behests of their Masters, or, in a hot fever of Fidelity, stand up for
them in Times of Danger or Desperate Affrays. Has there not ever been
brought under your notice that famous French Law Case, of the Court
Lady,--the Dame de Liancourt, I think she was called,--against whom
another Dame had a Spite, either for her Beauty, or her Wit, or her
Riches' sake? She, riding one day in her Coach-and-Six by a cross-road,
comes upon the Dame de Liancourt, likewise in her Coach-and-Six, both
ladies having the ordinary complement of Running Footmen. My Lady who
had a Spite against her of Liancourt whispers to her Lacqueys; and these
poor Faithful Rogues, too eager to obey their Mistress's commands, ran
to the other coach-door, pulled out that unlucky Dame de Liancourt, and
then and there inflicted on her that shameful chastisement which jealous
Venus, as the Poetry books say, did, once upon a time, order to poor
Psyche; and which, even in our own times, so I have heard, Madame du
Barry, the last French King's Favourite, did cause Four Chambermaids to
inflict on some Lady about Versailles with whom she had cause of Anger.
At any rate, the cruel and Disgraceful thing was done, the Dame sitting
in her coach meanwhile clapping her hands. O! 'twas a scandalous thing.
The poor Dame de Liancourt goes, Burning with Rage and Shame, to the
Chief Town of the Province, to lodge her complaint. The matter is
brought before the Parliament, and in due time it goes to Paris, and is
heard and re-heard, the Judges all making a Mighty to-do about it; and
at last, after some two years and a half's litigation, is settled in
this wise. My Lady pays a Fine and the Costs, and begs the Dame de
Liancourt's pardon. But what, think you, becomes of the two poor
Lacqueys that had been rash enough to execute her Revengeful Orders?
Why, at first they are haled about from one gaol to another for Thirty
Months in succession, and then they are subjected to the question,
Ordinary and Extraordinary--that is to say, to the Torture; and at last,
when my Lady is paying her fine of 10,000 livres, I think, or about Four
Hundred Pounds of our Money, the Judges at Paris pronounce against these
two poor Devils of Footmen,--that were as innocent of any Malice in the
Matter as the Babe that is unborn, and only Did what they were
Told,--that one is to be Hanged in the Place de Greve, and the other
banished to the Galleys, there to be chained to the Oar for life. A fine
Encouragement truly for those who think that, for good Victuals and a
Fine Livery, they are bound to obey all the Humours and Caprices, even
to the most Unreasonable and most Arbitrary, of their Masters and
Mistresses.
We were in no great Mood, after this Affair was over, to remain in
Vienna. Mr. Pinchin did at first purpose journeying through the Province
of Styria by Gratz, to a little town on the sea-coast, called
Trieste,--that has much grown in importance during these latter
days,--and so crossing the Gulf to Venice; but he abandoned this Scheme.
His health was visibly breaking; his Funds, he said, were running low;
he was more anxious about his Mamma than ever; and 'twas easy to see
that he was half-weary and half-afraid of the Chaplain and Myself, and
that he desired nothing Half so Much as to get Rid of us Both. So we
packed up, and resumed our Wanderings, but in Retreat instead of
Advance. We passed, coming back, through Dresden, where there are some
fine History Pictures, and close to which the Saxon Elector had set up a
great Factory for the making of painted Pottery Ware: not after the
monstrous Chinese Fashion, but rather after the Mode practised with
great Success at our own Chelsea. The manner of making this Pottery was,
however, kept a high State Secret by the government of the then Saxon
Elector; and no strangers were, on any pretence, admitted to the place
where the Works were carried on; so of this we saw nothing: and not
Sorry was I of the privation, being utterly Wearied and palled with much
gadding about and Sight-seeing. So post to Frankfort, where there were a
many Jews; and thence to Mayence; and from thence down the grand old
River Rhine to the City of Cologne; whence, by the most lagging stages I
did ever know, to Bruxelles. But we stayed not here to see the
sights--not even the droll little statue of the Mannikin (at the corner
of a street, in a most improper attitude; and there is a Group quite as
unseemly in one of the Markets, so I was told, although at that time we
were fain to pass them by), which Mannikin the burgesses of Bruxelles
regard as a kind of tutelary Divinity, and set much greater store by
than do we by our London Stone, or Little Naked Boy in Panyer Alley. But
it is curious to mark what strange fanteagues these Foreigners run mad
after.
