THE inn, of which I had become an inhabitant, was a place of infinite
life and bustle. Travellers of all descriptions, from all the cardinal
points, were continually stopping at it; and to attend to their wants,
and minister to their convenience, an army of servants, of one
description or other, was kept; waiters, chambermaids, grooms,
postillions, shoe-blacks, cooks, scullions, and what not, for there was a
barber and hair-dresser, who had been at Paris, and talked French with a
cockney accent, the French sounding all the better, as no accent is so
melodious as the cockney. Jacks creaked in the kitchens turning round
spits, on which large joints of meat piped and smoked before the great
big fires. There was running up and down stairs, and along galleries,
slamming of doors, cries of “Coming, sir,” and “Please to step this way,
ma’am,” during eighteen hours of the four-and-twenty. Truly a very great
place for life and bustle was this inn. And often in after life, when
lonely and melancholy, I have called up the time I spent there, and never
failed to become cheerful from the recollection.
I found the master of the house a very kind and civil person. Before
being an innkeeper he had been in some other line of business; but on the
death of the former proprietor of the inn had married his widow, who was
still alive, but, being somewhat infirm, lived in a retired part of the
house. I have said that he was kind and civil; he was, however, not one
of those people who suffer themselves to be made fools of by anybody; he
knew his customers, and had a calm, clear eye, which would look through a
man without seeming to do so. The accommodation of his house was of the
very best description; his wines were good, his viands equally so, and
his charges not immoderate; though he very properly took care of himself.
He was no vulgar innkeeper, had a host of friends, and deserved them all.
During the time I lived with him, he was presented by a large assemblage
of his friends and customers with a dinner at his own house, which was
very costly, and at which the best of wines were sported, and after the
dinner with a piece of plate estimated at fifty guineas. He received the
plate, made a neat speech of thanks, and when the bill was called for,
made another neat speech, in which he refused to receive one farthing for
the entertainment, ordering in at the same time two dozen more of the
best champagne, and sitting down amidst uproarious applause, and cries of
“You shall be no loser by it!” Nothing very wonderful in such conduct,
some people will say; I don’t say there is, nor have I any intention to
endeavour to persuade the reader that the landlord was a Carlo Borromeo;
he merely gave a _quid pro quo_; but it is not every person who will give
you a _quid pro quo_. Had he been a vulgar publican, he would have sent
in a swinging bill after receiving the plate; “but then no vulgar
publican would have been presented with plate”; perhaps not, but many a
vulgar public character has been presented with plate, whose admirers
never received a _quid pro quo_, except in the shape of a swinging bill.
I found my duties of distributing hay and corn, and keeping an account
thereof, anything but disagreeable, particularly after I had acquired the
good-will of the old ostler, who at first looked upon me with rather an
evil eye, considering me somewhat in the light of one who had usurped an
office which belonged to himself by the right of succession; but there
was little gall in the old fellow, and, by speaking kindly to him, never
giving myself any airs of assumption, but, above all, by frequently
reading the newspapers to him—for though passionately fond of news and
politics, he was unable to read—I soon succeeded in placing myself on
excellent terms with him. A regular character was that old ostler; he
was a Yorkshireman by birth, but had seen a great deal of life in the
vicinity of London, to which, on the death of his parents, who were very
poor people, he went at a very early age. Amongst other places where he
had served as ostler was a small inn at Hounslow, much frequented by
highwaymen, whose exploits he was fond of narrating, especially those of
Jerry Abershaw, who, he said, was a capital rider; and on hearing his
accounts of that worthy, I half regretted that the old fellow had not
been in London, and I had not formed his acquaintance about the time I
was thinking of writing the life of the said Abershaw, not doubting that
with his assistance, I could have produced a book at least as remarkable
as the life and adventures of that entirely imaginary personage Joseph
Sell; perhaps, however, I was mistaken; and whenever Abershaw’s life
shall appear before the public—and my publisher credibly informs me that
it has not yet appeared—I beg and entreat the public to state which it
likes best, the life of Abershaw or that of Sell, for which latter work I
am informed that during the last few months there has been a prodigious
demand. My old friend, however, after talking of Abershaw, would
frequently add, that, good rider as Abershaw certainly was, he was
decidedly inferior to Richard Ferguson, generally called Galloping Dick,
who was a pal of Abershaw’s, and had enjoyed a career as long, and nearly
as remarkable as his own. I learned from him that both were capital
customers at the Hounslow inn, and that he had frequently drank with them
in the corn-room. He said that no man could desire more jolly or
entertaining companions over a glass of “summut,” but that upon the road
it was anything but desirable to meet them; there they were terrible,
cursing and swearing, and thrusting the muzzles of their pistols into
people’s mouths; and at this part of his locution the old man winked, and
said, in a somewhat lower voice, that upon the whole they were right in
doing so, and that when a person had once made up his mind to become a
highwayman, his best policy was to go the whole hog, fearing nothing, but
making everybody afraid of him; that people never thought of resisting a
