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Things I have Seen

and

People I have Known

Things I have Seen

and

People I have Known

GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA

IN TWO VOLUMES
Volume II

CASSELL AND COMPANY Limited

LONDON PARIS <(: MELBOURNE

1894

v/. 2.

■^

PAGE

CONTENTS.

Chapter IX. — In a Mexican Sombrero.

A Mexican Costume — ^Travelling "Light" — "Blue FlannePs the
Thing" — ^Dreams of Many Lands — General Grant— A Shot
from a Federal Cruiser — Havana— Vera Cruz — General Santa
Anna — How he Lost his Leg — An Escort of Zouaves to
Puebla — A Cantinihe — General Almonte — Augustin I. —
Juarez — Bazaiue — Cavaignac — General Le F16 — The Marquis
de Montholon

Chapter X. — Usurers of the Past.

The French Usurer and his Wife — Money-lenders and their Profits
— "Kite-flying" — Loans in Kind — A Hundred and Twenty
per Cent. — The Literary Money-lender — ^The Didactic Usurer
"Mr. Thorough "—** Mr. Quasimodo" and his Breach of
Promise— "My Tommy" • . 33

Chapter XL— ** Fi. Fa." and " Ca. Sa."

John Doe and Kichard Roe — Two Old "Writs — Charles Dickens and
the Troublesome Guest — ^Four Courses— The Old Spunging
Houses — Copper Captains — "Washed Out of his own
Buckets " — The Whitecross Street Prison— An Out-of -Elbows
Club 51

Chapter XII. — The Fast Life of the Past.

Difference Between the " Fast " Life of the Present and that of the
Past— The Effect of Evening Dress : A New Clothes Philo-
sophy— Lord Frederick Verisopht and Sir Mulberry Hawk —

vi THINGS AND PEOPLE.

PAGE

**The "Wildest Young Dog About Town" — A Museum of
Stolen ** Curios" — The "Mad Marquis" and his Frolics —
Gambling in Regent Street — "Greeks" — JackThurtell and
his Victim— Arthur Thistlewood: How he "Was Ruined —
" Crockford's" — Superintendent Beresford and his Raids—
The "Night Houses" of the Haymarket— "The Pic."—
Panton Street 71

Chapter XIII. — Pantomimes Past and Present.

A Theological Professor with a Taste for Horse-racing — An Attempt
to Recall Bygone Christmases — Boxing Day, 1835 — Grue-
some Curtain Raisers on Pantomime Nights — The Police in
Early Days— Primitive Pantomime Tricks — A Criticism : " Few
Tricks, Fewer Thumps, a Singular Lack of Bumps" — The
Covent Garden Pantomime in 1820 — Za-Ze-Zi-Zo-Zoo: Ani-
mated Dominoes — Pilules du Diable in 1839 : A Run of a
Thousand Nights — The Author Nicknamed — Harlequin
Billy Taylor at the Princess's in 1851 — A Feline Comedy —
A Change of rd/^ 103

Chapter XIV.— Operas Remembered.

Mana di Eohan in 1847 — ^A Voice " like melted Butter " — Alboni —
Artaxerxes — Musical Criticism in 1836 — The Lord of the
Manor — Tom Thumb — The Quaker— Love in a Village — Guy
Mannering — Rob Roy — The Antiquary — John Bamet,
Michael Balfe, and Vincent "Wallace 123

Chapter XV. — Songs that Come Back to Me.

Rossini and "the excellent M. La-da-di-da-de-da-de-day " — A
Memoiy for Tunes — Arabic, Russian, and Spanish Melodies —
A Phenomenon of the Musical Memory : the Probable Ex-
planation — " The Evening Gun " — ^French Melodies — English
Ballads and Choruses — " She "Wore a "Wreath of Roses " and
its Composer— George Linley— Lover's Ballads — Songs to be
Avoided ' . 140

CONTENTS. vii

Chapter XVI. — Pictures that Haunt Me.

PAGE

Pictures Itecalled by Association — Jack Sheppard, with a Difference
— Cruikshank's Presentment of the Housebreaker— A Portrait
at Washington— Guido's " Beatrice Cenci " — Laying a Ghost
— Valdes LeaPs "Dead Prelate " — Gruesome War Pictures —
Jan Van Beers— The ** Operating Theatre " of the Inquisition
at Madrid — John Martin's Big Pictures — Hablot Knight
Browne's "John Gilpin" — Turner's Paintings — Two Works
in Distemper 155

Chapter XVII. — Taverns that Have Vanished.

Metamorphosed Taverns — George IV. and his Works — The Making
of Begent Street — Great Swallow Street — Development of
Club Life— The Old White Hart, Bishopsgate Street— The
Old Elephant, Fenchurch Street, and William Hogarth— The
Old Dog, Holjrwell Street — Changing Fashions in Drinks —
Business and Liquor Fifty Years Ago — The Rainbow, in Fleet
Street— The Cock— Peele's Coffee House . . . .171

Chapter XVIII. — Dinners Departed and Discussed.

French and English School Diet Compared — Eating Fat by Deputy
— " Joe's" Chophouse in Finch Lane — ^Market before " Meat "
— "A devilish good Dinner for Threepence-halfpenny" — ^The
** Thirteen Cantons *' — Beef d la mode — A Mysterious Sauce —
A Famous Boiled Beef House in the Old Bailey — ^The Wait-
ress and the Barrister — A Disestablished Feast — ^Responding
for the Visitors — ^The Sublime Society of Steaks— An Un-
spoken Speedi— A Dinner at Clifford's Inn — An American
Maxim 190

Chapter XIX. — Cooks oy My Acquaintance.

* * The Wretchedest of Weaklings "—Boy and Girl Cooks— The Potato
— Prices in the Past— Concerning Omelettes — Fricour's — ^How
to Govern a Kitchen — Verrey's — Bertolini's — Hungerford
Market — The Swan Tavern and its Denizens — A Man with a
Grievance and a Devourer of Crabs — ^A Meeting with Soyer
— Madame Soyer — ^A " Magic Stove " — Francatelli . , 219

viii THINGS AND PEOPLE,

PAGE

Chapter XX. — Costumes of My Infancy.

Boys in Petticoats — A "Skeleton Suit "—In Uniform — Schoolboy
Attire — A Vanished Garment — The Carlist War and One of
its Effects — A Gorgeous Costume 251

Chapter XXI. — Handwriting of My Friends.

Autograph Prices — Character in Handwriting— Flourishes Classified
— The Origin of a "Lasso" — Charles Dickens's "Forked
Lightning" Flourish — Compliments from Lord Brougham —
His Handwriting — Mr. Beresford Hope's— Mr. Walter Thom-
bury's— Thackeray's — Douglas Jerrold's— Sir Arthur Helps's
— Charles Reade's — Mr. Gye's — " Hans Breitnuum's " . . 266

THINGS I HAVE SEEN

AND

PEOPLE I HAYE KNOWN.

<•»

CHAPTER IX.

IN A MEXICAN SOMBRERO.

A Mexican Costume — ^Travelling "Light" — "Blue Flannels the
Thing " — Dreams of Many Lands — General Grant — ^A Shot from
a Federal Cruiser — Havana — ^Vera Cruz — General Santa Anna
— ^How he Lost his Leg — An Escort of Zouaves to Puebla — A
Cantiniere — General Almonte — ^Augnstin I. — Juarez — Bazaine
— Cavaignao— General Le Flo — The Marquis de Montholon.

In my study in London, on the top of a Chat-
wood's burglar-proof safe — a gift from Henry
Irving — ^there has stood for a long time a shallow-
but broad case of ebony, of which three of the
sides are of glass ; and in this case is a hat — a
very broad-brimmed, low-crowned article indeed,
of white felt lined with crimson silk. The under-
side of the brim is- profusely embroidered in
gold, silver, and green silk, with images of
eagles sitting on " nopals " — the eagle and nopal
being the heraldic cognisance of Mexico. From
b

2 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

that strange land I brought the hat in the
year 1864. It lay for years forgotten in
some obscure wardrobe-drawer, and the moths
had made sad havoc with the white felt ;
when, the article being accidentally discovered,
it was carefully placed in a case which was
hermetically sealed. I should add that by
the side of this hat — known in Mexico as a
sombrero galonado — there is a " pudding ; " not,
I hasten to explain, anything of a farinaceous or
fruity kind, but such a " pudding " as very
little children used to wear round their heads
in the far-off bj^gones, to save their skulls from
injury should they chance to tumble down
while essaying their first toddling. The " pud-
ding " to my sombrero is, in short, a padded
circular cushion, hollow in the centre; and it
was placed round the crown of the hat to miti-
gate to the wearer the fierceness of the sun's rays.
I wore that hat for several weeks in the
spring of 1864 ; and in addition I donned a dark
cloth, braided, round jacket, worn open, but
embellished with silver sugarloaf buttons and
loops ; very wide trousers of soft leather slashed
and puffed on the outer seams so as to show

m A MEXICAN SOMBRERO. 3

the white linen chapareros or drawers beneath,
and very large and long spurs, the rowels
of which were so broad that they seemed
to be emulating in their humble way the
diameter of the " coach- wheel *' hat itself. No
waistcoat, if you please; a linen shirt with a
turned-down collar, and a broad silken sash
round the waist, something like the Anglo-
Indian "cummerbund" or Jcamar-band ; while a
silk neckerchief passed through a ring, and a
revolver in the hip-pocket of the trousers, com-
pleted the costume. This was the garb which I
habitually wore when riding on horseback in the
land of the Aztecs ; and as in Mexico one is much
oftener in the saddle than out of it, you may
imagine that I soon grew accustomed to Mexican
sumptuary ways. In journeying hy dili^encia,
however, one wore ordinary travelling garments ;
and, at dinner in Mexico city, the usual sables
and white cravat of civilised life were adopted :
the dress-coat being, however, oftener of alpaca
than of cloth.

The hat of which I have told you is in the
glass case; but in a cabinet in another room
I keep the revolver and the spurs, which came
b2

THINGS AND PEOPLE.

from a town called Amozoc, famous for the
manufacture of spurs of the old Spanish pat-
tern. As for the braided and silver-buttoned
jacket, the soft leather trousers, the chapareros,
and the silken sash, those items were not
my property; they belonged to a kind friend
long since deceased, and whom I will call
Don Eustaquio, who guided me from New
York to Havana, thence to Vera Cruz, and so
through the mountain passes of the Cumbres
to the capital of the United States of Mexico,
where, at his mansion in the Calle San Francisco,
as well as at his country house at Chapultepec, he
entertained me with a bounteous hospitality which
I shall never forget. Englishmen journeying in
America are frequently advised to ** travel light"
— that is to say, not to encumber themselves
with too much luggage; but, considering the
distance between the Empire City and the
capital of Mexico, I scarcely think that it was
practicable for a civilised mortal to travel much
lighter than I did.

I only took with me a single and moder-
ate - sized valise, containing toilet requisites,
a sufficiency of linen, and a few suits of

IN A MEXICAN SOMBRERO, 5

white duck and brown hoUand. The last I
had made for me under the advice of a cautious
British Foreign Office messenger, who had,
in his youth, seen much military service in
the West Indies. He strongly counselled the
adoption of white ducks. '* And have them very
w6jl starched,'' he added ; " under those circum-
stances the fleas will have no purchase, and will
slip oft." An equally discreet New York tailor,
however, suggested that a few suits of brown
hoUand should alternate with the white ones.
'* If you wear white from eend to eend," opined
this sage, " I guess you must change every day ;
whereas there is at least forty-eight hours' wear
in a brown-holland suit, even in the hottest of
weather." But when, with what I thought
justifiable pride, I exhibited my outfit to my
friend the Don, he good-naturedly laughed me
and my advisers to scorn. "You should have
asked me," he said, " about a rig-out for Mexico,
White ducks are no good, and brown holland is
little better. Blue flannel is the thing ; it is
better than serge, and better than alpaca." But
it was too late. " Our boat was on the shore and
our bark was on the sea," and I had to get on

6 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

as well as I could with my too rashly ordered
outfit.

More clothes than these I did not need.
I was precisely of the same stature and build as
my host ; and he undertook to dress me in suits
of his own garments during the whole of my
stay in Mexico. This offer was prompted by a
very sufficient reason. Puebla had only just
been stormed by the French Expeditionary force
commanded by Marshal Bazaine ; and, ivlthough
President Juarez had fled to the Eio Grande,
and the French were, in a military sense, masters
of Mexico, while the ill-fated Archduke Maxi-
milian had been tempted by Napoleonic intrigues
to abandon his beautiful domain at Miramar,
near Trieste, and allow himself to be proclaimed
Emperor of Mexico, the country between Vera
Cruz and the metropolis swarmed with j/uerri/leros,
or brigands ; and the less luggage that a traveller
from the coast carried with him the better.

My friend, who was an enthusiastic ad-
mirer of field sports and had a large stud at
Chapultepec, had made extensive purchases of
horses in New York ; but these animals he
had sent on to Vera Cruz by a merchant

IK A MEXICAN SOMBRERO. 7

steamer ; and, to avoid embarrassing complica-
tions with the Custom House, the noble steeds
were supposed to represent so many four-footed
members of a travelling circus, my host's stud-
groom being, pro /em,, the Franconi or the
Sanger in charge. K we did meet any bandits
on the way, they would probably do us no harm
if, when our travelling carriage happened to be
attacked, no articles of much value were found
in the baggage. The Mexican guerrillero^ were
rather a cowardly crew, not nearly so ferocious
as the Turco-Greek brigands ; and although a
traveller with little to be robbed of might not
altogether verify the Latin proverb by singing
in the presence of Mexican ladrones, he would
not, probably, come to much grief unless he hap-
pened to be some conspicuous native merchant
or banker, in which case he would in all likeli-
hood be held for ransom in the approved Greek,
Neapolitan, and Sicilian fashion. Now, my
friend happened to be distinguished both as a
merchant and as a banker; but he intended to
take very good care not to allow his name to
be bruited about till he got safe home.

I have seen, in my time, a good many

THINGS AND PEOPLE.

countries and a godd many cities ; and I judge of
the amount of interest which those countries
and cities have excited in my mind by the pro-
portionate frequency with which I dream about
them. And when I speak of dreaming, be good
enough to remember that you can have distinct
visions of bygone scenes and people that will
rise before you when you are wide awake : — walk-
ing in the street, or travelling in an express
train, or leaning lazily over the taffrail of a ship
becalmed in the midst of the blue Pacific or the
bluer Indian Ocean. You can dream vivid
dreams at a public dinner, even when you are
listening, perforce, to the prosing of some ancient
general or admiral who is telling the Master,
Wardens, and Court of Assistants of the Wor-
shipful Company of Tobacco - Pipe - Stopper
Makers that the military or naval services of
this country are going to the deuce.

Ever so many times in the course of every
twelve months I dream of Eome, and Venice,
and Florence ; but with much greater rarity of
Milan and Genoa, and scarcely ever of Turin.
As rarely do I see Paris in my visions, as rarely
Madrid; but Seville and Granada are old day

IN A MEXICAN SOMBRERO. 9

and night visitors of mine, and so are Constanti-
nople and Smyrna. If ever I dream of Athens
it is in a bewilderingly confused manner, in
which a small Brunswick, or a miniature Dres-
den, or a restricted Cassel, gets mixed up with the
Acropolis and the Temple of Theseus. I try,
generally with success, not to dream of Australia
at all ; and I was too short a time in India, and
too sick and wretched when I was there, to pre-
serve any very graphic memory of that wonderful
land. Ceylon, with its spice-laden breezes,
comes back to me very often ; still not so
often, most assuredly, as Mexico. I have but
to glance at the sombrero galonado on the top of
the safe, to tsike up one of the espuelas de Amozoc^
to look at a little statuette of the Madonna — a
Dolores with a beautiful, sorrow-stricken, im-
ploring face — or at some wax figures dressed in
Mexican costume, or at some pictures exquisitely
worked with the brilliant feathers of tiny Mexi-
can birds, to see at once, clear, sharp-cut, and
many-hued, the mysterious country of Monte-
zuma. I see the Cofre of Perote, the Peak of
Orizaba, the long, dark canones of the Cumbres,
the broad belts of Tier r a Caliente, teeming with

THINGS AND PEOFLE.

tropical vegetation : — coffee and tobacco, sugar-
cane, arrowroot, indigo, manioc, bananas, the
cotton plant, the fan-palm, the cacao ; and then
my eye stretches across vast tracts of sandy
desert, relieved only by clumps of cactus and
prickly pear, and now and again by grisly ruins
of ancient Aztec arches and pyramids ; while
in the remote background is the wondrous
city of Tenostitlan itself, dominated by the
snow-clad mountains half shrouded in mist,
Popocatapetl and Tsclascihuatl ; the first nearly
18,000ft. high. I strolled into the Camera
Obscura on the West Pier at Brighton not
long . ago ; and there was some delay in the
darkened chamber while the conductor of the
show was arranging his lens. I declare that
when on the adumbrated field of the circular
table there should have been produced the image
of the Hotel Metropole and ladies and gentle-
men in European summer costume lounging in
the porch of the great red-brick caravanserai,
there were conjured up in my mind the two great
mountains that tower over the valley of Mexico,
rising suddenly out of a low range of hills ;
their summits clothed with eternal snows, and

IN A MEXICAN 80MBBEE0. 11

their bases shrouded in dense masses of dark
green pine forest.

Most of us have heard of the extreme
taciturnity of the late General Ulysses S.
Grant. I had the honour to know that re-
nowned captain, both in the States and in
Europe. He was, as a rule, certainly most reti-
cent of speech ; but happening to meet him one
evening at dinner at the house of my old
friend Mr. James Ashbury, in Eastern Terrace,
Brighton, of which borough Mr. Ashbury was
then one of the representatives in Parliament,
I chanced to tell the General that I had
sojourned for a considerable time in Mexico.
He had been there, I knew, as a young officer
in the United States Army during the Mexican
war. He began to talk about the country, espe-
cially about Popocatapetl, and he continued to
discourse without surcease for full twenty min-
utes; and although that which he said deeply
interested me, I confess that I was slightl}^
disenchanted when the General concluded by
remarking that he guessed that there was
a remunerative amount of business to be
done in the way of working sulphur mines in

12 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

the sides of the huge volcano. It is far from
improbable that the mental vision of the two
snow-clad mountains which rose before me in
the dark chamber on the West Pier was ob-
scurely due to the circumstance that three or
four days previously I had been looking over a
house in Eastern Terrace, and that I had re-
membered the dinner at Mr. Ashbury's residence
at which General Grant talked so long and so
fluently about his Mexican experiences.

A voyage to Mexico, at the period when
the War of Secession in the States was at
its height, was not unaccompanied by some
little inconveniences, occasionally amounting to
no small danger. All the ports in the Southern
States, with the exception of New Orleans,
which had been early captured by the Federals,
were strictly blockaded; and during our run
from New York to Havana we were boarded
three times by Federal gunboats, the com-
mander of one of which was kind enough
to fire a shot, not over, but into our bows,
because our skipper did not at once obey the
signal commanding us to lay-to. In fact, I
think the skipper, the first officer, and a select

IN A MEXICAN SOMBliERO. 13

party of passengers, were playing a cheerful game
of poker when the shot from the Federal cruiser
came crashing into the timbers forward. It was
a lieutenant from the gunboat who boarded us,
and he talked at first in a very menacing man-
ner ; but when our captain had conducted the
gallant son of Neptune to his — the captain's own
— cabin he emerged therefrom about ten minutes
afterwards with an expression of perfect confi-
dence and satisfaction on his manly countenance.
Of course the steamer's papers had been sub-
mitted to him, and found to be in proper order ;
still, unless I gravely err, he had had another
cause for complacency. " You see, sir," ex-
plained our thoughtful skipper, " when these
navy chaps that does the blockading want a
drink of whisky, they just bear down on the
first passengej steamer they sight, and overhaul
her to make sure that she isn't a blockade-runner.
It was right good Bourbon that I gave that
leeftenant." A queer time.

It was, nevertheless, quite necessary for
Federal cruisers to keep the sharpest of eyes
on passenger steamers hailing from New York
and bound to the Gulf of Mexico. Not seldom

THINGS AND PEOPLE.

it would happen that when the ship had been
at sea a couple of days the majority of the
passengers would suddenly convey to the skipper
the unwelcome information that they were mili-
tant Confederates ; and, after exhibiting bowie-
knives, revolvers, knuckledusters, and other means
of persuasion, they would take command of the
steamer and run her, if they could, into a Secesh
port. It took us four days and a half to reach
Havana ; and unluckily we did not make the
coast of Cuba till after sundown, at which time
the port is closed ; so we had to cruise about all
night outside the harbour and under the guns of
the Morro Castle. Next day, however, we
landed, and abode in the capital of Cuba for a
whole week.

Havana, I have been told, has consider-
ably altered — and for the better, I hope —
since the spring of 1804. The fortifications of
the town had only just been demolished, and
broad suburban promenades were being formed.
The hotels were altogether Spanish — that is to
say, extremely vile. Slavery still existed, and
beggars abounded. There was plenty, however,
to be seen and to be admired, especially the great

IN A MEXICAN SOMBRERO. 15

Tacon Opera House — the Scala, one may almost
say, of the Spanish West Indies, at which vast
theatre I found ^^ prima donna assoluta an old and
esteemed friend of mine, Madame Gruerrabella,
who has sung under that name and with great
applause in England, but who is better known
to modern playgoers as the accomplished tra^e-
dienne. Miss Grenevieve Ward. Of course one
could not leave the Pearl of the Antilles without
paying a visit to the great cigar manufactory,
the " Real Fabrica de Tabacos " of the *' Hija;
de Cabanas y Carvajal." The firm were kind
enough to present me with what is known in
Spanish as an obsequio, in the shape of fifty of the
very choicest regalias imperiales in a glass casket
richly framed with gilt metal. I came upon the
casket, much battered and shattered, a few weeks
since in a lumber-room ; and I wondered how
many thousands of Cabafias I have smoked since
March, 1864 !

A few days' steaming in another ship took
us to Vera Cruz, then a hot, dusty, bustling,
and I should say fearfully malarious place, with
no regular harbour, but only an open roadstead
with a kind of natural breakwater in the rock,

16 THINGS AND PEOPLE,

crowned by the mediaeval castle of San Juan de
Ulloa. We did not anchor under the lee of that
fortress half an hour too soon ; for almost imme-
diately after our arrival there sprang up what in
these latitudes is called a Norte: a storm the
cousin-german of which, in amusing accordance
with the rule of contraries, is known on the
Australian shores of the Pacific as a *' Southerly
Buster." The sky is blue, the sea is calm, the
sun shines brightly ; when on a sudden a black
spot is visible just above the horizon. It grows ;
it swells into a tremendous rain-cloud ; it
bursts. The wind begins to howl ; the sky
becomes inky black ; and the sea is lashed into
one seething, heaving mass of white foam. In
the case of a Norte, the prudent master-mariner
eschews even the open roadstead of Vera Cruz,
changes his course, and makes a run for the
adjacent port of Sacrificios.

Vera Cruz in 1864 bore the strangest of
aspects. There were several French men-of-war
in the harbour ; and immediately you landed you
found yourself surrounded by military natives
of la Belle France, mingled with more or less
ragged Mexicans, in striped serapes or blankets

m A MEXICAN SOMBRERO. 17

and coachwheel hats ; swarthy women with
ribosos or mantles of black cloth or silkily fine
cotton drawn over their heads — the Mexican sub-
stitute for the mantilla of Old Spain — together
with shovel-hatted priests, muleteers, half-castes,
Indians, mendicants, and dogs innumerable.
The narrow and dirty streets of the town were
patrolled by droves of zopilotes — black vultures
of the turkey-buzzard genus, which hopped
about unmolested in the open and pestiferous
gutters ; in fact, their vast capacity for devouring
carrion had caused the zopilotes to be placed
under the immediate protection of the police.
The obscene creatures were, indeed, the only
scavengers of Vera Cruz in my time — and they
were no doubt very useful in freeing the town
of some of its most revolting features. Still, for
all the vultures could do, the place had a hor-
rible smell ; and it was difficult tp converse for
five minutes with a native without reference
being made to the far from fascinating subject
of the vomito, or yellow fever, which was per-
manently domiciled there. Add to the evil
odours and the carrion- birds the presence of
myriads of sand-flies and mosquitos, and you

18 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

may imagine that my first impressions of the
land of Montezuma were not very exhilarating.
But my friendly Don bade me be of good cheer,
and assured me that when we reached a higher
level and emerged into the valley of Mexico I
should find myself in one of the most delightful
countries and climates in the world. And he
spoke the truth. I should add that in addition
to French troops of every branch in the Imperial
service, there were quartered at Vera Cruz two re-
giments of Egyptian soldiers — coal-black Nubians
in white uniforms and red fez caps, who had been
lent — for a consideration, I suppose — to the Em-
peror Napoleon III. by the Pasha of Egypt — not
then known as Khedive. These sable warriors
were mostly of gigantic stature ; and I was in-
formed that excellent discipline was maintained
in their ranks : the chief means of preserving it
being that when a soldier did not do as he was
ordered, his officer straightway proceeded to fell
him to the earth with his sabre — it is to be hoped,
with the blunt edge of the weapon.

My sojourn in Mexico brought me in contact
with a large number of celebrated people.
There was, to begin with, Don Antonio Lopes

m A MEXICAN SOMBRERO, 19

de Santa Anna. The intercolonial steamer on
board which I was a passenger picked up the
ex-President of the Mexican Eepublic at St.
Thomas — that pleasant little island with its
white houses with green verandahs and bright
red roofs — where the Greneral had a country-
house, and solaced himself during exile by the
diversion of cock-fighting. The General was
coming to Mexico to offer his services to the
Emperor Maximilian — and perhaps with a view
towards his own personal interests, in which he
had always manifested the liveliest concern — and
was accompanied by his wife, whose personal im-
pedimentay comprising several enormous trunks
of the pattern known to the Spaniards as mundos
— worlds — a parrot in a cage, several lapdogs,
and a guitar, almost filled the boat in which her
Excellency was conveyed to the steamer.

Santa Anna himself was, in 1864, a hale old
gentleman of sixty-six ; he wore a glossy, curly,
brown wig, very much resembling the historic
peruke assumed by his Majesty King George IV.,
as you behold him in Sir Thomas Lawrence's
full-length portrait of the First Gentleman in
Europe in the full robes of the Garter; nor
c2

20 THINGS AND l^EOPLB,

were the Mexican warrior and statesman's high
white cravat and stand-up shirt- collars altogether
unlike those worn, in the portrait of which I
have spoken, by the Fourth Greorge. For the
rest, Santa Anna was attired in a blue body-coat
with gilt buttons, a formidable shirt-frill of the
'* pouter-pigeon " pattern, nankeen waistcoat
and pantaloons, with a great bunch of seals
pendant from the fob which contained his
watch. He had a wooden leg ; and I think he
told me, after I had been presented to him by
my friend the Don, who knew, him very well,
that he had lost the limb during the bombard-
ment of Vera Cruz by the French in 1839 : and
that the surgical department of the Mexican
army being at the time somewhat defective,
his leg had been amputated by a local butcher.
Santa Anna s complexion was pink and white,
although he was Mexican born, but of unmixed
Spanish descent.

He came of an ancient Castilian house, a
cadet of which had emigrated to New Spain ;
and his earlier feats of arms had been in defence
of the Spanish Monarchy against the partisans
of independence. But he speedily threw in his

IN A MEXICAN SOMBRERO. 21

lot with the patriots ; and for twenty years was
one of the most conspicuous personages in
Mexican politics, and became President of the
EepubHc and Dictator over and over again ;
his tenures of power alternating with long
periods of banishment. He was full of anecdote,
and, I should say, was, on the whole, about as
crafty an old fox as ever looted a henroost
or doubled when the hounds were close upon
him. But the French, when we arrived at
Vera Cruz, would have nought to do with Don
Antonio Lopes de Santa Anna. The comman-
dant of the garrison, with three aides-de-camp,
all very brave in white puggrees floating in the
breeze, boarded us so soon as we were under the
guns of the castle of San Juan de UUoa, and
politely but firmly communicated to General
Santa Anna the positive orders of Greneral
Bazaine, that he — the ex-Dictator — was not to
be allowed to land on Mexican soil. So, with
the Sefiora, his spouse, and her multifarious
belongings, the ex-Dictator transferred him-
self to another steamer bound direct for St.
Thomas.

I must now mention that my hospitable Don's

22 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

hopes of not being recognised until his arrival
in Mexico city were frustrated. We purposely
avoided going to a /onda, or hotel ; but re-
paired instead to the house of a mercantile
correspondent of ray friend, where, like Brer
Eabbit, we " lay low ''for a few days ; but it
oozed out, somehow or another, that the senior
partner in the great banking-house of the city
of Mexico was in Vera Cruz ; and ere long we
heard that the tidings had reached the niala
gente, or brigands, who were making active pre-
parations to seize our party and hold us to
ransom. The guerilleros, notwithstanding all
the vigilance of the French, were swarming in
the Cumbres, and an exceptionally audacious
bandit, whose sobriquet was "El Aguador " —
the water-carrier — had made no secret of his
intention to kidnap Don Eustaquio and his com-
panions. For the Don he meant to ask, he said,
a ransom of $50,000. There was in his company,
added " El Aguador," another person — an Eng-
lishman, whose name he could not gather, but
who was fat. For M Gordo, the corpulent
traveller, he should demand a ransom of $2,000.
Take physic, pomp ! Here was a rascally Mexi-

IN A MEXICAN 80MBBEE0. 23

can highwayman, who not only alluded uncom-
plimentarily to my personal appearance, but
contemptuously appraised me at the pitiful
price of £400 sterling. Thus, we waited at
Vera Cruz until the commandant of the garrison
of Puebla, who was a French general of division,
could be communicated with; and he very
obligingly placed a company of French Zouaves
at our disposition as an escort as far as Puebla ;
promising us another escort — of cavalry, if pos-
sible — from that city to the capital.

The Zouaves were accommodated in a couple
of large omnibuses, not only filling the interior,
but crowding the roofs of those vehicles; and I
am happy to remember that the gallant warriors
in the baggy red breeches and the white turbans
were accompanied by a French caniiniere, who
was under orders to join the headquarters of her
regiment in Mexico city. A merrier, wittier,
saucier, kindlier-hearted little lady in short skirt,
scarlet continuations, and white canvas gaiters I
never met. She eschewed the regimental turban,
and wore a sailor s hat covered with black oilskin,
rakishly set on one side of her curly brown head.
The soldiers treated her with chivalric respect ;

24 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

for the poor little soul was a widow with two
children. Her husband, who was a sergeant,
had been killed at Magenta. She had been in
the Crimea, too, and expressed great surprise
that the English regiments at Balaclava had no
vivandieres — ^nothing in that line, indeed, save a
ladj of dark complexion who kept an everything
store at Balaclava, and whom she called La Mere
Cicol — I suppose she meant that respectable
West Indian universal provider, Mrs. Seacole,
who did so much to minister to the well-being
of our gallant soldiers in the Tauric Chersonese.
Altogether, the little French cantiniere whose
husband was slain at Magenta has not ceased
to shine as a very bright spot in my memory.
From top to toe, in mien and speech, she was
the counterpart of B^ranger's sutler. " Soldats,
voilk Catin ! '' I saw her afterwards on the
march with her regiment ; and she looked more
like Beranger's heroine than ever — alert, saucy,
confident, brave, as was her ancestress when she
marched into Vienna, into Berlin, into Madrid,
into Moscow.

So, with the aid of the two omnibuses full of
Zouaves, we reached the capital in safety, and a

IN A MEXICAN SOMBRERO. 25

very few days after our arrival my friendly Don
took me to the Palace and presented me to
General Don Juan Ndpomucfene Almonte, who
was Eegent of Mexico, or Chief of the Provi-
sional Grovernment, fulfilling all the duties of a
chief magistrate until the arrival of the Emperor
Maximilian. Almonte was a gentleman of middle
stature, slight of limb, and extremely swarthy,
even to the colour of copper, in complexion. He
was altogether a remarkable man, being, in fact,
the son of the famous Cura Morelos, one of the
most conspicuous of the patriots who fought for
Mexican independence. His mother was a full-
blooded Indian ; and the story was current that
the bellicose curate's son derived his name of
Almonte from the circumstance of his sire, at the
moment of departure on one of his adventurous
expeditions, being accustomed to say to his wife
and the nurse who carried the infant, El nino al
monte — ^the child to the hills ; the densely-
wooded mountain ranges being the habitual
refuge, in troublous times, of women and child-
ren. Morelos was captured and shot by the
Eoyalists; and his young son escaped to New
Orleans, where a generous French Creole lady

26 THIN08 AND PEOPLE.

adopted him, had him thoroughly educated, and
would have set him up in business as a merchant ;
but the youth preferred to return to his native
country, to which he was recalled in company
with other Mexican exiles by the unlucky Em-
peror Iturbide. His life had been one continual
fever of agitation and intrigue ; but his educa-
tion had stood him in good stead, inasmuch as he
had been repeatedly despatched on diplomatic
missions to London, to Paris, and to other Euro-
pean capitals. He spoke English and French

fluently, and retained a lively and favourable
remembrance of Lord Palmerston and of Lord
Clarendon.

The palace of which I speak is a long range
of stone or adode buildings, of no great altitude,
but of immense extent ; and the edifice is inter-
esting as standing on the exact site of the palace
of the ill-fated Montezuma. It occupies one
side of the great Plaza of the city, to your right
as you emerge from the long street which runs
right through the town; and although the
topography of Mexico has in the course of nearly
four centuries undergone many changes, the
student of Prescott will without much difficulty

IN A MEXICAN SOMBRERO. 27

recognise the similarity between the structural
arrangements of the modern city and those
so iniraitahly described by the American his-
torian. The great pyramidal temple of Tenos-
titlan has been replaced by an imposing Eoman
Catholic cathedral, which fronts you as you enter
the Plaza from the street just named. It is a
splendid pile, which was begun so far back as
1573, and was not completely finished until
1791 ; but on one side of this magnificent fane
there remains the great sacrificial stone of the
ancient Aztecs. The cathedral faces you from
the north ; the whole south side of the Plaza is
occupied by the Portal, or market, the arcades
of which are heaped high with all kinds of pro-
ducts and miscellaneous ware, including large
quantities of characteristic native pottery, and
which seem to be frequented at all hours by in-
numerable swarms of people of both sexes and
all ages — white, half-castes, and Indians ; the
women in ribosos, the men mainly draped in
serapes. The attractions of the Portal were en-
hanced by a number of little gambling-tables
held by crafty-looking men, at which you could
play at the national and fascinating game of

28 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

montc, either for doubloons or onzas de orOy or
for clacos or coppers.

The mention of the name of Iturbide re-
minds me — first, that the only commonly-
decent hotel in the Mexico which I remember
was the Fonda Iturbide ; and next, that I was
introduced to two middle-aged gentlemen, who
were the sons of the unfortunate Emperor just
named. The elder Iturbide had begun his
career, like Santa Anna, by fighting in the Royal
army against the patriots ; but he subsequently
joined the Independence party, and was mainly
instrumental in driving the Spaniards out of
the country. The victorious Greneral unwisely
allowed himself to be elected Emperor of Mexico,
and took the title of Augustin I. Naturally he
was, in process of time, overthrown and banished ;
and as naturally, when he returned to Mexico,
the faction in power tried him for treason and
shot him. Mexicans of all shades of opinion
have, however, been unanimous in acclaiming
Iturbide as the greatest of their countrymen.
His remains were interred with great pomp in
the Cathedral of Mexico ; his sword is preserved
as a precious relic in the Chamber of Deputies ;

IN A MEXICAN SOMBRERO. 29

and the two middle-aged gentlemen whom I
knew were in receipt of pensions from the
Grovernment, which stipends, wonderful to relate,
had always been paid with punctuality.

Of the two brethren I only preserve a distinct
recollection of Don Augustin, who was celebrated
for one rather remarkable quality. He was con-
sidered to be the only cahallero in Mexico city
who could drink a bottle of dry sherry without
turning a hair. The devotees of temperance
might clap their hands in ecstasy could they
take note of the abstemiousness which prevails
among the upper classes in the city of Monte-
zuma. Champagne and light claret and a very
little pure sherry make their appearance at high-
class dinner tables ; but the air, owing to the
great altitude of the plateau on which the city
stands, is so excessively rarefied that you seem
to be in a state of continual finger-snapping
and head-tossing elation, and you require only
homoeopathic quantities of alcohol. On the
other hand, the Indian population will get
tipsy, whenever they have the opportunity of
doing so, on the national beverage, pulque, a
vinous liquor obtained by fermenting the juice

30 THINGS AND PEOPLE,

of the various species of the agave. It looks
like butter-milk, it smells like rotten eggs, and
it tastes like cider that has gone very wrong
indeed. The Indians are passionately fond of it.

The country, just prior to the arrival of
Maximilian of Hapsburg, was in the strangest
condition. Mexico, Puebla, and Vera Cruz
were completely under the military control of
the French ; but in the interior states the Re-
publican party was far from being annihilated.
Ex-President Benito Juarez, with a diminished
following, had been slowly driven back to
Zacatecas ; still he continued to protest that
he alone represented the National Government,
and General Bazaine was unable to '* destroy "
him — a term so frequently used by the Great
Duke during the Waterloo campaign with refer-
ence to Napoleon Bonaparte. That conqueror
our Wellington certainly did '' destroy " ; but
Juarez lived to fight another day, to murder,
judicially, the unhappy Maximilian, and to
become once more President of Mexico.

I deeply regret that I never encountered Don
Benito Juarez — a most remarkable little copper-
coloured man. He was known in Mexico as

IN A MEXICAN SOMBRERO. 31

M Lidio, and had, I believe, very little, if any,
Spanish blood in his veins. He was of very
humble extraction; but, by the sheer force
of indefatigable industry and sedulous study,
added to great natural gifts, had got himself
called to the Bar, and jjrior to his election as
Chief Magistrate of the Republic, he had been
President of the Supreme Court of Mexico. I
mentioned General (afterwards Marshal) Bazaine
just now, to whom I was presented by his kins-
man, a young captain of infantry, who was
generally known as '' Le Petit Bazaine." The
General struck me as neitHer more nor less intelli-
gent than the average of French officers of rank
with whom I have had the privilege to converse.
Pelissier, Forey, Leboiuf, and Bosquet all seemed
to have been turned out of the same mould ; and
all struck me as being very brave, hearty, but
somewhat dense gentlemen ; but Lamoriciere
had something of the patrician and the chivalrous
about him ; and Cavaignac was a general officer
of decided character and marked political as well
as military ability.

General Le Flo I met in St. Petersburg,
where he was Ambassador, in 1876. He was

32 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

a most amusing, energetic warrior-diplomatist,
who had been, I should say, both a lady-
killer and a fire-eater in his youth. He was
never tired of inveighing against the hopeless
deterioration of French statesmen ; and, on the
whole, he reminded one somewhat forcibly of
General Boum in Za Grande Duchesse. One
more personage of importance I may mention
among the people whom I met in Mexico.
This was the Marquis de Montholon, whom I
had known as French Consul-General of New
York ; but who, when a shadowy crown was
placed on the brow of an Austrian Grand Duke,
was despatched as Minister Plenipotentiary to
Mexico. He was either the son or the near
kinsman of General Montholon, the devoted
adherent of the first Napoleon, who accompanied
his fallen master to St. Helena, and remained
there until the death of the exile of Longwood.

CHAPTEE X.

USURERS OF THE PAST.

The French Usurer and his Wife— Money-lenders and their Profits
— " Kite-flying " — ^Loans in Kind — A Hundred and Twenty per
Cent. — The Literary Money-lender — The Didactic Usurer —
"Mr. Thorough" — "Mr. Quasimodo" and his Breach of
Promise — " My Tommy."

I SUPPOSE that there have been money-lenders
ever since the time when gold, silver, copper,
leather, or tin was recognised as a circulating
medium ; and almost as old as the hills are
the stories of the extortions of usurers. I was
reading, a while ago, in a little sixteenth-
century Book of Jests, how a French usurer,
coming home to his wife after the transactions
of the day, told her that he had done a very
good stroke of business; inasmuch as he
had lent the sum of six hundred livres to
a young * gentleman for a term of one year at
fifty per cent, interest; had deducted the in-
terest in advance, and consequently had dis-
bursed only three hundred livres in hard cash.
"You fool!" replied his better half, "you
d

34 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

ought to have lent him the money for two
years, deducting two years' interest ; and then
you would not have had to part with any
cash at all." The story may be, for aught I
know, in Joe Miller ; or it may have come
from the ''Book of the Sixty " in Old Athens;
or it may possibly be recited in hieroglyphics
on the oldest of Egyptian obelisks. Still, what-
ever may be the origin of the little apologue, it
points to the universal belief that money-lenders
are the very hardest of persons with whom it is
possible to do business ; and that if they were
not the most rapacious of extortioners, they
would never enrich themselves.

I have seen a good deal of usurers in my day,
and, generally speaking, have been on amicable
terms with many shining lights of the money-
lending fraternity ; but, strange to say, I have
been led, after many years' experience of them, to
the opinion that money-lenders, as a rule, do not
acquire very great wealth. Some twenty years
ago, a then very well-known bill-discounter, one
of the good old sixty per cent, fraternity, in-
cidentally observed to me, "People are quite
mistaken in thinking that we make such a

USURERS OF THE PAST, 35

tremendous pile of money out of stamped paper
at three months. My dear sir, I can assure
you, on my word of honour, that when I
balance my books, every Good Friday, I think
myself lucky if they show an all-round profit of
ten per cent." Bacon, in his Essay on Riches,
says that " usury is the certainest means of gain,
though one of the worst ; " yet the illustrious
philosopher is fain to qualify his assertion as to
the certainty of the usurer's gains when he
proceeds to say that the money-lender's trade
has flaws ; " for that the scriveners and brokers
do value unsound men to serve their turn."

There it is. Emboldened by the facility with
which he has eaten up innumerable herds of
small deer, the usurer imagines that it will be as
easy for him to devour some huge Monarch of
the Glen — with a coronet perchance on one of
the tynes of his antlers — but the giant may
turn out, in the long run, to be merely a Colossus
of Insolvency ; and the disconsolate usurer finds
that he has only been throwing away his money.
Be it as it may, I have not known many bill-
discounters who have realised exceptionally large
fortunes. I have heard, it is true, of two or
d2

36 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

three millionnaires in the *' kite -flying" line;
but, on the contrary, I have been aware of a
considerable number of once prominent money-
lenders who have either retired from that peculiar
branch of business, to take up some other avoca-
tion, or who have gone to dire and irremediable
smash.

