by R S Surtees
Many a time Mr. Jorrocks and him have passed for lords as they rolled arm in arm through the Zoological or Kensington Gardens, haw, haw, hawing, at each other’s jokes, looking about at the girls and criticising their feet and ankles. This latter, however, was in short-petticoat times.
Mr. Bowker was an extraordinary fellow; over head and ears in debt and difficulties, he was as light and gay as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Not a new fashion came out but Bill immediately had it. If a flight of extraordinary neckcloths alighted in the mercers’ windows, the next time you met Bill he was sure to have one on. All the rumbustical apologies for greatcoats that have inundated the town of late years had their turns on Bill’s back. You seldom saw him twice in the same waistcoat. Variable as D’Orsay, and as gay in his colours. Moreover, there was a certain easy nonchalance about Bill, far different to the anxious eyeings and watchings of the generality of “would-be” swells. He would salute a man immeasurably his superior, with perfect familiarity; offer his richly-ornamented gilt snuffbox, or poke him in the ribs with a smile and a wink, that plainly said “You and I have a secret between us.” His looks were in his favour — rosy and healthy, as though he had never known care or confinement; with wavy yellow locks, slightly streaked with grey, giving him the license of age over youngsters; while his jolly corpulency and plummy legs, filling his bright Hessian boots, had the appearance of belonging to some swell fox-hunter up at Long’s or Limmer’s, or some of the tiger traps, for what they call a spree — rouge et noir, feathers, hot port, Clarence Gardens, and the Quadrant.
In the language of the sect, Bill had some breeding in him — by a lord, out of a lady’s-maid — and blood will tell in men as well as horses. Hence, whatever his difficulties, or whatever his situation, Bill always retained the easy composure of a well-bred man. His address was good, his manner easy, and his language pure. If fortune had neglected to supply him with the essentials, at all events it had not deprived him of the advantages of birth. He was about the gamest cock with the fewest feathers that ever flew.
Hundreds will exclaim on reading this sketch, “Lord, I know that man as well as can be! Have seen him in the Park a thousand times;” and perhaps no one has caused more “Who’s that?” than our friend Mr. Bowker. Indeed, he was a sort of person that you couldn’t overlook, any more than you could a peacock in a poultry yard, for there was a strut and a dazzle about him that almost provoked criticism.
Of course Bowker was well known to his own set, but what’s a man’s own set in the great ocean of London society? Moreover, even in his own set he was an object of admiration, for he was friendly and jocose, and we don’t believe there was a man among them but would rather have enhanced Bill’s consequence than attempted to lower him by proclaiming him the clerk to a conveyancer, and keeper of a miserable tobacco shop in the miserable purlieus of Red Lion Square. Our readers, we dare say, will be anxious to know how Bill managed matters. We will tell them. He lived by his wits.
When old Snarle was in full practice, Bill’s fees were considerable, and in those days he was nothing but the “thorough varmint and the real swell.” As soon as Chambers closed, he repaired, full dress, to a theatre, attended a “free and easy,” or some convivial society. Here his jolly good humour ensured him a hearty reception, and the landlords of the houses were too happy to hand him anything he called for in return for the amusement he afforded to his customers. He could sing, or he could talk, or he could dance, or he could conjure, lie through thick and thin — in short, do everything that’s wanted at this sort of place. He was in with the players too, and had the entrée of most of the minor theatres about London. At these he might be seen in the front row of the stage boxes, dressed out in imitation of some of the fat swells in the “omnibus,” his elbow resting on a huge bamboo, with a large “Dollond” in his primrose-kidded hand. There he was the critic. Not the noisy, boisterous, self-proclaiming claquer, but the gentle irresistible leader, whose soft plaudits brought forth the thunder of the pit and gallery. He had some taste for acting, and we have read some neatish critiques attributed to him in the Morning Herald and Advertiser. This sort of society brought him, of course, a good deal among actresses, and we have heard that several of his “How d’ye do?” great acquaintance arose out of little delicate arrangements that he had the felicity of bringing about. This, however, we don’t vouch for; we will therefore thank our readers not to “quote us” on this point. —
But to the “baccy” shop.
