This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler
[Picture: Logo of Everett & Co.]
First Edition, June, 1908.
Second ,, September, 1908.
Third ,, March, 1909.
Cheap ,, March, 1914.
London in
The Sixties
(WITH A FEW DIGRESSIONS)
* * * * *
By
ONE OF THE OLD BRIGADE
London:
EVERETT & CO. LTD.
42 ESSEX STREET,
STRAND, W.C.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. 1860 1
II. THE TOWER 13
III. MOTT’S AND CREMORNE 25
IV. KATE HAMILTON’S AND LEICESTER SQUARE 37
V. THE NIGHT HOUSES OF THE HAYMARKET 48
VI. EVANS’S AND THE DIALS 61
VII. THE RATCLIFF HIGHWAY 73
VIII. THE BOOTHS ON EPSOM DOWNS 83
IX. RACING _par Excellence_ 94
X. THE EPIDEMIC OF CARDS 111
XI. THE COUP DE JARNAC 127
XII. THE PUBLIC HANGING OF THE PIRATES 130
XIII. THE HOSTELRIES OF THE SIXTIES 140
XIV. THE DRAMA (LEGITIMATE AND OTHERWISE) 151
XV. MOSTLY “OTHERWISE” (CONTINUED) 163
XVI. USURERS AND MILLIONAIRES 175
XVII. SOME CURIOUS FISH OF THE SIXTIES 182
XVIII. SPIRITUALISM AND REALISM 192
XIX. THE ROCK AND THE CAPE 205
XX. EASTWARD-HO! 222
XXI. THE GUILLOTINE AND MADAME RACHEL 232
XXII. REMINISCENCES OF THE PURPLE 243
XXIII. DHULEEP SINGH AND FIFTY YEARS AFTER 257
XXIV. THE LAST OF THE OLD BRIGADE 264
CHAPTER I.
1860.
LONDON in the sixties was so different from the London of to-day that,
looking back through the long vista of years, one is astonished at the
gradual changes—unnoticed as they proceed. Streets have been annihilated
and transformed into boulevards; churches have been removed and flats
substituted; night houses and comfortable taverns demolished and
transformed into plate-glass abominations run by foreigners and Jews,
whilst hulking louts in uniform, electro-plate and the shabby-genteel
masher have taken the place of solid silver spoons and a higher type of
humanity. So extensive indeed has been the transformation, that, if any
night-bird of those naughty days were suddenly exhumed, and let loose in
Soho, he would assuredly wander into a church in his search of a popular
resort, and having come to scoff, might remain to pray, and so
unwittingly fall into the goody-goody ways that make up our present
monotonous existence.
The highest in the land in those benighted days turned up their coat
collars and rubbed shoulders after dusk with others of their species in
recreations which, if indulged in now, would be tantamount to social
ostracism, or imperilling the “succession.”
It was, in short, the tail end of the days of the Regency, changed,
virtuous reader, for better or worse. It was, nevertheless, distinctly
enjoyable and straightforward, for it showed its worst, and blinked
nothing in hypocrisy.
The only recommendation for this appearance is its authenticity; every
incident passed within (or very near) my ken, for I was a veritable
“front-rank man” in that long-ago disbanded army—a veteran left behind
when better men have passed away—one of the few who could attend a muster
parade of that vast battalion of roysterers, and who, by sheer physical
strength, has survived what weaker constitutions have succumbed to—a
living contradiction of the theory of the “survival of the fittest.”
It was one morning early in 1860 that I proudly saw my name in the
_Gazette_—as a full-blown ensign. I had scanned every paper for weeks,
although aware that our late gracious Sovereign (or her deputy) could
hardly have had time to decide the momentous question as to whether I was
to be a fusilier, a rifleman, or a Highlander, so short was the period
between passing my examination and the announcement I so fervently
awaited. But I had great Army interest, and so it came to pass that,
within six weeks of leaving Chelsea Hospital (where the examinations took
place), I held a commission in a distinguished regiment.
To give the number of the dear old corps would at best be misleading, for
numerals and the prestige that attached to them were wiped out long ago
by one scratch of the pen of that great civilian who remodelled our Army
from what it was when it suppressed the Mutiny to what it became before
the Boer War.
