Bred up, like a bailiff or a shabby attorney, about the purlieus of the
Inns of Court, Shepherd's Inn is always to be found in the close
neighbourhood of Lincoln's-Inn Fields, and the Temple. Some where behind
the black gables and smutty chimney-stacks of Wych Street, Holywell
Street, Chancery Lane, the quadrangle lies, hidden from the outer world;
and it is approached by curious passages and ambiguous smoky alleys, on
which the sun has forgotten to shine. Slop-sellers, brandy-ball and
hard-bake vendors, purveyors of theatrical prints for youth, dealers in
dingy furniture and bedding suggestive of anything but sleep, line the
narrow walls and dark casements with their wares. The doors are
many-belled: and crowds of dirty children form endless groups about the
steps: or around the shell-fish dealers' trays in these courts; whereof
the damp pavements resound with pattens, and are drabbled with a
never-failing mud. Ballad-singers come and chant here, in deadly guttural
tones, satirical songs against the Whig administration, against the
bishops and dignified clergy, against the German relatives of an august
royal family: Punch sets up his theatre, sure of an audience, and
occasionally of a halfpenny from the swarming occupants of the houses:
women scream after their children for loitering in the gutter, or, worse
still, against the husband who comes reeling from the gin-shop;--there is
a ceaseless din and life in these courts out of which you pass into the
tranquil, old-fashioned quadrangle of Shepherd's Inn. In a mangy little
grass-plat in the centre rises up the statue of Shepherd, defended by
iron railings from the assaults of boys. The hall of the Inn, on which
the founder's arms are painted, occupies one side of the square, the tall
and ancient chambers are carried round other two sides, and over the
central archway, which leads into Oldcastle Street, and so into the great
London thoroughfare.
The Inn may have been occupied by lawyers once: but the laity have long
since been admitted into its precincts, and I do not know that any of
the principal legal firms have their chambers here. The offices of the
Polwheedle and Tredyddlum Copper Mines occupy one set of the
ground-floor chambers; the Registry of Patent Inventions and Union of
Genius and Capital Company, another;--the only gentleman whose name
figures here, and in the "Law List," is Mr. Campion, who wears
mustachios, and who comes in his cab twice or thrice in a week; and whose
West End offices are in Curzon Street, Mayfair, where Mrs. Campion
entertains the nobility and gentry to whom her husband lends money.
There, and on his glazed cards, he is Mr. Somerset Campion; here he is
Campion and Co.; and the same tuft which ornaments his chin, sprouts
from the under lip of the rest of the firm. It is splendid to see his
cab-horse harness blazing with heraldic bearings, as the vehicle stops at
the door leading to his chambers: The horse flings froth off his nostrils
as he chafes and tosses under the shining bit. The reins and the breeches
of the groom are glittering white,--the lustre of that equipage makes a
sunshine in that shady place.
Our old friend, Captain Costigan, has examined Campion's cab and horse
many an afternoon, as he trailed about the court in his carpet slippers
and dressing-gown, with his old hat cocked over his eye. He suns himself
there after his breakfast when the day is suitable; and goes and pays a
visit to the porter's lodge, where he pats the heads of the children, and
talks to Mrs. Bolton about the thayatres and me daughther Leedy Mirabel.
Mrs. Bolton was herself in the profession once, and danced at the Wells
in early days as the thirteenth of Mr. Serle's forty pupils.
Costigan lives in the third floor at No. 4, in the rooms which were Mr.
Podmore's, and whose name is still on the door--(somebody else's name, by
the way, is on almost all the doors in Shepherd's Inn). When Charley
Podmore (the pleasing tenor singer, T.R.D.L., and at the Back Kitchen
Concert Rooms) married, and went to live at Lambeth, he ceded his
chambers to Mr. Bows and Captain Costigan, who occupy them in common now,
and you may often hear the tones of Mr. Bows's piano of fine days when
the windows are open, acid when he is practising for amusement, or for
the instruction of a theatrical pupil, of whom he has one or two. Fanny
Bolton is one, the porteress's daughter, who has heard tell of her
mother's theatrical glories, which she longs to emulate. She has a good
voice and a pretty face and figure for the stage; and she prepares the
rooms and makes the beds and breakfasts for Messrs. Costigan and Bows, in
return for which the latter instructs her in music and singing. But for
his unfortunate propensity to liquor (and in that excess she supposes
that all men of fashion indulge), she thinks the Captain the finest
gentleman in the world, and believes in all the versions of all his
stories, and she is very fond of Mr. Bows too, and very grateful to him,
and this shy queer old gentleman has a fatherly fondness for her too, for
in truth his heart is full of kindness, and he is never easy unless he
loves somebody.