At Bruxelles my Master buys an old Post Carriage--cost him Two Hundred
and Fifty Livres, which was not dear; and the wretched horses of the
country being harnessed thereto, we made Paris in about a week
afterwards. We alighted at a decent enough kind of Inn, in the Place
named after Lewis the Great (an eight-sided space, and the houses
handsome, though not so large as Golden Square). There was a great sight
the day after our coming, which we could not well avoid seeing. This was
the Burial of a certain great nobleman, a Duke and Marshal of France,
and at the time of his Decease Governor of the City of Paris. I have
forgotten his name; but it does not so much matter at this time of day,
his Grace and Governorship being as dead as Queen Anne. It began (the
Burial), on foot, from his house, which was next door but one to our
Inn, and went first to his Parish Church, and thence, in coaches, right
to the other end of Paris, to a Monastery where his Lordship's Family
Vault was. There was a prodigious long procession of Flambeaux; Friars,
white, black, and gray, very trumpery, and marvellous foul-looking; no
plumes, banners, scutcheons, led horses, or open chariots,--altogether
most mean obsequies. The march began at eight in the evening, and did
not end till four o'clock the next morning, for at each church they
passed they stopped for a Hymn and Holy Water. And, by the way, we were
told that one of these same choice Friars, who had been set to watching
the body while it lay in state, fell asleep one night, and let the
Tapers catch fire of the rich Velvet Mantle, lined with Ermine and
powdered over with gold Flower-de-Luces, which melted all the candles,
and burnt off one of the feet of the Departed, before it wakened the
watcher.
It was afterwards my fortune to know Paris very well; but I cannot say
that I thought much of the place on first coming to it. Dirt there was
everywhere, and the most villanous smells that could be imagined. A
great deal of Show, but a vein of Rascal manners running through it all.
Nothing neat or handsomely ordered. Where my Master stood to see the
Burial Procession, the balcony was hung with Crimson Damask and Gold;
but the windows behind him were patched in half-a-dozen places with
oiled paper. At Dinner they gave you at least Three Courses; but a third
of the Repast was patched up with Sallets, Butter, Puff-paste, or some
such miscarriages of Dishes. Nothing like good, wholesome, substantial
Belly-Timber. None but Germans, and other Strangers, wore fine clothes;
the French people mainly in rags, but powdered up to their eyebrows.
Their coaches miserably horsed, and rope-harnessed; yet, in the way of
Allegories on the panels, all tawdry enough for the Wedding of Cupid
and Psyche. Their shop-signs extremely laughable. Here some living at
the Y Gue; some at Venus's Toilette; and others at the Sucking Cat.
Their notions of Honour most preposterous. It was thought mighty
dishonourable for any that was a Born Gentleman not to be in the Army,
or in the King's Service, but no dishonour at all to keep Public Gaming
Houses; there being at least five hundred persons of the first Quality
in Paris living by it. You might go to their Houses at all Hours of the
Night, and find Hazard, Pharaoh, &c. The men who kept the gaming-tables
at the Duke of Gesvres' paid him twelve guineas a night for the
privilege. Even the Princesses of the Blood were mean enough to go
snacks in the profits of the banks kept in their palaces. I will say
nothing more of Paris in this place, save that it was the fashion of the
Ladies to wear Red Hair of a very deep hue; these said Princesses of the
Blood being consumedly carroty. And I do think that if a Princess of the
Blood was born with a Tail, and chose to show it, tied up with
Pea-Green Ribbon, through the Placket-hole of her Gown, the Ladies, not
only in France, but all over the World, would be proud to sport Tails
with Pea-Green Ribbons,--or any other colour that was the mode,--whether
they were Born with 'em or not.
