THE VISIT TO WRIGGLESWORTH[63]
It is said that a certain place not mentionable to "ears polite" is paved with "good intentions." Whether it will ever be macadamized (for that, I believe, is the term for "unstoning," now fast gaining ground, as I am looking over my paper, which, in all probability, everybody else will overlook) I cannot pretend to say; but certain it is, that although I was beyond measure mortified by the results of the Twickenham prank, my exclusion from the society of the Miss Dods, and my absolutely necessary escape from an association with them, I was very soon reconciled to my fate after the arrival of Devil Daly (as I used subsequently to call him) at my lodgings in Suffolk Street.
The instant he had been dislodged from the cottage by the appearance of the young ladies whose family he had so seriously outraged on the previous evening, instead of walking his horse back to Smart's, at the Toy, at Hampton Court, he cantered up to visit me in London; not so much from any particular affection for me, but because, although himself the victim, there was something so exciting and delightful to him in a joke, that he could not deny himself the pleasure of narrating to me the history of the arrival of the sylphs, and his extraordinary ruse of the bleeding nose. I never saw him in higher spirits, and, quoad my resolutions, I could not, for the life of me, refuse to join him in a stroll about town, which, although the season was somewhat advanced, was yet agreeably full, with a pledge to dine with him somewhere afterwards.
In those days clubs were scarce, although then hearts were plenty; there were no clubs of note at that period but White's, Brookes's, and Boodle's. To be sure, there was the Cocoa Tree, and there was Graham's, but the number of members was small, the system confined, and therefore, although Daly and I were as proud as Lucifer, and as "fine as fine could be," men had no resource when they wished to enjoy the "feast of reason and the flow of soul"—the one in the shape of a cutlet, and the other in the tapering form of a bottle of claret—but to repair to a coffee-house, a place which, I find, is now (I speak while I am arranging my papers) obsolete—a dear, nice, uncomfortable room, with a bar opening into it, a sanded floor, an argand lamp smoking a tin tray in the middle of its ceiling, boxes along its sides, with hard carpet-covered benches, schoolboy tables, and partitions, with rods, and rings, and curtains, like those of a churchwarden's pew in a country church.
I selected Dejex's, at the corner of Leicester Place. Attention and civility, a good cuisine, and good wine, formed its particular attractions, and the courteous attention of "mine host" gave a new zest to his cookery and his claret. I own I love attention and civility—not that which seems to be extracted by dint of money, or by force of the relative situations of guest and landlord, but that anxious desire to please, that consideration of one's little peculiarities, and that cheerfulness of greeting which, even if it be assumed, is always satisfactory. To Dejex's we resolved to go, and having "secured our box" and taken our stroll, we found ourselves seated and served by a little after six o'clock.
There was something irresistibly, practically, engaging about Daly, and I never felt more completely assured of the influence over me of a man with whom I had been so short a time acquainted, than I was when I found myself again—in the course of eight and forty hours—associated with him in a place which, of all others, was the most likely to afford him some opportunity of exhibiting his eccentricities; for the company consisted in a great degree of emigrés of the ancient régime, who, until the master-hand of Wellington was raised to cut the Gordion knot of their difficulties, which negotiation had for years in vain attempted to untwist, "had made England the asylum for their persecuted race." Yet, however much their misfortunes—the natural results of anarchy and revolution—might excite our sympathies and demand our assistance, some of them, it must be admitted, were, to our then unaccustomed eyes, extremely strange specimens of humanity; they were what Mr. Daly, in his peculiar phraseology, called "uncommon gigs;" and one very venerable ci-devant marquis, who wore spectacles, the said Daly, as he advanced up the room, somewhat too loudly, I thought, pronounced to be "a gig with lamps."
However, we got through dinner, and had safely demolished our admirable omelette soufflée without any outbreaking on the part of my mercurial companion; the coffee-room began to thin, and I began to be more at my ease than before, when Daly proceeded to recount some of his adventures, which proved to me that, however deeply the scene of the preceding day at Twickenham might have impressed itself on me, it was to him a "trifle light as air."
"But how," said I, "shall I ever reconcile the Dods? I am destined to meet those people; you are not."