England at this period bristled with soldiers—bronzed old warriors with
beards down to their waists, who had not seen their native shores for
twelve or fifteen or twenty years; who, till they were scraped (in
conformity with St. James’s campaigning ideas), looked fit to do
anything, or go anywhere—men who had survived the trenches and the twenty
degrees of frost in the Crimea, and sweltered twelve months later at
Gwalior, Jhansi, Lucknow, and Delhi, and had at last found their reward,
amidst cocked hats, red tape, recruits’ drill, and discharge, in that
haven of rest, “merrie England.”
My future regiment, then on its way home, was no exception to the rule,
and I remember, as but yesterday, the comparisons I drew a few weeks
later on the Barrack Square of the (then) new barracks at Gosport,
between the pasty-faced “strong-detachment” from the depôt and the grand
old veterans that towered over them.
And every man-jack of them was possessed of valuable jewels. Where the
worthy rogues had captured the loot needs not to inquire, suffice to say
that oriental stones worth hundreds were retailed for a few shillings,
and found their way to the coffers, and tended to build up the fortune,
of an astute Hebrew who, by “the encouragement of British industries,”
eventually became a knight, and died not long ago in the odour of
sanctity, rich and respected—as all rich men do.
It was amid these surroundings that I began my military career, despite
the fact that every rascal with anything to sell had radiated towards
Gosport from every point of the compass.
Gosport and Portsmouth were in those days the first stepping stones in
the filtration towards Aldershot, after which, and only after a drill
season, the grandest soldiers England ever possessed, were considered as
presentable troops.
The barrack squares in those happy days, after a regiment had landed,
resembled oriental bazaars rather than the starchy, adamant quadrangles
familiar to the present generation. Every forenoon officers and men were
surrounded by hucksterers of every care and creed, and one’s very
quarters were invaded by Jews and Gentiles anxious to sell or buy
something.
“This is the most arakristic trap in the west of England, so ’elp me
Gawd; isn’t it, Cyril?” one Hebrew would inquire of another, as the
points of an ancient buggy and a quadruped standing in the square were
extolled to ambitious youngsters; and “Yes it is, so ’elp me Gawd,” often
succeeded in selling a rattle-trap that had done duty in every regiment
stationed at Gosport from time immemorial. Old clothes-dealers, too,
abounded by the score, ready to buy anything for next to nothing. But
some of us youngsters were not to be caught like the veterans who were
unfamiliar with depôt ways, and the judicious deposit of a farthing in a
pocket now and again resulted in phenomenal prices for cast-off garments
till the hucksterers “tumbled,” and the harvests ended; and so, between
the goose step and a thousand other delights, the happiest days many of
us ever enjoyed (though unaware of it at the time) passed slowly on.
At this period the Volunteers had just come into existence, and, not
having developed the splendid qualities they proved themselves possessed
of during the Boer War, naturally came in for considerable chaff and
ridicule.
As a specimen of the senseless jokes that abounded at the time, I may
quote what was generally mooted in military messes, that at a recent
levée the volunteers who had attended had shown so much _esprit de corps_
that Her Majesty had ordered the windows to be opened; and it is, I
believe, an absolute fact that on one occasion an inspecting officer
nearly had a fit when the major of a gallant corps appeared with the
medal his prize sow had won pinned upon his breast.
It was the Volunteer review in Hyde Park in 1860 that was responsible for
my first appearance in uniform. Determined that the review should lack
nothing of military recognition, stands had been erected, for which
officers in uniform were entitled to tickets for themselves and their
relations. In an unlucky moment the announcement had caught the eye of a
sister, with the result that, terribly nervous, nay almost defiant, I was
marched boldly down to Bond Street on the day of the review, and, _nolens
volens_, dressed at Ridpath and Manning’s in my brand new cast-iron
uniform.
Conceive, kind reader, a wretched youth—dressed inch by inch by a
ruthless tailor in broad daylight on a sunny afternoon, incapable of
deceiving the most inexperienced by his amateur attempts of appearing at
home—huddled into the clothes, and then hustled into the street by a
proud sister and father, and some idea of my abject misery will be
apparent to you.
