Alsatia
Bred up, like a bailiff or a shabby attorney, about the purlieus of the
Inns of Court, Shepherd’s Inn is always to be found in the close
neighbourhood of Lincoln’s-Inn Fields, and the Temple. Some where
behind the black gables and smutty chimney-stacks of Wych Street,
Holywell Street, Chancery Lane, the quadrangle lies, hidden from the
outer world; and it is approached by curious passages and ambiguous
smoky alleys, on which the sun has forgotten to shine. Slop-sellers,
brandy-ball and hard-bake vendors, purveyors of theatrical prints for
youth, dealers in dingy furniture and bedding suggestive of anything
but sleep, line the narrow walls and dark casements with their wares.
The doors are many-belled: and crowds of dirty children form endless
groups about the steps: or around the shell-fish dealers’ trays in
these courts; whereof the damp pavements resound with pattens, and are
drabbled with a never-failing mud. Ballad-singers come and chant here,
in deadly guttural tones, satirical songs against the Whig
administration, against the bishops and dignified clergy, against the
German relatives of an august royal family: Punch sets up his theatre,
sure of an audience, and occasionally of a halfpenny from the swarming
occupants of the houses: women scream after their children for
loitering in the gutter, or, worse still, against the husband who comes
reeling from the gin-shop;—there is a ceaseless din and life in these
courts out of which you pass into the tranquil, old-fashioned
quadrangle of Shepherd’s Inn. In a mangy little grass-plat in the
centre rises up the statue of Shepherd, defended by iron railings from
the assaults of boys. The hall of the Inn, on which the founder’s arms
are painted, occupies one side of the square, the tall and ancient
chambers are carried round other two sides, and over the central
archway, which leads into Oldcastle Street, and so into the great
London thoroughfare.
The Inn may have been occupied by lawyers once: but the laity have long
since been admitted into its precincts, and I do not know that any of
the principal legal firms have their chambers here. The offices of the
Polwheedle and Tredyddlum Copper Mines occupy one set of the
ground-floor chambers; the Registry of Patent Inventions and Union of
Genius and Capital Company, another;—the only gentleman whose name
figures here, and in the “Law List,” is Mr. Campion, who wears
mustachios, and who comes in his cab twice or thrice in a week; and
whose West End offices are in Curzon Street, Mayfair, where Mrs.
Campion entertains the nobility and gentry to whom her husband lends
money. There, and on his glazed cards, he is Mr. Somerset Campion; here
he is Campion and Co.; and the same tuft which ornaments his chin,
sprouts from the under lip of the rest of the firm. It is splendid to
see his cab-horse harness blazing with heraldic bearings, as the
vehicle stops at the door leading to his chambers: The horse flings
froth off his nostrils as he chafes and tosses under the shining bit.
The reins and the breeches of the groom are glittering white,—the
lustre of that equipage makes a sunshine in that shady place.
Our old friend, Captain Costigan, has examined Campion’s cab and horse
many an afternoon, as he trailed about the court in his carpet slippers
and dressing-gown, with his old hat cocked over his eye. He suns
himself there after his breakfast when the day is suitable; and goes
and pays a visit to the porter’s lodge, where he pats the heads of the
children, and talks to Mrs. Bolton about the thayatres and me daughther
Leedy Mirabel. Mrs. Bolton was herself in the profession once, and
danced at the Wells in early days as the thirteenth of Mr. Serle’s
forty pupils.
Costigan lives in the third floor at No. 4, in the rooms which were Mr.
Podmore’s, and whose name is still on the door—(somebody else’s name,
by the way, is on almost all the doors in Shepherd’s Inn). When Charley
Podmore (the pleasing tenor singer, T.R.D.L., and at the Back Kitchen
Concert Rooms) married, and went to live at Lambeth, he ceded his
chambers to Mr. Bows and Captain Costigan, who occupy them in common
now, and you may often hear the tones of Mr. Bows’s piano of fine days
when the windows are open, and when he is practising for amusement, or
for the instruction of a theatrical pupil, of whom he has one or two.
Fanny Bolton is one, the porteress’s daughter, who has heard tell of
her mother’s theatrical glories, which she longs to emulate. She has a
good voice and a pretty face and figure for the stage; and she prepares
the rooms and makes the beds and breakfasts for Messrs. Costigan and
Bows, in return for which the latter instructs her in music and
singing. But for his unfortunate propensity to liquor (and in that
excess she supposes that all men of fashion indulge), she thinks the
Captain the finest gentleman in the world, and believes in all the
versions of all his stories, and she is very fond of Mr. Bows too, and
very grateful to him, and this shy queer old gentleman has a fatherly
fondness for her too, for in truth his heart is full of kindness, and
he is never easy unless he loves somebody.
