This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler

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 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.

CHAPTER II.
THE TOWER.

About this time all England was ringing with what was known as the “Trent affair”; 10,000 troops had been ordered to Montreal, of which a considerable portion were Guards, and so it devolved on certain line battalions to garrison London, and we were ordered to the Tower.

It was the regimental guest-night, and all the plate of which the regiment was so proud decked the table in the dark wainscoted room of the Mess House. In the middle of the table stood a centre-piece displaying the soldiers in the uniforms of the days of Marlborough, the Peninsular, and later on, when the hateful Albert Shako did duty as the headgear of British infantry; extending down each side were scrolls containing the names of brave men who had fallen with their faces to the enemy at Quebec, Quatre Bras, and the Redan, whilst flanking the massive trophy were silver goblets varying in size—from those that held a quart down to others of more modern dimensions, indicative of presentations on promotion, marriage, or “selling out.” It had, indeed, once been a custom for the last joined ensign to drain the largest tankard on his first appearance at mess; but that was in the days when four bottles under a man’s belt was deemed a reasonable amount, and before the Regent’s allowance enabled every one to consume nightly a half-glass of port or sherry free of expense.

The Colonel, as may be supposed, was in great form, each of his yarns exceeding in improbability the one preceding it. “Yes, gentlemen,” he was saying, “I remember my father saying how at Quatre Bras the regiment found itself confronted by the 88th French Infantry Corps, and he overheard the right-hand man of his company saying, as he bit off the end of his cartridge, ‘Jasus, boys, here’s a case—here we are opposite the French Connaught Rangers!’”

“I was saying, gentlemen,” the Colonel’s voice was here heard declaring, “that I shall never forget”—and then followed a tissue of fabrications every one had frequently heard before, but which nobody but the worthy old warrior for one moment believed.

Coffee and cigars had meanwhile made their welcome appearance, and as guests began to think of home, and others settled down to muff whist, the ante-room resumed the humdrum appearance so familiar to every one who can speak from experience.

By the irony of fate, also, the regiment was furnishing the guards on this special guest-night, a circumstance that claimed more than one punter; not satisfied with which, the field officer’s “roster” had apparently joined issue and requisitioned the old Major who, on these festive occasions was always a sure hand at loo, and who at the identical moment when he should have been “taking the miss,” was probably bellowing out “Grand Rounds,” to some distant guard in tones that belied his amiable genial disposition.

George, on these occasions, was the recognised organiser, and by herculean efforts had secured some half-dozen recruits to commence loo as soon as old Hanmer returned.

Games of chance—even in the long-ago sixties—were rarely indulged in in the ante-room, which was reserved exclusively for solemn whist for nominal stakes, where the players bottled up trumps, misdealt, and revoked, regardless of all the canons of the game.

“Damn it, sir!” once exclaimed an irate General at an inspection dinner to his trembling partner—the assistant surgeon—“Are you aware that 3,000 shoeless men are tramping the streets of the Continent for not leading trumps?” to which the medico—who was a Kerry man—replied respectfully:

“Oi apalagoise, surr, most humbly; but oi disremembered me abligation.”

“Obligation be d—, sir!” replied the genial old warrior as he lighted a fresh cheroot.

“The Major’s late,” remarked George to a confirmed loo player; “let us go up to my room and get the table ready. Come on,” he continued to four or five others, “we’ll make a start anyhow; he can’t be long.”

The officers’ quarters in the Tower can hardly be described as spacious, and so by the addition of chairs from other rooms; with the table lugged into the centre, and brandy and sodas piled on the bed it was not long before some half-dozen punters were securely wedged together and indulging in unlimited loo for stakes that were not always nominal.

The Major, meanwhile, had joined the party and without divesting himself of either cloak, shako, or sword, dashed into the fray with considerably greater zeal than he had displayed when going the rounds. Not that he was any feather-bed soldier; on the contrary, he had borne his full share of the trenches, and then often found himself told off to march to Balaclava with a fatigue party, and eventually to enjoy a few hours’ sleep in wet clothes on wet ground, whilst blankets and boots were rotting within six miles, and all because brave men were at the front, and old women were at the back of that rickety machine called the War Office.

Billy Hanmer, amid the ordinary walks of life, was of a chilly temperament; the thermometer in his quarters was never permitted to register less than 65 degrees; he wore flannels all the year round, which in winter were duplicated, even to his socks; when he became excited—which never occurred except at loo, or when suddenly called upon to drill the battalion—the three hairs that were usually pasted across his martial skull rose like the crest of a cockatoo, and he was apt to give vent to expressions seldom or never heard at a bishop’s. Swearing in those long-ago days was considered a necessary adjunct to military efficiency, as any one who was under Pennefather when he commanded at Aldershot can testify, and so it was that the Major was now swearing like a trooper. As a fact, he had just been “loo-ed,” and was counting some forty sovereigns into the pool, and every sovereign was accompanied by an oath as unique as it was unavailing.

George Hay, sportsman though he was, was also a bad loser, but this evening, in his capacity as host the Fates had happily protected him. The grilled bones that appeared at 2 a.m., and the inordinate amount of brandy and soda that had been consumed, were all put down to him; but the hundred he had won left ample margin for the hospitality, and towards five our hero fell into a profound and refreshing sleep, periodically enlivened by sweet visions of huge pools that he persistently raked in, whilst Billy Hanmer, divested of cloak, sword, and shako, was swearing till the old rafters rattled.

In those days the club most affected by subalterns was the “Raleigh,” a charming night-house, approached by a tunnel, whose portals opened at dusk and closed reputedly at four a.m., or whenever its members vacated it. And the comfort of that long, delightful single room! Ranged round its entirety were fauteuils, suitable alike for forty winks, or brandy and soda, or the only eatables procurable—bacon on toast sandwiches with a dash of biting sauce. Here might be seen the best men in London percolating through at every moment, and exchanging badinage as brilliant as probably it was naughty—poor old George Lawrence of “Sword and Gown” fame, and Piggy Lawrence, killed not long after in a regimental steeplechase; Fred Granville, who assisted at a once celebrated elopement by waiting at one door of an Oxford Street shop for the beautiful fiancée of a wealthy landowner whose brougham had deposited her at another; Freddy Cooper, the best four-in-hand whip of the day; the wicked Marquis who ran through a fortune almost before he was of age; and young Wyndham, another Croesus of the duck-and-drake type; Sir Henry de Hoghton of the red tie and velvet suit who thought he could play ecarté; and King-Harman, then a sinner, but eventually a saint, who died in the sanctity of respectability. These, and a hundred others, all, alas gone to the inevitable dustbin, and yet the old building exists, externally apparently the same—the haunt of aspiring youths seeking a club with a past, respectable and cautious to the highest degree, where cheques are not cashed over £5, and the doors close at one a.m. to the tick.

But even in these long-ago days, the membership increased to such an extent that elbow-room had to be sought, and so Sally Sutherland’s, a high-class night-house that abutted on the premises, was eventually taken in, and became the card room of the old Raleigh. To see this room in its glory it was necessary to enter it during the Derby week, where, as far as the eye could reach (and farther), one dense mass of human faces watched the proceedings at the card table, and fought and hustled to pass fivers and tenners and fifties towards building up the mountain of bank notes that flanked either side of the table.

Seated composedly were the two champions with their bankers alongside them, then a fringe ten deep of pasty-faced cornets and rubicund old sinners with sheaves of bank notes in their hands, while beyond were the “fielders”—landsharks who never played—eagerly watching every turn of the cards to take advantage of any bet that appeared slightly in their favour. “Chalky” White—the master of the Essex as he was ironically called—because he affected horsy overalls, and was once seen on a screw at the Boat Race; Captain Mulroony, an Irish buckeen who joined the “North Corks” to be eligible for “the cloob”; “the Rapparee,” another warrior with a brogue of a pronounced order, all ready to plunge on a reasonable certainty and retail their experiences later on, on their return to Dublin. Needless to add, we youngsters had put down our names en bloc for membership as soon as we had settled down at the Tower, and on the memorable night to which we refer were in great force in the long room. George Hay, one of our lieutenants who was being entertained by a venerable member, was wrapped in contemplation as he watched a decrepit old gentleman sipping a gin sling. “That man”—his cicerone was telling him—“fought the last duel in England; look at him now, about eighty if he’s a day, and barely able to crawl down here, and yet fifty years ago he had a drunken brawl with his best friend at Crockford’s, and shot him dead before breakfast at the back of Ham House. Wait till the play begins and you’ll see him ‘fielding’; he never plays, but if he sees a chance, no matter how slightly in his favour, he still pulls out a crumpled fiver and invites you to cover it. He only bets ‘ready,’ and would probably ‘call you out’ if you suggested ‘booking’ it. That man in the blue shirt is the Duke of Hamilton; he only turns up in the Derby week, and has probably just arrived by special train. We call him ‘the butcher,’ because of his shirt and his punching proclivities. He plunges, too; wait a bit till the Leviathans turn up. You’ll see some sport yet.”