As fees fell off, Bill set up a snuff and cigar shop, and he who had amused so many, sought for the favours of the fumigating public. But Bill had a great mind. He did not stoop to the humble-mindedness of appearing as a little tobacconist, but leapt all at once into the station of a merchant, and advertised his miserable domicile as BOWKER & Co.’s WHOLESALE SNUFF AND TOBACCO WAREHOUSE. — THE TRADE SUPPLIED. Whether this latter announcement had the effect of keeping off customers — people perhaps supposing they could not get less than a waggon-load of baccy at a time — or whether Eagle Street is too little of a thoroughfare, or not sufficiently inviting in its appearance, or whether there were too many Bowker & Co.’s in the trade already, we know not; but certain it is, no wholesale customer ever cast up, and most of the retail ones were what Bill touted himself or were brought by his friends. The situation, we take it, must have been the thing; not that we mean to say anything unhandsome of Eagle Street, but we cannot account for the bad success of Bowker & Co.’s establishment upon any other grounds than that the neighbouring shops were not attractive, and a good deal of a tobacconist’s trade consists of what is called “chance custom.” Doors with half-a-dozen bell-pulls in each post, denoting half-a-dozen families in the house, coal and cabbage sheds united, those mysterious, police-inviting bazaars, denominated “marine stores,” with milk shops, corn chandlers, furniture warehouses, and pawnbrokers commingled, do not add much to the appearance of any street, and certainly Eagle Street has nothing to lose in the way of attraction. —
Yes, the situation must have been the thing, for if any one will take the trouble of walking through the thoroughfares, and casting their eyes into the brilliantly-illumined “divans,” they will see men, without a tithe part of Mr, Bowker’s ready wit and humour, handing the cigars over the counter as fast as they can fumble them, with women immeasurably Mrs. Bowker’s inferior, riveting men with their charms, and sending them away by the score every night with the full conviction that they are desperately in love with them all, and only wanting to get rid of the other chaps to tell them so. That, we take it, is the grand secret of a baccy shop. Keep up the delusion, and you keep up your customers, but then you must have a bumper at starting. There’s the advantage of a thoroughfare. Fool No. 2 sees Fool I smoking and making eyes at a woman, and in he goes to see what she’s like. She’s equally affable with him, and while both are striving to do the agreeable in comes No. 3 on a like errand — 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 — legion, in fact, quickly follow, and they all go on eyeing and fumigating, as jealous of each other as ever they can be, until the smoke obscures their vision, and they leave, each with the determination of seeing what they can do singlehanded next night. The shop is then established.
Mrs. Bowker, when Bill set up, was a fine, big, dashing woman, with as good a foot and ankle as any in London. She was then on the stage at the Coburg, but marrying Bill for the purpose of getting off it, he found to his sorrow that she was likely to be a dead weight, instead of an assistance in housekeeping and theatrical society, which it was then his ambition to enter. Still there were her looks — a clear Italian complexion, large richly-fringed dark eyes, cork-screwy ringlets, swan-like neck and ample bust; and what with gaslight, and the tinsel of a theatrical wardrobe, Bill hoped to turn his better half to some account in the way of decoy duck at a cigar shop. Mrs. Bowker, however, took badly to it. She was above it in fact, and instead of sitting to display her charms in the gaslight, she was generally sipping brandy-and-water, and reading greasy novels on a sofa
in the back shop. Miss Susan Slummers, her sister, also an actress and a fine handsome girl too, was shortly afterwards added to the family circle; and certainly, if wit and beauty can command success in the baccy line, Mr. Bowker had every reason to expect it. Still, as we said before, we grieve to say it did not come; and debt, and duns, and difficulties soon beset Bill’s path of life in most alarming profusion.
Our old friend, Mr. Jorrocks, as kind-hearted and liberal a man as ever stuffed big calves into top-boots, long stood his friend — so long, indeed, that the worthy old gentleman had ceased entering Bill’s obligations in his books — and many people trusted Bill on the strength of the intimacy, who would never have let him into their debt upon the faith of any of his own palaverments. Not that he was a bad hand in that line, but they had had too much of it. In short, Bill was better known than trusted.
