THE ART OF ROARING.
"Damn me, I will be a roarer, or't shall cost me a fall."--_Amends for
Ladies._
On the February morning when he rose from bed in the coal-house
attached to the haunted dwelling in Foster Lane, Captain Ravenshaw
waited about the yard for Moll Frith to return from her excursion of
the night. When she appeared, he gave her back the key to the gate, and
borrowed two angels from her. Armed with these, he bade her repent of
her sins, and hastened to Cheapside, turning eastward with the purpose
of finding out how and where his new friend, the scholar, fared in the
hands of the law.
Cheapside, which was in a double sense the Broadway of Elizabethan
London, was already thronged with people going about their business,
the shops and booths of the merchants being open, and the shopmen and
'prentices crying out their wares with the customary "What d'ye lack?"
At the great conduit, the captain pushed his way through the crowd of
jesting and quarrelling water-carriers who were filling their vessels,
and washed his hands and face. Looking about for a means of drying
himself, while the water dripped from his features, he espied a woman
with a pitcher, to whom the uncouth water-carriers would not give
place. The captain knocked several of them aside, gallantly took the
woman by the hand, led her to the fountain, and enabled her to fill her
pitcher. While she was doing this, he, with courteous gestures, took
her kerchief from her head and dried himself therewith; after which he
returned it with a bow so polite that, between her amazement and her
sense of flattery, she could not find it in her to say a word against
the proceeding.
Going on his way refreshed, the captain suddenly met Master Holyday,
who looked as unconcerned as if he had never been near a prison in his
life.
"What, lad, did not the watch take thee, then?"
"Yes, faith, and kept me all night in a cage, where I think I have
turned foul inside with the smell of stale tobacco smoke. I am come but
now from the justice's hall."
"Man, you've had a quick journey of it. By this light, you must have
found money in those new clothes, and tickled the palm of a constable."
"No; the justice might have sent me back to the stinking hole, for all
the money I had to give anybody. When he asked me my name, I bethought
me to reply, 'Sir Ralph Holyday;' which was no more than my right at
Cambridge, when I became a graduate there. But, seeing me in these
clothes instead of in black, the justice thought the 'Sir' was of
knighthood, not of scholarship. And so he said he could make nothing
out of the watchmen's stories, which agreed not. I then addressed him
respectfully in Latin; and, lest it might be seen that he did not
understand me, he got rid of me forthwith."
"We'll drink his health--but not yet. While I have money to show, we'll
bespeak lodgings, and so make sure of sleeping indoors, for a week o'
nights, come what may. These clothes will get us curtseys and smiles
from any hostess--except them that have already lodged me."
"Ay, we are fine enough above the waist, but our poor legs and feet are
sorry company for our upper halves."
"Why, we must see to that when we meet our four asses again. Meanwhile
our cloaks will cover us to the knees, and if we carry our heads high
enough, nobody will dare look scornful at our feet. Remember, we are
gallants while these clothes last; swaggering gallants, that give the
wall to no man. And while we go seek lodgings, I'll tell thee how thou
shalt earn thy share of these coxcombs' wastings. Hast ever travelled
abroad?"
"No," said the scholar, falling into the captain's stride as the pair
went westward.
"No matter. Thou hast read books of other countries, and heard
travellers tell of foreign cities?"
"Yes; I've read and heard much; and remembered some of it."
"Then bear in mind, you are a great traveller. Your gentleman that hath
not been abroad is counted a poor thing among gallants. Now these four
silken gulls have never been out of England, and they look sheepish
whene'er a travelled man talks of France or Italy in their company.
They would give much to pass for travelled gallants; to talk of French
fashions and Italian vices without exposing their inexperience. You
shall instruct 'em, so they may fool others as you fool them. I'll
broach the matter softly, and in such a way that they shall see the
value of it. Thus, while you fill 'em up with tales of the foreign
cities you have seen, we shall eat and drink at their cost. And so we
shall hold 'em when they be tired of the swaggering lessons I mean to
give 'em."
"Well, I will do my best. What I don't know, I will e'en supply by
invention. My stomach will inspire me, I trust."
