Chapter XVIII: Part 18

But Thomas Carlyle wouldn’t come to this place, at his age and at this time in the morning; and, between you and me, I think it high time that we too should depart. In truth, the place is growing anything but orderly. Champagne and incessant exercise on the “light fantastic toe” have done their work. Dances of a wild and incoherent character, reminding one of the “_Chaloupe_” the “_Tulipe Orageuse_,” and the much-by-municipal-authorities-abhorred “_Cancan_” are attempted. The masters of the ceremonies seem laudably desirous of clearing the _salle_. Let us procure our great-coats, and flee from Babylon before the masquers grew unroarious.

A stream of masquerading humanity, male and female, begins to pour through the corridors and so out beneath the portico. It is time. Cabs and broughams—the “swells” came in the broughams—sly, wicked little inventions; policemen hoarsely shout and linkmen dart about.

* * * * *

I thought so. I knew how it would end. A row, of course. That big _Postillon de Longjumeau_ has borne it with admirable temper for hours; but the conduct of the Charles the Second Cavalier has been beyond human forbearance. She—the cavalier is a she—has incited the _Pierrot_ (an Englishman, for a wonder, and hopelessly gone in champagne) to knock the postilion down. He wept piteously at first, but, gathering courage, and not liking, perhaps, to be humiliated in the eyes of a _débardeur_ in claret-coloured velvet, he kicked up wildly at the aggressor with his boots. Then the cavalier scratched his face; then the claret-coloured _débardeur_ fainted; then Mr. Edward Clyfaker, of Charles Street, Drury Lane, thief, cut in cleverly from between the wheels of a carriage, and picked Lord Holloway’s pocket of Miss Claypainter’s cambric handkerchief; then A 22 drew his truncheon and hit an inoffensive fox-hunter a violent blow on the head; then four medical students called out “Fire!” and an inebriated costermonger, who had not been to the masquerade at all, but was quietly reeling home, challenged Lord Claude Miffin to single combat; then Ned Raggabones and Robin Barelegs, street Arabs, threw “cart-wheels” into the midst of the throng; then the police came down in great force, and, after knocking a great many people about who were not in the slightest degree implicated in the disturbance, at last pitched upon the right parties, and bore the pugnacious _Pierrot_ and the disorderly Cavalier off to the station-house. It is but due to the managers of the masquerade to state, that no such scandalous _melées_ take place within the precincts of the theatre itself. The masters of the ceremonies and the police on duty take care of that: but such little accidents will happen, outside, after the best-regulated masquerades.

To the station-house, then, to the abode of captivity and the hall of justice. The complaining postilion and his friends, accompanied by a motley procession of tag-rag and bob-tail, press triumphantly forward. Shall we follow also?

In a commodious gas-lit box, surrounded by books and papers, and with a mighty folio of loose leaves open before him—a book of Fate, in truth—sits a Rhadamanthine man, buttoned up in a great-coat often; for be it blazing July or frigid December, it is always cold at three o’clock in the morning. Not a very pleasant duty his: sitting through the long night before that folio, smoking prohibited, warm alcoholic liquids only, I should suppose, to be surreptitiously indulged in: sitting only diversified by an occasional sally into the night air, to visit the policemen on their various beats, and learn what wicked deeds are doing this night and morning—a deputy taking charge of the folio meanwhile. Duty perhaps as onerous as that of the Speaker of the House of Commons: but, ah! not half so wearisome. For the Rhadamanthine man in the great-coat has betimes to listen to tales of awful murder, of desperate burglaries, of harrowing suicides, of poverty and misery that make your soul to shudder and your heart to grow sick; and sometimes to more jocund narratives—harum-scarum escapades, drunken freaks, impudent tricks, ingenious swindles, absurd jealousy, quarrels, and the like. But they all—be the case murder, or be it mouse-trap stealing—are entered on that vast loose folio, which is the charge-sheet, in fact; Rhadamanthine man in great-coat being but the inspector of police on night duty, sitting here at his grim task for some fifty or sixty shillings a week. Harder task than sub-editing a newspaper even, I am of opinion.

He has had a busy time since nine last evening. One by one the “charges” were brought in, and hour after hour, and set before him in that little iron-railed dock. Some were felonious charges: scowling, beetle-browed, under-hung charges, who had been there many times before, and were likely to come there many times again. A multiplicity of Irish charges, too: beggars, brawlers, pavement-obstructors—all terribly voluble and abusive of tongue; many with squalid babies in their arms. One or two such charges are lying now, contentedly drunken heaps of rags, in the women’s cells. Plenty of juvenile charges, mere children, God help them! swept in and swept out; sometimes shot into cells—their boxes of fusees, or jagged broom-stumps, taken from them. A wife-beating charge; ruffianly carver, who has been beating his wife with the leg of a pianoforte. The wretched woman, all blood and tears, is very reluctant, even now, to give evidence, and entreats the inspector to “let Bill go; he didn’t mean no harm.” But he is locked up, departing to durance with the comforting assurance to his wife that he will, “do for her,” at the first convenient opportunity. I daresay he will, when his six months’ hard labour are over. There was a swell-mob charge, too, a dandy _de première force_, who swaggered, and twisted his eye-glass, and sucked his diamond ring while in the dock, and declared he knew nothing of the gentleman’s watch, he was “shaw.” He broke down, however, while being searched, and on the discovery of the watch—for he had missed the confederate who usually “covered” him—subsided into bad language, and the expression of a hope that he might not be tried by “old Bramwell,” meaning the learned judge of that name. Short work has been made with some of these charges, while the disposal of others has occupied a considerable time. As the night grew older, the drunk and disorderly and drunk and incapable charges began to drop in; but one by one they have been disposed of in a calm, business-like manner, and the “charges” are either released, or, if sufficient cause were apparent for their detention, are sleeping off their liquor, or chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancies, in the adjacent cells.

