At the door of a hotel in St. James's Street, towards that hour of the
day at which waiters, butlers, and valets, have the least to do, stood
a group consisting of several of those respectable personages, with
their hands behind their backs, enjoying the air of the fine spring
day, and making impertinent comments upon everybody who passed.
Amongst the rest was a tall, thin man, of middle age, who had
originally possessed very dark hair as well as a dark complexion, but
whose hair and whiskers were now thickly mottled with grey. His face
was good and intelligent, his eyes were black and sparkling, his
features aquiline and high. Though he was an Italian, his face had not
at all the Italian cast; and, well-dressed and gentlemanly in
appearance, he looked more like an old French nobleman, who had
escaped the first Revolution, than the foreign servant of an English
gentleman, which was in reality his condition. He and one or two more
were standing on the top step of the flight which descended from the
door of the hotel to the street, when a small, sleek, oily-looking
man, dressed as a respectable tradesman, approached and spoke to one
of the younger waiters, who, upon the lowest step, was making signs to
a chambermaid in the area.
"I don't know, I am sure: there's his gentleman," said the waiter.
"Mr. Carlini, this person is asking for your master. Is he at home?"
"No," replied the other, with a very slight foreign accent; "he has
gone out."
"Can you tell me where he is to be found, sir?" asked the tradesman in
a deferential tone; "I want to speak with him on important business."
"He has gone to Lady Fleetwood's, in ---- Square," said the Italian;
"but if your business is not very important indeed, he will not thank
you for going there after him;" and he turned round to carry on his
conversation with the others near.
"Why, the colonel is always going to Lady Fleetwood's, Mr. Carlini,"
said the head waiter, with a jocular air. "I should not wonder if you
found a mistress there some day. I recollect her a very handsome
woman, in Sir John's time. What do you think of it? Is it likely to
be?"
"Perhaps so: I know nothing about it," replied Carlini, "for I never
inquire into my master's affairs."
"Oh! it's all settled, I can tell you," said a pert puppy, who formed
the third at the top of the steps. "I heard my master talking about it
with young Count Fraga this very morning, and it's to be very soon,
too."
The gentleman who had been speaking to the waiter below heard all this
conversation, and then turned away. It might seem a matter of little
importance to a man of his apparent pursuits in life, who married
another in the higher ranks of society; but yet he seemed very well
satisfied with what he had heard; and he chuckled a little as he
walked up St. James's Street, crossed over to the corner of Abermarle
Street, and then took his way towards Berkeley Square.
"It only wants working well," he murmured to himself; "it only wants
working well, and we may make a pretty penny of it. I mustn't trust it
to that thick-headed fool, Sam, though. He'd make a mess of it. Going
to be married in two days! Well, that's extraordinary. I dare say the
old lady wouldn't like to be disappointed, and would pay a handsome
sum down to save her lover from being scragged. But I mustn't let Sam
have anything to do with it, he's so rude and unpolishable. There he
stands: I must have a chat with him before the matter goes farther."
And walking on, he found a tall, stout man, who has been already
described as holding negotiations with Joshua Brown, the pedlar, of
rather a fierce and intemperate character. He was not badly dressed
upon the present occasion, having clearly put on his Sunday's best for
his trip to London; but, nevertheless, he could not by any means get
rid of a certain blackguard air, any more than the ominous black eye,
which shed a halo of many colours around it on the cheek and temple.
As soon as he saw his friend and fellow-labourer, Mr. Mingy Bowes, he
advanced towards him with a quick step, asking eagerly for
intelligence, in language which, perhaps, would not be altogether
comprehensible to most of my readers.
"Mum!" said Mingy Bowes, holding up his finger, and looking along the
pavement under the walls of Lansdowne House, where a policeman was
seen sauntering slowly and _nonchalantly_ along, his eyes turned
towards the wall, as if his sole business in life was to count bricks
set in mortar. "Come along, Sam; let us go and have a whet at the 'Pig
and Whistle.' The cove's out, but I've got hold of something that, if
tidily worked, may fill both our breeches pockets."
"I'll have mine filled first," said the man he called Sam; "for it's
my job anyhow, Mingy, though I don't mind your having a cut out of the
whiddy."
