BUCKINGHAM PALACE.
The residence of the Queen, when in London, is generally supposed to be Buckingham Palace, a long gloomy looking building in St. James Park, not a stones' throw from the Marble Arch in Hyde Park or Westminster Abbey. The same big flashy looking soldiers in red coats, and hideous grenadier bearskins are to be seen marching up and down opposite this palace gate just as they do about St. James Palace, or at the Horse Guards in Parliament street.
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BUCKINGHAM PALACE.
St. James Park is a pretty place with fine shady trees, and here in the mall or wide walk of the park was played a century ago, and still farther back in the days of paint, powder, and patches, and garden masquerades, the game of "pell mell."
Buckingham Palace, though much frequented by the Queen, and situated pleasantly as far as appearances go, is not a healthy place of residence at all. The Queen frequently has complained of its dampness, she having often contracted bad colds there. This I have on the authority of her former chaplain.
George the IV had a Dutch predeliction for low ceilings, and as he never lived on good terms with his wife, whom he used to call a Fat Dutch Hog, no accommodations were made for Queen Caroline his spouse, in Buckingham Palace.
The palace was occupied by this monarch, for whom it was built, in 1825. This king was one of the most profligate of men and a roue—and yet had the reputation of being the finest gentleman in Europe, but he never spared man in his rage nor woman in his lust.
John, Duke of Buckingham, lived in a house on the site of the palace, in 1703, from which circumstance it has derived its name.
I had special permission to visit this palace while the Queen was absent on her summer tour in Scotland; it being a great favor to be admitted, and it was only by great perseverance and difficulty that I obtained entrance to the royal abode.
One bright morning I called about ten o'clock, and after presenting my order of admittance was allowed to enter.
I was bewildered by its sumptuous magnificence. Fancy a noble hall surrounded with a double row of marble columns, every one composed of a single piece of veined Carrara marble, with gilded bases and capitals; thetout ensemblebeinga splendid perspective of over one hundred and fifty feet. The steps of the grand staircase are also of the purest marble. The Library, Council room, and Sculpture gallery are all most beautifully decorated.
QUEEN'S LIBRARY.
The Library is used for a waiting room for deputations, which as soon as the Queen is ready to receive them pass across the Sculpture Gallery into the hall, and thence ascend by the Grand Stairway, through the Ante-Room and the Green Drawing-room to the Throne room. The Library and adjoining rooms are fitted up in a most gaudy fashion, there being a sad want of taste displayed, either by her Majesty or her upholsterer, but by which I am not able to say.
The Sculpture Gallery contains the busts of leading statesmen of all countries, and chief among them I noticed one of Prince Albert, the late husband of the Queen, mounted on a fine pedestal. Busts of all the members of the royal family, male and female, are also here. That of the Princess Louisa is a charming, innocent looking English face; she is said to be deeply in love with a rich Catholic nobleman of the Duke of Norfolk's family.
The Picture Gallery has fine skylights so as to throw a shaded light on the works of art below, and here are to be found the master pieces of the Dutch and Flemish schools, gems of Reynolds, Watteau, Titian, Albert Durer, Rembrandt, Teniers, Ostade, Cuyps, Wouvermans, and others, formerly the collection in great part of George IV.
The Yellow Drawing room, a superb apartment, has a series of paintings in panels of the royal family, there being full length pictures of Queen Victoria, looking very fat, with the crown upon her head, and Prince Albert in his costume of Knight of the Garter, a dress which is supremely ridiculous in these days when none but priests and academicians wear such drapery.
The Throne Room is a gaudy looking apartment, very large and spacious, and like all the rooms in Buckingham palace having a very low ceiling, the prevailing decoration being curtains of striped satin, and the alcoves are hung in rich crimsonvelvet relieved or rather bedizened with an nearly obscured gilding. William IV, the sailor king, hated this palace for its ugliness and discomfort, and this all the more that he was used to sleeping in a hammock aboard his own frigate.
The Marble Arch, an immense pile of stone now at the corner of Piccadilly and Hyde Park, formerly occupied the central position in this building, and was erected in its present position at a cost of thirty-one thousand pounds.
When the present Queen had her first child the palace was found so uncomfortable that she had to have the nursery removed to the attic, and there, while the royal child was getting its teeth cut, the Lord Chamberlain of England, who had charge of the improvements, was boiling glue and making French polish in the basement, so that altogether the queen of the greatest nation of the earth, subsequent to her honeymoon, was no better housed than a poor family in New York, dwelling in a respectable tenement house.
Parliament, however, was kind enough to grant the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds to alter and repair the building, and accordingly the palace was made habitable for her Majesty.