They took lodgings at the top of a house in St. Lawrence Lane, not
far from its Cheapside end; and passed the time in walking about the
streets till near noon, when they went to dinner at an ordinary where
long tables were crowded with men of different degrees, who dined
abundantly and cheaply. The two companions finally repaired to the
Windmill tavern, where they had to wait an hour before their young
gentlemen appeared.
The four were now sober, and showed hardly as much relish in meeting
the captain as he might have wished. They cast somewhat rueful glances
at the clothes they had given away in their vinous generosity, and
which they had now replaced with other articles suitable to their
quality. They manifested no eagerness for lessons in swaggering, and
seemed at first to have forgotten any understanding they may have
formed with the captain in regard thereto.
But Ravenshaw was prepared for this apathy. He took the risk of
inviting the gentlemen to drink, and with the air of an accustomed host
he bowed them into the room to which a tapster directed him. He trusted
they would be of different mood when the time to pay the score should
come.
A little drinking, and a few of the captain's tales, warmed them up
to some enthusiasm for his society; and in an hour he had them urging
him to proceed straightway to their further education in the art of
roaring. After some reluctance and some unwillingness to believe that
their proposal of the previous night had been serious, he was persuaded
to consent. With the faintest grimace of triumph, for the eyes of
Master Holyday alone, who smoked a pipe temperately by the fire, he
rose and began by illustrating how your true bully should "take the
wall" of any man about to pass him in the street.
The arras-hung partition of the room served as a street wall. The
captain started at one end, Master Dauncey at the other. When the
two met at the middle, the instructor enacted an elaborate scene of
disputing the right to pass next the wall and so avoid the mud of the
mid-street. He showed how to plant the feet, how to look fierce, how
to finger the sword-hilt, what gestures to make; then what speeches to
use, first of ironical courtesy, then of picturesque abuse, finally of
daunting threat. Master Holyday, looking on from the fireplace, was
amazed to see how much art could be displayed in what had ever seemed
to him quite a simple matter. The captain went through every possible
stage short of sword-thrusts; but there he stopped, saying that roaring
ended where real fighting began.
"If your man has not given way by this time," said he, "and you think
he may be your better with the weapons, the next thing is to come
gracefully out of the quarrel, by some jest or other shift. This is
what many swaggering boys do, out of fear. When I do it myself, 'tis
because I would avoid bloodshed, or out of mercy to my antagonist. But
'tis, in any case, a most important thing in the art of swaggering; I
shall give examples of it in my next lesson."
He then caused the gallants, in pairs, to go through such a scene as he
had enacted. They made a foolish, perfunctory business of it at first,
though he schooled them at every moment in attitude, gesture, or look,
and supplied them with terms of revilement that made the scholar stare
in admiration, and sanguinary threats before which a timid man might
well tremble in his shoes.
It would not do to carry his pupils too far forward at a step; he must
keep them dependent upon him as long as possible. Nor was it safe to
tire them with repetitions. So he put an end to the lesson in good
time; and then, to hold them for the rest of the day, he set forth
the possibility of their learning to pass as men that had travelled
abroad. Master Holyday, while modestly admitting the extent of his
wanderings in foreign countries, showed some disinclination to the task
of imparting the observations he had made.
"For, look ye," quoth he, "I once had a gossip whom I was wont to tell
of things I had seen abroad. Like yourselves, he had never crossed
the narrow seas; but by noting carefully my talk, he was able to make
other people think he had travelled as far as I. There was one thing I
had told him, which I had chanced to forget afterward. A dispute arose
betwixt us one day, before company that knew not either of us well,
touching certain customs in Venice. By my not mentioning the thing I
had forgot, and by his parading it as a matter well known, which others
in the company knew to be the case, I was made a laughing-stock, and
he got reputation as a great traveller. And to this day he keeps that
reputation, all at my expense."
This ingenious speech brought the desired insistence; and that very
afternoon was begun, at Antwerp, an imaginary journey through the chief
cities of Europe, in which were seen many things more astonishing than
any foreign traveller had ever observed before.
It took several evenings to go through Flanders and France, and would
have taken more, but that, after the gallants had satisfied their
curiosity regarding Paris, they were in haste to arrive in Italy as
soon as might be. Italy was then the great playground of English
travellers; the fashions came from there, so did the inspiration to
art and literature; the French got their cookery and their vices from
Italy; the English imported some of the vices, but not the cookery.
