They Hanged My Saintly Billy

'A fellow named Dawson,' he replied, 'who owns a big house near Stafford, and has done me an ill turn. I'm determined to marry his ward, the sweetest and most engaging little girl in the world. But he stuffs her ears with ill-natured tales against me. It's my opinion he wants to make her his third wife.'

We retraced our steps and presently walked across St Martin's Lane, where he led me to a public house, and said: 'Charley, I shall now show you England's greatest living hero, next to the Iron Duke, of course.' He nodded at the publican behind his bar, a white-haired, battered giant who stood ringed about by prizefighters with broken noses, cauliflower ears, and bleary eyes, and by a mixed assembly of dog-fanciers, bookmakers, ratting-match concocters, and the very scum of sporting life generally. Ah, those cutaway coats, the nankeen trousers fitting tightly to the leg, the bell-shaped hats, the blue-and-white neckties, the queer jargon and outrageous oaths!

'Who's your friend?' I asked.

'Who's he, indeed, Charley? Are you really so green? You should be ashamed to ask the question! Why, that's the great Tom Cribb, formerly pugilistic champion of England; who sparred in the presence of the Russian Tsar and the King of Prussia in the year before Waterloo; and who guarded the entrance to Westminster Hall at the disorderly coronation of his late Majesty, King George IV. Though now attained to the age of seventy, he could still, if he pleased, dash all the teeth from your jaw with a mere back-hander.'

Then we turned up Little New Street, even at that late hour blocked by the carts opposite a cheesemonger's; along King Street and the illumined windows of the Garrick Club; then down a steep flight of steps, and into Evans' Supper Room.

'Here you'll find a scene rather more to your liking, I hope,' said Will Palmer. And, in effect, Evans's of Covent Garden is an establishment that has ever since delighted me when I could afford to sup there. You don't know it? Why, it's the finest place of its kind in the metropolis—I rate it far above Rhodes's, or the Cyder Cellars in Maiden Lane, or the Coal Hole in the Strand. It's divided into two parts, do you see? First, the cafe, furnished in truly Parisian fashion—except that it doesn't spill over into the street—and hung around with framed portraits of the most famous theatrical personages in ancient and modern times. The cafe is where men of importance from every walk of life gather to exchange gossip. In fact, so much gossip is exchanged that a 'syndicate', or combination, of newspaper reporters has been formed to spread out among the tables, each secretly cocking an ear to the disclosures of the group sitting nearest him. Afterwards they pool their takings, perhaps less honestly than the members of a thieves' kitchen, but honestly enough to keep the syndicate in being. The newspaper proprietors pay them a fixed sum for their suppers so long as they continue to collect, or at least fabricate, printable news.

Then there's the Singing Room, a hall with a platform at the upper end on which a grand piano is stationed, and to which the singers climb when called upon by the chairman who sits beneath. The important business of eating is solemnly and industriously undertaken here by six or seven hundred men. Ladies are, of course, debarred, owing to the freedom of language which is permitted the performers; and women of the Town equally so, owing to the respectability of the audience. It happened that some most distinguished guests were present on this occasion, including several Members of Parliament, and two titled racehorse-owners whom Will pointed out to me; and (a thing that interested me far more) seated at the next table to us were two men whom I recognized as the famous novelists William Makepeace Thackeray and Charles Dickens! Mr Thackeray, a member of the adjoining Garrick's Club, still makes Evans's, as he has put it, 'my nightly chapel of ease'. He was then engaged in writing his immortal Vanity Fair, though under the misfortune of being married to an insane wife. Mr Dickens, already the author of Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist, had just been offered, and accepted, the editorship of the recently founded Daily News; and Mr Thackeray had been invited to celebrate this success. Mr Dickens lay under the almost equal misfortune of being unhappily married to a woman who had borne him a number of children, while he loved her younger sister to desperation. Will told me all this, sotto voce, observing that domestic unhappiness often positively assisted men of genius to pen immortal works. 'Not that I would ever have read a word written by either of them,' he added, 'had it not been for Dr Stegall and his merry evenings. I find Ruff's Guide to the Turf engrossing enough.'