Costigan has had the carriages of visitors of distinction before his
humble door in Shepherd’s Inn: and to hear him talk of a morning (for
his evening song is of a much more melancholy nature) you would fancy
that Sir Charles and Lady Mirabel were in the constant habit of calling
at his chambers, and bringing with them the select nobility to visit
the “old man, the honest old half-pay Captain, poor old Jack Costigan,”
as Cos calls himself.
The truth is, that Lady Mirabel has left her husband’s card (which has
been stuck in the little looking-glass over the mantelpiece of the
sitting-room at No. 4, for these many months past), and has come in
person to see her father, but not of late days. A kind person, disposed
to discharge her duties gravely, upon her marriage with Sir Charles she
settled a little pension upon her father, who occasionally was admitted
to the table of his daughter and son-in-law. At first poor Cos’s
behaviour “in the hoight of poloit societee,” as he denominated Lady
Mirabel’s drawing-room table, was harmless, if it was absurd. As he
clothed his person in his best attire, so he selected the longest and
richest words in his vocabulary to deck his conversation, and adopted a
solemnity of demeanour which struck with astonishment all those persons
in whose company he happened to be.—“Was your Leedyship in the Pork to
dee?” he would demand of his daughter. “I looked for your equipage in
veen:—the poor old man was not gratified by the soight of his
daughther’s choriot. Sir Chorlus, I saw your neem at the Levee; many’s
the Levee at the Castle at Dublin that poor old Jack Costigan has
attended in his time. Did the Juke look pretty well? Bedad, I’ll call
at Apsley House and lave me cyard upon ’um. I thank ye, James, a little
dthrop more champeane.” Indeed, he was magnificent in his courtesy to
all, and addressed his observations not only to the master and the
guests, but to the domestics who waited at the table, and who had some
difficulty in maintaining their professional gravity while they waited
on Captain Costigan.
On the first two or three visits to his son-in-law, Costigan maintained
a strict sobriety, content to make up for his lost time when he got to
the Back Kitchen, where he bragged about his son-in-law’s dart and
burgundee, until his own utterance began to fail him, over his sixth
tumbler of whisky-punch. But with familiarity his caution vanished, and
poor Cos lamentably disgraced himself at Sir Charles Mirabel’s table,
by premature inebriation. A carriage was called for him: the hospitable
door was shut upon him. Often and sadly did he speak to his friends at
the Kitchen of his resemblance to King Lear in the plee—of his having a
thankless choild, bedad—of his being a pore worn-out lonely old man,
dthriven to dthrinking by ingratitude, and seeking to dthrown his
sorrows in punch.
It is painful to be obliged to record the weaknesses of fathers, but it
must be furthermore told of Costigan, that when his credit was
exhausted and his money gone, he would not unfrequently beg money from
his daughter, and made statements to her not altogether consistent with
strict truth. On one day a bailiff was about to lead him to prison, he
wrote, “unless the—to you insignificant—sum of three pound five can be
forthcoming to liberate a poor man’s grey hairs from gaol.” And the
good-natured Lady Mirabel despatched the money necessary for her
father’s liberation, with a caution to him to be more economical for
the future. On a second occasion the Captain met with a frightful
accident, and broke a plate-glass window in the Strand, for which the
proprietor of the shop held him liable. The money was forthcoming on
this time too, to repair her papa’s disaster, and was carried down by
Lady Mirabel’s servant to the slipshod messenger and aide-de-camp of
the Captain, who brought the letter announcing his mishap. If the
servant had followed the Captain’s aide-de-camp who carried the
remittance, he would have seen that gentleman, a person of Costigan’s
country too (for have we not said, that however poor an Irish gentleman
is, he always has a poorer Irish gentleman to run on his errands and
transact his pecuniary affairs?), call a cab from the nearest stand,
and rattle down to the Roscius Head, Harlequin Yard, Drury Lane, where
the Captain was indeed in pawn, and for several glasses containing
rum-and-water, or other spirituous refreshment, of which he and his
staff had partaken. On a third melancholy occasion he wrote that he was
attacked by illness, and wanted money to pay the physician whom he was
compelled to call in; and this time Lady Mirabel, alarmed about her
father’s safety, and perhaps reproaching herself that she had of late
lost sight of her father, called for her carriage and drove to
Shepherd’s Inn, at the gate of which she alighted, whence she found the
way to her father’s chambers, “No. 4, third floor, name of Podmore over
the door,” the porteress said, with many curtsies, pointing towards the
door of the house, into which the affectionate daughter entered and
mounted the dingy stair. Alas! the door, surmounted by the name of
Podmore, was opened to her by poor Cos in his shirt-sleeves, and
prepared with the gridiron to receive the mutton-chops which Mrs.
