The Splendid Spur

night. ’Twas four o’clock before I dropp’d asleep in my bed in Trinity, and my last thoughts were still busy with the words I had heard. Nor, on the morrow, did it fair any better with me: so that, at rhetoric lecture, our president⁠—Dr. Ralph Kettle⁠—took me by the ears before the whole class. He was the fiercer upon me as being older than the gross of my fellow-scholars, and (as he thought) the more restless under discipline. “A tutor’d adolescence,” he would say, “is a fair grace before meat,” and had his hourglass enlarged to point the moral for us. But even a rhetoric lecture must have an end, and so, tossing my gown to the porter, I set off at last for Magdalen Bridge, where the new barricado was building, along the Physic Garden, in front of East Gate.

The day was dull and low’ring, though my wits were too busy to heed the sky; but scarcely was I past the small gate in the city wall when a brisk shower of hail and sleet drove me to shelter in the Pig Market (or Proscholium) before the Divinity School. ’Tis an ample vaulted passage, as I dare say you know; and here I found a great company of people already driven by the same cause.

To describe them fully ’twould be necessary to paint the whole state of our city in those distracted times, which I have neither wit nor time for. But here, today, along with many doctors and scholars, were walking courtiers, troopers, mountebanks, cutpurses, astrologers, rogues and gamesters; together with many of the first ladies and gentlemen of England, as the Prince Maurice, the lords Andover, Digby and Colepepper, my lady Thynne, Mistress Fanshawe, Mr. Secretary Nicholas, the famous Dr. Harvey, arm-in-arm with my lord Falkland (whose boots were splash’d with mud, he having ridden over from his house at Great Tew), and many such, all mix’d in this incredible tag-rag. Mistress Fanshawe, as I remember, was playing on a lute, which she carried always slung about her shoulders: and close beside her, a fellow impudently puffing his specific against the morbus campestris, which already had begun to invade us.

“Who’ll buy?” he was bawling. “’Tis from the receipt of a famous Italian, and never yet failed man, woman, nor child, unless the heart were clean drown’d in the disease: the lest part of it good muscadine, and has virtue against the plague, smallpox, or surfeits!”

I was standing before this jackanapes, when I heard a stir in the crowd behind me, and another calling, “Who’ll buy? Who’ll buy?”

Turning, I saw a young man, very gaily dressed, moving quickly about at the far end of the Pig Market, and behind him an old lackey, bent double with the weight of two great baskets that he carried. The baskets were piled with books, clothes, and gewgaws of all kinds; and ’twas the young gentleman that hawked his wares himself. “What d’ye lack?” he kept shouting, and would stop to unfold his merchandise, holding up now a book, and now a silk doublet, and running over their merits like any huckster⁠—but with the merriest conceit in the world.

And yet ’twas not this that sent my heart flying into my mouth at the sight of him. For by his curls and womanish face, no less than the amber cloak with the black bars, I knew him at once for the same I had seen yesterday among the dicers.

As I stood there, drawn this way and that by many reflections, he worked his way through the press, selling here and there a trifle from his baskets, and at length came to a halt in front of me.

“Ha!” he cried, pulling off his plumed hat, and bowing low, “a scholar, I perceive. Let me serve you, sir. Here is the History of Saint George,” and he picked out a thin brown quarto and held it up; “written by Master Peter Heylin; a ripe book they tell me (though, to be sure, I never read beyond the title), and the price a poor two shillings.”

Now, all this while I was considering what to do. So, as I put my hand in my pocket, and drew out the shillings, I said very slowly, looking him in the eyes (but softly, so that the lackey might not hear)⁠—

“So thus you feed your expenses at the dice: and my shilling, no doubt, is for Luke Settle, as well as the rest.”

For the moment, under my look, he went white to the lips; then clapped his hand to his sword, withdrew it, and answered me, red as a turkey-cock⁠—

“Shalt be a parson, yet, Master Scholar: but art in a damn’d hurry, it seems.”

Now, I had ever a quick temper, and as he turned on his heel, was like to have replied and raised a brawl. My own meddling tongue had brought the rebuff upon me: but yet my heart was hot as he walked away.

I was standing there and looking after him, turning over in my hand the Life of Saint George, when my fingers were aware of a slip of paper between the pages. Pulling it out, I saw ’twas scribbled over with writing and figures, as follows:⁠—

Mr. Anthony Killigrew, his acct for Oct. 25th, MDCXLII.⁠—For herrings, 2d.; for coffie, 4d.; for scowring my coat, 6d.; at bowls, 5s. 10d.; for bleading me, 1s. 0d.; for ye King’s speech, 3d.; for spic’d wine (with Marjory), 2s. 4d.; for seeing ye Rhinoceros, 4d.; at ye Ranter-go-round, 6¾d.; for a pair of silver buttons, 2s. 6d.; for apples, 2½d.; for ale, 6d.; at ye dice, £17 5s.; for spic’d wine (again), 4s. 6d.

And so on.

As I glanced my eye down this paper, my anger oozed away, and a great feeling of pity came over me, not only at the name of Anthony⁠—the name I had heard spoken in the bowling-green last night⁠—but also to see that monstrous item of £17