Costigan has had the carriages of visitors of distinction before his
humble door in Shepherd's Inn: and to hear him talk of a morning (for his
evening song is of a much more melancholy nature) you would fancy that
Sir Charles and Lady Mirabel were in the constant habit of calling at his
chambers, and bringing with them the select nobility to visit the "old
man, the honest old half-pay Captain, poor old Jack Costigan," as Cos
calls himself.
The truth is, that Lady Mirabel has left her husband's card (which has
been stuck in the little looking-glass over the mantelpiece of the
sitting-room at No. 4, for these many months past), and has come in
person to see her father, but not of late days. A kind person, disposed
to discharge her duties gravely, upon her marriage with Sir Charles she
settled a little pension upon her father, who occasionally was admitted
to the table of his daughter and son-in-law. At first poor Cos's
behaviour "in the hoight of poloit societee," as he denominated Lady
Mirabel's drawing-room table, was harmless, if it was absurd. As he
clothed his person in his best attire, so he selected the longest and
richest words in his vocabulary to deck his conversation, and adopted a
solemnity of demeanour which struck with astonishment all those persons
in whose company he happened to be.--"Was your Leedyship in the Pork to
dee?" he would demand of his daughter. "I looked for your equipage in
veen:--the poor old man was not gratified by the soight of his
daughther's choriot. Sir Chorlus, I saw your neem at the Levee; many's
the Levee at the Castle at Dublin that poor old Jack Costigan has
attended in his time. Did the Juke look pretty well? Bedad, I'll call at
Apsley House and lave me cyard upon 'um. I thank ye, James, a little
dthrop more champeane." Indeed, he was magnificent in his courtesy to
all, and addressed his observations not only to the master and the
guests, but to the domestics who waited at the table, and who had some
difficulty in maintaining their professional gravity while they waited on
Captain Costigan.
On the first two or three visits to his son-in-law, Costigan maintained a
strict sobriety, content to make up for his lost time when he got to the
Back Kitchen, where he bragged about his son-in-law's dart and burgundee,
until his own utterance began to fail him, over his sixth tumbler of
whisky-punch. But with familiarity his caution vanished, and poor Cos
lamentably disgraced himself at Sir Charles Mirabel's table, by premature
inebriation. A carriage was called for him: the hospitable door was shut
upon him. Often and sadly did he speak to his friends at the Kitchen of
his resemblance to King Lear in the plee--of his having a thankless
choild, bedad--of his being a pore worn-out lonely old man, dthriven to
dthrinking by ingratitude, and seeking to dthrown his sorrows in punch.
It is painful to be obliged to record the weaknesses of fathers, but it
must be furthermore told of Costigan, that when his credit was exhausted
and his money gone, he would not unfrequently beg money from his
daughter, and made statements to her not altogether consistent with
strict truth. On one day a bailiff was about to lead him to prison, he
wrote, "unless the--to you insignificant--sum of three pound five can be
forthcoming to liberate a poor man's grey hairs from gaol." And the
good-natured Lady Mirabel despatched the money necessary for her father's
liberation, with a caution to him to be more economical for the future.
On a second occasion the Captain met with a frightful accident, and broke
a plate-glass window in the Strand, for which the proprietor of the shop
held him liable. The money was forthcoming on this time too, to repair
her papa's disaster, and was carried down by Lady Mirabel's servant to
the slipshod messenger and aide-de-camp of the Captain, who brought the
letter announcing his mishap. If the servant had followed the Captain's
aide-de-camp who carried the remittance, he would have seen that
gentleman, a person of Costigan's country too (for have we not said, that
however poor an Irish gentleman is, he always has a poorer Irish
gentleman to run on his errands and transact his pecuniary affairs?),
call a cab from the nearest stand, and rattle down to the Roscius Head,
Harlequin Yard, Drury Lane, where the Captain was indeed in pawn, and for
several glasses containing rum-and-water, or other spirituous
refreshment, of which he and his staff had partaken. On a third
melancholy occasion he wrote that he was attacked by illness, and wanted
money to pay the physician whom he was compelled to call in; and this
time Lady Mirabel, alarmed about her father's safety, and perhaps
reproaching herself that she had of late lost sight of her father, called
for her carriage and drove to Shepherd's Inn, at the gate of which she
alighted, whence she found the way to her father's chambers, "No. 4,
third floor, name of Podmore over the door," the porteress said, with
many curtsies, pointing towards the door of the house, into which the
affectionate daughter entered and mounted the dingy stair. Alas! the
door, surmounted by the name of Podmore, was opened to her by poor Cos in
his shirt-sleeves, and prepared with the gridiron to receive the
mutton-chops which Mrs. Bolton had gone to purchase.
