MRS. ROWE'S COMPANY.
I must be permitted to tell the rambling stories that ran parallel
during my experiences of Mrs. Rowe's establishment in my own
manner--filling up with what I guessed, all I heard from Lucy, or saw
for myself. Mr. Charles was a visitor at intervals who always arrived
when the house was quiet; and after whose visits Mrs. Rowe regularly
took to her room for the day, leaving the accounts and the keys wholly
to Lucy, and the kitchen to Jane--with strict injunctions to look after
the Reverend Horace Mohun's tea and his round of toast if he called--and
let him see the _Times_ before it went up to the general sitting-room.
On these days Lucy looked pale; and Jane called her "poor child" to me,
and begged me to say a few words of comfort to her, for she would listen
to me.
What a fool Jane was!
Visitors came and went. The serious, who inspected Paris as Mr. Redgrave
inspects a factory, or as the late Mr. Braidwood inspected a fire on the
morrow; who did the Louvre and called for bread-and-butter and tea on
the Boulevards at five. The new-rich, who would not have breakfasted
with the general company to save their vulgar little souls, threw their
money to the fleecing shopkeepers (who knew their _monde_), and
misbehaved themselves in all the most expensive ways possible. The jolly
ignorant, who were loud and unabashed in the sincerity and heartiness of
their enjoyment, and had more litres of brandy in their bedrooms than
the rest of the house, as Jane had it, "put together." The frugal, who
counted the lumps of sugar, found fault with the dinners, lived with the
fixed and savage determination to eat well up to the rate at which they
were paying for their board, and stole in, in the evening, with their
brandy hidden about them. Somehow, although there never was a house in
which more differences of opinion were held on nearly every question of
human interest, there was a surprising harmony of ideas as to French
brandy. A Boulogne excursion boat on its homeward journey hardly
contains more uncorked bottles of cognac, than were thrust in all kinds
of secret places in the bedrooms under Mrs. Rowe's roof.
The hypocrisy and scandal which brandy produced in the general room were
occasionally very fierce, especially when whispers had travelled quietly
as the flies all over the house that one of the ladies had certainly, on
one occasion, revoked at cards--for one reason, and one only. Free
speculations would be cheerfully indulged in at other times on the exact
quantity the visitor who left yesterday had taken during his stay, and
the number of months which the charitable might give him to live.
[Illustration: ON THE BOULEVARDS.]
After the general brandy, in degree of interest, stood dress. The
shopping was prodigious. The carts of the Louvre, the Ville de Paris,
the Coin de Rue, and other famous houses of nouveautés were for ever
rattling to Mrs. Rowe's door. With a toss of the head a parcel from the
_Bon Marché_ was handed to its owner. Mrs. Jones must have come to
Paris with just one change--and such a change! Mrs. Tottenham had
nothing fit to wear. Mrs. Court must still be wearing out her
trousseau--and her youngest was three! Mrs. Rhode had no more taste, my
dear, than our cook. The men were not far behind--had looked out for
Captain Tottenham in the Army List; went to Galignani's expressly: not in
it, by Jove, sir! Court paid four shillings in the pound hardly two years
ago, and met him swelling it with his wife (deuced pretty creature!)
yesterday at Bignon's. Is quite up to Marennes oysters: wonder where he
could have heard of 'em. Rhode is a bore; plenty of money, very
good-natured; read a good deal--but can't the fellow come to table in
something better than those eternal plaid trousers? Bad enough in Lord
Brougham. Eccentricity _with_ the genius, galling enough; but without,
not to be borne, sir. Last night Jones was simply drunk, and got a wigging,
no doubt, when he found his room. He looks it all.
We are an amiable people!
Happily, I have forgotten the Joneses and the Tottenhams, and the Courts
and the Rhodes! The two "sets" who dwell in my memory--who are, I may
say, somewhat linked with my own life, and of whom I have something to
tell--were, as a visitor said of the fowls of Boulogne hotels--birds
apart. They crossed and re-crossed under Mrs. Rowe's roof until they
hooked together; and I was mixed up with them, until a tragedy and a
happy event made us part company.
Now, so complicated are our treaties--offensive and defensive--that I
have to refer to my note-book, where I am likely to meet any one of
them, to see whether I am on speaking terms with the coming man or
woman as the case may be.
I shall first introduce the Cockaynes as holding the greater "lengths"
on my stage.