Real Life In London Part 72

~109~~ DASHALL, during a stroll with his relation round the neighbourhood of Covent Garden, learning that several of his friends had formed a select party to dine at the Shakespear that day, sent in the names of himself and Coz, and they were received by the social and convivial a.s.semblage with acclamation.

The Dinner-party comprised Sir Felix O'Grady, an Irish baronet just imported from the province of Munster; the honorable Frederick Fitzroy, a luminary in the constellation of Fas.h.i.+on; Colonel Mc. Can, a distinguished Scotch Officer; an amateur Poet; a member of the Corps Dramatique; and our old friends Sparkle and Mortimer, with the augmentation of Dashall and Tallyho, as already mentioned.

The viands were excellent, and the wines of the first quality.

Conviviality was the order of the evening, and its whimsicalities were commenced during the repast, by the player, who, taking up a goblet of wine, and a.s.suming the att.i.tude of Macbeth in the banquet scene, exclaimed--

"I drink To the general joy of the whole table;-- May good digestion wait on appet.i.te, And health on both."----

~110~~The bottle was now put into quick circulation; harmony and hilarity prevailed; and the poet, availing himself of the moments of inspiration, gave the following chant, _extempore_.--

Song.

Air. Here's to the maiden of bashful fifteen.

Here's to the land where fair Freedom is seen,

Old England,--her glory and trade, aye;-- Here's to the island of Erin so green, And here's to Sir Felix O'Grady; Let the toast pa.s.s, Flinch not the gla.s.s That warms like the kiss of your favorite la.s.s.

Here's to the beaus and the belles of the day,

The pleasures of life who enjoy, sir;-- Here's to the leaders of fas.h.i.+on, so gay, And here's to the das.h.i.+ng Fitzroy, sir.

Let the toast pa.s.s, Flinch not the gla.s.s That warms like the kiss of your favorite la.s.s.

Here's to our sailors who plough the salt wave,

And never from battle have ran, sir;-- Here's to our soldiers who n.o.bly behave, And here's to brave Colonel Mc. Can, sir.

Let the toast pa.s.s, Flinch not the gla.s.s That warms like the kiss of your favorite la.s.s.

Here's to the joys that our reason engage,

Where Truth s.h.i.+nes our best benefactress; Here's to the triumph of Learning,--the Stage,- And here's to each actor and actress.

Let the toast pa.s.s, Flinch not the gla.s.s That warms like the kiss of your favorite la.s.s.

Here's to the man with a head to discern,

And eke with a heart to bestow, sir, Tom Dashall, well skill'd Life in London to learn; And here's to the Squire Tallyho, sir.

Let the toast pa.s.s, Flinch not the gla.s.s That warms like the kiss of your favorite la.s.s.

Here's to the friends.h.i.+p united and true,

That paces variety's round, sir; To Sparkle and Mortimer fill then, anew, And let us with pleasure abound, sir.

Let the toast pa.s.s, Flinch not the gla.s.s That warms like the kiss of your favorite la.s.s.

This complimentary bag-a-telle was well received, and Sir Felix, shaking the amateur cordially by the hand, observed, that amongst other attainments before he left London, he meant to acquire the art of making verses, when he should give the poet a Rowland for his Oliver!

The player having but recently returned to Town, after completing his engagements with some of the Irish provincial theatres, proceeded to amuse his auditory, the baronet excepted, with accounts of the manner of posting in the sister kingdom.--

"Travelling," said he, "in the province of Munster, having got into a chaise, I was surprised to hear the driver knocking at each side of the carriage.--"What are you doing?"--"A'n't I nailing your honor?"--"Why do you nail me up? I don't wish to be nailed up."--"Augh! would your honor have the doors fly off the hinges?" When we came to the end of the stage, I begged the man to unfasten the doors.--"Ogh! what would I be taking out the nails for, to be racking the doors?"--"How shall I get out then?"--"Can't your honor get out of the window like any other jontleman?" I then began the operation; but having forced my head and shoulders out, could get no farther, and called again to the postillion.--"Augh! did any one ever see any one get out of a chay head foremost? Can't your honor put out your feet first, like a Christian?"

Here the baronet manifested considerable impatience, and was about to interrupt the narrator, when the latter requesting permission, continued:

"Next day four horses were attached to the crazy vehicle;--one, unfortunately, lost a shoe; and as I refused to go on until the poor animal was shod, my two postillions commenced, in my hearing, a colloquy.--"Paddy, where will I get a shoe, and no smith nigh hand?"--"Why don't you see yon jontleman's horse in the field; can't you go and unshoe him?"--"True for ye," said Jem, "but that horse's shoe will never fit him." "Augh! you can but try it," said Paddy. So the gentleman's horse was actually unshod, and his shoe put upon the posting hack; and fit or not fit, Paddy went off with it.

