EVANS’S AND THE DIALS.
BEFORE the Embankment came into existence, Salisbury Street and Cecil
Street—where the hotel now stands—consisted for the most part of lodging
houses. Overlooking the river, stairs led to shanties to which wherries
were moored, whilst a verandah, running the entire length of the house in
which I once had rooms, enabled shade and muddy breezes to be indulged in
during the hot summer evenings. At the side could be seen the arches
known as Fox Hill, which, still visible from the (now) Tivoli Music Hall,
were in those days capable of being traversed for a considerable
distance.
In ancient days the haunt of smugglers and desperadoes, it had not lost
its popularity with the lawless classes even in the more modern long-ago
sixties, and weird stories of murders that had never been discovered, and
crimes of every description, were currently reported as of almost daily
occurrence in the impenetrable “dark arches of the Adelphi.” No sane
person would have ventured to explore them unless accompanied by an armed
escort, and even Wych Street, Newcastle Street, and Holywell Street were
“out of bounds” after nightfall.
The dead body of a female having one morning been discovered, it was
currently reported that the assassin was in concealment in the “dark
arches;” the police—from information received—were convinced of it, and
the authorities, having a mind to probe the mystery, organised search
parties, which scattered amongst the labyrinths, and eventually emerged
no nearer an elucidation than before.
Passages, it was asserted, led to various exits on the river bank, and
extended in an easterly direction to Whitefriars, all of which in later
years have been gradually filled up till now nothing more pernicious than
a peaceful beer-store a few yards from the entrance and an occasional
board-man who ought to be traversing the street, give signs of vitality
to what was once a sink of iniquity.
It is refreshing after this weird retrospect to turn to the modern
Adelphi Terrace, where years ago I participated in many enjoyable
reunions. Here each Sunday night such lively company as the late Kate
Vaughan and her husband, Freddy Wellesley, Billy Hill, Marius, Florence
St. John, Sweet Nell Hazel, and other vestals congregated; whilst the
“Savages” have made it their headquarters, and can lean over the balcony
without risking typhoid, and eventually cross the Strand at no greater
risk than an invitation to air their French.
And the changes in the Adelphi suggest the changes that have taken place
in other historical resorts, than which nothing has been more marked than
in the Burlington Arcade. Here every afternoon, between six and seven,
throngs composed of all that made up the pomp and vanity of this wicked
world disported themselves. Here Baby Jordan and “Shoes”—since become
the mother of a present-day baronet—Nelly Fowler, and Nelly Clifton held
court with their attendant squires and lords of every degree. Here at
seven the entire mass surged towards the Blue Posts in Cork street and
indulged in champagne and caviare toast. Here about the same time
Hastings, Fred Granville, and roysterers of a more pronounced type looked
in for a breakfast of “fixed bayonets” by way of appetite for the dinner
at Limmer’s that most of them would barely touch. Here (in Cork Street)
a little head might be seen cautiously peeping over the blinds at No. 17
in the hope that some eligible client might seek pecuniary relief before
entering on the night’s enjoyment. Here in later years the same head,
but transformed into the appearance of a Fitzroy storm signal, might be
seen more shiny, more haughtily posed, dictating terms to Lairds of
Aboyne and owners of Derby favourites. After which the rich man died,
and the shekels made by usury have gone (as was only right) to bolster up
impecunious subalterns and Christian hospitals.
In the palmy days of Paddy Green, Evans’s provided perhaps the only
tavern where a weary sojourner might sit in peace and realise that he was
surrounded by comfort and tone. Hovering near the door was the genial
old proprietor, with white hair and rubicund face, a smile for every one,
and capable of passing anywhere for a chairman of directors at least.
Around the walls were the priceless oil paintings belonging to the
Garrick, deposited temporarily after the fire that made havoc with that
historical building; whilst covering the entire floor were tables where
the best (and the best only) of chops, steaks, mealy potatoes, and welsh
rabbits, with wines of heaven knows what age, beer, and spirits were
procurable.
Nor must the old establishment be confounded with the modern fungus that
continued its name under the pilotage of an enterprising Jew, and
eventually got closed by the police for developing into an ordinary night
house.