The Ball Room is one hundred and thirty-nine feet in length. The Supper Room is seventy-six by sixty feet—with a promenade gallery one hundred and nine feet in length, and twenty-one feet wide. There is a riding school attached, with a mews or stable for horses; here the state carriages and coaches are kept at an expense, for flunkies, grooms, masters of the horse, stable boys, feed for horses and labor, of thirty-six thousand pounds, or over two hundred thousand dollars annually.
I was allowed as a great favor to inspect the Queen's library, which is very handsomely fitted up, and wherever the eye rested for a moment it was sure to find a picture or bust of Prince Albert. There were a number of small tables of inlaid ivory, mother of pearl, and gold, covered with handsomely bound volumes of Shakespeare and other English poets. I also saw a finely bound copy of the Memoirs of the Queen, which it is supposed was written by her Majesty. This is a mistake, however, as the entire book was written by a secretary of hers from some scanty notes provided by her, and from personal recollections. The Queen was nine months dictating the work before its publication. The Queen was in the habit of sitting four hours a day giving these reminiscences of her husband, and during this time she always had a glass of sherry and a biscuit by her side.
Very little is known of her Majesty outside of the British Isles. Almost every other female sovereign has publicity given to all her secret actions, and her private life is discussed with great personal freedom, in the cafes and clubs. A thousand stories have been set afloat and circulated in regard to Madam Isabella, lately Queen of Spain, and but a few of them are true. Rochefort in his papers, "The Lantern" and the "Marsellaise," has not hesitated to pour columns of abuse upon the head of the Empress Eugenie, a lady whose principal fault is a fondness for low necked dresses.
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PORTRAIT OF THE QUEEN.
Two women have hitherto escaped this kind of slander, and these two are the Empress of Austria and Queen Victoria. The reason is palpable in the case of the Empress of Austria; she is an imperial lady to discuss whose private life it would be dangerous if done on Austrian territory.
In regard to the Queen of England, the reason why silence is kept in relation to her private life is because of a sneaking regard for the manners, customs, and good opinions of titled individuals among most American travelers.
The Queen has been a good wife and mother, but in these two qualities she is more than equaled by thousands of American women. She is no better and no worse than the average married woman; has her faults, her weaknesses, and her good qualities, and it is among her own people that her failings find their loudest trumpeters.
In honestly dealing with these stories I shall not stop to give the gross yarns which are spun by the Jenkinses of the press, who make what they call an honest penny by chronicling all the loose street scandal that is poured into their ears.
The London Times, the leading paper of England, has on several occasions soundly berated the Queen for her continued seclusion from the public, her exalted position being, it is said, her only excuse, and subsequent to the death of Prince Albert this seclusion was continued so long that the shopkeepers and tradesmen who profit by the receptions, festivals, and gaieties of the court, were loud in their complaints of what they deemed to be an overstrained and extravagant grief.
Several leading modistes or dress makers were obliged to give up business, owing to the Queen having closed her drawing rooms; murmuring loudly that they had been ruined by her Majesty, as their principal business was to make dresses for the ladies of rank who have nothing else to do but go to balls, parties, and drawing-room receptions when invited. Indeed for the past three years there has been a growing dissatisfaction with her Majesty, and sad stories are told of that royal lady in the English capital—chiefly the shopkeepers were enraged—although this class of people are usually the most loyal—then the Fenian affair came and was added as fuel to the general discontent.
But the worst remains to be told, and it is with no feeling of pleasure that I am compelled to lift the veil.
QUEEN'S SECLUSION.
The story is everywhere prevalent that the seclusion of the Queen is owing to her fondness for liquor; this statement has never been openly promulgated in the papers, but is continually hinted at obscurely in the more liberal organs. It is boldly spoken of by private individuals that the temper of herMajesty has of late years become very irascible and is sometimes ungovernable, and the cause is attributed to drink and its consequent delirium which has seized upon this unfortunate lady.
I was told by a clergyman who had it direct from the wife of a former chaplain of her Majesty, that the Queen was in the habit of drinking half a pint of raw liquor per day. The effects of these liberal potations are making visible havoc in her once comely face. I saw her thrice, and her inflamed face and swollen eyes gave her all the appearance of an inebriate. Perhaps the trouble caused by her scapegrace of a son, the Prince of Wales, who, without doubt, is as reckless a scamp as ever existed, has had much to do with his mother's present condition, and has driven her to drinking.
It is also notorious that the Queen has chosen for her body servant one John Brown, a raw boned, robust, and coarse Highlander, and clings to him with more warmth and tenacity than becomes a lady who carried her sorrow for a deceased husband previously to such an extravagant pitch.