"To be sure, to be sure," answered Mingy Bowes; "that's all fair. I
don't want more than a quarter; and I'll manage it so, if you'll let
me, that I'll answer for it my quarter shall be more than ever I took
in three months out of the shop--the bank into the bargain."
His companion merely gave a grunt, for the policeman was by this time
near; and they walked on together, across various streets and through
various alleys which led into Oxford Street.
It is curious and sad that in some of the most fashionable parts of
the town of London, within a stone's throw of the mansions of the
opulent and great, are, or at least were some twenty years ago, an
immense mass of the lowest and most squalid houses in the metropolis.
Close by Grosvenor and Manchester Squares, and lying between them and
Bond Street, are a number of places in which it was dangerous, as the
writer once found to his cost, for a respectably-dressed person to set
his foot. There, congregated tier above tier, in small, dark,
unwholesome rooms, are whole classes of people, in comparison with
whom the denizens of Saint Giles's may be looked upon as aristocracy.
If you walk along one of these courts or alleys, the first things you
remark, on the right hand and the left, are the two confederates in
demoralization and degradation, the pawnbroker's and the gin-shop,
both tolerated and encouraged by the British government on account of
those iniquitous and burdensome taxes grouped under the name of
excise--taxes which, whatever they may do for the revenue, tend more
to hamper industry, to debase the people, to make rogues of honest
men, to prevent the employment of the poor, to give monopoly to the
rich, to obstruct salutary laws, and to disgrace the legislature, than
any imposts that ever were invented by the great British demon,
Taxation.
The fact is, ministers dare not deal with the gin-shop nuisance as
they would with any other nuisance, for fear of diminishing the
revenue; and when they come before parliament and boast of an
increased revenue from the excise--which they call the barometer of
commercial prosperity--they boast, in fact, of how much they have been
able to wring from the vices, the follies, or the hard labours of the
industrious classes. They say neither more nor less than this: there
must have been more demand for labour, because the labouring classes
have been able to drink more gin, to smoke more tobacco, and to swill
more beer.
This is a very irrelevant tirade, but it would be written.
Beyond the pawnbroker's and the gin-shop, you enter into the heart of
the den; probably meeting, at the first two or three steps, some
half-clad women, with foul matted hair, strange-shaped caps which were
once white, and yellowish handkerchiefs loosely spread over the
otherwise uncovered bosom. Perhaps there is a short pipe in the mouth;
but there is gin in every hue of the face, and the eyes are bleared
and inflamed with habitual intoxication.
There may be a miserable baby in the arms, or on the back, the naked
feet and legs appearing from beneath the rags that cover it--sallow,
sickly, sharp-faced, keen-eyed--the nursling of misery, despair, and
vice--the destined victim of every evil passion and every degrading
crime. Above, below, around, from every window in cellar, in attic, in
the middle floors, come forth the varied murmurs, in different tongues
and tones: the slang and cant of English rogues and vagabonds; the
brogue of Ireland, or the old Irish language itself; the shouts of
wrath or merriment; the groans of anguish; the cries of pain or
sorrow; the gay laugh; the dull buzz of tongues consulting over deeds
of evil, telling tales of despair and woe, or asking counsel how to
avoid starvation.
As you go on, innumerable are the different forms you meet, in every
shape of degradation: the fierce bludgeoned bully, the dexterous
pickpocket, the wretched woman who acts as their decoy, the boys and
girls serving an apprenticeship to vice, the hoary prompters of all
evil, who, in the shape of receivers, profit by the crimes of the
younger and more active.
Look at that girl there in the tattered chintz gown. She can scarcely
be sixteen; and yet, see how she reels from side to side in beastly
intoxication! And then that elderly man in the shabby brown coat, with
the venerable white hair, who goes walking along by the side of the
gutter, and every now and then stops and gazes in, as if he saw
something exceedingly curious there. He is a respectable-looking man,
with a gentlemanly air and carriage. A thief, and a man suspected of
murder, are just passing him; but he is quite safe: they know he has
nothing to lose, and his emaciated body would not fetch two pounds at
the anatomist's.
