"Where to dine at any time," says the advertisement, as though such a
thing as money was quite out of the question, and so many men did not
depend upon the hospitality of their old friend Duke Humphrey. Spite of
cattle disease and trichine terrors, the human stomach--be it beneath an
educated brain, or appertaining to Bill Sykes, of the Somers Town
Brill--the human stomach will act upon the mind, and cause it to long
after the flesh-pots. _Il faut manger_--as a matter of course, the more
moderately the better! and as the Spartans held up the drunken Helot for
their youth to shun, why do we not have a double-barrelled statue of
Banting erected in our streets--a "look on this picture and on this"
style of article, showing the beauties of temperance and moderation--the
keeping a tight rein upon gastronomic desires, as opposed to gluttony
and feasting.
When you _can_ dine, how many temptations are offered, as, urged on by
the vacuum which, above all, fond Nature abhors, you stand chinking your
coin and considering. You are in London, say; and you stand and ponder.
Club? No. Invites? Not one. Where shall it be--at the first-class
hotel or the shilling ordinary? Fish with Simpson? Whitebait with
Lovegrove? With Bibra? With Rudkin? A steak at the Cock? A snack at
the Rainbow? Sawyer! Sawyer! Suggestive of snags and America, and
tremendous gorges? Shall it be the London? Shall we mount above the
great stationer's--the Partridge and Cozens--suggestive names for a
hungry man--impulsive as to the first, and making him think of a cozy
dinner after a long tramp in the stubble--checking as to the second.
"Call me cousin, but do not cozen me," says somebody somewhere, and most
likely the quotation is not correct, but then we hunger and are athirst.
No; we will dine in London, but not in "The London." Westward, ho!
Strand, Circus, Quadrant, up the great street where rent is said to
swallow the tradesman's profit; where the throng is great in the season,
while out of the season the dog-fancier pockets his pups, and migrates
to the far east. Now down this street to the left.
The student of human nature is like the proverbial traveller--he sees
strange things; and, what is more, he gets into queer company. To study
human nature in its happiest moments, study it over its dinner--be it
the three courses and a dessert, preceded by removes, partaken of in
Belgravia, Berkleyria, or Transgibbetia; the public feed at a great
tavern, with a real MP in the chair, and all the delicacies of the
season upon the table, with toasts, speeches, cheers, reporters, and a
long and particular account to follow in the morning paper; the dinner
at the club, _a la_ Sprouts--a nubbly potato from a can, peppered with
gingery dust; the meal brought in a basin, "kivered" with a plate, tied
up in a blue cotton "wipe," and partaken of perchance upon the bricks
waiting for piling in father's hod when he has had his "wittles"; or the
three-halfpenny saveloy and "penny buster," forming in combination the
delicacy popularly known as a "dustman's sandwich," and said, in
connection with porter, to form a large portion of that gentleman's
sustenance; each, every, either of these dinners gives a certain glow to
the countenance of the recipient and undoubtedly it will be found that
human nature will be at its best about feeding-time.
Listen, then, and know all ye of the softer sex; and if you want
anything out of this same human nature, wait till the corn is planted,
and then look out for your harvest.
Knowing all this, and how mollifying is the influence of food, we should
prefer the interval following his last anthropophagia in our visit to
the cannibal; and, therefore, urged by a desire to see our enemy of the
badge at his best, we walk down "this street to the left," and somewhere
about half-way down we find a perennial fountain in the shape of an iron
post with a hole in its side by which to wind it up. There are some
squat, tubby-looking little pails in a row; while close by stands a
shiny-hatted straw-bit besprinkled Triton blowing his pipe. The water
looks cool and limpid, but hard by is the gin--a trap within an open
door. Gin and water--a potent mixture; but in this case the master
takes the gin, and the horse the water. The horses look hot and stuffy
this sunshiny day, as they stand with their cabs in a row down the long
street, nose-bagged and contemplative, but they evidently find
considerable enjoyment in banging their chaff-holding receptacles
against the back of the cab in front, or resting them upon spring or
wheel.
But where are the drivers--the supplanters of the Jehu, the jarvey of
hackney-coach days--the men who place a bit in the mouths of their
steeds, but prefer a sup in their own--the men who guide and rein them
in their course and check the prancings of their hoofs--where are they?
At their best. Cabby dineth! Dine we with him.
Up this shady little street, and into this shady shop--none the cooler
for it though; while phew! the steam! Six, ten, fifteen hams in the
window; legs, loins, shoulders, all sorts of mutton; beef joints by the
dozen; and all hanging ready for to-morrow's consumption. And to-day's?