This John Brown whom I saw is over six feet in height, a powerful looking fellow; but he has a face that would find favor in the eyes of very few women. He was formerly a body servant of Prince Albert, and was always an attendant on him in his hunting and fishing excursions. The Queen took notice of him at Balmoral, her summer residence in Scotland, and here she made a great pet of him.
After the death of Prince Albert the Queen attached Brown to her person, and ever since he has constantly attended her.
It is the custom of the Queen to have herself pushed around the grounds of her lodge at Balmoral in a perambulator or hand carriage when she visits that charming spot.
The person selected for this duty was the lucky John Brown. Day after day he might be seen pushing around the spacious lawn, the Majesty of England.
LUCKY JOHN BROWN.
During her hours of idleness Brown is always allowed to converse with the Queen in a familiar manner, and it is said presumes on her gracious condescension more than her noblest subject would dare to do.
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JOHN BROWN EXERCISING THE QUEEN.
When the Queen takes her seat in her perambulator it might often occur that a servant would spring forward with a lowly reverence to assist the royal lady, but in every instance the unfortunate flunkey would receive a rebuking frown, and in a moment after might have to undergo the mortification of a sneering laugh from Brown, who at this crisis would make his appearance—strolling in a leisurely fashion toward the perambulator, and stretching his long Celtic legs, his arms full of warm wraps in which he proceeds to enfold the person of the Queen, with as much seeming fondness as if he were the husband instead of the low lackey of royalty, without polish and breeding; then in addition to the silent rebuke of the Queen the offending servant would hear from Brown some such remark as "I say my douce laddie, dinna ya offer yer sarvices till herMajesty asks ya fur them. Dinna ye be sticking yer finger in till anoother mun's haggis or ye moon be scalded."
"That will do Brown," the Queen would say to prevent a scene which would be sure to take place were Brown's violent temper not curbed in time to prevent an explosion, for the tall Highland gillie is no respecter of persons, and cares very little for royalty except in the person of its chief representative.
It is a current anecdote in the Pall Mall clubs, that the Queen's cousin, the Duke of Cambridge, who is also the commander-in-chief of the British Army, having one day desired an audience with the Queen of a private nature, waited upon her at Buckingham Palace and presented his card like any other private citizen. He was desired to wait, and did so until he became tired, and finally he was admitted to the presence, and was somewhat astonished to find the servant, John Brown, in the room.
The Duke being a member of the royal family did not hesitate to say to her majesty in a respectful way:
"Will your Majesty be so kind as to ask your footman to leave the saloon, I desire to speak to you on a matter of importance, privately."
"Very well, you may speak without intrusion," said the Queen, turning her head slightly to the window where her servant stood with his back turned coolly upon the Queen's cousin, "there is no one here but Brown, he is very discreet."
A GOOD STORY.
Finding that the Highlander could not be prevailed upon to leave the room, the Duke made a virtue of necessity and proceeded to state the purport of his visit. The Queen engaged in conversation with her cousin, and some minutes having elapsed the conversation turned upon different subjects. The Duke was relating a joke about the Clubs for the edification of the Queen, in which a noble person was made to assume a ridiculous position, when all at once he was interrupted with a peal of coarse and irreverent laughter, which rang through the apartments, and the Duke turning around with a thrill ofhorror and astonishment, heard Brown scream out while he held his sides to contain his mad mirth:
"Oh! oh! What a d—d fule that fellow must have been."
The Duke for a moment stood petrified with horror, an unpleasant tremor ran down the small of his back, and then being seized with a sudden idea, he took his hat and making a low reverence left the apartment as the Queen said in an irritable tone:
"Oh! never mind, it's only Brown."
The story was too good to keep, and in a few days it was known all over London.
On the day that the Queen opened Blackfriars bridge she rode in a state carriage with Brown behind her, and the act was so flagrant that when the procession passed through the Strand, the Queen was openly hissed by the people who stood on the sidewalks and saw the burly form of the Scotsman in the carriage, so close to her Majesty.
I leave facts to speak for themselves, there is no need of comment. The great rival of Punch is a paper called the Tomahawk, published in Fleet street, and which is edited with fearless ability. The chief artist is a Matthew Morgan who excels all others of his craft in London for the beauty and spirit of his cartoons. Well, one day the Tomahawk appeared with a large two paged cartoon, in which the queen was pictured in her perambulator, and the tall form of Brown behind pushing the vehicle, while he leaned over the back and looked with an affectionate leer into the face of the sovereign of England. There was no inscription at the bottom of the picture, but it was so truthful and telling, that every person who looked, saw the whole scandalous story at a glance. Three editions of this number of the Tomahawk were sold in a few days, and in the corner of the picture the daring artist did not hesitate to sign his initials, "M.M." It is sufficient to state that no proceedings were taken, nor was a suit of libel brought against the editors who publish the paper.
