Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty
fellow, I consider that I have provided for you in life, and rely upon
your doing something to provide for me in return.’
‘I do not understand your meaning, sir.’
‘My meaning, Ned, is obvious--I observe another fly in the cream-jug,
but have the goodness not to take it out as you did the first, for
their walk when their legs are milky, is extremely ungraceful and
disagreeable--my meaning is, that you must do as I did; that you must
marry well and make the most of yourself.’
‘A mere fortune-hunter!’ cried the son, indignantly.
‘What in the devil’s name, Ned, would you be!’ returned the father. ‘All
men are fortune-hunters, are they not? The law, the church, the court,
the camp--see how they are all crowded with fortune-hunters, jostling
each other in the pursuit. The stock-exchange, the pulpit, the
counting-house, the royal drawing-room, the senate,--what but
fortune-hunters are they filled with? A fortune-hunter! Yes. You
ARE one; and you would be nothing else, my dear Ned, if you were
the greatest courtier, lawyer, legislator, prelate, or merchant, in
existence. If you are squeamish and moral, Ned, console yourself with
the reflection that at the very worst your fortune-hunting can make but
one person miserable or unhappy. How many people do you suppose these
other kinds of huntsmen crush in following their sport--hundreds at a
step? Or thousands?’
The young man leant his head upon his hand, and made no answer.
‘I am quite charmed,’ said the father rising, and walking slowly to and
fro--stopping now and then to glance at himself in the mirror, or survey
a picture through his glass, with the air of a connoisseur, ‘that we
have had this conversation, Ned, unpromising as it was. It establishes
a confidence between us which is quite delightful, and was certainly
necessary, though how you can ever have mistaken our positions and
designs, I confess I cannot understand. I conceived, until I found your
fancy for this girl, that all these points were tacitly agreed upon
between us.’
‘I knew you were embarrassed, sir,’ returned the son, raising his head
for a moment, and then falling into his former attitude, ‘but I had no
idea we were the beggared wretches you describe. How could I suppose it,
bred as I have been; witnessing the life you have always led; and the
appearance you have always made?’
‘My dear child,’ said the father--‘for you really talk so like a child
that I must call you one--you were bred upon a careful principle;
the very manner of your education, I assure you, maintained my credit
surprisingly. As to the life I lead, I must lead it, Ned. I must have
these little refinements about me. I have always been used to them, and
I cannot exist without them. They must surround me, you observe, and
therefore they are here. With regard to our circumstances, Ned, you
may set your mind at rest upon that score. They are desperate. Your own
appearance is by no means despicable, and our joint pocket-money alone
devours our income. That’s the truth.’
‘Why have I never known this before? Why have you encouraged me, sir, to
an expenditure and mode of life to which we have no right or title?’
‘My good fellow,’ returned his father more compassionately than ever,
‘if you made no appearance, how could you possibly succeed in the
pursuit for which I destined you? As to our mode of life, every man
has a right to live in the best way he can; and to make himself as
comfortable as he can, or he is an unnatural scoundrel. Our debts, I
grant, are very great, and therefore it the more behoves you, as a young
man of principle and honour, to pay them off as speedily as possible.’
‘The villain’s part,’ muttered Edward, ‘that I have unconsciously
played! I to win the heart of Emma Haredale! I would, for her sake, I
had died first!’
‘I am glad you see, Ned,’ returned his father, ‘how perfectly
self-evident it is, that nothing can be done in that quarter. But apart
from this, and the necessity of your speedily bestowing yourself on
another (as you know you could to-morrow, if you chose), I wish you’d
look upon it pleasantly. In a religious point of view alone, how
could you ever think of uniting yourself to a Catholic, unless she was
amazingly rich? You ought to be so very Protestant, coming of such a
Protestant family as you do. Let us be moral, Ned, or we are nothing.
Even if one could set that objection aside, which is impossible, we come
to another which is quite conclusive. The very idea of marrying a girl
whose father was killed, like meat! Good God, Ned, how disagreeable!
Consider the impossibility of having any respect for your father-in-law
under such unpleasant circumstances--think of his having been “viewed”
by jurors, and “sat upon” by coroners, and of his very doubtful position
in the family ever afterwards. It seems to me such an indelicate sort
of thing that I really think the girl ought to have been put to death by
the state to prevent its happening. But I tease you perhaps. You would
rather be alone? My dear Ned, most willingly. God bless you. I shall
be going out presently, but we shall meet to-night, or if not to-night,
certainly to-morrow. Take care of yourself in the mean time, for both
our sakes. You are a person of great consequence to me, Ned--of vast
consequence indeed. God bless you!’
With these words, the father, who had been arranging his cravat in
the glass, while he uttered them in a disconnected careless manner,
withdrew, humming a tune as he went. The son, who had appeared so lost
in thought as not to hear or understand them, remained quite still and
silent. After the lapse of half an hour or so, the elder Chester, gaily
dressed, went out. The younger still sat with his head resting on his
hands, in what appeared to be a kind of stupor.
