The neighbourhood of Bennet Street is very convenient: if a pigeon be refused admittance on the score of not being known, and receive the stale answer—‘Sir, this house is only open to the gentlemen of the Club,’ he has only to go down St James’s Street into the Square or to Pall Mall, and he will find accommodation all the way: the descent is easy even to the most intoxicated dandy or guardsman, who will experience the truth of the ‘facilis descensus Averni.’
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No. 10 ST JAMES’S SQUARE.
A low House, Humourously Called the Pigeon hole.
Firm: Abbot Watson, Davies, Fearlove, Leach, and Holdsworth.
This snug little trap is doing remarkably well. Fama volat, that it has netted thirty thousand within twelve months. Whether the exact sum, in so very small a time be true or not, we cannot pretend to say; but we know that a great deal of work is done there, and it is said to have divided twenty-seven thousand in the half-year ending Midsummer 1817.
A certain little doctor is a great friend (we do not say a decoy) to the house, and, of course, a great favourite. There are many links to this chain; and a good bill would be done there, or an I.O.U. taken from gem’men of respectability.
There is a littleness about the concern, both outside and inside; and your topping Greeks prefer a larger scale of establishment. The firm, notwithstanding, goes on slow and sure; and there is no saying what they may realise with time, brisk trade and good customers, although great complaints are made of emigrations to France, the Insolvent Act, the want of honour in the young men of the present day, and, especially, of our disclosures of their mysteries. The north country dialect is here spoken in perfection.
One of the firm is Abbot, of a religious establishment of a somewhat different kind. It is a nunnery, to which confessors are, of course, admitted at the usual hours, on the terms, to use a sporting phrase, of play, or pay. This Abbot is said to be worth nearly a hundred thousand pounds. ‘Two strings to my bow’ is his suitable motto, for he has a wife and family also.
He is more parsimonious than abstemious, as befits the order of which he is the worthy principal, and of which we shall furnish a ludicrous instance. He once had particular occasion for a sovereign. Now, how could he save his money? He was extricated by a most delightful thought, and he, accordingly, sat down to play against his own firm for one pound. Oh! what a slippery jade is Fortune! Luck was against him, and he rose IN DEBT to the bank, little short of £500. His junior partners, however, most liberally (it is said) took the entire case into their serious consideration, and FORGAVE HIM THE DEBT! What other house can produce an instance of such splendid munificence?—Lieut. N—— g, R.N., has lately extracted from the house above £2000. They would almost as soon see the devil as the lieutenant, for Fortune has never deserted him hitherto:—but, even this, like a fire to insurance offices, or a large prize in a lottery, is not without its good effects! It is, after all, baiting with sprats to catch salmon. We are happy to find that this officer has been so prudent as to retire on his good luck!