While the scholar led his four charges from city to city by routes
often unusual and sometimes impossible, Captain Ravenshaw conducted
them stage by stage toward proficiency in swaggering. He showed
them how differently to bully their betters, their equals, their
inferiors; how to bully before company, how without witnesses, how
in the presence of ladies; how to overbear in every situation, from a
simple jostle in the street to a dispute about a woman; how to meet a
contradiction in argument, how to give and receive every degree of the
lie, how to intimidate a winner out of the stakes at a gaming-table;
and finally how, when the opponent was not to be talked down, either to
slip out of a fight or to carry one through.
The progress of the four would-be bullies in their fireside travels,
and their swaggering education, was accompanied by further improvement
in the dress of their instructors. At last the soldier and his friend
were able to go clad in breeches, stockings, shoes, shirts, ruffs,
and gloves, quite worthy of the cloaks, doublets, and hats they had
previously received. The four young gentlemen were now eager to try
their new accomplishments about the town. The captain postponed
the test as long as he could; but finally their impatience was so
peremptory that he had to consent.
Now the captain knew that if his four apes should make a failure of
their first attempt at swaggering, his favour with them were swiftly
ruined; conversely, a success would warrant his demanding a substantial
reward in money. Thus far his only payment, and Master Holyday's
likewise, had been in the shape of dinners, suppers, tobacco, and
clothes. The two had been compelled, from time to time, to put off
payment for their lodgings, and to temporise with their laundress;
and now their hostess's face wore a more and more inquiring look
each morning as they went out. Ravenshaw had, it was true, obtained
a little coin in the card-playing and dicing, by means of which he
had illustrated to his pupils the uses of roaring in those pastimes.
But this amount, small enough, he decided to lay out in ensuring the
desired success of his coxcombs in their first bullying exhibition.
He therefore made a sudden and secret excursion to the suburbs beyond
Newgate. After searching the lower taverns and ale-houses about Holborn
and Smithfield, he found, in a cookshop in Pye Corner, a man with
whom he forthwith entered into negotiation. This man was a burly,
middle-aged fellow, with a broken nose, a scarred cheek, a sullen
attitude, and a husky voice. While he talked, he frequently spat in
the rushes that covered the floor; and now and again he would finish a
remark with the words, added without the least sense, "And that's the
hell of it." He wore a dirty leather jerkin over other clothes, and his
attire was little better than Ravenshaw's had been before his change of
fortune.
After some talk, Captain Ravenshaw handed over some money to this man,
promised a further sum upon the issue of the business, received the
bravo's assurance that all should go well, and hastened back alone to
meet his companions at the sign of the Windmill.
It was evening when the party sallied forth, the four coxcombs as keen
for riot as ever was a colt for kicking up heels in a field. They would
have barred the street against the first comers, or sought a brawl in
the first tavern, but that Ravenshaw bade them save their mettle for
adversaries worthy of their schooling.
"I mean to pit ye 'gainst the first roarers of the suburbs," said he.
"Nothing short of the kings of Turnbull Street shall suffice ye, lads.
What think ye of Cutting Tom himself? I know where he and his comrades
take their supper nowadays. Save your breath for such; an ye roar them
down in their own haunts, it shall be heard of. Waste no wind upon
citizens or spruce gallants. Strike high, win supremacy at the first
trial, and you are made men."
With such counsel he restrained them until he had led them through
Smithfield to Cow Cross, near the town's edge.
Like a bent arm, lying northwestward along the fields toward
Clerkenwell, was the narrow lane of ramshackle houses called Turnbull
Street. Leaving his followers, the captain went into one of these
houses. He soon came back.
"'Tis excellent," said he. "Cutting Tom and his friends are in the
front room at the top o' the stairs. They are feasting it with the
hostess and some of her gossips. You four shall go up and claim the
room by right of superior quality. Master Holyday and I will stay below
in talk with the bar-boy so they sha'n't know I'm with you; but if need
be, call me."
"Nay, we shall want no help," said Master Maylands; but the quaver of
his voice belied his show of confidence.
"'Tis well," replied Ravenshaw. "A rare thing to roar these braggarts
from their own table, before the womankind of their own acquaintance!
Come."
A minute later the four sparks, huddled close together, and with
white faces, thrust themselves into an ill-plastered room where four
villainous-looking fellows and as many painted women sat at table.