Again, it strikes me that there are not a
quarter so many professional usurers at present
as was formerly the case; and that " kite-flying/'
or, to use a less figurative term, dealing in ac-
commodation bills, is a financial operation rapidly
declining. Whether the Public Offices are yet
haunted by Harpagons of the insatiably ravenous
type depicted with inimitable humour in the
Autobiography of Anthony TroUope, I have no
precise means of judging ; still, I should say that
the practice of '' kite-flying " on a comparatively
small scale — the security being merely the signa-
tures of the drawer, acceptor, and endorser of the
'* bits of stiff " — is not by any means so prevalent
as it was thirty years since. Scores or hundreds
of thousands of pounds sterling may still be lent
to prodigal sons by a very few usurers on a larger
scale ; but my Lord Rakewell has usually some

USURERS OF THE PAST, 37

tangible security to offer, in the shape of land
or reversions of property. The money-lenders
whom I remember in the past were quite con-
tent to do business on a strictly '' kite-flying
basis," and perhaps the Debtors' Act of 1869,
which, although it did not entirely abolish im-
prisonment for debt, sufficed to empty and
render useless all the debtors' prisons in London,
had a great deal to do with reducing the traffic
in accommodatipn bills. When the maximum
of the duration of imprisonment for a debt was
fixed at six weeks, the bill-discounting creditor
felt that he was bereaved of one of his most
cherished privileges — that of keeping his debtor
in gaol for an indefinite term of years.

The abolition of the purchase system in the
army may furthermore have conduced to the
discouragement of the once flourishing trade of
" doing bits of stiff." So long as a commission
in her Majesty's service was a saleable article,
the impecunious subaltern could always borrow.
But the disestablishment and demolition of the
Fleet, the Bench, and Whitecross Street prisons,
were more immediately instrumental in bringing
about the decline, if not the fall, of the accom-

38 THINGS AND PEOPLE,

modation bill. A " Father of the Marshalsea "
is at the present day happily an impossibility.
I must frankly admit that, althougli my acquaint-
ance with bill-discounters goes back to the very
early 'fifties, the bill-discounters who are de-
scribed in Samuel Warren's '* Ten Thousand a
Year," and in Charles Lever's early Irish and
military novels, flourished before my time. Most
of us have read about the wheeled vehicle which
a Dublin bill-discounter made his customers ac-
cept as an equivalent for part of the sum which
he lent them, and which had returned to him
and gone through so many hands that it came
at last to be known as "the discount dennet."
Then there was the Trapbois, who forced his
victims to take a portion of their loans in pic-
tures by the Old Masters, or percussion-muskets
from the Tower, or bird-of- paradise and humming-
bird skins, or models in ivory of the old Teme-
raire. Wine, too, was very frequently foisted
on the acceptor of a biH, to the extent of fifty per
cent, of the sum theoretically advanced, and I
once had a friend who, getting a ** kite " flown for
a hundred pounds, received twenty-five pounds
in cash and the balance in " leather." What he

USURERS OF THE PAST. 39

did with the hides, or whether the leather con-
sisted of saddles, bridles, portmanteaus, or lug-
gage straps, I do not know.

There were, of course, as there may be still
to a restricted extent, money-lenders and money-
lenders. There were fashionable West End
tailors who would advance thousands to cus-
tomers whom they thought to be "safe," and
crapulous money-spinners who turned over, so to
speak, only shillings and pence, but who, on the
whole, made far fewer bad debts than their
fashionable congeners did. About Clare Market
and the streets surrounding Lincoln's Inn, there
used to hang, some forty years ago, money-
lenders akin to those pests and curses to the
French peasant, the usuriers a la petite semaine.
Their vocation was to advance small sums, rarely
exceeding five pounds, to temporarily necessitous
tradespeople : the loan being generally for a week,
and never exceeding a fortnight ; the transaction
being effected, not by a bill of exchange or pro-
missory note, but simply by I U. The interest
which these benevolent assistants of struggling
traders exacted would be nearer, I should say, a
hundred and twenty than the proverbial sixty per

40 TRlJSfOS AND PEOPLE.

cent., and their business was, in the main, I ap-
prehend, a remarkably lucrative one ; since they
dealt with persons who were continually in
receipt of ready money, and who were, as a rule,
ready and able to repay small loans ; although
indebtedness to any large amount would surely
have driven them into bankruptcy. One of these
hebdomadal money-lenders advanced cash ex-
clusively to small undertakers ; another devoted
his attention especially to butchers ; and a third
was the beneficent genius of widows who kept
small chandlers' shops.

Then there was the literary money-lender — a
sympathising soul whose professed object in life
was to minister to the necessities of young
authors, for whom he always predicted a swift
rise to fame and fortune. He was no advertising
usurer, oh dear no; but he wrote you affec-
tionate and strictly confidential letters, isigned
" A Retired Bookseller," and asking for an in-
terview. Eventually you found out that his
name was, we will say, Skinemalive. He was the
most obliging creature in the world, in the
way of renewing bills when they became due ;
and by the time you had had, say, thirty

USURERS OF THE PAST. 41

pounds in solid money from him, you found
that you owed him on stamped paper at
least a hundred. He was a rare rogue.
Another type of the bland and almost pathetic
usurer was a gentleman long since deceased,
whom I may call the didactic bill-discounter.
He had an office somewhere near Leicester
Square; and he entertained you with high-
flown discourse while the little formalities in-
cidental to getting "a bit of stiff" done
were being transacted by his clerks. He was
curiously well read in Pope, and occasionally
even favoured his clients with quotations from
*' Paradise Lost," while his epistolary style was
based on Dr. Johnson's " Eambler" and " Idler";
his loftiest sentences, however, being enlivened
by touches of his own peculiar humour. " Sir,"
he once wrote to a friend of mine, " the pressing
entreaties you make for additional time being ex-
tended to you, for the discharge of the debt and
costs for which I have obtained judgment against
you, have not the ring of true remorse. They
rather resemble the shriek of the impenitent
malefactor in his cell, on the evening prior to his
execution ; and I intend to have all your molar

42 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

teeth to-morrow." That which the didactic bill-
discounter intended to do, he generally did — and
with a vengeance.

Somewhere in a street off the Strand, be-
tween Waterloo Bridge and the Adelphi, there
flourished, when I was quite a young man,
another facetious usurer whom I will call Mr.
Thorough — he did things so very completely.
He had a front office and a back office, the last his
own private sanctum, which was, so far as I re-
collect, devoid of any furniture except the bureau
at which he sat, an iron safe, a couple of chairs,
and a hanging bookshelf, on which reposed an
Army List, a Navy List, a Clergy List, and
*' Boyle's Court Guide." His humour was pecu-
liar. When you called upon him with some
stamped paper which you were anxious to get
discounted, his first proceeding was to unlock a
drawer, take out his cheque-book, flourish it in
your sight, replace the book in the drawer, lock
it, and then, putting his hands in his pockets,
cheerfully address you in this wise : " Well, my
buck ; and what might you want with me ? '*
You replied that you wanted a bill discounted.
Impossible ! There was no money in London —

USUEEE8 OF THE PAST. 43

absolutely no money in London. " Still," lie
would continue on being further pressed, '* there
will be no harm in taking just a peep at the
young *un. Has she got the names of the
Governor and Company of the Bank of England
on her back ? "

He alvsrays spoke of an accommodation bill as
a feminine entity. Then he would send for his
clerk, ''to see how his account stood at the bank."
He doubted whether he had as much as ten
pounds balance. He " did " the bill, eventually,
and remarkably stiff interest he charged ; but it
took, so you thought, an immensity of time before
Mr. Thorough could be persuaded to unlock the
drawer again and sign the much-desiderated
cheque. After that he would once more put
his hands in his pockets, whistle, and cheerily in-
quire whether it was at Eichmond or at Green-
wich that you meant to take the little party in
the pink bonnet to dinner, that same afternoon.
Oh ! he was very thorough ; for while he was
conversing with you his solicitor, who had an
office above, had prepared something of the
nature of a cognovit or confession of debt and
consent that judgment should be entered up

44 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

against you. This document you signed ; so that
if the bill was not paid at maturity, Mr. Thorough
could at once obtain execution against you, thus
saving himself the trouble of having to serve
you with a writ and sue you in due form. I had
a brief acquaintance, also, with one usurer — one
of the class defined by Bacon as " cruel moneyed
men " — who had an odd penchant for making
little presents of an edible nature to his clients.
Now it was pickled tunny, now dried sprats from
Norway, now clotted cream from Devonshire.
But he sued you nevertheless, ruthlessly.

These brief reminiscences of bygone money-
lenders would be sadly incomplete were I to
omit mention of two notable specimens of the race,
both dead and gone these many years. Let me
summon from the inmost recesses of my memory
a truly curious personage indeed, whom I will
call Mr. Quasimodo. He was scrupulously par-
ticular as to his personal appearance, and always
dressed in glossy broadcloth of raven hue ; and
in the centre of his spotless lawn shirt-front
glistened a large diamond solitaire. His hat
was very tall and very shiny, and was always
iicircled with a shallow crape hat-band ; but, on

USURERS OF THE PAST. 45

being interrogated as to what bereavement he
had recently undergone, he would return evasive
answers; and it was generally understood by
Mr. Quasimodo's intimates that the sign of
mourning was a general and not a particular
one, and that he wore it in sorrowful remem-
brance of clients who had fled to Boulogne, or
who had passed through the Court for the
Eelief of Insolvent Debtors. He wore the
nattiest little black kid gloves imaginable ;
and he was shod with unimpeachably elegant
boots of French kid with varnished toes. The
only thing which he needed to complete his
engaging aspect was, say, a couple of feet in
height ; for, to tell the truth, Mr. Quasimodo was
a dwarf. His physical shortcomings stood him
once in unexpectedly good stead. Mr. Quasi-
modo — who was about fifty when I knew him
— was by no means insensible to the tender
passion ; and on one occasion a handsome but
wily widow brought an action against him for
breach of promise of marriage : he being, as it
happened, a very much married man, with a
wife as tall as a Life Guardsman and two strap-
ping daughters. The case was tried before

•46 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

Mr. Justice Martin; and Mr. Quasimodo's leading
counsel was that once highly popular advo-
cate, Mr. Serjeant Wilkins, who, after reading
his brief, told the defendant that the case was
one that must be " bounced '' through. And
the Serjeant did bounce it through in a truly
remarkable manner. *' Gentlemen of the jury,"
he said, at the close of a most eloquent speech,
in which he endeavoured to persuade the twelve
honest men in the box that they were about the
most intelligent and most patriotic jurymen that
had ever been empanelled since the Trial of the
Seven Bishops, "you have heard the evidence for
the plaintiff ; and, gentlemen of the jury, you
have seen and admired that most bewitching
plaintiff herself. Gentlemen, do you believe
that this enchanting, this fascinating, this capti-
vating, this accomplished lady would, for one
moment, favour the advances or listen with any-
thing save scorn and indignation to the amorous
protestations of the wretched and repulsive
homuncidus, the deformed and degraded de-
fendant ? " Mr. Quasimodo looked up from the
well of the court and piteously muimured, " Mr.
Serjeant Wilkins ! Oh, Mr. Serjeant Wilkins ! "

USURERS OF THE PAST. 47

" Silence, sir ! " replied the Serjeant, in a wrath-
ful undertone. " Gentlemen," he continued,
bringing his fist down heavily on the desk
before him, " do you think that this lovely lady,
this fair and smiling creature, would ever have
permitted an offer of marriage to be made to
her by this deplorable atom of humanity, this
stunted deformity, w/io would have to stand on a
sheet of notepaper to look over twopence ? " The
jury at once gave a verdict for the defendant.
Mr. Quasimodo's exiguity of stature was as-
suredly no fault of his ; still, it must be mourn-
fully conceded that, so far as the discounting of
bills went, a more flagitious little villain rarely
existed. He came to deserved grief at last;
and after an interview with the magistrate at a
police-court, and making some very complicated
arrangements to repair certain wrongs which he
was accused of having done, he retired from the
kite-flying line of business, and subsided into
private life, from which he did not emerge until
the period of his decease.

A very different type of the bill-discounter
was " My Tommy." He was a solicitor who at
one time had been in considerable practice ; but

48 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

who, having realised a considerable fortune,
turned his attention to dealing in bills. When
I first became acquainted with " My Tommy,"
he was reputed to be worth at least eighty
thousand pounds. He dwelt in a handsome
house at the West End, where he gave excellent
dinners, with copious liquid accessories in the
shape of admirable dry champagne and rare old
port. So, you may remind me, did Ealpli
Nickleby give dinners at his house in Golden
Square ; but the Nickleby banquets were exclu-
sively discount dinners ; while " My Tommy's "
were really prompted by his own profuse hospi-
tality, and love of good company and sparkling
conversation. Whether any of his guests, whom
I used to meet at his well-spread board, were in
his debt, was a matter between "My Tommy '*
and themselves; but he was always the cheer-
fullest and most generous of hosts, and one fore-
gathered at his table with all kinds of legal,
political, and literary notabilities. I first met
the late Mr. Isaac Butt, M.P., at " My Tommy's" ;
and Mr. Commissioner Murphy was one of his
most constant visitors. " My Tommy " was a
little man, but he had a most symmetrical figure,

USURERS OF THE PAST, 49

and would have looked very well indeed in black
silk shorts and stockings. He was quite con-
scious of the symmetry of his lower limbs, which
he was wont to say with smiling complacency,
were as "fine as a fawn's." In matters of busi-
ness, however, " My Tommy '' was the sharpest
of sharp practitioners. It was he who, when a
body of four Government clerks waited on him
one forenoon, three of their number being re-
spectively the drawer, acceptor, and indorser of
a " bit of stiff/' inquired " whether the young
gentleman who was looking out of the window
wouldn't like to jump up behind." The young
gentleman who was looking out of the window
was not in any way concerned in the negotiation
of the bill, and consequently he did not see his
way towards "jumping up behind," or giving an
additional endorsement to the document to be
discounted. " My Tommy's " prosperity did
not continue to the period of his death. Very
late in life, and most unfortunately for himself,
he came into possession of a racing stud, his
acquisition of which I suppose had some kind of
connection with bills. " My Tommy " went on
the turf; and he lost, I am afraid, all his i3Clo\jl^^.
e

50 THINGS AND PEOPLE,

He was not altogether friendless in his declining
years ; and among the usurers that I have known
" My Tommy '' was certainly the least rapacious
and the warmest-hearted.

CHAPTER XI.

"FI. FA/' AND "CA. SA."

John Doe and Richard Roe — Two Old Writs — Charles Dickens and
the Troublesome Guest— Four Courses — The Old Spunging
Houses — Copper Captains — *' Washed Out of his own Buckets'* —
The Whitecross Street Prison — An Out-of -Elbows Club.

Are there any students of legal antiquities, I
may ask, who mourn the disappearance of time-
honoured — or dishonoured — processes and usages
from our system of civil jurisprudence ? Nero's
nurse, together with a lady of somewhat light
reputation, wept, we all know, for the dead
despot, collected his worthless remains, and gave
them decent sepulture ; but are there any elderly
persons who, being cognisant of what was the
state of the law of debtor and creditor, say, fifty-
five years ago, feel inclined to drop a tear, or
even to heave a soft sigh over the tombs of de-
parted processes and pleas of the British Themis ?
Having occasion, the other day, to consult a
quite up-to-date handy book on the Principles of
Law and Equity, purporting to be compiled for
e2

52 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

the purpose of saving laymen the trouble and
expense of consulting a solicitor in trifling
matters, I was mournfully surprised to find that
although the writ of Fieri Facias had a place in
the index, no mention whatever was made
therein of the more formidable process of Capias
ad Satisfaciendum, With equal grief and be-
wilderment did I also note the absence of
those very early friends of mine, John Doe and
Eichard Eoe.

The younger generation of readers may even
ask who John Doe and Richard Eoe were ;
but I believe that I am right in stating that Doe
and Eoe were the leading characters in a merry
little farce called " Legal Fiction." For exam-
ple, a bogus plaintiff, Doe, complained that a
sham defendant, Eoe — the release for a term
of years having been made to Doe by the claim-
ant, and Doe having entered thereupon — had
ousted him ; for which Doe claimed damages ;
and subjoined to this declaration was a notice
to appear, addressed to the tenant in posses-
sion by name, in the form of a letter from
Eoe, informing him that he, Eoe, was sued as a
casual ejector " only, and had no title to the

''FL FA,'' AND '' GA. SA^ 53

premises, and would make no defence ; and there-
fore advising him to appear in court and defend
his own title ; otherwise he, Roe, would suffer
judgment to be had against him, and thereby
the party addressed would be turned out of pos-
session.

At this time of day, the Doe and Roe bur-
letta seems as absurd as the story of the mon-
goose which was to be used as a means of
curing a person suffering from delirium ireme7is
and the delusion that he saw strange creatures
crawling round a grandmother's clock; but which,
confessedly, was not a real mongoose; yet, for
all the unreality of Doe and Roe, they endured
for centuries, and may have been in their time
the means of some millions of pounds sterling
changing hands.

And the Capias ad Satisfaciendum ! It was
a rare old writ. The writ of Fieri Facias took
and continues to take your goods in execution ;
the writ of Capias took yourself. In my boy-
hood it could be issued for a judgment debt of
any amount ; but by an Act passed in the eighth
year of Her Majesty's reign it was enacted
that no person should be charged or taken in

54 THINGS AND PEOPLE,

execution on a judgment obtained in any court,
superior or inferior, in any action for the re-
covery of a debt not exceeding twenty pounds.
Thus, as the dramatic action of *' Pickwick "
takes place at least a dozen years prior to the
passing of the Act of Parliament in question,
Sam Weller need not have borrowed so large a
sum as five-and-twenty pounds from his father.
Ten pounds would have been enough for the
purpose of the good and faithful servant when
he wished to be arrested and consigned to the
same debtors' prison in which his master was
languishing. The well-known episode in " Pick-
wick " will, on the other hand, afford an adequate
illustration of the celerity of the operation of the
writ of Capias ad Satis^faciendmny or " Ca. Sa,^
as it was familiarly termed.

Immediately after Sam had borrowed the
money from his stout sire, a pettifogging
attorney, Mr. Solomon Pell, was sought out by
Mr. Weller, senior, who desired him to issue a
writ forthwith for the sum of twenty-five
pounds and costs of process to be executed with-
out delay on the body of one Samuel Weller.
The attorney then led the elder Mr. Weller

((

FT. FA." AND " CA. SA." 55

down to the Temple to swear the affidavit of
debts, and subsequently the Wellers, pere el Ji/s,
and a select gathering of friends, held a con-
vivial meeting in a tavern-parlour, where they
tumultuously toasted the Chief Commissioner
of the Insolvent Court and Mr. Solomon Pell
for having between them " w^hitewashed " or
effected the discharge of a gentleman in the
coaching line who had got into pecuniary diffi-
culties. At four o'clock the sheriff's officer
arrived and arrested Sam for the debt and costs ;
and so off they all set — the plaintiff and defend-
ant walking arm-in-arm, the officer in front, and
eight stout coachmen bringing up the rear. At
Serjeants' Inn Coffee House the whole party
halted to refresh; and the legal arrangements
being completed, the procession moved on again
till it reached the gate of the Fleet Prison,
where the jovially-sympathetic party, taking
the time from the plaintiff, gave three tremen-
dous cheers for the defendant, and, after shaking
hands all round, left him.

The " legal arrangements " briefly alluded
to above were merely the sueing out of a writ of
Habeas Corpus on the part of the arrested debtor;

56 THIXOS AND PEOPLE.

the return to the writ on the part of the plaintiff,
and the issuing of an order by a judge sitting in
chambers at Serjeants' Inn for the defendant to
be committed to the Fleet. Obvibusly the con-
summate art of Dickens led him to desist from
again describing the little comedy of the Habeas
Corpus, which he had already so inimitably
sketched in the case of the arrest of Mr. Pickwick.
As an attorney's clerk the great novelist may have
served hundreds of writs and sued out as many
Capiases and Habeas Corpuses ; and it is inter-
esting to those who not only hang lovingly over
every line that he penned, but had the advantage
of knowing him personally, to remark how the
image — evidently drawn from the life — of Mr.
Namby, the bailiff who arrested Mr. Pickwick,
dwelt in Dickens's mind long years after
the Fleet Prison had vanished from the face of
the earth.

It must have been about 1860 that I was
present at a dinner given at the Freemasons'
Tavern in honour of Charles Dickens the
Younger, who was about to start on a voyage to
China; and the chair was occupied by his illus-
trious father. One of the company, a very well-

''FL FA." AND '' CA. SA.'' 57

known man of letters, long since deceased and in
his latter years desperately impecunious, had
partaken somewhat too liberally of the juice of
the grape, and was getting rather troublesome :
whereupon Dickens whispered to his next neigh-
bour '*Tell him" — meaning the troublesome
guest — *' that there is a stout party downstairs
with bushy whiskers and top-boots, in a one-
horse chaise. He will be glad enough, then, to
escape by a side door." The novelist had
evidently before him at that moment, twenty-
four years after he had written " Pickwick," the
image of Mr. Namby with his whiskers, his
rough greatcoat, his glaring silk handkerchief,
and his boots. Why the sheriff's officers of the
past should have habitually worn top-boots I
know no more than I do why the bailiffs of the
seventeenth century were generally Flemings.

When you were arrested on a Capias in the
county of Middlesex, four courses were open to
you. First, you might pay the debt and costs ;
but even under these circumstances you were de-
tained — usually at the office of the bailiff*^until
the plaintiff or his solicitor could be communi-
cated with, and a discharge for the debt given.

THINGS AND PEOPLE.

Next, if you had a sufficiency of petty cash
about you, you might elect to be taken to the
sheriff's officer's own private place of durance,
which, in popular parlance, was known as a
'* spunging-house." If you could not afford to
pay for the somewhat costly accommodation pro-
vided at these private penal hotels, you were
taken to the common debtors' gaol in Whitecross
Street ; but, fourthly, if you had the two pounds
ten shillings necessary to obtain a Habeas Corpm,
you might be transferred from the custody
of the sheriff's officer to the Fleet or to the
Queen's Bench.

The old spunging-house has been amusingly
described, both by Dickens in '* Pickwick," and by
Thackeray in ''Vanity Fair" and in some of his
shorter stories. The places of this kind which
recur to me were situated respectively in Cursitor
Street, Chancery Lane ; in a court, the name of
which I forget, opening out of the west side of
the lane in question ; and in Bream's Buildings,
between Chancery Lane and Fetter Lane. The
Cursitor Street one may perhaps be defined as
the Mivart's among these peculiar hostelries.
LThere was nothing to mark the fact of the house

''FL fa:' and ^* ga, sa:' 59

being a place of enforced detention, save rows of
substantial bars to all the windows, and the roof-
ing over with open ironwork of the small paved
yard in which the gentlemen in difficulties took
exercise. The outer door was, of course, strongly-
bolted and barred at night ; otherwise the in-
terior was one of the queerest of Liberty Halls
imaginable. The payment of a guinea a day
entitled the detenu not only to a bed, which was
clean enough and comfortable enough, but to the
use of an apartment called the coffee-room, on
the first floor back, overlooking the paved yard.
I scarcely think that, save at breakfast time,
much coffee was consumed in this place of social
and convivial intercourse. " Pegs" of spirits and
aerated waters, or " modest quenchers " of bitter
beer or brown stout, were much more to the taste
of the unwilling guests and their friends than
the product of Mocha or other localities whence
that which is erroneously known as a *'bean," but
which is in reality the seed of a berry, is sup-
posed to come. Smoking was the almost uni-
versal rule — and, indeed, the curtains, the furni-
ture, and the carpets reeked with the fumes of
at least fifty years' almost incessant puffing of

60 THINGS AND PEOPLE,

cigars and pipes. Miserably pathetic scenes
might be witnessed on occasion in this Cursitor
Street coffee-room — spendthrifts, whom their
mothers came to pity or their fathers' solicitors
to reproach — mere boys, who in a year or two
had run through princely fortunes ; hoary-headed
old roues, copper captains, ruined speculators,
chronically distressed poets; penniless parsons,
impecunious lords and incurably insolvent
baronets, who had managed to live luxuriously on
the credit of their titles, but had been towed at
last into this shabby dock to be soon laid up in
ordinary in the Bench ; while mingled with
these were the light-hearted gentlemen in diffi-
culties who were continually getting arrested
as drawers or acceptors of accommodation bills,
and who regarded a few days' sojourn in a
spunging - house and a longer residence in
the Bench as only a cheerful episode in their
careers.

The copper captains abounded among these
gay prisoners. There was the celebrated Captain

Jack I , who was wont facetiously to pretend

that next morning would never fail to bring
about the payment of his debts by a wealthy

''FL fa:' and "GA. 8 A'' 61

aunt in Devonshire ; and who continually sat on
the chair nearest the coffee-room door, with his
hat on, his walking-stick in his hand and a rail-
way rug across his knees, as though awaiting the
imminent arrival of his solicitor with an order of
discharge. Then there was rattling Tommy

D , a son of one of Her Majesty's judges,

who had been a barrister and a Grovemment
clerk, a lieutenant of marines, a company pro-
moter, a newspaper proprietor, and an advertising
agent, and was so constant an habitue of the
Cursitor Street caravansary that one morning,
on his fresh arrival, he looked round the coffee-
room, and especially at the very dingy prints
which adorned the walls, and asked, in a tone
of affected surprise, " Where is the view of
Corfu ? "

In addition to the common-room there were
private apartments to be had at the spunging-
house. These apartments were sometimes very
handsomely furnished ; and their occupants were
often gentlemen occupying very exalted positions
indeed in the most fashionable society. It was
usually French hazard at Crockford's, or plung-
ing on the turf, or a Pet of the Ballet that had

62 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

brought them to this pass. Only traders could
be made bankrupts five-and-fifty years ago ; and
a gentleman in difficulties, when he had moved
from Cursitor Street to the Fleet in Farringdon
Street, or to the Queen's Bench in Southwark,
and had grown tired of incarceration, had only
to file his petition and to get " whitewashed " at
the Court for Insolvent Debtors in Portugal
Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields. No kind of social
stigma attached to a gentleman who had gone
through this cheerful process. In these days
bankruptcy means, among other things, com-
pulsory withdrawal from the club or clubs to
which the bankrupt belongs ; but no such un-
pleasant consequence was associated with insol-
vency. No one was ashamed of confessing in
open court that he had not one farthing
wherewith to discharge indebtedness possibly
amounting to many thousands of pounds; and
so easily and so quickly conducted was insolvency,
that in one notorious case a Commissioner of
Insolvency — a very humorous and highly popular
barrister — positively went through his own court
and was whitewashed, so to speak, out of his
own buckets. The Lord Chancellor did not call

"1^/. fa:' and ''ga. 8 a:' 63

on that learned Commissioner of Insolvency to
resign.

Whitecross Street Prison was tenanted, as a
rule, by debtors as hopelessly poverty-stricken
as those who occupied the Old Marshalsea in
Southwark, and the debtors' side of Horse-
monger Lane Graol. For gentlemen in difficul-
ties arrested in the county of Surrey there was
a single spunging-house in a street somewhere
off the Blackfriars Eoad. I remember visiting
a friend there once, who told me that the apart-
ments were extremely comfortable. The sheriff's
officer was an accomplished whist-player, and he
had a musical daughter, who used to play and
sing to the gentlemen in "diffs." My friend
used to call her Miss Blondel, and pictured her
as warbling " Oh, Eichard, Oh, mon Eoi ! " to
some exceptionally good-looking captive. The
mournful inhabitants of Whitecross Street had
very rarely passed through the spunging-houses
of Cursitor Street or of Bream's Buildings, and
the bailiffs who arrested them took them straight
to Whitecross Street. The prison itself was
ugly and dingy enough; but it had no very
specially gaol-like appearance. Four high brick

64 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

walls, duly spiked, enclosed an area of about
an acre of ground, within which were the day-
rooms and dormitories and two well-paved yards
for exercise, the whole edifice being well ven-
tilated and scrupulously clean.

The prison was the property of the City Cor-
poration, and was administered by a governor, a
deputy- governor, and a sufficient number of war-
ders, or, as I think they used to be called half a
century since, turnkeys. All these functionaries
received handsome salaries, and the governor was
generally a military man. There was a standing
joke among the habitues of the prison that the
governor should always be knighted and created
a "Ca.Sa.B." The joke was a sorry one; but a
very little fun went a very long way in this
abode of misery, which held within its walls not
only spendthrifts and ne'er-do-weels, but im-
poverished tradesmen and needy working-men
committed for non-payment of sums as low as
forty shillings. In addition to these there was
usually among the detenus a Chancery prisoner
— that is to say, an unfortunate individual
consigned to Whitecross Street, by decree of the
High Court of Chancery, for contempt of court,

"Zr. FA." AND ''GA. 8Ar 65

for not filing an answer to certain legal pro-
ceedings. The Chancery prisoner in " Pick-
wick " is about one of the most pathetic charac-
ters that Dickens ever drew ; and that deplorable
creature had managed to get transferred to the
Fleet; but there were a few replicas of that
pitiable type in Whitecross Street, and to a
much greater extent in the King's Bench.
The Inland Revenue had also its captives in
every debtors' prison. There was a duty of
eighteenpence payable on every advertisement
inserted in any newspaper; and, as journals
started without sufficient capital were in the
habit of coming to grief with painful frequency,
and the penalties for non-payment of the adver-
tisement duties were cumulative, there was
usually a sprinkling of indigent publishers as
prisoners, they being responsible to the Crown
for the debts of the newspaper proprietors.

Of course Whitecross Street had a chapel
and a chaplain, an infirmary and a medical
attendant, who enjoyed the liberal salary of
three hundred a year. In each yard was
posted, in a conspicuous position, a tall black-
board, on which was painted, in letters of gold,

66 THINGS AND PEOPLE,

a list of all the charitable bequests made at
different periods by deceased benefactors for the
succour of the poor debtors. There were not
many of these endowments belonging to White-
cross Street, but in cases in which the prisoners
were altogether destitute, they received a com-
paratively liberal allowance of rations from the
Corporation. At one corner of the yard was a
kind of huckster's stall, or "everything" shop,
where the prisoners' caterer sold butcher's meat,
bacon, sausages, eggs, bread, butter, cheese, and
other articles of food; and twice a day he was
allowed to sell one pint, and not more than one
pint, of beer per head to such prisoners as could
aflPord malt-liquor. A quart of beer or a pint
of wine per diem was the maximum amount of
strong liquor fixed by order of the Secretary of
State for the Home Department. Spirits were
altogether prohibited, and as the prisoners slept
in large dormitories, and there were no private
rooms, the existence of a " whistling-shop," such
as we read of in the description of the Fleet in
" Pickwick," was, practically, an impossibility.

The day-rooms, or wards, each held about
fifty prisoners, who took their meals in common.

''FL FAr AND '' GA. SAJ' 67

Some boarded themselves ; others were content
to pay two shillings and sixpence per diem to
the day-steward, who provided breakfast at nine,
luncheon at twelve — when the first pint of beer
was procurable — and dinner at five. A day-
warden received eight shillings a week for
cleaning the knives and forks and waiting
at table ; while the bed- warden made the beds,
cleaned the boots, provided hot water for the
toilet, and assisted in waiting at table : for
which services he received seven-and-sixpence
a week. Cups and saucers, plates, jugs; the
knives and forks aforesaid ; mustard, salt, and
pepper were all provided from a common fund,
which was formed by every member paying
three-and-sixpence upon entrance, and one shil-
ling per week while he remained in prison.
Plenty of newspapers were supplied out of
this fund.

On certain evenings in the week the gentle-
men in difficulties had recitations and debates ;
and on Saturdays there was a vocal concert,
instrumental music being for some reason or
another forbidden. Smoking was mercifully
permitted between the hours of meals and until

68 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

the prisoners went to their dormitories at night ;
but no gambling was allowed, and cards were
strictly forbidden. Chess, draughts, back-
gammon, and dominoes were, however, tolerated.
It will thus be seen that, in comparison with
Holloway or the provincial gaols in which
debtors are still confined for non-payment of
judgment orders or neglect of judgment sum-
monses in the County Court, Whitecross Street
Prison was quite a jovial and festive place — an
out-of-elbows club, indeed, for which nobody
cared to be a candidate, but election to which,
when a Capias was issued against you, was com-
pulsory. When, however, you became a member
of this City cercle, existence was certainly endur-
able, and on thirty shillings a week a prisoner
in Whitecross Street might even enjoy no small
amount of luxury. It was coarse certainly, but
neither scanty nor squalid. Over the chimney
in one of the wards some prisoner of artistic
taste had blazoned, in colours and gold-leaf, a
burlesque heraldic achievement, and beneath, in
large Gothic letters, was the motto " Dum Spiro
Spero!' The prisoners tried to live up to the
motto ; but you had only to scan their faces in

''FL FAP AND " GA. SA." 69

the intervals of the singing and the reciting,
and the chess and backgammon playing, to see
hopeless wretchedness marked on the features of
at least three out of four captives — marked there
as distinctly as the wretch doomed to death
in the tribunal of old Greece had the fatal
word " Thanatos " branded on his brow.

CHAPTEE XII.

THE FAST LIFE OF THE PAST.

DiflFerence between the Fast Life of the Present and that of the
Past— The EflFect of Evening Dress : A New Clothes Philosophy
— Lord Frederick Verisopht and Sir Mulberry Hawk — " The
Wildest Young Dog About Town" — A Museum of Stolen
" Curios " — The " Mad Marquis " and His Frolics — Grambling
in Regent Street — " G-reeks" — Jack Thurtell and His Victim —
Arthur Thistlewood : How He was Ruined—" Crockf ord's " —
Superintendent Beresf ord and His Raids— The " Night Houses "
of the Haymarket— " The Pic."— Panton Street.

If there be anything of the character of that
which used to be understood as " Fast Life " in
the social manners of the present epoch, a good
many years have passed since I knew anything
about such fastness. The records of the courts
of law and police prove, sadly enough, that
vice and profligacy are prevalent in most classes
of society; and that in the lower grades of
the couches sociales there is still a deplorable
amount of drunkenness and ruffianism, which
will abate, it is to be hoped, when the people
are better lodged, better taught, and better
clothed, but which will not, I should say, be

THE FAST LIFE OF THE PAST. 71

stamped out by any drastic Acts of Parliament
for bringing down to the Pump a people who
have been convivial in their habits for more
than a thousand years. Still, the street affrays
of which one reads ; the assaults on the police ;
the furious driving by drunken revellers, and the
vagaries of unfortunates, whose names are only
too well known, do not constitute such a "fast
life " as I remember very well some fifty years
ago, and in which, when I grew up, I took a
rather active part myself. The " fast " life of the
past, on which I propose to descant, was one
that was enjoyable — if enjoyment is Ihe proper
term to be given to madcap dissipation and
mischievous practical joking by almost every
class in male society.

There had been little solution of continuity
in that " fast " life, so far as the metropolis
was concerned, since that tremendous re-
action against Puritanism — the Restoration.
The Mohocks of Queen Anne's time, among
whom was a son of the Eight Eev. Bishop
Burnet, were the lineal descendants of the
Whipping Toms of Charles IT.'s reign. Roches-
ter and Sedley transmitted their besmirched

72 TnmGS AND PEOPLE.

laurels to the bloods and beaux who get drunk
and gamble and figlit duels in Hogarth's pictures ;
and the traditions of excess and devilry in high
life were followed with amusing fidelity through-
out the reign of George III., which began with
the scandalous frolics of Jack Wilks and the
Friars of Medmenham Abbey, and ended with
that ''fast'' life which has been so divertingly
depicted in Pierce Egan's " Life in London." I
am not old enough to have met Bob Logic or
Corinthian Tom in the flesh; although I can
remember witnessing a performance of " Life in
London," in which occurs the celebrated dance
of " Dusty Bob and Black Sal." Still, about the
close of the reign of King William IV. and the
accession of Queen Victoria, I must have known
and listened to a good many middle-aged gentle-
men who, in their hot youth, had been renowned
for their skill in fisticuffs and their fondness for
ratting, badger-baiting, and cock-fighting, and
to whom a dining-room mahogany possessed one
attribute which it has long since lost — that of
being a table under which the large proportion
of the guests were accustomed to subside when
they had swilled too much port or sherry.

THE FAST LIFE OF THE PAST, 73

The riot, the turinoi], the inebriety, the
pugnaciousness, of which you obtain inklings in
the literature and the newspaper files of fifty
years ago, were, I take it, very largely due to
the circumstance that the attitude of England
towards foreign nations, at intervals through-
out the eighteenth and continuously during
the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century,
had been much more frequently one of war than
of peace. In a time of arms laws are mute, says
the old Latin saw; and, perhaps, epochs when
there are almost incessantly wars and rumours
of wars afoot are more conducive to coarseness
and brutality of manners than when the world
is calm and meek-eyed peace reigns supreme.
Grenerally speaking, I incline to the impres-
sion that what little " fast " life we have left
among us in the upper ranks of society has had
its roughness materially modified by the habit
of donning evening dress on the slightest pro-
vocation ; of smoking cigarettes ; of wearing gar-
denias in the button-hole, and of drinking lemon
squashes, or at least modicums of ardent spirits
largely diluted with aerated waters. A gentle-
man in a sable swallowtail coat, a white cravat, a

74 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

snowy shirt-front with a diamond stud in the
centre, and a Gibus hat, thinks twice before he
" punches " the heads of cabmen and defies police-
constables to single combat ; and when we
remember that the present time is one in which
even prize-fighters appear in evening dress, I
think there is something in my contention that
"fast" life in 1894 is altogether more polished,
more refined, and perhaps a little less courageous
and daredevil than the roaring horseplay and the
coarse dissoluteness of the past.

I began to look at life with keen curiosity —
a curiosity which at this present writing is not
by any means satiated — about the year 1836 or
1837; about which time I had recovered from
a long and dismal probation of total blindness.
If you will be kind enough to look at the
twenty-sixth chapter of " Nicholas Nickleby,''
you will find, in about a dozen lines, a wonder-
fully graphic conspectus of the '* fast " life which
I, as a child, and with absorbed attention, peered
into. In the chapter of which I speak the place is
a handsome suite of private apartments in Regent
Street. The time is three in the afternoon to
the dull and plodding, and the first hour of the

TKEJ FAST LIFE OF THE PAST. 75

morning to the gay and spirited. The persons
are Lord Frederick Verisopht and his friend Sir
Mulberry Hawk. These distinguished gentle-
men, both suflPering from acute headache, are
reclining listlessly on a couple of sofas, with a
table between them, on which are scattered in
rich confusion the materials of an untasted
breakfast. Newspapers lie strewn about the
room; but these, like the meal, are neglected
and unnoticed. " These appearances," writes
Charles Dickens, "would in themselves have
furnished a pretty strong clue to the extent of
the debauch of the previous night, even if there
had not been other indications of the amuse-
ments in which it had been passed. A couple
of billiard-balls all mud and dirt, two battered
hats, a champagne bottle with a soiled glove
twisted round the neck to allow of its being
grasped more surely in its capacity of an offen-
sive weapon, a broken cane, a card case with-
out the top, an empty purse, a watch-guard
snapped asunder, a handful of silver mingled
with fragments of half-smoked cigars and their
stale and crumbled ashes; these and many
other tokens of riot and disorder hinted very

76 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

intelligibly at the nature of last night's gentle-
manly frolics."

In this terse but eminently truthful picture
there is a most convincing proof of the assimila-
tive power of the genius of Dickens. He could
scarcely have actually seen the aristocratic fast
life of which he gives his readers so vivid an
impression. He divined it. At the time when
he was writing '* Nicholas Nickleby " he was a
youthful Benedick, living in modest peace and
happy competence with his comely wife; and the
" fast '* life which he may have witnessed in his
bachelor days would be more of the character of
that of which we have such delightful glimpses
in the medical students' supper-party, and the
revelries of the lawyers' clerks at the Magpie
and Stump, in " Pickwick " ; or the con-
vivialities of Mr. Eichard Swiveller and his
friends, in the *' Old Curiosity Shop." The
boiled leg of mutton and trimmings " swarry "
of the Bath footmen may have had a slight
foundation in fact ; but the incidents and
conversation are, I should say, in the main,
imaginary. Thackeray had his ideal flunkey
and Dickens his ; but neither Mr. Jeames

THE FAST LIFE OF THE PAST. 77

Yellowplusli nor Mr. John Sniauker is entirely
true to nature.

Dickens had certainly never been the boon
companion of Lord Frederick Verisopht or Sir
Mulberry Hawk. Those worthies moved in a
world — and a very bad and profligate world
it was — to which the youthful novelist was
socially a stranger ; but he had read all about
their doings in the police reports, and may
even have been present as a reporter in those
police courts in which the frolicsome gentle-
men so frequently made their appearance as
defendants. Now it curiously happens that
the force of circumstances brought me in
daily contact and converse, if not with the
Hawks, at least with the Verisophts. My dear
mother was something more than a distinguished
teacher of Italian singing. She was a gentle-
woman of high culture and great intellectual
gifts. She knew everybody in society; and
her drawing-room was a real salon, in which
might be found not only the great lords and
ladies of the age — not only the leading repre-
sentatives of literature and art, but all the wits
and the beaux, the dandies, and the gay young

78 THINQS AND PEOPLE,

fellows of the time. In 1836-7 young gentle-
men who habitually drank too much champagne
and too much brandy, frequented common
gaming-houses, beat the police or got beaten by
them and were locked up in the station-house
for the night, were only termed '* a little wild,"
and they were not ostracised from society.
From that society, in these more refined days, I
suppose, '* Johnnies " and " Chappies " who, like
Hans Breitmann's bush-whacker, "raise Cain
and break things," are inexorably banished. It
happened that we lived in a first floor in the
Regent's Quadrant, and, at the time of which I
speak, the entresol beneath was occupied by

Mr. Charles L , who was, perhaps, the

wildest young dog about town of that fiercely
wild epoch. He was supremely handsome —
handsome even for a period when Count Alfred
d'Orsay was the model of male comeliness in
London. His apparel was gorgeous even for a
time when gentlemen wore two or three coloured
and white under- waistcoats and an over- vest of
velvet or rich brocade, with a long gold chain
meandering over it, and above it a high satin
stock adorned by two jewelled breastpins united

THE FAST LIFE OF THE PAST. 79

by a thin chain of gold — a time when young Mr.
Benjamin Disraeli moved in patrician circles in
black velvet pantaloons and with ruffles at his

wrists. Mr. Charles L had run through a

couple of fortunes, one of which at least had
been squandered over French hazard at Crock-
ford's. He was very well educated, very urbane,
nay, almost fascinating in his manner ; and he
usually came home about four o'clock in the
morning either boisterously, lyrically, pugilisti-
cally, or maniacally drunk. When he did not
return to the entresol his manservant used to opine
that his master had reached the incapable stage
of intoxication, and that he had been conveyed
on a stretcher to St. James's Watchhouse, just
round the corner ; and he would philosophically
proceed to wait upon him there with a change
of linen and a small silver flask full of brandy.
After a few seasons spent in the manner at which

I have hinted, Mr. Charles L married an

Anglo-Indian widow of immense wealth.