It was at the moment, whilst waiting on the pavement to enter our
carriage, that a huge Guardsman passed and thought fit to “salute.” My
first instinct was to wring him by the hand and present him with a
sovereign; then all became indistinct, and I tumbled into the carriage.
The excitement was too much for me—I almost fainted.
A splendid specimen of the Hibernian type in my regiment was a man called
Madden (and by his familiars “Payther”), who, as a character, deserves
special mention. This giant had not long previously been “claimed” by an
elder brother whilst serving in a Highland Regiment, and it was reported
that on one occasion, when on sentry at Lucknow, the general officer
impressed by his six feet three in full Highland costume, having pulled
up and addressed him with, “What part of the Highlands do you come from,
my man?” was considerably nonplussed by being informed, “Oi come from
Clonakilty, yer honour, in the County Cork.” Our colonel, too, was an
undoubted Irishman by birth; but had succeeded, after forty years’
service, in being capable of assuming the Scotch, Irish, or English
dialect as circumstances seemed to require. In addition, moreover, to an
excessive amount of _esprit de corps_, he had the reputation of being the
greatest liar in the Army; not a liar be it understood in the offensive
application of the term, but incapable of accuracy or divesting his
statements of exaggeration when notoriety or circumstances gave him an
opening. This failing of “Bill Sykes,” as he was called, was so
universally known throughout the Army, that one evening a trap was laid
for him by some jovial spirits in the smoking-room of a famous Army club.
“Here comes old Bill,” was remarked by Cootie, of the Bays, as the
Colonel sauntered in with a toothpick in his mouth. “I’ll bet a fiver
I’ll start a yarn he’ll never be able to cap.”
“Done!” cried Kirby, “and if he doesn’t keep up his reputation I’ll pay
you on the nail, and send in my papers in the morning.”
“Good evening, Colonel,” began Cootie. “I was just relating a most
extraordinary coincidence that was lately told me by a man whose veracity
I can vouch for—Shute of ours.”
“Indeed,” replied the Colonel, filling a pipe—Bill invariably smoked a
dudeen at the head of the regiment. “By all means let me hear it.”
“It is simply this. Coming home on sick leave in a P. and O. not long
ago, the look-out man descried half a mile out at sea what appeared to be
a huge box; a long boat was immediately lowered, and when the derelict
was brought on deck, conceive the astonishment of everybody in
discovering that it was a hencoop, and a live man inside. It was a case
of shipwreck it appears, and the man saved was the only survivor of some
180 souls. Rum thing, wasn’t it? but some people have infernal luck.”
“Yes,” replied the Colonel. “I believe I was horn under a lucky star;
perhaps you will be surprised to hear that _I_ was the man.”
A roar of astonishment greeted this admission, whilst Cootie, hastily
thrusting a fiver into Kirby’s hand, whispered, “I presume you won’t send
in your papers to-morrow?”
But, despite his peculiarity, old Bill was universally popular. A
splendid billiard player, he had in India created such excitement in a
match for £500, that even Lord Faulkland, the Governor of Bombay, who
never parted with a sixpence without looking at it twice, was said to
have put a gold mohur on it, and in later times I can remember the Club
House at Aldershot being crammed to suffocation when the same redoubtable
warrior licked Curry the Brigade Major, who till our arrival had no
compeer.
One curious experience he had had which he never tired of narrating: “I
was once waiting for the d— packet at Dover to take me over to Calais,
and at the hostelry I met a d— Frenchman, who asked me if I could ‘parley
vous,’ and I said ‘no,’ but offered to play him a game of billiards. We
had a fiver on it, but I soon discovered that no matter where I left the
balls the d— fellow made a cannon. I was only about three ahead of him,
so when next I played I knocked a ball off the table. The first time the
d— fellow sympathised with me, and picked up the ball; after two or three
repetitions the coincidence appeared to puzzle him. ‘I can’t play if
Mooser does this,’ he said angrily. ‘I can’t help that,’ I replied, and
ran out with a break. He declined to go double or quits, so I pocketed
the fiver, and often found myself laughing over it in the d— boat, where
I was d— ill.”