Bolton had gone to purchase.
Also, it was not pleasant for Sir Charles Mirabel to have letters
constantly addressed to him at Brookes’s, with the information that
Captain Costigan was in the hall, waiting for an answer; or when he
went to play his rubber at the Travellers’, to be obliged to shoot out
of his brougham and run up the steps rapidly, lest his father-in-law
should seize upon him; and to think that while he read his paper or
played his whist, the Captain was walking on the opposite side of Pall
Mall, with that dreadful cocked hat, and the eye beneath it fixed
steadily upon the windows of the club. Sir Charles was a weak man; he
was old, and had many infirmities: he cried about his father-in-law to
his wife, whom he adored with senile infatuation: he said he must go
abroad,—he must go and live in the country—he should die or have
another fit if he saw that man again—he knew he should. And it was only
by paying a second visit to Captain Costigan, and representing to him,
that if he plagued Sir Charles by letters or addressed him in the
street, or made any further applications for loans, his allowance would
be withdrawn altogether, that Lady Mirabel was enabled to keep her papa
in order, and to restore tranquillity to her husband. And on occasion
of this visit, she sternly rebuked Bows for not keeping a better watch
over the Captain; desired that he should not be allowed to drink in
that shameful way; and that the people at the horrid taverns which he
frequented should be told, upon no account to give him credit. “Papa’s
conduct is bringing me to the grave,” she said (though she looked
perfectly healthy), “and you, as an old man, Mr. Bows, and one that
pretended to have a regard for us, ought to be ashamed of abetting him
in it.” Those were the thanks which honest Bows got for his friendship
and his life’s devotion. And I do not suppose that the old philosopher
was much worse off than many other men, or had greater reason to
grumble.
On the second floor of the next house to Bows’s, in Shepherd’s Inn, at
No. 3, live two other acquaintances of ours: Colonel Altamont, agent to
the Nawaub of Lucknow, and Captain Chevalier Edward Strong. No name at
all is over their door. The Captain does not choose to let all the
world know where he lives and his cards bear the address of a Jermyn
Street hotel; and as for the Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the Indian
potentate, he is not an envoy accredited to the Courts of St. James’s
or Leadenhall Street but is here on a confidential mission quite
independent of the East India Company or the Board of Control. “In
fact,” Strong says, “Colonel Altamont’s object being financial, and to
effectuate a sale of some of the principal diamonds and rubies of the
Lucknow crown, his wish is not to report himself at the India House or
in Cannon Row, but rather to negotiate with private capitalists—with
whom he has had important transactions both in this country and on the
Continent.”
We have said that these anonymous chambers of Strong’s had been very
comfortably furnished since the arrival of Sir Francis Clavering in
London, and the Chevalier might boast with reason to the friends who
visited him, that few retired Captains were more snugly quartered than
he, in his crib in Shepherd’s Inn. There were three rooms below: the
office where Strong transacted his business—whatever that might be—and
where still remained the desk and railings of the departed officials
who had preceded him, and the Chevalier’s own bedroom and sitting-room;
and a private stair led out of the office to two upper apartments, the
one occupied by Colonel Altamont, and the other serving as the kitchen
of the establishment, and the bedroom of Mr. Grady, the attendant.
These rooms were on a level with the apartments of our friends Bows and
Costigan next door at No. 4; and by reaching over the communicating
leads, Grady could command the mignonette-box which bloomed in Bows’s
window.
From Grady’s kitchen casement often came odours still more fragrant.