“What are you going to do, George?” inquired a youngster; “why not have a look in at Kate Hamilton’s? This is all d— rot, and I’ve put my name down for 2 a.m.”

Putting one’s name down, it may be explained, was a necessary formality indicating at what hour an officer intended to return when the wicket at the Tower was opened and closed, and punctuality was a necessity of the greatest moment.

On one occasion, indeed when “Payther” Madden was on sentry, the wife of an officer who gave herself considerable airs having arrived five minutes late was challenged from inside by “Who goes there?” “I’m the Major’s lady,” was the haughty response. “Divil a bit do I care if ye were the Major’s wife!” yelled Payther from inside; “you’ll not get in till the wicket is opened agin.”

And the approaches to the Tower in those days were not the broad and well-lighted avenues such as the Eastcheap of to-day; tortuous alleys and dingy, narrow streets had to be traversed, and the garrotter was very much in evidence. Officers returning late carried knuckle-dusters and short blades in their right-hand overcoat pockets, ready to job any footpad who attempted to seize them from behind. Men seldom returned but in parties of twos or threes, and so it was that the Major’s “lady” found herself constrained to hug the walls of the grim old fortress during the early hours of that memorable night in the long-ago sixties.

It was the night after the big race, when Caractacus was responsible for much that followed, that the crowd at the Raleigh was phenomenal, and champagne was being consumed in tumblers from the entrance hall to the card room. Thousands had changed hands within the past dozen hours, and old Jimmy Jopp with his chocolate wig over his left eye was scrambling sovereigns from the doorstep amongst the fair guests of our country who thronged the boulevard. The card room had not as yet entered on its usual function, the window was indeed open in an endeavour to dilute the stifling atmosphere, and a corpulent old lady with a Flemish accent was half-way in the sacred precincts through the combined efforts of a bevy of fair compatriots on the pavement.

“Curse these races,” ejaculated Biscoe, “where have the plungers got to? Nearly one o’clock by G—, and a pile to be got home before daylight.”

This Biscoe was not a favourite in the club; of a hectoring disposition he added to his unpopularity by the pursuit of sharp practices. If he won he invariably found an excuse to retire with his gains, and if he lost he became cantankerous and offensive in his remarks. Some there were, indeed, who went so far as hinting that he was not above unfair dealings. He was partial to shuffling the cards with their faces towards him and placing a king at the bottom of the pack. This he explained was mere force of habit, and when remonstrated with—as he often had been—added that he was superstitious and that one of his superstitions took this form. No actual act of foul play had ever been brought home to him; he was nevertheless under suspicion, and being otherwise unpopular, his eccentricities assumed a graver form when balanced by hostile critics.

Cheating in those long-ago days was happily a rare occurrence; a man about town might beggar his parents, or drive his wife into the workhouse, and still hold up his head as a man of honour if he met his card debts on the nail; but “sharping” was practically unknown till some years later, when a scandal that thrilled Europe and involved a deep erasure in the Army List was enacted at Nice.

The Raleigh, meanwhile, was gradually simmering down; choice spirits had started for Cremorne or Mott’s; the more soberly amused had wended their steps towards Evans’s, and the residue might have been classed as either punters or puntees—if such base coin will bear alloy.

Seated in the card room, Biscoe still smoked in his solitude; before him was a gilt-bound volume such as betting men affect, and its contemplation apparently did not afford unalloyed pleasure. “Egad,” he muttered, “£4,000, more or less, and not a hundred to meet it with; to-night it’s neck or nothing, and if nobody bleeds I shall be unable to face the music on Monday. Ah, De Hoghton,” he exclaimed, barely looking up as an apparition in velvet and red tie appeared, “been at Epsom? No? Perhaps you were wise.”

Paddy was too clever to suggest a game, knowing as he did the eccentric baronet’s peculiarities. “Never mind,” he continued, “better luck to-morrow, perhaps. I’m half asleep. Good-night,” and he rose as if about to depart.

“What’s the hurry?” inquired the new arrival. “If you want to keep awake I’ll play you half a dozen games of ecarté, but only for small stakes, mind.”

Want indeed! It was what Biscoe had wanted for hours, and as to the stakes, did he not know from delightful experience that if they began at £5 it would not be long before the game was for hundreds, and that his adversary’s rent roll might be counted in thousands?

“My dear Sir Henry,” replied Biscoe, “name your own stakes. No fear of making them too low. I feel in bad form to-night, and your science will be altogether too much for me.”

“Say a pony then,” continued the baronet, and they cut for deal.

Meanwhile the room began gradually to fill, and as the unmistakable flutter of crisp notes—for which no resemblance has ever been discovered—made itself heard in the long room, George Hay and a troop of others sauntered negligently into the room.

“Sit beside me, Colonel,” De Hoghton requested a grizzly, rubicund warrior, “you’ll be able to advise me when they make a pool.”

“And, Rapparee, I want you,” exclaimed Biscoe. “We must show these English boys how we play at Stephen’s Green,” and a fire-eating pronounced Hibernian took post alongside his compatriot.

For a considerable time the luck appeared to fluctuate, and if hundreds were passed across the table on one game, they returned more or less intact at the subsequent encounter. Play was now in real earnest, and stakes were hazarded that were simply appalling. Biscoe, too, appeared to be in for a run of luck, and the excited whisperings between him and the Rapparee left little room for doubt that he contemplated a retreat on the first defeat.

His winnings, indeed, were considerable, and a smile pervaded his hitherto scowling face as he contemplated the Monday’s settling with equanimity. Again the bank was declared, and a pile of notes larger than any of its predecessors lumbered each side of the table; eyes, apparently, had no other vocation than to watch their respective champion’s hands; the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece became a nuisance, and the grasshopper literally became a burden; the silence of the Catacombs pervaded the entire assembly, when a voice, shrill and excited, was heard: “Do that again, Mr. Biscoe, and I’ll expose you.”

It was the Colonel, who leaning across the table bore down Biscoe’s hands with a strong right arm as he was in the act of shuffling.

“What am I to understand by this?” inquired Biscoe looking towards the Rapparee. “If it’s by way of an insult you’ve met the right boy to resent it. Hands off, sir!” he shouted, as shaking off the Colonel’s hand, he hurled the pack of cards in his face.

“Hold, hold, gentlemen, for God’s sake,” implored De Hoghton, as a dozen men interposed between the belligerents. “Some explanation is surely forthcoming that may avoid a scandal. Colonel, tell those gentlemen what you saw, and let them decide on the merits before it gets into the papers.”

“What I saw I am prepared to prove,” replied the Colonel, excitedly; “but even that sinks into insignificance, as far as I am personally concerned, in face of the man’s assault. Meanwhile, pick up these cards, count them carefully, and if you don’t find five kings in the pack I’ll apologise to Mr. Biscoe, and take his assault like a coward.”

And then a scramble on the floor began, which was followed by breathless silence.

“Count them, please,” requested the Colonel, and sure enough 33 was the result.

“Now turn the faces towards you, sir,” continued the Colonel; “and extract the kings.” And lo! before a dumbfounded crowd, two kings of hearts were displayed.

“This, gentlemen, is my accusation. I charge Mr. Biscoe with being a card-sharper and a cheat. To-morrow I’ll lay my charge before the Committee; meanwhile, I retire and will ask you, Hay, to act as my representative.”

The Rapparee meanwhile had been in whispered conversation with his friend, and on the Colonel’s departure, addressed himself to Hay.

“Oi presume, surr, your principal will meet my man unless he’s a coward, and we shall be pleased to let him fix his own day, either before or afther his complaint to the Committee.”

“This is hardly the time, sir, to enter into such arrangements,” replied Hay, courteously; “but I vouch for Colonel George doing what is right and honourable.”

But one of the younger members seemed inclined to treat the matter as a joke, and turning towards the Rapparee, remarked, “But, surely, sir, you must see that if it’s a duel you are hinting at, it would hardly be fair considering that Colonel George is considerably stouter than Mr. Biscoe. May we assume, sir, that you won’t object to a chalk mark down each side of the Colonel’s waistcoat, and a hit outside not to count?”