To see a genuine old English waiter crumble a huge potato with a spotless
napkin creates a pang when one thinks of his German and Italian prototype
asking “’Ow many breads you have?” and on being told “one,” looking as if
he could swear you had had two.
And no accounts were discharged at the time—sit, as one might, from 10 to
2 a.m., and eat and drink variously, and as often as one pleased—all the
reckoning was one’s own as one imparted it on leaving to the most
courteous of butlers at the door.
And then the stage, what comparison is possible between the healthy
singing of glees and solos one then heard and the elephantine wit of the
modern serio-comic? And poor old Van Joel, who, as the programme
explained, was retained on account of past services, retailing cigars in
the hall and obtaining fancy prices for “Auld Lang Syne”—how a lump comes
even now into one’s knotty, hoary old throat at the recollections of
these long-agos!
Monotonous as all this may sound to the modern up-to-date sightseer,
there was a homeliness and an indescribable delight associated with
Evans’s that surely the recording angel will not fail to remember when he
sums up the sins of the sixties.
Across the market, again, was a hostelry, long since disappeared except
in name, “The Hummums,” and who shall find to-day such rare old English
fare, served on silver by the most typical of English waiters?
The rooms may have been dingy, the smoking-room a little stuffy, but the
spirit of Bob Garnham must surely hover over the modern imitation that
has arisen on its ashes and assumed everything but its indescribable
comfort.
The approaches to Evans’s after dark were by no means free of danger in
the long-ago sixties. The market porters, who for the most part were
cut-purses and pugilists, were apt to waylay solitary foot passengers
whilst awaiting the arrival of the vegetable vans, and I recollect an
Uxbridge farmer named Hillyard entering the hotel one night with a broken
wrist after being waylaid and robbed in Russell Street.
The old Olympic, hard by, was another nasty place to leave after the
performance, except in a cab. Within fifty yards the alleys bristled
with footpads, and any foolhardy pedestrian traversing the dimly-lighted
Drury Lane or Newcastle Street was pretty sure not to reach civilisation
without a very rough experience from the denizens of Vinegar Yard and
Betterton Street.
The Forty Thieves were an organised bevy of sirens, whose headquarters
were the Seven Dials, and whose mission it was to entice, decoy, and
cajole any fool who had the temerity to listen to their cooing.
The Clock House on the Dials, now an apparently well-conducted pot-house,
was in those days a hotbed of villainy. The king of pickpockets there
held his nightly levée, and the half-dozen constables within view would
no more have thought of entering it than they would the cage of a cobra.
If a man lost a dog the reward was offered there; if one’s watch
disappeared it was there that immediate application was desirable; and if
the emissary was not “saucy” he might with luck save it from the
melting-pot that simmered all day and all night within fifty feet of
Aldridge’s horse repository.
The walk through the Dials after dark was an act none but a lunatic would
have attempted, and the betting that he ever emerged with his shirt was
1,000 to 60. A swaggering ass named Corrigan, whose personal bravery was
not assessed as highly by the public, once undertook for a wager to walk
the entire length of Great Andrew Street at midnight, and if molested to
annihilate his assailants.
The half-dozen doubters who awaited his advent in the Broadway were
surprised about 1 a.m. to see him running as fast as he could put legs to
the ground, with only the remnant of a shirt on him; after recovering his
breath and his courage he proceeded to describe the terrific slaughter he
had inflicted on an innumerable number of assailants. A scurrilous print
that flourished about this time in its next issue narrated the incident
in verse by: “Oh, pray for the souls that Corrigan kilt,” etc. Corrigan,
it may be added, was an Irishman, and not a particularly veracious one.
Any list of queer fish would be incomplete without introducing the name
of Bill Holland, who, although he struggled on till the eighties, was in
his zenith in the sixties. Rosherville being too far, and Vauxhall
having disappeared, the North Woolwich Gardens came into favour with
those who sought recreation of a less boisterous kind than that at
Cremorne.
