(It is the winter of 1760-61. Charles Huntingdon has come to London to claim his inheriatnce from his late aunt, and has has met a friend from college days: Lord Staines, the son of the Earl of Teesdale)
Staines had a wide circle of friends; young gentlemen of about the same age, not yet married, who were the sons of rich fathers. When I sallied forth in my new finery, and with my new friends to guide me, I discovered London to be a place of infinite variety. My days were never empty, and my nights full of entertainment. I began to think that perhaps Staines was right, and that no-one with sufficient funds could ever tire of London.
I had long hoped to behold the great David Garrick on stage at Drury Lane. Now Lord Staines accompanied me there, together with two of his friends, John Robertson and Henry Darnwell.
My first impressions were of the theatre
itself, which caused me much surprise, for it was very crowded and very noisy.
Many of the audience, both men and women, seemed more interested in eating and
making conversation than giving any attention to the stage. Others felt free to
comment loudly on any aspects of the performance that displeased them, and even
the immortal Garrick himself was not immune from their criticism. Of my
companions, Robertson was mostly silent, but Darnwell laughed immoderately,
and Lord Staines uttered the occasional icy comment on the defects of the
performance. I cannot now recall the name of the play, which was merely some
trivial comedy, but to my mind Garrick’s performance was so affecting that he
made it all seem very real. I was also much smitten by a charming young
actress who played an innocent girl who narrowly escaped from attempts of
seduction.
I mentioned to Staines afterwards that I had
hoped to see Garrick in some great Shakespearean tragedy, which I had heard
could produce sensations of sheer terror in his audience. But he replied, with
an affectation of weariness, that it might indeed be the case that silly women
could interrupt a performance with cries and weeping, and bumpkins newly
arrived from the country, who had perhaps never before seen a play might be
alarmed; but, speaking for himself, he had seen Garrick in many different
roles; he considered that the man was well past his peak and was unlikely now
to bring anything fresh could now be brought into his performances. As for the pretty young actress; he said that
the girl in question was in real life far from being the innocent maiden that
she depicted on stage; that if I wished, I could join the long line of
admirers who trailed after her, but I should reconcile myself to a place at
the rear of that train, for a certain great nobleman has his eye on her, and if
she was a girl of sense, she would bestow her favours on that man rather than
an unknown youth. For his part, he would not be joining any such procession,
for he considered her acting weak and insipid, and predicted that her career as an
actress would be short.
Danrwell laughed at this, but Robertson explained
to me the perils of the theatre. As we walked through Covent Garden he drew my
attention to a lady hoping to collect a few coppers in a handkerchief at her
feet as she sang. Her dress had once been fine but was now much stained, and her
face was lined, but her voice was still magnificent. I wondered why she was not
employed by a theatrical company rather than being forced to beg in the street.
“Would you believe,” Robertson told me,
“that less than ten years ago that lady was the toast of London and rumoured to
be the mistress of a certain member of the royal family? But she threw it all
away by her own foolishness, and now no theatrical manager will employ her, for
no sooner has she earned some money than she spends it all on gin, and will not
return to work until none is left. Let us hope that your young actress does not
come to such an end.”
I was moved by this to drop a shilling onto the singer’s handkerchief. Robertson shook his head sadly, but the lady halted in her Handel aria to smile at me. Some time later I bought an engraving of Garrick playing the role of Richard III in Shakespeare’s tragedy, depicting the scene where King Richard is haunted by visions of his victims on the eve of his defeat at Bosworth field. I still possess it.
Robertson and Darnwell now became two of my
particular friends. The former was tall and dark, more serious-minded than
other young gentlemen of Lord Staines’s circle and somewhat detached from their
more madcap ventures, giving the impression that he would shortly be leaving
the activities of his youth behind. Henry Darnwell, by contrast, was always the
first in some reckless scheme;
attracting trouble wherever he went and seeming to revel in it. He was
invariably cheerful, and well-liked by everyone who knew him. Unlike Robertson,
who preferred to dress in sober colours, he spent large sums on colourful
fashions derived from Italy or France. He never persisted in anything for long: he said he was studying the law and
boasted of how he would inevitably become a famous advocate, but according to
Robertson had never done the smallest amount of work.