This persistent swearing may sound curious to the student of to-day, but
in those halcyon days everybody swore. The Iron Duke, it is well known,
never opened his mouth without a superfluous adjective, and General
Pennefather, who commanded at Aldershot in my time, literally “swore
himself” into office. On one occasion, when the Queen was on the ground,
he wished every regiment so vehemently to the “bottom of the bottomless
pit” that it frightened the gracious lady, who sent an equerry to remind
him of her presence. The monition had the desired effect for ten
minutes, when the bombardment commenced afresh, and brought the field-day
to an abrupt termination. The Queen had bolted in sheer trepidation of
an earthquake.
Military examinations for direct commissions in those long-ago days were
held at Chelsea Hospital, and extended over a week. On the occasion of
my public appearance an extraordinary incident occurred. Every
precaution, it was stated, had been taken against the papers getting into
unauthorised hands, but hardly had the first day passed when every
candidate was aware that the tout of a sporting tailor was prepared to
sell the paper of the day correctly answered at £2 a head. The
conspirators met at the “Hans Hotel,” and donkeys incapable of spelling,
and with no knowledge of any language but their own, passed examinations
worthy of a senior wrangler.
The miscreant who thus tampered with Her Majesty’s stationery was one
Pugh, and his employer (if I remember rightly) was one Cutler; but the
golden shower came to an abrupt ending, as on one fateful morning (the
last day) General Rumley ascended the gallery, and amid the silence of
the Catacombs briefly announced:
“The late examination is cancelled; candidates will attend again next
Monday.”
The consternation that ensued is beyond description. Jolliffe, who, I
believe, had been measured for his uniform, did not join for at least a
year after, and poor old Plummy Ruthven, who couldn’t spell six words
correctly, abandoned all further idea of the Army. He was sitting next
me on the first day, and I remember as if it were yesterday his whispered
inquiry as to the correct reply to a mathematical question: “At what hour
between two and three are the hands of a clock opposite one another?”
The reply, it is needless to add, had to be “worked out” by figures, but
thinking in the excitement he was asking the time I hurriedly whispered,
“Twenty minutes to one,” and down it went on poor old Plummy’s paper.
During the subsequent days his papers, I fancy, were vastly improved, as
he was a constant visitor at the “Hans Hotel.”
The Aldershot of the sixties was a very different place to what it is
to-day. Three rows of huts—as the lines of three regiments—constituted
the North Camp, and about an equal number and two blocks of permanent
barracks represented the South Camp. During the drill season everything
else was under canvas, and heaven help those who ever experienced the
watertight capacity of the regulation bell tent. I can well remember one
night, when the windows of heaven had been open for days, a dripping
figure in regimental great-coat and billycock hat appearing in the mess
tent with, “The horse is disthroyed, and I don’t know what the Jasus to
do,” and as he dripped at “attention” we realised it was only the
adjutant’s Irish groom that had been washed out of the temporary stable.
These wooden huts were peculiarly adapted for practical joking. Within a
week of my joining whilst contemplating with admiration, previous to
turning in, my brand new possessions of portable furniture, I was
astonished by a brick rattling down the chimney. Barely had I dodged it
when bang came another, whilst not a sound disturbed the peaceful repose
of the camp. “Great heavens,” I thought, “there must be an earthquake,”
and rushing out frantically to give the alarm, I paused, and on second
thoughts returned. But in the few seconds that had elapsed there must
have been another violent shock, for everything in my room was upside
down—the bedding was capsized, my boots were swimming in the tub,
table-cloths, carpet, everything one huge mass. It was then that it
dawned upon me, “this is the finger of man,” and I proceeded to adjust my
belongings. “Anything up?” now sounded through the window, and the
appearance of two brother ensigns explained the rest. I was never
molested afterwards.
Practical joking, however, occasionally assumed serious proportions, and
ended in courts-martial, as did the Crawley case. It was on this
occasion that Sir William Harcourt first came prominently to notice by
the brilliant oration he put into his client’s mouth: “Give me back my
sword,” was the dramatic phrase with which the old bully ended his
address. As if Crawley cared one rap what became of his sword so long as
the £10,000 attached to his commission as colonel of the Inniskillings
was safe.
