Running the Gauntlet: A Novel

by Edmund Yates

And Mr. Griffiths whipped off the tall hat, and showed in it a handkerchief, a greasy parcel suspiciously like a ham sandwich, a pocket comb, and a paper book with the title "The Olio of Oddities, or the Warbling Wagoner's Wallet of Wit and Wisdom."

Mr. Effingham took his friend's advice, and transferred all his portable property from the tail-pockets of his coat to other less patent recesses, and the pair started on their excursion.

Crossing Bishopgate, and turning short round to the right up a street called Sandy's Row, past a huge black block of buildings belonging to the East India Company, and used as a store-house for costly silks, round which seethed and bubbled a dirty, pushing, striving, fighting, higgling, chaffering, vociferating, laughing mob, filling up the narrow street, the small strips of pavement on either side, and what ought to have been the carriage-way between them. It was Sunday, and may have been observed "as such" elsewhere, but certainly not in Sandy's Row or Cutler's Row. There were shops of all kinds, and all at work: tool-shops,--files, saws, adzes, knives, chisels, hammers, and tool-baskets displayed in the open windows, whence the sashes had been removed for the better furtherance of trade; hatters', hosiers', tailors', bootmakers' shops, the proprietors of which had left the calm asylum of their counters and stood at the doors, importuning the passers-by with familiar blandishments; for in the carriage-way through which Effingham and Griffiths slowly forced a passage, were peripatetic vendors of hats, hosiery, clothes, and boots,--hook-nosed oleaginous gentry with ten pairs of trousers over one arm, and five coats over the other, with enormous boots, a few hats, and a number of cloth caps. Mr. Effingham soon learned the value of his friend's advice, for there were thieves of all kinds in the motley crowd; big burly roughs, with sunken eyes and massive jaws, sulkily elbowing their way through the mass, and "gonophs" or pickpockets of fourteen or fifteen, with their collarless tightly-tied neckerchief, their greasy caps, and "aggerawater" curls. Delicate attention was paid to Mr. Effingham before he had been five minutes amongst them. The hind-pockets of his coat were turned inside out, and he was "sounded" all over by a pair of lightly-touching hands. Whether Mr. Griffiths was known, or whether his personal appearance was unattractive and promised no hope of adequate reward, is uncertain; but no attempt was made on him.

While Mr. Effingham was vaguely gaping about him, staring at everything and thoroughly impressed with the novelty of his situation, Griffiths had been taking stock of the crowd, and keeping a strict lookout for Mr. Lyons. Jews were there in shoals, and of all kinds: the grand old Jewish type, dignified and bearded, than which, when good, there is nothing better; handsome sensual-looking men, with bright eyes, and hook-noses, and scarlet lips; red frizzy-headed Jews, with red eyelids, and shambling gait, and nasal intonation; big flat-headed, stupid-looking men, with thick lips, and tongues too large for their mouths, and visibly protruding therefrom;--all kinds of Jews, but Mr. Lyons not among them.

So they pushed on, uncaring for the chaff of the mob, which was very facetious on the subject of Mr. Effingham's attire, saluting him as a "collared bloke," in delicate compliment to his wearing a clean shirt; asking whether he was a "Rooshan;" whether he were not "Prince Halbut's brother," and other delicate compliments,--pushed on until they arrived at the Clothes-Exchange, a roofed building filled round every side and in the centre with old-clothes stalls. Here, piled up in wondrous confusion, lay hats, coats, boots, hob-nailed shoes, satin ball-shoes, driving-coats, satin dresses, hoops, brocaded gowns, flannel jackets, fans, shirts, stockings with clocks, stockings with torn and darned feet, feathers, parasols, black-silk mantles, blue-kid boots, belcher neckerchiefs, and lace ruffles. More Jews here; salesmen shrieking out laudations of their wares, and frantically imploring passers-by to come in and be fitted: "Here'th a coat! plue Vitney; trai this plue Vitney, ma tear." "Here'th a vethkit for you, thir!" shouted one man to Effingham; "thuch a vethkit! a thplendid vethkit, covered all over with blue-and-thilver thpright." Mr. Effingham cast a longing eye at this gorgeous garment, but passed on.

No Lyons here, either among sharp-eyed vendors or leering buyers. Mr. Griffiths was getting nonplussed, and Mr. Effingham growing anxious. "We must find him, Griffiths," he said; "we must not throw away this chance that he's given us; he may be off to the Continent, Lord knows where, to-morrow. Why the devil don't you find him?"

Mr. Griffiths intimated that so far as eye-straining could be gone through, he had done his best; and suggested that if the man they sought were not there, all the energy in the world would not discover him. "But there's the Net of Lemons yet," he said; "that's, after all, the safest draw, and we're more likely to hit upon him there than anywhere else."

So they pushed their way through the steaming, seething, struggling crowd, and found themselves in a quiet dull little square. Across this, and merely glancing at several groups of men dotted here and there in its midst, loudly talking and gesticulating with energy which smacked more of the Hamburg Börsenhalle or the Frankfort Zeil than the stolid reticence of England, Mr. Griffiths led his companion until they stopped before the closed door of a public house, aloft from which swung the sign of "The Net of Lemons." At the door Mr. Griffiths gave three mystic raps, at the third of which the door opened for about a couple of inches, and a thick voice said, "Who is it?"

"All right, Mr. Eliason. Griffiths, whom you know. Take a squint, and judge for yourself."

Mr. Eliason probably followed this advice, and finding the inspection satisfactory, opened the door to its extent, and admitted the pair; but raising his bushy brows in doubt as to Mr. Effingham, Griffiths said, "A friend of mine--come on partickler business, and by appointment with Mr. Lyons. Is he here?"