Once, when I mentioned to Robertson that
Darnwell has invited me to join him at a certain club the next evening, he warned
me against too close an association.
“Henry Darnwell is an excellent fellow in
most ways, and would never betray a friend, but is sadly devoid of good sense
in his conduct. His reckless behaviour is the despair of his father. Both for
his sake and your own you should never lend him money for his wagers, or agree
to cover his debts. It would be best to plead poverty, for he will assuredly gamble
it away and then ask you for more, with a friendly smile on his face and
without the least intention of doing you harm.
“As for the club he mentions; go if you
wish, but avoid all invitations to play at cards there, for it is a notorious
haunt of dishonest players. You might consider it a worthy deed to rescue
Darnwell from their clutches if you can, and conduct him home before he is
plucked clean like a pigeon ripe for roasting.”
The club was an opulent building near St
James’s Square. I wore my best clothes for the occasion, and was bowed in by a
most obliging footman. I did not immediately find Darnwell, and instead wandered into a
room that was crowded and
smoke-filled. Faro was being played: a game which, as far as I could tell, involved little or no
degree of skill. Large sums were being staked on the turn of a card, with
perhaps whole estates being forfeited as a result. One young fellow, a mere
schoolboy, with blue powder on his wig and red heels on his shoes, was playing
with complete abandon. He appeared not to care whether he won or lost, for
either made him laugh uproariously and increase the stake on the next card. I asked a gentleman standing next to me, in a whisper, who this boy might be.
“That”, he told me, is Charles James Fox,
and standing by him is his brother Stephen. They are the sons of the Right Honourable
Henry Fox.”
“Oh yes: I know of him,” I said, wishing to
appear a man of the world. I had heard of Mr Fox as a member of the ministry, but knew little else about him. “And does the father know of the debts his sons are
accumulating? Young Charles there is losing very large sums and does not seem
to care.”
“His father indulges the boys most
outrageously, sir! No matter what vast amounts they squander, the father pays.
I am told that Charles Fox’s example is corrupting a whole generation of
schoolboys at Eton. But why should we care at that? Mr Fox is Paymaster of the
Army, and during the course of this war enormous quantities of the country’s
money have found their way into his pocket. We, the taxpayers, have been
robbed, and it is no more than just, sir, that the unaccounted millions stolen
by the father should be wasted by the sons!”
I watched a while as young Fox continued on
his costly path with every sign of enjoyment. I did not wager anything myself,
but walked to another room where there were several card tables. I was
approached by an older man who invited me to join him and his friends in a
game.
I pleaded that I did not know how to play.
He must have concluded from my attitude, and perhaps also from my voice, that I
was an innocent recently arrived from the country, for he laughed and said that
they would quickly teach me: playing only for the very smallest stakes until I
was familiar with the game. Remembering Robertson’s advice, I took refuge in
pleading that I had sworn to my father on his deathbed that I would never
gamble with strangers. This entirely false excuse caused one of the cardplayers
to turn his back and mutter that I was a feeble milksop. The older man,
however, smiled sympathetically and said that we were all gentlemen together
and that I was old enough to choose for myself. I was sorely tempted, and was
about to take my seat at the table when Henry Darnwell appeared. He was
evidently well-known to the card-players, and they greeted him warmly, but he
acknowledged them with no more than a brief salutation of the hand before
turning to me. His manner was flustered.
“Mr Huntingdon – Charles,” he pleaded,
“I’ve searched the whole building for you. Would you please be kind enough to
lend me a few guineas? Or, better still, add your name to a bill of mine?
Otherwise I shall be in the most deuced fix. Why, only last week at the Cockpit
I was put in a basket and raised up to the ceiling as a defaulter, and now I
dare not show my face there again! Who knows what might happen here! So please
help me out, I beg you!”
The card-players were unanimous that it was
indeed my duty to open my wallet for my friend, for otherwise I would prove myself no sportsman.
The scene was becoming unpleasant, but I was saved by the sudden arrival of
John Robertson himself. He ignored the card-players and me, but instead
addressed himself to Darnwell.
“I thought I might find you here!” he
exclaimed, “May I remind you that we had promised to dine with Lord Staines
tonight? We are late, but there is still time!”