On the second floor above us, in Eegent
Street, a French milliner, whom I may call
Madame Frdtillon, had her showroom; and es-
pecially busy was Madame at that particular

80 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

period of the London season when the annual
fruit and flower show of the Eoyal Horticultural
Society used to take place in their gardens at
Chiswiek. One afternoon — it was the day before

the show — the Honourable Billy D , with his

friend, Mark B. W. — the last a cousin of the
'' Mad Marquis " — called to see mj^ mother. I

was rather afraid of the Honourable Billy I)

for the reason that, although he was of a most
genial and hilarious temperament, and frequently
*' tipped " me with half-crowns, he was actuated
by an intense yearning to remove two of my front
teeth in order that I might be able to give a
peculiar whistle which he had heard at Stunning
Joe Somebody's hot sausage and gin-punch
supper-parties in Buckeridge Street, St. G-iles's.
The whistle, I believe, was a signal made by
a boy outside Stunning Joe Somebody's estab-
lishment to warn the guests within that the
New Police were about to enter the premises ;
whereupon those of the company who had good
reasons for avoiding a personal interview with
the constables prudently withdrew, by means of
a convenient trap-door, into a cellar communicat-
ing with an alley at the rear.

THE FAST LIFE OF THE PAST. 81

Considering that we were not in the habit of
receiving burglars, coiners, and pickpockets at our
modest repasts in Eegent Street, I cannot exactly
discern why the Honourable Billy should have
wished to knock two of my front teeth out. He
was, in all respects, a remarkable personage — ^had
been in the army ; but at the affectionately earnest
request of his commanding officers had exchanged
from regiment to regiment until he ultimately
sold out. Then he became a man about town.
It was he who in his chambers at Bruton Street
had a museum of articles which he and the gay
sparks who associated with him had " conveyed "
from the tradesmen who were the proprietors
thereof. A museum such as the one of which
the Hon. Billy D was so proud, and par-
donably proud in the estimation of his frisky
contemporaries, would be in these days practi-
cally an impossibility ; since the collector who
attempted to bring together such an assemblage
of commercial and domestic " curios " would be
in perpetual peril of indictment at the Old
Bailey or the County of London Sessions for
larceny. All the brass plates bearing announce-
ments relative to academies for young ladies,

82 THINGS AND PEOPLE,

medical practitioners, agents to the Moon Fire
Insurance Office, and professors of the piano-
forte ; all the knockers, ranging from the
fierce lion's head in iron to the diminutive
Sphinx in brass ; all the bell-pull handles
and signboards; all the Original Little Dust
Pans ; the huge red effigies of human hands
which had hung over glovers' shops ; the arms
brandishing hammers which had been tjie signs
of goldbeaters — had been impudently looted in
the public thoroughfares by the Honourable

Billy D and his "larky" companions. I

am not quite certain as to whether he was able
to carry out his intention of stealing a turnpike-
gate from Ewell to serve as a portal to his collec-
tion of street plunder ; but he was quite capable
of attempting such an heroic act of filibustering.
As it was, the predatory laurels which he had
won formed a most extraordinary chaplet. It was
he who, in conjunction with other companions
of the " Mad Marquis," tried to carry off the
stone lions which flanked the entrance to a well-
known shop in Eegent Street; and it was only
by an accident that he was not present when a
group of tearing young aristocrats, his intimate

THE FAST LIFE OF THE PAST, 83

friends, achieved their notable exploit, at dead of
night, of pouncing upon an unfortunate police-
man, binding him hand and foot, painting him
pea-green, and lowering him by means of a rope
into the area of a mansion at the West End,
where he was discovered next morning by the
sympathising damsel who answered the milk-
man's summons.

In this last-named chivalric adventure the
tearing young aristocrats went just a little too
far. The Police Commissioners of the day,
Colonel Eowan and Mr., afterwards Sir Eichard
Mayne, took up the case of the outraged '' bobby"
very seriously indeed. Two of the uproarious
young practical jokers were indicted for a mis-
demeanour ; and on conviction were sentenced to
a somewhat heavy fine and to a few months'
imprisonment in the King's Bench prison. The
brief incarceration did not by any means damp
the high spirits of these gay young bloods.
Why, indeed, should it have done so ? As I have
had occasion to show when in the preceding
chapter I treated of imprisonment for debt in the
past, the old Bench, of which not one stone now,
happily, remains upon another, was a place where,

84 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

with a sufficiency of ready money, life might be
made not only tolerable but crapulously luxuri-
ous ; and smugglers, libellers, persons committed
for contempt of court, and other misdemeanants
v/ho had cash at call, could enjoy themselves quite
as heartily as the moneyed debtors could do. The
dashing young patricians, who were consigned
to the Bench for painting the '* bobby" pea-green
gave dinner-parties to their friends ; drank cham-
pagne, and smoked cigars of the best brands ;
played racquets, and lounged about in Cashmere
shawl dressing-gowns, to the admiration and
envy of the more indigent gaol-birds.

That " Mad Marquis," whom I often saw
and whom I heard of almost every day, was not
half so crazy as people in this generation are apt

to imagine that he was. The Marquis of W ,

indeed, while gratifying his eccentric whims to
the utmost, was not much of a spendthrift. He
neither squandered thousands on the turf nor
wasted his substance at Crockford's and kindred
hells. In fact, although a desperate roysterer, he
was rather a frugal than a prodigal peer, and
enjoyed an immense amount of what he con-
sidered to be fun at a comparatively moderate

THE FAST LIFE OF THE PAST. 85

outlay of cash. For example, when he and the

Hon. Billy D called on my mother, as

already stated, and at the conclusion of the visit
ascended to Madame Fretillon's show-room,
and in the absence of the lady assistants, who
were at tea, sat down consecutively on twenty-
two new bonnets which were to be worn by
ladies of distinction in fashionable society at
the approaching flower show, Madame, after
much weeping and wailing, wringing of her
hands, and declaring that she was a ruined woman,
was glad to accept a fifty pound note from
his lordship and a douceur of ten guineas from

the Hon. Billy D as a solatium for the

injuries which her wares had suffered.

And if she did keep her assistants at work till
five o'clock the next morning to repair the damage
done, there was in those happy-go-lucky days no
troublesome Government inspector to spy out
the matter and summon her to a police-court for
an infraction of the Factories and Workshops
Acts. Then again, when the Marquis himself
was arraigned at Marlborough Street for
furiously driving his tilbury through a crowded
thoroughfare, and endeavoured to bring his

86 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

horse into court as a witness for the defence,
not much more harm was done to his purse
than the disbursement of a few half-sove-
reigns among the police who prevented the
ingress of the noble steed to the magisterial
presence ; and furthermore, when the droll idea
caught his lordship's fancy of driving about with
a wolf chained underneath his dog-cart, nobody
came to grief save the wolf, which managed, poor
brute, to strangle itself in its bonds. Another
frolic, of a somewhat more expensive nature, was
the purchase one night from a publican in the
Hay market of a cask of gin, which his lordship
caused to be brought into the street, and from
which he regaled in half-pint measures the
cabmen, the pickpockets, the beggars, and the
wantons who then infested that now highly-
respectable thoroughfare. We all know that the
" Mad Marquis " abandoned all his vagaries ere
he had reached middle life and settled down on
the paternal estates, and in due course came to
be known as an exemplary landlord and a model
husband.
0^^£io picture, however slight, of the " fast " life
Ske past, as I studied it in my youth, would

THE FAST LIFE OF THE PAST 87

be complete without some reference to the habit
of gambling which prevailed in aristocratic and
upper-middle class society in London at the
beginning of tlie Victorian era. I have men-
tioned that we resided, a little more than
half a century since, in Regent Street; and,
indeed, I think my mother, between 1835 and
1845, must have occupied from time to time
at least a dozen different first . floors in
the agreeable avenue built by Nash, Prince of
Architects, between the Piccadilly and the
Oxford Circuses ; our permanent home being
all the while at Brighton. Regent Street we
only inhabited as birds of passage during the
season. The particular first floor in the entresol

of which lived the bibulous Mr. L , and on

the second floor of which the Marquis and

the Hon. Billy D sat on the Horticultural

Show bonnets, was in a house with a
common gambling-hell on one side and a
private and most select place for gaming on
the other. The private Inferno was merely
the small but very handsomely-furnished back-
parlour of a shop, in which a plump and
swarthy widow lady — a Madame Une Telle,

88 THINGS AND PEOPLE,

whose black eyes could flash almost as brightly
as her abundant diamonds did — sold cigars,
and those, too, of the very finest brands of
Havana tobacco, to the nobility and gentry.
She had only one assistant, a sturdy, middle-
aged, clean-shaven, pock-marked, closely-cropped,
square-headed, broad-chested man, with a broken
nose, who was dressed very plainly, but neatly,
and was a model of civility and alacrity in
serving customers.

How it came about I know not; but I
harboured in my boyish mind a secret per-
suasion that the clean-shaven assistant in the
cigar shop had once been a member of the
"ring/* He at once became in my eyes a
hero of romance; and I drew him innumer-
able times in all kinds of pugilistic attitudes
— stripped to the waist, girt with a blue
Belcher handkerchief, and with shorts and
white cotton stockings, terminating in ankle-
jacks. Why Madame Une Telle should have
hired him from the " ring " and made him her
shopman I cannot authoritatively say. Possibly
he may have been found useful very late at night
as a "chucker-out/' not of Madame's own clients.

r..

THE FAST LIFE OF THE PAST 89

but of unprivileged persons in a questionable
state of sobriety, who might have sought during
the small hours to . obtain admission to the
little back-parlour where, so I was told, many
thousands of pounds sterling were lost in the
course of every year. The place was, in fact, a
kind of tiny chapel-of-ease to Crockford's, in St.
James's Street ; and from that palatial gambling
den the greatest noblemen and gentlemen in
England, when they were tired of calling
"mains," would come down to Madame Une
Telle to chat, and smoke, and eventually
adjourn to the back parlour, where, w^ith the
refreshments of champagne, brandy and water,
broiled bones, and anchovy toast, they would
fall to gambling again and keep the dice
clacking merrily until four or five or six in the
morning. The whole neighbourhood on both
sides of the Quadrant was spotted, and plenti-
fully spotted too, with gambling-houses, which
on our side spread through Air Street into
Piccadilly, and then down . St. James's Street ;
while on the opposite side the gambling-house
pestilence reached as far as Golden Square.

To the east there were numerous tripots in

90 THINGS AND PEOPLE,

Prince's Street, and Cranborne Alley, and
Leicester Square; but these were of a lower
and altogether more repulsive type than the
showy Infernos of Regent Street and St. James's.
The lower-class dens were known as "silver
hells," for the reason that stakes as low as half-
a-crown were accepted ; and so late as 1847 or
1848 there was — at least I have a dim impres-
sion of its existence — a very shady gambling
house, indeed, close to Leicester Square, and
which was called " The Little Nick." It may
seem almost incredible, but it is nevertheless
the fact, that in a notorious weekly journal,
published at the period of which I am speaking,
there appeared regularly every week a couple of
columns with the attractive heading of " Pan-
demonium ; " and therein the readers of the
journal in question were kept duly au courant
with the edifying proceedings at the most noted
gaming-houses of the time, the professional
frequenters of which were known, in the slang of
the epochs, as '' Greeks." The *' Greek " of half
a century since was a type that may be said to
have completely disappeared in these days. He
was something superior to a "welsher," and

THE FAST LIFE OF THE PAST 91

something inferior to a promoter of bogus
companies and " wild cat " proprietary clubs.
Now and again, perhaps, a shadow faintly
resembling his gKost maj^ be seen hanging
about the vestibule of the Casino at Monte
Carlo; but the authorities of the Hades on
the Eiviera are well aware of the phantom
" Greek's " character, and scrupulously exclude
him from the interior of the Casino itself.

In England the gaming-house " Greek " very
frequently dubbed himself a captain ; and in
some few instances, possibly, he may have held
a subaltern's commission in that celebrated
British Auxiliary Legion commanded by General
Sir de Lacy Evans, which, with the authority
of the Eeform Parliament, was sent out to
Spain in the interests of Queen Christina and her
daughter. Queen Isabella, to fight the partisans
of Don Carlos. The British auxiliaries were
very irregularly paid, if they were paid at all,
by the Spanish Government. In my boyhood it
was by no means uncommon to see deplorable
creatures in ragged scarlet jackets, proclaiming
their former connection with the British Legion,
sweeping crossings or begging in the streets of

92 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

London. The greater number, however, of the
gambling-house '' Greeks " were the merest of
copper captains, who were employed as touts or
" bonnets " to inveigle foolish or half-intoxicated
gentlemen into common gaming-houses, where
they could be swindled out of their money at
hazard, faro, or roulette.

An exceptionally infamous " Greek " of the
generation just preceding that of which I
am speaking was the notorious Jack Thurtell,
who in his youth had actually been an officer
in the army, but who after the peace had
taken to betting on horse-races and prize
fights, and to cheating the persons who were
simple enough to play cards with him. His
victim, Mr. Weare, who " lived in Lyon's
Inn," was, in point of morals, not very much
above the status of the villain who murdered
him. Weare, in short, was a professional
gamester, and he was led to join in the expedi-
tion which ended so fatally for him by a story-
trumped up by Thurtell and his confederates
that there was a " pigeon " to be plucked some-
where out of town. The poor wretch himself
was the ** pigeon." The mischief effected by

THE FAST LIFE OF TEE PAST. 93

these common gaming houses with their Greek
" bonnets " and touts was almost immeasur-
able. Midnight gambling sapped the very
vitals, economically speaking, of the community,
and directly and indirectly led to innumerable
tragedies.

It is, perhaps, a fact known to very few
save systematic students of old newspapers that
the remote cause of the ruin and the dreadful
end of Arthur Thistlewood, the chief of the
Cato Street conspirators, who, with their leader,
were hanged and beheaded before the Debtors'
Door, Newgate, in 1820, was a misadventure
which he met with in a gaming house. Thistle-
w^ood was the son of a country gentleman of fair
estate. When quite a young man he was sent
up to London with a very large sum of money —
reaching four figures, if I remember aright — in
his possession, to make some investment on
behalf of a relative. He had this money about
him in bank notes; when, having dined much
too copiously at a tavern, he was enticed by
some improvised acquaintance of the " Greek ''
order to try his luck in a gambling house.
There he was stripped of every farthing of the

94 THINGS AND PEOPLU.

money he had about him. He made, subse-
quently, some ineffectual attempt to show that
the play had been unfair, and to recover some
portion of his losses ; but the wretched mishap in
the gaming-house led, step by step, to his utter
destruction, and he became an impoverished
desperado, who drifted first into sedition, and
then into treason, very possibly because he
had become altogether a social leper and
pariah.

It was impossible that the evils at which
I have briefly glanced could be allowed to
go on unchecked for any considerable time
after the accession of the young Queen,
and the presence by her side of the Prince
Consort, whose dignified, decorous, and blameless
character became at once a model to all English
gentlemen. Even the great Crockford's felt the
influence of the new standard of morals which
had been set up at the British Court. The
frequenters of the gambling palace in Pall Mall
gradually dwindled away; and not very long
after the death in debt and discredit of one of the
most brilliant of Crockford's circle — Theodore
Hook — the club was disestablished for ever.

THE FAST LIFE OF THE PAST. 95

The hour of doom for the common gaming-
houses now rapidly approached, and the complete
breaking up of these " hells " was in a very great
measure the work of an exceptionally energetic
and resourceful superintendent of police named
Beresford, who, with strong contingents of
constables, successively and successfully raided
every one of the West End dens. Doors lined
with sheet-iron ; bolts, bars, and chains ; contri-
vances by which the dice, rakes, and cards could
be thrown down a pipe connecting with the sewer,
and an ingenious device by means of which a
roulette-wheel could be elevated by cords and
pulleys and made to fit into the disc of the over-
hanging chandelier, Vere all tried by the gam-
bling-house proprietors. But their game was up
for good ; and Inspector Beresford and his merry
men cleaned out the hell-keepers, their touts, and
their " bonnets " quite as efficaciously as the
rascals themselves had cleaned out innumerable
dupes. Many of the gambling house proprietors
had realised handsome fortunes ; and in after
life I came casually across a few of them who,
like the Shums in Thackeray's story — after Mr.
Slium had retired from the crossing-sweeping

96 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

business — passed for " quite respectable people/'
Joe Martingale, if I remember aright, dabbled in
antique plate ; and Fred Elbowshake cultivated
a taste for the Old Masters.

It would be an insult to the common-sense
of my readers were I to attempt to contend
that illegal gambling is not to some extent
prevalent in the metropolis at the present
moment ; yet I do maintain that we have in
our midst, nowadays, no state of society even
remotely approximating to that which existed
when Crockford's had twenty tributaries, little
less palatial than itself, in the parish of St.
James alone, and when Regent Street and its
vicinity literally swarmed with common and
private "hells/'

The next phase of ** fastness " which I
not only witnessed but was intimately con-
cerned with may have ascribed to it the date
of 1847 or 1848 ; and such "fastness" obtained,
I should say, until the passing of the last
Licensing Act in 1874, which definitively swept
away those remarkable institutions "the night
houses '' of the Haymarket and its immediate
neighbourhood. The Haymarket ! As I sit

THE FAST LIFE OF THE PAST. 97

in a quiet study by the side of the sea, the
word as it falls from my pen is as the sound of a
trumpet, long hushed, but which for a moment
has a strange clangour in mine ear. The Hay-
market ! I drive by it sometimes late at night
coming home from the play or from dining out.
The Haymarket of the present, as T have already ^
hinted, is a thoroughly respectable, well-behaved,
and prosperous business thoroughfare; and in
the day-time, if I take a walk down the well-
remembered street, I am never tired of admiring
the handsomeness of the buildings and the
display of articles of all kinds in the spacious
and well-appointed shops.

But the Haymarket of other days ! From
eleven p.m. to three and four a.m. all the
year round, and Sundays scarcely excepted,
the Haymarket was a wild scene of howling,
yelling, shrieking carousal and riot. Some-
where on the site of the present Criterion
Eestaurant there was a succursal to the Hay-
market in a horrible haunt of dissipation
called " The Piccadilly Saloon," where rowdy
people of both sexes danced, drank, smoked,
and fought to their own content and to the

98 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

delight, I should say, of the Devil who was
watching them from the gallery above. The
place was rather handsomely decorated, nor
were the liquors adulterated ; but it was impos-
sible to prevent disorder in a resort the very
foundations of which were laid in defiance of all
order and decency ; and the consequence was that
the Piccadilly Saloon became a convertible term
for permanent brawling, the upshot of which
went, occasionally, far beyond the battering of
heads and the blackening of eyes. More than one
of the fatal duels which began to shock society
at the beginning of her Majesty's reign were
the direct outcome of a row at " The Pic."
Bob Somebody's, in the Haymarket itself, was
another resort of night-birds, quite as dissipated
as " The Pic,'' but not half so noisy ; the pro-
prietor being, apart from the equivocal nature
of his business, a really worthy fellow, who
exercised some kind of selection and control
with respect to the guests, male or female,
whom he admitted to his establishment. It
was in Panton Street, however — Panton Street
now so thoroughly irreproachable from a moral
point of view — that the night houses did most

THE FAST LIFE OF THE PAST. 99

thickly congregate. They might be covered,
in horse-racing phrase, by a pocket handker-
chief, so closely did they pullulate together ;
and most of them bore the name of the gaily-
dressed dame de comptoir who presided over
the revels. '' Sally'' this, " Nellie" that, " Kate"
another, and *' Jenny" yet another — these were
the dames who, rouged and powdered and
bedizened in jewels, leered and coquetted with
the favourite frequenters of these halls of
dazzling light.

The champagne was bad and infamously
dear; the spirits were worse; the cigars were
vile, and the company was mixed : that is to
sav, noblemen and Guardsmen rubbed shoulders
with rackety stockbrokers and business men,
and young fellows from the country burning
to gain an insight into London life after
dark. The ladies were splendidly dressed ;
and, until they had taken too much of the
bad champagne, they usually behaved them-
selves. The night-houses were not altogether
indiscriminately opened to the public. You had
to knock for admission : and before ingress was
conceded to you a Judas-wicket or trap was
h 2

100 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

opened in the portal, and you were scrutinised
by a janitor inside : the normal qualification
which in his eyes entitled a candidate to be
inducted into the gay scene being that he should
be well dressed, and that he should not be either
in an uproarious or a * helpless condition of in-
toxication. These night-houses had been in
existence for some years with the full cognisance
of the police, but without suffering any inter-
ference from the authorities ; but at last public
opinion having begun, through the agency of
the press, to wake up in the matter, steps
were taken to overhaul the unlicensed houses of
the Haymarket and Panton Street, and ascer-
tain something definite as to the character of
the festivities common there — festivities which
the respectable shopkeepers of the neighbour-
hood had come to regard as a scandal and a
nuisance.

A system was introduced of paying police
visits at irregular intervals during the night
to the more notorious of the " Sally," "Jenny,'*
"Kate," and "Nellie" places of nightly resort.
The lady and gentlemen revellers would be
enjoying themselves with delightful hilarity.

THE FAST LIFE OF THE PAST. 101

say at half -past two in the morning; when
a knock of authority would be heard at
the outer portal, and the janitor would enter
the room with well-affected consternation,
and inform the beauteous dame de comptoir
that the "bobbies was come." "Admit them
at once," was the stereotyped answer of the
lovely and, for the nonce, law-abiding female.
The janitor took a minute or so to open the
heavy door; and meanwhile the waiters, who
were in the joke, carefully removed every lady
and gentleman's glass of champagne or tumbler
of aerated water with something in it, and con-
cealed these Bacchanalian pieces de conviction
behind the bar.

Then, with solemn march and stern mien,
an inspector of police, accompanied by a
sergeant, made his appearance, to find only a
large number of well-dressed gentlemen chat-
ting and smoking, and an equally large number
of ladies, attired in the highest style of
fashion, and smiling around with an expression
of innocence quite enchanting to behold. The
inspector produced a note-book from his pocket
and wrote something down. Whether it was

102 THINGS AND PEOPLE,

the name of the house or the titles of some of
the noble lords present, or a verse of the latest
comic song, or the Slavonic alphabet, it did not
matter much : the whole proceedings being, as
the proprietor and the guests knew well enough,
and the police authorities knew even better,
an egregious and preposterous farce. The at-
tendant sergeant did little more than cough
behind his right hand in a vaguely ominous
and mysterious manner. Then the police would
retire, and the revels would begin again ; only,
through some curious phenomenon, it was always
found that the wines and liquors which had
formerly sparkled in tumblers and 'glasses had
unaccountably disappeared during the time of
the invasion of the " bobbies." Perhaps there
was a night-house cat which drank up all that
was potable.

103

CHAPTER XIII.

PANTOMIMES PAST AND PRESENT.

A Theological Professor with a Taste for Horse-racing" — An Attempt
to Recall Bygone Christmases — Boxing Day, 1835 — Gruesome
Curtain Raisers on Pantomime Nights — The Police in Early
Days — Primitive Pantomime Tricks — ^A Criticism : "Few Tricks,
Fewer Thumps, a Singular Lack of Bumps" — The Covent
Garden Pantomime in 1820 — Za-Ze-Zl-Zo-Zoo : Animated
Dominoes — Pilules du Didble in 1839 : A Run of a Thousand
Nights — The Author Nicknamed — Harlequin Billy Taylor at
the Princess's in 1851 — A Feline Comedy — A Change of role.

I ONCE enjoyed the friendship of a professor of
theology in a German university who, at a
moment's notice, could enumerate all the succes-
sive winners of the Derby, from Diomed to
Blair Athol. He had never been in England,
and never evinced any admiration or liking for
the noble sport of racing ; thus, why it should
have occurred to him to learn the names of so
many famous English racehorses by heart, passes
my comprehension. Still, as Mr. Carlyle has
somewhere asked, " A learned man, shall he not
be learned?" For aught I know to the con-
trary, the Teutonic sage with whom I had the

104 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

honour to be acquainted may have been quite as
well versed in the Acta Sanctorum, the Rig
Veda, and the Belfast Town and Country-
Almanack as in the English Racing Calendar.
Recalling, however, the strange eflfort of memory
made by the enumerator of the Derby winners,
I have often wondered how many mature persons
of average intelligence and with fairly retentive
memories there are who, at call and without
reference to their diaries, could be able to tell
you how they had passed all their Christmas
Days from, say, the age of twelve to sixty. I
attempted the task once myself, but very soon
gave it up in despair; since I found a hiatus
between a certain Christmas spent in a sick-
room, and another, many years afterwards, en-
joyed with the hardest of hard work in the
painting-room of a London theatre; and then,
after a tolerably well-remembered procession of
years, came yet another disastrous blank be-
tween a Christmas Day passed at Montreal, in
Canada, and one on board a steamer in Bass's
Straits voyaging from Launceston to Sydney.
These failures to summon up in their proper
sequence the Christmases of the bygone may

PANTOMIMES PAST AND PRESENT. 105

have been partly due to the fact that many of
my Christmas Days in early life were strictly
domestic ones, and that in middle-class society
one Christmas Day with its family dinner as
intimately resembles the Christmas Day preceding
it as the one following it, just as, to most people
who are not shepherds, one sheep in a flock re-
sembles his forty or his four hundred fellow-
muttons. Another reason, possibly, is that I
have often had to spend a Christmas Day under
anything but festive circumstances, and that
occasionally I have designedly thought as little
about the convivial aspect of the season as I pos-
sibly could, there having occurred considerable
difficulty in the way either of becoming the host
or a guest at a Christmas dinner at all.

Recognising, therefore, the practical impossi-
bility of keeping an accurate account of how many
times one has regaled on roast turkey, sirloin of
beef, plum pudding, and mince pies, as against
the Christmas Days when one was glad to get a
sham Christmas dinner at an hotel or restaurant
in some foreign country, and those other Christ-
mases when one was sick or sorry and had no
mind for feasting at all; or when, with every

106 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

wish to be joyous, one was fain to dine with
Duke Humphrey, I am trying as well as I can
in this chapter to conjure up the memories of a
few of the Christmas pantomimes which I have
witnessed. There need be no wearisome beating
about the bush in this matter ; it will be better
to plunge, like Homer, into the midst of things ;
and sitting in a cosy study at Brighton on
Christmas Eve, 1893, my memory flies back
straight as an arrow from a Tartar's bow to
Boxing Day, 1835. I was at that period a
small boy with a large head, and a great yearn-
ing for the acquaintance of giants and dwarfs
and fairies and elves ; and for three weeks before
Boxing Day that head was full of the most in-
toxicating visions of the coming delights of the
Christmas pantomime at the Theatre Royal,
Brighton, to which my mother had promised
that I should be taken on the evening of Dec.
2Gth, provided always that the weather was
favourable, and, in particular, that it did not
rain.

Fortunately for my Boxing Day felicity, we
had a very cold Yule-tide ; and it was on a fine
frosty evening that, with an elder sister and a

PANTOMIMES PAST AND PEE SENT. 107

group of young friends as small as I, I found
myseK in a box at the theatre, awaiting with
the most intense anxiety the rising of the green
curtain on the long yearned-for pantomime.
I do not retain the slightest idea of the nature
of the piece which preceded the Christmas enter-
tainment. In those days it was customary to
have as a first piece on Boxing Night a dread-
fully gloomy tragedy, called George Barnwell,
In this harrowing production was told the story
of the dissolute London apprentice who, lured to
crime by the artifices of an objectionable femalie
named Millwood, murdered his uncle, a highly
respectable and afiluent old gentleman — in the
pawnbroking line, I believe ; although, according
to some authorities, the uncle thus done to
death by his naughty kinsman was a rich grazier
at Ludlow. I am inclined to think that the
play at Brighton was Barnwell inasmuch as
I have just one solitary recollection of a tall
young lady, highly rouged, who wore an
immense hat and feathers. Possibly, this was
the abandoned Sarah Millwood; although I
am not prepared to say that the curtain-raiser
was not Kotzebue's depressing drama of The

108 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

Stranger; and the tall young lady with the
rouged cheeks and the huge hat and feathers
the repentant Mrs. Haller. It does not matter
much at this time of writing, since Lille's
gloomy but exemplary tragedy is almost for-
gotten, and Kotzebue's mawkish drama, trans-
lated into stilted English, is very rarely played.

Nor, again, can I give any distinct informa-
tion as to the plot, scenery, or characters in the
** opening" of the Christmas novelty itself . The
pantomime may have been called The Babes
in the Wood; or Hop o My Thumb; or The
Forty Thieves; or Cherry and Fairstar ; or Cock
llohin. All I know is, that to the extrava-
ganza, whatever it may have been, its official
title was prefixed — the glorious name of Harle-
quin — and that suffixed to it was the equally
glorious one of the Fairy Somebody. I do not
suppose that the *' opening'' was very spectacular ;
but we children in the private box, who made so
much noise by clapping our hands and laughing
so riotously that our buttons, like Peggotty's in
*' David Copperfield," may have flown off our
skeleton suits, and the box-keeper was obliged
to open the door and request my sister to keep

PANTOMIMES PAST AND PRESENT. 109

US — I think he called us " young warmints " —
quiet, found quite enough spectacle and to spare
in the "tricks" and transformations of the
" comic business."

The " tricks," I daresay, were simple and
silly enough ; but children, who can be amused
and even interested to the stage of fascina-
tion, and by the most artless of means, do not
stand in need of any very elaborate thauma-
turgicai delusions. A very plain little founda-
tion of glamour is enough for them; and
imagination supplies the rest. There is no
spectacle in " Punch and Judy " ; and when do
little ones, or even grown-up people, tire of be-
holding that historic alfresco drama, and shriek-
ing with merriment over the misdeeds of an
abandoned ruffian and profligate who murders
his devoted wife, and, after cheating the gallows
and hanging Jack Ketch himself, is not afraid
to confront even the Enemy of Mankind ?

The " trick" in the " comic business " at the
Brighton pantomime which I can most dis-
tinctly remember was the metamorphosis of
a policeman into a lobster. The "force"
were not very popular in 1835. They had

110 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

been but recently established and were con-
tumeliously halloaed at by small boys in the
street as ''bobbies," "peelers," and " crushers/'
Nor in the way of uniform were they very
lovely to look upon ; since, instead of neat
blue tunics and spruce helmets, they were
arrayed in absurdly -cut swallow-tail coats, and
wore chimney-pot hats, crowned and bound down
the sides with black leather. In the Brighton
pantomime Clown and Pantaloon between them
captured a policeman and proceeded to boil him
in a cauldron, from which they dragged him out
turned in hue to a bright scarlet: the transfor-
mation having been effected by simply covering
him with a veil of red gauze. There was
another trick, too, of Harlequin being fired out
of a mortar and simultaneously making his ap-
pearance in a box on the upper tier.

Of course there were two Harlequins made
use of to carry out this not very occult
delusion; but to us it was at once delicious
and marvellous. Then, again, there was a
gentleman who tried to read a book by the
light of a candle placed on a table; but the
candle, table and all slowly rose from the

PANTOMIMES PAST AND PRESENT. Ill

stage close up to the arch of the proscenium.
Then it as slowly descended, and the gentle-
man opened his book again ; whereupon he, his
volume and his chair to boot, all gravely rose
nearly to the altitude of the " flies." I saw the
self-same and venerable trick performed in the
year 1856 in the " comic business" of a grand
ballet at the Eoyal Opera House at Berlin;
and very possibly that identical trick was a com-
mon one in the Roman theatres of antiquity.
As it happens, I chanced to be turning, the other
day, over a file of newspapers for 1835, and in
one of their number the writer, who criticised
the Covent Garden pantomime, began by re-
marking that " the genius of this kind of
entertainment was at a rapid decline." " There
is no use," continued the critic, " in deny-
ing it. These fine scenes and splendid ' effects '
have played the very deuce. Harlequin
thinks it unnecessary to exert himself; he is
bewildered by visions and panoramas, and has
become anything but what he ought to be.
What wonder, then, that degeneracy has also
affected the Columbine, and that she, the
tender, frightened little heart, no longer runs

112 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

hither and thither for protection and love,
but assures herself on her own account, and
is not afraid to rebuke the advances of gouty
old aristocrats, as though she were sixty-
years of age instead of sixteen. That profligate
wag, the Clown, no longer picks pockets with a
gusto, nor looks those outrageous lies, nor laughs
as thougli he would shake his shoulders off.
He merely makes respectable summersaults, and
hopes that people will laugh at him."

Furthermore, the censor of the Covent Grarden
pantomime, the name of which he even disdains
to give, complains that the spectacle included "few
tricks, fewer thumps, a singular lack of bumps,
and little or no mirthful enjoyment." He
sneered, too, at what was then the modem joke
of the squeaking pig, and denounces '^ allegories
of gin-palaces starting suddenly out of dissipa-
tion, outrage, poverty, and disease." Still he
has a good word to say for a device in which
the ** Largest Turkey in Europe is being rescued
from the hug of a Eussian Bear " by a broadside
from an admirably modelled representation of
H.M.S. Britannia, Looking through journal-
istic strictures on pantomimes between 1835 and

PANTOMIMES PAST AND PRESENT. 113

1850, one finds over and over again the same
complaint of the sad degeneracy of these once
mirthful Christmas spectacles, and bitter lamen-
tations over the evanishment of the days of Joey
G-rimaldi in Mother Goose. That renowned en-
tertainment, which is said to have been the first
pantomime ever seen by Lord Eldon, and which
his lordship subsequently witnessed eleven times
in^succession, I have never read; but I have
before me a copy of a pantomime called Harle-
quin and Friar Bacon ; or. The Brazen Head^
performed at Covent Garden Theatre on Boxing
Night, 1820. The Pantaloon was the famous
Barnes ; Miles, Friar Bacon s servant, afterwards
Clown, was played by the great " Joey '' himself;
and Fribble, the Page, afterwards Dandy Lover,
was impersonated by the younger Grimaldi,
whose wretched career and miserable end are
so forcibly narrated in the "Life of Joseph
Grimaldi,'' edited by Charles Dickens.

That interesting work was illustrated by
George Cruikshank, and, by an odd coincidence,
the frontispiece of my copy of Harlequin Friar
Bacon is a portrait of the original " Joey,*' etched
by Isaac Eobert Cruikshank, George's father.

114 THINGS AND PEOPLE,

The unrivalled clown is represented in the act of
opening a number of oysters from a barrel ; and
the veiy way in which he leers at the bivalves
and the manner in which he brandishes an exag-
gerated oyster-knife, at once suffices to convince
you that the man had inherited from his Italian
father the most subtle of mimetic powers. As
to the " opening " of Friar Bacon, it is about as
stupid a production as it is possible to imagine ;
while the " comic business '' comprises scenes of
the " West Cliff, Brighton," the " Elephant and
Castle," the " Outside of a Lodging House
and Snuff Shop," the "Peacock, at Islington,"
"Donnybrook Pair," "Dublin Bay," and a
grand transformation scene of the " Temple of
the Brazen Head," with plenty of red and blue
fire as a wind up, you may be sure.

I may have seen a Christmas pantomime or
two in London between 1835 and 1838; but I
confess that I have but a very cloudy remem-
brance of them, principally, I think, because my
capacity of astonishment and delight were
absorbed by a wonderful spectacle played, I
think, at Drury Lane, and entitled, Za-Ze-Zi-
Zo'Zoo, in which there was an animated game

PANTOMIMES PAST AND PRESENT 115

of dominoes, about one of the funniest stage
devices that I ever saw. The animated dominoes,
of course, afterwards joined in a game of leap-
frog, which culminated in a chaotic revel, in
which Double Blank took a flying leap over the
back of Double Six.

But now I come to a pantomime which,
although I first saw it fifty-three years ago,
is distinctly and still delightfully engraved
on my mind. In 1839 I was a boy at
school at Paris; and one summer Sunday
evening, having my ea^eat, or "pass," from
college in my pocket, I was allowed, with my
sister, who was finishing her education in the
French capital, to visit, under matronly escort,
Franconi's Winter Circus, high up on the
Boulevards towards the Place de la Bastille, at
v/hich theatre a wonderful pantomime f eerie
called Les Pilules du Diable was just then
sending all Paris wild with excitement. The
piece was in five acts; the authors were MM.
Anicet-Bourgeois, Laloue, and Laurent; and it
was first produced in February. It was in July
that I saw it, and it had been running ever
since. Its run amounted altogether to a
i2

116 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

thousand nights. The transformations in the
Pilules die Liable seemed to be innumerable ;
although the plot was an exceedingly simple
one, being founded on the misadventures of an
old apothecary and his son-in-law, who through
the five acts were continually searching for the
heroine, who had been carried off by a dissipated
personage, by the name of Babylas ; but it was
tlie transformations that excited our wonder,
and threw us into transports of joy.

Men were changed into turkeys, children
into cat^ wretched liovels into palaces blazing
with gold and jewels; while wooden razors
which hung as signs over barbers' shops
opened of their own accord to cut off the
heads of passers-by. An Italian image-boy
came on the stage with a tray of plaster casts
on his head; and one Magloire, who was a
kind of clown, stole the images and replaced
them with the severed heads which he had
picked up. The Italian image-boy, suspecting
naught, went on his way, but was pursued by a
crowd, which, to defend himself, he pelted with
the heads on his tray. A man was run over by
a locomotive engine — then an almost entire

PANTOMIMES PAST AND PRESENT. 117

novelty in France; his body was cut to pieces
and magically put together again. A quack-
salver brought forward a head of wood, and by
the aid of a new pomatum made the hair, the
beard, and the moustaches grow. Then there
were the old tricks of the chairs and table which
played at hide and seek; of the beds which
turned into baths of iced water, and of a cotton
factory which changes into a madhouse of four
storeys, out of every window of which a lunatic
with a tall white night-cap popped his head.

If Magloire halted in front of a cabaret and
ordered a bottle of wine, the sign of the inn,
" Le More Couronne," became animated, jumped
on to the table and emptied his glass; while
gigantic frogs issued from a neighbouring pool
and carried off the bottle. When he tried to
dine at a cook shop, roast pigeons flew up from
the dish and into the gaping mouth of a giant
painted on the wall; raised pies burst asunder
and disclosed fantastic animals making astound-
ing grimaces. These and five hundred extrava-
gances made the Pilules du Liable a world-
famous pantomime; and many of the tricks
which were really original have long since

118 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

become stock devices in modern comic business.
This wondrous pantomime was revived in 1874
in Paris, at the great theatre of the ChSrtelet,
but the management unwisely thought that the
old rough-and-tumble tricks and grotesque
transformations were no longer up to date, or at
least that it was necessary to supplement them
by more spectacle, more tinsel and foil paper and
coloured fires, and especially by many more pairs
of feminine legs. The Pilules du Biable gained
in splendour, but lost in fun; nor was the
revival, on the whole, a long-continued success.
It did not, at least, achieve the triumph
which was the lot of Peaic d'Ane^ of La Biche
au Bois, and especially of the famous Pied de
Mouton,

I have had a good deal to do in my working
time with pantomimes. In 1846 at the old
Princess's Theatre, Mr. John Medex Maddox
being the lessee and manager thereof, I was
employed as an assistant in the painting-room,
as I have mentioned in the first chapter. I
forget the name of the grand Christmas panto-
mime produced in the winter of the year just
named, but I know that I worked very hard in

PANTOMIMES PAST AND PRESENT, 119

connection with it. One of the comic scenes was
a tableau of the Arctic regions, which was meta-
morphosed into a kitchen full of blazing fireplaces
and cooks in white jerkins and caps. All the
kitchen utensils, which were projected on a fiery-
background, had to cast the very deepest of
shadows, which it was my business to delineate ;
and I used up so many pots of sable colour in
painting these shadows that I was known among
my colleagues as the " gentleman in black." I
likewise helped to model all the pantomime
masks, and to paint and gild the ** properties "
— technical training which stood me in very
good stead many years afterwards, when I was
examined as a witness in the great Belt libel case,
and was asked somewhat insolently by one of
the counsel whether I knew anything practically
about the plastic modelling with regard to which
I was being examined. I told the learned gen-
tleman that I could model heads well enough,
and would be charmed to model his — wig and
all — if he liked.

When I left the Princess's and Mr. Maddox,
I drifted into journalism in a small way, but
I had not lost my love for Clown, Pantaloon,

120 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

and their fuiiniments ; and about 1 848, Mr.
Alfred Bunn being lessee and manager of the
Theatre Eoyal, Drury Lane, I designed the
masks and costumes for a pantomime called, I
think, ''Harlequin Hogarth." Again, in 1851,
the Princess's having passed out of the hands of
Mr. Maddox and into those of Mr. Charles Kean,
for that excellent actor and accomplished gentle-
man I wrote, in conjunction with a brother long
since deceased and Mr. George Ellis, the stage
manager of the theatre, the opening of a
pantomime called Harlequin Billy Taylor. Our
scene painters were the Grieves ; our Clown was
the admirable Flexmore ; our Pantaloon a very
old pantomimic hand, Paulo ; our Columbine
Miss Carlotta Leclercq; and a marvellously pretty
little girl called Kate Terry played the figure-
head of a mimic man-of-war, with a crew of
small children dressed as tars, who sang " Rule
Britannia," in the midst of coloured fires, while
the bowsprit slowly descended to the level of the
stage, and the charming little figure-head stepped
forth as a fairy all white muslin and spangles,
waved her tinsel wand, and brought about the
Grand Transformation, followed by the " rally "

PANTOMIMES PAST AND PRESENT. 121

and the comic business, in which one scene was
the work of my brother and myself.

It was the outside of a lodging-house by
moonlight. Of course, Clown and Pantaloon
were ''all over the place" with warming-pans
and night-lights and other adjuncts for fun;
and the scene wound up with a great concert
of " practical '' cats on the roof, whose dia-
bolical moll-rowings still ring in my ears.
Charles Kean, who was a dry humorist, took
great interest in this feline comedy; and one
day at rehearsal, while he was sitting at the
back of the pit watching the scene, he called
out to Mrs. Charles Kean, who was a splendid
stage manageress, " Ellen, there's a large tom
cat close to the chimney, and he does not
cock his tail correctly ; take him away and let
me have another cat with a larger tail."

I had nothing more to do with pantomimes
until 1856, when during the disastrous manage-
ment of Professor Anderson, the " Wizard of
the North," at Covent Garden, soon after-
wards to be destroyed by fire, I assisted the
stage director, Mr. Augustus Harris — the father
of Sir Augustus, the present lessee of the two

122 TIHJ^QS AND PEOPLE.

national theatres — in writing the rhymed-
*' book " of a pantomime called Harlequin Kinff
Heni^j VIIL ; or. The Field of the Cloth of
Gold, Two years afterwards a new and very
different field of pantomimic industry was opened
to me. It became my duty to write the annual
Boxing Night article on the Drury Lane panto-
mime for the Daily Telegraph ; and in the course
of four-and-thirty years, allowing for occasional
absence in foreign parts, I suppose that I have
written some twenty yearly pantomime critiques.

123

CHAPTER XIV.

OPERAS REMEMBERED.

Maria di Rolian in 1847 — A Voice "like melted Butter" — Alboni —
Artaxerxes — Musical Criticism in 1836 — The Lord of the
Manor — Tom Thumb — The Quaker — Love in a Village — Guy
Mannering — Rol Boy — The Antiquary — John Bamet, Michael
Balfe, and Vincent Wallace.