These people suddenly ceased their loud talk and coarse laughter, and
one of them,--the broken-nosed rascal with whom Ravenshaw had that day
conversed in the cook-shop--demanded thunderously:
"Death and furies! Who the devil be these?"
"Your betters, bottle-ale rogue!" cried Maylands, somewhat shrilly, and
like an actor in a play.
"Betters!" bellowed the broken-nosed man, rising to his feet. "Plagues,
curses, and damnations! Does the dog live that says 'betters' to me? I
am called Cutting Tom, thou bubble!--Cutting Tom, and that's the hell
of it!"
"An you be called Cutting Tom," replied Maylands, taking a little
courage from the sound of his own voice, "'tis plain you are called so
for the cuts you have received, not given. The wounds in your dirty
face come not from war, but from bottles thrown by hostesses you've
cheated. Out of this room, dog-face!--you and your scurvy crew. 'Twould
take a forest of juniper to sweeten the place while you're in it. You
are not fit for the presence of such handsome ladies."
"A gentleman of spirit," whispered one of the ladies, audibly.
"What, thou froth, thou vapour, thou fume!" roared Cutting Tom.
"Avaunt! ere I stick you with my dagger and hang you up by the
love-lock at a butcher's stall for veal."
"Hence, thou slave," retorted Maylands, "thou pick-purse, thou
horse-stealer, thou contamination, thou conglomeration of all
plagues--!"
"Thou bundle of refuse!" put in Master Hawes.
"Thou heap of mud!" added Master Dauncey.
"Thou filth out of the street-ditch!" cried Master Clarington.
Meanwhile the women had scampered to the fireplace for safety. Cutting
Tom's three comrades had found their feet, and they now joined their
voices to his in a chorus of abuse, defiance, and threat; they beat
the table fearsomely with their sheathed swords. In turn, the young
gentlemen half-drew their blades and then pushed them violently back
again, and trod angrily upon the rushes. Cutting Tom's party had all
got to that side of the table farther from the door. The four intruders
therefore advanced to the table, and with terrible words belaboured
their adversaries across it.
"A step more," cried Cutting Tom, banging his sword handle upon the
table, "and I'll spit ye!"
"And roast ye after at the fire!" said one of his men.
The gallants showed that they could rattle their hilts upon the
innocent board as fiercely.
"Out of the room," shouted Maylands, "ere we pin ye to the wall and set
dogs on ye!"
This was but the beginning of the contest, which soon attained a
scurrility too shocking, not for Elizabethan ears, but for these
pages. Meanwhile, Ravenshaw and Holyday waited below. At last a noise
was heard in the passage above, and the four ill-favoured fellows
came bounding down the stairs. Three of them left the house at once,
but Cutting Tom, seeing that the gallants did not follow, stopped to
whisper with the captain.
"'Twas good as a play," quoth he. "We held our own awhile, as you bade.
Then we let 'em overbear us, and at last we feigned such fear they
said they'd e'en make us tie their shoes. 'They're tied already,' quoth
I. 'Then untie 'em,' said they. We untied 'em; and then they'd have us
depart a-crawling on our hands and knees; and so we left 'em, on all
fours; and that's the hell of it! I thought the women would have burst
a-laughing."
"Here's the rest of the money," said Ravenshaw, parting with his last
coin. "Now vanish, and come not here again this night, or you'll have
me to answer!"
Cutting Tom examined the money by the candle-light, and went his way
with a grunt.
"So far, good," said Ravenshaw, chuckling. "Our young cocks will think
themselves the prime swaggerers of Christendom."
"Until they come upon the truth," said Holyday. "The next men they
meet, they'll be for bullying; and then they're not like to come off as
well."
"But they shall meet no men this night. The ladies above will keep
'em here till they be too sleepy with wine for any desire of roaring.
We'll see 'em safe home, and to-morrow at dinner I'll ply 'em for a fat
remuneration. When that's in our pockets, they may learn the truth and
go hang. We'll hire a page to attend us, and we'll live like gentlemen.
We're lucky to have found 'em constant so long. Come; we'll up to them,
as if we happened in."
"Nay, not I, where there be women."
"Oh, plague, man, you'll not be long bashful afore these trollops!" And
he pulled the unwilling scholar after him by the arm.