He bowed to the cardplayers, who were
perhaps impressed by the mention of Lord Staines’s name. He then took Darnwell
by the right arm and I copied this by taking the left, and so together we
marched him from the building. On the street outside two elderly gentlemen,
their wigs all awry, were engaged in fisticuffs, presumably over a gambling
debt, but were too drunk to inflict much damage on each other. A crowd of
ragged urchins stood jeering at the impotent violence, and doubtless hoping to
rush in and grab any object that fell on the pavement. They parted to let us
through, with the accompaniment of vulgar comments which we ignored.
The story about the dinner was, of course, false. When we were out of sight, we released our prisoner and Robertson apologised for the untruth; but Darnwell admitted we had rescued him from a dangerous situation, and, under pressure, promised not to enter that club again. Whether he kept the vow I never found out, but he remained a friend and bore no grudge at my refusal to lend him money.
Another friend of Lord Staines was George Davies, who was by far the tallest and strongest man I had ever met, and wholly fearless in his behaviour. He was entirely without malice, though his impulses frequently led him into actions that were wrong.
I remember instances of this. At night
Staines and his friends would explore an entirely different London; one that
was poor, dirty and often dangerous. We would leave our swords and best clothes
behind and venture into the mean streets of the city to the east of the Tower
and around the Mint. Darnwell and Davies revelled in these expeditions, and so,
to my surprise, did Staines himself. Even the boldest among us did not dare
venture into the narrow and dark alleyways that lay behind: cesspits of
desperate poverty that also served as refuges for low criminals, where pigs
rooted in the noxious dunghills. We knew such places only by their evil repute:
Rosemary Lane, inhabited by the Irish, and Poor Jewry Lane, the home of
Israelites from Poland and Russia. Instead we walked eastwards from the Tower
down the great Ratcliff Highway, lined with sailors’ taverns and brothels, where
drunken seamen and coalheavers would fight, encouraged by the howls and
imprecations of their ragged harpies. When we entered such a place, our
disguises can have deceived nobody as to our true rank: sometimes we were
welcomed for the money we would spend freely, and would chaff on easy terms
with the other customers, but on other occasions these expeditions resulted in ourselves
giving and receiving blows, and we would recount our adventures with glee the
next day.
One
night in a low tavern somewhere near the Tower Henry Darnwell suddenly seized a
man by his collar and shouted, “You’ve picked my pocket!” The man so accused, a
short, dirty, unshaven fellow, wriggled out of Darnwell’s grip and retreated,
denying all knowledge of the crime.
“My purse has gone! Give it back!” Darnwell
shouted. Various of the accused man’s friends turned to face us. They looked
ready for a fight, but Lord Staines was undaunted. “You had best return the
purse immediately, or it will be worse for you”, he pronounced in a quiet but
cold voice. At this, George Davies stepped forwards to Staines’s side, raising
his fists in the manner of a pugilist and challenging the thief and any friends
to come forward. One of them raised a bludgeon, but Davies was too quick for
him and felled him with a single blow.
Chaos now ensued. One fellow advanced on me,
cursing loudly, and aimed a wild swing at me which I avoided and responded with
a punch to his chest. It was not a strong blow, but by great good fortune he
tripped over his own feet and tumbled backwards, striking his head against a
bench and taking no further interest in the proceedings.
We were heavily outnumbered and were obliged
to make a strategic retreat. Our opponents appeared satisfied at having driven
us out of their citadel, for they did not pursue us far; contenting themselves
with hurling a few stones. Fortunately their aim was poor, probably as a result
of the consumption of too much gin, and all missed the target. Davies had
sustained a bloody nose, which he wiped casually with his sleeve, and appeared
extremely cheerful. Whether Staines had any part in the battle I did not know,
for he showed no sign. I felt blood tricking into my collar, and found I had
been stuck on my right cheekbone, though I had no memory of receiving any blow.
Davies lent me a silk handkerchief to stem the wound, and commended the way I
had overthrown my opponent, saying that he had not previously considered me a
fighting man. I did not disillusion him as to my pugilistic abilities.
“Oh, and by the way,” he said to Darnwell,
“Your purse wasn’t stolen. You dropped it on the floor, but you were too drunk
to notice!”