~112~~ "Same day, during a violent storm of wind and rain, 1 found that two of the windows were broken, and two could not, by force or art of man, be pulled up. I ventured to complain to Paddy of the inconvenience I suffered from the storm pelting in my face. His consolation was, "Augh! G.o.d bless your honour, and can't you get out and set behind the carriage, and you'll not get a drop at all, I'll engage!"

The player having thus closed his narrative, and the laughter of the company having subsided, the baronet very candidly admitted, that the sister kingdom in many parts, was miserably deficient in the requisites of travelling, and other conveniences to which the English were accustomed. But in process of time (he continued) we shall get more civilized. Nevertheless, we have still an advantage over you; we have more hospitality, and more honesty. Nay, by the powers! but it is so, my good friends. However much we unhappily may quarrel with each other, we respect the stranger who comes to sojourn amongst us; and long would he reside, even in the province of Munster, before a dirty spalpeen would rob him of his great coat and umbrella, and be after doing that same thing when he was at a friend's house too, from which they were taken, along with nearly all the great coats, cloaks, shawls, pelisses, hats and umbrellas, belonging to the company."{1}

1 We are inclined to believe that Sir Felix alludes to the fol-lowing instance of daring depredation.

Extraordinary Robbery. On Thursday night, whilst a large party of young folks were a.s.sembled at the house of Mr. Gregory, in Hertford Street, Fitzroy Square, to supper, a young man was let in by a servant, who said he had brought a cloak for his young mistress, as the night was cold.

The servant left him in the hall, and went up stairs; when shortly after, a second arrived with a hackney coach, and on his being questioned by the servant, he said he brought the coach to take his master and mistress home. The servant was not acquainted with the names of half the company, and therefore credited what was told her. The two strangers were suffered to stand at the stairs head, to listen to the music and singing, with which they appeared highly delighted, and also had their supper and plenty to drink. But while festive hilarity prevailed above, the villains began to exercise their calling below, and the supper table in a trice they unloaded of four silver table spoons, a silver sauce-boat, knives and forks, &c. and from off the pegs and banisters they stole eight top-coats, several cloaks, shawls, pelisses and hats, besides a number of umbrellas, m.u.f.fs, tippets, and other articles, all of which they carried off in the coach which was in waiting. To complete the farce, the watchman shut the coach door, and wished "their honours" good night. The robbery was not discovered until the company was breaking up. No trace of the thieves can be found.

~113~~ There was certainly somewhat of an _Iris.h.i.+sm_ in the baronet's remark.--Of eight great coats stolen, the thieves could not discriminate who were the respective owners, and if it had been possible that they could have discriminated, it is not likely that any regard for the laws of hospitality would have induced them to make an exception of Sir Felix O'Grady's property amidst the general depredation.

The company, although secretly amused by the baronet's remarks, condoled with him on the loss he had sustained; and the player protesting that in stating the facts of Irish posting, he had no intention of giving the baronet the least offence, unanimity was restored, and the conviviality of the evening proceeded without further interruption.

Sir Felix made Irish bulls, and gave Irish anecdotes; the amateur occasionally gave a song or a stanza impromptu; the player spouted, recited, and took off several of his brother performers, by exhibiting their defects in close imitations,--

"Till tired at last wi' mony a farce,"

They sat them down--

and united with the remaining company in an attentive hearing to a conversation which the honorable Frederick Fitzroy had just commenced with his friend Dashall.--

"You have now," said the honourable Frederick Fitzroy, addressing himself to Dashall, "You have now become a retired, steady, contemplative young man; a peripatetic philosopher; tired with the scenes of ton, and deriving pleasure only from the investigation of Real Life in London, accompanied in your wanderings, by your respectable relative of Belville-Hall; and yet while you were one of us, you shone like a star of the first magnitude, and partic.i.p.ated in all the follies of fas.h.i.+on with a zest of enjoyment that forbid the presage of satiety or decline."

"Neither," answered Dashall, "have I now altogether relinquished those pleasures, but by frequent repet.i.tion they become irksome; the mind is thus relieved by opposite pursuits, and the line of observation which I have latterly chosen has certainly afforded me much substantial information and rational amus.e.m.e.nt."