I have here only recounted facts well known in England, and I set them down without malice or extenuation.
The salary or income of Queen Victoria is, I believe, about five thousand two hundred dollars a day, including Sundays, for which she also receives her regular stipend. Like other sovereigns, she does not toil or spin, yet the people must pay the bills all the same. Being of a very economical and thrifty disposition, it is supposed that her Majesty will leave a fortune of many millions of pounds to her scapegrace son when she dies, that is to say, if he has common decency enough too wait for her decease, and ceases to outrage her feelings to much.
Queen Victoria was born May 24th, 1819, and is consequently in her fifty-second year.
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CHAPTER V.
HIDDEN DEPTHS.
FINDING it necessary to have a companion with me who had a perfect knowledge of the English Metropolis, I paid a visit to the headquarters of the police in the Old Jewry, and procured from Inspector Bailey, the Chief of Police, the aid of a detective to accompany me in my nightly adventures. Shortly after midnight Sergeant Moss and myself passed through Gracechurch into Fenchurch street, by towering warehouses, and along Aldgate into High street, Whitechapel. Until we got well up into Whitechapel we had not met more than three or four persons, and they were principally individuals who had taken more ale or strong liquor than was good for their equilibrium. One person, who was evidently out of his latitude, accosted the detective and demanded of him, in a menacing but rather ludicrous way:
"I s'ay ole fel', whish ish Goodman's Feelsh? I wansh to go to Somshseet sthreeths. Goodman's Feelsh, ole boy. Show we waysh and give shixpensh, ole fel?"
"Go along and turn off to your left, and when you get home eat an onion, and it will do you good p'raps," said he, as he tried to dodge the drunken fellow, who seemed well dressed, and had some jewelry on his person.
"Eesh an onionsh. Sir, yer a gentlesmansh—ole boy. Blesh you. Blesh you," and he staggered away into the darkness, rolling like a yawl-boat in the breakers.
We turned off the Whitechapel road into Baker street, up Charles into Wellington street. The neighborhood was a poor desolate one, and every building, and every stone in the street, with the offal in the gutters, spoke of poverty and wretchedness.
Now and then a policeman spoke to us and looked sharply at me, but always they seemed civil and obliging.
The district we were now traversing was a kind of debatable land between Whitechapel and Bethnal Green. The streets, or rather lanes, ran across and along at angles and in circles of a perfect maze tending to confound ways that were well calculated to puzzle a stranger.
The lanes were, with few exceptions, not more than two or three hundred feet long, and the odor from the cellars and lodging houses was miasmatic. Shouts and yells and curses came from drunken male brutes who passed us, and now and then a wretched looking outcast of a woman, hideous with filth and bloated with gin, stole like a shadow from some of the low public houses that were, in accordance with the beer-house act, putting up their shutters.
A woman passed us with a stone bottle in one hand and a herring in the other, while we stood looking up and down the narrow street. Her eyes were bloodshot and her face seamed with dissipation and wretchedness, while she grasped the stone bottle hard, and seemed ready to defend her precious property with her life.
"Wot have you got there," said my companion seizing the stone jug and holding it to his nose. The woman was almost frenzied at this attempt, as she believed it was, to deprive her of what was far dearer to her than her life. "Give me back my gin!" she screamed, and dashed forward like a tigress to claw his eyes out. The sergeant seemed satisfied, and handed her back the stone vessel with a motion of disgust.
"That'll do, ole lady," said he, "I'd rather you'd drink that White Satan nor me. I pitys yer precious witles, that's hall, when you drinks it. Where do you live?"
AN EXPLORATION.
"I live's in 'Purty Bill's lodgin.' I'll show it to you for abrown. Come along." We followed her for a short distance, and now and then, as we passed the doorways and courts, some low blackguard would vent a little of his vile or rough humor upon our devoted heads, merely to keep his intellect in play.
"I say, ye pair of duffers, give us tuppence to get a pot o' beer, wont ye; come here, and I'll cash yer check hif you 'ave no small change," said a cut-throat looking rascal of large build who was lying across a door that seemed to open into the earth somewhere. He half rose; fell back on the broken cavern door stupefied with liquor, and began to snore like a wild beast gorged with blood.
"This is an awful district, sir," said the detective. "They doesn't stand on ceremony with you here."
We passed further down the dark street, and a very dark street it was. The atmosphere was very different from that which hung over London Bridge. The air was noisome, and the collected offal in the gutters sent up a frightful stench to the heavens. At the end of the street was a cul de sac, and before we came to it my conductor stopped at a passage, dim under the midnight sky, which ran back for some distance; I could not tell how far, owing to the darkness.