"This way, sir; room in that box to the left."
We enter that box to the left, and find the "room" very small, and also
that we are elbowed by the people "Pegging away" at their dinner; while,
if we closed our eyes for a moment, we should be ready to take oath that
we were neither in the shop of Rimmel, Hendrie, nor Atkinson. But,
sinking the sentimental, and setting aside the too great smell of
kitchen when a hot cinder has quenched its glow in the dripping-pan, the
odour is not so very bad, and we prepare to eat.
Now, we have eaten in a variety of places in our time, and with the
eating we have drunk--quaffing the regal wine of Champagne in an
ex-palace--that is to say, emptied glasses of what was said to be
genuine Clicquot; but we dare not venture to assert that it was not
gooseberry. Reversing Mr Hullah's legend, "per scalam ascendimus," we
have dined off an Abernethy biscuit and a "penn'orth" of shrimps in a
recess of Waterloo Bridge--a redbait dinner in a granite hall, with a
view of the river both ways, equalling or excelling that from
Lovegrove's; and, therefore, we were not above asking the opinion of
friends right and left as to the quality of the joints on cut.
"Try the beef, guv'ner," says a gentleman in the style of head-dress
known as a "deerstalker," which he wore while he trowelled his dinner
into his mouth with the blade of a very wide knife. "Try the beef,
guv'ner--the weal and 'am won't do. Somethin's turned, either the weal
or my stummick."
A gentleman in a great-coat on my right suggests "line o' mutton," while
a very red-nosed man in front--red-nosed, but the very antithesis of the
holy Stiggins--quotes beefsteak pudding; but we like the look of the
beef proposer, and the sound of the dish; so, forgetful of _rinder_ and
every other pest, we seek to gain the attention of the hot nymph in
waiting. No easy task, though, for the maiden, evidently own sister of
the Polly who captivated Smallweed, junior, is in all directions in the
space of a few seconds.
In luck though at last, and we announce that we will take a plate of
beef--roast.
"And taters?"
"And taters."
"And brockylow?"
"And brockylow."
"Stout?"
"Stout's hard," hints our beefy friend, and we decide upon
"half-and-half."
Five minutes after we are served with a prime plate off some prime ribs
of beef, three fine potatoes in their brown jackets, grinning all over,
and looking temptingly mealy-mouthed; a tolerably fine head of broccoli
that would suggest "cathoppers and grassipillars" were the season more
advanced, while even now one cannot help shuddering and thinking of
Fenianism and slugs; "a bread;" and, lastly, the beer supposed to be
soft, or rather not hard.
Now, if the place had been ventilated, twenty degrees cooler, free from
steam, smell, and tobacco smoke; it the knives had been what the cloth
should have been, and what the salt was not; if my neighbours had not
picked their teeth with their forks; if the mustard-pot had had no pipe
ashes in its jaundiced throat; if the pint pots had not made the tables
quite so gum-ringed; and lastly, and very briefly, if Cabby himself had
been a little less demonstrative in his eating, and a little more
guarded in his conversation: why, we could have made a very satisfactory
dinner. But as the few above-mentioned trifles, and a mangy dog at our
feet, militated against our getting a comfortable meal, why, the result
was not quite so well as might be expected.
The trade going on was fast and furious. Cabbies went out and Cabbies
came in; joint after joint was devoured, and the naked bones lay on the
steaming pewter desert like those of the vulture-torn camel in far
Araby. Cabby was certainly here at his best--the bow was unstrung, and
he seemed to be enjoying himself. He seemed rather Indian--Red Indian--
in his eating; laying in a good store, as though doubtful when time or
money would again be propitious for a hearty meal; while jokes flew
about--many at the expense of unwary fares and swells, for whom, as a
rule, Cabby seemed to entertain a profound contempt.
