Complete Works of R S Surtees

by R S Surtees

  Having ascertained the line of study that gentleman had pursued, in due course, old Stobbs and his son started for London, and after a week’s sight-seeing, during which they each had their pockets picked half a dozen times while staring into shop windows, they found themselves one fine morning at the chambers of the great Mr. Twister, in Lincoln’s Inn Square.

  Mr. Twister was one of those legal nuisances called conveyancers, whom it is to be hoped some contrivance will be found to extinguish, and he could find a loop-hole for an unwilling purchaser to creep out at in the very best of titles. Having plenty to do himself, he took as many pupils as ever he could get, to help each other to do nothing. Each of these paid him a hundred guineas a year, in return for which they had the run of a dingey, carpetless room, the use of some repulsive-looking desks, and liberty to copy twenty volumes of manuscript precedents, that the great Mr. Twister had copied himself when a pupil with great Mr. somebody else.

  The chapel clock was striking nine as father and son entered the dismal precincts of Lincoln’s Inn, and before they got to the uncouth outer door that shuts in the chambers set, the great conveyancer had handed his old mackintosh to his bustling clerk, and was pulling a little brown wig straight, preparatory to setting to for the day. The newly-lit fire shed a scanty ray over the cheerless, comfortless apartment, which was fitted up with a large library-table piled with red-taped dusty papers, the representatives most likely of many thousand acres of land, and a rag of a carpet under it, three or four faded morocco chairs, and a large glass book-case, with a twenty year old almanack flopping in front.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” said the parchment-faced old man, as the clerk ushered the fresh fly into the spider’s web. “Hope to make your better acquaintance,” bowing to each.

  Old Stobbs would have sat down and told Twister all hopes and fears, but the latter, though a voluminous conveyancer, was a concise conversationalist, and soon cut short the dialogue by looking at his watch and producing a little red volume indorsed CASH BOOK, he politely inquired what Christian name he should enter, and then observing that his clerk would receive the fee, and show Mr. Charles what to do, he civilly bowed them into the outer room.

  Contrasting Twister’s brevity with his country solicitor’s loquacity, old Stobbs told over his hundred guineas to Mr. Bowker, the aforesaid clerk; and just as he was leaving Lincoln’s Inn, his mind received consolation for the otherwise unpromising investment, by seeing the Lord Chancellor arrive in his coach, and enter his court, preceded by the mace and other glittering insignia of office. “Who knows,” thought old Stobbs to himself, “but Charles may some day occupy that throne;” and an indistinct vision flitted across the old man’s mind, of stuffing the woolsack with the produce of his own sheep.

  Shortly after, with an aching heart and fervent prayers for his son’s happiness, the old gentleman returned to Yorkshire; and Charles, having removed his portmanteau from the Piazza to a first-floor lodging in Hadlow Street, Burton Crescent, made his second appearance at the chambers of Mr. Twister.

  “Oh, it’s you!” exclaimed Mr. Bowker, answering the gentle rat-tat-tat at the outer door, “come in, Sir, come in — no occasion to knock! — No ceremony! — Paid your footing you know — One of us.”

  Mr. Bowker, or Bill Bowker, as he was generally called, was a stout, square-built, ruddy-complexioned, yellow-haired, bustling, middle-aged man, with a great taste for flash clothes and jewellery. On the present occasion, he sported a smart nut-brown coat, with a velvet collar; a sky-blue satin stock, secured by numerous pins and brooches; a double-breasted red tartan waistcoat, well laid back; with brownish drab stockingnette pantaloons, and Hessian boots. A great bunch of Mosaic seals dangled from a massive chain of the same material; and a cut steel guard, one passing over his waistcoat, secured a pair of mother-of-pearl-cased eye-glasses, though Bill was not in the least short-sighted.

  “You’re early,” said Bowker, as Charles deposited a dripping umbrella in the stand. “You don’t look like a sap either,” added he, eyeing Charles in a free and easy sort of way, for Bill was a real impudent fellow.

  “What is the right hour?” inquired Charles, with a schoolboy sort of air.

  “Right hour?” exclaimed Bill, “any time you like — saps come at opening, others at noon, the honourable not till afternoon. There are two chaps copying precedents now, that the laundress left here at ten last night — (tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, went a little hand bell). There’s the old file himself,” observed Bill, bundling off, adding, as he went, “be back to you directly.”