“Surr!” scowled the Rapparee.

“Please,” pleaded Hay; “this is not a joking matter, the honour of the Club and of every member who was present is at stake till the affair is cleared up. I appeal to you, gentlemen, one and all, to retire.”

Turning to the Rapparee, and raising his hat, he continued: “My name, sir, is Lieutenant Hay, and I’m stationed at the Tower.”

CHAPTER III.
MOTT’S AND CREMORNE.

London in the sixties possessed no music-halls as at present except the London Pavilion and a transpontine establishment unknown to the West End. This former had not long previously been transformed from a swimming bath into an undertaker’s shed, which in its turn gave place to the dingy hall which eventually made the fortune of a waiter from Scott’s. But such excitement (!) hardly met the requirements of progressive civilisation, which found an outlet in the Argyll, Cremorne, the Café Riche, Sally Sutherland’s, Kate Hamilton’s, Rose Young’s, and Mott’s. It seems but yesterday that one was sipping champagne at Boxall’s stall in the Café Riche (now a flower shop adjoining the Criterion) waiting for young Broome the pugilist, who was to pilot one in safety to “the big fight between King and Heenan.” In those halcyon days cafés remained open all night, and three a.m. was the hour appointed for our start for London Bridge. What splendid aid was then given legitimate sport by the authorities, as driving through rows of police across London Bridge one reached the terminus in comfort by simply displaying one’s ticket. With a pork pie in one pocket, and a handkerchief in another, one’s peace of mind was delightful, and hands in every pocket—aye, and knives to cut one out if necessary—were accepted only as a portion of a novel and delightful excitement.

Pitching the ring again in one field and being warned off by the Kent constabulary, how invigorating the tramp through ploughed fields, till again we found a spot—this time undisturbed—in the muddy plains of Sussex. Wisps of straw provided for the more favoured by the attention of their punching cicerones, the biting of King’s ear to bring him to “time,” the two giants half blind, swinging their arms mechanically, the accidental blow that felled the brave Heenan, and the shameful verdict that denied him the victory ten minutes previously, the return to the “Bricklayers’ Arms”—how vivid it all seems! And yet principals, seconds, lookers-on, where are they?

The Café Riche of the long-ago sixties was perhaps the most successful and best regulated of the haunts of vanished London. Slack to an extreme till about 11 p.m., the huge mass of humanity as it poured out of the Argyll made straight for it. As one traversed the almost impassable Windmill Street along the narrow path kept by a bevy of police, all thoughts turned towards the Café Riche, where the best of suppers, oysters, and champagne prepared one for the more arduous exertions of Cremorne or Mott’s. Cremorne in those days was a delightful resort, with an excellent band, and frequented by the most exalted of men and the most beautiful of women. Here might be seen nightly during his stay in London a late ruling monarch (then Crown Prince) whose moustache the ladies insisted on twisting; here, too, occasionally big rows took place, affairs that originated in some trifle, such as the irritation of an excitable blood on seeing a harmless shop-boy dancing in the ring. King-Harman probably was the principal originator of these encounters. Naturally of an amiable but plethoric disposition, a sight such as the above was like a red rag to a bull, and in no time the fight became universal and furious. Gas was turned off, the ringleaders bolted, pursued by police. A run as far as Chelsea Hospital with a “bobby” in full cry was by no means an uncommon occurrence.

On the occasions when exalted foreigners like Prince Humbert were going, the ground in a way had to be salted. Intimation was privately conveyed to certain well-known roysterers at Long’s, the Raleigh, and elsewhere, that an exalted personage asked them to abstain from rows; a puncher and two or three bloods were told off to accompany, and a special envoy was instructed to warn Johnny Baum (the lessee) not to be aware of the angel he was harbouring and to resist the temptation of any gush and “dutiful” toadyism; and so on the eventful night Humbert lolled unrecognised through the revelling crowds, whilst ghastly veterans in harlotry twitted him on his huge moustache and thrust cards into his fist as tokens of British hospitality.

Mott’s, too, was a unique institution, select it might almost be termed, considering the precautions that were taken regarding admittance. Every man who entered was known by name or sight. A man of good birth or position, no matter how great a roué, was admitted as it were by right, whilst parvenus, however wealthy, were turned empty away. It was told indeed that on one occasion, being importuned for admission by a wealthy hatter, old Freer, having been requested by the indignant shop-boy to take his card, had replied, “Not necessary, sir. Not necessary. I have your name in my hat.” And so the line that divided the classes in the sixties was religiously respected. In those benighted days tradesmen sent in their bills apologetically, and if a tailor began to importune, a fresh order met the case. Flats were unbuilt, and people did not hear what was going on all day and all night at their next door neighbour’s; inferiors said “Sir,” and “Right you are” was a phrase uncoined; if you dined at Simpson’s or Limmer’s you were served on silver, and no waiter ventured to ask you who won the 3.45 race; club waiters literally stalked one as they approached with a dish, and the caravanserais that now dominate the entire length of Piccadilly had not pulled down club averages nor reduced the prestige that attached to club membership. The great gulf was fixed as immovably as between Dives and Lazarus when Abraham was the umpire, and things probably found their level as well as in these advanced days, when money is everything, and £20,000 judiciously applied will ensure a baronetcy.

The ladies who frequented Mott’s, moreover, were not the tawdry make-believes that haunt the modern “Palaces,” but actresses of note, who, if not Magdalens, sympathised with them; girls of education and refinement who had succumbed to the blandishments of youthful lordlings; fair women here and there who had not yet developed into peeresses and progenitors of future legislators. Among them were “Skittles,” celebrated for her ponies, and Sweet Nelly Fowler, the undisputed Queen of Beauty in those long-ago days. This beautiful girl had a natural perfume, so delicate, so universally admitted, that love-sick swains paid large sums for the privilege of having their handkerchiefs placed under the Goddess’s pillow, and sweet Nelly pervaded—in the spirit, if not in the flesh—half the clubs and drawing-rooms of London.

This remnant of old-fashioned homage was by no means unusual, and at fancy bazaars it was an almost invariable custom to secure the services of the belle of the hour to sell strawberries at 2s. 6d. apiece, which the fair vendor placed to her lip and then pushed between the swain’s. Years later a matronly creature, forgetting that her charms had long since vanished, essayed to fill the coffers of a charity bazaar by similar blandishments, and as one looked at the hollow cheeks and discoloured tusks one was fain to wonder what the effect of the “treatment” would be on the most robust constitution.

Situated in an unpretentious house in Foley Street, the ballroom at Mott’s (as it appeared in the sixties) was a spacious octagon with a glass dome. At the side, approached by a few steps, was the supper room, where between 2 and 3 a.m. cold fowl and ham and champagne were discussed, the fiddlers descending from their loft, and revelry fast and furious took the place of the valse.

Not many years ago, impelled by an irresistible impulse, I visited the hall of dazzling light; a greasy drab opened the street door, and conducted me into a dingy apartment, which she assured me was the old haunt. Sure enough, there stood the dilapidated orchestra perch, and, yet a little way off, the steps that led to the supper room; and whilst I was contemplating them with something very like a lump in my throat, a squeaky voice addressed me, and I beheld a decrepit old man—all that was left of poor old Freer—whom memory associated with an expanse of white waistcoat, essaying hints such as, “Now, then, lady’s chain,” or hob-nobbing with some beauty, or remonstrating, “Really, my lord, these practical jokes cannot be permitted.” This temple of the past may still be seen with all the windows smashed and on the eve of demolition.

Lord Hastings in those far-off days was the chief culprit in every devilry. Beloved by police and publican, he occupied a privileged position; nothing vicious characterised his jokes, and he had but one enemy—himself. His advent at a ratting match or a badger drawing was a signal to every loafer that the hour of his thirst was ended, and that henceforth “the Markis was in the chair.” Six cases of champagne invariably formed the first order, and as old Jimmy Shaw shouted, “’Ere, more glasses there, and dust a chair for ’is Lordship,” the four ale bar closed in, as it were, and duke and dustman hobnobbed and clinked glasses with a deferential familiarity unknown in these levelling days.

Lord Hastings selected his companions on facial and other merits, and no meeker, more guileless-looking youths existed than Bobby Shafto and Freddy Granville. “Bobby,” said the Marquis, on one occasion, when he had arranged a surprise at Mott’s, “we must go round to Jimmy Shaw’s. I’ve to pick up a parcel there, and, look here, old man, you must smuggle it in somehow; old Freer always looks carefully at me, but he’ll never suspect you; you must carry it under your cape, and when we get inside mind, don’t go down to the supper room. I’ll run down for a second, and then join you; you know the spot I showed you near the meter?”