He ordered 'Black Velvet' (which proved to be champagne mixed with stout), a couple of dozen oysters, and thin slices of buttered wholemeal bread as a commencer; to be followed by rump-steak and a good claret. On the other side of our table sat a party of provincials, Wolverhampton tradesmen by their accent and garb, who gazed at Will with veneration and astonishment, until presently one of them recognized him. Will bowed gravely but paid no further attention, though it appeared that this was an old schoolfellow; and the chap's 'Dang me, if it isn't Billy Palmer of the Rugeley Yard!' got drowned by a growl from his mates: 'Howd thy rattle, Tinny!' For now the Chairman had rapped on the table with his hammer and was crying: 'Attention, pray, my lords and gentlemen, to the music from Macbeth, No. 63 in the books, if you please!'

Up came the singers, half a dozen of them being boys with well-controlled trebles, and their rendering of Locke's beautiful melodies entranced us all. A decorous silence reigned, the audience abstaining from any clatter of hardware; but at the end broke into tumultuous applause, clapping their hands and beating on the table with fists and knife-handles.

I kept my ears open for some sublime or witty remark from the famous novelists, but apart from 'May I trouble you, Sir, to pass the mustard?' or 'These arc indeed capital chops,' I heard nothing of interest except Mr Dickens's discourse on the beneficial effect of Sunday Schools in increasing the number of children who can read and write, thus yearly swelling the literate public. 'I rely upon these former Sunday School pupils to keep my young brood in beef, mutton and potatoes, my dear Thackeray,' said he, 'not upon the University men and their families.'

'So I judge by your style and your subjects,' Mr Thackeray replied with a sigh that doubtless referred to his own childless state; though it would have sounded deuced crushing to any writer who had a lower opinion of his talents than Charles Dickens.

The Chairman then rapped for a comic singer, whose name escapes me, but I remember that he sang 'The Derby Ram' in a very arch manner, persuading the audience to expect obscene words because of the rhymes that led up to them, yet shutting his mouth fast like a freshwater mussel when he came to the point, and treating us to a most prodigious wink, as who would say: 'If you know the missing words, laugh by all means, gentlemen, but do not blame me for indecency—for I did not teach you them myself.'

Will kept replenishing my glass, only occasionally sipping at his own, and derived considerable amusement from the calf-eyes which a great, bearded, bald-headed Fellow of the Royal Academy was making at a handsome boy-soloist, as he sang:

Mother would have wed me with a Tailor

And not gi’en me my heart's delight,

But give me the lad with the tarry trowsers

That shine to me like diamonds bright!

He remarked: 'Although Cupid is said to have been a beautiful boy, I think it both foolish and unnatural to worship at any shrine save that of his mother Venus.'

The next song happened to be 'Here's a health to the King and a Lasting Peace', bawled by a tremendous basso; and Will nudged me delightedly with his oyster-knife at the lines:

And may misfortune still pursue

The senseless woman-hating crew . . .

Soon after eleven o'clock we slipped out. Will called a cab and we drove to Moss's, a first-class hell in the aristocratic neighbourhood of St James's Street. Moss's had a bright fanlight over the door, and a police constable stood guard on either side of the entrance. They had orders to take account of all visitors, their style of dress and apparent station in life; and hoped to be rewarded for their quiet 'good-night' with a half-crown, or a good cigar. 'Many little perquisites like these solace the arduous duties of the West-End peeler,' Will told me confidentially, as he pulled at an ivory bell-knob.

At once, as in the children's story of the White Cat, the portals flew open. In we went, and they closed behind us as if by magic. Wc found ourselves faced by a second door, iron-panelled and covered with green baize, from the centre of which a gleaming eye viewed us through a small square aperture. When Will nodded affably, an iron bar swung back, two bolts were shot, we mounted a flight of softly-carpeted stairs, and I was at last introduced to the mysteries of a London gambling-house. Splendid rooms they were: brilliantly lighted, warmly curtained, much-mirrored; and in one of them stood a table spread with cold fowl, ham, tongue, beef and salads.