Nothing more that is worthy of Mention took place until our leaving
Paris. We came away in a calash, that is, my Master and the Chaplain,
riding at their Ease in that vehicle, while I trotted behind on a little
Bidet, and posted it through St. Denis to Beauvais. So on to Abbeville,
where they had the Impudence to charge us Ten Livres for three Dishes of
Coffee, and some of the nastiest Eau de Vie that ever I tasted; excusing
themselves, the Rogues, on the score that Englishmen were scarce
nowadays. And to our great Relief, we at last arrived at Calais, where
we had comfortable Lodgings, and good fare, at a not too exorbitant
rate. Here we had to wait four days for a favourable Wind; and even then
we found the Packet Boat all taken up for Passengers, and not a place
on board to be had either for Love or Money. As Mr. Pinchin was
desperately pressed to reach his Native Land, to wait for the next boat
seemed utterly intolerable to him; so, all in a Hurry, and being
cheated, as folks when they are in a Hurry must needs be, we bargained
for a Private Yatch to take us to Dover. The Master would hear of
nothing less than five-and-twenty guineas for the voyage, which, with
many Sighs and almost Weeping, my poor Little Master agrees to give. He
might have recouped himself ten guineas of the money; for there was a
Great Italian Singing Woman, with her Chambermaid, her Valet de Chambre,
a Black Boy, and a Monkey, bound for the King's Opera House in the
Haymarket, very anxious to reach England, and willing to pay
Handsomely--out of English pockets in the long-run--for the
accommodation we had to give; but my capricious Master flies into a
Tiff, and vows that he will have no Foreign Squallers on board his Yatch
with him. So the poor Signora--who was not at all a Bad-looking woman,
although mighty Brown of visage--was fain to wait for the next Packet;
and we went off in very great state, but still having to Pay with
needless heaviness for our Whistle. And, of course, all the way there
was nothing but whining and grumbling on his Worship's part, that so
short a trip should have cost him Twenty-five Guineas. The little Brute
was never satisfied; and when I remembered the Life I had led with him,
despite abundant Victuals, good Clothes, and decent Wages, I confess
that I felt half-inclined to pitch him over the Taffrail, and make an
End of him, for good and all.
The villanous Tub which the Rascals who manned it called a Yatch was not
Seaworthy, wouldn't answer her Helm, and floundered about in the Trough
of the Sea for a day and a half; and even then we did not make Dover,
but were obliged to beat up for Ramsgate. We had been fools enough to
pay the Fare beforehand; and these Channel Pirates were unconscionable
enough to demand Ten Guineas more, swearing that they would have us up
before the Mayor--who, I believe, was in league with 'em--if we did not
disburse. Then the Master of the Port came upon us for Dues and Light
Tolls; and a Revenue Pink boarded us, the Crew getting Half-drunk at our
Expense, under pretence of searching for contraband, and sticking to us
till we had given the Midshipman a guinea, and another guinea to the
Crew, to drink our Healths.
CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.
OF CERTAIN TICKLISH UPS AND DOWNS IN MY LIFE:
AMONGST OTHERS OF MY BEING PRESSED FOR SERVICE IN
THE FLEET.