One bright summer eveniDg, in the year 1847,
it occurred to me, after I had been dining at
the Garrick's Head Hotel, in Bow Street, Covent
Garden — a tavern which has long since dis-
appeared — that I had in my pocket a stall for the
instant night's performance at the Royal Italian
Opera — clearly not the existing palatial theatre,
but the partially reconstructed and redecorated
Covent Garden : a transformation from the old,
or Kemble structure, effected by an Italian
architect named Albano, and which was totally
destroyed by fire after a masquerade given by
Professor Anderson, in the year 1856. The
opera, as I learned from the notice-board
under the portico, was Maria di Rohan, a
production which, I take it, is scarcely very

124 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

popular with modern opera-goers. I lived in
Salisbury Street, in the Strand ; and, after
debating for awhile whether I should see
Maria di Rohan, or take a ramble through the
streets, I elected the former course, hurried
home, dressed, and in due time found myself in
the splendid theatre, then under the management
either of Mr. Beale or of Mr. Delafield.

The opera had already commenced ; and just
as I took my scat there walked on to the stage a
young ladj^ in male attire of the Louis Treize or
early Louis Quatorze period. It was a " front '*
scene, and she had the whole of the space
behind the footlights and the canvas " flat ''
to herself. So soon as she began to sing, I
remembered that I had seen her only a very-
short time before, at the opening of the
Eoyal Italian Opera, in the opera of Semiramide^
in which magnificent work she sustained the
part of Arsace. I was listening to a voice
of w^onderful compass, including, so far as my
ear taught me, notes far beyond the reach of
the ordinary contralto. My next-door neigh-
bour in the stalls, who, from his face and
mien, I conjectured to be an officer in the

OPERAS BEMEMBEBED. 125

Guards, expressed his opinion touching the
delightful songstress with a terseness and lu-
cidity which far surpassed my more technical
appreciation. He remarked that the young
lady's voice was " like melted butter — by Jove ! "

It certainly was one of the richest, most
unctuous, and yet vigorous voices I had ever
Ustened to. The song she sang was of a
cavalier — herself — who, not wishing to be idle,
paid for two entire months assiduous court to
a fair and noble lady, who, however, vouch-
safed such scant attention to his sighs and
entreaties, that he might as well have tried to
propitiate a rock. There was a refrain to the
ditty, in which the disappointed swain expressed
his opinion that, after all, austere beauties of
the Lucretian type were rarely found. The en-
chanting lyric and the more enchanting singer
were quite enough for me. I wanted no more
of Maria di Rohan that summer evening, so I
hied me home, opened my paint-box, and made
a sketch, in water-colours, of the handsome
young lady in boy's clothes, with a voice,
as the Gruardsman put it, " like melted butter."

Only the other day, rummaging among

126 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

old-time papers in the drawers of a bureau,
and judiciously burning a large proportion of
the documents, I came across a water-colour
drawing of a young lady in boy's clothes —
a handsome brunette, somewhat inclined to
embonpoint. She was clad in a pourpoint and
hauts de chamses of black velvet, with black
silk hose and shoes with rosettes. She had
a deep, falling-collar of point lace and ample
lawn sleeves and lace ruffles ; while in one
hand she carried a slouched hat with sable
plumes. Underneath I found three lines in
Italian :

** Al Giudicar,
Da quel che par,
Son le Lucrezie rare a trovar ! "

The writing was lamentably faded, and the first
word was so blurred and indistinct that I could
not precisely make out whether it was " Al " or
'* Non." The paper, too, was stained and
crumpled ; and in the greys, with which I had
touched up the black velvet costume and the
plumes, I had incautiously mingled white lead
instead of Chinese white. The lead had oxidised,
and, where there should have been grey touches,

OPERAS REMEMBERED. 125

It certainly was one of the richest, most
unctuous, and yet vigorous voices I had ever
listened to. The song she sang was of a
cavalier — herself — who, not wishing to be idle,
paid for two entire months assiduous court to
a fair and noble lady, who, however, vouch-
safed such scant attention to his sighs and
entreaties, that he might as well have tried to
propitiate a rock. There was a refrain to the
ditty, in which the disappointed swain expressed
his opinion that, after all, austere beauties of
the Lucretian type were rarely found. The en-
chanting lyric and the more enchanting singer
were quite enough for me. I wanted no more
of Maria di Rohan that summer evening, so I
hied me home, opened my paint-box, and made
a sketch, in water-colours, of the handsome
young lady in boy's clothes, with a voice,
as the Gruardsman put it, " like melted butter."

Only the other day, rummaging among

128 THINOS AND PEOPLE.

both English and Italian, before the work, of
which Hullah was the composer and Dickens the
writer of the libretto, was produced. I should
say that a very large number of the lyrical pro-
ductions to which I intend to call brief attention
are at the present day scarcely known, even, by
name, to the great majority of patrons of the
lyric stage. For example, in October, 1837, I
saw at the St. James's, Dr. Ame's opera of
Artaxerxes, John Braham, then nearly sixty-two,
but still in splendid form, as a tenor equally
vigorous and mellifluous, was Artabanes, and
Mr. Bennett, of Covent Garden, Arbaces. The
Mandane of the evening was a debutantey Miss
Itainforth, who was at once acknowledged as
a peeress of the two then most conspicuous jt?rew^
do7ine of English opera. Miss Shirreff and Miss
Romer.

In J r taw e roses the contralto part was played
by Miss Julia Smith, but I am not ashamed to
confess that I have but a very indistinct re-
membrance of Miss Julia Smith's vocalisation,
or, indeed, of her individuality, save that she
was young and good-looking and inclined to
plumpness, and that she wore a very gorgeous

OPERAS EEMEMBEEED. 129

costume, comprising an exceptionally baggy pair
of Turkish trousers of crimson satin with gold
spangles. Musical critics in 1836 were not quite
so fully endowed with good manners as are their
successors in 1894; and it is instructive to note
in a contemporary criticism on the performance,
and in so grave and scholarly a journal as the
Exmniner, the following remarkable appreciation
of Miss Julia Smith (Artaxerxes) and her sister : —
" There are two stout Miss Smiths at the theatre,
and one of these Miss Smiths acted Artaxerxes.
This lady has a little fat person and a little
fat, reedy voice, the effects of which approach
occasionally the ludicrous. The two fat Miss
Smiths sing little fat duets together very
prettily ; but as their two pursey little voices do
not make up one good voice, they ought never
to be separated. The American motto is strongly
exemplified in these ladies, and we advise them
to pay every attention to it : E pluribus unwn.
It should be a double-barrelled engagement."
I may mention that the sisters Smith were nieces
of the Countess of Essex — the adorable " Kitty "
Stephens, whose face still delightfully haunts
the collector of old prints, as it beams from out

130 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

a group of spectators, in the engraving after
Harlowe's once popular picture of the Trial
Scene in Henry the Eighth — better known as the
" Kemble Family." I know sorrowfully well
that I am talking ancient history ; and even
professional musicians may fail to be interested
by the knowledge that in the orchestra, on the
first night of ArtaxerxeSy the once renowned
Harper played the trumpet, and Grattan Cooke
played the hautboy. Grattan Cooke was for
many years a favourite performer at the Philhar-
monic Concerts, and was afterwards bandmaster
of one of the cavalry regiments of the Household
Brigade. For the rest, although Dr. Arne's
Artaxerxes has long since practically fallen into
oblivion, and I suppose would be utterly unsuit-
able for performance on the modem stage, I
hope that it is not impertinent to hint that
this forgotten work contains a large number
of exquisitely beautiful melodies. It is six-
and-fifty years ago ; yet often when I am at
work the now cheering, now soothing, airs
return to me with all the freshness of a new-
gathered violet in spring; and I find myself
humming "The Soldier Tired," or "Mild as

OPERAS REMEMBERED. 131

the Moonbeams/' or " Thy Father, Away ! "
or " Water Parted."

English operatic managers used to do very
strange things occasionally, more than half a
century since, in the way of interpolating compo-
sitions alien from the operas which they brought
out. Thus, in Mozart's Marriage of Figaro at
Co vent Garden, in 1827, in which my mother
enacted the Countess Alma viva, Madame Vestris,
who played Susanna, was positively allowed to
introduce the pretty, frivolous ballad " I've been
Roaming ; " and in ArtaxerxeSy at the St. James's,
Handel's pathetic song, " Tears such as Tender
Fathers shed," was foisted on Arne's score; while
the recitative, " Dear and Beloved Shade," was
the composition of Mr. (afterwards Sir) Henry
R. Bishop, the composer, or at least the adapter,
of the melody of "Home, Sweet Home." To
complete the tableau of lyrical incongruities at
the St. James's, the manager described Artaxerxes
as " a Serious Burletta." Probably he had no
thought of Dante's Divine Comedy in his mind
when he affixed the epithet of serious to a bur-
letta which is essentially a comic, and even
farcical, composition ; but he was compelled to

132 THINGS AND PEOPLE,

give it the ridiculous title by the then tyran-
nical and absurd system of theatrical Hcens-
ing, which forbade the performance of operas
exceeding one act in length save at certain
privileged houses.

And now let me say a few words about
certain English operas, short, merry, and spark-
ling, of which the fathers and mothers of elderly
readers were once enthusiastically fond, but which
I suppose are very rarely performed in an
epoch that prefers the loose and lively operas
botcffes of Offenbach, Lecocq, and Herv^ to the
innocent, tuneful, but, it must be owned, some-
what ''pigtail" compositions of Charles Dibdin,
the elder Hook, and their school. Did you ever
hear of, or did you ever see, an opera called The
Lord of the Manor, the libretto of which was
altered by Charles Dibdin from a drama by
General Burgoyne, of Saratoga fame, and the
father of the valiant Field-Marshal Sir John Bur-
goyne ? In this opera, the plot of which bears
a slight resemblance to Farquhar's Recruiting
Officer, there is a boisterous, riotous, drunken
baggage-waggon woman called Moll Flaggon, as
unlike our modern type of a vivandiere as a wild

OPERAS BEMEMBEEED, 133

boar is unlike a sucking-pig. Moll Flaggon
used to wear serai-military costume — a scarlet
coatee with worsted embroidery, a quilted skirt
that reached no lower than the knee, a tucked
up apron (from one pocket of which protruded
a brandy bottle), blue worsted hose, and clouted
shoes. In the intervals of her ribaldry, her
roaring ditties, and her *' cellarflap " dances, she
smoked a short pipe. Moll Flaggon was always
played by a man ; and I have had the advantage
of seeing the edifying part performed by the
admirable comedian John Pritt Harley. I can
hear now the burden of one of the songs he
sung —

** Kiss and drink
But never think,
'Tis all the same to-morrow."

Harley also played, about the same time, the
role of Lord Grizzle in Fielding's burlesque of
Ihm Thumb the Great, and, not inappropriately,
called at the St. James's a '* musical burletta."
The purport and significance of Fielding's 2o7n
Thumb, as a political satire, had been forgotten,
even in the reign of William IV. ; but the piece
was a very droll one, and for awhile large

134 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

audiences flocked to see the extravaganza, to listen
to the witty dialogue and the tuneful songs sung
by the dra??mtis persona. But who remembers
the Princess Huncamunca and her famous scena
beginning ''Then Tremble all who Weddings ever
made, and Tremble more who did this Match
persuade " ? Who remembers the duet between
Noodle and Doodle — either the Noodle or the
Doodle being in 1836 a young gentleman by
the name of Alfred Wigan — and who preserves
any definite recollection of Grizzle's doleful song
after he is mortally wounded, '* My Body is a
Bankrupt's Shop, my grim Creditor is Death"?
He died superbl}'- — he could have " given points,"
even in this regard, to Mr. Lionel Brough ; and
the audience used to roar when Harley, couchant
on the stage, dragged himself to the footlights,
borrowed a snuff-box from Mr. George Sants-
bury, the leader of the orchestra, inhaled a
parting pinch, and then rolling over and over,
gave up the ghost with a sepulchral croak.

There was the opera of T/ie Quaker, too. I
can scarcely persuade myself that the charming
air, '* When the Lads of the Village," is wholly-
ignored at the present time ; surely it must be

0PEEA8 REMEMBERED. - 135

sung occasionally at village entertainments ;
but as for the opera itself, I am afraid that it
is as dead as Queen Anne. And '* Rosina," and
" No Song, no Supper," with the indignant air
of the discontented wife, " Go, George, I can't
endure you"? And the delightful Love in
a Village ? Are there any modem young
ladies who ever warble the sparkling duet in
the First Act, ''Hope, thou Nurse of young
Desire"? Would the humours of the statute
fair suit the fn-de-siecle taste ? I have seen
Keeley play Hodge; and I have heard that
very capable English tenor, Allen, as young
Meadows, sing, **How much superior Beauty
awes " ? And how long, I should like to know,
is it since the comic English opera of Midas
has been popular on the boards ? Midas, with
the rattling song for Apollo, " Pray, Goody,
please to moderate the Eancour of your
Tongue."

These simple-minded English operas, which
were not very scientific, possibly not very artistic,
musically speaking, but the words in the songs
of which were not always sickly namby-pamby,
continued to decline in public favour throughout

136 THINGS AND PEOPLE. ]

the 'thirties and for about five years in the next
decade.

I just recollect witnessing, at the English
Opera House (now the Lyceum), a hybrid kind
of opera, candidly confessed by the librettist
to be only a new broad, comic extravaganza
entertainment, entitled Giovanni in London; or,
the Libertine Reclaimed, It had first been pro-
duced at Drury Lane. Don Giovanni was of
course played by the incomparable Eliza Vestris,
who sent the town half crazy by her appearance
in a peach-coloured tunic edged with silver
embroidery, white silk tights, and half boots of
the same hue as her tunic ; while a magnificent
diamond star sparkled in her black velvet cap
with the white plume. Rob Roy, dramatically
speaking a pale parody of Sir Walter's novel,
was brought out as a musical drama in three
acts ten years before I was born. The cast
at Co vent Garden in 1818 comprised that
respectable tragedian, Mr. Egerton, as Sir Fred-
erick Vernon, Liston as Bailie Nicol Jar vie,
Miss Stephens as Diana Vernon, and Mrs.
Bishop as Katty, whilst Mrs. Egerton was the
first of Helen Macgregors, a part played in after

OPERAS REMEMBERED, 137

years hy, anioug others, Mrs. W. West, Mrs.
Warner, and my mother. Another operatic
version of a novel by the then Great Unknown
was Guy Mannenng ; or, the Gipsy's Projjhecyy
which production has happily come down to our
time, mainly owing, I should say, to the charm
of Bishop's music and the admirable acting of
Miss Genevieve Ward as Meg Merrilies, just
as " Home, Sweet Home,'' sung by Miss Maria
Tree, made the fortune of Howard Payne's melo-
drama of Clari, the Maid of Milan, The original
cast of Guy Mannering at Covent Garden was a
wonderfully strong one. Brahm and Sinclair
alternately played Harry Bertram; Liston was
Dominie Sampson, and Emery (the grandfather
of Miss Winifred Emery) was Dandie Dinmont.
Franco, a boy, was played by "Master" Barnett;
but whether the youth at Covent Garden subse-
quently blossomed into Morris Barnett, the
creator of the pathetic hero in Monsieur Jacques,
or John Barnett, the composer of The Mountain
Sylph, I am not aware. The parb of Gilbert
Glossin fell to that very fine actor Blanchard,
and Lucy Bertram was impersonated by the
enchanting Miss Stephens. No, I feel sure.

138 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

that "The Winds whistle cold" and the* 'Chough
and Crow " have not lost their hold on English
ears and hearts ; but I am afraid that no modem
manager would be so adventurous as to produce
The Antiquary, a musical play in three acts, in
which Miss Stephens played Miss Wardour ;
Mrs. Faucit, Elspeth; Mr. Liston, Jonathan
Oldbuck; Emery, Edie Ochiltree; and Blanchard,
Caxon. Lovel was played by Duruset; but, for
all that, the music of the songs, glees, and duets
was by Bishop. The musical play of The
Antiquary would have, I am afraid, a very cold
reception were it presented at the Lyric or the
Prince of Wales's, and derision rather than
applause might be the guerdon of the glee
*' Merrily Sounds the Dinner Bell.'* Another
of the Waverley Novels, The Heart of Mid--
lothian, was brought out at the Surrey, and was
only qualified as a melodramatic romance ; but
it was plentifully sprinkled with songs and
choruses. Effie Deans sang, Jeanie Deans sang,
Madge Wildfire sang, and Fitzwilliam as Dum-
biedikes favoured the audience with Burns's
'' Willy Wastle Dwelt on Tweed." AU these
operas and quasi-operas were destined to be

OPERAS REMEMBERED. 139

eclipsed by three very bright planets which
arose in the English dramatic firmament — John
Barnett, Michael Balfe, and Vincent Wallace.
Balfe was an intimate friend of our family ; he,
his excellent wife, his two daughters, and his
little son lived in Conduit Street, Eegent Street,
and, between the years 1835 and 1839, I and
my sister were almost daily visitors in the Balfe
household. Louisa and Victoria Balfe were our
playmates. Louisa, I believe, died not long
after her marriage, but I was privileged to meet
Victoria in 1865 at Madrid. She had been the
wife of Sir John Crampton, sometime Minister
at Washington and at Madrid ; but " Vicky,'' as I
used to call her in her childhood, when I visited
her in her sumptuous mansion in the Spanish
capital, had become the spouse of the Duke of
Frias, a Spanish grandee of ancient lineage,
who was the son of that Duke of Frias
who came to England as Ambassador-Extra-
ordinary from Spain at the coronation of Queen
Victoria.

140

CHAPTEE XV.

SONGS THAT COME BACK TO ME.

Rossini and ** the excellent M. La-da-di-da-de-da-de-day " — A
Memory for Tunes — Arabic, Russian, and Spanish Melodies —
A Phenomenon of the Musical Memorv : the Probable Ex-
planation — " The Evening Grun " — French Melodies — English
Ballads and Choruses — "She Wore a Wreath of Roses" and
its Composer — Greorge Linley — Lover's Ballads — Songs to be
avoided.

BossiNi, the composer, who had a spice of
malice in his humour, professed to be perma-
nently unable to recollect the name of Sir Henry
Bishop ; and whenever he met an English friend
with musical connections he would ask him,
^' And how goes the health of the excellent M.
La-da-di-da-de-da-de-day ? " and so proceeded
to hum right through the melody of "Home,
Sweet Home." It is possible, I take it, to be
utterly ignorant of the art and science of music,
and yet to have an accurate and copious musical
memory. I was always passionately fond of
music, and, in my boyhood, used pathetically to
entreat that I might be taught the tuneful art ;

SONGS THAT COME BACK TO ME. 141

but I was destined for other pursuits; and I
only preserve, now, an abiding love for operatic
music and a curiously retentive remembrance of
the tunes which were long, long ago familiar to
me.

Following the Emperor Napoleon III. and
his gorgeous train through Algeria some eight-
and-twenty years ago, I heard one night a
wild chorus sung by Arabs in a coffee-house at
Blidah. Being no Arabic scholar, I could make
nothing of the words which the men in the
burnouses chanted; but the tune remained for
many years latent in my memory ; and it came
back to me unbidden, one day last year, when I
had purchased a guitar for a youthful relative
who is an adept on that delightful instrument.
The melody haunted me so persistently for three
days that, at length, I sent for a professor of
music, who obligingly put down the notes as I
sang them and welded the wild chorus into
musical symmetry and artistic form.

I thought, while I was about it, that he
might also note down a very touching, tune-
ful melody I used to hear in Russia, sung
to the music of the balalaika^ more than

142 THTNGS AND PEOPLE,

five-and-thirty years ago. It is called the
" Temschick Song;" and to me the oddest
circumstance connected with this well-known
Muscovite ditty is, that while during the
twenty years which intervened between my
first and my second visit to the land of the
Czar, I entirely forgot the soft-flowing Kuss
which I had acquired during my first six
months' sojourn — with the exception, always,
til at I could still write the characters of
the Russian alphabet — yet 1 remembered
the words of " Fbt na pouti celo bohchoia ; "
although their meaning had become quite lost
to me. The musical professor took down the
" Yemschick Song ; " and before he left, I
pressed him to " prick down " — to use Mr.
Pepys' term — a certain Spanish peasant choral
song, the music of which, after a long lapse of
years, I remembered imperfectly, but of the
words of which I could only remember some-
thing like this, '* Carlos es rejin." To what
North Iberian patois these words belong I
do not know, but they linger in my mind.

Very often we yield to the dim persuasion
that we are listening to a strain of music.

SONGS THAT GOME BAGK TO ME. 143

which we have no consciousness of having
heard at any period in our lives ; and this
phenomenon, the experience of which is com-
mon, I should say, to the bulk of humanity,
has often engendered in some minds the fanciful
theory that the mysterious melody, which
we think has been audible to us, pertains
to some previous stage of existence. I would
rather favour the thought, that the vaguely-
imagined tune was one that was sung to us in
our very earliest infancy; but that, in many cases,
our harmonic memory is not retentive enough to
have preserved the definite apprehension of the
tune. Abundance of songs must have been
sung to us in our cradles — abundance of tunes
must have been played to us on the piano,
by those who loved us in our infancy; yet, I
should say, there must be very few children of
humanity who have a definite idea of what they
heard, or what they saw, when they were, say,
twelve months old. If those whose memory for
melodj'- is vigorous and conservative exercised
their faculty by repeating all the tunes which
have impressed themselves on their minds — say
from the age of four or six — such reminiscent

1^ TniXG> AXD PEOPLE.

monsters, as I mav call them, would become
intolerable bores both to themselves and to their
friends.

The charm of musical memory consists to
me, so I have always thought, in the melody
fading away fur a time into apparent extinction,
and of its suddenly and beautifully starting up
before one unsuramoned, but always welcome, at
a period wholly unexpected. You are riding, I
will say, on the sea-front at Brighton. There is
a wonderful sunset of crimson and gold and
orange, and the dying orb flashes in splendid
profusion on the window-panes of houses pro-
jecting, at right angles, from the line of buildings
on the front. Why should you hear, in the
inner chambers of your mind, the booming
reverberation of a cannon ; and why should there
come back to you the touching air of a ballad
called '' The Evening Gun," composed, if I re-
member aright, by a certain Mr. John Lodge
Ellerton, full sixty years ago? That ballad
visited me only yesterday; and the fascination
which exists in these unlooked-for, but fondly
cherished, recurrences of sweet sounds, is won-
derfully enhanced by the circumstance that the

80NG8 THAT OOME BACK TO ME. 145

song brings back to you the scenes and the
people of the bygone, and enables you to recall
still more and more melodies, associated with the
things and the creatures always lovable to you,
and which you will love till you die.

It is sixty years since ; and I am mentally
transported to a drawing-room in Cannon Place,
Brighton; and I can hear "The Bay of Dublin,"
and " Entreat Me not to Leave Thee," and " Lascia
ch'io piango " ; and, with the eyes of my soul, I
can see the beautiful mother of the present
Marquess of DufPerin. I can see Caroline Norton
and Lady Combermere, and Harriet, Duchess of
St. Albans, and Angela Burdett Coutts — the last
quite a young girl — and Malibran, and Paganini,
in his sitting-room at the Old Ship. It was
only the golden sunset, and the remembered air
of " The Evening Gun," that conjured up all
these phantoms of a happy past. Please do not
think that I intend to be studiously sentimental.
Can any of my readers remember a wonderfully
funny " society " song, that used to be sung
close upon six decades ago, beginning, " So
Miss Myrtle is Going to Marry " ? The words
were as humorous as the melody was vivaciously

146 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

tuneful. It was a lady-critic. I think, who was
supposed to be telling some feminine friend of
the approaching marriage of Miss Myrtle, and
in successive stanzas she gently, oh, so gently !
insinuated that the young lady and hex fiance
were of hopelessly contrary dispositions, and that
they would lead a cat-and-dog life ; each verse,
however, concluding with a deliciously spiteful
refrain to the effect that Miss Myrtle was a
charming woman, and her future spouse a most
fortunate man.

As I hum the air now, there comes to
me from France, straight as the railway line
from Petersburg to Moscow — did not the Tsar
Nicholas rule it with a pencil on a map, when
the engineers asked him what course the line
should follow? — a sparkling ditty called '' Les
CowplimenU de Normandie^' which was the rage
in Paris early in the reign of Louis Philippe.
I can see, even now, the lithographed drawing
on the title-page, representing two pretty peasant
women in sabots and lofty cauchoises, who are
complimenting one another on their good looks
and their smart caps and ribbons, but in whom
there is a manifest undercurrent of envy, hatred,

SONGS THAT GOME BAGK TO ME. 147

malice, and all uncharitableness. The air is
throughout lively and catching, but it rarely
abides with me long ; since it has to yield to a
stern, austere, menacing, tragic melody, which, at
the epoch I speak of, was sung by every musical
amateur in Paris who was endowed with a strong
baritone, or even a bass voice. The song was
called " VAnge Bechuy and related the awful
remorse of a Spirit who had been appointed
Guardian Angel to an enfant de la terre, a pretty
girl, to whom he had imprudently made love.
Mr. Thomas Moore might have approved of
these angelical flirtations ; but the French poet
took a different view of the transaction.

Of course no reminiscences of melody of the
Louis Philippe period can be destitute of a recol-
lection of a certain patriotic song entitled " La
Parisienne," now, I should say, wholly forgotten
in the land of its birth. The Citizen King,
shortly after the Eevolution of July, forbade the
performance of " La Marseillaise " ; so his sub-
jects had to be content with an illegitimate
and truncated parody of the magnificent anthem
of Eouget de Tlsle — " La Parisienne.'' It
was a stimulating air enough, but a plagiarism
k2

148 THTNOS AND PEOPLE.

as well as a parody. The music was com-
posed by Auber, and the words were by Casimir
Delavigne, the author of " Louis XI." Strange
to say, although I can remember, by a strong
mental effort, the airs of nearly all the comic
operas of the epoch to which I allude — the
Domino Noir, the Pre aax Clercs, the Am-
bassadrice, the Postilion de LongjmneaUy and
many more, the tunes very rarely come back
to me unasked; possibly for the reason that
when I heard them as a schoolboy I was
almost alone in Paris ; and the operatic airs
had thus no close association with scenes or per-
sons that I care to recall. It was different with
that gruesome tune the " Ange BichuJ^ It
chanced that about 1843, when I went to school
in England, the head of the remarkable Pesta-
lozzian establishment at Turnham Green, who
tried his best to give me an elementary training
in the English language, was endowed with a
very powerful bass voice, and had a French
wife ; and a certain way to gain his favour was
to ask liim to sing '* L Ange Dechu " when he
had a little leisure. I really liked the song;
although I must own that I was quite as partial

SONGS THAT COME BACK TO ME. 149

to the large slice of plum cake which was gener-
ally the reward of a request that my esteemed
preceptor would sing the dismal ditty over
again.

Long before this period my ears had gar-
nered in, for careful preservation in mental silos,
a number of delightful English ballads and
choruses. I wonder if many elderly people at
this time of day remember a rattling chorus in
Balfe's Sie^e of Eoc/ielle, beginning, " Swearing
Death to Traitor Slave, Hands we Clasp,
Swords we Draw ; Heaven defend the True and
Brave. Vive le Roi ! Vive le Roi'' ! I believe
that this chorus was chiefly, in the first instance,
engraved on my mind by the circumstance that
the English choristers at Drury Lane usually
pronounced, as true Britons should, Vive le Roi
as " Vive le Kaw " ! But, at all events, the
tune itself riveted itself in my recollection and
has never been removed therefrom. I will say
nothing about John Barnett's lovely opera of
The Mountain Sylph, because I have reason to
believe that the dulcet melodies in that produc-
tion are familiar to amateurs of the existing
generation, and that the trio — if it be a trio —

150 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

of the " Magic-wove Scarf" is still occasionally
warbled in musical circles.

Then, again, there must be, surely, up-to-
date young ladies who sing the enchanting
ballad of " She Wore a Wreath of Eoses."
I remember Mr. Thomas Haynes Bayly, the
writer of the words of that delicious, if some-
what namby-pamby, ballad, well. The com-
poser of the music was the Rev. Joseph Philip
Knight, with whom I was also acquainted.
Mr. T. H. Bayly was a dandy, who wore
white kid gloves in the day-time. He was
a gentleman ; had been a man of fortune ;
but I suspect that, like Dogberry, he had
had losses. Another composer of English
ballads has, I hope, not yet drifted down
the river of Lethe. This was George Linley,
whom I remember as a robust, middle-aged
gentleman in the early 'forties, who had
married a daughter of the eminent Orient-
alist, Dr. Gilchrist. George Linley had been
a captain in the Militia, and used to tell us
stories — to me deeply interesting — of his exploits
in suppressing certain rioters known as Luddites.
I scarcely think that he was a very scientific

SONGS THAT COME BACK TO ME, 151

musician; but his beautiful melodies in the
ballads " Constance " and " The Spirit of Love "
return to me repeatedly in the night-season.
He was not very richly remunerated by the
music publishers for his always popular com-
positions. " Constance '^ had an immense sale,
and " The Spirit of Love " may be sung yet for
aught I know ; but for the first of these ditties
I am afraid that poor Greorge did not get more
than five-and-twenty pounds, Well, Crouch
did not make a mint of money by " Kathleen
Mavourneen." Naturally, *' Kathleen " brings
back to my memory some of the ballads
of Samuel Lover. As Mr. Ashby Sterry
has recently pointed out in the columns
of an illustrated newspaper, the gifted Irish-
man in question was not only a skilled musician,
but a poet, a novelist, a painter of miniatures,
and an expert etcher; he illustrated his own
novels of '' Handy Andy '' and " Eory O'Moro,"
the last of which was dramatised, I think,
at the Adelphi. He composed the music for
a song with the same title as the drama;
but few people — even Irishmen, I should say
— sing " Rory O'More " now. On the other

152 TniNGS AND PEOPLE,

han4, ''The Four-leaved Shamrock" should still
retain its popularity; and a very frequent noc-
turnal visitor to me is the air of another of
Lover's ballads, " The Low-backed Car," a won-
derfully "lilting" tune, which has an additional
link with my memory, owing to the fact that
Lover's words were amusingly parodied at the
height of the Crimean war in a poem by Robert
Brough, called " The Low-bred Czar." Here is
one of the verses :

In battle's wild commotion

The fiercest man of war
Will spare the child, and sword defiled

By woman's blood abhor.
But Nick (the word describes him),

Unmoved by tear or shriek,
The child will slay, its mother flay,

If she dares a word to speak

To disparage the low-bred Czar.

The whole forty thieves in a jar

Not a tithe nor a toll

Of the villainous soul

Could express of the low-bred Czar.

Curious to remember, our then good allies
the French were, in the year 1855, of precisely
the same mind as John Bull as to the amiable
moral character of the Czar Nicholas of Bussia.

SONGS TEAT GOME BAGK TO ME, 153

Going back, for an instant, a few years, I take it
for granted that '* Through the Wood, Through
the Wood " and " I'd be a Butterfly " have not
yet been forgotten : but I am gravely doubtful
as to whether many persons recollect that once
tremendous favourite, " Oh, Give me Back My
Arab Steed."

The music to Mrs. Hemans' ballads is,
of course, as well remembered as the poems
themselves, and are still the joys of quiet
households; but I candidly admit that I do
my best to avoid recalling the almost sublime
" Burial in the Desert " and the magnificent
" Pilgrim Fathers." I strive to banish them,
because they fill me with an intense and almost
overwhelming melancholy. It is good to be
serious on occasion; but you can be serious
without being sad. With many other sym-
pathisers with a certain fat knight — I always
think most shamefully and ungratefully treated
by Henry V., who, so soon as he ascended the
throne, turned prig and moralist, and gave the
cold shoulder to his former boon companions — it
strikes me that I was born about three o'clock in
the afternoon, with a white head and somewhat

154 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

of a rotund stomach, and although I may have
lost the best notes in my voice in the " halloaing
and singing of anthems," I like to remember
tunes that are joyous, and not those which,
although artistically preferred, give me the
blues. Felicia Hemans was a true poetess, but
she seems to me to have been a hopeless
pessimist.

155

CHAPTER XVI.

PICTURES THAT HAUNT ME.

Pictures Becalled by Association — Jack Sheppard, with a Difference
— Cruikshank's Presentment of the Housebreaker — A Portrait
at Washington — Guide's "Beatrice Cenci" — Laying a Ghost
— Valdes Leal's ''Dead Prelate" — Gruesome War Pictures —
Jan Van Beers — The " Operating Theatre " of the Inquisition
at Madrid — John Martin's Big Pictures — Hablot Knight
Browne's " John Gilpin " — Turner's Paintings — Two Works in
Distemper.

Tou can be haunted by a picture, just as you
can be haunted by a melody ; and pictorial appa-
ritions are continually rising before my mind's
eye : although I suspect that I should experience
terrible difficulty were I to endeavour to enu-
merate consecutively the conspicuous features of
even a dozen of the annual Exhibitions of the
Eoyal Academy. Pictures, to my mind, should
come up unbidden and unexpected ; but, as a
rule, one can trace the mental appearance of the
phantoms to some association of their subjects
with a passage in a book or newspaper which
you are reading, or even to a figure or a face

156 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

which you fancy that you have seen before in
the flesh, but which, when you delve a little
into your memory, you find that you have seen
only on canvas. For example, returning from
Eome at the beginning of March, 1892, I noticed,
while the luggage was being examined in the
horribly uncomfortable Custom House at Ven-
timiglia, an individual whose visage immediately
conjured up a portrait which I had seen some
fourteen years ago in the bar of an hotel or
tavern up an entry somewhere off Pennsylvania
Avenue, Washington, in the district of Columbia,
U.S.A.

The person who had attracted my atten-
tion on the Eiviera was a man about thirty
years of age, high-shouldered, bull-necked, with
very large staring brown eyes, a heavy jaw, and
somewhat sensuous look. His forehead was low,
his hair dark and unkempt, and his cheeks and
chin presented unmistakable signs that, for some
days, possibly a week, his face had known no
barber's shear. To judge from the short, much-
patched and cobbled blue blouse which he wore,
he was presumably a Frenchman of the peasant
or labourer order ; he was a third-class passenger,

PICTURES THAT HAUNT ME. 157

and his belongings consisted of a large number
of bundles, which, on being untied by the
douaniers, presented a curious collection of rags,
bones, woollen socks, and sausages, together
with an empty bird-cage and a frying pan. As
I looked at him he underwent,, to my mind, a
transformation. The pale, unshaven face, the
unkempt locks, the low forehead, the heavy
maxillaries, the protruding brown eyes re-
mained ; but the blouse, the wide trousers, and
the wooden sabots vanished, and were replaced
by an early eighteenth century dress which had
once been fine enough, but had become woefully
tarnished and shabby. At once I exclaimed to
myself, " That is Jack Sheppard, painted by Sir
James Thornhill, at the time when the notorious
housebreaker was lying in the condemned hold,
Newgate," and brought to my notice, I believe,
as I have mentioned in an earlier chapter, by
Mr. Bayard when I was at Washington.

It is pretty well known by this time that the
portrait of Jack Sheppard, with which we are all
familiar in George Cruikshank's illustrations of
a very exciting, but very mischievous, romance
by Harrison Ainsworth, is a wholly imaginary

158 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

conception. Jack was not a dashing young fellow
with a bullet head and closely- cropped hair ; he
was an uncouth, vulgar, crapulous miscreant.
Nor is there any proof of the story told by
Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, that Sir James Thorn-
hill, when he visited Newgate to paint the
portrait of the ruffian who was so soon to make
his exit from the world at Tyburn, was accom-
panied by his youthful son-in-law, William
Hogarth. I do not think that the illustrious
English painter in question ever made graphic
mention of Sheppard; although in one of his
early engravings there is an allusion to another
noted prison-breaker, a chimney-sweep named
John Hall, whose exploits appear to have
suggested the revoltingly dramatic ballad of
'* Sam Hall," which was once a popular music-
hall ditty.

I have compared my memory of the
Washington picture with an engraved portrait
of Sheppard which I find in the " Criminal
Recorder," a precursor of the ** Newgate Calen-
dar," the " Chronicles of Crime," and cognate
works, which was published in 1804, and that
portrait precisely agrees with the Washington

PIGTUBES THAT HAUNT ME. 159

one as I remember it ; only the malefactor repre-
sented in the " Criminal Recorder " is clean
shaven. That circumstance strengthens my
belief that the Washington picture is a genuine
one. Loaded as he was with heavy irons, Jack
could scarcely have shaved himself; and there
would have been great risk in allowing the
prison barber to shave him, as possibly the
desperado might have tried to cheat the gallows
by jobbing his throat against the blade of the
razor. Be it as it may, I never open Ainsworth's
novel — for the sake of George Cruikshank's
illustrations — without recalling that picture at
Washington ; but I am wholly unable to account
for the curious resemblance between the portrait
which I saw in the Federal capital and the man
in the blouse whom I met for a moment at Ven-
timiglia, and who, very probably, was no house-
breaker, but a thoroughly respectable member
of society, although unblessed by capricious
Fortune.

Having travelled a good deal in many parts
of the world, in the course of nearly two genera-
tions, I have naturally paid frequent visits
to the great Continental picture galleries. I

160 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

believe that I am ardently fond of art, and I
hope that I shall never cease to dwell with en-
thusiastic admiration on the masterpieces of the
greatest painters the world has ever seen ; yet,
strangely enough, very few of those masterpieces
haunt me — that is to say, start up, as I put it
at the beginning of this chapter, unexpected and
unbidden. The reason for this may be that I
live in the midst of engravings and illustrated
books and photographs by the thousand, and
that scarcely a day passes without my turning
over portfolios and volumes full of prints, and
rummaging in photographic albums, in order to
rub up my memory of the triumphs of design,
composition, and colour, which have passed
before my eyes.

But these memories are not ghosts. Unless
you are a professed ghost-raiser, like the
Witch of Endor, phantoms should come upon
you unawares, and should so depart. I have
the honour of the acquaintance of a lady who
complains that she is haunted by a portrait
painted by Guido Reni, which she saw in a
certain palace at Eome, and which the catalogue
says is a picture of Beatrice Cenci; it being.

PIGTUBE8 THAT HAUNT ME. 161

however, no more a counterfeit presentment of
that unhappy young person than it is of Madame
de Pompadour or of Nell Grwynne. Guido's pic-
ture is that of a girl of fifteen. Her complexion
is not very fresh-coloured; still the features
of the maiden in Guido's portrait bear no signs
whatever of the horrible agony which Beatrice
had undergone day after day in the chamber of
torture. The real Beatrice Cenci, as a learned
Italian Professor has lately proved to demon-
stration, was two-and-twenty years of age when
she was executed. She was not very good-
looking ; and she was the mother of a bouncing
boy, in whose favour she made a will.

Still, my lady friend complains that the
eyes, the wonderful eyes of Guido's model —
who was, it is conjectured, a young Greek,
his slave — followed her about the gallery where
she first saw it, and continued to pursue her,
in an uncomfortably haunting manner, long
after she had returned to England. I told her
that I had once been haunted by those eyes,
just as she had been ; but that I had contrived
to lay the ghost in the Eed Sea, by the adoption
of a very simple expedient. Every time that I
/

162 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

journey to Rome I buy a copy in oil of the
world-famous portrait, taking care that thirty
francs shall be the maximum price which I pay
for it. About a dozen of these effigies, unframed,
stand side by side on the top of a bookcase about
breast high in my work-room. I raise my eyes,
now, from my desk to look upon these apocryphal
Beatrices ; and the original has long since ceased
to haunt me. Familiarity with the ghost breeds
not always contempt, but absence of astonish-
ment or terror. If you really saw an apparition
of Anne Boleyn, as she was nonsensically said to
be haunting Hampton Court Palace some little
time since, with her head under her arm, you
would, on the first appearance of such a phan-
tom, shake in your shoes with horror and
alarm ; but if the severed head were a pretty
one, and the decollated Queen called on you
every afternoon, it would not be long before you
asked her to tea.

Of all the pictures by the great Spanish
masters which I have feasted my eyes upon dur-
ing three voyages in North and Southern Spain,
there is only one that haunts me, and, I am sorry
to say, in a highly disagreeable manner. This

PICTURES THAT HAUNT ME. 163

picture is in the Church of La Caridad, at Seville
— an almshouse for poor, old, and chiefly bed-
ridden men — which, founded in 1578, was rebuilt
in 1661 by Don Miguel de Mafiara Vicentelo
de Lara, who, in youth, was so terrible a
profligate that he has been supposed to be the
prototype of Moliere's and Mozart's hero, Don
Juan Tenorio. He abandoned his wicked ways,
however, and made a good end of it. The
church is full of splendid paintings, among
which are a magnificent "Infant Saviour," a
"St. John," and a "San Juan de Dios," by
Murillo, the last-named picture being fully equal
to Eembrandt at his best. Then, by the same
master, there is the wondrous " Loaves and
Fishes," and the "Moses Striking the Eock,"
which, in every one of its accessories, is so mar-
vellously suggestive of intense thirst that the
Spaniards call the picture "La Sed." But the
painting that haunts me is the " Dead Prelate,"
by one Valdes Leal, which has been qualified
as a " putrid " picture, and which Murillo said
he could never look at without holding his nose.
It is, indeed, an absolutely sickening presentment
of death and corruption, mingled with gor^e<i\\.^^
12

16'i TIIINOS AND PEOPLE.

painted accessories of gold and silver work and
robes of lustrous fabric. Go where I may, and
strive as much as I do to summon pleasant and
cheerful images, that awful charnel-house dead
prelate rises up periodically to fill me with
horror and loathing.

These pictorial ghosts are only matters of
continuously associated thought. While Valdes
Leal and his " putrid " picture momentarily
occupy my mind, my physical eye sweeps round
my shelves in quest of two thin folios bound
in crimson morocco. These contain a large
number of etchings by the famous Spanish
painter Don Francisco Goya y Lucientes,
and bear the title of " Los Desastres de la
Guerra " — the Disasters of War. The etchings,
some of which are thinly aqua-tinted, are
twenty times more horrible than Callot's well-
known " Miseries of War,'' which are shocking
enough in many of their details, but which are
drawn ou so minute a scale that it is often only
by the aid of a strong magnifying glass that you
can discern the barbarities which Man is inflict-
ing on Man. In Goya's dreadful book the com-
positions are large and broad in execution ; and

PIG TUBES THAT HAUNT ME. 165

the dismal dramas which are being enacted strike
yoa at once and chill you to the marrow. The
artist has depicted the excesses committed by
the French garrison of Madrid, after the unsuc-
cessful rising of the populace on the memorable
^'Dos de Mayo/' 1808.

Women, with black mantillas over their white
skirts, are charging and firing cannon ; maddened
mothers are stabbing ferocious French soldiers,
with whom shrieking Spanish girls are struggling.
Then come scores of pictures exhibiting the fero-
cious vengeance of the French. Men and women
are being shot, impaled, burnt to death, garrotted,
and chopped in pieces, and their mangled
remains are being shot out of tumbrels into
pits. I have a very large collection of Groya's
etchings — the " Caprices,'' the " Prisoners," the
" Bull-fightings," the " Proverbs," and others ;
and I remember showing them, once, to Mr. Jan
Van Beers. He admired — as who does not
admire ? — the extraordinary vigour and dramatic
expression of the great Spaniard ; but when he
came to the ''Disasters of War" he found it
for a time impossible to tear himself away from
those terrible volumes, which exercised over him,

166 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

as they do over me, a weird and fearsome fasci-
nation. There is another Goya, too, an oil-
painting, in the Eoyal Gallery at Brussels. It
represents what may be tenned the " operating
theatre" of the Inquisition at Madrid, which,
towards the end of the eighteenth century, had
become a kind of Bridewell for the imprisonment
and punishment, not only of suspected heretics,
but also of quacks and mountebanks, fortune-
tellers, and women of evil life. The Brussels
picture, glowing as it does with light and colour,
is a simply hideous performance. Victims of
both sexes are being racked, fettered, scourged,
branded, picketted, and maltreated in almost
every possible form, and the colour of the whole
work is as rich as that of a Rubens or a
Reynolds .