Also, it was not pleasant for Sir Charles Mirabel to have letters
constantly addressed to him at Brookes's, with the information that
Captain Costigan was in the hall, waiting for an answer; or when he went
to play his rubber at the Travellers', to be obliged to shoot out of his
brougham and run up the steps rapidly, lest his father-in-law should
seize upon him; and to think that while he read his paper or played his
whist, the Captain was walking on the opposite side of Pall Mall, with
that dreadful cocked hat, and the eye beneath it fixed steadily upon the
windows of the club. Sir Charles was a weak man; he was old, and had many
infirmities: he cried about his father-in-law to his wife, whom he adored
with senile infatuation: he said he must go abroad,--he must go and live
in the country--he should die or have another fit if he saw that man
again--he knew he should. And it was only by paying a second visit to
Captain Costigan, and representing to him, that if he plagued Sir Charles
by letters or addressed him in the street, or made any further
applications for loans, his allowance would be withdrawn altogether, that
Lady Mirabel was enabled to keep her papa in order, and to restore
tranquillity to her husband. And on occasion of this visit, she sternly
rebuked Bows for not keeping a better watch over the Captain; desired
that he should not be allowed to drink in that shameful way; and that the
people at the horrid taverns which he frequented should be told, upon no
account to give him credit. "Papa's conduct is bringing me to the grave,"
she said (though she looked perfectly healthy), "and you, as an old man,
Mr. Bows, and one that pretended to have a regard for us, ought to be
ashamed of abetting him in it." Those were the thanks which honest Bows
got for his friendship and his life's devotion. And I do not suppose that
the old philosopher was much worse off than many other men, or had
greater reason to grumble.
On the second floor of the next house to Bows's, in Shepherd's Inn, at
No. 3, live two other acquaintances of ours: Colonel Altamont, agent to
the Nawaub of Lucknow, and Captain Chevalier Edward Strong. No name at
all is over their door. The Captain does not choose to let all the world
know where he lives and his cards bear the address of a Jermyn Street
hotel; and as for the Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the Indian potentate,
he is not an envoy accredited to the Courts of St. James's or Leadenhall
Street but is here on a confidential mission quite independent of the
East India Company or the Board of Control. "In fact," Strong says,
"Colonel Altamont's object being financial, and to effectuate a sale of
some of the principal diamonds and rubies of the Lucknow crown, his wish
is not to report himself at the India House or in Cannon Row, but rather
to negotiate with private capitalists--with whom he has had important
transactions both in this country and on the Continent."
We have said that these anonymous chambers of Strong's had been very
comfortably furnished since the arrival of Sir Francis Clavering in
London, and the Chevalier might boast with reason to the friends who
visited him, that few retired Captains were more snugly quartered than
he, in his crib in Shepherd's Inn. There were three rooms below: the
office where Strong transacted his business--whatever that might be--and
where still remained the desk and railings of the departed officials who
had preceded him, and the Chevalier's own bedroom and sitting-room; and a
private stair led out of the office to two upper apartments, the one
occupied by Colonel Altamont, and the other serving as the kitchen of the
establishment, and the bedroom of Mr. Grady, the attendant. These rooms
were on a level with the apartments of our friends Bows and Costigan next
door at No. 4; and by reaching over the communicating leads, Grady could
command the mignonette-box which bloomed in Bows's window.
From Grady's kitchen casement often came odours still more fragrant. The
three old soldiers who formed the garrison of No. 3 were all skilled in
the culinary art. Grady was great at an Irish stew; the Colonel was
famous for pillaus and curries; and as for Strong he could cook anything.