THE best of Friends, says the Proverb, must part, and so must the worst,
or the most indifferent of companions. By this time, I apprehend,--that
is to say, the year 1728, Messieurs Pinchin, Hodge, and Dangerous had
had quite enough of each other's company, and 'twas ripe Time for 'em to
Part. Not but what there were some difficulties in the way. 'Twas not to
be denied that my little Master was a parcel curmudgeon, very vain and
conceited, very difficult of management in his Everlasting Tempers, and
a trifle Mad, besides; but his service--apart from the inconvenience of
bearing with a tetchy, half Lunatic Ape of Quality, was light and easy;
the victuals were abundant and the Wages were comfortable. There must
be two parties to make a quarrel, and when Master and servant propose to
part, there should be a perfect agreement between them as to the manner
of their going asunder. A Hundred times, vexed by the follies and
exactions of the little man, I had sworn that I would doff his livery,
and have nothing more to do with him; but then came the Reflection of
the certain Bite and Sup, and I withheld my abandonment of Service. It
may be that the Chaplain, Mr. Hodge, was very much of the same mind as
your Humble. He said often, that he had been bearleader quite long
enough to this young Cub, and was sick alike of his savage hugs, and
uncouth gestures, when he had a mind to dance. Yet was he wise enough in
his generation to acknowledge the commodity of a fat Pasty and a full
Flask every day in the year, and of a neverfailing crown piece in the
pouch in the morning for a draught to cool one's throat, when the bottle
had been pushed about pretty briskly overnight. Parson Hodge was a
philosopher. "I don't like the kicks," quoth he; "but when halfpence
come along with 'em, they cease to be intolerable."
However, all our nice weighings of Pros and Cons were brought to a very
abrupt standstill upon our arrival at Dover (having taken a post chariot
from Ramsgate) by the Inconceivable Behaviour of Mr. Pinchin. This young
Gentleman, utterly forgetting the claims of Duty, of Honour, of Honesty,
and of Gratitude, fairly Ran away from us, his faithful and Attached
Domestics. Without with your leave or by your leave he showed us a clean
pair of Heels. He left a very cool Letter for the Chaplain in the hands
of the master of the Inn where we put up, in which he repeated his old
uncivil Accusation, that we had eaten him out of House and Home, that we
were Leeches, Pirates, bloodsucking vampires, and the like--myself he
even did the honour to call a Designing Cockatrice--and that he had fled
from us to save the small remains of his Fortune from being Devoured,
and intended to rejoin his long-neglected Mamma. Mr. Hodge read me this
letter with a very long face, and asked me what I intended to do. I
answered that I should be better able to tell him when he had read me
the Postscript to the letter, for that I hardly fancied that Squire
Pinchin would behave in so Base and Mean a manner as to run away without
paying his Body Servant's wages. Upon this the Reverend Gentleman hems
and ha's somewhat, and gave me to understand that Mr. Pinchin had
enclosed a draft upon a Goldsmith in Change Alley in part disbursement
of his debt to him, Mr. Hodge, and that out of that--although no special
provision had been made for me by Mr. Pinchin--he thought he could spare
me a matter of Ten Pound. Now as he kept the letter very tight in his
hand, and was, withal, a Strong Man, who would have resisted any attempt
of mine to wrest it from him, I was fain to take his statement for
granted, and in a very Sulky manner agreed to accept the Ten Pound in
full of all demands, stipulating only that my Travelling charges to
London should be defrayed. This Mr. Hodge boggled at for awhile; but,
seeing me Resolute he gave way, and at last said that there was no need
for me to trouble with going to the Goldsmith in London to get the Draft
changed--"If, indeed," says he, "the unhappy young spendthrift be not
proclaimed a Bankrupt before I get this slip of paper cashed;" and that
having a small store of Gold by him, he would give me the Ten Pound
down, together with a couple of Pieces to bear my Expenses to the Town.
To this I agreed; and his Reverence handing me over the ready, we cried
Quits.
"And now, Sir," says I, "as you are no longer a Led-Parson, and I am no
longer a Lacquey, we are both, till we get Fresh Places, Gentlemen at
large, and Jack is as good as his Master, I shall be happy to crack a
bottle of Lisbon with you, and whether you pay or I pay shall be decided
by the flinging up of a Jacobus."
He declared that I was an Impudent young Fellow, with more Wickednesses
in my Heart than I had hairs in my Head; but he accepted my Invitation
to crack the bottle of Lisbon very readily, and won the Toss of me with
much Affability. So, after a joyous Rouse (which my young Head could
then stand, but I am a sad Skinker at the bottle now), the Landlord
standing in, we drank Mr. Pinchin's health and better manners to him;
and his Reverence dismissed me with a Buss and his Benediction.