We passed into the court, which seemed to yawn wider as one progressed, between three-storied, tumble-down, dirty brick buildings, and finally we found ourselves in a yard about a hundred feet square, from the opposite side of whose buildings clothes lines depended covered with canvass jackets, ragged highlows, aprons, and two or three sou'westers, beside a lot of female articles of under-linen. There were barrows, hand carts, small jackass carts and baskets, with a few empty barrels piled up in a confused mass in the corner of the yard. Cabbage leaves, bones of fish and animals, potato skins—the remains of carniverous appetites—were strewed all round.
The detective had by this time lit a lantern which he had concealed in his breast, and thus I was enabled to look around me. He said, "This is a rum spot; but never mind, it's safe enough. Now dy'e see that cellar—that's where we are a goin' to spend an hour or two. Come along."
He pointed in the direction of the cellar, or rather an opening in the ground, at the further corner of the yard, from whose bowels issued slanting streaks of light, shouts of laughter, and yells indicative of mad revelry. Groping our way carefully over the heaps of rubbish, and around the vehicles and barrels, we arrived at the cellar, which had for an opening an aperture about six feet wide by five feet in length. The broken wooden stairs leading to the bottom had some fifteen steps.
We descended and found the door at the lowest step barring the entrance. It was fastened, and had a dirty, impenetrable pane of glass as a watchhole for the use of those inside, so that nothing could be seen from the outside of the door. We gave the door a kick, and then the shouting and laughing seemed to stop very suddenly, and there was a hustling and running about inside which betokened preparation.
A face appeared at the pane of glass, and, after a scrutiny of a minute or two, the door went back on its hinges with a grating sound. A big bullet-head protruded itself, and a voice said:
"Who is that ere? Wot does you want, and who the d—l send you at this time o' night a disturbin' of honest people in their comfortable beds?"
"Bill, it's 'Faking Johnny' as wants to hold a few moments conversation with you. The queen has just sent me with a patent of nobility for you, from Buckingham Palace. You are to be made a barronnight right hoff when you reforms," said the detective, in a jocular way, as he descended into the cellar and faced the proprietor of the den, who held a half-penny candle above his head to get a look at us both.
The master of the mansion finally recognized my companion, but did not seem at all well pleased with his visit.
"Well," he said, in a very gruff voice, "is hit bizness or pleasure? Vich? Kase, hif hits bizness you must 'elp yourself."
"PURTY BILL."
"Oh, pleasure by all means, Purty Bill," said the sergeant, "myself and friend here, who is a son of Henry Clay, as wasPresident of the United States of America, just wants to see how the fun is goin' on to-night, and as I knew you kept a fust-class place, Bill, I thought I would bring him around to see you. He has called on the Queen, Mr. Bright, Mr. Gladstone, the Hemperor of the French, and he expressed a great desire to see 'Purty Bill;' so here we are."
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PURTY BILL SHOWING US IN.
The hideous vagabond seemed touched by this piece of insidious flattery, and said in a modified tone:
"Oh, well, that's fair enough. I don't hask hanything better. But ye see I thought you might ha' wanted some of my lodgers, and so many of them have been done for lately that they are getting suspicious of my honesty, and I have to be careful. Come this way," and he held the half-penny candle over his head, which gave me a chance to observe him. The man was about six feet two inches in height, and much in form of shoulders like an ox, with loins like a prize-fighter. The face was pitted terribly with small-pox, his entire face wasseared, and even the corners of his eyebrows seemed eaten away by the awful disease. Hence his name of "Purty Bill." His eyes were of a greenish blue, and his attire was that of a costermonger; a smock of canvass, and knee breeches and huge shoes, whose heavy nails made rapid incisions in the clay floor of the long, dark passage through which we had to pass until we came to still another door. This door was not a door; in fact it was only a few planks strongly nailed together, and was not more than four feet high, so that we were all compelled, as "Purty Bill" lifted the latch, to put our feet in first, and making half circles of our bodies, we entered, and after descending three or four flagged steps we were at last in the cellar and establishment proper over which "Purty Bill" claimed a proprietary interest.
It was one of the strangest sights I ever saw—the interior of this Wild Beast's Den. It was a huge cellar formerly used as a brewery, of perhaps a hundred by seventy-five feet in dimension.