Arriving in Windmill Street, no time was lost in preliminaries.

“Is it all right, Jimmy?” inquired the Marquis, and in reply a cadaverous individual dressed like a gamekeeper respectfully approached his lordship. This was the professional rat-catcher, who traversed the main drains half the day, and supplied the various sporting haunts with thousands of rats nightly.

If a dog was backed to kill one thousand rats in a specified time the supply never failed to be equal to the demand, despite the hundreds that were pitted nightly against ferrets, or produced at so much a dozen for young bloods to try their dogs on.

To see this rat-catcher plunge his hand into a sack full of huge and ferocious sewer rats and extracting them one by one by the tail count the requisite amount into the pit was a sight beyond description, as legislators, cabinet ministers, peers, and army men threw sovereigns at him in payment of the sport supplied.

Carrying a sack in his hand this individual respectfully replied: “All right, my lud, two hundred as varmint a lot as iver I clapped eyes on. Thanks, your lordship, good luck to yer,” and he pocketed his fee.

“But are they tied all right?” inquired Bobby, as the parcel was presented to him.

“Right, sir? Why, you’ve only to slip this string like, and there you are.”

“Yes, I know where I should be,” suggested Bobby; “but I mean now. I’ll be d—d if I’ll put them under my cloak for a thousand till you make a regular knot.”

“Well, there you are, sir,” replied the expert with a pitying smile, as he performed the requisite function.

“Now we’re all right, Bobby,” added the Marquis. “Come on, we must catch them at supper. I’ve got a knife, come on,” and directing the hansom to Foley Street, the conspirators proceeded on their mission.

“Very quiet!” remarked the Marquis, as Freer received them at the door.

“Supper, my lord, supper; and, beg pardon, my lord, no larks to-night, please; we’ve a rare lot here to-night, my lord; Lord Londesboro’ is here with Miss Fowler and no end of toffs.”

“Why, Freer, what are you talking about? Look at me,” and he displayed his white waistcoat, “and Mr. Shafto here, he doesn’t know London or your infernal place. I’m showing him the rounds, Freer; we shan’t stay long,” and, preceded by the unsuspecting old sinner, the pair proceeded as arranged.

Sitting in the deserted room, Bobby scanned the empty orchestra loft, whilst shouts intermingled with the popping of corks arose from the supper room beyond, so shifting his position to nearer proximity to the meter, he awaited the return of his companion.

“All right, old man, they’ll be up in ten minutes, but don’t budge till the fiddles strike up; here’s the knife, blade open; don’t cut till I say ‘Now,’ and bolt like h— once the gas is out.”

The requisite wait was not of long duration. First came old Freer, as, casting a sheep’s eye at the Marquis, he contemplated the orchestra; next, producing a watch, he shouted, “time, gentlemen,” and half a dozen seedy instrumentalists ascended the stairs. The pianist, it was evident, was in his cups, but no notice was taken of this—it being admitted that he played better when drunk than when sober, and had even been known to supply impromptu variations and improvements to the “Mabel Valse” and “Blue Danube” when under the exhilarating influence of Freer’s brut champagne. Then followed a bevy of fair women—Nelly Fowler and her worshipful lord; “Shoes,” who eventually became Lady W—; Baby Jordan, Nelly Clifford, the innocent cause of dynastic ructions twelve months later at the Curragh—closely followed by Fred Granville, Lyttleton, Chuckles, John Delapont, of the 11th, and a mob of flushed men, and as the fiddles began to twang, and the dancers took up positions, the Marquis thought fit to add a word in season. “Talk away, old man, as if it was something private, or some one will be coming up and spoiling the game; go on, man; now then, look out, is the knife all ready? Shake ’em well out, old man, they can’t hurt you; look out, are you ready? Now.”

To describe what followed is impossible. Two hundred men and women, and two hundred sewer rats, compressed within the compass of forty feet by thirty, and in a darkness as profound as was ever experienced in Egypt.

Bobby and Hastings meanwhile were driving towards Cremorne with the complacency of men who had done their duty.

Cremorne on a Derby night baffles description; progress round the dancing platform was almost impossible. The “Hermit’s Cave” and the “Fairy Bower” were filled to repletion, and to pass the private boxes was to run the gauntlet of a quartern loaf or a dish of cutlets at one’s head. Fun fast and furious reigned supreme, during which the smaller fry of shop-boys and hired dancers pirouetted within the ring with their various partners. But as time advanced, and the wine circulated, the advent of detachments of roysterers bespoke a not-distant row. A Derby night without a row was, in those days, an impossibility, and the night that our contingent started from the Raleigh was no exception to the rule.

No man in his senses brought a watch, and if his coat was torn and his hat smashed, what matter? And if he lost the few shillings provided to meet cab fare and incidental expenses the loss was not a serious one, always supposing a cab was to be found, and one was not in the clutches of the law.

“There’s King-Harman,” remarked Hastings, “let us stick near him; there’s bound to be a row before morning, and we may as well be together. Can you run, Bobby? Not with that cape, though; you’ll have to chuck that; but what does it matter, it’s done its duty, and it’s unworthy of a less honourable distinction?”

“Yes,” replied Bobby. “I don’t fancy wearing it after those infernal rats. But why should there be a row?”

“A row, man,” replied his mentor, “of course there’ll be a row; what did we come here for but a row? What did King-Harman come here for, do you suppose, but a row? And look here, when they turn the gas out—as they always do—run like blazes; you’re not safe till you get to Chelsea Hospital, and don’t run into the arms of a policeman; they sometimes stop chaps running, on spec.,” and with these words of wisdom they mingled with the crowd.

The expected dénouement was not long in coming, and in a second, and without apparent warning, sticks were crashing down on top hats, tumblers flying in every direction, and fists coming in contact with anything or anybody whose proximity seemed to suggest it.

The fiddlers had meanwhile made a hasty retreat, the gas was put out, and with the exception here and there of an illumination (a dip steeped in oil), the free fight continued till a bevy of police appeared upon the scene.

Sauve qui peut was then the word, and helter skelter, old and young, Jew and Gentile, soiled doves and hereditary legislators dashed like the proverbial herd of swine towards the gates. Often did this stampede continue for a mile, till straggling cabs, on their way to their stables, picked up the stragglers, and landed them in less disturbed districts. But the night was by no means over, not certainly the Derby night for roysterers like Lord Hastings.

“We’ll have a rasher of bacon, Bobby,” he explained, as they descended in Piccadilly Circus. “Why, it’s barely five o’clock,” and they entered an unpretentious coffee-house in rear of the colonnade, much frequented by roysterers and market gardeners.

“Qui hi;” shouted a voice as they took their seats in an uncomfortable pew, and old Jim Stewart, of the 93rd, and a companion hailed them from behind a mountain of eggs and bacon.

But their adventures were not to end with this wholesome repast, as, coming out, they espied an empty cart, into which they all proceeded to climb.

“Hi, master,” shouted the owner, disturbed at his meal, “that be moine.”

“Not it, man,” yelled Hastings; “it’s mine; jump in,” and, without a murmur, the worthy man obeyed.

“Where to, master?” was the next inquiry. “I be going for a load of gravel to Scotland Yard.” And within half an hour four bucks with white ties were shovelling in gravel as if their lives depended on it.

Scotland Yard in those days was a public gravel-pit, and its name did not convey the painful suggestions of after years.

“Where now, master?” inquired the yokel again, and St. John’s Wood was the order.

Here, before a palatial mansion, the cart pulled up, and the load was shot on to the steps. Johnny MacNair, the handsomest man in the Highland Brigade, who was too “exhausted” to be moved, was then pushed into the hall, and the cortège again departed.

To describe further would be a physical impossibility. Exhausted nature, bad wine, possibly the bacon and eggs, all combined to make memory a blank. Suffice that the house was the private residence of a corpulent ratepayer and respected member of St. Stephen’s Church, who appeared in the “Court Directory” as Mrs. Hamilton.

The final episode was the appearance of Johnny MacNair at Rawling’s Hotel at three in the afternoon very irate, and only appeased on being assured that the episode was a blank to others beside himself.

People may say how scandalous all this reads, and how thankful we ought to be to be living in these decorous twentieth century days! But reflect, virtuous reader. The sixties, if apparently bad, were not so bad as the days of the Georges, which again compare favourably with the golden days when Charles (of blessed memory) was King. Vigilance societies did not then exist as now, and fifty institutions with their secretaries and staff had not to be supported by seekers after morality. London was not even blessed with a County Council, and John Burns probably could have robbed a birds’ nest as deftly as the veriest scapegrace in those long-ago roystering days.