The Robertson court-martial, of which I was an eyewitness, also created a
stir in the long-ago sixties. The colonel of the 4th Dragoon Guards was
at the time one Bentinck, who, despite his heirship to the Dukedom of
Portland, was about as uncouth a being as can well be conceived. As
field officer of the day, no matter how late, he never missed dismounting
and walking through the officers’ guard room without a word, as if he
were inspecting the married quarters, and it was this amiable creature
who eventually prosecuted, in conjunction with Adjutant Harran, as
harmless an individual as ever posed as a sabreur. Captain Robertson was
the son of a Highland laird, and, if I remember rightly, had a very
handsome wife. What it was all about I have long since forgotten, though
the cloud of witnesses that radiated towards the Royal barracks is in
many ways impressed on my memory. Captain Owen—an important witness as
he described himself—was an officer of militia, and, more military than
the military, he revelled in things military. His staple conversation
was military; a sort of peakless cap his everyday head-dress; his very
dressing-gown was frogged like a light dragoon’s frock coat; for gloves
he affected the buckskin class, and carried glove-trees and pipeclay, at
least whilst in Dublin. These peculiarities were grafted on my memory by
his having doubled up for six weeks in my solitary room in Dublin. I had
spoken to him on one occasion, and in a weak moment invited him to mess.
How it all came about I have no recollection beyond finding him located
on me; having every meal at my expense, and incurring a mess bill of over
£8, which I eventually had to pay. “D— it, old man,” he often said,
“this is like old times” (when the annual training was on, presumably);
“I can’t tear myself away from the bugles.” And he didn’t, till
peremptorily requested to go.
Other witnesses of a more desirable type also swarmed for weeks at our
mess. Ginger Durant, who had never been out of London since he left the
12th Lancers, was daily to be heard bellowing “To the rag, to the rag” to
the tune of “Dixey’s Land,” and General Dickson, a grand old warrior
(happily still as fresh as paint) who commanded the Turkish contingent in
the Crimea, champed his bit and cursed the necessity that detained him in
Dublin.
At Aldershot was a regiment that was supposed to have stormed some place
with ours a hundred years before, and in those days of “Regent’s
allowances” and tolerably hard drinking the occasion of again meeting in
camp could not be allowed to pass without various reciprocal
hospitalities. Their colonel was an old toper who never consumed less
than fifteen brandies-and-sodas after dinner, and well I recollect
hearing a mess waiter, as he helped him on with his coat, expressing the
hope, in a whisper, that if a man came before him in the morning for
being drunk, he would not think it necessary to give him forty-eight
hours cells. But the interchange of civilities was by no means over with
the dinner, and a dozen of our heroes insisting on seeing their guests
home, deliberately swam the Canal, and their comrades not to be outdone,
insisted on seeing our contingent back, till the innumerable duckings
restored sobriety and every one retired to his respective hut.
Not having been at the storming in the Peninsula, I had retired to bed
early.
The purchase system, however personally delightful, was undoubtedly a
very cruel regulation. I myself within seven years passed over five men
who had joined when I was two years old; but the injustice of it never
struck me till on one occasion the junior major of a regiment in the same
brigade, who had got his commission on the same day as I had, turned me
out as subaltern of a guard. But he had not obtained this luck without
risking “Yellow Jack,” for exchanging to a West India regiment and
jumping from bottom to top in every grade by bribing the entire regiment
was a thoroughly recognised arrangement by our amiable authorities.
D’Arcy Godolphin Osborne was an exponent of this brilliant bare-backed
(or bare-faced) vaulting, and despite being the brother of the Duke of
Leeds was not an ideal field officer.
“Purchase” literally killed poor ’Gus Anson, brother of the Earl of
Lichfield. With a constitution shattered since Lucknow, where he won the
V.C., night after night found him arguing against its abolition in the
House of Commons; and the almost nightly intimations I sent him, at his
request, “that we had enough for Baccarat” did the rest, and I eventually
saw the best and bravest of men on his death-bed at Dudley House.