Chapter 16
A series of pictures representing the streets of London in the night,
even at the comparatively recent date of this tale, would present to the
eye something so very different in character from the reality which is
witnessed in these times, that it would be difficult for the beholder to
recognise his most familiar walks in the altered aspect of little more
than half a century ago.
They were, one and all, from the broadest and best to the narrowest and
least frequented, very dark. The oil and cotton lamps, though regularly
trimmed twice or thrice in the long winter nights, burnt feebly at the
best; and at a late hour, when they were unassisted by the lamps and
candles in the shops, cast but a narrow track of doubtful light upon the
footway, leaving the projecting doors and house-fronts in the deepest
gloom. Many of the courts and lanes were left in total darkness; those
of the meaner sort, where one glimmering light twinkled for a score of
houses, being favoured in no slight degree. Even in these places, the
inhabitants had often good reason for extinguishing their lamp as soon
as it was lighted; and the watch being utterly inefficient and powerless
to prevent them, they did so at their pleasure. Thus, in the lightest
thoroughfares, there was at every turn some obscure and dangerous spot
whither a thief might fly or shelter, and few would care to follow; and
the city being belted round by fields, green lanes, waste grounds, and
lonely roads, dividing it at that time from the suburbs that have joined
it since, escape, even where the pursuit was hot, was rendered easy.
It is no wonder that with these favouring circumstances in full and
constant operation, street robberies, often accompanied by cruel wounds,
and not unfrequently by loss of life, should have been of nightly
occurrence in the very heart of London, or that quiet folks should have
had great dread of traversing its streets after the shops were closed.
It was not unusual for those who wended home alone at midnight, to
keep the middle of the road, the better to guard against surprise from
lurking footpads; few would venture to repair at a late hour to Kentish
Town or Hampstead, or even to Kensington or Chelsea, unarmed and
unattended; while he who had been loudest and most valiant at the
supper-table or the tavern, and had but a mile or so to go, was glad to
fee a link-boy to escort him home.
There were many other characteristics--not quite so disagreeable--about
the thoroughfares of London then, with which they had been long
familiar. Some of the shops, especially those to the eastward of Temple
Bar, still adhered to the old practice of hanging out a sign; and the
creaking and swinging of these boards in their iron frames on windy
nights, formed a strange and mournful concert for the ears of those
who lay awake in bed or hurried through the streets. Long stands of
hackney-chairs and groups of chairmen, compared with whom the coachmen
of our day are gentle and polite, obstructed the way and filled the
air with clamour; night-cellars, indicated by a little stream of light
crossing the pavement, and stretching out half-way into the road, and
by the stifled roar of voices from below, yawned for the reception and
entertainment of the most abandoned of both sexes; under every shed and
bulk small groups of link-boys gamed away the earnings of the day; or
one more weary than the rest, gave way to sleep, and let the fragment of
his torch fall hissing on the puddled ground.
Then there was the watch with staff and lantern crying the hour, and
the kind of weather; and those who woke up at his voice and turned them
round in bed, were glad to hear it rained, or snowed, or blew, or froze,
for very comfort’s sake. The solitary passenger was startled by the
chairmen’s cry of ‘By your leave there!’ as two came trotting past
him with their empty vehicle--carried backwards to show its being
disengaged--and hurried to the nearest stand. Many a private chair,
too, inclosing some fine lady, monstrously hooped and furbelowed, and
preceded by running-footmen bearing flambeaux--for which extinguishers
are yet suspended before the doors of a few houses of the better
sort--made the way gay and light as it danced along, and darker and more
dismal when it had passed. It was not unusual for these running gentry,
who carried it with a very high hand, to quarrel in the servants’ hall
while waiting for their masters and mistresses; and, falling to blows
either there or in the street without, to strew the place of skirmish
with hair-powder, fragments of bag-wigs, and scattered nosegays. Gaming,
the vice which ran so high among all classes (the fashion being of
course set by the upper), was generally the cause of these disputes;
for cards and dice were as openly used, and worked as much mischief, and
yielded as much excitement below stairs, as above. While incidents like
these, arising out of drums and masquerades and parties at quadrille,
were passing at the west end of the town, heavy stagecoaches and scarce
heavier waggons were lumbering slowly towards the city, the coachmen,
guard, and passengers, armed to the teeth, and the coach--a day or so
perhaps behind its time, but that was nothing--despoiled by highwaymen;
who made no scruple to attack, alone and single-handed, a whole caravan
of goods and men, and sometimes shot a passenger or two, and were
sometimes shot themselves, as the case might be. On the morrow, rumours
of this new act of daring on the road yielded matter for a few hours’
conversation through the town, and a Public Progress of some fine
gentleman (half-drunk) to Tyburn, dressed in the newest fashion, and
damning the ordinary with unspeakable gallantry and grace, furnished to
the populace, at once a pleasant excitement and a wholesome and profound
example.
Among all the dangerous characters who, in such a state of society,
prowled and skulked in the metropolis at night, there was one man from