~114~~ "Some such pursuit I too must think of adopting," replied Fitzroy, "else I shall sink into the gulph of ennuit to the verge of which I am fast approaching. Independent of the frequent ruinous consequences of the gaming-table, I have taken a dislike to its a.s.sociates, and therefore abandoned their society; nor will you be surprised at my having adopted this resolution, when I inform you, that at my last sitting in one of these nefarious haunts of dissipation, I was minus to the extent, in a few hours, of several thousand pounds, the prize of unprincipled adventurers, of swindlers, black-legs, and pigeon-fanciers!"{1}

1 A pigeon-fancier is one of those speculators at the Gambling Houses, whose object it is to lie in wait for inexperienced noviciates, and under the pretext of fair and honorable dealing pluck their feathers; that is to say, strip them bare of their property. Days and nights are pa.s.sed at the gaming-table. "I remember," said the Earl of G----, "spending three days and three nights in the hazard room of a well-known house in St James's Street; the shutters were closed, the curtains down, and we had candles the whole time; even in the adjoining rooms we had candles, that when our doors were opened to bring in refreshments, no obtrusive gleam of day-light might remind us how the hours had pa.s.sed. How human nature supported the fatigue, I know not. We scarcely allowed ourselves a moment's pause to take the sustenance our bodies required. At last one of the waiters, who had been in the room with us the whole time, declared that he could hold out no longer, and that sleep he must. With difficulty he obtained an hour's truce; the moment he got out of the room he fell asleep, absolutely at the very threshold of our door. By the rules of the house he was ent.i.tled to a bonus on every transfer of property at the hazard-table; and he made in the course of three days, up- wards of Three hundred pounds! Sleep and avarice had struggled to the utmost, but, with his vulgar habit, sleep prevailed. We were wide awake. I never shall forget the figure of one of my n.o.ble a.s.sociates, who sat holding his watch, his eager eyes fixed upon the minute-hand, whilst he exclaimed continually, "This hour will never be over!" Then he listened to discover whether his watch had stopped, then cursed the lazy fellow for falling asleep, protesting, that for his part, he never would again consent to such a waste of time. The very instant the hour was ended, he ordered "that dog" to be awakened, and to work we went. At this sitting Thirty-five Thousand Pounds were lost and won. I was very fortunate, for I lost a mere trifle--Ten Thousand Pounds only!"

Dashall congratulated Fitzroy on his resolution, in having cut the dangerous connexion, and expressed a hope that in due process of time he would emanc.i.p.ate himself from the trammels of dissipation generally.

~115~~ "That," rejoined Fitzroy, "is already in a considerable degree effected."

"In the higher and middle cla.s.ses of society," says a celebrated writer, "it is a melancholy and distressing sight to observe, not unfrequently, a man of a n.o.ble and ingenuous disposition, once feelingly alive to a sense of honor and integrity, gradually sinking under the pressure of his circ.u.mstances, making his excuses at first with a blush of conscious shame, afraid to see the faces of his friends from whom he may have borrowed money, reduced to the meanest tricks and subterfuges to delay or avoid the payment of his just debts, till ultimately grown familiar with falsehood, and at enmity with the world, he loses all the grace and dignity of man."--

"Such," continued Fitzroy, "was the acme of degradation to which I was rapidly advancing, when an incident occurred to arrest the progress of dissipation, and give a stimulus to more worthy pursuits.

"One morning having visited a certain nunnery in the precincts of Pall-Mail, the Lady Abbess introduced me to a young noviciate, a beautiful girl of sixteen.

"When we were left alone, she dropped on her knees, and in att.i.tude and voice of the most urgent supplication, implored me to save her from infamy!"

"I am in your power," she exclaimed, "but I feel confident that you will not use it to my dishonor.--I am yet innocent;--restore me to my parents,--pure and unsullied,--and the benediction of Heaven will reward you!"--

She then told me a most lamentable tale of distress;--that her father was in prison for a small debt; and that her mother, her brothers and sisters, were starving at home.--Under these disastrous circ.u.mstances she had sought service, and was inveighd into that of mother W. from whence she had no hope of extrication, unless through my generous a.s.sistance! She concluded her pathetic appeal, by observing, that if the honorable Frederick Fitzroy had listened to the call of humanity, and paid a debt of long standing, her father would not now be breaking his heart in prison, her family famis.h.i.+ng, nor herself subject to destruction.

"And I am the Author of all!" I exclaimed, "I am the dis-honorable Frederick Fitzroy, who in the vortex of dissipation, forgot the exercise of common justice, and involved a worthy man and his suffering family in misery! But I thank heaven, the injury is not irreparable!"