Thus then matters stood at the time of Bill’s enlistment in the League. Old Snarle was dead. The dwindling fees were done. To begin brushing coats and cleaning boots for a new man, in hopes of seeing him rise in the profession, was out of the question to a man with Bill’s ideas, and at his time of life. The cigar shop did nothing. Mrs. Bowker did a good deal in the brandy-and-water way. House rent was due — their first-floor lodger had left them. Gas rent was in arrear — water ditto — and poors’ rate collecting. Income-tax, we needn’t say, he was exempt from.
Mr. Jorrocks had retired into the country, and though he had never turned a deaf ear to any of Bill’s representations or petitions, still our worthy tobacconist could not help feeling that without the aid of the emollient blarney wherewith to pave the way in jolly half-seas-over intimacy, the ominous “no effects” might some day be returned to his epistolatory requisitions, and then what was to become of him?
— The law and Mr. Commissioner Fonblanque only knew!
Having now introduced Mr. Bowker, we will let his correspondence with Mr. Jorrocks speak for his situation and arrangements.
“EAGLE STREET, RED LION SQUARE.
“HONOURED SIR, — You’ll be glad to hear that your old friend Bill has lit on his legs at last. High time he did, for I really think I was never so nearly stumpt in my life. Old Snarle, as you’ll have heard, has cut his stick. Poor old bitch! Yet let it not be as our great master says —
“‘ — the evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft buried with their bones.’
“Snarle had his faults, and so have we all, but for ‘parties in a hurry’ there never was a quicker hand at a settlement. May his new settlement be to his liking!
“T’other night, as I was sitting in my back shop uncommonly spooney, reflecting on the uncertainty of life, and the certainty of the tax-gatherer calling in the morning, a mysterious big black-whiskered, beetle-browed stranger entered the shop, and asked to have a word with me in private. As soon as we had coalesced behind the scenes, ‘Mr. Bowker,’ said he, taking off his broad-brimmed hat and gloves, laying them on the table, and sitting down on the sofa, as if he meant to be comfortable, “‘You don’t know me?’
“‘ Why, you have the advantage of me,’ said I.
“‘ Well,’ said he, ‘I come to advantage you.’
“‘Glad of it,’ said I, adding aside, ‘wonder if it’s Joseph Ady?’
“‘ You are to be depended upon?’ said he, after a pause.
“‘ Close as wax,’ said I.
“‘ Well then,’ said he, ‘you have heard of the great National Anti-Corn-Law League?’
“‘I have seen their advertising machine,’ said I, ‘but I never thought more of it than I should of Tosspot’s crockery cart, or Warren’s matchless blacking van.’
“‘I could let you in for a good thing,’ observed the stranger musingly.
“‘Haste me to know it, that I with wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love, may — jump at it,’ exclaimed I.
“‘I find thee’ apt,’ rejoined the stranger, rising and extending his right arm, saying —
“‘And duller should’st thon be than the fat weed
That roots itself in ease on Lethe’s wharf,
Would’st thou not stir in this.’
“‘Oh, my prophetic soul! my uncle!’ exclaimed I, interrupting him; ‘ if it wasn’t for that black pow and those d —— — d heavy brows, I’d swear you were my old friend Jack Rafferty, late of the Adelphi Theatre.’
“‘You have me!’ said he, pulling off the wig and appurts with one hand and grasping my hand with the other. Sure enough, there stood old bald-headed Jack, with his little ferrety eyes peering at me with the great black brows still above them. Having taken these off and put them carefully in his pocket-book, he again shook hands, and asking for a squeeze of the old comforter, we stirred the fire, put on the kettle, and prepared for hot stopping.
“‘Bill,’ said he, as soon as he had got the brew to his liking, and one of my best Woodvilles in his mouth, ‘one good turn deserves another.’
“‘Undoubtedly,’ said I, ‘as the tailor observed when he turned the old trousers a second time.’
“‘Ah!’ said he, ‘you’re just the same old cove that ever you were. How are you off for blunt?’
“‘D — d badly,’ said I; ‘should be glad to join you in raising a mortgage on our joint industry.’