Bill Holland had all his life been a showman; amusing and full of
exaggerated anecdote, he had catered for the public from time immemorial;
every monstrosity had at some period passed through his hands; every
woman over seven feet, and every man under four, had appeared under his
auspices: the tattooed nobleman, the dog-faced man, the whiskered
lady—all recognised him as master at one period or another. He had
“directed” the Alhambra, the Surrey, the Blackpool Gardens, and, in later
years, the Battersea Palace, and signally failed with each; but,
sphinx-like, he invariably reappeared irreproachably groomed and waxed,
with some confiding creature ready to finance him. His constant
companion was Joe Pope, an abnormally fat little man, and a brother of
the Q.C. who not long ago died. It was the brains of this obese little
man, in conjunction with Bill Holland’s assurance, that kept the wheels
going for over thirty years.
Across the river at Greenwich were the historical Trafalgar and Ship
Taverns, where the famous fish dinners, served in the very best style,
were procurable. Only fish, but prepared and served in irreproachable
form; beginning with boiled flounder, one progressed by seven stages of
salmon in various forms, filleted sole, fried eel, each with its special
sauce, till whitebait plain and whitebait devilled found the wayfarer
well-nigh exhausted.
It was only then that the folly of ordering dinner on a hungry stomach
became manifest, and when the duckling that the smiling waiter had
suggested made its appearance it was almost with tears that one turned
away from its pleading savour and reluctantly confessed one’s inability
to do it justice. And then the coffee on the lawn, and the scrambling
for coppers amongst the water arabs in the surging mud below, were
adjuncts that never failed in the completing of enjoyable evenings now
for ever gone.
Why the resort went out of fashion seems an enigma. Forty, thirty, aye,
twenty years ago both taverns were the almost daily resorts, during the
summer and autumn, of the highest in the land. In one private room would
be heard Her Majesty’s judges, cracking jokes as if they were incapable
of judicial sternness; in another legislators by the score, who had
travelled down by special steamer to eat and drink as if no such things
as fiscal questions existed; whilst in the public room cosy couples
dined, and roysterers smoked and joked, and yet all has passed like a
pleasant dream. The Trafalgar has long since been pulled down, the Ship,
if not closed, is very much changed for the worse, and Londoners swelter
annually with the patience of Job, and are apparently indifferent to the
delightful resorts they have lost.
It was during a May meeting, when rural deans and other provincial Church
luminaries were staying at Haxell’s and the Golden Cross Hotels, that
Satan prompted certain roysterers to raid these establishments when the
reverend lodgers might be supposed to have retired to their respective
closets. It was Nassau Clarke—a subaltern in the Life Guards—who
conceived the brilliant idea, and collecting Jacob Burt, Charlie Buller,
Lennon, and a few other well-known roysterers, we proceeded towards the
Strand. The joke, if such it may be called, was to change every pair of
boots reposing peacefully outside the various doors, and the
development—which none of us was likely to witness—was the scare that
would ensue at 8 a.m., when sober ecclesiastics might be expected to
swear at the prospect of being late for their platform prayer at 9.
Charlie Buller in those days was reputedly the handsomest man in the
Household Brigade; an excellent bruiser, and not slow of wrath, he was,
moreover, a desirable companion when altercations were likely to occur.
Lennon, on the other hand, was not a cockney, and only up on leave, but
willing to assist in anything original or exciting. Not many months
previously he had been awarded a brevet-majority and the Victoria Cross
for a conspicuous act of bravery at the Taku Forts. I lost sight of him
for years, and when I again met him he had left the Army and fallen
apparently on bad times. In consideration of his past services, he was
nominated years later for a Knight of Windsor; but the poor old fellow
was “not himself” when he went down to be installed, and the appointment
was cancelled. He was an excellent actor in comic parts, and has a son,
I believe, on the London stage.
The winter of ’61 was an unusually severe one, and the river that washed
the walls of the grim old Tower was covered with a thick coating of ice,
which in its turn afforded a convenient asylum for the dead cats and
other refuse that drifted upon it from the neighbourhood of the adjoining
wharves. Locomotion in those pre-Embankment and underground railway days
was not so convenient as now, and as cabs had practically ceased running
by reason of the mountains of snow intervening between the Tower and the
Monument, I had, together with a few boon companions, decided that the
time had come for a migration, and went in for “first leave.”