Place a file of the Divorce Court proceedings in the scales, add the scandals that occasionally get into print, and, having adjusted them carefully, decide honestly whether the balance is much against the London of the long-ago sixties.

CHAPTER IV.
KATE HAMILTON—AND LEICESTER SQUARE.

The entrance to Kate Hamilton’s may best be located as the spot on which Appenrodt’s German sausage shop now stands, although the premises extended right through to Leicester Square.

“Don’t go yet, dear,” appealed a sweet siren as Bobby, looking at his watch, swore that when duty called one must obey, but eventually succumbed to a voice like a foghorn shouting, “John, a bottle of champagne,” and the beautiful Kate bowed approvingly from her throne. Kate Hamilton at this period must have weighed at least twenty stone, and had as hideous a physiognomy as any weather-beaten Deal pilot. Seated on a raised platform, with a bodice cut very low, this freak of nature sipped champagne steadily from midnight until daylight, and shook like a blanc mange every time she laughed.

Approached by a long tunnel from the street—where two janitors kept watch—a pressure of the bell gave instant admittance to a likely visitor, whilst an alarm gave immediate notice of the approach of the police.

Finding oneself within the “salon” during one of these periodical raids was not without interest. Carpets were turned up in the twinkling of an eye, boards were raised, and glasses and bottles—empty or full—were thrust promiscuously in; every one assumed a sweet and virtuous air and talked in subdued tones, whilst a bevy of police, headed by an inspector, marched solemnly in, and having completed the farce, marched solemnly out.

What the subsidy attached to this duty, and when and how paid, it is needless to inquire. Suffice to show that the hypocrisy that was to attain such eminence in these latter enlightened days was even then in its infancy, and worked as adroitly as any twentieth-century policeman could desire.

“Now we’re all right,” explained the foghorn, as the “salon” resumed its normal vivacity. “Bobby, my dear, come and sit next me,” and so, like a tomtit and a round of beef, the pasty-faced youth took the post of honour alongside the vibrating mass of humanity. The distinction conferred upon our hero was a much-coveted one amongst youngsters, and gave a “hall-marking” which henceforth proclaimed him a “man about town.” To dispense champagne ad libitum was one of its chief privileges—for the honour was not unaccompanied with responsibilities—and Florrie or Connie (or whoever the friend for the moment of the favoured one might be) not only held a carte blanche to order champagne, but to dispense it amongst all her acquaintances, by way of propitiation amongst the higher grades, and as an implied claim for reciprocity on those whose star might be in the ascendant later on.

Bobby, it is needless to say, was a proud man. But six months ago he had left school, and it seemed but yesterday that loving hands of mother and sisters had vied with one another in marking his linen and making brown holland bags with appropriate red bindings that were to contain his brushes and other requisites of his toilet. But these had long since been discarded as “bad form,” and a dressing case—on credit—with silver fittings had taken their place. It had been a question, indeed, whether the pony chaise would have to be put down to enable the worthy rector to provide the requisite £100 a year that was essential over and above the pay of a youngster in the service, and here was a young scamp swilling champagne like water, whilst the sisters’ allowance had been cut down to enable their brother to meet necessary expenses, and the boy that cleaned the knives had to look after the pony vice Simmons, the groom, dismissed. Not that Bobby was vicious by nature; on the contrary, his follies were to be attributed to that short-sighted policy that drives a youth on the curb up to a given moment, and then gives him his head; a lad who had never tasted anything stronger than an aperient suddenly engulfed in a deluge of champagne. In appearance he was delicate almost to effeminacy, with a gentle, courteous address, fair curly hair waved around his silly head, and he was popular alike with men and women. His good looks were his misfortune, and his amiability of temper led him into numerous scrapes, such as entanglements with designing chorus girls and the accompanying folly of too much champagne with too little money to pay for it. Not long previous to his arrival in London he had fallen desperately in love at Taunton with a strolling actress old enough to be his mother, who played very minor parts, and whose forte was pirouetting and pointing her huge foot at any patron in front whom she desired to signal out for honour. It had taken the combined talents of the adjutant, the rector, and George Hay to buy the sweet siren off with a promise that her son (nearly as old as poor Bobby) should get a berth on a sea-going merchantman. As a fact, he had promised to marry the charmer, and eventually to find money to run a company, and it was only by the accident of the show being in pawn in a Somersetshire village (where Julia Jemima was playing Juliet to a drunken former admirer’s Romeo) that an urgent appeal for funds brought the escapade to light.

“Of course,” Julia had once said by way of exciting his enthusiasm, “we can’t expect you to ‘go on’ all at once, but in time you could play up to me. You just study Romeo and get up Rover while you’re about it, and Hamlet and some of Charlie Matthews’s parts—you can easily knock them off, and one part do so ’elp another, dear.” Not that Master Bobby had been brought to realise at once the histrionic fame in store for him; on the contrary, he had jibbed considerably at the contemplation of having to don the spangled velvets and tights that constituted the “property” of the strollers, and it was only the herculean exertions of the lovely Julia Jemima—on her benefit night—smiling more bewitchingly, pirouetting if possible more gracefully, and gliding on one toe across the stage till the muscles of her calves stood out like a Sandow’s, that poor Bobby succumbed, and vowed that come who, come what, nothing should tear him from the divine creature. Happily our hero had not anticipated the effects of a combined attack of adjutant and father, and so, being rescued from one pitfall, we find him sailing steadily towards another amidst the brilliant scenes at Kate Hamilton’s.

“I’ve been in the profession, dear,” Connie was explaining as Bobby leaned over the throne to gaze on her, “and I often have half a mind to go back to it.” (She had once carried a banner through the run of the pantomime at the “Vic.”) The word “profession” acted like an electric shock; the lad blinked as the scales appeared to fall from his eyes; Julia Jemima appeared visibly before him; the spangles, the tights, and the muscular calf in mid-air floated through his brain in deadly proximity, as pulling out his watch with a shudder he bade a hurried good-bye, and dashed off in the fleetest four-wheeler to join the Major’s “lady” under the inhospitable walls of the Tower.

In the long, long ago the entertainments provided by Leicester Square were not of an exciting nature. The “Sans Souci,” Walhalla, and Burford’s Panorama (where Daly’s Theatre now stands) divided the honours till ’51, when Wylde’s Globe occupied the entire enclosure. This huge erection was sixty feet in diameter, and remained in existence till 1861, when it was pulled down to make way for entertainments combining instruction with pleasure.

In 1863 the “Eldorado” Café Chantant, which was leading a precarious existence, put up the shutters, when a section of the (non-speculative) public made the brilliant, loyal, and dutiful suggestion that somebody should erect a “Denmark” Winter Garden as a memento of the Prince of Wales’s recent marriage, but the loyal, dutiful, sycophantic proposal did not commend itself as it no doubt ought to have done, and probably would to-day. The requisite capital was not forthcoming, and so not till 1873 did the new era commence, when £50,000 was offered for the Square by that monument of aspiring greatness, “Baron” Grant, who burst upon the horizon and then fizzled into space as meteors are wont to do.

It is impossible to deny the fascination that Leicester Square has for a considerable majority of Londoners. Up to the days of Charles II. the entire space was composed of rustic hedge-rows and lanes. Then Castle Street, Newport Street, Cranbourne Alley, and Bear Lane came into existence, the Square was railed round, and all the chief duels of the day were fought within its historic precincts.

Lord Warwick, Lord Mountford, the Duke of Hamilton, and Lord Mohun (a professional bully and expert shot), and a host of smaller fry have avenged their honour within its boundaries—and then adjourned to Locket’s Coffee House in its immediate vicinity. This ancient institution must not be confused with the palatial establishments known as Lockhart’s.