savage-faced, foul-mouthed highwayman, and if he were taken, were afraid
to bear witness against him, lest he should get off and cut their throats
some time or other upon the roads; whereas people would resist being
robbed by a sneaking, pale-visaged rascal, and would swear bodily against
him on the first opportunity, adding, that Abershaw and Ferguson, two
most awful fellows, had enjoyed a long career, whereas two disbanded
officers of the army, who wished to rob a coach like gentlemen, had
begged the passengers’ pardon, and talked of hard necessity, had been set
upon by the passengers themselves, amongst whom were three women, pulled
from their horses, conducted to Maidstone, and hanged with as little pity
as such contemptible fellows deserved. “There is nothing like going the
whole hog,” he repeated, “and if ever I had been a highwayman, I would
have done so; I should have thought myself all the more safe; and,
moreover, shouldn’t have despised myself. To curry favour with those you
are robbing, sometimes at the expense of your own comrades, as I have
known fellows do, why, it is the greatest—”
“So it is,” interposed my friend the postillion, who chanced to be
present at a considerable part of the old ostler’s discourse; “it is, as
you say, the greatest of humbug, and merely, after all, gets a fellow
into trouble; but no regular bred highwayman would do it. I say, George,
catch the Pope of Rome trying to curry favour with anybody he robs; catch
old Mumbo Jumbo currying favour with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the
Dean and Chapter, should he meet them in a stage-coach; it would be with
him, _Bricconi abbasso_, as he knocked their teeth out with the butt of
his trombone; and the old regular-built ruffian would be all the safer
for it, as Bill would say, as ten to one the Archbishop and Chapter,
after such a spice of his quality, would be afraid to swear against him,
and to hang him, even if he were in their power, though that would be the
proper way; for, if it is the greatest of all humbug for a highwayman to
curry favour with those he robs, the next greatest is to try to curry
favour with a highwayman when you have got him, by letting him off.”
Finding the old man so well acquainted with the history of highwaymen,
and taking considerable interest in the subject, having myself edited a
book containing the lives of many remarkable people who had figured on
the highway, I forthwith asked him how it was that the trade of
highwaymen had become extinct in England, as at present we never heard of
any one following it. Whereupon he told me that many causes had
contributed to bring about that result; the principal of which were the
following: the refusal to license houses which were known to afford
shelter to highwaymen, which, amongst many others, had caused the inn at
Hounslow to be closed; the inclosure of many a wild heath in the country,
on which they were in the habit of lurking, and particularly the
establishing in the neighbourhood of London of a well-armed mounted
patrol, who rode the highwaymen down, and delivered them up to justice,
which hanged them without ceremony.
“And that would be the way to deal with Mumbo Jumbo and his gang,” said
the postillion, “should they show their visages in these realms; and I
hear by the newspapers that they are becoming every day more desperate.
Take away the licence from their public-houses, cut down the rookeries
and shadowy old avenues in which they are fond of lying in wait, in order
to sally out upon people as they pass in the roads; but, above all,
establish a good mounted police to ride after the ruffians and drag them
by the scruff of the neck to the next clink, where they might lie till
they could be properly dealt with by law; instead of which, the
Government are repealing the wise old laws enacted against such
characters, giving fresh licenses every day to their public-houses, and
saying that it would be a pity to cut down their rookeries and thickets
because they look so very picturesque; and, in fact, giving them all kind
of encouragement; why, if such behaviour is not enough to drive an honest
man mad, I know not what is. It is of no use talking; I only wish the
power were in my hands, and if I did not make short work of them, might I
be a mere jackass postillion all the remainder of my life.”
Besides acquiring from the ancient ostler a great deal of curious
information respecting the ways and habits of the heroes of the road,
with whom he had come in contact in the early portion of his life, I
picked up from him many excellent hints relating to the art of grooming
horses. Whilst at the inn, I frequently groomed the stage and
post-horses, and those driven up by travellers in their gigs: I was not
compelled, nor indeed expected, to do so, but I took pleasure in the
occupation; and I remember at that period one of the principal objects of
my ambition was to be a first-rate groom, and to make the skins of the
creatures I took in hand look sleek and glossy like those of moles. I
have said that I derived valuable hints from the old man, and, indeed,
became a very tolerable groom, but there was a certain finishing touch
which I could never learn from him, though he possessed it himself, and
which I could never attain to by my own endeavours; though my want of
success certainly did not proceed from want of application, for I have
rubbed the horses down, purring and buzzing all the time, after the
genuine ostler fashion, until the perspiration fell in heavy drops upon
my shoes, and when I had done my best and asked the old fellow what he
thought of my work, I could never extract from him more than a kind of
grunt, which might be translated, “Not so very bad, but I have seen a
horse groomed much better,” which leads me to suppose that a person, in
order to be a first-rate groom, must have something in him when he is
born which I had not, and, indeed, which many other people have not who
pretend to be grooms. What does the reader think?