The ceiling, or, rather, the rough, unplaned beams which supported the roof above us, gave an appearance of great strength to the place. There was a large fireplace in the center of the cellar, around which fifty or sixty persons sat, of all ages and of both sexes. The floor was of damp clay, smooth and trodden by the feet of countless thieves, vagabonds, and prostitutes. The corners of the cellar were buried in darkness, while the center of the cavern, near the fireplace, was bright with the flames of a fire of logs, which threw a flickering light on the wooden beams, the broken chairs and stools, the pewter pots in the hands of the lodgers, and on many faces stained with dirt and ploughed up with crime and misery. There were thirty or forty berths roughly constructed as they are in the emigrant steerage of a Liverpool packet, and a heap of dirty straw in each indicated that they were used as beds by the occupants of the apartments. There was a large black pot hanging from a big hook, which depended from the brick chimney, and from this pot came a steaming odor of soup, or stew of some kind. The majority of the lodgers were sittingon the bare ground, which was dry and hardened near the fire, while at a distance from its flame the ground was rather damp and the lodgers sat on broken stools or on ragged pieces of matting, broken pieces of willow ware, logs of wood, bundles of rags, or any other article, or articles, that were convertible into seats for the time being.
"WONT YOU TAKE SOMETHING?"
The room was lighted by four or five candles, which were stuck in glass bottles, the bottles being fastened to the joists which supported the berths in which the lodgers slept. The people nearest the fire had fragments of food in their hands and were evidently preparing for a grand midnight feast. Some of them were peeling potatoes, and one old fellow with rheumy eyes had a piece of bacon of five or six pounds weight between his crossed knees on a board, which he was cutting into small square lumps, and as he hacked a piece off he threw it at random into the large pot. A young girl was engaged in carving a huge cabbage-head, and her assistant was scraping carrots and parsnips. Every one seemed interested about the pot, and every one seemed to have some contribution for the feast, which I found was a co-operative one.
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"WONT YOU TAKE SOMETHING?"
"Purty Bill" bustled about and found two broken stools for myself and conductor, and placed them near the fire, saying in a hospitable way:
"Gent's, this ere night is werry wet, and you might as well dry yourselves. Sit up nearer the fire. Won't ye take somethink?" and he put his huge paws on the detectives knee in a friendly way. "This is agoin to be a topper of a meal to-night, and all of us will welcome ye gents to our 'umble board. So make yerselves at 'ome, and peck a bit when it's biled."
"Wot's the idea of getting up this cram at this time of the morning, Bill? It's near two o'clock. Won't it interfere with yer lodgers' precious digestion?"
"Hinterfere with it? Wot, vith one of my lodgers? Rayther! No. Vy there's Kicking Billy as heats six blessed meals a day, and then he's all the time a lookin' for sangwiches and pigs trotters a-tween meals. Urt their digestion hindeed? Vy they 'av got stomax like them ere hanimals wot performs at Hastleys. You knows Slap-Up Peter. You used to be a stone swallower in the purfession," and the proprietor touched a man who was squatted on his haunches, smoking a dirty stump of clay pipe, with his foot. Slap-Up Peter drew the pipe out of his mouth, shook the ashes from it, dusted the venerable relic with a greasy red handkerchief, carefully placed it in his breeches pocket, and said:
"Vy don't ye keep yer big feet to yerself? Wot hanimals do you mean? Do you mean cammomiles?"
"Yes, them hanimals vith the 'umps on their hugly backs. You see, sir, Slap-Up Peter has had a good eddycation in his time, and he knows the names of the hanimals, 'cos he used to travel with the circus afore he went on the tramp to swallow stones and snakes."
"Peter," said the detective, "you must 'ave quite an 'istry. Could you tell us somethink about your past life, my boy?"
Slap-Up Peter had a melancholy face. The skin was tanned, the eyes large, black, and bulging, and the nose like a hawk's. His clothes were worn and greasy; his face was gaunt, and when he moved his body the bones seemed to creak and grate as if they had been joined together by metallic hinges. There was something mournful about the man—some queer story attached to him, I felt.
PETER AND JUDY.
"Tell ye me 'istry, is it? Vell, I don't mind if I do; but them as hears my story mout give me somethink to drink first, for I ham werry dry. I lost my woice speaking on the Histablished Church bill tother night in Parlymint, and I've been 'oarse hever since."
"Well, take a drop, Peter," said Kicking Billy, a one-eyed and one-legged, and rascally looking fellow, who sat with his crutches between his knees, toasting his shin at the fire, and he handed a bottle to Slap-Up Peter, who took it without saying a word, and lifting it to his mouth, took a deep, deep draught without winking.
"Look at that fellow that they call Kicking Billy—the one-legged fellow, I mean," said the detective to me. "He's a returned burglar, that fellow, and has served fourteen years. This place is full of thieves. They are nearly all thieves, and this is a thieves feast," he whispered in my ear.
