my father, a young sawyer of low origin. The steward was named Hodson, and would have married my mother, but that he already had a wife; so my father saved him the trouble, by marrying her himself. Mr Hodson continued to be romantically attached to my mother; indeed, I've been told that my eldest brother Joseph may thank him as the author of his being. My own parentage was never, I understand, in doubt; because soon after Joseph's birth the family quitted King's Bromley and came to Rugeley. By this time, my father was in a fair way to make his fortune, for he and Hodson had not only gone snags in my mother's favours but done the same with the profits of the Marquess's timber, then being felled to supply the Royal Navy. The Marquess was away in Ireland, and his eldest son, the present Marquess, showed such negligence that Hodson had a clear run. Now, it seems that while Hodson courted my mother, my father was quietly marking the fallen logs I, I; 2, 2; 3, 3—so that he got six for the price of three. Or even more; an old fellow by the name of Littler who worked for him in those days has told me that he has seen no less than ten No. 10's carted out of Shoughborough Park during a single day. My father prided himself on a little rhyme which he had composed himself; and taught us at his knee:
This inheritance of mine, Charley, is ill come by, and the sooner it's spent, the better I'll be pleased.'
I felt dismayed at the bitter tones in which Will Palmer branded his father as a cuckold, his mother as an adulteress, and both of them as thieves. His story reminded me forcibly of the Biblical text: 'The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge.'
'No, but Will,' I objected,'I heard you tell Dr Stegall the other day that you were directly descended from Sir James Palmer, Chancellor of the Order of the Garter, in the reign of the martyred Charles I; and from his son Roger, the Earl of Castlemaine, a boon companion of the Merry Monarch, Charles II'
'So I did,' he said carelessly, 'but Stegall is no friend of mine; and I reserve the truth for my friends only, if I may count on you as such. To do so relieves my heart of a heavy burden. Though it may be unscientific to believe that dishonesty, infidelity, or cruelty is inheritable—as one may well inherit a gouty tendency, or short sight, or a syphilitic taint, or melancholia—I can't choke back the resentment I feel towards my father. Now, look'ee, Charley, I don't relish Stegall's household or the regimen he forces on me. I shall clear out, bag and baggage, at the end of this week. What do you say to rooming with me ? I hear you well spoken of as a thoroughbred entire, sound in wind and limb, without vices and a good stayer. In short, I'd be proud to have you as my stablemate.'
'If it puts me to no greater expense than I am incurring at present,' I answered, 'I should be most happy to join you. I won't say that I'm enchanted with the company I'm keeping; but my purse is light, and the rooms are cheap.'
'Tell me more,' he says, handing me an uncommonly good cigar and igniting it for me.
'Well,' I said, 'it's this way. 'My 'chums', as they call themselves, are sad dogs; very sad dogs indeed—though what the significance of 'sad' in this phrase may be, I'm sure I don't know. They are, in point of fact, confoundedly gay, so gay as to be perfect bores. The
'Myself, I could never abear boisterousness,' says he.
'And I draw the line sharply’ I continued, 'at the sport of wrenching knockers off street doors, and proudly displaying them to one's fellow-chums, very much as a Sioux or Ojibway 'brave' exhibits his scalps.'
'What are their peculiar habits at table?' Will asks with mock gravity, as one might inquire about some strange variety of jungle animal.
I told him: 'They make beer their morning beverage—'drunk from the native pewter,'—as the cant phrase is —and chaff me when I suggest that tea or coffee, both of which quicken rather than dull the intellect, may be the more civilized brew. 'Charley the slop-drinker,' one of them waggishly called me, until I flung a pint of half-and-half in his face, and followed it with the native pewter. There came no more waggishness from that quarter for a while, I warrant you. They breakfast from whatever happens to be in the cupboard—bread, cold meat, a stale pasty, or a petrified cheese-rind—and if the beer is expended, gin and water must serve. Generally half a dozen chums from the lodgings opposite thrust their way in, to join the merry meal and talk over last night's lark—how Johnny bonneted the policeman, or how old Tom stole the garter off a young lady's leg as she was mounting into a hansom cab. Savages, Will, ignoble savages! Nor do these visiting chums remember to bring the necessary breakfast tools with them; but the meat and cheese is sliced with a rusty pocketknife, or the very scalpel with which one of my party has been operating on a mouldering human femur, now carelessly tossed into the cupboard next to the loaf of bread. Gin and water is drunk from pickle-jars or gallipots, or the ornamental vases on the chimney-piece.'
Will chuckled at my recital, and I went on to tell of my chums' dinner taken at a 'slap-bang', or cheap eating- house, where they ate cow-heel or hot alamode, and offered familiarities to blowsy women waiters, who returned them in kind; I also described their disorderly supper. 'You'll live a very different life when you room with me, Charley,' he said. 'You'll eat and drink of the best, and never have a chum in the world to plague you.'
Will now rented a fine set of rooms in Bartholomew Close, belonging to a fellow by the name of Ayres, and fitted them up in approved style, covering the walls with anatomical charts and models, and laying out two or three hundred guineas on professional works. This was a great convenience to me during my home-studies, and Will did not deceive me by demanding any larger contribution than I had paid at the hole-in-the-wall from winch he rescued me. I drank tea for breakfast out of a handsome china cup, and ate bacon and eggs, or grilled kidneys, or kedgeree and fish (a capital food) off a well-heated plate with excellent table silver. Our rooms were never in disorder, and Will himself showed a particular niceness about his morning dress, which was neat rather than showy; and though somewhat provincial in his manners at the start, he soon learned London etiquette and became quite the gentleman.
So far as I know, he always paid his debts, even to tailors, which many a peer of the realm disdains to acknowledge—as though tailors were not also God's creatures, and entitled to payment for their tedious labours! When not walking the hospital, I stayed at home and studied; but for the first few months Will Palmer did not join me and proved very remiss in his attendance at the Lecture Theatre. I thought this none of my business; for if he chose to make the rounds of the betting-houses and mix with the racing fraternity—already his thoughts were turning to the Turf— at least he did not bring any doubtful characters back with him to Bartholomew Close. He respected my quiet, and showed me the most thoughtful consideration.
One evening, I remember, he said to me: 'Charley, you look fagged. Much study is a weariness to the flesh. Come out with me to supper! I'll stand you treat, and shan't expect any return but the pleasure of your company.'
I could hardly refuse, though I pointed out that if he took me to a more than ordinarily genteel place, I had no suitable togs for the occasion.
'Oh, damn the togs!' he answered. 'Borrow some of mine, if you like—we're much of a height, and your shoulders are as broad as mine.'
So presently we walked down the Strand, where he led me to an oyster shop, described as a 'night house', where scarlet lobsters and crabs like giant tea-roses jostled one another in appetizing profusion on the stone counters; where pickled salmon lurked in shady groves of fennel; where Finnon haddocks, truly Scotch in their hardness and crispness, were ranged in thick layers; where oyster tubs crowded the walls; and where a gilt placard hanging from the flaring gas jet invited us to partake of chops, kidneys, or steaks. At the counter stood a row of swells, cooling their parched throats with Colchester natives, and swearing unrestrainedly at the flannel-aproned attendants. Through the doorway of an inner room I caught sight of many ladies of the Town, in silks, satins, feathers, and plenty of'slab', that is to say, red ochre and bismuth, staining their cheeks.
Will was leading the way in, when he turned sharply about and came out again. 'Let's away,' he muttered, 'there's a fellow here whom I'd as lief meet as the Devil himself.'
'Who can that be?' I inquired, disappointed of my oysters and crab-meat.