And the choice we had made was by no means an unhappy one, for the
weather that had made existence in London well nigh intolerable had
driven the woodcocks into the coverts, and we all declared that a week of
such surroundings would compensate for all the vicissitudes we had
undergone from Kangaroos, Tower, and five o’clock bacon and eggs in
London. The “route,” too, had come, and we reasoned, not unwisely, that
the journey to Ireland was at best an unpleasant one, and that if we
delayed, 1000 to 60 were by no means extravagant odds that we might get
no leave at all.
It was about a fortnight after this that, having returned to grimy old
Lane’s, I received a characteristic letter from my old chum, George Hay.
“Most of my time” (he wrote) “is spent in accompanying the old squire on
his various peregrinations over the estate, and by pointing out various
agricultural developments that were absolutely necessary, or structural
alterations that would improve the holdings. He leads me to understand
that my place was on the spot I would one day inherit, and the fitting
moment would arrive after I got my company. ‘D— it, sir,’ he would
continue, ‘in my time no eldest son remained longer than a year in the
army unless he was prepared to pay £10,000 over regulation for the
regiment as Cardigan did.’
“‘But in the infantry, sir,’ I suggested, ‘things are different.
Promotion is slower, and I can’t help thinking that the bonds that unite
officers to the regiment are stronger than is usually the case in the
cavalry. But I see no prospect of my company till we are under orders
for foreign service, and we shan’t be at the top of the roster for
another two years at least.’
“‘I have nothing to say against the line, sir,’ he would reply, ‘except
that your officers can rarely ride to hounds.’
“‘But surely, sir,’ I answered, ‘there are other virtues you will not
deny to the linesman; in garrison towns they at all events appreciate
hospitality, and don’t insult worthy folks by accepting their invitations
only to turn them into ridicule. You may remember the story of a young
puppy who replied to a kindly hostess by “The King’s never dance, and the
King’s never sing,” and this in a regiment, forsooth, where every
man-jack of them was a shopkeeper’s son, and which was known as the
“Trades Union.”’”
Great excitement meanwhile prevailed at the Tower; the route had come,
the mess was closed, and everybody was packing in preparation for an
early departure for Ireland. Transports in those long-ago days were not
the floating palaces inaugurated years later by the Indian troopers.
Cranky steamers—whose principal industry was the transporting of pigs and
cattle—were hurriedly chartered by the War Office, and with the men
packed like herrings, and the junior officers billeted amongst the band
instruments, regiments proceeded at five knots an hour from London to the
Irish ports.
The Colonel, during these preparations, lost no opportunity of describing
his experiences when last stationed in Dublin; how he and certain boon
companions were within an ace of being tried for their lives for throwing
into the Liffey an old watchman deposited in a sentry-box; how they
started the “Pig and Whistle” in Sackville Street, run on lines that
would shock you, virtuous reader; their nightly visits to the “Quane’s”
Theatre, where Mikey Duff performed _Hamlet_, and declined to accede to
the demands of the gallery for “Pat Molloy and the roising step” with the
indignant retort: “D— yer oise, what do you expect for toppence;” the
orgies of “Red bank” oysters at Burten Binden’s, and the dinners at the
Bank of Ireland, when the regiment furnished the guard; how old Bill,
after a drinking bout, would stamp through every corner of the
guard-rooms, cursing at everything, and winding up by the consumption of
half-a-dozen brandies and sodas, and “very different to what it was in
the Peninsula!”
“Payther” Madden, too, was holding forth on what he would show them in
Cark, if “plase the Lard the rigimint was quarthered in the ould
station,” and went on to describe how Barny Magee “wad come on and sing
at the Hole in the Wall with a gaythaar in his fist, looking for all the
world like a hamstrung moke,” and how the gallery would shout, “For the
love of dacency, Barny, dhrop yer concertina and pull up yer stockin’,”
and how Mrs. Rooney, bless her soul, would pass yer the toime of day with
that grace—so genteel loike, so obsarvent—as ye paid toll to go in, with:
“God bless you, Carporal, it’s you that has the lip,” or ilse: “Go an wid
ye, Carporal, for a flirrt that ye are.”
“A sort of bloomin’ sing-song,” suggested a cockney comrade, “but give me
London, with ’er bloomin’ orange peel and hashfelt, with ’er boats down
to North Woolwich, with yer gal on yer knee and a new clay in yer face; a
pint of shrimps maybe, and a pint of ale down yer neck, and no bloomin’
guards.”