"My name is Peter Wilson, and I've been in the show business for sixteen years, come Christmas, man and boy. I'm thirty-eight years of age now, and they called me Slap-Up Peter when I fust began jumpin', as a hacrobat in the penny gaffs. Cos wy, I had a way of turnin' myself over a chair and coming back-handed on a somerset that used to take well, but now so many does it that the haudience don't mind it a bit. I jumped for four years, and wos counted pretty good in my line until I dislocated my wrist a doin' of the Pyramids of Hegypt, and then I vos laid hup and couldn't jump for six months and hover; so I thought I'd leave the bus'ness and happear in another character. I got married to—"
"More fool you," said Kicking Billy, sententiously, taking a drink.
"Well, hit didn't cost you nothing, no more than it did for the government to support you in Botany Bay for fourteen years. So you needn't hinterrupt me again."
"Go hon, Peter, and never mind him, its only 'is chaff."
"Well, as I wos saying," continued Slap-Up Peter, "I got married, and maybe it was rayther foolish, for when we were spliced, Judy and I—she wos an Irish gal and a good worker—we went into our cash account and found that we had only one pun six shillings and height pence, not a blessed brown more. I said to Judy—she wor a good gal—
"Judy, we can't keep 'ause on twenty-six shillings capital, that's shure. That's all our fortune in silver and gold, and it won't last long. So wot will we do?"
"'Well, Peter,' said she, 'I didn't marry you for the dirty money; I married you cos' you were sich a good jumper and hacrobat, and I'll stick to you now when you can't jump any more;' for you see, Billy, my wrist was two years afore it got well."
"'Let us pad the hoof together,' said Judy, 'and we'll do the best we can. Let us two work the southern counties and we'll get long French or Hitalyan names, and we'll pick up a shillin here and there.' Cos you see," said Peter, "Judy had been born and bred in Shoreditch, and she knew all the wandering play-actors and showmen, and she wor hup to all their affs. So I next came out as 'Signor Hokenfokos, the fiery salamander of Naples, and my wife, the Baroness Padila, who had to leave her country on account of the wiolent love vich the king's son would persist in making hup to her, and she had to leave all her property, to the amount of six millions, behind her.' This was a good lay and we made from three to eight shillings a day down in Devonshire and Cornwall, wherever we could get a crowd together. I used to swaller hot iron bars, pokers, and red hot coals, and my wife used to play the hurdy-gurdy while I was swallerin' the hot coals. I improved at this werry much in two years, and then, after I had vorked the hot coals out, Judy said to me one day:
"'Peter, why don't you try and swaller snakes and swords? They are better than coals, and not so dangerous.'"
SNAKE SWALLOWING.
"'Yes, but I don't know how,' I said, 'and I don't like snakes at all, they are so precious slimy.' You see sir, even then I didn' know what it was to get used to a thing. Well, I commenced to swallow knives at first, and I had to oil them—that's the trick you see—with sweet oil as good as I could findat eighteen pence a pint, and I had to rub this on with a piece of shammy cloth. This oil lets the knife down easily, and when I wos well drilled there wos no danger at all—only I had to be sober. My swallow was hawful bad with the hirritation for two months, but I got over that; for when I felt my throat sore I took sugar and lemon juice, and gorgled my throat and that took the soreness away."
"Tell us about the snakes, Peter," said Purty Bill. "That's a good story, sir," to the author.
snake
SNAKE SWALLOWING STORY.
"Ah! that was the most unlikely thing I hever took to. It went aginst my stomach hawful to swaller the snakes at first, and I don't believe I'd ever have done it if it hadn't been for Judy, who said to me, when I kicked agin it,—
"'Wot difference does it make, Peter, whether you swallow red hot coals or snakes? The snakes has their stings all taken out, and its nothing more than swallowin' a sausage or pork saveloy.'"
"Well, I went at it with a very bad 'art, and my old woman used to play 'Boney's March Across the Halps,' and the 'Death of Nelson,' whenever I swallowed a snake. You see I generally took a snake about fourteen or fifteen inches, or maybe a foot and a half long. The sting is out, you know, and I takes the head and puts the snake in, and if he doesn't go down why I pinches his tail, and then he rolls down the throat. It made me sea-sick at first, and the people in Sussex thought I was the devil out and out, and a good many hexamined my feet, which were in tights, to see if I had cloven feet. A goodish lot of people thinks that the snake goes entirely down the throat, but it stands to reason that the snake is more frightened than the man, and he does not go down, and hif he did he would be glad to come up, I can tell you."
"Don't you put somethink in your throat," said a boy of fourteen, who was known among the confraternity as 'Teddy the Kinchin;' "I mean, to make the snake sick if he'd go too far."
SLAP-UP-PETER'S SONG.