“Then why did you not say so?” Darwell
replied indignantly.
“What, and lose the opportunity for a good
scrap?” retorted Davies, roaring with laughter.
On more than one occasion we were pursued
down the street by groups of drunken men and women who shouted the most
disgusting abuse at us from a safe distance. This alarmed me, but it was as if
my companions were unable to hear, and did not even turn round. John Robertson
explained that in his opinion it was undignified to acknowledge such comments
from ruffians, and he preferred to feign deafness and take no notice at all; at
which George Davies added, “If they really anger you, knock them down! That’s
what I always do!” I would not have felt confident acting in this manner, and
wished I felt safer.
Some of Davies’s behaviour was less
excusable. The city watchmen were frequently old, idle and useless, and we
would provoke them with jokes and insults and then run away laughing, leaving
them cursing impotently. One night we discovered one of these Charlies (as they
were derisively nicknamed) asleep in his little sentry-box, wrapped up in his
huge dirty coat and snoring; his mouth open to reveal just two decayed teeth.
His lantern was unlit and his truncheon and rattle on the ground by his feet.
Davies, on seeing this, seized the sentry-box and with no great effort tipped
it over, laughing uproariously at the plight of the unfortunate man inside.
Happily, the victim escaped uninjured, though he was furiously angry. His
truncheon had bounced away across the cobbles, and Davies took it as a souvenir
of his triumph: it was a handsome object, freshly painted with the arms of the
city.
He commented, “These old Charlies are
quite useless; for the most part they are too old and feeble to catch any
robber, and spend most of the night skulking in their boxes lest they should
get wet in the rain. So whenever I find one asleep, or too deaf to hear my
approach, I make sure that he is awake and alert to his duties!” Although I
laughed, I felt that it was a most sophistical argument if taken seriously; and
when at this point Davies struck his head on a low-hanging inn sign that he had
failed to see in the darkness, I felt it was no less than the hand of Divine
justice in action. Happily, Davies was blessed with an extremely thick skull,
and suffered no more damage than the loss of his hat and wig in the dirt, but
his reaction to the accident astonished me, for, to the accompaniment of an
oath, and with all the force he could muster, he deliberately struck the offending
board again with his forehead! He would no doubt have done so many more times,
until either the board cracked or he lost all consciousness, had no his friends
seized him by the arms and, not without difficulty, dragged him away. They were
roaring with laughter, and had no doubt witnessed such scenes before, and very
soon he was laughing too.
Roberson turned to me and tapped his own head. “Mad!” he proclaimed, “Quite mad!”
The best that could be said of our exploits is that we never attacked harmless law-abiding citizens, as some parties of young bravoes did. One such group, who styled themselves the Mohawks, after the North American tribe, would surround some unfortunate man and prick him with their swords, or assault respectable women. We never sank into this level of barbarism, though sometimes we could not resist enjoying the pusillanimous behaviour of those who thought that we might. One night we had a man grovelling on his knees in the mud, begging us to spare him, pleading that he was but a poor tailor with a wife and children dependent on him. Staines held him with an icy expression until, bored and disgusted by this spectacle of abject cowardice, he abruptly turned on his heel and strode away without a word. It is only now when I look back that I realise that humiliating the poor man in this way could be as wounding as violence.
It was through Henry Darnwell that I became
acquainted with Bartley Wandescote. I never considered him a friend, and but
for the fact that he was to have a very important part to play later in my
story indeed I would happily blot the man entirely from my memory, for he took
a peculiar delight in a particular feature of London life.
Several times a year, a grim procession of
carts would set forth from Newgate and make their way westwards along Holborn
and past the old church of St Giles, bearing a number of unfortunates, both men
and women, to the gallows at Tyburn. The rabble of London would assemble in
vast numbers to witness these processions, and the hangings would provide a
climax to the entertainment, especially if some particularly noted criminal was
to suffer; and there Wandescote would be among them. He told me with pride that
he had never missed an execution since he was a boy!
Once he persuaded me to accompany him. The
people gathered in the streets around Tyburn looked to be a mob of the most
degraded men and women, and I kept a hand close on my purse, but Wandescote
appeared to find the scene exhilarating. There were roars of excitement as the procession
came in sight.