"When you reach London, which is a wicked place," says he; "I prithee
get you to Highgate, and without more ado cause yourself to be sworn
upon the Horns there, never to drink Small Ale when you can get Strong,
and never to Kiss the Maid when you can Kiss the Mistress. After that,
with your Face, and your Figure, and your Foreign Travel, to say nothing
of your Amazing Impudence, and your Incorrigible habit of Lying, I think
you will do pretty well. Go thy ways, my son, and if ever you come to be
hanged, send for Parson Hodge, and he will (with the Ordinary's
permission) do everything for you in the cart that a True Blue Church
and State Man can wish. _Vale_: that is to say, get off, you vagabond,"
with which in his merry way he half pushes me out of the room at the
Inn, and I dare say that he had given a sufficiently liberal
construction to Mr. Pinchin's postscript as to cheat me out of Twenty
Pound.
And now on this worthy I must bestow a brace of Paragraphs ere I dismiss
him for good and all, premising that the knowledge of what I am about to
set down did not come upon me at this period of my History, but was
gathered up, in Odds and Ends in subsequent epochs of my career:--some
of it, indeed, many years afterwards. Parson Hodge had managed--all
losses allowed for--to feather his nest pretty well out of his
attendance on Squire Bartholomew Pinchin, and the ten or twelve pound he
doled out to me (whether the story about the draft on the Goldsmith was
a Cock and Bull one or not) must have been but a mere fleabite to him. I
heard that he went down to the Bath, and dropping his Clerical Dignity
for awhile, set up for a fashionable Physician of High Dutch extraction
that was to cure all ailments. Doctor Von Hoogius I think he called
himself; and his travelling about with my little Master had given him
just such a smattering of Tongues as to enable him to speak Broken
English with just so much of a foreign accent as to make it unlike a
Brogue or a Burr. The guineas came in pretty quickly, and I believe that
he cured several people of the Quinsy with pills made of dough,
hogslard, cinnamon, and turmeric, and that he was highly successful in
ridding ladies of fashion of the vapours by means of his Royal Arabian
Electuary, which was nothing more than white Jamaica Rum coloured pink
and with a flavouring of Almonds. The regular Practitioners, however,
grew jealous of him, and beginning to ask him impertinent questions
about his Diploma, he was fain to give up Legitimate practice, and to
pick up a dirty Living as a mere Quack, and Vendor of Pills, Potions,
Salves, Balsams, and Elixirs of Life. Then he came down in the world,
owing to a Waiting Gentlewoman whose fortune he must needs tell, and
whom, 'tis said, he cozened out of three quarters' wages; so, for fear
of being committed by the justices as a Rogue and Vagabond, he then kept
a Herb Shop for some time, with great success, until he got into trouble
about a Horse, and being clearly Tart of that crime, very wisely shifted
his quarters to the Kingdom of Ireland. I have heard that by turns he
was, in his New Sphere, a Player at the Dublin Theatre, a Drawer at a
Usquebaugh Shop in Cork, a hedge-schoolmaster among the Bogtrotters--a
wild, savage kind of People, that infest the Southern parts of that
fertile but distracted kingdom--a teacher of the Mathematics in Belfast,
and a fiddler going about to wakes and weddings in the county of Galway.