In the days of which we are writing, Leicester Square was a barren waste surrounded by rusty railings, trodden down in all directions; refuse of every description was shot into it, whilst in the centre stood a dilapidated equestrian statue that assumed various adornments as the freaks of drunken roysterers suggested. On the north side (where now stands the Empire) was The Shades, a low-class eating-house in the basement, approached by steps, where every knife, fork and spoon was indelibly stamped “Stolen from The Shades” as a delicate hint to its patrons. On the opposite side stood a huge wooden pump, of which more anon. At the adjoining eastern corner were the “tableaux vivants,” presided over by a judge in “wig and gown” where more blasphemy and filth was to be heard for a shilling than would appear possible, all within one hundred yards of such harmless (if disreputable) haunts as Kate Hamilton’s, which were overhauled nightly. It was many years afterwards (July, 1874) that the barren wilderness was made beautiful for ever by the generosity of “Baron” Grant. One can see him now, arrayed in white waistcoat and huge buttonhole, accompanied by an unpretentious bevy of councillors and Board of Works men, over whom a few bits of bunting fluttered, presenting his gift of many thousands in a speech that was quite inaudible. But, like medals and decorations, gifts in those days were not rewarded in the lavish manner of to-day. Had such a public benefit been conferred now, the donor would have been dubbed a baronet, or a privy councillor at least, with every prospect of a peerage should he again spring £20,000. Apropos of this gift, there was a peculiar sequel. When asked at the time whether he gave or retained the underground rights in addition to the recreation ground, the great man, in the zenith of his success, replied, “Yes, yes; I give it all.” Years after, however, when poor and friendless, hearing that underground works had made the subsoil more valuable than the surface, he enquired whether some remnant could not be claimed by him, but was forcibly reminded of the follies of his youth by a prompt negative, and left to die in penury without a helping hand.

Perhaps never was the irony of Fate more clearly exemplified than when, years after, two yokels who were gazing on Shakespeare’s monument were heard to say “That’s ’im as give the place.”

Situated exactly on the site of the Criterion Buffet was the “Pic,” a dancing saloon of a decidedly inferior class, where anybody entering (except perhaps the Angel Gabriel) was bound to have a row. Hat smashing in this delectable spot was the preliminary to a scrimmage, and when it is recollected what “hats” were in the long-ago sixties, it will be easily understood that any interference with them was an offence to be wiped out only with blood. Hats, it may be asserted without fear of contradiction, were the Alpha and Omega of dress amongst every section of the community; the postmen wore hats with their long scarlet coats; policemen wore hats with their swallow-tails; boys the height of fourpence in copper wore hats; the entire field at a cricket match wore flannels and hats; and the yokels and agricultural classes topped their smocks with hats. Not hats, be it understood, of the modern silky limited style, but huge extinguishers, with piles varying from solid beaver to the substance of a terrier’s coat; and to enter the “Pic” was tantamount to the annihilation of one of these creations. The “Kangaroo,” of whom mention is made elsewhere, was a standing dish at this establishment, and to such an extent was his position recognised that many men tipped him on entering to obviate molestation.

The “Pic,” despite its central position, never attained popularity, and was the resort of pickpockets, bullies, and “soiled doves” of a very mediocre class. On Boat Race nights, however, an organised gang of University “men” invariably raided it, and by smashing everything balanced the account to a certain extent.

No place of amusement has passed through so many convulsions as the edifice now known as the Alhambra. Erected in the sixties, it began life as a species of polytechnic, where it was hoped that the instruction afforded by the contemplation of two electric batteries and a diving bell, in conjunction with the exhilarating air of the neighbourhood, would attract sufficient audiences to meet rent and expenses; but the venture not having fulfilled the expectations of its youth, its portals were closed, and it next came into prominence during the Franco-German war. Here “patriotic songs” were the pièce de résistance, and towards 11 o’clock a dense throng waved flags and cheered and hooted indiscriminately the “Marseillaise,” the “Wacht am Rhein,” and everything and everybody. Jones, calmly smoking, would, without the slightest provocation, assault Brown, who was similarly innocently occupied, and who in turn resented the polite distinction. Stand-up fights took place nightly, and, as was anticipated, drew all London to the Alhambra towards 11 o’clock.

These indiscriminate nightly riots attracted, as may be assumed, all the bullies and sharpers in London, amongst whom stands prominently the “Kangaroo,” a gigantic black, who was known to everybody in the sixties. This ruffian, who was admittedly an expert pugilist, was the biggest coward that hovered round Piccadilly. No place was free from his unwelcome visits, and his ubiquity showed itself by his nightly appearance at the Pavilion, the Alhambra, the Café Riche, Barnes’s, the “Pic,” the Blue Posts, the Argyll, and Cremorne. From such places as Evans’s and Mott’s he was absolutely barred, and the moral effect of the reception he would have received deterred him—in his wisdom—from making the attempt.

His modus operandi was simplicity itself; seating himself at some inoffensive man’s table, he helped himself to anything he might find within reach; if remonstrated with, he knocked the remonstrator down, and coolly walked out of the room.

On other occasions he would demand money, and if refused, applied the same remedy; if a party were seated at the Alhambra watching the performance, a black arm would suddenly appear over one’s shoulder, and glass by glass was lifted and coolly drained. Occasionally he met his match, when, having pocketed his thrashing, he commenced afresh in an adjoining night-house.

A plethora of coloured ex-prizefighters roamed about these latitudes in the long-ago sixties. Plantagenet Green, an admittedly scientific boxer unaccompanied by any heart, was everywhere much in evidence, and Bob Travers, one of the best and pluckiest that ever contested the middle-weight championship, might have been seen years after selling chutnee in the streets. In those unenlightened days prizefighters, although made much of, never forgot their place, and the illiterate abortions in rabbit-skin collars that intrude into every public resort at the present day and dub themselves “professors” were creations happily unknown.

Needless to add that the Alhambra, with its miscellaneous attractions, stood very high in the estimation of our subalterns, or a considerable portion who deferred to Bobby on all matters relating to “form.”

Armed with diminutive flags of every nationality in Europe, a select team were one evening enjoying the delights that led up to the “patriotic era,” as sitting around a table on the balcony they agreed upon the rendezvous should circumstances—and the fights—separate them. Ladies, moreover, graced the board, and sipped from time to time the exhilarating fluid that sparkled in various tumblers. George Hay meanwhile was explaining to an interested houri how by an extraordinary coincidence red, white, and blue predominated in most of the National colours of Europe, while Bobby was urging some argument on a fair creature in inaudible tones, when an apparition a yard long, and as black as ebony, passed over his head and deliberately seized a tumbler. Dazed for a moment, and ignorant of the notoriety of the “Kangaroo,” one and all sat spellbound as the ruffian deliberately emptied the glass and replaced it on the table.

George was the first to grasp the situation, as, springing from his chair, he confronted the bully, and inquired: “What are we to understand by this?” But, “What you d— please!” was barely out of his mouth when a swinging blow on the jaw sent him staggering towards the counter.

Dropping his cane and hat, the “Kangaroo” now advanced in an attitude that meant business, and dashing in his long left arm, essayed to fell George with one blow. But his adversary was prepared for this, and springing back lightly, got beyond danger. The “Kangaroo’s” arms, when reposing by his side, reached almost to his knees, and gave him an incalculable advantage with any but the most nimble. Realising this fact, George decided to change his tactics, and to direct all his blows for the neck or body of his opponent; he had been taught, indeed, that a negro’s head is practically invulnerable, but that a swinging slog in the loins would double up the most seasoned. A shower of blows now rattled on the black’s sides, as springing out of danger after every onslaught, the “Kangaroo” began to show signs of distress; standing well out of range, he appeared but to wait the opportunity, and picking up his hat and cane, he bolted down the stairs.

The “Kangaroo” had learnt a lesson, and was profoundly ignorant of the fact that his meek-looking opponent had a heart as big as a lion’s and was a pupil of Ben Caunt.

But patriotism and loyalism of the blatant type are apt to cloy even on the most gushing, and the fever pitch having been attained, the cooling process set in, and then a series of experiments ensued to try and keep up the demand for the disrated Alhambra.

CHAPTER V.
THE NIGHT HOUSES OF THE HAYMARKET.

If any of the Bucks of the sixties were suddenly brought to life and placed in the centre of Piccadilly Circus, no labyrinth could more completely puzzle them than the structural alterations of to-day. Abutting on to where Shaftesbury Avenue commences was a dismal row of houses, with here and there an outlet into the purlieus of more dismal Soho; where the obstruction for the accommodation of flower-sellers now raises its useless head, another block of houses ran eastwards, dividing the present broad expanse into two narrow thoroughfares; the huge monument to the profitable industry in intoxicating drinks takes the place of the ancient “Pic,” and the Haymarket, from the exalted position of centre of the surging mass of nocturnal corruption, has descended to the status of a dimly-lighted thoroughfare, with here and there an unlicensed Italian restaurant and a sprinkling of second-class pot-houses.