He made French dishes and Spanish dishes, stews, fricassees, and
omelettes, to perfection; nor was there any man in England more
hospitable than he when his purse was full or his credit was good. At
those happy periods, he could give a friend, as he said, a good dinner, a
good glass of wine, and a good song afterwards; and poor Cos often heard
with envy the roar of Strong's choruses, and the musical clinking of the
glasses, as he sate in his own room, so far removed and yet so near to
those festivities. It was not expedient to invite Mr. Costigan always:
his practice of inebriation was lamentable; and he bored Strong's guests
with his stories when sober, and with his maudlin tears when drunk.
A strange and motley set they were, these friends of the Chevalier; and
though Major Pendennis would not much have relished their company, Arthur
and Warrington liked it not a little, and Pen thought it as amusing as
the society of the finest gentlemen in the finest houses which he had the
honour to frequent. There was a history about every man of the set: they
seemed all to have had their tides of luck and bad fortune. Most of them
had wonderful schemes and speculations in their pockets, and plenty for
making rapid and extraordinary fortunes. Jack Holt had been in Don
Carlos's army, when Ned Strong had fought on the other side; and was now
organising a little scheme for smuggling tobacco into London, which must
bring thirty thousand a year to any man who would advance fifteen
hundred, just to bribe the last officer of the Excise who held out, and
had wind of the scheme. Tom Diver, who had been in the Mexican navy, knew
of a specie-ship which had been sunk in the first year of the war, with
three hundred and eighty thousand dollars on board, and a hundred and
eighty thousand pounds in bars and doubloons. "Give me eighteen hundred
pounds," Tom said, "and I'm off tomorrow. I take out four men, and a
diving-bell with me; and I return in ten months to take my seat in
Parliament, by Jove! and to buy back my family estate." Keightley, the
manager of the Tredyddlum and Polwheedle Copper Mines (which were as yet
under water), besides singing as good a second as any professional man,
and besides the Tredyddlum Office, had a Smyrna Sponge Company, and a
little quicksilver operation in view, which would set him straight with
the world yet. Filby had been everything a corporal of dragoons, a
field-preacher, and missionary-agent for converting the Irish; an actor
at a Greenwich fair-booth, in front of which his father's attorney found
him when the old gentleman died and left him that famous property, from
which he got no rents now, and of which nobody exactly knew the
situation. Added to these was Sir Francis Clavering, Bart., who liked
their society, though he did not much add to its amusements by his
convivial powers. But he was made much of by the company now, on account
of his wealth and position in the world. He told his little story and
sang his little song or two with great affability; and he had had his own
history, too, before his accession to good fortune; and had seen the
inside of more prisons than one, and written his name on many a stamped
paper.
When Altamont first returned from Paris, and after he had communicated
with Sir Francis Clavering from the hotel at which he had taken up his
quarters (and which he had reached in a very denuded state, considering
the wealth of diamonds and rubies with which this honest man was
entrusted), Strong was sent to his patron by the Baronet; paid his little
bill at the inn, and invited him to come and sleep for a night or two at
the chambers, where he subsequently took up his residence. To negotiate
with this man was very well, but to have such a person settled in his
rooms, and to be constantly burthened with such society, did not suit the
Chevalier's taste much; and he grumbled not a little to his principal.
"I wish you would put this bear into somebody else's cage," he said to
Clavering. "The fellow's no gentleman. I don't like walking with him. He
dresses himself like a nigger on a holiday. I took him to the play the
other night; and, by Jove, sir, he abused the actor who was doing the
part of villain in the play, and swore at him so, that the people in the
boxes wanted to turn him out. The after-piece was the 'Brigand,' where
Wallack comes in wounded, you know, and dies. When he died, Altamont
began to cry like a child, and said it was a d----d shame, and cried and
swore so, that there was another row, and everybody laughing. Then I had
to take him away, because he wanted to take his coat off to one fellow
who laughed at him; and bellowed to him to stand up like a man.--Who is
he? Where the deuce does he come from? You had best tell me the whole
story. Frank; you must one day. You and he have robbed a church together,
that's my belief. You had better get it off your mind at once, Clavering,
and tell me what this Altamont is, and what hold he has over you."
"Hang him! I wish he was dead!" was the Baronet's only reply; and his
countenance became so gloomy, that Strong did not think fit to question
his patron any further at that time; but resolved, if need were, to try
and discover for himself what was the secret tie between Altamont and
Clavering.