“I thought the _ball masky_ would bring us some work,” the inspector remarks to the sergeant, as the _Pierrot_ is carried, and the cavalier is dragged, and the postilion and his friend stalk indignantly—the whole accompanied by a posse of police, into the station: “Now, then, F 29, what is it?”

F, or X, or Z, or whatever may be his distinguishing letter or numeral, gives a succinct narrative of the row, so far as he is acquainted with its phases, very much in the style of the _Act d’Accusation_ of a French _procureur imperial_, which is always as damaging as it conveniently can be made against the person in custody. The postilion follows with _his_ statement, the cavalier breaks in with an indignant denial of all he has said, violently insists upon charging the postilion with murder and assault, and ultimately expresses a desire to know what he, the inspector, thinks of himself, a wish to tear F 29’s eyes out, and ardent ambition to “polish off the whole lot.” “Don’t all speak at once,” remonstrates the inspector, but they _will_ all speak at once, and the _Pierrot_, waking up from an intoxicated trance, asseverates, in broken accents, that he is a “p-p-p-p-pro-f-f-fessional man, and highly res-pe-pe-p-pectable,” and then sinks quiescent over the front of the dock, in an attitude very much resembling that sometimes assumed by the celebrated Mr. Punch.

“There, take him away,” says the municipal functionary, pointing with sternly contemptuous finger to the _Pierrot_. “And take _her_ away,” he adds, designating the cavalier. “And you, sir,” he continues, to the postilion, “sign your name and address there, and take care to be at the court at ten in the morning. And I should advise you to go straight home, or you’ll be here again shortly, with somebody to take care of you. I wonder whether we shall have any more,” he says wearily, to his sergeant, as the captives are removed, and the room is cleared.

* * * * *

It does not so much matter, for the third hour is gone and past, and as we emerge into the street, the clock of St. Paul’s strikes FOUR. There! the twenty-four hours are accomplished, and we have progressed, however lamely and imperfectly, “Twice Round the Clock.” Good-bye, dear readers—pleasant companions of my labours. Goodbye, troops of shadowy friends and shadowy enemies, whose handwriting—in praise, in reproach, in condolence, in sympathy, in jest, and in earnest—is visible enough to me on many pages laying open before me at this moment, but whose faces I shall never see on this side the grave. Your smiles and frowns henceforward belong to the past, for my humble task is achieved, and the Clock is Stopped.

THE END.

FOOTNOTES

[1] A post-prandial paper, called the “Evening Mail,” rarely seen in the metropolis, but extensively circulated in the provinces, and especially in the colonies, and in the United States, is published as a species of vesper thunderer at the “Times” office.

[2] “The Chimes.”

[3] This old man’s name was “Corney,” at least I never knew him by any other appellation. He had been a collegian for years; and being a Briton who “stood upon his rights,” and was for “freedom of opinion,” gave the governor an immense amount of trouble. I think one of the happiest days of Captain Hudson’s life must have been the one on which “Corney” (who, it turned out, ought never to have been imprisoned at all) got his discharge. He took lodgings immediately, I have heard, at a neighbouring coal shed, and brought an action (_in formâ pauperis_) against the governor for false imprisonment, and wrongful detention of property, about once a fortnight.

[4] Free-grown sugar in the first two: slave-grown sugar in boxes.

[5] See page 30.

[6] I am afraid that this legend must be regarded as what the “Times” newspaper called, in reference to old Peter Thellusson’s delicate sense of honour, in providing for a possible restitution of property left in his charge by the ancient noblesse of France—a “modern myth.” An analogous story, relative to the appearance of a _real_ demon on the stage, in addition to those forming part of the _dramatis personæ_, is related in connection with Edward Alleyn, the actor; and the supernatural visitation, it is said, caused him to quit the stage as a profession, and found Dulwich College.

[7] The ladies appear in the gallery before dinner, quit it after grace has been said, and are regaled in ante-chambers with ices, coffee, and champagne. They return when the speech-making, wine-bibbing, and song-singing commence.

[8] This absurd remnant of a candle-snuffing age, and which is about as consistent with dramatic proprieties as the performance of the character of Macbeth by Garrick in the costume of a Captain in the Guards, was abolished—so far as his admirable Shakspearian revivals were concerned—by Mr. Charles Kean.

[9] Who married again, and extinguished herself. So did Maria Louisa, so did Mrs. Shelley. They _will_ marry again, those unconscionable feminines.

[10] This pretty little theatre has succeeded, thanks to the genius and perseverance of Miss Swanborough, aided by an admirable company.

[11] There is a curious story anent this “Green Dragon” tavern, a dim record, embosomed in the musty records of the “State Trials.” In a note to one of those chronicles of crimes and suffering, it is hinted at that the daughter of the executioner of Charles the First was a barmaid at the Green Dragon in the reign of Queen Anne.

[12] “He made the giants first, and then he killed them.”—_Fielding’s “Tom Thumb.”_