'Twas whilst pursuing this last and jovial vocation that he was
fortunate enough to run away with an Heiress of considerable Fortune. He
managed it by a sort of Rough and Ready process they call over there an
Abduction, two or three of the Wild Irishes being killed while he was
getting the young lady on the car to take her away to be married; and
she, happening to be a Ward in Chancery, he fell into Contempt, and was
committed to Newgate in the City of Dublin, where he might have lain
till his heels rotted off, but for the Favourable Renown into which he
grew by his Bold and Gallant Feat of Abduction, and which brought him
into such sympathetic notice, that interest was made with the Chancellor
to purge him of his contempt, and he was honourably Discharged therefrom
by means of escaping from Newgate at night by means of a Silver Key
agreed upon betwixt him and the Warden. By the way, he had the sagacity
at this time to conceal his being an Englishman, and passed very easily
by the name of O'Hagan. A subscription was made for him among the
Quality after his Enlargement, and he was charitably advised to push his
fortune among the Saxons in England, his good friends little suspecting
that he had already pushed his Fortune there, at different times, to a
very pretty tune. But for his unfortunate--or rather fortunate, for
him--collision with justice, he might have obtained employment as a
Tithe Proctor with some of the dignified and non-resident Established
Clergy in Ireland, who were very anxious to have able and Unscrupulous
Men to collect their Dues for 'em; but the Sister Isle being, on several
accounts, too hot for Mr. Hodge, Von Hoogius, O'Hagan, he took shipping
with a purse full of guineas, collected for him by his kind friends, for
Liverpool in Lancashire. Here he prospered indifferently for a time, now
as a Schoolmaster, now as a Quack Doctor, under his old High Dutch
alias, and now as an Agent for the crimping of children for the West
India plantations, which last traffic I have ever held, for reasons
personal, to be utterly Indefensible and Abominable. A Bill of
Indictment before the Grand Jury speedily, however, put an end to the
chaplain's dealings in flesh and blood; so he made what haste he could
to town, where squandering what means he had with him in Riot and
Unthrift, and being unluckily recognised by an old acquaintance in the
Tailoring line, he was arrested on civil process, and clapped into the
Fleet Prison. But here his ever-soaring genius took a new Flight. Those
half surreptitious and wholly scandalous Nuptials known as Fleet
Marriages, were then very rife, and the adventurer had wit enough to
discover that it was to his interest to resume his cassock and bands,
and to become the Reverend Mr. Hodge once more. Not much was wanted to
set him up in business. Canonicals were to be had cheap enough in Rag
Fair for the sending for 'em; a greasy Common Prayer Book and a
chandler's-shop ledger to serve as a Register, did not cost much; so
with these, and an inimitably Brazen face, behold our worthy equipped as
a perfect Fleet Parson. He had to maintain at first a ragged regiment of
cads and Runners to tout for him and bring him customers, but he soon
became notorious, and formed a very fine connexion. Judgements by the
score had been obtained, and Detainers lodged against him at the gate,
since his incarceration at the suit of his acquaintance, the Tailor; but
'twas not long ere he contrived, by the easy process of joining people's
hands, to gain enough to pay all the claims against him, and by
permission of the Warden of the Fleet, to set up a Chapel and Liquor
Shop within the rules of the prison. Punch, Geneva, poisonous wine,
brandy, bitters, Rum, and Tobacco, were sold below stairs, and the Order
for the Solemnization of Matrimony was performed on the first floor. It
became quite a fashionable thing to go and be married by Parson Hodge,
and at last it would be said of him, that if he extorted money from you
beforehand, he did not pick your pocket afterwards, as too many of the
Fleet Parsons in those shameful days were in the habit of doing. He
continued at this merry game for many years, being in his way quite as
popular as Orator Henley, and coining a great deal more money than that
crack-brained Fanatic--for I have always been at pains to discover
whether Henley was more Rogue or Fool--till at last his lucrative but
unholy trade was put an end to by an Act of Parliament, called for by
the righteous indignation of all peaceable and loyal subjects of the
King, who did not desire to be married in haste and to repent at
leisure. I believe that Parson Hodge retired with a comfortable fortune,
and, going down into Somersetshire, purchased a small estate there, and
died, much respected, in the odour of many pigs, and in the Commission
of the Peace.
As for poor little Bartholomew Pinchin, his career was not nearly so
prosperous, nor his end so happy. You will learn, a little further on,
what scurvy tricks Fortune played him, and how at last his poor little
brains succumbed to the rough toasting of that graceless jade. I had
always thought him Mad, and Mad, indeed, as a March hare he proved to be
in the long run.