The three old soldiers who formed the garrison of No. 3 were all
skilled in the culinary art. Grady was great at an Irish stew; the
Colonel was famous for pillaus and curries; and as for Strong he could
cook anything. He made French dishes and Spanish dishes, stews,
fricassees, and omelettes, to perfection; nor was there any man in
England more hospitable than he when his purse was full or his credit
was good. At those happy periods, he could give a friend, as he said, a
good dinner, a good glass of wine, and a good song afterwards; and poor
Cos often heard with envy the roar of Strong’s choruses, and the
musical clinking of the glasses, as he sate in his own room, so far
removed and yet so near to those festivities. It was not expedient to
invite Mr. Costigan always: his practice of inebriation was lamentable;
and he bored Strong’s guests with his stories when sober, and with his
maudlin tears when drunk.
A strange and motley set they were, these friends of the Chevalier; and
though Major Pendennis would not much have relished their company,
Arthur and Warrington liked it not a little, and Pen thought it as
amusing as the society of the finest gentlemen in the finest houses
which he had the honour to frequent. There was a history about every
man of the set: they seemed all to have had their tides of luck and bad
fortune. Most of them had wonderful schemes and speculations in their
pockets, and plenty for making rapid and extraordinary fortunes. Jack
Holt had been in Don Carlos’s army, when Ned Strong had fought on the
other side; and was now organising a little scheme for smuggling
tobacco into London, which must bring thirty thousand a year to any man
who would advance fifteen hundred, just to bribe the last officer of
the Excise who held out, and had wind of the scheme. Tom Diver, who had
been in the Mexican navy, knew of a specie-ship which had been sunk in
the first year of the war, with three hundred and eighty thousand
dollars on board, and a hundred and eighty thousand pounds in bars and
doubloons. “Give me eighteen hundred pounds,” Tom said, “and I’m off
tomorrow. I take out four men, and a diving-bell with me; and I return
in ten months to take my seat in Parliament, by Jove! and to buy back
my family estate.” Keightley, the manager of the Tredyddlum and
Polwheedle Copper Mines (which were as yet under water), besides
singing as good a second as any professional man, and besides the
Tredyddlum Office, had a Smyrna Sponge Company, and a little
quicksilver operation in view, which would set him straight with the
world yet. Filby had been everything: a corporal of dragoons, a
field-preacher, and missionary-agent for converting the Irish; an actor
at a Greenwich fair-booth, in front of which his father’s attorney
found him when the old gentleman died and left him that famous
property, from which he got no rents now, and of which nobody exactly
knew the situation. Added to these was Sir Francis Clavering, Bart.,
who liked their society, though he did not much add to its amusements
by his convivial powers. But he was made much of by the company now, on
account of his wealth and position in the world. He told his little
story and sang his little song or two with great affability; and he had
had his own history, too, before his accession to good fortune; and had
seen the inside of more prisons than one, and written his name on many
a stamped paper.
When Altamont first returned from Paris, and after he had communicated
with Sir Francis Clavering from the hotel at which he had taken up his
quarters (and which he had reached in a very denuded state, considering
the wealth of diamonds and rubies with which this honest man was
entrusted), Strong was sent to his patron by the Baronet; paid his
little bill at the inn, and invited him to come and sleep for a night
or two at the chambers, where he subsequently took up his residence. To
negotiate with this man was very well, but to have such a person
settled in his rooms, and to be constantly burthened with such society,
did not suit the Chevalier’s taste much; and he grumbled not a little
to his principal.
“I wish you would put this bear into somebody else’s cage,” he said to
Clavering. “The fellow’s no gentleman. I don’t like walking with him.
He dresses himself like a nigger on a holiday. I took him to the play
the other night; and, by Jove, sir, he abused the actor who was doing
the part of villain in the play, and swore at him so, that the people
in the boxes wanted to turn him out. The after-piece was the ‘Brigand,’
where Wallack comes in wounded, you know, and dies. When he died,
Altamont began to cry like a child, and said it was a d——d shame, and
cried and swore so, that there was another row, and everybody laughing.
Then I had to take him away, because he wanted to take his coat off to
one fellow who laughed at him; and bellowed to him to stand up like a
man.—Who is he? Where the deuce does he come from? You had best tell me
the whole story. Frank; you must one day. You and he have robbed a
church together, that’s my belief. You had better get it off your mind
at once, Clavering, and tell me what this Altamont is, and what hold he
has over you.”
“Hang him! I wish he was dead!” was the Baronet’s only reply; and his
countenance became so gloomy, that Strong did not think fit to question
his patron any further at that time; but resolved, if need were, to try
and discover for himself what was the secret tie between Altamont and
Clavering.