When I was young I used to be haunted
by the paintings, and the mezzotint engravings
therefrom, of a once amazingly favourite, but
now, T should say, mainly forgotten artist, John
Martin. His pictures were vast architectural
" machines," in which he imitated, not with
very great success, the scheme of Rembrandt in
juxtapositions of light and shadow. His figures

PICTURES THAT HAUNT ME. 16?

were misty and faulty in drawing and model-
ling ; yet there was something about the man
that imposed on you and made you, for a time,
bow to him in deference and almost fear. The
last of his oil paintings, the "Eve of the
Deluge," I think I saw at the old British In-
stitution in 1841. It was a huge canvas, so
highly varnished as to rival the sheen of the
painted panel of a state carriage. Of his earlier
works, " Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand
Still," " Belshazzar's Feast," the " Fall of Baby-
lon," I can only remember the transcripts in
mezzotint; but they haunted me for many a
year, and I used to go home and strive to
produce Martinesque effects by smoking jet-
black a sheet of cardboard over a candle, and
then dashing in violent effects of light with a
penknife. There was a special printseller's shop
in Wardour Street — a shop long since vanished
— where there were always plenty of John
Martin's alarming mezzotints on view. That
shop I also recall, from the fact that I once saw
in the window a large etching illustrating Cow-
per's " John Gilpin," for which splendid piece
of needle work the artist, Hablot Knight Browne,

168 THINGS AND PEOPLE,

had received the prize of a medal, either of silver
or gold, from the Eoyal Society of Arts. I
cannot remember to have looked on this par-
ticular etching at any time or at any place since.
As for the mezzotints after Martin, they must
be entombed, somewhere or another, in dim port-
folios, for I scarcely ever see them exposed to
the public gaze. One morning, however, a few
years since, walking down the Western Eoad,
Brighton, I came across a temporary exhibition
of Martins original oil paintings. They had
fallen into a desperately dingy and grubby con-
dition ; but the proprietor of the show informed
me that these paintings had made the round
of the world, and had been exhibited during a
long course of years in ever so many countries.

There are a few Turners which come up to
me of a sudden, and they are always welcome ;
although they are productions belonging to the
epoch which most critics, with the exception
perhaps of Mr. Euskin, take to be the period
of the mighty painter's decadence. I can re-
member very well, on the walls of the Eoyal
Academy Exhibition at the National Gallery,
not at Burlington House, the famous picture

PICTURES THAT HAUNT ME. 169

of the express train dashing along a viaduct on
the Great Western Eailway, " Eain, Steam, and
Speed," I think it was called. Then there was
^'Jessica at the Window," which, from the
abundance of bright yellow in the background,
was known to irreverent observers as the " Mad
Woman and the Mustard Pot." The "Slave
Ship," the " Old Temeraire," and " Venice —
Going to the Ball," and " Eeturning from the
Ball" — belonged, if I mistake not, to this
period ; and while watching effects of colour in
sea and sky in distant lands, on the shores of
the Pacific, in the Indian Ocean, in the Eed Sea,
in Spain and Italy, Turner's later incoherent but
gorgeous colour-dreams have often flitted across
my mental field of vision.

Perhaps, out of the many thousands of works
of art which from first to last I must have
looked upon at home and abroad, there are, in
addition to those which I have already set down,
no pictures that so persistently haunt me as
two marvellous paintings executed between forty
and fifty years ago. They were works in dis-
temper — one painted by Clarkson Stanfield, E. A.,
for Macready, when he was lessee of Drury Lane

Ill

170

THINGS AND PEOPLE.

Theatre, and the other executed by William
Beverly at the Princess's about 1846-7. The
first was the seashore scene in Jets and Galateay
the second a scene in Edward Loder's opera of
The Night Dancers, an exquisitely beautiful view
of a lake with distant mountains, and in the
foreground a palm.

171

CHAPTER XVII.

TAVERNS THAT HAVE VANISHED.

Metamorphosed Taverns^-George IV. and his Works — ^The Making
of Regent Street — Great Swallow Street — Development of
Club Life— The Old White Hart, Bishopsgate Street— The Old
Elephant, Fenchuroh Street, and William Hogarth — The Old
Dog, Holywell Street — Changing Fashions in Drinks — Business
and Liquor Fifty Years Ago — The Rainbow, in Fleet Street —
The Cock — Peele's Coffee House.

It is rather a difficult matter, and a delicate
one to boot, to write about taverns which have
vanished ; since, within the last five-and-twenty
years or so, an almost incomplete structural
metamorphosis has taken place of many old-
fashioned hotels and taverns which I remember
in my youth. Still have we Long's and
Limmers; but they are not the Long's and
Limmer's of my nonage. Scores upon scores of
houses for the sale of excisable liquors have been
partially or wholly reconstructed ; they have been
made, of course, brighter and handsomer, and
offer much more luxurious accommodation to
the public than under their old conditions they

172 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

used to do; yet, they wholly lack the pic-
turesque associations which they presented to
me when some three-and-forty years ago, in the
columns of Household Words, I wrote a series of
papers on *' Phases of Public Life." The names
of the original signs of the old taverns, at a few
! of which I propose to glance, are of course recited

in the leases ; but in a multitude of instances
the frequenters of the transformed places of
entertainment know nor care little whether the
houses which they patronise are the Magpie and
Stump, the Coach and Horses, the Crown, the
Wrekin, the Angel and Sun, or the Monster.

There are, it is true, certain tavern signs the
names of which have become, in connection with
the vehicular traffic of the metropolis, per-
manently graven on the memory of that very
large section of the public who travel by omni-
bus. Thus, there may be many thousands of
people who have heard, and are well aware of,
the locality of that same " Monster " at Pimlico,
the Elephant and Castle, the Swiss Cottage, the
Eyre Arms,, the Sol's Arms, the Angel at
Islington, the Mother Redcap, and the Hero
of Waterloo ; but who would never dream

TAVERNS THAT HAVE VANISHED. 173

of entering those hostelries ; and possibly a
large proportion of these omnibus travellers
are teetotallers.

I suppose that the process of the disappearance
of the oldest of the London taverns began on an
extended scale during the architectural supremacy
of Nash, whose Eoyal master was commendably
desirous of beautifying the metropolis of his
dominions. William Hone, in the scurrilous
Political Catechism, for publishing which he was
tried before Lord EUenborough and acquitted,
paid an oblique compliment to the King whom
he libelled by dubbing him " George, Maker of
New Streets." One of the " new streets " which
we owe to the taste and liberality of the much-
maligned Fourth George was, as I have men-
tioned before, Eegent Street ; and that hand-
some thoroughfare — which, were the houses only
twenty feet higher, would be one of the noblest
in Europe — was partially formed by the demoli-
tion of a long, shabby, dirty thoroughfare called
Great Swallow Street, which abounded in old
taverns and livery stables, the last of which
enjoyed the equivocal celebrity of being much
affected by highwaymen, for the putting up of

174 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

their steeds. Claude Duval is — I should say
apocryphally — reputed to have been one of the
distinguished patrons of the Great Swallow
Street stables.

More old taverns had to be taken down
to render practicable the audacious architec-
tural curve of the Quadrant ; and yet more
taverns vanished to make way for the ap-
proach from the eastern comer of Piccadilly
to Carlton House. Another cause of the dis-
appearance of antique metropolitan taverns was
the extraordinary development of clubs during
the reigns of George IV. and William IV. The
clubs of Eastern and Central London, during the
eighteenth century, were more or less intellectual
pot-houses ; and the West-End clubs were
mainly gaming-houses, which, with the ex-
ception of Brooks's and White's, had scant
architectural pretensions ; but very soon after
the formation of Eegent Street palatial clubs
began to spring up with surprising rapidity in
the parish of St. James. The innovation was
hotly resented by many Conservatives in con-
vivialism, whose idea of a club was that it
should merely be a place for eating, drinking,

TAVERNS THAT HAVE VANISHED, 175

and conversation, and not necessarily occupying
premises of its own.

I have before me a book called " The
Clubs of London," published in 1828, in
which no less than one hundred and thirty-two
pages out of three hundred and thirty are
devoted to a history of the " Sublime Society of
Beefsteaks '' — the old Beefsteak Club — then held
in a room in the Lyceum Theatre. The writer
has also some very genial words to say touching
a number of clubs held at taverns and coffee-
houses ; but in his preface he contemptuously
repudiates the name of club, as applied "to
several modem subscription houses which, by a
colloquial usurpation, are called clubs. They are
merely substitutes for the coffee-houses which
they have superseded. It was not the love of
pleasant companionship that gave them birth;
but a thrifty speculation that purveys at the
cheapest rate for sensual satisfaction."

In the following year (1829) there was
taken down the Old White Hart tavern, in
Bishopsgate Street, an exceedingly quaint struc-
ture, the front to which bore the date 1480.
It was three-storeyed, with an overhanging

17t> THIXGS AND PEOPLE.

upper floor, and had been noted by Stow as
'* a fair inn for receipt of travellers next unto
the parish church of St. Buttolph." Obviously
T never saw this remarkably ancient tavern,
for the sufficing reason that I was only a
year old when it vanished ; but I have a
distinct recollection of having been acquainted
in my childhood with the outsides of many
taverns quite as picturesque as the Old White
Hart. I remember the slanting roof of tli0
Thatched House tavern, standing a good way
back, in St. James's Street. I have slept at
the old Angel, in the Strand, where now is
Danes' Inn. I remember the Crown and
Anchor, and the London Tavern. I have
visited friends staying at the Clarendon in
Bond Street — a tomb of generations of aristo-
cratic Capulets. I have a picture of the Old
White Hart in an interleaved copy of a book
called *' Tavern Anecdotes, by One of the
Old School," published, I should say, some
time in the 'thirties, in which I find an en-
graving of the Old Elephant tavern in Fen-
church Street. It was kept by " M. Hibbert,"
and it vended, in addition to wines and spirits.

TAVEBNa THAT HAVE VANISHED. 177

" Henry Meux and Co.'s Entire," and it pro-
claimed itself a "House of Call for Errand Carts."
What were errand carts ? The Old Elephant
was a three-storeyed brick house, with stone
dressings to the windows, and to all appear-
ance was of seventeenth-century construction.
When did it disappear? I should like to
know ; because, in a newspaper cutting attached
to the engraving, it is stated that the Old
Elephant was worthy of the attention of all
lovers of painting, since in it, previous to
its celebrity, lodged William Hogarth. On
the wall of the tap-room were four paintings
by Hogarth, one representing the Hudson's
Bay Company's porters; another the first idea
for the '' Modern Midnight Conversation," and
another of " Harlequin and Pierrot." In a
room on the first fioor was a picture of Harlow
Bush Fair — whatever Harlow Bush Fair may
have been. If the great English painter, en-
graver, and philosopher did really lodge at the
Old Elephant, it was probably at the period
when he was engraving plates for a printseller
in Cornhill. Of another very ancient tavern I
have something more specific to say. I mean the
7n

178 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

Old Dog, in Holywell Street ; a house which I
remember very well, inasmuch as I resided there
some months about three-and-forty years since.
The hostelry has entirely disappeared ; the
licence, I suppose, has long since lapsed ; and on
the site of the old house have been erected two
or three altogether modem shops. Early in the
Restoration there was a tavern by the sign of
The Dog, which is frequently mentioned in
Pepys' "Diary/' The house was much fre-
quented by the Clerks of the Exchequer ; and
on one occasion Mr. Pepys gave these estimable
civil servants a dinner at The Dog. Lord Bray-
broke, in his first edition of the "Diary,'* says
in a note that the Dog tavern still existed in
Holywell Street ; but in subsequent editions this
statement was corrected, and it was stated that
Pepys' Dog must have been in Westminster;
although a house in Holywell Street still bore
the same designation. The edition I now speak
of bears the date 1890 ; but at least fifteen years,
if not more, I should say, have elapsed since the
demolition of the Old Dog in Holywell Street.
It must have faded out of existence while I
was absent on some mission abroad. In any case.

TAVERNS THAT HAVE VANISHED, 179

a good deal of mystery has, so far as metropolitan
antiquaries are concerned, surrounded tlie begin-
ning and the ending of this particular tavern.
Allan and Peter Cunningham, and other eminent
writers have had nothing to say about the Old
Dog, although it was situated in a street of
which Strype makes mention in his edition of
Stow; while the late Mr. Timbs incidentally
alludes to it when he remarks that the Holy
Well, which gave its name to the narrow little
street, was under the Old Dog tavern. " This,"
writes Mr. Walford, in " Old and New London,"
"is clearly a mistake." As it happens, it has
been my lot to look down a well, not under, but
behind the Old Dog. About 1851 the house
passed into the possession of the late Mr. Nicholas
Dormer, the landlord of a tavern in the Strand
close by, called " Old Betty's Chop House." To
his ultimate misfortune, he made considerable
structural alterations in the old premises, and,
imbued with the persuasion that the choked-up
well at the back was the identical Holy one, he
spent nearly £200 in excavating the well, which
was filled nearly to the top with miscellaneous
rubbish.

m 2

180 tHINGS AlfD PEOPLE.

Day after day I used to pay him a visit, to
see how the excavations were progressing. Our
*' finds " were scarcely remunerative : consisting,
as they mainly did, of huge quantities of smashed
crockery, brickbats, old pots and kettles, and
broken bottles. One or two interesting articles
did turn up. There were numerous tobacco
pipes of the "churchwarden" pattern, and bearing
the date of 1742, and a scrap of paper seemingly
torn out of a memorandum book, and containing
in faded ink the words, " Dr. Groldsmith,
13s. lOd." Was this an unpaid score of
** Goldie's " ? There were the fragments of a
shattered punch bowl, with a William and Mary
guinea encrusted in a part of the base. Probably
this china bowl had been broken in some mid-
night frolic and flung wantonly down the well ;
but when all these debris had been taken out we
did not come on any water. The spring was as
dry as though it had been sunk in the Valley of
Dry Bones.

But I am anticipating a little. I knew the
Old Dog some years before I made the acquaint-
ance of Mr. Dormer. In 1847 I had an office at
the western corner of Holywell Street, where I

TAVERNS THAT HAVE VANISHED. 181

edited, illustrated, published, and owned a little
halfpenny weekly publication. The original
proprietor had been a Mr. Frederick Marriott,
who, on leaving England for California, where at
San Francisco he founded the yet flourishing
San Francisco News Letter, liberally assigned to
me the copyright and goodwill of the little pub-
lication in question. After a while I took a
partner. Our venture was not a highly pros-
perous one : the journal never obtaining more
than a modest circulation. We could have
lived very well on the advertisements, but the
Inland Eevenue ate us up in duties. All we
wanted was a couple of thousand pounds or so to
push the undertaking. One afternoon we received
a visit from an American gentleman who had
something to do, if I remember aright, with a
pill, or a plaster, or a baby's soothing syrup, or
something of that kind. He was one of our
best advertisers, and his object in calling on us
was to discuss the expediency of purchasing a
third share in our journal. Of course, we
named two thousand pounds as the minimum
price ; yet I scarcely think the property was
worth quite so much as that.

182 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

Business, however, is business ; and in the
days of which I speak very few business trans-
actions could be begun or terminated without
the agency of what was conventionally known
as " a pint of wine." Frequently the pint
became a quart, and not unfrequently brandy-
and-water hot was considered as a convertible
beverage for the juice of the grape. When I
speak of brandy-and-water I may add that it
was almost invariably brown brandy — precisely
that brown brandy which my mother used to
mingle with her Christmas plum -puddings, and
which is understood by the Americans when they
order ''soda and dark bottom." To drink pale
brandy, or cognac, was looked upon as an affecta-
tion ; and not one Englishman out of a hundred
ever touched whisky, either the Irish or the
Scotch variety. There are changing fashions
in drinks as well as in most other mundane
things.

For forty years I had been reading about
the extensive consumption of " brandy pawnee "
in India; but when at last I did get to
Calcutta, I found that brandy pawnee had be-
come almost entirely a thing of the past, and

TAVEBN8 THAT HAVE VANISHED. 183

that the universal beverage among Anglo-Indians
who drank anything stronger than water was
much-diluted whisky. It was, however, a legiti-
mate pint of wine that the American gentleman,
my partner, and myself regaled ourselves with
in the coffee-room of the Old Dog ; for the
tavern happened to be celebrated for its old port.
None of your light old ports with no " to-
morrow " in them ; but a sound, stiff, beeswinged
old crusted vintage, that seemed to grow stronger
as it grew older. Our negotiations with the
American gentleman did not, I am sorry to say,
go beyond emptying, say, a couple of bottles of
port and nibbling a few biscuits. I wish that
he had nibbled at our offer as well ; but he
omitted to do so. The tavern where we dis-
cussed business and wine was a typical example
of the houses of entertainment which have
vanished from our midst. It was, like the old
White Hart in Bishopsgate Street, a beetle-
browed, three -storey ed structure, with three bays
of windows on the first and second floor, and an
overhanging superstructure. You entered the
place by a rather steep flight of steps ; and if
you were privileged to enjoy the acquaintance of

184 THINGS AND PEOPLE,

the landlady of the establishment, Mr. Dormer's
predecessor, you might at once walk into her
extremely comfortable, although somewhat dark,
bar parlour. There she used to sit in a big arm-
chair, surrounded by heavy old furniture and
dingy old prints in ponderous frames, chatting
with her gossips, and generally beaming around
in a manner most cheerful to behold.

The bar was a mere hutch or counter, cut
in the wall, where a pretty barmaid attended
to the needs of casual customers. These were,
however, comparatively few and far between.
Casual drinkers preferred Old Betty's Chop
House in the Strand hard by, or some other of
the *' pubs " which abounded in the neighbour-
hood. The Old Dog did not bark furiously
or even growl at people who wanted a glass
of beer or spirits; but it did not wag its
ancient tail at such patrons. A right cordial
welcome, however, it extended to parties who
desired "a pint of wine," and who were sedu-
lously, although somewhat pat roni singly, served
by a very stout, elderly waiter, who disdained to
bear a napkin on his arm, but who constantly
waved a very large red-and-yellow bandana silk

TAVERNS THAT HAVE VANISHED, 185

handkerchief. There was a dining-room and a
coffee-room on the other side of the passage, in
which was the bar ; and there was another little
apartment, not much bigger than a state-room
on board an Atlantic steamship, which exiguous
apartment was known as the smoke-room. As a
matter of fact, smoking was allowed in the
coffee-room after seven o'clock, by which hour
the dinners had almost invariably come to an
end ; while about five in the afternoon the land-
lady had in her bar parlour quite a little levee
of substantial tradesmen and professional men
in the neighbourhood, who came to gossip with
her and each other and sip brown brandy and
water.

Let there be no mistake about it : business
between forty and fifty years ago was, to a very
great extent, supported on pillars of excisable
liquors. It would amaze youthful and middle-
aged moderate drinkers, could they form an
adequate idea of the amount of drinking which
went on among well-to-do and decorous business
men when I was a lad — drinking not by any
means confined to the night season, but pro-
gressing very steadily throughout the day.

186 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

In one of Defoe's dialogue-stories, two re-
spectable tradesmen meet, one of whom has just
had a violent quarrel with his son. His friend
suggests that they should adjourn to an adjacent
tavern and discuss the whole question of parental
authority over " a pint of wine," and they thus
did in fiction in 1693 that which we used to do
at the Old Dog in 1847. The house was largely
supported in its hotel capacity by steady-going
old commercial travellers : a race who, I suppose,
have undergone the transformation which has
taken place in almost every grade and profes-
sion. Many of these commercial ** gents " had
patronised the Dog for twenty or thirty years,
and even longer; and they were sorrowfully
scandalised when Mr. Dormer, having made a
good deal of money at Old Betty's Chop House,
purchased the lease of the Old Dog ; and, while
still keeping a number of bedrooms, converted
the lower part of the house into a modern restau-
rant, with a capacious bar which was nothing
more nor less than a highly-decorated " pub."
For a while he prospered ; but his enterprise
was in the end disastrous, and the Dog, at last,
disappeared for ever. I should much like,

TAVERNS THAT HAVE VANISHED. 187

nevertheless, to know what has become of the
well out of which we extracted the broken shards
of crockery and the eighteenth -century tobacco
pipes.

Transformation as well as total disappear-
ance has been the lot of many of the old
taverns of my time. I can remember the Old
Hummums in Covent Garden, and the old
Eainbow in Fleet Street, near the Inner Temple
gate. The Eainbow was formerly known as
Nando's Coffee House, and in the time of Charles
II. was kept by one James h Barbe, who was
presented by the Inquest — or recommended for
prosecution — by the Ward of St. Dunstan-in-the-
West " for making and selling a sort of liquor
called coffee, to the great nuisance and prejudice
of the neighbourhood." Of the Old Cock, like-
wise in Fleet Street, it would be obviously
impertinent to say anything after " Will Water-
proof's Lyrical Monologue," but I may apolo-
getically mention, as a proof of the rigid
conservatism of the Cock, that a very old friend
of mine, a well-known man of letters, taking
his chop once at the Cock and following it with
a salad, in the dressing of which he considered

188 THINGS AND PEOPLE,

himself an adept, asked for a hard-boiled egg.
The head waiter looked at him earnestly, and
politely but authoritatively replied, " Hif Prince
Halbert wos to come here, sir, he couldn't 'ave
a hegg."

Peele's Coffee House, now a handsome
and quite modern house of entertainment,
was in my youth an old tavern, the much-
favoured resort of countrj'^ squires, who, when
they came up to town, found the beefsteaks
at Peele's as toothsome as those on which
they feasted, when they visited the West End,
at the Blue Posts in Cork Street, Burlington
Gardens. In 1885, happening to be at Adelaide,
South Australia, I was favoured with the ac-
quaintance of the chief of the mounted police,
who was a very old Londoner, and who asked
me if regular files of all the town and country
newspapers were still kept at Peele's Coffee
House, for the amusement or business reference
of visitors who were desirous of learning the
news of their particular county or town, or of
knowing what property was to be disposed of in
or out of London. By referring to these
files, he added, any person who had sent an

TAVERNS THAT HAVE VANISHED, 189

advertisement to a paper might know if it had
appeared at the time ordered. There was a
diverting and instructive suggestiveness in this
inquiry of those literally " dear " old days of
journalism when the price of a daily newspaper
was sevenpence, the Government appropriating
no less than fourpence for the stamp. The
penny stamp, which has also vanished, was, com-
paratively speaking, a modern impost.

190

CHAPTEE XVIII.

DINNERS DEPARTED AND DISCUSSED.

French and English School Diet Compared — Eating Fat by
Deputy — *' Joe's" Chophouse in Finch Lane — ^Market before
"Meat" — "A devilish good Dinner for Threepence Halfpenny"
— The "Thirteen Cantons" — Beef a la mode — ^A Mysterious
Sauce — A Famous Boiled Beef House in the Old Bailey — The
Waitress and the Barrister— A Disestablished Feast — Respond-
ing for the Visitors — The Sublime Society of Steaks — An
Unspoken Speech — A Dinner at Clifford's Inn — An American
Maxim.

It stands to reason that, in the course of more
than fifty years' dining out, one must have en-
countered a rather large number of interesting
and, more or less, memorable repasts. It has
been my lot to dine with all sorts and conditions
of people, in almost every part of the world ; and
I am now jotting down, as chronologically as I
am able to do, a few of the dinners of which I
have partaken, together with some brief notices
of the people I have met at more or less well-
furnished tables.

Naturally, when we begin to take a retro-
spective view of bygone meals, the mind reverts

DINNERS DEPARTED AND DI8GU88ED. 191

to scholastic experiences in the matter of feeding ;
and I think I can serve some useful purpose if
I tell my readers how schoolboys were fed in
France and in England half a century since. As
I have said before, I was at a public school
in Paris for about two years. It was a day
school ; so every morning about nine o'clock, I
made one of a band of about forty boys who,
under the charge of a pion, a kind of sub-usher,
were marched down to college from the boarding
house, or pension, in the Rue de Courcelles.
At noon we were marched back again to break-
fast ; at two we returned to college, and at five
o'clock we made our final return to the Eue de
Courcelles. You will excuse my particularising
these hours, since I wish to show the radical
difference which then existed between the man-
ner of refecting boys in Paris and in London.

We rose at six in the morning in summer,
and at seven in winter, our toilet being of the very
roughest and rudest description. Then we assem-
bled in the refectory, where every boy found, at
his accustomed place at the board, an earthenware
pipkin, holding at least a pint and a quarter of
scalding hot milk, by the side of which was a

192 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

large hunch of excellent bread. Then a man-
servant came round with a huge tin coffee-pot,
and poured about a gill of the concoction of the
odoriferous product of Mocha — or elsewhere —
into each boy's pipkin. This was our cafe au laity
or first breakfast. The elder boys, if they were
in funds, were allowed to purchase a pat of
butter ; but, in the majority of cases, we were
quite satisfied with bread, milk, and coffee. In
summer time there was a slight diversion from
the monotony of the cafe au lait. Two days a
week we were marched to an ecole de natation^
or swimming bath, on the banks of the Seine.
After our bath we had the choice either of bread,
milk, and coffee at the buffet attached to the
baths, or of a little crusty loaf of brown bread, a
tiny garlic sausage, a piece of Gruyere or Brie,
and a cup of cold milk ; and as we were usually
sharp set, after a walk of a couple of miles and
an hour's exercise at swimming, we were glad to
avail ourselves of the brown bread, sausage,
cheese, and cup of milk alternative.

Tlie noon breakfast consisted of one dish of
meat, for which on Friday was substituted either
fish, eggs, or haricot beans, a dish of vegetables.

niNNEBS DEPARTED AND DI8GU88ED. 193

and some fruit. Apples and pears in the winter,
grapes in the autumn, and currants or goose-
berries and melons in summer. For dinner, at
five o'clock, there was the inevitable pot-au-feu, or
beef broth, with vegetables ; after this came the
bouilli, or beef, which had been slowly simmered,
for I know not how many hours, to make the soup.
It was not quite boiled to rags, as our own gravy
beef generally and idiotically is, but it was cer-
tainly flavourless enough ; and this trifling draw-
back was compensated for by a very relishing and
savoury brown sauce being served with the bouilli.
After this we had, according to the season, either
some fowl or some turkey ; to this succeeded a
dish of vegetables, and either a sweet or a large
plateful of liquid cream cheese ; then dessert as
at breakfast, and nothing more till half-past seven
on the following morning.

I should add that, both at luncheon and
at dinner, each boy had the fourth part of a
bottle of vin ordinaire, which he was expected
to dilute with at least half its volume of
water. Of course, we used to say that the
wine had been preliminarily diluted ere it
came to table, and its current name among us
n

194 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

was eaf^ rouble. Three times a week also a
thoroughly good salad, dressed with excellent
oil and unimpeachable white-wine vinegar, was
served at dinner. Of course we grumbled at our
fare. The salad, it was quite groundlessly
asserted, was full of worms ; the beef was of in-
ferior quality ; the poultry was tough and skinny;
and the fish and eggs on fast days were stale. I
do not suppose that any of these allegations had
the slightest foundation in fact; but when has
there been a period in the history of mankind,
when schoolboys — and for the matter of that
schoolgirls also — have not grumbled at the food
provided for them ?

Coming to England to a Pestalozzian
academy at Turnham Green, for the purpose of
learning the English language, which I had
pretty well forgotten during my sojourn in
France, I became acquainted with quite another
kind of dietary. Breakfast was at eight, and
the repast consisted of exceedingly weak and
washy tea, and washier coffee on alternate days,
with two thick slices of stale bread very thinly
veneered with butter. If a boy still felt hungry
when he had consumed these meagre commons

DINNERS DEPARTED AND DISCUSSED. 195

he was allowed to have an extra slice of bread
and butter, if he asked for it in the German
language. I have always preserved a lively
antipathy for the Teutonic speech, and I fancy
sometimes that my dislike for the tongue of
Hermann springs in some measure from the
frequency with which I used to break down in
asking for more bread and butter in German.
The WoUen Sie so giitig sein ? used to come out
very trippingly, but I usually broke down over
the accusative of stiick ; and so lost the much-
coveted slice.

Dinner came at one p.m. There was not
much to be said against the meat, save that,
to our thinking, there was not enough of it.
It was hot one day and cold the next, and was
as a rule uncomfortably abounding in fat. I
had no experience of fat meat in France ; and
the fat, or rather suet, attached to the meagre
slices of cold meat at the Pestalozzian academy,
aroused in me feelings of absolute loathing. But
it was a law of the Medes and Persians at that
Pestalozzian place of education that no fat was
to remain on any boy's plate ; whether the un-
happy youth could eat fat or not was a matter

196 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

of indifference to the authorities ; but the dread-
ful stuff had to vanish. I think that I paid a
boy twopence a week to eat my fat. He sat
just four boys below me ; and the abhorrent
adipose lumps were passed to him in a pocket
handkerchief. I believe he ate that fat. He
was a tallish boy, with a pasty face. The
only vegetables we had with our meat were
potatoes one day, and boiled cabbage the next.
There was always a pudding, either baked or
boiled; suet pudding with currants, and baked
rice or bread and butter predominating. We
never had any fish; we never tasted veal, or
pork, or poultry ; but, on breaking-up day of the
Midsummer and Christmas holidays, every boy
had a boiled egg. For tea, which was at five
o'clock, there was the tea itself, accompanied by
two more slices of thick bread, veneered with
butter — an extra slice was not attainable by ask-
ing for it in German ; but on most evenings in
the week the bread and butter was supplemented
by a slice of plum cake. It was the laudable
rule of the Pestalozzian academy that, when a
boy's friends sent him a cake, he should at once
give it up to the housekeeper, who cut it into

DINNERS DEPARTED AND DISGU88ED. 197

slices and sent it up to table at tea time, where
it was impartially distributed among the young
gentlemen, and the boy to whom the cake had
been sent was privileged to ask two of his friends
to partake of an extra slice. Boys as a rule are
not bad fellows.

We had a considerable contingent of foreign
boys among us, to whom cakes were seldom,
if ever, sent ; and I never knew an instance
of a cakeless boy being jeered at for his
destitution in this regard : nay, he would
often be the favoured recipient of the extra
slice which I have mentioned. On Sundays
we had for dinner a dish which, I dare say,
was wholesome enough, but which it was the
fashion to abuse and vilify. It was a meat pie,
with a very substantial crust, and, of course,
following some immemorial schoolboy tradition,
we called it Eesurrection Pie, and declared that
all the scraps of the week's dinners had been
served up in this objectionable pasty. I frankly
own that the indictments which we were con-
tinually bringing against our food were almost
devoid of foundation ; but, at the same time, I
am bound to asseverate that we did not have.

198 THINGS AND PEOPLE,

by a long way, enough to eat. Such, at least,
was my practical conviction, when I compared
our attenuated rations with the abundant fare of
my pension in the Rue de Courcelles, Paris.

I was never a greedy boy; but in youth I had
a hearty appetite, and I confess, without shame,
that three-fourths of the pocket-money allowed
me during my sojourn at an English school were
spent in buying eatables — not the " sweet-stuff''
that boys are usually fond of squandering their
pence upon; but downright solid food, sausage
rolls or meat pies, or sandwiches, and so forth.
Let it be understood, that neither of the schools
of which I am speaking was of the Dotheboys
Hall order. Both were expensive establish-
ments, and in both the education imparted to us
may fairly be described as splendid ; at least, in
France I had plenty of Latin and Greek, prac-
tical geometry — but no Euclid — drawing, model-
ling, and delles lettres ; while, at my English
school, I had to learn the hated German ; and,
in addition to the usual branches of a polite
English education, we learned Italian, a little
Spanish, and a great deal of music, both vocal
and instrumental. The head master was a most

DINNERS DEPARTED AND DISCUSSED. 199

remarkable person. He was nominally a mem-
ber of the Church of England, and we were
carefully despatched every Sunday morning to
Chiswick Parish Church ; but, in the afternoon
and evening, he would deliver to us what seemed
to the majority of his hearers utterly incompre-
hensible theological harangues and disquisitions
on the ''spiritual signification" of Scripture.
Unless I am mistaken, his religious sympathies
were, to a considerable extent, in harmony with
the nebulous doctrines of Emmanuel Sweden-
borg.

When I come to review the dinners of my
adolescence — those, I mean, which I enjoyed after
I had left a comfortable home to earn my own
living — I am confronted by a few difficulties, not
wholly insurmountable, but still not at all easy
of solution. For example, it is quite impossible
to notice these repasts in anything like chrono-
logical order. The dinners were not regularly con-
tinuous : they were only occasionally recurrent,
and there were wide gaps or intervals between
them, during which, I am inclined to suspect,
the dinners must have been very few in number,
ifj indeed, they existed at all. Now, a clerk

200 THmOS AND PEOPLE.

in a Government office, if he have a tolerable
memory, can bear in mind the whereabouts of all
the restaurants or eating-houses which he has
patronised since his first induction into the Civil
Service. I am not able to keep anything of the
nature of an exact ij^ord of the meals which I
discussed between my twentieth and my thirtieth
years. They varied in quantity and in quality ;
still, assuming that at the least fortunate period
I had a regular dinner, say, a hundred and fifty
days in each year, I must have resorted to a very
large number of dining-rooms. My friend Mr.
Edmund Yates knows much more about the City
chop house, which flourished while he was in
the Post Office, than I do.

I can only recall with distinctness one chop
house east of St. Paul's. It was somewhere
near the Mansion House end of Cornhill, if I
remember aright, and was one of the regular
v,v ^^ orthodox Old London luncheon houses. Men
f "^ worth their hundred thousand pounds, bankers
,^:^^ and merchants and stock-brokers, at the time
of the railway mania, were not ashamed to
lunch at this establishment, under the follow-
ing primitive and unostentatious circumstances.

DINNERS DEPARTED AND DISCUSSED. 201

The first thing your hundred thousand pound
man did was to proceed to Bannister's, the
butcher, somewhere near Threadneedle Street,
and purchase his chop or steak, which was
handed to him neatly wrapped up in a fresh
cabbage-leaf; then, if he preferred biscuit to
bread, he would repair to the shop of a baker
named Moxhay, a shrewd Scotchman, who made,
I think, a very large fortune, and built a huge
edifice called the Hall of Commerce, which has
long since been converted into a bank or insur-
ance oflGice, or something of that kind. With
their raw meat wrapped up in a cabbage-leaf in
one hand, and their bag of biscuits in the other,
the City Croesuses would placidly enter their
favourite chop house, where a bald-headed waiter
would take charge of the viands, deliver them to
the cook, and in due time bring them piping hot
to the guests. Potatoes were always in readi-
ness, together with the proper condiments and
good store of Stilton and Cheddar cheese. Still,
looking at the circumstance that the majority
of the customers brought their own meat with
them, you might ask where the chop house
keeper's profits came in. The remunerative

202 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

part of the business was the very large con-
sumption of brown stout, sound sherry and
Madeira, and old port, both dry and fruity.
In those remote times gentlemen saw nothing
derogatory in comfortably cracking a bottle of
port at a chop house, after disposing with equal
cheerfulness of a quart of stout, and then going
back to business. There were giants in the land
in those days.

I have an indistinct idea also that, at one
period of my youth, I was a pretty constant
customer at a particular eating-house on Holborn
Hill, in the window of which restaurant there
was a placard bearing an inscription, " A devilish
good dinner for threepence halfpenny." The
devilish good dinner was simply stewed leg of
beef and, with a liberal allowance of bread, was
really a most satisfying meal. Much more
epicurean, however, was the fare obtainable at
the different establishments for the sale of what
was called alamo de beef, which, with the excep-
tion of its bovine foundation, presented no culin-
ary resemblance to that doeuf a la mode which is
one of the standing dishes of the French cuisine
bourgeoise, and can be obtained to perfection at

DINNERS DEPARTED AND DISCUSSED. 203

the present day at a restaurant in one of the
streets at the rear of the Palais Eoyal. Forty,
thirty, and even twenty years ago, alamode beef
shops were scattered pretty liberally over central
London, but the establishment with which I was
most familiar was a house with the sign of the
" Thu4)een Cantons," in Blackmore Street, Drury
Lane. It was kept by a person by the name, I
think, .of Jacquet. If you asked for a fourpenny
plate of alamode, it was brought to you in a
pewter plate ; and that plate, I warrant you, stood
very little in need of cleaning after the beef had
been despatched. The customers' knives and
spoons made the pewter glisten as though it
were silver. For sixpence you were served with a
somewhat larger portion of alamode on an earthen-
ware plate. Why it was called alamode puzzled
me ; but it was a distinctly characteristic dish,
deriving its peculiarity from the remarkably
luscious and tasty sauce, or rather soup, with
which it was accompanied. The composition of
this thick rich sauce perplexed many culinary
experts. Soyer, who was very fond of alamode
beef, and often used to send for a quart of it in
a jug for the refection of himself and friends at

204 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

supper, frankly acknowledged that he did not
know what were the ingredients of the sauce.

The late Mr. Christopher Pond, of the firm of
Spiers and Pond, was of opinion that the thick-
ening was made with arrowroot ; but, happening
some twenty years ago to have made sportive
mention in some periodical or another of the by-
gone alamode beef at the *' Thirteen Cantons,"
the former proprietor of the establishment wrote
me a very courteous letter and cleared up the
mystery. He had retired from business, he told
me, having realised a modest competence, and had
no longer any reason to keep the recipe for the
thickening a secret. It was simpl}'-, he said,
made from a particular mushroom, which he
called "morella,*' and which I infer was the
Morchella esculenta described in botanical works.
These mushrooms were gathered in the fields
round about the metropolis, dried, reduced to
powder, and then used to thicken the sauce and
enhance the flavour of alamode beef. There may
be a few eating-houses which are still exclusively
devoted to the preparation of this speciality ; but
I am inclined to fear that alamode beef houses in
London have grown as rare as the pewter plates

DINNERS DEPARTED AND DI8GU88ED, 205

on which the fourpenny portions were served in
the bygones.*

Among the dinners departed and discussed
during adolescence and maturity, I should b,e
erring gravely if I did not allude to two
most remarkable places of entertainment which
formerly adorned the Old Bailey. The first was
Williams's Boiled Beef House, which stood on
the right hand side of the thoroughfare just
named, as you ascend the once repulsive, but
now handsome, Ludgate Hill. Williams's was
an establishment wholly devoid of architectural
pretensions ; and the ceilings of the dining-room
were, if I mistake not, somewhat low. The
floor — in my time, at least — was sanded; the
knives were devoid of balanced handles, and
the forks were of steel and had only three
prongs. You see that this memorable eating-
house dated from days long before Elkington,
and even before the era' when a substitute for

* Since these remarks were first published I have received
several letters telling me that alamode beef can still be obtained at
numerous restaurants in the metropolis. That may be, and I am
glad to hear it ; yet I doubt whether there are any eating-houses
left exclusively devoted to the sale of alamode and conducted on the
old-fashioned "Thirteen Cantons" model — including the pewter
platters. g

206 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

silver, sometimes called " albata," sometimes
'' Britannia metal," and sometimes " Shef-
field plate,'' was used in middle-class eating-
houses. The triumphantly predominant staple
at Williams's was the boiled beef. It was
renowned throughout Europe. French culinary
critics declared it to be superior to their own
beloved boiiilli, and a formidable rival to our
own " rosbif." Williams's boiled beef needed
no rich sauce to make it palatable. It stood
on its own merits — calmly, loftily, serenely, and
without fear of competition. The joints — if
joints the mighty masses of meat could be called
— weighed on an average thirty pounds each,
and were taken from the silver or " tongue "
side of the round.

Williams's cook, a pale, portly, pensive
man, who had been boiling-cook at the
London Tavern, sometimes condescended to
tell regular customers that he salted his beef
for eight or ten days ; then cleaned off the
brine, skewered the round up tight, and
encircled it with a piece of wide tape to keep
it well together. The meat was allowed to
simmer very gently, allowing twenty minutes for

DTNNEB8 DEPARTED AND DISCUSSED. 207

each pound weight. No " made " gravy, if you
please, with this not only British, but Homeric,
dish. Only some of the liquor in which the
meat had been boiled was thrown over it. It
was wine of beef. Only one variant to the
classic " round " was permitted at Williams's.
To please the eyes of more artistic guests there
was a boiled beef at the Old Bailey eating-house
which had been pickled with salt, sugar, and
powdered saltpetre, which last gave the flesh a
fine ruddy hue. With each joint were served
accompaniments or " trimmings " more elaborate
than those which come with a boiled leg of
mutton — that is to say, potatoes, mashed turnips,
together with caper sauce. At Williams's you
had potatoes of exquisite mealiness, carrots sweet
and juicy, greens if you liked, boiled to a turn
with just a dash of vinegar to give them life,
and, to crown all, suet pudding — an almost
pellucid pudding, with such liberality had the
suet been introduced to modify and mollify the
lumpiness of the flour and water.

All these divers dainties were brought in
vessels of block tin, somewhat resembling the
French gamelle — that is to say, into the

208 THINGS AND PEOPLE,

structure of the different dishes, which con-
stituted, so to speak, a kind of metallic
pillar, there entered that " tambour " principle
which was used by Philibert de Lome in
the construction of the columns in the fa9ade
of the Tuileries. The service at Williams's
was exclusively performed by waitresses; and
the unerring accuracy with which they carried
the round towers of block tin, so that
they should never topple over, earned for
those neat-handed Phyllises the admiration
of customers, who were besides chronically
pleased by the good looks and the civility of
the female attendants. There was a legend
current among the hahifucs of the restaurant
that a young barrister, just called, who had
elected to seek for practice at the Old Bailey
bar, once entered Williams's, and called for
beef with the ** usuals " — the " usuals '' meaning
the vegetables and suet pudding. The neat-
handed Phyllis made her appearance in due
time bearing the circular tower of metal with
'^ tambours " of beef and accessories. She was
a very good-looking waitress, and ordinarily a
smiling one. She looked the youthful barrister

DINNERS DEPARTED AND DISCUSSED. 209

in the face ; and then her comely countenance
first flushed scarlet, and then assumed a hue
of muffin-like pallor. Her hand shook; the
circular tower became more pendant than the
leaning tower of Pisa ; she screamed " Wretch ! "
and down went the entire fabric, the beef
whizzing in one direction, and the vegetables
and the pudding in another. To quote Cole-
ridge : —

" Alas ! they had been friends in youth ;
But whispering tongues can poison truth,

And constancy lives in realms above.
And life is thorny, and youth is vain,
And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain."

This calamitous rencontre must have taken place
some time about 1849. I was a pretty constant
customer, I should say, for some time after-
wards ; but when the regretted disestablishment
of Williams's took place I am unable to tell.