  “Confound these covenants for quiet enjoyment!” muttered he, returning and opening a pigeon-holed cupboard, labelled like the drawers against a chemist’s shop wall with all sorts of titles; “I get no quiet enjoyment for them, I know. One, two, three — there — three and one left,” returning a few sheets of manuscript to their hole, “free from incumbrances.” “Wish I was,” thought Bill— “and for further assurance — one, two, three,” counted Bill, “now let’s see if he’ll have the further assurance to ask for any more to-day.”

  “Well now, what can I do for you?” inquired he, returning from the delivery of his “common forms.” There’s Squelchback’s settlement, that most pupils copy — five hundred pages! Great precedent! produced ten issues, an arbitration, and a Chancery suit.

  “But I think I’ve something in my pee-jacket that will suit you better,” observed Bill, taking up a great coarse large-buttoned pilot jacket, and producing a paper from the pocket. “There,” said he, opening it out, “there’s ‘Bell’s Life in London;’ you’ll see a letter from me signed ‘Ajax.’ Bring it back when you’ve done, and don’t let the Honourable catch it or he’ll burn it.” Saying which, Bill presented our pupil with the paper, and opening the door of an adjoining apartment, ushered Charles into a room on the right, in which sat two youths in very seedy, out at elbow coats, copying away out of manuscript books.

  “Mr. Stobbs, gentleman!” exclaimed Bill with an air of importance, “Mr. Frost, Mr. Stobbs; Mr. Stobbs, Mr. Frost; Mr. Jones, Mr. Stobbs; Mr. Stobbs, Mr. Jones.”

  Mr. Frost and Mr. Jones half rose from their chairs, and greeted Mr. Stobbs much in the manner of debtors receiving a chum into their already over-crowded apartment. Frost and Jones were both working men; with their ways to make in the world, they had paid their hundred guineas for a high-sounding name, and betaken themselves to the mechanical drudgery of precedent copying, with an industry worthy of a better direction.

  Stobbs’s early appearance at chambers inspired hopes that he was going to be a working man, but the sight of “Bell’s Life” demolished the idea, and the conversation died out as the pupils gradually resumed their weary occupations.

  “The Life” was uncommonly lively that morning; there had been a great fight at No Man’s Land, between Big-headed Bob and the Pet of the Fancy, which appeared in the glowing language in which poor Vincent Dowling, as good a man as ever lived, used to clothe his pugilistic accounts. How Big-head was caught, and his nob put in chancery, how he sent the Pet’s teeth down his trap in return, how both were floored, and picked up by their seconds with their claret corks out.

  Then there was a host of correspondence; complaints against stewards; accounts of races; hints to judges; and Ajax’s letter, in which he assumed the toga of his master, and dating from Lincoln’s Inn, gave some very queer law respecting landlord and tenant. The challenges too were numerous. Ugly Borrock of Bristol would eat boiled mutton and turnips with any man in England; Tom Jumper had a terrier he would match against any dog of his weight for ten sovereigns, to be heard of at the Jew’s Harp, City Road; Joe Scamp could be backed to whistle; Tom King to run on all fours; and the Lord knows what else.

  The advertisements, too, were peculiar. In addition to the usual inquiry after hounds, and offers of horses, there were a suit of Daniel Lambert’s clothes for sale, a preserved boa constrictor serpent, notice of vocalisation and frontal-frapidigitation, and the meeting of the jud
ge and jury society at the Coal-hole.

  Charles kept reading and wondering, amid occasional interruptions from the arrival and introduction of pupils. They were mostly gentlemenly men, somewhat choked into idleness by the prolixity of Squelchback’s settlement. Indeed, their chief claims to the title of reading men consisted in the perusal of the newspapers, of which old Twister furnished the “Times,” and they clubbed together for the “Chronicle.” Bowker’s “Life” was well-known, and what with it and a pair of cord trousers Charles had on, they made up their minds that he was a “sporting gent.”

  Between twelve and one o’clock, all the gentlemen, except the honourable, had arrived, and the old question of “fire” or “no fire” was broached. This had been an open question in the chambers ever since old Twister commenced taking double the number of pupils the room would accommodate, and as it furnished great scope for eloquence and idleness, the debate frequently lasted a couple of hours, during which time the Saps used to sneak out to dinner, generally getting back in time to vote. This day they stayed, expecting the new pupil would “hold forth,” but he was so absorbed with “Bell’s Life,” that when called upon by the chair, he gave a silent vote; and just as Bill Bowker answered the bell, and let off his old joke about issuing a fiery facias, “the honourable” arrived, and the room was full.