“‘Well, never mind,’ said he, chuckling, ‘you did me a good turn when that wicked bailiff, Levy Solomons, came to take me for the butter bill, and I haven’t forgotten it. By Jove! I fancy I hear him blobbing into the rain-water tub at this moment. I’ve seen queer days since then,’ added he thoughtfully; ‘been all through the Disunited States, Canada, Columbia, and I don’t know where, shipwrecked twice, gaoled thrice, tarred and feathered besides. Hard life a player’s, forced to appear merry when we’re fit to cry; however, that’s all done — I’ve turned over a new leaf — I’m in the respectable line now, and hearing that your occupation in Lincoln’s Inn’s gone, why I’ve just stepped in, as Paul Pry would say, to see if I could do anything for you in the respectable line too. You see,’ said he, ‘the way for talented men like us to prosper is to take the folly of the day and work it. I saw this in the nigger times. Lord, if the compensation money had been taken direct from the pockets of the people, instead o passing through the filtering bag of Parliament, it would have been a good workable subject to this day. John Bull is a great jackass — a thick-headed fool. Unless you empty his breeches pocket before his face, and say, “Now, John, I take this shilling for the window tax, this for the dog tax, this for gig tax, and this for the nigger tax,” you can’t make the great muddle-headed beast believe he pays anything for the nigger tax, and so by making it a parliamentary grant, opposition was lost, and with it as fine a field for enterprise as ever was seen. However, it’s no use crying for spilt milk. Go ahead’s my motto, as they say in the Disunited States. But to business.
“‘The new light is the Corn Laws. There’s more sense in this than there was in the nigger question, because if you can persuade a man he’ll get a fourpenny loaf for twopence, you show him something to benefit himself, which you couldn’t do in the case of the great Bull niggers, that he had never seen or cared to set eyes on. Still John shows his stubbornness, and hangs back as if he thought the Repealers were the only people that would get the four-penny loaf for twopence. It is to rouse the animal, and convince him that for once there is such a thing as pure disinterestedness in the world, that the League is bestirring itself; and now, my old friend Bill,’ continued he, ‘for the service you did me, by popping the bailiff over head in the tub, I’ve come to offer to recommend you, as a man of very great talent, eloquence, experience, and I don’t know what; in fact, to supply the vacuum there must necessarily be in the heads of men who are fools enough to subscribe their money to force a benefit on people that they don’t want.
“‘The League is about to enlighten the country — north, south, east, and west — from the Orkneys to Portsmouth, from Solway Frith to Flamborough Head — all a
re to be visited by men of mettle like ourselves, and if we don’t astonish the natives, why my name is not Jack Rafferty.’
“‘Faith,’ said I, ‘Jack, I’m not nasty particular, and never was about making money, especially at the present time, for to tell you the truth, I’m as near in Short’s Gardens as ever I was in all my life; but the devil and all is, I know nothing about either corn or the corn laws, and hardly know wheat when I see it.’
“‘That’s nothing,’ said Jack; ‘you’ve a quick apprehension and a ready tongue — lots of jaw — and that’s what the League want. You’ll have plenty of time to study your part, and rehearsals over and over again. Zounds, man, it’s the easiest thing in life! Instead of appearing in one character on Monday, another on Tuesday, a third on Wednesday, a fourth on Friday, and a fifth on Saturday, and having to study and cram and rehearse for them all, here you have nothing to do but repeat the same old story over and over again, which comes as pat off the lips as a child’s church catechism. “Infamous aristocracy”—” iniquitous”—” ruinous starvation”—” landlord-supporting tax”— “blasted Quarterly” — and all that sort of thing. Whatever is wrong, lay it to the corn tax. If a man can’t pay his Christmas bills, attribute it to the bread tax; say the landlords have grabbed a third of his income. Tell the shipowners their interest is ruined by the monopolists — nay, you may even try it on with the farmers, and say you verily believe they would be benefited by the abolition of the corn laws; that you really think our climate and system so superior, that they would drive foreign grain out of the market, just as our fat Durhams and Devoushires beat Sir Robert’s Tariff fat cattle out of the shambles. In fact, you may say almost anything you like; and should any one oppose you, you will always be ready with a cut and dried answer, which, with an easy delivery, will put your cleverest unprepared arguer quite in the background.’