We were not there long, but the topics of the day were settled again and
again in the most satisfactory of ways, though probably not in
accordance with the ideas of our statesmen. Mr Sothern was pitied; and
gin, rum, whisky, and brandy declared the only table spirits. Fenianism
was stigmatised as "rowdy"; Jamaica turned inside out; and the
Parliamentary campaign mapped down. We noted what we could while
finishing our "toke"; but we were upon enemies' ground; and who knows
the fate of spies discovered amid the freemasonry of Cabland. We
thought of all this, and did not so much as point a pencil within the
sacred precincts; but we recollected what we could--not much, though,
for after dinner the digestive organs form a combination against those
devoted to thinking. We came, however, to the conclusion that Cabby
loves good living--bodily, if not morally; and we fear that he possesses
the amiable weakness that exists to so large an extent amongst the
London poor--namely, that of living well to-day, and letting to-morrow
take care of itself. To-morrow may be a bad day, and then he goes not
to his club; but contents himself with a "small German" upon his box; or
a kidney-pie at the corner; or lower still, perhaps, he may have but a
mealy potato from a can, or a "penn'orth" of peas-pudding on a scrap of
a newspaper, the aroma of whose ink imparts no improved flavour. But so
it is throughout the world, Earth's creatures remembering that on the
blackest day there is another side to the cloud, and that sooner or
later the sun will shine again for rich and poor alike.
Cabby says luck's sure to turn sometime; so he munches his potato on or
in his cab; goes "tic" for a screw of tobacco, for which he seldom finds
the screw on too tightly, and then smokes and waits patiently for a
fare. When he is down on his luck, and has nothing else to live upon,
he exists upon Hope; and she deals as gently with the rough-clothed,
battle-scarred veteran of the streets as with the Hon Charley
Fitzgauntlet of the Blues, when Fortune frowns and he has gambled away
half his patrimony at the Derby. But if Cabby makes himself comfortable
at times, surely he is not much to be blamed, for this world is not
peopled with abstemious Dr Franklins, and when Cabby has the money in
his pocket, and smells a good dinner, who can blame him that he eats,
pays, and then waits for the next? Perhaps it comes punctually, perhaps
it does not; still he waits, as Trotty Veck did, for his jobs; the bells
cried, "Job coming soon, Toby;" and it always did come sooner or later.
And so, like Toby's, Cabby's job comes sooner or later, and then he does
as wiser men do--eats, drinks, and is merry, "quaffing amber draughts
from the pearly pewter's foam"--draughts that make glad his heart, and
sometimes unsteady his hand. But cab-horses are not given to run away--
we have sometimes wished they were--that is, if they would keep in the
right direction. Still it is very rarely that Cabby meets with a mishap
through careless driving. Accidents he does have, 'tis true; but,
considered in relation to the thousands of miles traversed, their
paucity is wonderful.
"But they're a shocking set, my dear; lazy, good-for-nothing creatures--
cheating, story-telling fellows. Whatever you do, take the man's number
before you enter his cab."
So says Mrs British Matron. But this is not all true. Cabby can
cheat, lie, and be good for nothing; but he has his honest phase; and,
poor fellow, he has a hard time of it.
The wind whistles down the street on a dark night; the rain or sleet
drives in cutting clouds round the corners; and Dives' son and daughter,
to return from dinner or party, send for a cab. The first Cabby has
been sitting for a couple of hours fareless upon his box, and as his
half-frozen Rosinante is drawn up at the door of the well-lit house,
Cabby stiffly descends, and begins to dance upon the pavement, and beat
warmth into his breast after the popular mode of "Two thieves whopping a
rascal."
All this while there is a round of "good-byeing," and "dearing,"
shawling, wrapping, and goloshing; and then the thoughtful head of the
house hopes that the cabman is a member of the Bonded Brotherhood of
Bottle Scorners, and thinks Thomas had better take a hand candlestick
and look at the man's number.
The hand candlestick goes out, and so does the candle; for directly the
white-stockinged legs of Thomas are outside the hall door the light is
extinct, and the bearer fares like poor Mr Winkle on the windy night at
Bath, for he is banged out of the house.
"Vot odds vot a cove's number is?" says Cabby. "Tell 'em to make 'aste
out."
Now Cabby is not a member of the Bonded Brotherhood, for he has had two
"goes" of gin since eight o'clock, and would have liked another--"only
it runs away with the brass"; and if this were known he would probably
lose his fare, although he has been sitting so long in the driving sleet
or rain, and Dives, jun, has imbibed two or three glasses of sherry,
three of champagne, and as many of port, during dinner and dessert.
The ricketty door of the vehicle is opened; the glass let down; dragged
up again; and then, with a bang which threatens to dislocate every joint
in the old cab's body, the door is closed, the box mounted, when
rattling and jangling, off goes the licensed carriage to deposit its
freight.
Distance two miles, barely, time nearly midnight; what wonder that after
a bad day our dinner companion pockets his "bob" with a growl, and
sullenly mounts his box to seek a fairer fare?