Instead of the promenade from which strollers are now hustled off the pavement by a zealous police, the strip between Windmill Street and the Raleigh Club was the favoured lounge, and the Haymarket literally blazed with light (till daylight) from such temples as the “Blue Posts,” Barnes’s, The Burmese, and Barron’s Oyster Rooms. This latter place, although palpably suffering from old age and the ravages of time, and propped up by beams innumerable, was the nightly rendezvous of oyster-eaters, where, sandwiched in between “loose boxes” upstairs and down, champagne and other drinks were consumed to excess.

Often amid these sounds of revelry, ominous cracks and groans warned the revellers that all was not right, till on one never-to-be-forgotten night a sound that vibrated like the crack of doom caused a stampede, and leaving wine, oysters, hats, unpaid bills, every one rushed helter-skelter into the street. Old Barron, staring disconsolately from the pavement at his fast-collapsing house, suddenly appeared to remember that his cash-box was in the doomed building, and rushing frantically in, was seen hurrying out with the prized treasure. And then a crash that might have quailed the stoutest heart rang through the night, and Barron, cash-box, and lights, all disappeared in a cloud of dust that ascended up to heaven. Days after the old man was found firmly clutching his treasure. Let us hope its possession compensated him in his passage across the Styx.

The decorous Panton Street of to-day was another very sink of iniquity. Night houses abounded, and Rose Burton’s and Jack Percival’s were sandwiched between hot baths of questionable respectability and abominations of every kind. Stone’s Coffee House was the only redeeming feature, and, as it existed in those days, was a very spring of water in a dry land.

But it must not be assumed that, although Percival’s was a “night house,” it was to be classed with its next door neighbours. Here the sporting fraternity radiated after all important events; here Heenan lodged after his fight with Tom King; and one can see him—as if it were yesterday—receiving his friends and backers on the following Sunday with his handsome features incrusted in plaster of Paris and smiling as if he had been awarded the victory he was undoubtedly choused out of.

But perhaps no spot has undergone more structural and social change than Arundel Place, an unpretentious court that leads out of Coventry Street. At one corner now stands a tobacconist’s shop, and at the other an eating bar, where hunks of provender are devoured at the counter, and cocoa retailed at a penny a bucket; whilst the court itself is practically absorbed by the Civil Service Stores, through whose windows “gentlemen” may be seen weighing out coffee, and “bald-headed noblemen” tying up parcels.

In the sixties, however, the place had considerably more vitality—after nightfall. On the eastern side stood a public-house of unenviable repute, owned by an ex-prizefighter, to which the fraternity congregated in considerable numbers; whilst at the end furthest from Coventry Street was a coffee-house, whose open portals discovered nothing more dangerous than an oil-clothed floor, chairs and tables over its surface, and an unassuming counter for the supply of moderate refreshments. During the day a spirit of repose pervaded the entire area; the public-house appeared to be doing little or no trade, whilst the coffee-house was chiefly remarkable for the persistent scrubbing and emptying of buckets that went on, as a mechanical charwoman, in the inevitable bonnet, oscillated to and fro between the door and the pavement. But for the old woman, and an occasional apparition in a startling check costume that flashed in and out between the coffee-house and the pot-house, one might have imagined the entire place was uninhabited, so subdued and reposeful was everything.

Tall and angular by nature, with skin-tight overalls and a coat the colour of a Camden Town ’bus, Jerry Fry was the undisputed landlord of the unpretentious coffee-house, and recognised director of a gang of sharpers who made human nature their study, and scoured the highways and byways nightly in search of profitable quarry. Not that the above costume was the sole one in Jerry’s extensive wardrobe, which boasted amongst others the huge cape and whip associated with rustic drivers, a clerical outfit, evening clothes, and a white tie the size of a poultice. Jerry as a strategist was without a rival, and it requires but little effort of imagination to assume that he has turned in his grave times innumerable in the contemplation of the sorry sharpers of the present era who have usurped his functions in the despoiling of their species. Any promising subject that appeared on the horizon immediately became the object of Jerry’s personal solicitude, and once the victim’s besetting sin was accurately diagnosed, no time was lost in placing a specialist on his unsuspecting track. It was not long after the arrival of the “Line” garrison in London that George Hay was focussed as an inveterate gambler, and as the “Landed Gentry” vouched for his being the eldest son of a county magnate, no time was lost in laying lines in every direction in the hope of catching him. Not that play—in which he was by no means an expert—was his only delight; on the contrary, he excelled in every kind of manly sport, and could hold his own with the gloves with many a man who had the advantage of him in height and weight.

When in the country cards never entered his mind; in London, however, with the fascination ever before him, the temptation was irresistible, and the three fly-blown cards of a racecourse manipulator or chemin de fer at the Arlington held him like a vice whilst the fever was upon him.

It was a sultry evening in September when everybody (except four millions) was out of town that George and Bobby elected to stroll to the West End after an uneventful dinner at mess. Threading their way through the slums that abutted on the Tower, nothing worthy of record occurred till, casually stopping to light a cigar, they were accosted on the threshold of Leicester Square by a courteous individual who asked for a light.

George was nothing if he was not a gentleman, and without waiting to consider why the person should seek a light from him when gas jets were blazing outside every shop, he considerately acceded.

But the stranger apparently was of a sociable disposition, and persisted in hanging on to their skirts and essaying remarks on objects on their way.

“What have we here?” he inquired as, passing Arundel Place, a dense crowd outside the pot-house riveted his attention. “The fight, of course,” he continued, “the seconds and backers are squaring up, I expect. Will you step in, gentlemen, it’s all right, but I’d better perhaps go in and inquire, they all know me; one minute, gents, by your leave,” and he disappeared into the crowded court.

“Shall we go in, George,” inquired Bobby, “or have a peep at the ‘Pic’? D— it! we must have some sport after twenty-four hours of the Tower.”

“Go in? Of course we will if there’s anything to be seen,” answered George; “I’m half-inclined to shake up my liver by arranging with Ben Caunt to resume my ‘studies’ at the Tower, and there’s one consolation, Bobby, it’s not as expensive as the Arlington, and we haven’t much to lose if they do pick our pockets.”

So summed up the situation Solon George, as their cicerone made his reappearance.

“Right, gents; step this way,” intimated the stranger; “but we had best wait awhile in the coffee-house yonder; leave it to me to give you the tip,” and without further ado they all entered the hostelry.

George, with all his common sense, was a very tyro in the rudiments of the unwritten law of knavery, and certainly no match for a shrewd London rascal; to enter into conversation with an absolute stranger appeared nothing extraordinary to him, and when a punching match was the basis of the acquaintance, and the chance of meeting certain leading—if illiterate—lights of the fraternity the prospect, conventionalism with him was an infinitesimal quantity, and he entered into the sport with the enthusiasm of a schoolboy.

“But why here?” inquired George, as they found themselves the sole occupants of the oilclothed room.

“Wait a bit, gents, they’ll come presently,” replied their cicerone; “I’ve given them the office, but they’re a bit busy just now settling up the scores for this morning, maybe.” And then he proceeded with what purported to be a personal description of the fight, looking frequently at a huge clock that ticked in the corner, and fervently hoping that Jerry would not be long.

Bobby meanwhile was champing his bit, and bewailing the time that might so much more profitably have been passed at the “Pic,” when a man in the immaculate disguise of a coachman walked hurriedly through the room. Peering into every corner, and examining crevices that a cat would have been incommoded in, he hurriedly approached our heroes, and asked excitedly whether they had seen a gentleman such as he described. Without waiting for a reply, he next dropped his whip and rug on to a vacant chair, and whipping out a pack of cards, continued: “It drives me mad to think I should have lost such a stupid game; but I was drunk, gentlemen—forgive the admission—yes, drunk; but he has promised me my revenge here to-night,” and pulling out a watch the size of a frying-pan, he contemplated it as if wrapt in thought. Replacing it with a spasmodic jerk, he continued: “Just fancy, gentlemen, this was the simple thing; but I was drunk, alas!—happy thought, ’ware drink,” and he gave a halloa such as foxhunters give on the stage, and proceeded to rattle three cards.

“Now, gentlemen, just for fun, which is the knave?” And Bobby, without a check, selected the correct cardboard. “Again, gentlemen, if you please, it will bring my hand into practice; shall we say half a crown? Thanks!” and again, with the accuracy of a truffle dog, Bobby discovered the card.

Again and again was this farce perpetrated, till Bobby’s winnings amounted to £4, and in his generosity he seemed loth to take advantage of such a greenhorn.

George meanwhile had caught the infection and bet and won as the stakes were made higher.

“Five pounds for once, gentlemen? I think I’ve earned my revenge,” pleaded Jerry, and fickle Fortune as if of the same opinion, decided in his favour.