You will remember that when ^neas and his
shipwrecked companions landed on the Punic
coast they felt extremely hungry, and at once
proceeded to knock over three '' beamy stags,"
which, being duly cut up, were hurriedly boiled

210 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

in a cauldron, the improvised meal being washed
down by sundry jars of generous wine, the gift
of the Trinacrian Acestes. ^neas's meal of
seethed venison may, for the purpose which I
have in hand, be likened to Williams's Boiled
Beef House, which was rarely called to furnish
jars of generous wine, but often, as a grace-
ful substitute, offered stimulating old ale and
choice brown stout. But Virgilian students
will likewise call to mind the fact that ^neas
and his jovial crew were subsequently and splen-
didly entertained in Queen Dido's palace. Ten
fat oxen were sent to the ship, together with a
hundred boars and as many lambs ; while the
Trojan prince himself was banqueted on the
rarest viands ; after which golden bowls with
sparkling wine — possibly the first mention in
poetry of champagne — went round, and through
the palace cheerful cries resounded.

I had my feast at Dido's Palace in the
Old Bailey, long after Williams's boiled beef
and " usuals " had become a departed dinner.
My Dido was the Lord Mayor of London,
and the Trojan lords of the Central Criminal
Court were one of her Majesty's Judges,

DINNERS DEPARTED AND DISCUSSED. 211

the Eecorder, the Common Serjeant, the
Sheriffs, and a sprinkling of the members of
the Old Bailey bar. The hospitable friend
who was kind enough to invite me to this
most characteristic dinner was Alderman Sir
John Bennett ; and the year, I fancy, must have
been the one in which he served the Shrieval
office. City Corporation usages die hard; and
it is worth notice that so long since as 1836
the late Mr. Abraham Hayward, in the course
of a diverting article, " On Matters Culinary "
in the (Quarterly Review, remarked that ''the
fiat had gone forth already against one class of
City dinners, which was altogether peculiar of its
time " ; yet it must have been more than thirty
years after the appearance of this article that I
found myself a guest at the well-spread board
in the dining-room over the Court.

Originally, I believe, these banquets con-
sisted exclusively of beefsteaks; but at the
dinner at which I was present there were
three courses and a dessert, in the most
approved style of Messrs. Ring and Brymer's
cuisine. Port and sherry made a conspicuous
appearance, and there was also plenty of
2

212 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

champagne and claret — ^in fact, it was a civic
dinner of the highest class, and only differed
from the symposia of the Mansion House
and the halls of the City Companies in the
circumstance that there was one course com-
posed of marrow pudding. It will be at once
apparent that, although these famous puddings
are practically sweet cates, made as they are of
thin slices of bread, marrow, cream, eggs, citron,
sugar, and pounded sweet almonds, a graceful
tribute was paid to beef at the Central Court
dinners by the fact that the marrow was in-
variably beef marrow.

Another characteristic of these departed
tribunals was that the vice-chair was taken by
the chaplain or Ordinary of Newgate, whose
special duty it was to see that the glasses of
the guests at his end of the table were kept
fully charged. There was some speech-making
after dinner ; the oratory being delivered sitting
and not standing. I had to return thanks for
the visitors, and I naturally prefaced my few
words of grateful acknowledgment by remarking
that I found myself dreadfully alarmed at being
surrounded by so many exalted legal and civic

DINNERS DEPARTED AND DISCUSSED. 213

functionaries ; and that, under the circumstances,
perhaps the best thing I could do was to beg to
be enlarged on my own recognisances, and come
up for judgment, at that same dinner table, next
session. Some kind of repasts are, I suppose,
still held in the apartment over the Court during
the periodical sittings of the Central Criminal
Court; but the grandiose banquets, with the
Lord Mayor in the chair and the Ordinary of
Newgate in the vice, together with the marrow
pudding and the sedentary speech-making after
dinner, have, I fear, departed for good.

Touching the inconveniences experienced by
a tyro in after-dinner oratory, I may be
allowed to recall a little post-prandial address
which I once endeavoured, wholly unsuccess-
fully, to deliver at one of the dinners of
the Sublime Society of Steaks, more popularly
known as the Old Beefsteak Club. This
once-celebrated symposium was held in that
which is now the Armoury of the Lyceum
Theatre, but it is still known, I am told,
as the Beefsteak Eoom. My host was a well-
known sculptor, long since deceased, named
Jones. The dinner, if my memory serves me

214 • THINGS AND PEOPLE.

correctly, took place in the summer of 1857
or 1858, and among the company I recollect the
late Sir Charles Locock and John Lord Camp-
bell, sometime Lord High Chancellor of Eng-
land. I think Sir Charles Locock was in the
chair ; but I am certain that that eminent medical
practitioner sang a song after dinner, which ditty
was emphatically declared by the members to be a
thoroughly ''Beefsteak" song. Lord Brougham
was expected, but he did not put in an appear-
ance. The furniture of the club-room was very
simple ; but the damask tablecloths were of the
finest, and there was a handsome show of plate.
One extremity of the room was in the form of a
huge gridiron, through which you could see the
cooks exercising their vocation in front of a
roaring fire. The steaks were served in little
pieces about two inches long by an inch broad,
hot and hot, and there was nothing but steaks.
I remember a good deal of port and a good
deal of punch, but there was no champagne.
Whether smoking was, or was not, permitted I
am not prepared to say ; but I am inclined to
think that nicotine was inhibited.

The first toast was of -a peculiar nature;

DINNERS DEPARTED AND DISCUSSED, 215

and the chairman, whose seat was consider-
ably elevated beyond those of the other
guests, assumed, at one stage of the pro-
ceedings, a short velvet robe adorned with
ermine, which was stated to have been worn
by Garrick in the character of Eichard III.
As at the Old Bailey, it fell to my lot to
return thanks for the visitors, and as it
happened that no less than ten days had
elapsed between my reception of the invita-
tion and the occurrence of the dinner itself,
I found time to learn by heart what I secretly
thought to be really a neat and effective little
speech. There was good need for its possess-
ing these qualities, since my host told me of
the probable attendance at the club of two
such giants of oratory as Henry Brougham and
John Campbell.

Well; when the time arrived, I rose to
make my speech, but I had not reached
the end of the first sentence, before my
voice was drowned by the unanimous and
uproarious " Hear, hears ! " of the members.
I began the speech again, only to encounter
a fresh burst of cheering, and, at last, after

216 THINGS AND PEOPLE,

perhaps half a dozen futile attempts to make
myself heard, I abandoned the endeavour,
and sat down quite baffled and discomfited.
Then one of the members rose and proposed
to the assemblage, which had become quite
quiet and attentive in listening, " that the
long and eloquent speech just made by their
guest should be forthwith printed, at the cost
and charges of the Sublime Society, for private
circulation only." I am afraid that the humours
of the Sublime Society would scarcely be appre-
ciated at the present day ; nor, perhaps, would
the style and diction of the songs chanted after
the banquet find greater favour with this fasti-
dious age. The Old Beefsteak Club, indeed,
has become a convivial anachronism. The dinner
began at five and the festivities were over by
half -past nine ; and what with the port and the
punch there was some peril of your finding
yourself under the portico of the Lyceum
Theatre in a somewhat dishevelled condition
just as the broughams of the nobility and gentry
were passing up Wellington Street on their
way to the Eoyal Italian Opera, Covent Garden.
I may say a few words touching another

DINNERS DEPARTED AND DISCUSSED. 217

very curious dinner which I once discussed, but
which I hope is not yet departed. In the
remote bygones my old friend, the late Mr.
Samuel Joyce, Q.C., took me to dine one evening
in the hall of that extremely ancient Inn of
Chancery, Clifford's Inn, of which the only
knowledge that I then possessed was that the
hall was the place where Sir Matthew Hale and
seven other legal assessors sat after the Great
Fire of 1666 to adjudicate upon the claims of
landlords and tenants of houses which had
perished in the flames. I think Mr. Joyce was
an Ancient of the Inn. There was a senior and
a junior table in the picturesque, but not very
spacious, hall, in which, I think, there was also
preserved an old oak folding-case containing
the rules of the institution, and said to date
from the reign of Henry VIII. It was a
capital dinner, and the port was rich and rare ;
but the peculiarity of the banquet was in the
following ceremonial:

After dinner the chairman at the junior
table, which was called either the Kentish
Mess or the Kentish Men, took from the
hands of a servitor four small rolls of bread

218 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

baked together, dashed them three times on
the table, and then pushed the rolls down to
the further end of the board, saying at the
same time, "I drink to the Eules/' Subse-
quently the Principal, at the senior table, rose
and drank to the " Kentish Men " or " Mess."
There was a mysterious solemnity about the whole
affair which threw you into doubt as to whether
you should laugh or look serious ; but, on the
whole, following the American precept, " If in
doubt take a drink," the best way out of the
difficulty was to devote yourself assiduously to
the fine old port of this fine old Inn of Chancery.
Many dinners have I discussed in the mess-
room of the Guards at St. James's Palace, and I
have also enjoyed the hospitality of the officer on
guard at the Bank of England and in the Tower
of London ; but the character of those banquets
is too well known to need description here ;
and, again, none of these dinners are, happily,
*' departed."

219

CHAPTER XIX.

COOKS OF MY ACQUAINTANCE.

"The Wretchedest . of Weaklings "—Boy and Girl Cooks— The
Potato — Prices in the Past — Concerning' Omelettes— Fricour's
— How to Govern a Kitchen — Verrey's — Bertolini's — Hunger-
ford Market — ^The Swan Tavern and its Denizens — A Man with
a Grievance and a Devourer of Crabs — A Meeting with Soyer
— Madame Soyer — ^A " Magic Stove *' — Francatelli.

In my early home we were all taught to
cook. Although I am, with one exception, the
sole survivor of a family of thirteen, I was in
childhood the wretchedest of weaklings — rickety,
purblind, deaf, hysterical, and with a chronic
inflammation of the mucous membrane which
caused me, at the slightest provocation of dust
or a draught, to '' sneeze my head off," so to
speak. Indeed, I may say, that my life has
been almost one continuous course of catarrh:
and even the niovement of the Indian punkah
has sufficed to set up a kind of hay -fever in that
unfortunate membrane of mine. Being, then,
what is called a delicate child, I was excused
from the more arduous labours of the kitchen

220 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

range. I was never made to baste a joint ; and,
possibly, it may be because I was sometimes
made to boil a potato that I so heartily detest
that questionably nutritious tuber, which, to my
mind, has, since its introduction as a popular
article of food — about the middle of the
eighteenth century — been the curse and bane of
the English kitchen. Prior to 1750 the potato
was always served as a sweet dish, being dressed
with cream, sugar, almonds, rosewater, and
spices ; but late in the reign of George II. the
general practice of potato-eating found its way
from Ireland into Lancashire; and soon after-
wards potatoes earned the greedy appreciation of
the English people as food to be eaten with
meat. To be sure, it was denounced by Cobbett
as *' hog's food ; " but then the savage old editor
of the Political Register loathed tea quite as
implacably as he did the potato ; and both con-
tinue to retain their hold on the popular taste as
articles of daily diet.

So it did not fall to my lot to roast ;
although I dare say I was as fond as most
small people used to be of the surreptitious
dainty known as a '* sop in the pan." The

COOKS OF MY ACQUAINTANCE. 221

culinary training through which, together with
my brothers and sister, I passed, included the
making of soups, the artistic dressing of
vegetables — I mean the sending of them to table
as distinct and independent dishes, and not as
mere accessories to be heaped indiscriminately
on a plate already overladen with meat — the
preparation of entrees, and the confection of pies
and puddings. By the time I was ten years old
1 was an expert hand at dressing hashed mutton,
a dish which, according to its cooking, may be
either one of the most succulent or the most
nauseous of foods.

We were taught to make collops after the
Scotch fashion, to mince the mutton, to braise it
with vegetables, to make it into kebobs, to
encase it in paste and fry it, to curry it, and
especially to hash it ; and it was in the last form
that I, considering my years, was supposed to
excel. Many and many a time has my parent,
when starting at about eleven in the morning
on her round of singing lessons, bidden me
get the mutton well under way, to be served as
a hash at four o'clock in the afternoon, which
was our dinner hour. This was when my

222 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

brothers and sister were all absent ; and I was,
after a fashion, the housekeeper to a family of
two. I sliced the cold meat carefully, dusted
the slices with flour, and seasoned them with
pepper and salt ; then I set the slices on a plate,
and for an hour or so would dig my elbows into
a big folio copy of Lyttleton's "History of
England '' and read as hard as I could.

Then I would take a writing lesson in
copying the big initial letters at the beginning
of the chapters ; for although, when I recovered
from blindness, my sister taught me to read,
I preferred to be my own instructor in calli-
graphy. Many other dishes I was taught,
with equal care and patience, to cook, or to
assist in cooking; and I specially remember
my achievements in the way of stewing and
frying tripe, of stewing kidneys — I could
never eat them — of making toad-in-the-hole,
and of concocting Tomato, Piquante, Proven-
gale, " Poor Man's " Shalot, Gravy, Eobert and
Lyonnaise sauces for cutlets. For fish days
I also learnt the secret of making " black
butter " sauce for skate. In making puddings
and pastry my sister was a brighter proficient

COOKS OF MY AOQUAINTANOE. 223

than I, her hand being lighter and her sense of
dulcet flavour more delicate than mine ; but we
were both beaten in the culinary competition by
my brother Charles, who was six years my
senior, and whom I regarded almost with venera-
tion as an unequalled fabricator of meat pies.
He was as grand at rumpsteak as he was at
veal-and-ham, steak-and-kidney, game, and
pigeon pie; but, perhaps, his steak-and-kidney
pie was his masterpiece. Long years afterwards
we kept bachelor house together in a little street
off the Western Eoad at Brighton ; and once a
week^ at least, we had one of my brother's notable
rump-steak pies for dinner. I was allowed to
make the crust ; but it was he who arranged all
the savoury ingredients of the pasty. When
the pie was ready, I conveyed the dainty to the
bakehouse ; and five minutes before the dish was
to be ready for delivery my brother would pop
in at the bakehouse, cause the pie to be with-
drawn from the oven, delicately raise the crust,
pour in four pennyworth of cream, and then
allow it to be restored for a brief space to the
hot chamber.

I must confess that my early culinary

..THINOa AND PEOPLE.

reminiscences are not quite devoid of melancl
souvenirs. Oh ! the agonies of trying to m
a mayonnaise sauce : the crashing with a woo
spoon of the hard-boiled yolks of eggs;
pouring in of the oil drop by drop ; the di
of having made too free with the tarra
vinegar. Often, it need'scareely be said, I a
sad bungles in my cooking, and had to b
with what resignation I might, the stem re
mands which I so richly deserved ; but, on
whole, I was oftener rewarded with a kiss t
with a scolding for what I had done in the '
of dressing little dishes. Those of my culii
memories which are slightly sad are connei
with the two first cooks whose acquaints
I chanced to make between 1836 and 1839.
was my duty to effect most of the housel
purchases ; and to that circumstance I owe
curious technical knowledge, which I have -n^
lost, of the prices current of provisions. I
trace the gradual fall in the price of tea f
the period when I used to buy it at a gro<
shop kept by a Quaker, named Joshua,
Kegent Street. It was mixed tea, six shilli
green and five shillings black per pound.

COOKS OF MY AGQUAINTANOE. 225

Coffee was half-a-crown a pound, and the
best lump sugar eighteen pence ; while the best
fresh butter was one and eightpence ; the quartern
loaf varied in price between elevenpence and
eightpence — I can remember it, once, at thirteen-
pence — and flour was threepence a pound. New-
laid eggs were three-halfpence each, and they
were new-laid. This marketing rather inter-
ested me than annoyed me ; nor even now, when
I am old and feeble, have I ceased to take an
interest in marketing, and very willingly go
shopping if I am allowed to do so. But those
cooks whose acquaintance I was forced to
make ! Very frequently, during the London
season, some musical friends would drop in about
three o'clock in the afternoon ; and very often
they would be asked to stay to dinner. Eubini
and Tamburini, Labi ache, and the Eussian tenor
Ivamoff, Grrisi, and Persiani were among the
guests whom I best remember; and at least
once I know we enjoyed the society at dinner
of the fascinating Marie Malibran and her
husband, M. de Beriot. The incomparable
Marie Taglioni — the Sylphide of Sylphides —
was likewise sometimes of our company, as she

226 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

smilingly told me when, long long years after-
wards, I met her, as the Countess Gilbert des
Voisins, at the memorable banquet to Literature
and Art given at the Mansion House during the
mayoralty of Sir Andrew Lusk.

For these distinguished foreigners our house-
hold would cater, in the way of such Continental
delicacies as macaroni, stuffato, ravioli, polpette,
risotto, and so forth, in the Milanese or the
Florentine, the Grenoese or the Eoman fashion ;
and when a nice little dish had to be got up,
say at an hour's notice, the good-natured land-
lady of the house in which we occupied apart-
ments made no objection to my going down
into the kitchen and dressing the article wanted.
Indeed, the good woman would often, in a case
of boiling — that awful boiling! — lift the saucepan
on and off the fire with her own hands ; and, in
return for her kindness, I would try next day to
teach her how to make an omelette — an attempt,
however, in which, as a rule, she dismally failed.
The British people have done mighty things in
the course of their history ; they have created a
vast empire in India and established a Grreater
Britain at the antipodes ; they beat Napoleon ;

G00K8 OF MY AGQUAINTANOE. 227

practically invented the steam-engine and rail-
roads ; actually invented penny postage and per-
forated postage-stamps ; but they have never,
nationally, been able to make omelettes properly,
and never will do so, I opine.

There were occasions, however, when my
parent wished to give a more than usually
elaborate dinner; and on these occasions I
used to be sent with a market basket — a
horrible wicker pannier, dear readers, with a
circular lid, with two flaps opening at the
middle, and a semi-circular handle — to a
French restaurant in Marylebone Street, Regent
Street. That was when we were living in
the Quadrant. The restaurant was known, if
I remember aright, as the New Slaughter's
Coffee House ; the Old Slaughter's, as all readers
of Vanity Fair are aware, was in St. Martin's
Lane, and the New was kept by a Frenchman of
the name of Fricour. I never, to my remem-
brance, was taken to dine at this house of enter-
tainment ; but over and over again have I been
sent thither to interview the cook and to pur-
chase such delicacies as John Dory a la creme or
en ravigote^ salmon with Mazarine sauce, soles a
p 2

228 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

la Normande^ filet de bceiff a la Jeanne d'Arc^
ducklings (i la Chartres, pheasant a la CorsairCy
vol-au-vent de riz de veau, cotelettes de mouton a
la Soubisey all piping hot, which, carefully placed
between plates, were bestowed in the abhorred
market basket.

I always had a rooted, although perfectly
irrational, hatred of sweetbreads and of kidneys,
two dishes of which our Italian guests were
passionately fond; and I do believe that it
was owing to the frequency with which I had
to obtain these viands from Fricour's that I
learned to abominate that which most persons
consider as very delicate and tasty articles of
food. The chef at Fricour's was a very fat, wry
man, of about fifty, with a merrily- twinkling
eye. I never knew his name ; but in process of
time we grew quite friendly. I can see him, now,
in his full suit of white, his long knife stuck in
his girdle, and his white, quadrangular cap stuck
rakishly on one side of his head. Sometimes, if
the afternoon was very warm, I would find him
taking just a breath of air at the kitchen entrance
to the restaurant ; and at these times, for fear of
catching cold, he would always have a table

G00K8 OF MY AGQUAINTANOE, 229

napkin tied loosely round his neck. He was a
harmonious chef, too, and would frequently sing
to me, while he was attending to my needs,
snatches from a French song called, I think,
Le vin a quaV sous. One other peculiarity of
his I remember very well; and that was his
habit of administering back-handed slaps on the
face to his assistants, not excluding the kitchen-
maids. These females would yelp a little, but
no harm seemed to be done; and the c/iey himself
would occasionally confidentially inform me that
it was impossible to govern a kitchen properly
sans une pluie de gifles — without a shower of
slaps.

I scarcely think that the market-basket excur-
sions, at the period when we lived in the Quad-
rant, were so grievously afflictive to me as they
were when we resided in the upper part of
Eegent Street, close to the Oxford Circus. It
was then my duty, when we had visitors who
had to be regaled in an exceptionally elaborate
manner, to take the horrible basket to Verrey's
restaurant in Eegent Street. I suppose there
was a real Verrey fifty-five years ago, who was
the founder of the famous restaurant which still

230 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

bears his name, and prospers. Verrey was, I
apprehend, a Swiss ; and he has often been erro-
neously confounded with an even more famous
restaurateur in the Palais Eoyal in Paris — Y6vy,
to wit. The Palais Royal restaurateur started
in business as early as 1805.

With Verrey 's cooking in Regent Street
I made, of course, a very close acquaintance ;
but I was not admitted to the kitchen ; and
it was a waiter at the back entrance who
took my modest order and brought me the
plats to be placed in the hideous market
basket. How I loathed it ! How I slunk to
and from the eating-house with the burden that
choked the spring of my young life ! I have
no hesitation, now, in candidly confessing that
one golden summer afternoon, returning from
Verrey 's with iny accursed incubus, I sat down
on the steps under the portico of a grimy church
in Regent Street and burst out crying. I was
comforted, curiously enough, by an Italian image
boy; for the portico in question was at that
epoch a favourite resting-place for the little
swarthy lads who used to carry on their heads
trays exhibiting plaster-casts of Queen Victoria,

000K8 OF MY AOQJJAINTANOE. 231

Napoleon Bonaparte, Shakespeare, Malibran,
the Duke of Wellington, the Dying Gladiator,
the Three Grraces, and Mr. Daniel O'Connell. I
spoke to the image boy in his own tongue ; but
whether it was that circumstance or the savoury
odours evolving from the dishes in the basket
that made him treat me fair, I am unaware. I
am glad to say, however, that I reached home
with the contents of the basket intact. I am
thoroughly persuaded that no feeling of harsh-
ness — to say nothing of cruelty-^ actuated my
parent in sending me out on these, to me, agon-
ising errands. Not one child in a thousand,
perhaps, is entirely understood by its parents ;
and 1 daresay that I was rather irritatingly diffi-
cult to be comprehended.

Touching another cook of my acquaintance
in the days of my boyhood, I may say a few
words before I pass to the more celebrated chefs
whom I knew in my adolescence. We never
resided in the immediate neighbourhood of
Leicester Square ; else, when the operatic cele-
brities were good enough to take pot-luck with
us, I might have been despatched with that
woeful basket either to Pagliano's Hotel in

232 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

Leicester Square itself, an old-fashioned edifice,
which had once been the house of William
Hogarth, but which was pulled down to make
room for Archbishop Tenison's School ; or, per-
chance, I might have been bidden to wend my
wa}^ to Bertolini's Restaurant — the H6tel New-
ton, I think it was called — in St. Martin's
Street. The last-named establishment was kept
by a Mr. Bertolini, a very worthy Italian, long
domiciled in England, who contrived, I believe,
to make^ a handsome fortune, long before the
days of the Gattis and Monicos. The rumour
ran that he had a handsome country house, and
rode to hounds with the county families ; but,
whatever may have been the extent of his
prosperity, it did not prevent him from showing
the most sedulous attention to all his guests,
whether they dined simply or sumptuously. It
was very rarely, between the ages of fifteen and
eighteen, that I could afford a banquet at Berto-
lini's, but I liked to go there when I had
sufiicient cash, for the reason that the H6tel
Newton was the only place with which I was
then acquainted where Italian, as well as French,
cookery flourished.

COOKS OF MY ACQUAINTANCE. 233

There was another and more powerful in-
centive to my occasionally patronising the
house. It was to a considerable extent the
resort of the wits and the wags who, in the
evening, habitually foregathered at the Caf6
de TEurope in the Haymarket ; and there,
at Bertolini's, I think I met one day Mr.
Charles Dance, a once well-known dramatist.
He asked me what I was doing ; and I replied
that I was trying my hand at about half-a-dozen
different callings, in the endeavour to earn a
livelihood; but that, on the whole, not very
much success had attended my efforts. Then
and there he sat down and wrote for me a
letter to Shirley Brook&. Shirley gave me a
cordial welcome and sent me to Albert Smith,
who then Kved in Percy Street, Tottenham
Court Eoad.

Albert, in the year 1847, was editing a
comic monthly periodical called I%€ Man in
the Moon, in conjunction with Angus Bethune
Eeach; and the joint editors engaged me to
make comic designs on wood for The Man in the
Moon aforesaid. I need scarcely say that, with
the proceeds of the first cheque I received

234 THINOS AND PEOPLE.

for my drawings, I dined quite festively at
Bertolini's.

Hungerford Market, which disappeared for
ever in 1863, when it was demolished to make
room for the West-End terminus of the South-
Eastern Eailway and the Charing Cross Hotel,
was to me, in the days of my youth, one of the
most interesting places in London, I knew the
history of the locality by heart — from the ghastly
story of Dame Alice Hungerford, who, in the
reign of Henry VIII., was hanged at Tyburn
for the cruel murder of her stepson, to the tale
of the burning of Hungerford House in 1669
through the carelessness of a maidservant, who
was sent to take a candle off a bunch, which she
did by burning the wick off, and so set the
whole mansion in a blaze. It was the property
of Sir Edward Hungerford, the super-refined
beau who gave £600 for a periwig, and who,
after having squandered a princely fortune, died
a poor Knight of Windsor in Queen Anne's
reign. The market which I knew was not the
ugly, tumbledown building with a pent-house
roof, contemptuously alluded to by John Thomas
Smith, the author of the delightful *' Book for

000K8 OF MY ACQUAINTANCE, 235

a Eainy Day," but the heavy, pseudo-Italian
structure built by Fowler, the architect of
Covent Grarden Market. In the upper storey
there were three avenues, all roofed, in one
block ; and although Billingsgate proved in the
long run too powerful for its West-End rival,
the business done at Hungerford in the sale of
fish was very considerable ; and there were also
well-stocked shops and stalls for the sale of
butcher's meat, poultry, game, fruit, and vege-
tables. On the basement floor of the market
was a large building, commonly known as the
" Trench Church," from its having been used as
a place of worship by the Huguenot refugees
who fled to England after the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes. Then it became a Charity
School for the parish of St. Martin's-in-the-
Fields. In 1860 the premises had fallen into a
wretchedly dilapidated condition, and they were
acquired by some speculative persons, who, in
view of the approaching Exhibition of the In-
dustries of all Nations to be held in Hyde
Park, re-erected the building in the basement
as a tavern and music hall. The speculation,
I believe, was a disastrous one; but, whatever

236 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

might be the fortunes of Hungerford, the place
itself was always full of the liveliest attractions
for me.

There is to most minds something irresis-
tibly fascinating in a market, whatever may
be the kind of commodities dispensed in the
emporium. Socrates, it is true, when he was
taken into the Agora, merely remarked, " How
many things are there here which I do not
want ? " But then the son of Sophroniscus
was a philosopher; and I cannot afford to
be philosophical, even if I had that gift.
Hungerford, consequently, never failed to amuse
and please me. There was the parlour of
the Swan Tavern to begin with, where mys-
terious London eccentrics — the race seems to
have almost died out by this time — used to meet
in occult conclave, saying little, but drinking
cooling draughts of old ale, smoking the longest
of clay pipes, and reading newspapers which, from
their yellowness and raggedness, might have been
the Ledgers and Postboys of the early Georgian
era. On a summer afternoon the parlour at the
Swan was one of the coolest and shadiest retreats
into which you could dive from the feverish

COOKS OF MY ACQUAINTANCE. 237

buzzing and brawling of town life, the jarring of
wheels and the confusion of tongues at Charing
Cross ; and in that parlour I have made many
curious acquaintances whose names I never
knew, but from communion with whom I learnt
many things.

There was a man who had a grievance —
most probably a wholly imaginary one — against
a certain learned judge, and who followed his
lordship about the streets, and when he came
in and out of his house, so persistently, that at
last he was given over to the police for wilfully
annoying the judicial functionary whom he con-
ceived to have wronged him. He must have
had some small means ; for he told me that he
made it a rule to purchase every Act of Parlia-
ment and every Blue Book and Parliamentary
Paper that was issued from the offices of the
Queen's printers, so soon as ever those not
ordinarily very exciting publications made their
appearance. There was another individual of
mildewed appearance, who, winter and summer
alike, always wore a large cloak with a stand-up
collar of what used to be known as "grey poodle.''
Nowadays it would be dubbed astrachan. He

238 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

was mucli given to devouring dressed crab,
having purchased the crustacean at one of the
fish-stalls in the adjacent market. The landlady
of the tavern, to whom he was well known,
willingly supplied him with the oil and vinegar
and the condiments which he required.

The quantity of dressed crab, washed down
by ginger beer and hollands, which the man
in the cloak habitually consumed, used first
to astonish and afterwards to alarm me. I
always had a horror of crab as an article
of food; and every moment I expected to
see the cadaverous visage of the man in the
mildewed mantle bloom forth in dark purple
spots, or otherwise present itself in an aspect
menacing the proximate dissolution of the unholy
feeder ; but my friend in the cloak, when he was
not eating crab and swallowing draughts of
ginger-beer and gin from a tall pewter pot, was
amicably communicative, and had a great deal to
say that Avas worth attentively listening to.
Profound erudition does not always wear a college
cap and gown. So far as I could make out, the
crab-devourer was a ripe Oriental scholar; and,
indeed, one day he proposed to teach me Arabic

COOKS OF MY ACQUAINTANCE. 239

if I would teach him French in return. I did
not get further than the Arabic alphabet, and
the man in the cloak did not make much progress
in the Gallic tongue beyond: Comment vous portez-
vous ? and II est quatre heures et demie. He was
fond of repeating the latter phrase, possibly
because half-past four p.m. was usually the time
when he began to devote himseK to dressed crab
and ginger 'heev panache with gin.

One afternoon, in the autumn of 1850, I was
strolling through Hungerford Market with my
brother. We had had a ramble into Lambeth
Marsh and had returned by way of Brunei's
poetically graceful aerial suspension bridge, which
now spans the Avon at Clifton. We had regaled
on " gaufEres," hot and hot, cooked by an indus-
trious Italian, who had formerly, it was whispered,
been a brigand, and ultimately took to stereo-
typing, and who kept a little hut for the sale of ^ •
those crisp delicacies in a street by the side of \Jl^^'
the market going down to the river. I can still
see the bubbling batter being poured into the
moulds and scent the odour of the cooked
"gauffres,'' as they were swiftly baked over a
charcoal fire. Then I promised my relative to

240 THINQS AND PEOPLE,

take bim to the Swan and introduce him to the
man in the cloak.

But, just as we were beginning to wend our
way Swan ward, my eye lighted on a gentleman
who was bargaining for lobsters at one of the
shops in the Central Avenue. " Who can that
extraordinary individual be ? " I asked my
brother. The stranger was a stoutish, tallish
gentleman, a little past middle age, with closely-
cropped grey hair and a stubbly grey moustache ;
and, but for his more than peculiar costume, he
might have been mistaken for the riding-master
of a foreign circus, who had been originally in
the army. He wore a kind of palet6t of light
camlet cloth, with voluminous lappels and deep
cuffs of lavender watered silk ; very baggy
trousers, with a lavender stripe down the seams ;
very shiny boots, and quite as glossy a hat ; his
attire being completed by tightly-fitting gloves,
of the hue known in Paris as deurre frais — that
is to say, light yellow. All this you may think
was odd enough; but an extraordinary oddity
was added to his appearance by the circum-
stance that every article of his attire, save, I
suppose, his gloves and boots, was cut on what

COOKS OF MY ACQUAINTANCE. 241

dressmakers call a " bias," or as he himself, when
I came to know him well, used to designate as
a la zoag-zoug. He must have been the terror
of his tailor, his hatter, and his maker of cravats
and underlinen ; since he had, to all appearance, an
unconquerable aversion from any garment which,
when displayed on the human figure, exhibited
either horizontal or perpendicular lines. His
very visiting-cards, his cigar-case, and the handle
of his cane took slightly oblique inclinations.

He evidently knew all about shell-fish ; for he
took the lobsters up one by one, critically scanned
them, poised them in one hand after the other to
ascertain their weight, examined their claws,
rapped them on their back, poked their sides,
and ofiered terms for them in a mildly authori-
tative tone ; terms which were at length, and
not very ruefully, accepted by the fishmonger,
who was possibly desirous of keeping on the best
of terms with the foreign gentleman whose hat,
coat, cravat, and pantaloons were all so studiously
awry. "Who is that?" said my brother, re-
peating my question. " Why, of all people
on earth who could that be but Soyer? How do
you do, Soyer?" It was in good sooth the

242 THINGS AND PEOPLE,

noted Alexis Soyer, erst c/ief of the Eeform Club,
to whom I was then and there introduced, and
of whom I have had already had occasion to speak
in the chapter on Thackeray. He had then,
I believe, just quitted the service of the palatial
establishment in Pall Mall, where a handsome
salary, and the fees which he was permitted to
take from " improvers/' brought him an income,
it was said, of not less than a thousand a year.
There was not the slightest ill-feeling between
himself and the committee wlien he left; and
many members of the club, including Thackeray,
Sir John Easthope, Mr. Fox Maule (afterwards
Lord Panmure), Mr. Edward EUice, and Lord
Marcus Hill, remained his fast friends. Alexis
Soyer, however, was a very ambitious artist, and
when I first met him was on the point of organ-
ising a grand culinary enterprise on his own
account, of which enterprise I shall have in-
cidentally to speak presently.

In addition to this undertaking he was,
like Mr. Rudyard Kipling, a dealer in "many
inventions.'' His " Gastronomic Regenerator,"
a costly cookery book, of which he took care
to preserve the copyright, brought him in a

COOKS OF MY ACQUAINTANCE. 243

large annual income; and even larger yearly
gains accrued to him from the sale of his
" Modern Housewife or Mdnagere/' which com-
prised, by the way, a bill of fare for a nursery
dinner, which. Sir Erasmus Wilson said, was
one of the most valuable pages that he ever
read on the subject of diet, and was '* calculated
to confer an everlasting benefit on society/'
Then, again, he had devised numerous condi-
ments and sauces, among which I especially
remember " Soyer's Eelish," which was sold in
vast quantities by a well-known firm of manu-
facturers in London, who paid him liberal
royalties for his recipes. He once told me in
confidence what the Eelish was made of, and I
committed the prescription to paper ; but I am
sorry to say that I lost it long years ago. I
remember, however, that the foundation of the
sauce was garlic.

Soyer invited my brother and myself to
supper that very evening. He occupied, at the
time, the upper part of a house in the dim regions
of Soho — a district which still retains many of
its Gallic attributes, but which, in 1850, was
almost as French as the Eue Montmartre.
q2

244 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

French c/iarcutters, French restaurants, hotels,
barbers and hairdressers, newsvendors, cbculat-
ing libraries, and cigar-shops encompassed his
dwelling ; while the floors over the French shops
were tenanted by French tailors, milliners, and
dressmakers. The rooms occupied by Soyer,
who was a widower, were, with one exception,
very plainly furnished. The exception was in
the instance of a number of very able and
tasteful oil paintings by his deceased wife,
a pupil of a celebrated Flemish painter named
Simonau, who had been trained in the studio of
the celebrated Baron Gros. Soyer was married
in 1836; but six years afterwards his wife, still
in the bloom of her youth, being in delicate
health, died, literally terrified to death by a
memorable thunderstorm.

All those who have visited Kensal Green
must have seen the monument to Madame
Soyer. In one of the panels are visible, under
glass, the palette and brushes of the lamented
artist. A pretty circumstance connected with
the inauguration of the monument at Kensal
Green was that a wreath of laurel was placed
on the pedestal by the charming danseuse,

COOKS OF MY ACQUAINTANGK 245

Fanny Cerrito, a daughter of Terpsichore
whose goodness equalled her genius and her
renown, and who yet lives, I hope, as Madame
St. h6on. The wreath was made addition-
ally interesting by the fact that it had formed
part of a crown which had been placed on
Cerrito's brow by an Austrian Archduke, on
the stage of La Scala at Milan. One other
minor item connected with this monument
remains to be mentioned. The question of a
suitable inscription on the tomb had arisen, and
someone — I am sure I do not know whether it
was Jerrold, or Thackeray, or Monckton Milnes,
or Bernal Osborne, or Disraeli — suggested that
the epitaph could be well completed in two
words, '^ Soyer Trayiquilley In a by no means
imposingly-furnished upper room, in a small
street, the name of which has hopelessly drifted
away from me, in Soho, Soyer had installed that
which he proudly called his. "Kitchen at Home."
It is in one of Congreve's comedies, I think,
that one of the characters taunts a lady with
having taken her " out of a shop no bigger than
a birdcage " ; and, as a matter of fact, Soyer's
apartments were not of much more commanding

246

THINGS AND FSOJ^LB.

dimensions than would belong to a series of
moderate-sized aviaries; but tbe eminentlj
assimilative and inventive naturo of ihe man
had enabled him to set up in two or three little
exiguous dens on the top floor, a miniature
kitchen and larder and scullery, as complete in
their way as the wonderful kitchen and annexes
which he had arranged for the Beform Club.
He had his roasting range, his oven, his screeu
and pkte-warmer; his b^n-marie ya^ heated by
water from the adjacent boiler, his ** hot-plate,'!
his seasoning box and fish sauce-box ; his refrige-
rator, and his knife-cleaning machine ; his dressers
and tables, and plate rack. The larder was as
completely furnished as the kitchen ; and on the
floor beneath was his dining-room. I remember
that, after we had consumed an admirable supper,
which he had cooked with his own hands, with
the assistance of a very small but obedient and
handy Irish servant girl, with shoes hopelessly
down at heel, he brought forth that which
seemed to me to be a kind of conjuring apparatus.
It was his " magic stove." A chop or a steak
was placed on a metal tripod, of which the top
was solid or barred, just as it was intended that

G00K8 OF MY ACQUAINTANCE. 247

the meat should be fried or broiled. At a little
distance from this tripod, but quite independent
of it, was a spirit lamp, and by means of some
ingenious blow-pipe arrangement, a prolonged
tongue of flame, so to speak, was projected hori-
zontally from the lamp into the tripod and under
the frying-pan or the gridiron, as the case might
be, where the flame assumed a circular shape,
and cooked the meat above to a nicety. Soyer,
indeed, was continually inventing something,
and his not altogether unreasonable anxiety
that due publicity should be attained by his
inventions led to his being very frequently
disparaged as a charlatan.

That there may have been a slight spice of
the poseur in his composition it would be idle
to deny ; but his foible in this direction was a
perfectly harmless one, and it was more than
compensated by the real talent of the man, by
his great capacity for organisation, and by the
manliness, simplicity, and uprightness of his
character. He was, in more than one sense, a
public benefactor; and at the time of the Irish
potato famine, he crossed St. George's Channel
to give practical and gratuitous instruction to

848 THmOB AND PMOPLE.

the poor in cookiiig chei^ food oilier fhan tiie
potato ; and after tiie failiiie ol Sojerls Sjmpo^
aium, the somptaoas Bestanrani for all Nationsi
which, in the year of the Qreat Exhibition,
he opened alt Gore House, Kendngton, he
undertook a jonmej to the Crimea, and not
only at Balaclava^ hot at Seidari, adhoeyed
wonders in improYing the cooking of the
soldiers' rations and in imranging better soales
of dietary for the military hospitals.

His services gained for him the wann com^
mendations of the Commander-in-Chief of the
Army in the Crimea and the amicable appreci-
ation of Florence Nightingale ; but I am not
aware that any honorific distinction was conferred
on him by the British Government, or that
any kind of pension or annuity was settled
on him. One of his last appearances in
public was at the United Service Institution,
where he delivered a lecture on " Camp and
Barrack Cookery." Very soon afterwards, worn
out by hard labour and still further enfeebled
by the Crimean climate, he died. He was
only a cook; but I shall always cherish the
remembrance of my friendship with him.

COOKS OF MY ACQUAINTANCE. 249

not only because I sincerely admired his char-
acter, but because I consider him to have
been a thoroughly capable and refined culinary
artist. Peace to his manes!

A few years afterwards it was my fortune
to make the acquaintance of another cook
almost as celebrated as Soyer. This was
Charles Edme Francatelli, who had been chef
to her Majesty the Queen, and whose cookery-
book I consider to be quite as practical and
quite as refined as Soyer's " Eegenerator,"
while it is devoid of those bizarre and fan-
tastic episodes with which Soyer occasionally
spiced his pages. Francatelli was a very in-
telligent, courteous person, whose only artistic
fault was that he had an exceeding weakness
for the use of truffles, with which, often with-
out rhyme or reason, he pertinaciously stuffed
his dishes. As a rule, three-fourths of these
costly tubers have lost their scent and savour
by the time that they have reached an English
kitchen, and are practically worthless ; but
Francatelli could not be dissuaded from con-
cocting plats truffes. My relations with him
were amicable, but not of the nature of close

frieadship. Ib iat^ I owned in
sense about one-twdTe-hiuubed«id-fiftieth part
of bim, rince he was ei^ at a dub in Pall
Hall of which I was ckcted unember twp^«nd-
thirly yean ago.

251

CHAPTER XX.

COSTUMES OF MY INFANCY.

Boys in Petticoats — A " Skeleton Suit " — In Uniform — Schoolboy
Attire — ^A Vanished Garment — The Carlist War and One of its
Effects — A Gorgeous Costume.

I FORGET whether it is in the '* Almanach des
Gourmands " of Grimod de la Reynifere, or in
the works of some other writer on gastronomy,
that there occurs a graphic and almost terrific
episode in which an epicure, who has lived not
wisely but too well, sees in a vision a procession
of all the good things which he has eaten
and drunk during a prolonged career of gorman-
dising. The procession winds its way down
a mountain-side ; and at the foot of the
declivity is, naturally, the Grave. Oxen by the
drove ; sheep by the flock ; swine by the herd ;
fruit and vegetables by the waggon-load ; wine,
beer, and spirits by the hogshead ; sugar by the
cask ; flour by the sack ; butter by hundreds
of firkins; eggs by hundreds of boxes, and milk
by hundreds of cans ; salt and spices, coffee, tea,

252 THINGS AND PMOFLB.

and chocolate by the ton — all these comestibles
pass before the eje of the dyspeptic, and it is to
be hoped penitent, ion piv^mt; while, above, the
sky is darkened by pheasants and partridges,
gronse, larks, ortolans, and plover ; and flocks of
geese, torkeys, «nd fowls borer, strut, and waddle
in the outskirts of Ihe throng, and tiie merry
brown hares leap in and out. A sony dream,
at least when you are uncomfortably aware that
in all probabilify there are not many more anccu'*
lent luncheons and dinners in store for you 1
With r^lim,. bvpUy p^takmg M«e of

elderly person review in his raind's eye the
varying costumes which he has worn from
his infancy downwards. Of course, I would not
for one moment venture to suggest that such a
retrospect should be undertaken by a lady ; for
what fair daughter of Eve would care to remind
herself of the toilettes with which she embellished
her elegant form say forty or fifty years ago ?
Nothing is more common than to hear a lady,
when she is turning over the leaves of an old Book
of the Fashions, exclaim, ''And is it possible
that such frightful things as those were ever

G08TUMES OF MY INFANCY. 253

worn ? " In many instances the fair critics may
at a remote period, the existence of which they
have totally forgotten, have worn the frightful
things themselves. However, the sterner sex can
afford to have more retentive memories ; and I
am not in the least ashamed to confess that the
earliest infantile costume of which I have a
distinct recollection was donned at Brighton very
early in the 'thirties. Indeed, I think that it was
on the morning after a terrible storm ; and that,
looking from the window of my little bedroom
in Manchester Street, Marine Parade, I could see
that what is now known as the Old Chain Pier,
but which was then quite a juvenile institution,
had been struck by lightning and seriously
damaged. I can see now, mentally, the severed
cables bent and twisted by the lightning, swing-
ing to and fro in the morning blast.