"No, that's no use at all; you see he doesn't go hall the way down. He is afraid, is the snake, and if you cough he'll come up and draw himself up and coil in a bunch in your mouth. But the duffers who pay their money think that the snake is in your stomach. It stands to reason that he'd get sick. It makes a man retch, and the first snake I swallowed I threw up and had awful vomits, but the next one I rather relished it, and it did me a sight o' good, like an oyster does after ye 'ave been drinkin at night and take's tuppence worth of natives in the morning. Well, when I began snake-swallowing it was rather new, and I had it all my own way for a long time, but finally, lots of men began to swallow snakes, and coal swallowing was not as good as it used to be; so I took to ballad singing, Judy and I. By this time we had sixty pounds saved, and we were doing well, but I made the acquaintance of a lot of Doncaster men, who knew I had the money, and before I could say 'Jack Robinson,' the money was all gone. Judy was in her confinement then, and she took on so bad about it that she died in child-bed, and the kid as well, andI've been on the tramp ever since, and now I do an odd turn at anything that turns up, but mostly I sing ballads, and make sometimes a shilling a day, and sometimes eightpence and ninepence a day. Times have changed for me. Worse luck."
Here the snake-swallower's story ended.
"Slap-Up Peter, will you give us a song? and I'll give you a drink, me oul wiper," said the crippled Kicking Billy to the snake-swallower.
"Well, Billy, I don't mind if I do," said Slap-Up Peter, draining the tin skillet to the last greasy drop.
The thieves, loafers, and women gathered around the fire in a half circle, and Purty Bill heaped logs very liberally, while Slap-Up Peter chanted in a hoarse voice the song, an extract of which I give below, as near as I remember it with my recollections of the scene, the choking smoke, the blazing fire, and the band of outcasts and outlaws in the den in Whitechapel:
'Twas down in Whitechapel that once I used to dwell,And of all the coves that knocked about, I was the greatest swell,My highlows were the cheese, with breeches to the knees,Oh, my toggery was quite correct—my coat was Irish frieze,My togs from Bond street came, it's a nobby slap-up street,In a fashionable locality—the swells the girls there meet;Nicol's my man for shirts, with his I cut a shine,His shop's in far famed Regent street, he's a pal-o'-mine.Rum too-rul-um, Happy-go-Bill,Inyuns and greens who'll buy,Rum too-rul-um, Happy-go-Bill,Inyuns and greens who'll buy.
"That's a fine melojous voice of yours," said Purty Bill to the singer.
"He's used to it," said one of the women.
Here's Spuds at Thrums a pound, they're prime 'uns as I've found,Oh, I've Reds and Dukes and Flukes and Blues, I sells in going my round.My greens are superfine, full blown and hearty are mine,Oh, come make a deal with me, my dear; don't wait, you'll find 'em prime.My inyuns now are new, you'll find what I says is true,In fact, the Queen, since these she's seen has cartloads just a few;My carrots are long and red, you'll find they're well bred,My vegetables are the cheese, bunch for you—penny-a-head.Rum too-rul-um, &c.
"Now give us the last werse with all the 'armony," said Teddy the Kinchin, in a piping voice.
"I vill, vith moosh plesh-yar, as the Frenchman said," returned Slap-Up Peter.
Jerry, my moke's a bird, of him perhaps you've heard,He knows his way about, he does, to match him's quite absurd;Just see him cock his eye when grub time's getting nigh,He likes his feed, he does indeed, he lives on cabbage-pie.Now any girl that's kind, and a husband wants to find,I'm ready made and so's my trade, that's if I'm to her mind;So down to Whitechapel we'll trudge again to dwell,And of all the coves that knock about I'll be the greatest swell.Rum too-rul-um, &c.
"That's wot I call a topper of a song. It's so werry sentimental that it makes a gal peep. The lines are werry touchin'," said a young gal of sixteen or seventeen years of age, who was not badly dressed nor bad-looking, and who went by the name of "Bilking Bet." She was a favorite, and several of them called upon her to sing. She had just the same mock modesty, this young woman with the brassy face, as if she had been a fashionable lady at the West End, with a jointure and a coach and six.
"Wot's that young gal's name, Bill," said the detective to the boss of the thieves.
He did not seem inclined to tell at first, but said sullenly, "you don't want her do you? No? Well then that's 'Bilking Bet,' she used to be a 'coster gal but now she's on the cross."
"Oho!" said Serjeant Moss, "that's the gal as was hup before Mr. Knox at Marlboro street the other morning for snatching a lady's purse in a push."
"Yes," said Purty Bill, "but there was no proof aginst the gal. She was brought out has hinnocent as the new-born baby. She wor."