“This first man is a notorious pickpocket”,
Wandescote explained, indicating a mere boy who appeared to be half-witted with
fear, and who gawped open-mouthed as the poorly-dressed clergyman who was with
him pointed at the heavens and urged him to repent. In the next cart was a
woman, certainly younger than me, who stood upright and motionless. The crowd
were sympathetic, and shouted encouragement, but she ignored them and her
expressionless face looking neither to the right or the left.
“She was condemned for stealing a roll of
cloth”, Wandescote explained, “She said it was to feed her family. She is only
eighteen years old, and as it was her first offence, It was expected that she
would be reprieved, but she doomed herself by her insolence to the judge.” I
contrived to slip away before the actual hangings, and had no desire to witness
any more such events.
I never heard Wandescote express any sympathy
with the victims. He said that many were be drunk on the way their final
destination, which was as well for them, since they might take as long as
twenty minutes to die by strangulation. He further told me that if a
particularly notorious criminal was to suffer, it was possible to hire an upper
room to obtain a better view of the elevating scene of his despatch. I am glad
to say that none of our friends accepted his invitation to accompany him to
such an occasion. He had also, he said, once been allowed to view the bodies of
the executed, but his ambition to attend their dissection at the Royal College
of Surgeons, which was the ultimate fate of those deemed to be the very worst
of criminals was as yet unfulfilled.
Wandescote often visited the prisons,
where, doubtless with the aid of extensive bribery, he was by his own account
able to meet and talk with practically every famous criminal in London. He also
regaled us with accounts of his visits to the Bethlehem lunatic asylum: the
famous “Bedlam”. He described how he had talked to a man who was kept chained
up in a cage, like a dog, on account of his occasional bouts of ungovernable
violent rage; and how an unfortunate woman, all in rags, had grovelled before
him and attempted to kiss his feet.
“She must have taken me for Jesus Christ, no
less”, he commented, in a voice that made it impossible to tell whether or not
he was jesting.
He sometimes said that he would write a book
about his experiences, and at other times that he was torn between becoming an
advocate or a physician; but we all knew, and perhaps he knew too, that he
would do none of these things, but would contentedly wander idly through life,
secure in the vast wealth he had inherited from his father.
Staines’s sarcastic comments deterred me
from pursuing Garrick’s pretty young actress, though I did indeed find that in
London I was surrounded by free-spirited women of all degrees, from the
splendid madam at fifty guineas to the nymph who walks along the Strand or
lurks in an alley-way, and who might resign herself to your pleasure for a
shilling and a bottle of wine. Many of the latter class would join us on our
nocturnal expeditions, but I behaved with great continence. To excuse myself
with Staines’s friends I pleaded a dread of contracting the pox, with the added
explanation that most of these women were often very old and excessively ugly;
so much so that they could not possibly arouse any amorous instinct in me. I was
commended in this by Robertson:
“It may be considered a universal rule, that
the darker the night, the uglier the whore; for surely a handsome young whore
would wish for light, to reveal her charms? And to follow any whore into
darkness is courting danger. A friend of mine, a young lawyer at Gray’s Inn,
one night incautiously followed one of these ladies into a lightless entry,
where he was immediately knocked down, and when he regained his faculties
discovered himself to be lying prostrate upon a dunghill and robbed not only of
his purse but also of all his clothes, leaving him quite Adam-naked, so he had
to make his way home with his shame covered only by a filthy rag he found in
the gutter, to the vast amusement of all who beheld him”.
Henry Darnwell laughed at this, and told
Robertson that he would have a future as a novelist.
The truth, which I did not reveal for fear of
their ridicule, was that at the time I had very little experience of women, and
was afraid of making a fool of myself. Staines wondered at my abstinence, and
enquired whether my proclivities could lie in other directions. I did not at
the time comprehend what he might mean. Others of his friends spoke of a dose
of the clap as virtually a badge of manhood, and another suggested that I
should enjoy the ladies “wearing armour”, by which I understood he meant a
certain instrument made from an animal’s gut. I was also advised that certain
discreet “houses of assignation” were available for the use of young gentlemen
who did not wish to disturb their parents or landladies. My sole lapse at that
time I shall describe shortly, but it occurred only after the most important
event of my early life in London.
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