Amid these conflicting sentiments the regiment quitted the Tower.
And what a delightful station the Dublin of the sixties was; here Lord
Carlisle as Lord-Lieutenant reigned supreme, and though compelled by
usage to keep up the mock court, with its mock “Master of the Horse” and
“Gentlemen at Large,” diffused hospitality like the fine old English
gentleman he was.
Nightly the captain and subaltern of the Castle Guard were invited to the
Viceregal table, during which the kind old man clinked glasses and
invited his every guest to take wine with him. How His Excellency could
retain his head after all these courtesies was once a marvel till it
transpired that the huge decanter before him was the weakest brandy and
water diluted to the exact colour of Amontillado. And then the whist
that followed at sixpenny points, when His Excellency rigorously
prevented his partner—and his partner only—from seeing every card in his
hand. How refreshing it all was!
No contortions short of dislocating their necks could prevent his
adversaries from taking advantage of the dishonest opportunity, for the
old gentleman cracked jokes throughout the entire rubber, and claimed and
paid his sixpences with the scrupulousness of a confirmed gambler.
Among the Viceregal staff were some inflated specimens of
vice-flunkeydom. Foster, Master of Horse, whose death occurred lately,
was reputed as not knowing one end of a horse from another, and never
ventured on a purchase for the Viceregal stables, at Farrell’s or
Sewell’s, unless fortified by the close proximity of Andy Ryan or some
other horse-coper. Burke, a Gentleman at Large and an ex-colonel of
militia, was another warrior of the offensive type, and I shall never
forget the scene when a youngster of the 16th Lancers at one of the
levées gave him a peremptory order when he was officially glued to the
staircase, under pretence that he mistook him for a flunkey. But the
matter was not to end there, and before the réveille had ceased blowing
at Island Bridge he was waited upon by a fiery buckeen to demand
satisfaction on behalf of Kornel Burke.
Captain Stackpool (everybody had a military title) was another Dublin
curiosity. Member of Parliament for Ennis, he affected Dublin and the
delights of the Unoited Service from one year’s end to the other.
Dublin, he assured me, was the most “car-driving, tea-drinking,
money-spending city in the world,” and he was not far wrong.
Lord Louth, who weighed eighteen stone, and stood five foot seven in his
stockings, had served some years in a kilted regiment; but he, too, has
long since been gathered to his fathers.
About this time an amusing incident occurred to Lord Louth. The very
best of fellows, his vanity was insatiable, and only London-built clothes
were good enough to set off his graceful figure.
In the 14th Hussars was a diminutive cornet who also patronised the same
tailor as Louth, and both these dandies—as appeared later—had telegraphed
on the same day for a pair of the most bewitching trousers in preparation
for some social event to which they had both been invited. Conceive the
consternation of the two recipients when at the last moment a pair of
diminutive pants revealed themselves to the enraged peer, and a garment
sufficiently voluminous to engulf three Deal boatmen reached the
expectant cornet. This latter was known as the “Shunter” from the
extraordinary talents he developed later as a gentleman rider, and still
later as a hanger-on of Abingdon Baird.
One of the most brilliant surgeons that Ireland or any other country has
ever produced was just coming into prominence in those long-ago days.
Dr. Butcher, who in appearance resembled the portraits of Disraeli in his
younger days, was known professionally to nearly every man in the
garrison; of the most enthusiastic type, he thought nothing of producing
two or three stones from his waistcoat pocket and exultantly explaining
that he had that morning taken them from certain patients’ interiors, and
nothing gave him greater offence than refusing to attend one of his
private séances. But the most marvellous operation he ever performed was
on Billy Deane, of the 4th Dragoon Guards, who, having consulted every
specialist in Europe, appealed to Butcher to save his arm and enable him
to remain in the service.
A fall whilst hunting had resulted in the disease of the elbow-bone of
the left arm.
“Nothing but taking your arm off will save your life,” was the universal
fiat.
“D— nonsense!” was Butcher’s retort, and he cut a square clean out of the
elbow.
Within six months Billy’s bridle arm was stronger than the other.