Any one but the veriest tyro would have deemed this a favourable opportunity to stop, but George, as we have seen, had his own ideas of honour; the fever, moreover, was upon him, and, producing the contents of his own pocket, he again backed his opinion.

Gone in a twinkling, he next turned to Bobby, and the lad at once proceeded to supply him with his cash. Meanwhile their original acquaintance whispered imploringly to George to have done with it, but he might as well have spoken to the winds. “D— it, man, if I’m cleaned out of ready money I’ve still my ring and sleeve links; go on, sir,” he continued to Jerry. “I’ll bet my jewellery against a tenner.”

But fortune was still against our friends, and divested of his trinkets, in his turn he appealed to his opponent.

“Come, sir, I gave you your revenge, now give me mine, and anything I lose I’ll give you my cheque for.”

But Jerry was of a practical nature; cheques were occasionally stopped, and officious detectives might come to hear of it, so he decided to decline the tempting offer, but promised revenge on the morrow. The first stranger meanwhile came to the rescue. “I know you’re a gentleman,” he whispered, “and mayn’t like to lose those things, why not offer the gent to redeem them to-morrow?”

The idea seemed a happy one, and the party dispersed, on the understanding that at twelve the following day they should all meet at the Pump in Leicester Square.

But our heroes were not yet done with casual acquaintances, as passing along the Haymarket they were again accosted by a man. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” was the abrupt introduction, “I saw you parting company just now with two well-known sharpers; I’m Detective Bulger of the police, may I ask if you’ve been robbed?”

And then the painful truth began to dawn upon the victims that two officers in Her Majesty’s Service had been overreached at a game that a Blue-coat boy would have jibbed at.

The sequel is briefly told. The next day the appointment was punctually kept by all except Jerry, who, oddly enough, deputed another man to explain that he was sending off an urgent telegram, and had requested him (if the coast was clear) to conduct our friends to him.

Followed at a respectful distance by the detective, the jewellery was duly redeemed; but just as Jerry was pocketing the money, a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and he found himself in the clutches of Sergeant Bulger.

George refused to prosecute; his money was however, restored to him, and binding Bobby to secrecy, he thus escaped the chaff that would have cleaved to him for life.

The “Kitchen” was situated in St. Martin’s Court, abutting on Castle Street, now known as Charing Cross Road; adjoining it was a famous à la mode house kept by two brothers, each of whom could turn the scale at thirty stone. It was explained by way of accounting for this extraordinary freak of nature that, by never leaving the establishment and inhaling the greasy fumes from night to morning, their pores were constantly imbibing from a thousand sources the oleaginous vapours that conduce to obesity; be that as it may, the entire front of an upper chamber had to be removed to allow of the usual formalities of Christian burial when one of the firm died, and it is doubtful if the place was not afterwards demolished.

Here nightly were to be found actors since known to fame; journalists such as Horace (Pony) Mayhew and his brother Gus, George Augustus Sala—then writing to measure—and a sprinkling of golden calves with theatrical proclivities. The refreshments, of course, left nothing to be desired on the score of satisfying, and à la mode gravy in pewter pots stimulated many a jaded reveller during the small hours of the morning.

It was on our way to this refined hostelry that we on one occasion met Polly Amherst, and the sequel was so absurd that I give the story special prominence.

Polly was a delightful companion. Just down from Oxford, he was destined to take up a fat family living in the neighbourhood of Sevenoaks, but being seen one night in a bird’s eye tie amid the revels of Cremorne, and the birds of the air having carried it to his bishop, it was pointed out to the worthy fellow that free scope for his undoubted talent was impossible in the Church, and so posterity was the loser of much pulpit oratory that would doubtless have thrilled the present generation.

As we entered the “Kitchen” Jack Coney—a promoted scene-shifter lately come into prominence by his marriage with Rose Burton—was retailing to the assembled revellers the spot which had been kept secret to the last moment where a big fight was to take place in the morning.

“Of course, I’ll go,” replied George Hay to someone’s inquiry.

“I’m too seedy,” continued Bobby, who had not spared the punch.

“I, too,” added Oliver.

“I should like to, but I daren’t,” chimed in Polly. And so a detachment was added to the contingent that were piloted by the irrepressible Coney.

Bobby during the past night had, alas! not followed the paths of sobriety, and so it came to pass that the blind agreed to lead the blind, and Polly Amherst and Harry Turner (a genial comedian) agreed to escort him to the Hummums.

Passing Hart’s Coffee House we, of course, “looked in,” and, sure enough, there was Hastings and a dozen boon companions; but the night air had been too much for many of us; we saw a dozen Marquises and only one boon companion, so taking the wisest resolve we had taken that night, we bade each other farewell on the steps of the Hummums, and proceeded to our virtuous couches.

Arising late on the following afternoon, a circumstance occurred that drove everything else out of my head, and to the elucidation of this inexplicable coincidence are to be attributed the monotonous details I have just described.

It was towards three on the following afternoon, when, having completed a refreshing toilette, my left arm was entering my sleeve that I became aware of a foreign substance that bulged to an abnormal extent the inner pocket of my coat; proceeding to examine the cause with that self-possession for which I was so justly conspicuous, my equanimity was considerably tried by coming into contact with a watch; extracting it carefully, I discovered that it was attached to a massive chain adorned with numerous seals and lockets. Surprised, I continued my investigations, my surprise turning to anxiety as a second watch (a repeater) made its appearance. By this time thoroughly alarmed, I dived again, and out came three or four rings and a purse stuffed full of sovereigns. Fairly staggered, my sang-froid left me, and reeling towards the bed, I endeavoured to solve the mystery.

Had I in my cups robbed a jeweller’s? Had I picked somebody’s pocket? Had I had a row, and after the fray put on my opponent’s coat? But every argument failed to elucidate the mystery, and my thoughts wandered to such an extent that in it all I saw a distinct judgment on my back-sliding.

To make matters worse, I knew not where Amherst or Harry Turner resided, and so resolved to have breakfast and await developments.

But breakfast under such circumstances was a sorry farce; every gulp of tea appeared to choke me, and in every waiter who approached I recognised a constable on the track of the burglar. Flesh and blood could not long stand this strain, and my pent-up feelings received a still greater shock by the waiter thrusting a card into my hand. “Ask him in,” I replied, and Harry Turner, with a face a yard long, hurriedly shuffled towards me.

“An awful thing has occurred,” began the unhappy mummer, “and I’ve come to you in the hope that you’ll be able to explain it. Look at this,” he continued, as he proceeded to untie a bundle. “When I was putting on my coat just now I found two watches, a cheque-book, a ring, and a packet of papers. Can you recollect what we did? By Gad, I’m half disposed to go and give myself up. One would get off lighter then, perhaps.”

Whilst we were discussing ways and means, a second card was brought to me, and again the waiter was requested to “show him in,” and then Polly Amherst came upon the scene, the ghost of his former self, pale and haggard, but otherwise externally irreproachable as regards white tie and High Church clerical attire. “Billy,” he began, “a terrible thing has occurred, and I’ve come here in the hopes that you will be able to set my mind at rest. Conceive my horror, when opening my eyes this afternoon, to see at my bedside a watch, a pile of sovereigns, and a valuable ring. What silly jokes did we indulge in last night, old man? ’Pon my word as I came here I shuddered as I passed a policeman. The matter can’t rest here. I’ve locked the accursed things in my portmanteau, and now what’s to be done?”

But the consolation he received from his dismal companions in no way tended to allay his anxiety. “We have neither of us the smallest conception of how we became possessed of these things,” replied Turner, “and it seems to me our only course is to walk round to Bow Street and voluntarily give ourselves up.”

Our teeth had now begun to chatter, and, hoping against hope, we agreed it would be best to await George Hay’s return, and act as he should advise.

Three weary hours later, George Hay, Oliver Montagu, the irrepressible Jack Coney, and Harry Ashley (afterwards of Pink Dominoes fame), returned from the fight, and it having been arranged that the three latter should be permitted to depart before the culprits broke the news to George, a magnum was called for by way of a stirrup cup.

“By the way, Polly,” remarked Montagu, “I may as well relieve you of my gimcracks, and, by Gad, it’s as well we didn’t take them. Did you ever see a rougher lot?” he added, turning to George.

And then a cloud rose from off the countenances of Polly, Harry Turner, and myself; the magnum that had hitherto tasted like jalap appeared as nectar to our lips, and we began to recollect that prior to leaving the “Kitchen” our comrades had entrusted their valuables to us.

We never told our terrible experience.

CHAPTER VI.
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.