What is it has brought him to this state? Look in his face; see the
dull, meaningless eye, the nose and lips bloated with habitual sottish
tippling. That man can boast that he never was drunk in his life, but
for more than forty years he has never been quite sober. Hark to the
screams coming forth from that house where one-half of the windowpanes
at least are covered up with paper. They are produced by a drunken
scoundrel beating his unhappy wife. She was once an honest, cheerful,
happy country girl, and now--I must not stay to tell the various
stages of degradation she has gone through, till she is here, the wife
of a drunken savage, in one of the lowest and vilest dens of London.
Hark how the poor thing screams under the ruffian's blow, while one of
his brutal companions sits hard by and witnesses it, laughing! Three
days hence, by one too-fatally-directed blow, that man will murder the
wretched woman in the presence of her two children, and then will go
to end his own days on a scaffold, leaving those wretched infants to
follow the same course in after years.
I must not pause upon these things more. It was through such scenes as
I have described that Mingy Bowes and his companion took their way,
without the slightest fear or trepidation, for it would seem that they
both knew the haunt right well. They went up a very narrow sort of
court out of Oxford Road, and then turned into a broader and more
reputable-looking street, though heaven knows it was bad enough. About
half-way down was an open door, over which were written some letters
required by the excise, and by the side of which, on a board about two
feet square, appeared a curious painting.
On a background, intended to represent sky and cloud, though in
reality it looked more like a torn blue coat with a white shirt
peeping through the rents, appeared a tolerably well painted sow,
standing on her hind legs, with a flageolet in her mouth, whence this
pleasant resort of rogues and vagabonds took its name of the "Pig and
Whistle." Mingy and his friend went in, pushed the first swing-door
open, then passed a second, for there was no impediment in the way, at
least for the moment, though there were bolts and bars in plenty
about, which might possibly be used at times to shut out suspicious
characters. The sense of words, of course, differs in different
places, and perhaps by the term "suspicious characters" two very
different classes of persons would be meant by the police and by the
landlord of the "Pig and Whistle." The latter, at all events, did not
seem to consider Mr. Mingy Bowes and his friend Sam as within the
category; for he made them a very reverent bow as they entered that
apartment which bore an ironical inscription, designating it as "the
Commercial Room." With Sam he seemed quite familiar, and to Mingy
Bowes was highly deferential, for gentlemen of Mingy's calling are
very important personages in the great community of thieves and
scoundrels. As soon as he had brought the liquor which his two guests
demanded, the landlord, well skilled in the usages of his own peculiar
world, retired from the room, which for the time had no other tenants
than those just arrived.
"And so the cove was out, Mingy," said Sam, who had by this time
recovered in some degree from his first disappointment; "but what's
this you've found out that you think you may work well?"
Mingy took a sip of his brandy-and-water, looked into his glass, and
seemed to consider, like one of Homer's heroes, before he began to
tell his story. When it began, however, it was not a very long one.
"Why, as far as I can make out, Sam," he replied, at length, "the
young man is a-going to be married to a rich lady, a good deal older
than hisself."
"D--n him! what's that to me?" asked the ruffian.
"A great deal," answered Mingy Bowes; "for I think it was ten to one
your scheme broke down with the young man, while I am quite sure we
can make it answer with the old woman."
"Broke down! How the devil should it break down?" asked Sam, with
great indignation. "Why, I had nothing to do but to tell him that I'd
blow him altogether if he didn't give three or four hundred down."
"But he might think you couldn't, Sam," said Mingy Bowes, in a sly
tone. "You may say you would soon have shown him that you could, and
that you'd tell him his own real name, and all that you made out from
the pocket-book. But then, you see, Sam, it's very much more than
probable that the fellow who came after the book has told him by this
time that you put it in the fire. Then the young man will lay his
calculation this way:--'As this cove has burned the book, he can't
prove anything but by his own word. Now, he can't come forward to
swear, even if his swearing would be of any good; for if he swears at
all, he must swear that he knocked me down and took my pocket-book,
and then what's his oath worth? If I give him a penny, he will be sure
to come bothering me for more.' That's what he will say, Sam, and
devilish right, too."