Children at the present time are put into
sailors' garb or into little vests and knicker-
bockers at so very early an age that it is
by no means uncommon to meet tiny Jack
Tars, or tiny Rip van Winkles, or Lilliputian
Highlanders of three and four; but in the
'thirties small boys were kept in petticoats

until an age when their appearance lu such a
garb would, in these days, be thought highly
absoid. The short skirta wfaioh fdtuie soldten,

. lawyers, doctorB, and clergymen wore till they
.were six or seren yens old, were supplemented

' 1^ an abominably ngly garment called a
pinafore ; not in any way lesembliiig the pretty
little blouses which tiny nrchins are at present pat
into, bat hideous gabardines (rf brown holland,
which were tied at the shoulders by ti^tes.

I had been emancipated from this jurenile
Ktniemio just before the oocarrisnoe (^ tiie great
storm ; and on the morning when I beheld the
shattered chains of the suspensiou pier at
Brighton I was brought triumphantly down to
breakfast by my nurse, and exhibited to the
family circle in all the pride of what was known
as a " skeleton suit," In a word, I was
"breeched;" and in the right-hand pocket of
my nether garments was placed, according to
the kindly custom of that time, a bright new
shilling. The coin, however, did not long
retain its lustre, which I very soon tarnished by
fumbling it, by the hour at a time, between my
hot, moist little fingers. The " skeleton " suit

COSTUMES OF MY INFANCY. 255

comprised a cloth jacket, with two rows of flat
gilt buttons. Three rows would have made the
wearer look like a page-boy. There was also a
zone of buttons encircling the jacket, just at the
termination of the basket of the ribs ; and to
this zone were affixed the pantaloons, for they
really could not be properly called trousers.
They buttoned over, instead of under, the jacket,
and were ridiculously short, so as to display white
socks and " pumps."

In summer-time the wretched little slaves
of a preposterous fashion wore nether garments
of pink and white striped nankeen, or of white
duck ; but in all cases the costume was completed
by a prodigiously wide linen collar with a plaited
frill. The jacket had no pockets, and the
equipment was destitute of a waistcoat; so
that the unhappy little urchin who had just been
** breeched" was constrained to turn his two lateral
pockets into very cupboards or haversacks, the
contents of which comprised such useful articles
as a pocket-handkerchief and the key of that
beloved box, full of unconsidered trifles, in the
possession of which the smallest of children who
can read and write take an infinite delight;

256 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

while, among the objects of ornament or luxury
were, possibly, a marble or two, a piece of india-
rubber, some coppers, a scrap of hardbake or
toffy wrapped in paper, a few nuts in the
season, an apple (partially munched) in summer,
and a bit of slate pencil all the year round. I
imagine that if anybody had given me a watch in
those days I should have been constrained to
add it to the miscellaneous contents of my
trousers' pockets ; but in the reign of the Sailor
King not one boy in a thousand, not being a
little Prince, had, under the age of ten, such a
thing as a watch. I have a notion that when
I attended a day school kept by a kind lady,
named Scott, somewhere in the region of where
there is now the Montpelier Eoad, I excited
considerable envy among my youthful colleagues
through this same " skeleton " suit.

You know what form envy takes among
small boys and among, I am grieved to
say, small girls. Envy manifests itself in the
pulling of the hair, the tweaking of the ears,
the accidental — accidental, of course — treading
on the toes of the envied infant, and the
administration of those miscellaneous " nips and

COSTUMES OF MY INFANCY. 267

bobs " of which poor little Lady Jane Grey had
such a liberal - allowance at the hands of her
noble papa and mamma. However, my school-
fellows were themselves gradually promoted into
the wearing of skeleton suits, and I experienced
no more nips or bobs ; and I daresay that, with
my newly-breeched comrades, I was quite ready
to envy, pinch, tease, and otherwise maltreat a
particularly plump and squab-figured boy — he
must have been ten — who scandalised us all one
morning by making his appearance in a round
jacket, a white waistcoat and trousers, and a
blue silk neckerchief tied in a sailor's knot. He
had a bad time, that boy, I warrant you.

There was another very juvenile costume
which I remember, consisting of a kind of tunic
with a broad belt round the waist and a buckle.
Socks were worn with this raiment; and the
head-gear was a cloth cap with a glazed peak,
and a tassel hanging on one side by a silken
cord.

In the summer of 1839 a strange trans-
formation took place in my dress. I went to
Paris, as I have mentioned earlier in these
pages ; and, being a boy at a public school, I

258 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

was bound to wear the authorised uniform of the
establishment. Picture to yourself, if you please,
a small boy of eleven suddenly deprived of his
tunic, his large frilled collar, and his cap with
the peak and tassel, and thrust into a tightly-
fitting, single-breasted, closely-buttoned tail
coat, which, but that its hue was either green or
chocolate, bore a grotesque resemblance to the
policeman's coatee as worn in the early days of
the Force. My likeness to a police constable,
drawn small, was enhanced by the circumstance
that I was made to wear a tall hat, although it
had no oil- cloth covering to the crown, and no
protecting bands of leather down the sides ;
otherwise, with a stiff stand-up collar and
straight-cut trousers, with a tiny strip of scarlet
down the outer seams, I might well have passed
for a duodecimo edition of a London '* bobby '*
slightly Gallicised. . Coming back to England to
become an English schoolboy, I was made to
adopt a style of dress of which a good many
patterns are still popular in boyland. The round
jacket, vest, and trousers, the neck-tie and the
lie-down, highly-glazed shirt collar of the Eton
boy was, about 1843, largely worn in schools all

COSTUMES OF MY INFANCY, 259

over England; only the Eton boy wore con-
tinuously a high hat ; whereas, in middle-class
seminaries, the " stove-pipe " was reserved for
Sundays and such whole holidays as those on
which we used to be conveyed in brakes and
waggonettes to Richmond or Greenwich or
Hampton Court, or even Windsor, for a treat.
On other days the cap was worn, and at the
particular academy where I finished my boyish
education we generally wore a navy cap of blue
cloth, with a gold lace band.

I have no remembrance of having seen
in my childhood any schoolboys wearing any
kind of wideawake or soft hat ; nor was the com-
promise between a frock-coat and a jacket — the
"cutaway" or Newmarket coat — ever assumed by
lads under twelve. It should, nevertheless, be
noted that one article of attire worn between
1835 and 1848, not only by grown-up people,
but by quite little boys, has wholly vanished
from civilian society in England. This was the
Cloak. I do not mean the Inverness capes
which gentlemen now don with tolerable fre-
quency over evening dress; the cloak which I
wore in the forties was a regular Spanish capa.
r2

260 THINQ8 AND PEOPLE/

Something like it had been popular in France
a few years previously ; the garment being cut
in precise accordance with the lines of the Roman
toga, as laid down by that eminent reformer of
theatrical costume in France, the famous trage-
dian Talma. In England the circular-cut cloak
was patronised for widely different reasons.

In the Spanish Peninsula a fierce war, for the
succession to the Spanish Crown, was raging
between the partisans of Don Carlos on one side
and Dona Isabel de Borbon on the other. The
Liberal party in England generally sympathised
with the Isabelinos, or Christinos, as they were
commonly called, after the Queen-mother and
Regent, Clnnstina ; and the Liberal Government
had sent out, to assist the Christinos, a numerous
body of troops, to which was given the name of
the British Legion, and which was under the
command of the gallant Sir De Lacy Evans.
The achievements of the Legion in Spain were
not very successful ; they fought on many occa-
sions with great bravery, but the Spanish
Constitutional Government did not treat the
Legionaries with exceptional liberality ; the
commissariat was from first to last miserably

COSTUME 8 OF MY INFANGY. 261

deficient, and the men had the utmost difficulty
in obtaining their pay. I can well remember,
so late as 1850, seeing one-legged men, in the
ragged scarlet uniform of the Legion, sweeping
street crossings; while one-armed men in the
same tattered panoply used to beg in the public
thoroughfares. Very soon rank impostors took
up that which, for a season, was a rather re-
munerative form of mendicancy ; and rogaes who
had never been nearer Spain than the '* Spaniards "
tavern at Hampstead took to wearing cast-off
Legion uniforms, which were plentiful and cheap
enough in the second-hand clothes shops of
Dudley Street, Holywell Street, and West Street,
Smithfield. The officers of the Mendicity Society
eventually managed, however, to run these rascals
to earth; but meanwhile the influence of the
contest in Spain began to be felt somewhat
extensively in London, owing to the numbers of
English gentlemen who had visited the ''Africa
which begins at the Pyrenees " — either in a
military capacity, or as artists or newspaper
correspondents — and who brought home not only
Spanish circular-cat cloaks, but the Spanish
mode of draping themselves therein.

262 THJNQ8 AND PEOPLE.

The late Mr. Gruneisen, a distinguished jour-
nalist, who in later life was the secretary of the
Conservative Land Society, wore a cloak. He
had been war correspondent of a London daily
paper in Spain, and, being on the Carlist side, was
within an ace of being shot as a spy when he was
taken prisoner by the Christinos. Lord Ranelagh,
who had also campaigned with the Carlists, wore a
cloak of the same fashion after his return home,
and so did Mr. G. F. Sargent, a well-known
graphic contributor to the Penny Magazine^ to
whom must be ascribed the honour of having
been the first of that indefatigable army of
artistic war correspondents of whom Mr. Wil-
liam Simpson, Mr. Sydney Hall, Mr. Frederick
Villiers, and Mr. Melton Prior have since been
such distinguished types. I am afraid that the
gentlemen who returned from Spain very soon
forgot the art of draping their cloaks in the
genuine Eomano-Iberian mode, such as you may
see it practised all the year round by the myste-
rious, swarthy, and cigarette-smoking individuals
who loaf round the fountain in the Puerta del
Sol at Madrid.

The cloak, however, remained. I wore

COSTUMES OF MY INFANCY. 263

one when I was fourteen ; and I half fancy
that the mantle in question had been in the
army, and had been cut down to suit my stature.
At all events, it was of blue serge, and was lined
with dingy scarlet. The collar was a stand-up
one, and was secured by a gilt clasp.

One other sartorial aspect of my boyhood
I recollect, in 1843 or 1844. I had a maiden
cousin, the kindest, cheerfuUest, tenderest little
soul you can imagine, who, in her childhood, had
absolutely been the heiress of a large sugar
plantation swarming with slaves, in the West
Indies : even as my own mother had been. My
cousin, whenever she had the chance, used to
delight in giving me a treat in the shape of an
outing. I have escorted her, or rather she
escorted me, to old Vauxhall, to the Surrey Zoo-
logical Gardens, to Kew and Eichmond, and to
the annual fetes of the Eoyal Horticultural
Society at Chiswick; but the treat which she
and I most heartily enjoyed was Grisi's benefit
at Her Majesty's Theatre in the Hay market.
The function usually took place towards the end of
July. I will say nothing about the particular per-
formance itself, since I only wish to complete this

slight tableau of the costumes of ray infancy, wlien
I describe tiie' i^puel wfaioh I mare on a well-Te-
memlwradeTeiiiDgmtiiesnmmerof 1643oT 1844.

A nmnd jackeij ooloor luny bloe; black
Telvet collar, and lappels. tamed back, of
white damask ; flowing white shirt collar edged
yritix lace, white silk necktie tied in a large bow,
a Jaiot, or shirt-^ill, protruding in a cresoHit
form, like a table mqikin folded bj an expert
Trench waiter, and in the centre of the bosom
a brooch of garnets. Does anyone ever wear
garnets now? They say garnets are lucky
stones. Then imi^ine Tcrjr tigfat-Stting pontar
loons of the same hue as the coat, speckled silk
socks, and low shoes (brightly varnished) with
large black silk bows.

The most conspicuous article in my costume
I have reserved to be cited last ; I wore a wonder-
ful waistcoat. It was known at home as the
" flower-pot " waistcoat — being of lustrous
poplin, or rather brocade, of blue silk, profusely
embroidered with flowers of golden hue, the
bouquets being tied and the waistcoat itself
edged with gold thread. A most gorgeous
garment, truly ; still, I am bound to acknowledge

COSTUMES OF MY INFANCY, 265

' that the gleaming fabric was part of a petticoat,
which my mother had bought at a theatrical
costumier's in Vinegar Yard, Drury Lane. I
am of opinion that in that petticoat, with a
bodice to match, and a black calash, my
mother had ])layed the parts of Deborah Wood-
cock in Love in a Village and Mrs. Hardcastle
in She Stoops to Conquer, At all events, I feel
as fully persuaded that my " flower-pot '' waist-
coat had been on the stage, as that my out-
of-door cloak had been in the army. Who had
worn that brocaded petticoat, before it came into
my mother's possession, I have of course no
means of ascertaining. Perhaps it had been
worn at the coronation of George IV. ; nay,
brocades wear a very long time; my "flower-
pot " vest had perchance once formed part of the
dress of one of the beautiful Miss Chudleighs,
or of Molly Lepel, or of Lady Betty Germaine.
Why not ? I went to a concert at a great palazzo
at Venice not long ago, and some of the ladies,
who were members of the antique aristocracy of
the city, came in brocade dresses which, I was
told, were two hundred years old ; and they —
the dresses T mean — did not look so very faded.

266

CHAPTER XXI.

HANDWRITING OF MY FRIENDS.

Autograph Prices — Character in Handwriting — Flourishes Classified
—The Origin of a " Lasso "—Charles Dickens' "Forked
Lightning" Flourish — Compliments from Lord Brougham —
His Handwriting — Mr. Beresford Hope's — ^Mr. Walter Thom-
bury's — Thackeray's — Douglas Jerrold's — Sir Arthur Helps' —
— Charles Reade's — Mr. Gye's — " Hans Breitmann*s."

I HAVE been acquainted, in the course of a pro-
tracted career, with a great multitude of cele-
brated people of both sexes ; and I must have re-
ceived, during the last forty years, several reams
of correspondence signed by all sorts and con-
ditions of famous or notorious, and, in some
instances, infamous folk. Yet I possess at
present only a very meagre gathering of auto-
graphs; and it is with difficulty that I can
realise the amount of gratification, if any, which
can be derived by the autograph-hunter from
his indefatigable quest of other people's signa-
tures. It is useful, however, now and again,
to consult the catalogue of some professional
dealer in autographs — highly useful, indeed, on

HANDWRITING OF MY FEIEND8, 267

Shakespeare's "Take Physic, Pomp" principle —
especially when you find a signature of Frede-
rick Louis, Prince of Mecklenburg-Schwerin,
father of Helen Louisa, married to Ferdinand
Duke of Orleans, son of King Louis Philippe,
offered for seven shillings and sixpence; whereas
a four-page letter of your own, expressing your
views on the study of classical form in art, is
offered for eighteenpence. In the same cata-
logue the autographic value of Frederick, Duke
of York, is three shillings ; and for this sum
is procurable the signature of Mr. Galignani,
the once eminent Parisian publisher. The
sign manual of the gallant Admiral, Lord
Exmouth, who bombarded Algiers, goes for
half-a-crown, which is the selling price of
the elder William Farren; but a letter from
Colonel Marcus Despard is quoted at nine
and sixpence — the price asked for a letter
from Charles Dickens to his schoolfellow and
early friend, Thomas Mitton. To be sure, it
was the gallant Colonel Despard's fate to close
a distinguished military career by being hanged,
drawn, and decapitated at Horsemonger Lane
Gaol for the crime of high treason.

268 THINGS AND PEOPLE,

As for Mr. Gladstone, an autograph note
of his in the third person only fetches half-a-
crown; but twenty-five lines in the autograph
of Thomas Hood, addressed to Sir Walter Scott,
may be considered cheap at half-a-guinea. Alto-
gether, the traffic in autographs, like the passion
for possessing them, is to me a mystery.

Again, it is possible that the very slight
value which I attach, as a rule, to autographs,
may be due to the circumstance that I am an
entire disbeliever in the so-called science of
" graphology," although I have read with much
interest a book, published not long since, called
" Handwriting and Expression,*' translated from
the French of M. J. Crepieux-Jamin by Mr.
John Holt Schooling. I am not at all open to the
conviction that — save in very rare instances —
the handwriting offers any trustworthy evidence
as to the writer's character ; and, in defence of
my scepticism in this regard, I may say some-
thing very briefly and, I hope, modestly, about
my own calligraphy, which, as a good many
people are aware, is peculiar. I write a very
small hand, which, some ten years ago, was very
legible, but which is now rapidly becoming the

HANDWRITING OF MY FRIENDS, 269

reverse. There are three reasons for this indis-
tinctness : first, as a child I was for a long time
quite blind, and when I recovered my sight I
taught myself to write from a book in large
print, Lord Lyttelton's " History of England."
I remember very well drawing every particular
character in the alphabet, large and small,
capitals and minuscules, vertically and diagon-
ally ; and I daresay that, during the process of
copying, I put my tongue out, and made the
organ of speech follow the motion of my pen,
just as you may have seen servant-maids do
when they indite an epistle beginning, say :
^* Miss Sarah Jane Smith presents her compli-
ments to Mrs. Soapsuds, and I must have more
starch in my cuffs, which thank Goodness it
leaves me at present."

The next reason for my writing a minute
hand is, that in my early adolescence I scraped
together sufficient money to apprentice myself
to an engraver, and went conscientiouslj'-, not
only through the artistic processes of my craft,
but through the much humbler business of
engraving bill-heads, and invoices, and visit-
ing cards, backwards, on copper-plate. Finally,

270 THINGS AND PEOPLE,

my handwriting became habitually minute, be-
cause ever singe my boyhood I have been in the
habit of keeping extracts, commonplace books,
and memoranda of every description ; and had I
not written very small, I should have by this
time several shelves groaning with elephant-
folios full of my scribblings.

But we will come now, only for a moment,
to the question of character in handwriting.
I always append to my signature a kind of
flourish — that which the French call a paraphe ;
and I notice in " Handwriting and Expression
a list of these flourishes, including the " lasso,
the "forked lightning," the "arachnoid," the
^' snail," the " corkscrew," and the " wavy "
— a different human idiosyncrasy being assigned
to each variety of flourish. Looking at the
facsimiles of these flourishes, I find that
I have a " lasso " paraphe, and, according
to M. Crepieux-Jamin, the "lasso" flourish
signifies " defensiveness becoming aggressive."
As a random shot this is not a very bad one :
seeing that I have generally had to defend
something or somebody, and not unfrequently
myself; and I may have been occasionally

HANDWRITING OF MY FBIEND8. 271

aggressive in resisting attack ; but it so happens
that the lasso-like flourish was not an instinctive
one, but that I deliberately adopted it from the
signature of a French schoolmaster of mine,
fifty -three years ago. His name was Henon ;
and I have one of his quarterly school bills
before me, now, with a most portentous ''lasso"
after the final " n," reaching a good inch and a
half down the page. Possibly there may be
relatives or schoolfellows of Charles Dickens
alive who can account for the " forked light-
ning" horizontal zig-zag flourish which he
always appended to his signature. This forked
horizontal zig-zag appears under his name in
the engraving of the portrait by Daniel Maclise;
but, oddly enough, it happens that I possess
a pirated copy of " Oliver Twist," in which there
is a signature unfamiliar to European eyes,
published in New York, 1841. Even the illus-
trations by George Cruikshank are forged — and
very cleverly too ; but the frontispiece is a por-
trait of Dickens as a very young man, with the
signature "Boz," with one horizontal stroke
beneath, and no more. I have never seen an
English copy of the portrait, and do not know

272 THINGS AND PEOPLE,

whether this " Boz " is a facsimile or an impu-
dent invention.

Of the very many letters which, during a long
course of years of close friendship, I received
from the illustrious novelist, I have retained only
one, and I find the solitary example pasted down
— not by my hands I feel sure — in a vellum-
bound account folio full, not only of autographs,
but of caricatures of my friends and myself, cards
of invitation, photographs, play-bills, and a letter
written nearly a hundred years ago from Deme-
rara by my maternal grandfather to my mother,
then a little girl at school in England. Dickens's
letter is dated from the office of Jll the Year
Roimd, August 19th, 1868, and simply announces
the enclosure of a cheque for fifteen pounds.
The billet is written in the old familiar Stephens's
dark blue ink, and the *' forked lightning" flourish
is as bold as ever. According to M. Crdpieux-
Jamin, Dickens's signature by this time should
have grown irresolute ; since he was in far from
good health, and in less than two years after-
wards he was dead.

I have not a single Thackeray in my
possession ; and for this bereavement I can

HANDWRITING OF MY FRIENDS. 273

account, just as well as I am able to do for the
almost total absence of communications in the
hand of Charles Dickens. All my autograph
letters from the two great writers whom I have
named have been politely begged from me by
public libraries and literary and scientific insti-
tutions in England and in the United States.
Furthermore, I may hint that once in every
seven years or so I yield to an uneasy conviction
that I am about, at no great distance of time, to
join the majority ; and while I am under the
influence of that which is perhaps only a tem-
porary fit of hypochondria, I either give away
some of my most valued autograph letters to
my friends, or else I make a bonfire-royal of a
couple of hundred letters or so.

I am glad, nevertheless, to say that I know
the whereabouts — although I have it not in my
own custody — of one at least of about a dozen
letters which I received from Lord Brougham.
The great orator and statesman was noted for
the kindly encouragement which he was always
ready to extend to young and struggling men of
letters. It is many, many years since I first
met him at a Mechanics' Institute soiree, at

274 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

Huddersfield, in Yorkshire. The Lord of
Vaux was in the chair; and I had to make a
speech. I have not the slightest remem-
brance of what the speech was about; and as
I had never before set eyes on th^ famous
ex-Chancellor, and I was sitting close to him, I
own that I felt desperately frightened. I stum-
bled through my sentences somehow or another ;
and then the good old man shook me cordially
by the hand and said some very kind things to
me. A few weeks afterwards I received a letter
from him in London asking me to come to a
public meeting at St. James's Hall, on which
occasion he was to preside. The meeting was to
discuss the question of middle-class education ;
and he evidently expected a large attendance of
the clergy, since, in a postscript, he remarked,
" he did not wish the Bishops to have things all
their own way." On the morning of the meet-
ing I received another note from him asking me
to call upon him, as early in the forenoon as I
could, at his house in Grafton Street. The well-
remembered mansion was at the bottom of the
street, facing Bond Street. In a very dusty old
dining-room I found the venerable statesman in

HANDWRITING OF MY FRIENDS. 275

his customary attire of black body-coat and
waistcoat, an immensely high black stock, and
the historic checked trousers. By the way,
Eobert Brough, humorist, dramatist, and poet,
used to say that the fluted columns of the ex-
terior of the Church of the Madeleine, which are
constructed on the " tambour " principle, the
fluted shafts being not monolithic, but so many
superposed discs of stone, always reminded him
of Lord Brougham's trousers.

He had sent for me — so said the British
Demosthenes — to give me a few hints on
public speaking; and this he did, not only
then, but on two subsequent occasions. It
is, however, with the handwriting of this
great Englishman, and not with his personal
relations with me, that I have to deal. What
his calligraphy in youth or in his maturity may
have been like I do not know, but at the ad-
vanced age when I enjoyed the honour of his
friendship, he wrote about the most execrably
illegible and ungainly scrawl that, with one ex-
ception, I have ever gazed upon. The only
simile which will serve to give my readers an
idea of his " fist " is the very hackneyed one of a
*2

276 THINGS AND TBOFLE.

spider dipped in ink being allowed to crawl over
a sheet of paper. He always signed "H.
Brougham," instead of " Brougham," just as the
Earl of Eosebery signs "A. Eosebery." One
other letter from the renowned statesman, who
when he was " Harry Brougham " held the
House of Commons in the hollow of his hand,
had reference to a leading article which I wrote
in the Daily Telegraph more than thirty years
ago. The paper had reference to the expediency
of appointing a Public Prosecutor, and this
expediency Lord Brougham remarked that he
''gravely doubted."

I have said that I know of one other sample
of handwriting as shockingly illegible as that of
Lord Brougham. It was the writing of the late
Mr. Beresford Hope. Up and down, in and out,
and round the corner, some of the letters stand-
ing on their heads, others ** standing prostrate,"
as Lord Castlereagh put it — others apparently
engaged in mortal combat with their next neigh-
bours — the ultimate result. Chaos. That was
the calligraphy, or the cacography, of worthy,
clever Mr. Beresford Hope. The late Walter
Thornbury, traveller, and historiographer, in

HANDWRITING OF MY FRIENDS. 277

conjunction with Mr. E. Walford, of " Old
and New London," also wrote a disastrously
bad hand. The prevailing impression in
your mind was that not ink, but a succession
of small bomb-shells had been discharged
from poor Walter's pen, and that these petards
had exploded on the paper. On the whole,
were I called upon to come into any court
and make affidavit as to the handwriting
of my literary friends, I should say that the
finest calligrapher of all was Thackeray. He
had two distinct handwritings : a cursive and
slanting one, and a vertical or upright hand,
in which every letter was distinctly formed.
Both hands were, to my mind, inimitably
beautiful.

Douglas Jerrold, as a letter-writer, wrote
a bold, decisive hand ; but his " cop}' " was
in almost microscopically small characters. I
have seen the bound manuscript of his strange
novel, " A Man Made of Money ; " and I doubt
whether even a reader with powerful eyes could
decipher that MS. without the aid of a magnify-
ing glass. I find in the book of scraps to which
Ij have alluded several very kind letters from

278 THINGS AND PEOPLE.

Sir Arthur Helps, the author of " Friends in
Council." He wrote a typically official " fist,"
large, clear, decisive, and not devoid of sym-
metry. One communication, written in 1874,
had reference to those very cruel devices — not
yet, I am sorry to say, abandoned — for the
torture of horses : the bearing-rein and the gag-
bit. He wanted me to write something de-
nouncing that which most people think to be a
barbarous and useless practice ; but I told him,
in reply, that an anti-bearing-rein movement
must, to have any chance of success, be initiated
by the very highest classes in society ; and in his
letter in answer he wrote, " I am afraid you are
right; we must begin with the duchesses. I
have already had the audacity to try what I can
do with them, and I must persevere." Next to
Sir Arthur I find an invitation to dinner from
dear old Charles Eeade. A big, fighting, " hit-
ting between the eyes " hand — a sprawl ; but a
giant's sprawl. He disdained to fold the pages
of his letters, and went right across the sheet.
Then do I chance on a note addressed to me in
April, 1875, from the Royal Italian Opera, in a
neat, delicate, almost feminine Italian hand.

HANDWRITING OF MY FRIENDS. 279

signed "Fred Gye." I had sent him from
Venice a note expressing the enthusiastic admir-
ation which I felt for a young prima donna by
the name of Albani, whom I had heard at the
Fenice Theatre, on the occasion of a gala per-
formance held in honour of the visit of the
Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria to Victor
Emanuel, King of Italy. " I am delighted,"
writes Mr. Gye, '* to see that you, as well as the
Venetians, know how to appreciate the charming
talent of Mademoiselle Albani, who," he adds,
" is about to sing in the Sonnamhula^ at Covent
Garden." Following Mr. Gye's is a letter of
eight pages from Mr. Charles Godfrey Leland,
otherwise " Hans Breitmann," a very constant
correspondent of mine in days of yore. A fine,
flowing, legible masculine hand, setting down
things sensible and sagacious.

INDEX.

-•c*-

AbbeviUe, i. 160

A'Beckett, Onbert Abbot, i. 44;

caiicatiired by the author, 88
Adams, Charles Francis, i. 214
Adams' Express Company, i. 233,

234
Admiralty, The, semaphore on the

roof of, i. 201 ; courtyard of, 201
Advertisement duties, and indigent

publishers, ii. 65
j^EUieas, his meal on the Punic coast

and his invitation from Queen

Dido, ii. 209, 210
Ainsworth, Harrison, his "Jack

Sheppard," ii. 157
Alamode beef dinners, ii. 202 — 204 ;

the sauce served with, 203, 204
Alboni, Maria, in Maria di Rohan at

Covent Gtarden Theatre, ii. 124 —

127; her picture by the author,

126, 127
Aiken, Henry, i. 99
Almonte, General Don Juan N6-

pomucene, ii. 25, 26
America : Change in meaning of

term ** Democrats

;

224;
author's experience in the country,
210 — 268; Century Club, 225;
voyage from England thirty years
ago, 213 ; lavish expenditure on
entertainments during the war,
and the issue of "greenbacks,"
227—230; sleeping-cars and rail-
way travelling, 230 — 234 ; Adams'
Express Company, 233, 234;
Custom House, 234 — 236; smug-
gling, 236; spies, 236, 237;
abuse between Federals and Con-
federates, 237 ; steam-boat travel-
ling, 239—241 ; the Federal army,
241—248 ; patriotic lyrics of Con-
federate army, 248
Americans: in Paris, i. 215, 216 ; in-
justice done to them by English

writers, 216; epithets applied to
the author, 218, 219
Amozoc, Spurs of, ii. 4
Anderson, Prof essor, ii. 121, 123
Anecdotes and Incidents: Thack-
eray's remark to the "Professor,"
i. 17 ; the "Professor's" estimate
of Thackeray, 17; Thackeray's
remark to Dr. Bellows, 18 ; Thack-
eray's speech at a Coitihill dinner,
32, 33 ; Thackeray's jocular pro-
posal at a Greenwich dinner, 39;
reputed authorship of the "Ves-
tiges of Creation,'' 46 ; alterations
by Dickens in author's " copy,"
7§ ; a French tailor's notion of
"arriving," 123; Dickens and
Ary Scheffer, 132 ; tips to the
Brighton coachman, 202, 203 ;
E-obsrt Stephenson and Paxton's
plans for the Great Exhibition
buildings, 208, 209; John Van
Buren addressing electors in his
shirt - sleeves, 225 ; Nathaniel
Parker Willis and "Willis's
Booms," 226 ; a young - lady
smuggler in America, 236; Bar-
num and the beefsteak, 239; the
gamblers and an American
Minister, 240, 241; "Bibles"
and smuggled spirits in the
Federal army, 243 ; Mrs. Lincoln
announcing dinner, 254 ; the black
hotel-keeper and the invalid lady,
257; the American lady and her
deceased husband's " casket," 259,
260 ; the cow-boys and the lecture
on Junius, 260; the humorist
counting the steps, 261 ; Abraham
lincohi, and the lady soliciting an
appointment for a relation, 266 ;
well-stai'ched white ducks, ii. 5;
the Federal lieutenant boarding a
passenger steamer, 13 ; the French

282

THINGS AND PEOPLE.

money-lender and his wife, 33, 34 ;
** Mr. Thorough " the money-
lender, 42, 43 ; " Mr. Quasimodo "
and Mr. Serjeant WiUdns, 45 — 47 ;
Dickens ana the impecunious man
of letters at the Freemasons*

Tavern, 57 ; Captain Jack I ,

and Tonmiy D in a spunging

house, 60, 61 ; insolvency of a
commissioner of insolvency, 62 ;
the sheriff's officer ana his
daughter in a spunging house,
63 ; heraldic achievement of a
prisoner at Whitecross Street, 68 ;
the professor of theology and the
winners of the Derby, 103 ;
Chai'les Kean and the tom-cat,
121 ; a criticism on Madame
Alboni*8 voice, 125 ; Rossini and
Sir Henry Bishop's name, 140;
laying the ^host of a portrait by
Guido Rem, 161, 162 ; the waiter
at the " Cock," and the hard-
boiled eggy 187, 188 ; the waitress
and the barrister, 208, 209 ; a post-
prandial speech at the Old Beef-
steak club, 215, 216 ; the Italian
image boy and the author, 230,
231

" Anglo -Parisian Cockneys," i. 109,
110; their place of residence in
Paris 110, 111, 118 ; their delight
at Dickens's visits, 112 ; idleness in
Paris, 115; impecuniosity, 113, 117,
119, 127 ; and Madame Busque,
118 ; their dinners and breakfasts,
118, 121, 122

Anglophobia in Paris, i. 173 — 175

Ant'iqtiaryy The, musical play, ii. 138

Arabic chorus, An, ii. 141

Army, The : The abolition of the
purchase system and its effect on
money-lenders, ii. 37

Artaxerxes at St. James's Theatre,
ii. 128-131

Ashbury, Mr. James, ii. 11, 12

Athens, ii. 9

Auber, and "Z« Parisienney'' ii. 148

Autograplis : Market prices, ii. 267,
268 ; as evidences of the writers'
characters, 268, 270 ; of Charles
Dickens, 271, 272; given away to
institutions, 273 ; Lord Brough-

am's, 276. {See also Hand-
writing).
Aztec ruins, ii. 10

Bacon, His allusions to usurers, ii. 35
Balfe, Michael, ii. 139; marriage of

a daughter to Sir John Crampton,

139 ; his Sie^e of Rochelle, 149
Balls at American hotels, i. 255
Bancroft, Q«orge, i 222
Bankruptcy confined to traders fifty-
five years ago, ii. 62
Barlow, Samuel L. M., Library of, i.

223
Bamett, John, ii. 137, 139 ; his

Mountain Sylph ^ 149
Bamett, Morris, ii. 137
Bamum, Phineas Taylor: author's

acquaintance with him, i 220 — 222 ;

and the beefsteak, 239, 240
Barry, Sir Charles, and Paxton's

plans for the Great Exhibition

Buildings, i. 209
Bayard, Senator, i. 259 ; his anecdotes

of Western cowboys, etc., 260
Bayly, Thomas Haynes, and *' She

wore a wreath of roses," ii. 150
Bazaine, Marshal, in Mexico, ii. 6,

21,31
Beau, A, of 1836, ii. 78, 79
Beauvais, i. 152
Beers, Mr. Jan Van, and Goya's

*' Disasters of War," ii. 165
Beggars in France, i. 147, 148
Bellows, Rev. Dr., and Thackeray's

visit to America, i. 18, 225
Belmont, August, of New York, i.

215
Belt libel case, and the examination

of the author, ii. 119
Bennett, Mr., in Artaxerxes , ii. 128
Bennett, James Gordon, Author's

first interview with, i. 210, 211;

his hospitality to the author, 219
Bennett, Sir John, and a dinner at

the Old BaUey, ii. 211
Beranger, his glorification of Na-

poleonism, i. 189
Beresford, Inspector, and gambling

hells, ii. 95
Berryer, M. , defends Louis Napoleon,

i. 185
Bertolini's Restaurant, ii. 232

INDEX.

283

Beverly, William Roxby, his kind-
ness to the author at the Princess's
Theatre, i. 5, 6 ; his picture of a
scene in The Night Dancers, ii.
170

Bill-discounters {see Money-lenders)

Bishop, Mrs., in Rob Roy^ ii. 136

Bishop, Sir Henry R., ii. 131 ; and
Rossini, 140

Blackwood. Mr., and the suppers at
Ambrose*s Tavern, i. 82

Blanchard, Mr. , as "Gilbert Glossin"
in Guy Mannering, ii. 137 ; in The
Antiquary y 138

Blanchard, Laman, editor of the
Omnibus f i. 94

Blanchard, Sidney, i. 77, 94

Blomfield, Lord, i. 253

Bohemians, EngUsh, in Paris, i, 109,
110,115, 116—118; forty years ago
and now, 113, 114

Bosquet, General, ii. 31

Boulogne, A journey in 1839 to, i.
135 — 139 ; examination at the Cus-
tom House of, 141 — 144 ; the lug-
gage porters of, 141 ; Louis Napo-
leon's " invasion " of, 183 — 185

Braham, John, manager of St.
James's Theatre, i. 48 ; in the
Village Coqttette,60', inArtaxerxeSy
ii. 128 ; in Guy Mannei'ingy 137

Breach of promise case, A remarkable
defence in a, ii. 46, 47

Bread, Former price of, ii. 225

Brigands in Mexico, ii. 6, 7, 22

Brighton, Camera Obscura at, ii. 10;
a pantomime in 1835 at, 106 — 110 ;
scene in a drawing-room at, 145 ;
exhibition of John Martin's pic-
tures, 168

Brighton, Railway to, i. 199, 200 ;
coach-ride to, 202 ; early carriages
on the railway to, 205

British Auxilia^ Legion, The, ii. 91,
260

Brooks, Shiriey, i. 85 ; ii. 233

Brooks's Club, ii. 174

Brough, Robert Bamdibas, i. 21 ; one
of me "Anglo-Parisian Cockneys,"
111 ; his parody on "The iJow-
backed Car," 152

Brough, William, i. 21 ; one of the
Bohemian Coclaieys in Paris, 111

Brougham, Lord, ii. 214 ; at a meet-
ing in Yorkshire, 274 ; his dress,
275 ; his handwriting, 275
Browning, Robert, at a Cornhill

dinner, i. 30
Brunei and sleeping-cars, i. 238
Buckingham, Leicester, i, 21
Bunn, Alfred, his retort on Punchy i.

87—89
Burdett-Coutts, Baroness, ii. 145
Buren, Mr. John Van, i. 224
Burgoyne, Field- Marshal Sir John,

i.30
Busque, Madame, her creinerie in

Paris, i. 118, 215
Butt, Mr. Isaac, ii. 48
Bryant, Wm. Cullen, i. 225

Cafe -concerts in Paris, i, 178
Campbell, Lord, and the Old Beef-
Steak Club, ii. 214
Canada, Dispatch of British troops

during American War to, i. 212
Cantinih'e, A French, in Mexico, ii.

23, 24
Capias ad satisfaciendum^ The writ

of, ii 52, 53, 54, 57
Carteret, Sir Philip, and Samuel

Pepys, i. 155
Carlton House, The approach to, ii.

174
Cato Street Conspiracy, and Arthur

Thistlewood, ii. 93, 94
Cavaignac, General, ii. 31
Cenci, Beatrice, Apocryphal portrait

of, ii. 160—162
Ceylon, ii. 9
Chambers, Robert, i. 38
Chapin, Dr., of New York, i 220,

221
Chapultepec, ii. 4
Chase, Mr., i. 254
Children, Costumes of, ii. 257 — 259,

262, 263
Chiswick Parish Church, ii. 199
Chop-houses, Luncheons of City

merchants at, ii. 200 —202
Christian Commission, The, during

the American War, i 244
Christmas Days : Difficulty of recall-
ing the way they were spent, ii.

104, 105
Cider cellars, i. 21

284

THINGS AND PEOPLE.

Glare Market, Money-lenders in the
neighboorhood of, ii. 39

Clarif the Maid of Milan ^ Miss Maria
Tree in, ii. 137

Clifford's Inn, A dinner at, ii. 217, 218

Cloak, The Spanish, worn in Eng-
land, ii. 259—262

Clubs: Their development during the
reigns of George IV. and William
IV., iL 174 ; book on the subject
pubH8hedinl828, 175

Club, Century (New York), i. 225
Crockford's, li. 61, 84, 89, 94
Deanery, i. 10
Fielding, i. 20, 22

Old Beefsteak, ii. 175, 213—216

Reform, i. 34, 35

Keunion, i. 21
Coach -travelling from London to

Brighton, i. 202
Cobbett, WilUam, compared with

Dickens, i. 103, 107, 109; his

knowledge of the French language,

107 — 109 ; his denunciation of the

potato, ii. 220
Coffee, its introduction into England,

ii. 187
Coffee-house, Potter's, i. 7, 8 ; Peele's,

ii. 188 ; New Slaughter's, and Old

Slaughter's, 227 {seeuXso Taverns)
Cofre of Perote, The, ii. 9
Collins, Charles, Association of

Dickens with, i. 106
Collins, Wilkie, Association of

Dickens with, i. 106
Corabermere, Lady, ii. 145
Confederate army, Patriotic lyrics of,

i. 248
Conscripts in France, i. 149
Consort, The Prince, his blameless

example, ii. 94
Cook, Mr. Douglas, editor of the

Saturday lievicw^ i. 38
Cooke, Mr. Grattau, i. 58 ; ii. 130
Cooke and Wheatstone's Magnetic

Needle Telegraph, i. 199
Cooking taught in the author's child-
hood, ii. 219, 221—224
Cooks of the past : The chef at Fri-

cour's, ii 228, 229 ; Soyer, 240—

249; Charles Edme Fraucatelli,

249, 250

" Copi)er captains," ii. 60, 92

Collecting-boxes for charitable so-
cieties, i 1?7, 138

Comhill Magazine^ its commence-
ment, i. 28

Corsiean Brothers, The, L 100

Costumes of the past : Their great

^ variety , ii. 252 ; of children, 253 —
257 ; of schoolboys in Paris, 258 ;
of schoolboys in England, 259,
264 ; cloaks of Spanish origin, 259,
262, 263

Cotton, Sir Vincent, and the Brighton
coach, i. 202

Cotton famine. The, i. 212

Covent Garden Theatre^ Harlequin
and Friar Bacon at, li. 113 ; de-
stroyed by fire J 123

Coyne, Stirling, i. 21

Crampton, Mr., and the American
Secretaiy of State, i. 250

Crampton, Sir John, i. 253 ; ii. 139

Crepieux- Jamin, M., on handwriting,
ii. 268, 272

Crimean War, and W. H. Russell's
letters to the TimeSy i 125; and
the work of Florence Nightingale,
125

Crockford's, ii. 61, 84, 89 ; broken
up, 94

Crmkshank, George : Author's intro-
duction to him, i. 58 ; his illustra-
tions of "Jack Sheppard," ii. 157

Cruikshank, Isaac Robert, his por-
trait of Joseph Grimaldi, ii. 113

Crystal Palace, and Sir Joseph Pax-
ton's plans, i. 208, 209

Cumbres, The, ii. 4, 9, 22

Cunard Line, The, i. 213, 214

Custom House at VentimigUa, ii. 156

Custom House officers at Boulogne,
i. 139, 142—144 ; in America, 234—
236

Daily Telegraph, Boxing night,
article on the Drury Lane panto-
mime for, ii. 122; article on the
expediency of appointing a public
prosecutor, 276

Dance, Charles, ii. 233

Debt, Imprisonment for, ii. 53 — 69

Debtors' Act of 1869, its effect on

INDEX.