  The Hon. Henry Lollington, the ninth son of an Earl, was quite a used-up west-end man. He was a tall, drawling, dancing sort of a man, in great request at balls, and had a perfect abhorrence of any thing coarse or common-place. He was a mortal enemy to Mr. Bowker, whom he kept at arm’s length, instead of treating as an equal as some of the pupils did.

  “Mr. Bowkar,” drawled he, as he encountered that worthy in the passage, “bring me a piece of papar, and let me give you orders about my lettars — I’m going to Bath.”

  “Yes, my Lud!” responded Bill, in a loud tone, to let Charles hear what a great man they had among them.

  “Dem you, Mr. Bowkar, I’m not a Lord,” responded the Hon. Mr. Lollington.

  “Beg pardon, my Lud!” replied the imperturbable Bill, bustling out.

  xsCharles at this moment had got into the notices to correspondents, and was chuckling at their humorous originality: —

  “‘Suppose one man to wilfully fire at another with intention of taking away his life, but accidentally misses his aim and kills another, will the laws of our country find this man guilty of wilful murder?’ asked a correspondent.

  “‘No,’ replied the Editor, ‘but a jury will, and he will be comfortably hanged.

  “‘A snake is not a ‘barber,’ although he ‘curls.” ‘The querist is not ‘snake-headed,’ was the answer to another.

  “‘We are not aware that a negro boiled, turns white. If Niger will boil one of his children and it turns black, the problem will be solved,’ he observed to another.

  “J. G. — The ‘respectable class of servants’ alluded to, are very properly employed in turning the mangle; we wish, in their leisure hours, they would turn J. G. inside out.

  “The best cure for carbuncles is to rub them with cheese, and sleep in the domicile of mice, who will eat them off in a night.

  “The masculine for ‘flirt’ is cock flirt, if there be such a wretch.

  “Apropos. — Hand-shaking is vulgar in polite society upon merely meeting ladies. Pay your respects to the ladies first, married before single.

  “Magdalen. — A gentleman may jilt as well as a lady.”

  The following American story graced the columns of general information: —

  “The Negro and the Cheese. — The ‘Boston Post’ says, that up at the westend of that city there is a good-natured, fun-making negro, named Parsis, who hovers round the grocery stores in that neighbourhood rather more than is desirable. Like many other gentlemen of colour, he prides himself upon the thickness of his skull, and he is always up for a bet upon his butting powers, and well he may be, for his head is hard enough for a battering-ram. The other day he made a bet in a store that he could butt in the head of a flour-barrel, and he succeeded. He then took up a bet to drive it through a very large cheese, which was to be covered with a crash-cloth to keep his wool clear of cheese-crumbs. The cheese, thus enveloped, was placed in a proper position, and Parsis starting off like a locomotive, buried his head up to his ears in the inviting target. Parsis now began to feel himself irresistible, and talked up ‘purty considerable.’ A plan, however, was soon contrived to take the conceit out of him. There being some grindstones in the store for sale, one of them was privately taken up, and wrapped up in the same manner as the cheese had been, and looked precisely as if it were a second cheese, and Parsis readily took another bet for 9d. that he would butt his head through it as easy as he had sent it through the first. The interest of the spectators in the operation became intense. Everything was carefully adjusted, and upon the word being given, Parsis darted like an arrow at the ambush grind-stone; he struck it fair in the centre, and in the next instant lay sprawling on the floor, upon which he recoiled. For some minutes he lay speechless, and then he raised himself slowly on his knees, and scratching his head, said, with a squirming voice, ‘Bery hard cheese dat, massa! Dey skim de milk too much altogether before dey make him, dat’s a fact.’”

  At length, amid many chuckles, having fairly exhausted its contents, in compliance with Bill Bowker’s request, Charles left the room for the purpose of returning his paper. As he departed, Mr. Lollington eyed him through his glass, and with an air of well-feigned astonishment, exclaimed, as Charles closed the door,

  “Surely, we’ve got the Tipton Slasher among us!”