4
"Not quite so right after all," answered the man; "for if I can't
prove nothing myself, I can put those upon the scent as will. He
wouldn't like that, Mingy, and I shall just tell him so. If there's
anybody can prove that he's the same man who ten years ago was called
Henry Hayley, they can hang him--that's all; for the paper that showed
who did forge the gentleman's name was burned in that book. Now, take
my word for it, Mingy, he won't let it come to that for the sake of a
cool hundred or two."
"Do you recollect whose name it was that was forged?" asked Mingy
Bowes, fixing his shrewd eyes upon the big man's face.
"To be sure I do," answered the other: "it was Scriven and Co.; and
hang me, if the young fellow makes any mouths at it, I'll find out
where Scriven and Co. put up, and tell them all about it."
"For heaven's sake, don't do that!" cried Mingy Bowes, with a look of
consternation. "It was bad enough burning the pocket-book; but if once
you tell, you've given the whip out of your own hands altogether, my
man. Let me try it with the old lady first. I think we might manage to
get a thousand pound out of her to save her young man, if we can but
get her to believe that we can grab him when we like. If you like to
leave her to me, Sam, I'll take you a bet I'll screw something out of
her."
The ruffian seemed a good deal impressed by the cogency of Mr. Bowes's
arguments, especially in regard to the impropriety of suffering his
valuable secret to slip from him in any fit of rage.
"No, no; it won't do," he said, "I can see that clear enough, to go
and tell Scriven and Co. till I've tried everything else; and as to
the old lady, Mingy, I don't care if you try her, but I'll try the
young man too; and I say, Mingy--remember, fair play's a jewel, and
it's understood I am to have three-quarters of whatever we get, and
you one quarter; so no kicking, Master Mingy."
"Honour--honour!" said Mingy, laying his hand upon his heart; "but now
let's have something to eat after this brandy-and-water. I dare say
the landlord has got some cold roast pork. He generally has."
His pleasant anticipations were fulfilled. The landlord had cold roast
pork, and it was speedily placed upon the table before him and his
companion, together with a fresh supply of brandy-and-water. Mingy
calculated upon discussing all points which wanted further
elucidation, over cold pork and mustard; but here he was disappointed,
for hardly had each helped himself abundantly when the room was
flooded by a stream of the usual guests, who seemed just returned from
some successful enterprise, so that any further private conversation
was at an end. All sorts of things were called for by the new-comers.
Mingy and San were saluted by several, who had some slight
acquaintance with them. Beer, gin, brandy, flowed abundantly. Some
stood, some sat; all talked together. There was a great deal of
swearing, a great deal of laughter, a great deal of abuse. One-half of
them seemed to be quarrelling with the other half, though in reality
they were only what is called chaffing; but from one especial corner
of the room a continual strain of angry words was heard to rise, which
went on, with greater and greater vehemence, till at last a blow was
struck and returned. Two or three who were near rushed forward,
perhaps to see what was going on, perhaps to keep the peace; but
somehow the pugnacious spirit seemed to spread. Fists seemed to be
flying about very thick; and in the midst of the uproar and confusion,
the cause of which nobody appeared clearly to understand, the two men
with whom the riot had originated came struggling forward out of their
corner, driving back the crowd, knocking over the tables and benches,
smashing the glasses, and squeezing flat the pewter ware.
Mingy Bowes did not like the scene at all, although he was often
compelled to witness such; for, besides being small and fragile, he
was a very peaceable person, and thought force of cunning much
superior to force of arm. Besides, he calculated upon having his
character compromised, and he soon saw that such was very likely to be
the case.
His more pugnacious companion, Sam, who never could resist a row when
it was either within sight or hearing, had just started up and rushed
into the midst of the affray, exclaiming, "I'll soon settle that,"
when Mingy Bowes, having raised his eyes to the window, in the
vain hope of finding some means of exit, perceived two or three
ominous-looking heads gazing in, and at the same time heard the sound
of a rattle. He would have given worlds to reach the door, but that
was impossible, for the combatants were exactly in the way; and in a
minute after his worst anticipations were realised; for, just as the
landlord was attempting to restore peace, an overwhelming force of
police poured in, and the whole body of vagabonds there assembled,
inclusive of Sam and his friend, were marched off to the
station-house.