285

the money-lending profession, ii.
37

Delafield, Mr., and Covent Garden
Theatre, ii. 124

Delavigne, Casimir, author of ** La
Parisienne,** i 150 ; ii. 148

Derby, The : A German professor
and the winners, ii. 103

Dibdin, Charles, and The Lord of the
Manor, ii. 132

Dicey, Edward, i. 226

Dickens, Charles : And Thackeray, i.
3 ; myths regarding him, 46 ; his
greatness, 47 ; writes the Ubretto
of The Villoffe Coquettes, 48, ii.
127 ; the author's first impressions
of him, i 50, 51 ; his appearance
and dress as a yoimg man, 51 ; his
portrait by Daniel Maclise, 51 ;
the dawn of his popularity, 51 —
54 ; early experiences, 52, 53 ;
acquaintance with the author's
family, 54 ; writes The Strange
Gentleman^ 55 ; dramatised ver-
sions of his "Oliver Twist" and
** Nicholas Nickleby," 55, 56; his
first successes in the United States,
56 ; opinion of the author's
sketches, 62 ; his appearance in
middle life, 60, 74 ; his editorship
oiHottsehold Words, and his accept-
ance of contributions from the
author, 67—82 ; his conversational
powers compared with those of
Thackeray, 75^ 76; hatred of
shams, 77 ; his imitators, 77 ;
chairman of Hottsehold Words
dinners, 84, 90; fondness for
entertaining police-officers, 95, 96;
his trips to Taris, 97; absence of
Gullicisms in his writings, 103;
good - humoured contempt for
foreigners, 104; lack of apprecia-
tion for *'Hi^h Art," 105 ; fond-
ness for Continental travel, 106;
association with Wilkio and Charles
Collins, 106; French scholarship,
107 ; compared with Cobbett, 103,
107, 108: slight acquaintance with
IVench literature, 108, 109 ; visits
to Paris between 1851 and 1855
and fiutemising with the "Anglo-
Parisian cockneys," 112, 113;

breakfast in Paris with the author,
123—126; ** getting up" Macau-
lay's "history," 124, 125; liking
for old-fashioned hotels, 126, 127 ;
and Victor Hugo, 128 ; partiality
for the Palais Iloyal restam*ants,
130; love for the theatre, 131, 132 ;
portrait bv Ary Scheffer, 132 ; on
the men of the United States, 265;
his practical knowledge of legal
processes illustrated m "Pick-
wick," ii 56 ; at a dinner at the
Freemasons' Tavern, 57 ; the
assimilative {KDwer of his genius,
76 ; his pictures of fast me and
his ideal fiunkey, 75, 76 ; and the
"Life of Joseph Grimaldi," 113;
his autograph, 271, 272

Dickens, Junior, Charles, dinner
given on his departure for China,
li. 56

Diet of schoolboys in Paris, ii. 191 —
194

Biligoice, Travelling in France by,
i. 145—154

Dinners : Of schoolboys in Paris, ii.
193 ; in a Pestalozzian academy,
195 — 198 ; at City chop-houses,
200 — 202; at an eating-house on
Holbom Hill, 202 ; at alamode
beef shops, 202—204; at the
" Thirteen Cantons," 203, 204 ; at
Williams's Boiled Beef House,
205 — 209 ; in the dining-room of
the Old Bailey Court, 210—213 ;
at Clifford's Inn, 217, 218 ; at the
old Beefsteak Club, 213—216 ; at
the mess-room, St. Jameses
Palace, in the Bank of England,
and at the Tower, 218

"Dixie," and other lyrics of the
Confederate army, i. 248

Dormer, Nicholas, and the Holy
Well at the " Old Dog" Tavern,
ii. 179, 180

D'Orsay, Count Alfred, ii. 78

Doyle, Kichard, at "Soyer's Sym-
posium," i. 13 ; 44, 59

Draughtsmen, Kail way, their earn-
ings during the railway mania, i.
204, 205

Drinking habits in former times, ii.
182, 185, 186, 202

286

THINGS AND PEOPLE.

Drunkenness, Punishment in the
Federal army for, i. 242 ; its
decrease in London, ii. 71, 73

Drury Lane Theatre, Za-Ze-Zi-Zo-
Zoo At, u, 114, 115

Dufferin, Lord, L 253 ; ii. 145

Dumas the younger, Alexandre, i.
129, 188

Duruset, Mr., in The Antiquary^ ii.
1(38

Duval, Claude, and Great Swallow
Street, ii. 174

ificole de Natation, Paris, i. 179

Edwards, Mr. Henry Sutherland :
One of the " Anglo-Parisian Cock-
neys," i. Ill ; contributes to the
FigarOy 111 ; business transactions
in Paris, 116

Egan, Pierce, his description of
" fast " life in London, ii. 72

Egerton, Mr. and Mrs., in Roh Roy,
ii. 136

EUerton, Mr. John Lodge, composer
of the '* Evening Gun," ii. 144

EUiot, Sir Henry, i. 253

Ellis, Mr. George, i. 100 ; ii. 120

Emeiy, Sam, i. 21 ; in Guy Manner-
inffj ii. 137; in T/ie Antiquary,
138

Epicure, A vision appearing to an,
ii. 251

Essex, Countess of, and her nieces, ii.
129

Evans, General Sir de Lacy, and the
British Legion, ii. 91, 260

Evans's Supper Rooms, i. 86

Evarts, Mr. William Maxwell, Anec-
dote told by, i. 259, 260

Evening dress. Influence on manners
of, ii. 73

Fashions in the early part of the
Queen's reign, i. 61 ; at the present
time, 135

Fast life of the past : different from
that of the present, ii. 70, 71, 73;
reaction during the Restoration,
71 ; the Whipping Toms and Mo-
hocks, 71 ; as depicted by Pierce
Egan, 72; in "Nicholas Nickleby,"
74—76 ; in St. Giles's, 80 ; practi-
cal jokes of the "Mad Marquis"
and the Hon. Billy D , 80—86 ;

gambling, 86 — 96 ; night-houses,
and the condition of the Haymarket,
96—102

Faucit, Mrs., in The Antiquary , ii.
138

Federal army during American War :
Mode of punishment for drunken-
ness, i. 242 ; teetotalismand smug-
gled drinks, 243 ; care bestowed by
tiie Sanitary Commission and the
Christian ConmiissioiL 244 ; ab-
sence of corporal punishment, 245 ;
" spread-eagling,'' 245 ; influence
of Puritanism, 247 ; verses adapted
to the tune of " John Brown," 247,
248

Field, Inspector, i. 95, 96

Fielding Club, Author's meeting with
Thackeray at the, i. 22, 23

Fielding's burlesque of Tom Thumb
the Great, n. 133

Fieri facias, The writ of, ii. 52, 53

" Filthy bluebeUies," i. 237, 246

Fitzwilliam, Mr., in The Heart of
Midlothian, ii. 138

Fleet Prison, The, ii. bb, 56, 58, 65

Forey, General, ii. 31

Forster, John, i. 29 ; allusion to his
" Life " of Dickens, 49

Francatelli, Charles Edme, ii. 249

France : Gendarmes, i. 140, 141 ;
passports, 142; Custom House, 141,
142 ; travelling by diligence, 145 —
154 ; beggars, 147 ; poplar-bor-
dered roads, 148; viUfiges, 148;
conscripts, 149 ; and Mexico, ii.
30, 31 ; usurers amongst the peas-
ants, 39

Francis, John Deffett, i. 21

Freemasons' Tavern, Dinner in hon-
om- of Charles Dickens, jr., at, ii.
56

French usurer. Anecdote of a, ii, 33,
34

Fretillon, Madame, ii. 79 ; and the
"Mad Marquis," 85

Frias, Duke of, ii. 139

Fricour's Restaurant, ii. 227, 228

Gallen^a, Antonio, i. 268

Gambluig : On American Steamers,
i. 240, 241 ; at Madame Une Telle's
establishment, ii. 87—89 ; at Crock-

INDEX.

287

ford's 89 ; at houses in the neigh-
bourhood of Leicester Square, 90 ;
the " Greeks," 90—92; Jack Thur-
tell and his victim, 92, 93 ; and
Arthur Thistlewood, 93, 94 ; break-
inff-up of the " hells," 95

Gamck Club, The, i. 3

Garrick's Head Hotel, ii. 123

Gaskell, Mrs., a contributor to JJbiw^-
hold TFordSf i. 85

Gendarmes,^. 140, 141

Geometry in the training of an artist,
i. 148

George IV., Libel by William Hone
on, ii. 173

George Barnwell^ played at Brighton,
ii. 107

Gilchrist, Dr., ii. 150

Giovanni in London, at the Lyceum
Theatre, ii. 136

Goldsmith, Oliver, and the '*01d
Dog'' Tavern, ii. 180

Gore House, taken by Aleicis Soyer,

1. i.£i

Goya y Lucientes, Don Francisco,

Etchings by, ii. 164—166
Graham, junior, Janies Lorimfer, 1.

222
Grant, General, his taciturnity,

ii. 11 ; his knowledge of Mexico,

Great Exhibition, of 1851, and the

transformation of Gore House, i.

12 ; Sir Joseph Paxton's design for,

207, 208
Great Swallow Street, demolished

for the construction of Regent

Street, ii. 173
" Greeks," Gamesters, ii. 90—92
Greeley, Horace, amongst the London

Bohemians in Paris, i. 118, 215;

renewal of author's acquaintance

with, 220
" Greenbacks," Issue of, i. 229
" Greybacks," i. 237
Grimaldi, Joseph, ii. 113
Grisi, Madame, ii. 225 ; a benefit of

hers at Her Majesty's Theatre, 263
Gruneisen, Mr., ii. 262
Guizot, M., applies to the British

Government for the restoration of

the ashes of Napoleon I. to France,

i. 190

Guy Mannering, Miss Genevieve

Ward in, ii. 137
Gye, Frederick, Handwriting of, ii.

278, 279

Hackney coaches of 1839, i. 133,
134

Hall, Mr. Sydney, ii. 262

Hallswelle, Keely, i. 72

Handwriting : As an index of char-
acter, ii. 268, 270 ; smallness of
the author's, 269, 270; Charles
Dickens's, 271, 272 ; Lord Brough-
am's, 275, 276 ; Beresford Hope's,
276; Walter Thombury's, 276;
Thackeray's, 277 ; Douglas Jer-
rold's, 277 ; Sir Arthur Helps',
278 ; Charles Reade's, 278 ; Fred-
erick Gye' 8 and Charles Godfrey
Leland's, 279

Hannay, James, i. 22

Harlequin Billy Taylor, i. 100;
played at the Piincess's Theatre,
u. 120, 121

Harlequin and Friar Bacon at Covent
Garden Theatre, ii. 113

Harlequin Hogarth, ii. 120

Harlequin King Henry VIII., at
Covent Garden Theatre, ii. 121,
122

Harley, John Pritt, i. 50, 54 ; in The
Lord of the Manor, ii. 133, 134

Harper, the trumpet-player, ii. 130

Harris, Mr. Augustus, stage director
at Covent Garden Theatre in 1856,
ii. 121

Harris, Sir Augustus, ii. 121

Harrisse, Mr. Henry, i. 223

Hart, Mr. Ernest, i. 21

Havana, ii. 4 ; Opera House and
cigar manufactory at, 15

Hawkers in Paris, i. 157, 158, 161,
162

Havmarket, The, Its condition during
the days of the night-houses and
now, ii. 96—98

Heart of Midlothian, at the Surrey
Theatre, ii. 138

Helps, Sir Arthur, Handwriting of,
ii. 278

Hemans, Mrs., Melancholy tone of
her songs, ii. 153, 154

Higgins, Matthew, i. 31

288

THIJSrOS AND PEOPLE.

Higliwaymen, Hauuts in Great
Swallow Street of, ii. 173

Hogarth, Thackeray's opinion of, i.
24 ; author *8 proposed ** Life " of,
25, 27 ; the author's papers in the
Cornhill Magazine on, 28, 29 ;
lodging at the *' Old Elephant,"
ii. 177 ; his residejice in Leicester
Square, 232

Hogg, James, and the suppers at
Ainbrose's tavern, i. 83

Holliugshead, Mr. John, i. 21, 77

Holloway Prison, compared with
Whitecross Street Prison, ii. 68

Holy Well, The, and the ** Old Dog"
Tavern, ii. 179, 180

Hone, William, His Political Cate-
chiftm, and his oblique compliment
to George IV., ii. 173

Hook, Theodore, and Crockford's, ii.
94

Hope, Mr. Bereaford, i. 38 ; his hand-
writing, ii. 276

Home, Richard Henry, at the
Household Words dinners, i. 92;
his *' Orion " and other literary
work, 93

Hotels, Old-fashioned and modem,
i. 126, 127 ; at Washington, 235,
256 ; of Havana, ii. 14

Houghton, Lord, i. 30

Uousehold IFoi'ds, Author's con-
tributions to, i. 19, 20, 67—74, 77 -
82 ; anonymity of its contributors,
80, 81 ; dinners to contributors to,
84, 85, 90—95

Howe, Mrs. Julia Ward, Her words
for the tune of " John Brown,"
i. 247, 248

Hugo, Victor, and Charles Dickens,
i. 128

HuUah, John, and the Village
Coquettes^ i. 48, 49

Huugerford Market, Historical as-
sociations of, ii. 234 ; its architec-
ture and general arrangements,
235 ; disused as a market, 235 ; its
attractions, 236

Hunt, Leigh, at the Household JFordts
dinners, i. 90, 91 ; characteristics,
91 ; as a journalist, 92

Hurlburt, Mr. William Henry, i.
220

Imprisonment for debt under the
writ of Capias ad satisfaciendum,
ii. 53 ; illustrated in "Pickwick,"
54,65

Insolvency of gentlemen in difficul-
ties, ii. 62

Irving, Mr. Henry, ii. 1

Isclascihuatl, ii. 10 .

Iturbide, ii. 28 ; his two sons, 28, 29

Ivanoflf, M., ii. 225

Jerrold, Blanchard, i. 77; his "Life
of NajKjleon, III.," and other lit-
erary work, 94 ; residence in Paris,
and association with London Bo-
hemians, 110; industry in Paris,
116

Jerrold, Douglas, i. 44 ; at Kilpack's
Divan, 86 ; caricatured by the
author, 87, 88; his advice to the
author, 90 ; allusion to his "Pris-
oner of War," 104 ; his handwrit-
ing, ii. 277

" John Brown," Mrs. J. W. Howe's
words for the tune of, i. 247, 248

" John Doe and Kichard Roe," ii.
52, 53

Johnson, Andrew, Incident at inau-
guration of, i. 263

Johnson, Captain Cecil, i. 252

Johnson, Mr. Godschall, i. 252

" Joumey Due North," A, i. 102

Joyce, Q.C., Samuel, and Clifford's
Inn, ii. 217

Juarez, President, ii. 6, 30, 31

Kean, Charles, takes the manage-
ment of the Princess's Theatre, ii.
120 ; a humorous remark to his
wife, 121

Keeley, Mrs., as " Oliver Twist,"
and as " Smike," i. 56; as "Jack
Sheppard," 262

King's Bench Prison, Chancery pris-
oners in, ii. Qb

Kingsley, Charles, i. 29

Knight, Charles, at the Household
Words dinners, i. 90

Knight, Rev. Joseph Philip, and
" She wore a wreath of roses,"
ii. 150

" La Marseillaise," i. 150

INDEX.

289

"La Parisienne," Casimir Dela-
vigne's, i. 150

Labmche, M., ii 225

Laffarge, Madame, her trial, i. 181

Lamb, Charles, his remark respecting
John Braham, i. 48

Lamoriciere, General, ii. 31

Laudseer, Sir Edwin, i. 31

Lara, Don Miguel de Mailara Vicen-
telo de, ii. 1(53

Layard, Sir A. H., i. 253

Le Flo, General, ii. 31, 32

Leal, Valdes, his ** Dead Prelate," ii.
163, 164

Leboeuf, General, ii. 31

Leelercq, Miss Carlotta, as Colum-
bine at the Princess's Theatre,
ii. 120

Leech, John, i. 44, 59

Leighton, Sir Frederick, i. 30

Leighton, Mr. John, i. 14

Leland, Charles Godfrey, his hand-
writing, ii. 279

Lemon, Mark, i. 44, 59 ; his geni-
ality, 62 ; opinion of the author's
G^etches, 63 ; caricatured by the
author, 88

Zes Pilules da Liable, at Franconi's
Winter Circus, ii. 115—118

Lever, Charles, His allusions to
money-lenders, ii. 38

Levy, Mr. Jonas, i. 21

Lewes, George H., i. 30

Limmer's Hotel, ii. 171

Lincoln, Abraham: Simplicity of
his prandial arrangements, i. 254 ;
proclamation of the abolition of
slavery, 259 ; appearance and
manner, 264 ; his oiy humour, 265,
266

Linley, George, Melodies by, ii. 150,
151

Liston, in Rob Roy, ii. 136; in
Guy Mannering, 137 ; in The Anti-
quary, 138

Literary men. Money-lenders to, ii.
40

Lockhart, John Gibson, and '^Noctes
.^brosianse," i. 82, 83

Locock, Sir Charles, and the Old
Beefsteak Club, ii. 214

Loftus, Lord Augustus, i. 253

London and Brighton Railway,

Commencement and opening of, i.
199, 200 ; early carriages on the,
205—207
Long's Hotel, ii. 171
L(^e8 de Santa Anna, Don Antonio,
His characteristics, and his attempt
to enter Vera Cruz, ii. 19—21
Lord of the Manor, The, "Moll Fla-
gon "in, ii. 132, 133
Louia, King of Holland, i. 183
Louis Napoleon, His " invasion" of
Boulogne, i. 183—185; his subse-
quent career, 185, 186 ; his parent-
age, 183, 187
Louis Philippe, Policy of, i. 189, 191
Love in a J ulage, Aira in, ii. 135
Lover, Samuel, Versatili^ of, ii. 151
Lyceum Theatre, The, Giovanni in
London at, ii. 136; and the Old
Beefsteak Club, 213
Lyons, Lord, i. 214; his tact and
skill at Washington during the
American War, ^9, 250 ; his taci-
turnity and his numerous de-
spatches, 250—252 ; his good din-
ners, 252, 253

Macdonald, Marshal, Funeral of, i.

182
Mackay, Charles, i. 34, 268
Macready, William Charles, i. 110
" Mad Murquis," The, ii. 80, 82, 84 ;

at Marlborough Street Police Cbuit,

85,86
Maddox, Mr. John Medex, His em-
ployment of the author at the

Princess's Theatre, i. 6, 203; ii.

118
Madeleine, The, i. 159
Maginn, Dr. William, and the sup*

pers at Ambrose's Tavern, i. 82,

83
Magnetic Needle Telegraph, i. 199
Malet, Sir Edward, i. 251
MaUbran, ii. 145, 225
Man in the Moon, The, i. 64; ii.

233
Marble, Mr. Manton, Editor of the

New York World, i. 220
Maria di Rohan at Covent Ghurden

Theatre, U. 123—127
Markets, The fasdnations of, ii; 236
ManHaye of Figaro, ii 131

290

THINGS AND PEOPLE.

Marriott, Frederick, ii. 181

Marshalsea Prison : Claas of debtors
confined there, ii. 63

Martin, John, Pictures by, ii. 166—
168

Maximilian, Emperor, ii. 6

Maxwell, Mr. John, and Temple Bar,
i. 33, 34

Mayhew, Augustus, i. Ill

May hew, Henry, and his ^* London
Labour and London Poor,*' i 111

Mayhew, Horace, i. 44

Mayhew, Julius, 1. HI

Mexico : Souvenirs of a visit, ii. 1 —
4, 9 ; costume for horseback riding,
3 ; author's travelling outfit, 4, 5 ;
brigands, 6, 1, 22 ; reminiscences
awakened, 9, 10; and Q«neral
Grant, 11 ; and the dangers of a
voyage there during the American
War, 12, 14; the palace at the
capital, 2o, 26; catnedral, sacri-
ficial stone, and market of the

. capital, 27; notels, 28; abstemious-
ness amongst the upper classes of
the city, 29 ; the national beverage,
29 ; condition prior to the ar-
rival of Maximilian, 30

Midas ^ Song for Apollo in, ii. 135

Millais, Sir John, i. 30

Mohocks, The, of Queen Anne's
reign, ii. 71

Money-lenders : Their hardness and
rapacity illustrated, ii. 33, 34 ; ex-
aggerated ideas of their gains, 34,
35 ; Bacon's remark on their vocation,
35 ; their numbers diminished, 36 ;
risks of "kite-flying," 36 ; affected
by the legislation of 1869, 37;

. affected by abolition of purchase
in the army, 37 ; old customs of
lenders and borrowers, 38 ; at the
West End, about Clare Market,
and amongst French peasants, 39,
40; to literary men, 40; a "di-
dactic " specimen, 41 ; the tactics of
" Mr. Thorough," 42, 43 ; making
presents of food to clients, 44 ; de-
scription of " Mr. Quasimodo," and

. liis breach of promise case, 44—47 ;
"My Tommy's" hospitality and
busjiness practices, 47 — 50

Montholon, M^rquis de, ii. 32

Morelos. The Curay ii. 25
Morland, "Dicky," i 11
Mother (roose, ana Joey Grimaldi, ii.

113
Mountain Sylph, John Bamett's, ii.

149
Muloch, Mis Dinah, a contributor

to Household Words, i. 85
Murillo, and Valdes Leal's "Dead

Prelate," ii. 163
Murphy, Mr. Commissioner, ii. 48
Music impressed upon the mind in

infancy, ii. 143
Musical critics in 1836, Manners of,

ii. 129
" My Tommy," His career as a bill-
discounter, ii. 47 — 50

NaiKDleon I. : Parisian enthusiasm
for him in 1840, i. 187—189 ; in-
terment of his remains in Paris in
1840, 192—195

Napoleon UL in Algeria, ii. 141

Nash, the architect. Mis construction
of Regent Street, ii. 87, 173

Nassau, rendezvous for Confederate
agents during the American War,
i. 235

New York : Voya^ from England
thii-ty years ago, i. 213 ; laviwi ex-
pencutureon entertainments duiing
the war, 227—230

Nicholas, Emperor, and the parody,
" The Low-bred Czar," ii. 152

" Nickleby," Banquets given by, ii,
48 ; illustrations of fast hfe in, 74,
75

" Night-houses," ii. 96

Nightingale, Florence : Dickens's
appreciation of her work, i. 125

" Noctes Ambrosianaj," Origin of,
i. 82, 83

Norte, Description of a, ii. 16

North, Christopher, and the suppers
at Ambrose's Tavern, i. 82, 83

Norton, The Hon. Caroline, ii. 145

O'Connell, Morgan John, i. 21

O'Dowd, Mr. J. H., i. 220

Old Bailey Court, A dinner at the,

ii. 211—213
Old Beefsteak Club, ii. 175 ; a dinner

at the, 213—216

INDEX.

291

*' Old Dog" tavern, The : Its anti-
qpty, u. 178, 179 ; Pepys' allu-
sion, 178 ; allusion by Timbs, 179 ;
and the Holy Well, 179 ; excava-
tion of the supiKDsed well, 179,
180; its appearance, 183; its
accommodation, 184, 185

Omelettes, Inability of British people
to make, ii. 227

Operas of past years : Maria di
.Mohan, tL 123—127; Village
Coquettes, 127 ; Artaxerxes, 128—
130 ; Marriage of Figaro, 131 ;
The Lord of the Manor, 132 ; The
Quaker, 134; Love in a Tillage,
135 ; Mida^, 135 ; Giovanni in
Loftdon, 136; Rob Roy, 136; Guy
Mamtering, 137; The Antiquary,
138; The Heart of Midlothian,
138; the Doinino Noir, 148; the
Pre aux Chrcs, 148 ; the Ambassa-
drice, 148 ; the Fostillon de Long-
jumeau, 148; Siege of Rochelle,
149 ; The Mountain Sylph, 149

Orizaba, Peak of, ii. 9

Orleans, Duchess of, i. 172

Osborne, Lord Sidney Godolphin, i.
29

Paganini, ii. 145

Pagliano's Hotel, ii. 231

Pahnerston, Lord, and M. Guizot's
application for the restoration of
the ashes of Napoleon I. to France,
i 190; 214

Pantomimes: The autiior's first
experiences of them, ii. 106— HI ;
tricks in former days, 109 — HI ;
, remarks of a critic of ,1835, 111,
112; their degeneracy complained
of, 113; at Covent Garden, 113,
121 ; at Drury Lane, 114 ; in
Paris, 115 — 118; at the Princess's
Theatre, 118

Panton Street, Night-houses of, ii.
98—102

Paris : Dickens's frequent trips, i. 97 ;
English Bohemians, 109, 110—123;
Dickens's domicile, 124 ; restaur-
ants, 130; theatres, 131, 132;
journey from Boulogne by dili-
gence, 145—154; its condition in
1667, 155, 156 ; its streets in 1839,

156—163; street cries, 157, 158;
hawkers, 157, 158, 161, 162; the
Madeleine, 159; the Bue Boyale,
159, 160; Place de la Concorde,
160 ; the Champs ^lys^, 160, 161 ;
Pare Monceau, 163; a peaceful
Major - General, 165 ; sdioolboy
life, 166, 174, 177—180; a dis-
tribution of school prizes, 166, 167 ;
memories of the Bieign of Terror,
169, 170 ; wearing of whiskers and
moustaches, 170, 171 ; the Duchess
of Orleans, 172; the Prince
Imperial, 173; Anglophobia, 173
—175; ^cole de Natation, 179,
180; trial of Madame Laffarge,
181 ; funeral of Marshal Mac-
donald, 182; trial of Louis
Napoleon, 185 ; enthusiasm about
Napoleon I. 187, 188, 189; poUcy
of Louis PhiUppe, 189—191;
second funeral of Napoleon I., 192
— 195 ; pantomimes, u. 115—118

Parody, by Eobert Brough, on "The
Low-backed Car," ii. 152

Pany, Junior, Mr. John, His engage-
ment at St. James's Ilieatre, i. 47,
48, 50

Passpoi*t8, Examination at Boulogne
of, i. 142

Paxton, Sir Joseph, and his plans for
the Great Exhibition, i. 208, 209

Payn, Mr. James, i. 77; con-
tributor to Household Words, 94

P^lissier, General, ii. 31

Pepys, Samuel, and the condition of
Paris in 1667, i. 155

Persiani, ii. 225

Pestalozzian academy. Diet of boys
in a, ii. 194—198

"Piccadilly Saloon," The, ii. 97, 98

Pictures of the past: Impressions
made by them, ii. 155, 156 ; "Jack
Sheppard," 156 — 159; master-
pieces, 160; a portrait by Guide
Keni, 160—162; by Spanish
masters, 162—165; the "Dead
Prelate," 163, 164; "Los De-
sastres de la Guerra, 164 — 165 ;
Goya's picture on the "Inquisi-
tion," 166; Martin's "Eve of the
Deluge," "Joshua Commanding
the Sun to Stand Still," "Bel-

f^XGS Jyi> PEOPLE.

uidtha '■FaUof

Babflan," 167; Turner'* "Bnhi,
Steam, Knd Speed." " Jessicu
at the Window," tlio "Slave
Ship," lhB"01d Thnirain." tiiid
" Venice — gciiog lo the Ball." uid
" Retnmiiig from the Ball," 169 i
Clarkson Staufield'B aeashora scene
in .<rii hhH Galalra, and WiUiom
Beverly's scene in The ITwhl
Oamirt, H)9. 170

"Pklcwicfc," AUuacm to the opers-
tiou o( the wiil of Capiai ad mlit-
/krim-iHin in, ii. 54, fiS ; the
Chancerjr prisoner iu, 6>i

Pitt, Win., uid the foiled ainigiiata.

P™oi.taiBti,ti. id. U

Potato, The, the curse of the English

roiiST B vunoB JIUUHB, xts nun

7 ; its propriet<»j 8
Plinoa Imperial, iWi. 173
Prinffiet'ii Theatre, The: i. 6 : a

mtituuiime in i84<j, ii. US. 1I»;

H.irlr'i«,t>lli//<ri\v/i.-a,t,V>0. VH;

uuderOliiu'lus Keou's management,

120, 12t
Prior, Mr. Melton, ii. 262
frocter. Miss Adelaide, a contTibutor

to Mamrholil ll'miii. i. So
PnUmnn's auriage building works,

J^lqHi, ii, 29

J^iHch, and Mark Lemon, i. oQ, 62,

63 ; parody of froutiapiece by the

author, SH, H9
" Punch and Judy," ii. 100
Puritanism, Influence on American

Federal anny of, i. 247 ; reaction

aoainst it duriiiR the Beetoration,

li.71

QiiBtei; The, Aire in, ii. 134, 13,1
"Quuauuodo," Mr., money-lender.

His appearance and hie breach of

promise case, ii. 44—47
Queen's Messengers between Aiiiericu

and England, i, iii'i

Bnilway, London and BnghloD,

Comraeneemeut and opeuiug of, i.
199, 2O0 ; early carriages on the,

ao,5-ao7

Railway mania of lS4o, and the
laboaFB of drsughbmien, i. 201.
2(),i ^

Railways ; Signalmim of 1839, i. ISTJ
\m: electric tel(«mph on, 19D|1
Parliamentary trains on, 206 ; ew^JI
earnage8Dii.20j— 207;thosmDkiu« .
carrkee iunoration on, 207 ; m <
America. 2*}— 234 i

Boinforth, Miss, in AHarnia, E. I
128 '

RaiieUgh, Lord, and the Spaui>h,,
cloak, ii. 262

Raymond, Henry, Editor of Xii»
hri Timr,. i. 220

Beach, A;ngus B., i, 20 : and tfaa ,
3feH in Ihi Maori, Si \

Beade, Charles, Handwriting of, iL <
278 ,

Eeform Club, L 34, 3!> ^

for Uie conitruotion of, 173
Reign of Tenor, Memonea of the, i.

lOil, 170
Beui, Guido, A portrait by, ii. 160 —

Bigga and Corooran, Bankine firm of,

i.2.'i6
Rob Son, at Covent Garden Theatre,

ii. 136
Bomance of a waistcoat, ii, 264, 265
Homer, Miss, prima dmiiB, ii. 128
Bosaini, and Sir Henry Bishop's

Bowdyism fifty years ago, ii. 73
Rubini. M,,ii. 225
Russell, Admiral, L 86
Russell, William Howard, i. 38 : his
letters to the Tiiiin from the
_ Crimea, 125 ; in America, 268
song to the music o

baUik

i. 141, 142

Sacrilicios, ii. 16

St. Albans, Duchen of, ii

St, Clair, Mr,, in Ovy M

INDEX.

293

St. Denis, i. 153

St. James's Theatre, Engagements
of author's mother and Mr. John
Parry at, i. 47, 48

St. Thomas, ii. 19, 21

Sanitary Commission during Ameri-
can War, i. 244

Santsbury, Mr. George, ii. 134

Sargent, Mr. G. F., ii. 262

/Saturday Meview, Its treatment of
the author, i 38

Scheflfer, Aiy, His portrait of Charles
Dickens, i. 132

Schoolboy Ufe in Paris, i. 166, 174,
177—180 ; ii. 191—194

Seacole, Mrs., ii. 24

•* Secesh " officers, i. 236

Semaphore on the roof of the Ad-
miralty, i. 201

Serjeants' Inn, and processes against
debtors, ii. 56

Seville, Pictures in the Church of La
Caridad at, ii. 163

Seward, Mr., Nephew of W, H.
Seward, i. 267

Seward, William H., i. 215, 254;
characteristics, 266, 267 ; his opinion
of the English Press, 267, 268

Seymour, Captain Conway, i. 252

Sheffield, Mr., Secretary to Lord
Lyons at Washington, i. 251

Sheppard, Jack, Portrait in Wash-
ington of, i. 261, 262; ii. 158, 159;
and a face on the Aiviera. 156,
157

Sherreff, Miss, Frinia cUnma^ ii. 128

Siege of Rochelie^ Balfe's, ii. 149

Signalling, Railway, First system of,
1. 197, 198

Sikes, Mr., Designer of the cover of
Cor^ihill Mayaziney i. 28, 31

Simpson, Mr. William, ii. 262

Slavery, Its abolition in British
Colonies, i. 137, 217

Sleeping-cars, in America, i. 230,
231, 238; their originators, 238,
239

Smith, Albert : Takes the author to
the Fielding Club, i. 20 ; and the
Coitthill Magazitie, 29 ; and the
Man in the Moon, 64 ; ii. 233 ; his
" Great Hotel Nuisance," i. 126

Smith, Mr. George, i. 25, 27 ; ,his

payments for contributions to the
Cor nhill Magazine y 29

Smith, John Thomas, Author of " A
Book for a Rainy Day," ii., 234

Smith, Miss Julia, in Artaxerxesy ii»
128, 129

Smuggling in America during the
war, i. 236

Songs of the Past: The " Yemstchick
Song," ii. 142; "The Evening
Gun," 144 ; * ' The Bay of Dublin,"
145; "Entreat me not to leave
thee," 145; **Lascia ch'iopiango,"
145; "So Miss Myrtle is going
to Marry," 145; '* Les Com-
plinients de Normandie,''^ 146 ;
" L'Ange IJechUy" 147, 148 ; " La
Farisienney" 147; the "Magic-
wove Scarf," 150 ; " She wore a
wreath of roses," 150; "Con»
stance," "The Spirit of Love,"
and " Kathleen Mavoumeen," 151 ;
"RoryO'More," 151; "The Four*
leaved Shamrock," 152; "The
Low-backed Car," 152 ; " Through
the Wood," " rd be a butterfly,"
"Oh, give me back my Arab
steed," "Burial in the Desert,"
and the " Pilgrim Fathers," 153

Soyer, Alexis, turns Gore House into
a restaurant, i. 12; and Thack-
eray, 15 ; his journey to Scutari
and Balaclava, 101; ii. 248; his
offer to the author, i. 102; and
alamode beef, ii. 203 ; his dress, and
an introduction to hun in Hunger*
ford Market, 240—242 ; leaves the
Reform Club, 242 ; hia books on
cookery, 242, 243 ; his apartments
in Soho, 243, 244 ; his wife, and
her monument in Kensal Green
Cemetery, 244, 245 ; his miniature
kitchen and larder, 246 ; his char-
acter, 247 ; lectures at United
Service Institution, 248

"Soyer's Symposium," i. 12; Thack-
eray's visit to, 13 — 17

Spain, The British Legion in, ii. 91,
260

Spaniards,Pseudo-, in London, ii. 261

Spanish peasant song, ii. 142

" Spread-Eagling " in the Federal
army, i. 24o

294

THINGS AND PEOPLE.

'* SijungiDg houses : *' Bescribed by
Dickens and Thackeray, ii. 58 ; in
Ciirsitor Street and Bream's Build-
ings, 58 ; habits of inmates, 59 ;

. and the pathetic scenes witnessed,
60; and ** copper captains,'* 60;
their private apartments, 61 ; off
the Blackfriars Boad, 63

Spurs of Mexico, ii. 3, 4

Staniield, Clarkson, i. 110 ; his pic-
ture of a scene in Acts and Galatea
ii. 170

Staunton, Mr., i. 254

Steamboat traveUing in America, i.
239—241

Stephen, Mr. Leslie, and Thackeray,

1. £

Stephens, Miss, in Hob Moy^ ii. 136 ;

in Guy Mannerhig, 137; in the
• Atitiqttari/y 138
Stephenson, Bobert, and Sir Joseph

Paxton's plans for the Great
. Exhibition building, i. 208, 209
Sterry , Mr. Ashby, and the versatility
. of Samuel Lover, ii. 151
StratKjer, The, ii. 108
Street-cries in Paris, i. 157, 158
Sullivan, Barry, i. 93
Sumuer, Charles, at a dinner at

Thackeray's, i. 36, 37 ; his manner,

and his eloquence as a senator,

258, 259
Swan Tavern, Hungerford Market,

Eccentric people at the, ii. 237 — 239
Swearing, Habit of, in London, i.

135, 136 ; in France, 139

Taglioni, Maria, ii. 225, 226

Tamburini, M., ii. 225

Taverns of the past : Their transfor-
mations of to-day, ii. 172 ; the
"Monster," "Elephant and Cas-
tle," "Swiss Cottage," "Eyre
Arms," " Sol's Arms," "Angel,"
" Mother Redcap," 172 ; work of
demolition by Nash, 173 ; causes
of demoUtion, 174 ; " Old White
Hart," 175, 176; "Thatched
House," " Angel " (Strand),
" Crown and Anchor," " London
Tavern," " Clarendon " (Bond
Street), "Old Elephant," 176,
177; "Old Dog," 178, 180, 183,

184—187; "Old Betty's Chop
House," 179; the old "Hum-
mums," " Bainbow," and the
"Cock," 187; "Peele's Coffee
House," 188; "Blue Posts," 188;
* * S wan, ' ' Hungerford Market,
236

Tawell, the murderer, and the elec-
tric telegraph, i. 199

Taylor, Bayard, i. 222

Taylor, Sir Charles, i. 30 ; at a Corn-
/till dinner, 33

Tea, Former prices of, ii. 224

Teetotalism m the Federal army of
America, i. 243

Telegraph, Electric, on the Great
"Western Railway, i. 199

Telegraph, Magnetic Needle, i. 199

Telegraph, Wheatstone's Alpha-
betical, i 199

Temple JBar, Its commencement, i.
34

Tenniel, Sir John, i. 44

Tenostitlan, ii. 10

Terry, Kate, Miss, in a pantomime
at the Princess's Theatre, ii. 120

Thackei'ay, William Makepeace : As
drawn by Anthony TroUope, i 2 ;
and Charles Dickens, 3 ; the most
competent person to write his life,
3 ; and Mr. Edmund Yates 3 — 5 ;
his pseudonyms in Fraser^s Maga^
zitie, 9 ; at the Deaneiy Club, 11 ;
at " Soyer's Symposium," 13 — 17 ;
his remark to the " Professor " at
Gore House, 17 ; his lecturing tour
in the United States, 18 ; and Dr.
Bellows, 18 ; meeting with the
author at the Fielding Club, 22, 23 ;
his opinion of Hogarth, 24 ; as a
conversationalist, 25, 75 ; his vary-
ing moods, 26 ; commences Coru'
hill Magazine y 28; as a lecturer,

31, 32 ; as an after-dinner speaker,

32, 33 ; proposes the author as a
member of the Reform Club, 34,
35 ; removal to Kensington, 36 :
sees Napoleon at St. Helena, 38 ;
his jocular suggestion at a dmner
at Greenwich, 39 ; his death, 39 ;
characteristics, 40—44 ; his extrac-
tion, 43 ; his associates on the
ranch staff, 44 ; partiality for

INDEX.

295

patricuin acquaintances, 44 ; m3rths
regarding his individualitYf 46 ; his
: use of foreign words and expres-
sions, 103; nis description of the
sjecond funeral of Napoleon, 193 ;
his ideal flunkey, ii. 76

Thistlewood, Arthur, ruined by
. gambling, ii. 93, 94

Thomas, Mr. W. Moy, i. 77, 94

Thombury, Walter, i. 77, 94; his
handwriting, ii. 276, 277

Thomhill, Sir James, and the por-
trait of Jack Sheppard, i. 262 ; ii.
157

Thornton, Sir Edward, i. 253

"Thorough, Mr.," money-lender, ii.
42—44

Thurtell, Jack, and his victim,
Weare, ii. 92, 93

Tickler, Mr., and the suppers at Am-
brose's Tavern, i. 82

Tierra Caliente, Vegetation of, ii. 9,
10

Timbs, John, allusion to the "Old
Dog " Tavern, and the Holy Well,
ii. 179

Tom Thumb the Great at the St.
James's Theatre, ii. 133, 134

Tomlins, Frederick Guest, i. 21

" Trapbois," The, ii. 38

Tree, Miss Maria in Claris the Maid
ofMilaUy ii. 137

l^/'e«^ affair, The, i. 212

Troilope, Anthony, His portraiture of
Thackeray, i. 2 ; some of his cha-
racteristics, 30

Turner's pictures, ii. 168, 169

Tumham Green, Diet of boys in an
academy at, ii. 194 — 198

line Telle, Madame, G^ambling In-
ferno kept by, ii. 87 — 89

Yanderbilt, Commodore, i. 223

Yentimiglia, Custom House at, ii.
156

Vera Cruz, ii. 4, 15 ; a Norte off^ 16;
its people, streets, and unsamtary
condition, 17 ; French and Egyp-
tian troops at, 16, 18

Yemet, Horace, His illustrations of
the **Xife ?' of Napoleon I^-by M^
Xjaur^nt de I'Arddche, i. 189

Verrej's Restaurant, ii. 229, 230
Yestns, Madame, in Marriape of

Figaro, ii. 131 ; as Don Giovanm,

136
Victoria, Queen, Her influence on

the morals of the West-End, ii. 94
Village Coquettes, ii. 127
Villages in France, i. 148
ViUiers, Mr. Frederick, ii. 262
Vivian, Lord, i. 253

Waistcoat, A romance of a, ii. 264,
265

Walford, Mr., Allusion to the " Old
Dog " Tavern, and the Holy Well,
ii. 179

Walker, Frederick, i. 31

Ward, Miss Genevieve, at Havana,
ii. 15 ; in Guy Mannering, 137

Warner, Mrs., in Mob Jioy, ii. 137

Warren, Samuel, allusion to his
" Ten Thousand a Year," ii. 38

Washington: Festal aspect during
the war, i. 230 ; ability and hospi-
tality of Lord Lyons as British
Minister, 249—253 ; hospitality at
the White House, 253, 254; hotels,
255, 256 ; eloquent speech by Mr.
Sumner, 259 ; the Capitol, 263

West, Mrs. W., in jRob JRoy, ii.
137

" Wliipping Toms," The, of Charles
II.'s reign, ii. 71

Whiskers and moustaches in Paris, i.
170, 171

White, Mark Beresford, i. 11

White House, Washington, Hospi-
tality and cuisine at, i. 253, 254 ;
destruction of original edifice by
British troops, 263

White's Club, ii. 174

Whitecross Street Prison : The class
of debtors confined there, ii. 63,
64 ; its appearance, 63, 64 ; its
administration, 64 ; Chancery pris-
oners, 64, 65 : chaplain, 65 ; be-
quests to debtors, and purchase of
food and drink, 66 ; duties and
wages of stewards, 67 ; entei-tain-
ments, 67 ; an ** out-of -elbow
club," 68 ; artistic production of a

- prisoner, 68 ; hopelessness of in-
mates, 69

■PB^WVM

mmrmsism

296

TEINQ8 AND PEOPLE,

Wigan, Alfred, His French scholar-
Bnip, i. 15; in Tom Tkutnb the
Gi-eat, ii 134

Wilkins, Mr. Serjeant. *' bounces"
the jury in Mr. " Qiuurimodo*s "
breach of promise case, ii. 46,
47

Willard's Hotel, Washington, L 255

Williams's Boiled Beef House, Old
Bailey, Dinners at, ii. 205—209;
incident of the bairister and the
waitress, 208, 209

Willis, Nathaniel Parker, His cha-
racteristics, i 226, 227

Wills, Mr. William Henry, assistant

editor of Household Wbrdt. i. 73,

78, 90, 119
Wilson, Professor, and the suppers

at Ambrose's Tavern, i. 82
"Word with FuHch, A," L 88, 89,

100

Yates, Mr. Edmund, and his rela-
tions witii Thackeray, i 3 — 5, 99 ;
and City chop-houses, ii. 200
Tates, Frederick, as "Fagin,'* i 56
" Temstchick Song,'' The, ii. 142

Za-Ze-Zi-
Lane

Zi'Zo'ZoOy played at
Theatre, ii. Ill, 115

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