  “Well,” said Bill Bowker, flourishing his great mosaic seals, as he received the paper from Charles, “that’s something like, is’nt it? And how do you like the Honourable? By the way, I forgot to introduce you! Never mind, soon get acquainted — manner against him — but a good-hearted fellow when you know him. Saw him give a gal half-a-crown once for picking up his glove — noble, wasn’t it? Your fiddle-strings will begin to grumble, I guess, for want of your dinner, and by the way, that reminds me, if you havn’t got yourself suited for lodging, we have an excellent first-floor disengaged, and Mrs. B. and her sister will be happy to do for you. — Smart gal! — Dances at the ‘Cobourg;”’ and thereupon Bill, who had exchanged his fine brown coat for a little grey thing that seemed undetermined whether to be a jacket or a coat, kimbo’d his arms, pointed his toe, and pirouetted in the middle of his office.

  Charles replied, that he had just taken lodgings in Hadlow Street.

  “What, at the feather-maker’s?” inquired Bowker, balancing on one leg.

  “No,” replied Charles; “at Mrs. Hall’s, a widow woman’s, number twenty something.”

  “I know her!” exclaimed Bill, resuming both feet, “left-hand side of the way, going up — D — d bitch she is, too (aside); pawned her last lodger’s linen — Well, perhaps you’ll bear us in mind, in case she don’t suit — Quiet house — no children — private door — sneck key — social party. You’ll find London deuced dull without acquaintance.”

  This last observation came home with uncommon keenness, for Charles had begun to feel the full force of that London loneliness, which damps the spirit of many an ardent genius from the country. At their own market town of Boroughbridge, he met familiar faces at every turn, while, in London, all hurried on, or looked as they would at an indifferent object — a dog or a post. The style of living too disgusted him.

  Instead of the comfortable well-stored table, and cheerful fire, he had been accustomed to at home, he had to stew into hot chop-houses, where they doled out their dinners in portions, and a frowsy waiter kept whisking a duster, to get him away the moment his dinner was done. The dull freedom of manhood did not compensate for the joyousness of boyish restraint.

  Mr. Bowker did not give him much time for reflection— “Should have been glad to have taken you to the Cobourg to-night,” observed he, “but have a particular engagement, and that
reminds me, I must get one of our saps to answer the door when I go, for I must be off before seven. Have to meet a particular friend of mine, a great fox-hunter, to introduce him at the Blue Dragon Yard, where he wants to choose a terrier for the great hunt in Surrey he belongs to. Des say I could take you if you liked?”

  Charles had a taste for terriers, and no taste for his own society, and without ascertaining what Bowker’s offer amounted to, he gladly accepted it, and just as that worthy had fixed for him to meet him at his snuff and cigar warehouse in Eagle Street, Red Lion Square, old Snarle tinkled the bell for his biscuit, and Charles returned to the pupils’ room.

  Having settled, on the motion of Mr. Lollington, that Charles was a snob, he met with little encouragement from his brother pupils. They answered his questions, and were civil, but that was all. There was no approach to sociality, and as a dirty, slip-shod straw-bonneted hag of a laundress scattered some block tin candlesticks with thick-wicked candles about the pupils’ room, Charles repaired to a neighbouring chop-house, to kill time, until he was due at Mr. Bowker’s.

  At the appointed hour, a fan-tailed gas-light revolving between miniature negroes, stopped his progress up the poverty-stricken region of Eagle Street, and looking up— “Bowker and Co’s Wholesale and Retail Snuff Warehouse,” figured in gilt capitals above the shop-front, while a further notification of “The Trade Supplied,” appeared in the window, though the coal-shed, milk shop, pawn-broking, huck-stering appearance of the dirty, narrow, irregularly built street, gave a palpable contradiction to the assertion. Large gilt-lettered barrels were ranged along the walls and floor of the shop, and the lower part of the window was strewed with snuff-boxes, Meerschams, loose cigars, and wooden rolls of tobacco.

  “Come in!” exclaimed a female voice, through the sash-door, drawing a green curtain aside, and showing a fire in the little back parlour — as Charley hesitated about entering, on seeing the shop empty— “Oh, it’s Mr. Stobbs!” continued the voice, and a fine fat tawdry woman in ringlets and a yellow gauze gown with short sleeves, made her appearance. The pleasure of being recognised in London was grateful, and Charley readily accepted the lady’s invitation to enter and sit down.