Authors: The Quincunx
There was a great deal of coming and going throughout the day with hackney-coaches arriving and vans bringing goods of the most luxurious quality from shops in Oxford-street and Bond-street.
Once I heard Nan recounting an adventure in one of these grand places: “Didn’t the shop-man stare when he seen my purse full of gold!” she exclaimed. “I’ll wager he thought the paper was screens.”
And my bewilderment was as great as the shop-man’s.
All this time I was studying my new companions. The man-like woman was Carrotty Poll who was good to me in a rough way, so long as she was sober. Two others — who were apparently sisters and were called “Smithfield” and “Billingsgate” — I learned to avoid, drunk or sober. Though I was at first repelled by the sinister appearance of a man who wore a pale brass nose in the middle of his face and was called “Silvernose”, I later found him to be one of the kindest of the gang. (I was told that he had suffered his injury in the Wars, though this was said with so much private significance that I doubted it even then.) I never cared much for Bob, a youngish man with a weak, rather brutal face.
Will always hit me when he noticed me, but Sam and Jack were usually friendly.
I was often puzzled by the fact that many of them had a variety of soubriquets 396
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or “by-names” in addition to or instead of their usual ones. So Jack was sometimes
“Quicksilver Jack” or just “Quicksilver” or even “Quick”. Barney was often called merely “Black”.
I tried to obey Bissett’s often-repeated injunction to keep my mouth closed and my eyes and ears open. Above all, I watched Barney. lie smiled constantly except when angry (as he often was) or when his gaze lighted upon Jack. His expression suggested always that he was about to jeer, and he was continually inviting the others to laugh at the victim of the moment — whether absent or present.
As that first day advanced into evening more and more was drunk. Gambling broke out and soon led to quarrelling and, later on, there was dancing when someone brought out a fiddle. I was petted by the women when they remembered me and ignored by the men, and, in general, I was treated well — if encouraging me to eat far too many sweetmeats and getting me drunk on Marsala can be so called. These jollifications continued all night and into the dawn, though I fell asleep and woke up a number of times. finally I awoke to find everyone else asleep and a grey morning peering through the boarded windows. I made my breakfast on the remains of a meat-pie and some fragments of seed-cake.
I believe that another day passed as before, though, to anticipate a little, I found that the distinction between night and day was so entirely disregarded in that house that it was often difficult to be sure of the day of the week or even the time of day. To the best of my belief, then, it was the third day after my arrival that I was talking to Sam in the dining-room when Barney came up to us.
He cuffed me under the chin and said: “All right, young feller?”
“Barney,” I asked, “Sally calls you Uncle. Does that mean you are really of the same family?”
“That’s right. In fact, we’re all one big fambly. Sam here’s my little brother and Nan’s my cousing and Will’s my nevy and so on.”
Sam grinned at me and nodded.
Not sure whether to believe this I went on: “And why do you live here? In this lonely place?”
“Why this is our new house what we’ve bought and paid for and we’re waiting for it to be decorated,” Sam said. “It’s wonderful not to have no neighbours nearby, for one doesn’t want to bother ’em with one’s noise.”
That sounded more plausible. “And what do you all do?”
The two grinned at each other.
“Why, do I dare trust you?” Barney asked with a smile.
I nodded and he went on: “Well, you might say we perform a public benefaction. You see, there’s a deal of paper credit circulating on the money-market. Now, do you know what that is?” I shook my head. “Well, say Sam here needs money, so he borrers it and signs a bill and gets cash for promising to repay the full amount at six months. Now that bill is a kind of money and it’s bought and sold and its vally depends on whether the file what buys it thinks Sam will be able to pay it. There’s many people as makes it their business to know these things and if Sam comes into a fortin of an old aunt, why then the vally of his bill goes up.”
“But if he doesn’t pay it when it falls due?” I asked, remembering my mother’s experience.
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397
“Why, then I get someone to take another bill of me,” Sam said, “and use that money to pay the first. And if nobody won’t, why then I try to get a friend to back it.”
“But if you can’t do that,” I asked Sam, “what will become of you?”
“Then arst for me at the fleet or the Marshalsea,” he answered with a laugh.
I remembered my poor old friend, Mr Pentecost.
“But the p’int is,” Barney said, “what happens to that bill when nobody don’t believe no more that Sam can pay it so it’s discounted and discounted until at last it’s nigh on worthless. Now someone buys it for next to nothing and he passes it on to me.”
“Who is he?” I asked.
“Nivver you mind,” Barney said quickly. Then more affably he went on: “Well, what I does is I restore the bill’s credit. This is how I does it. Now say you’re a tradesman and own a big shop selling joolery or carpets or clothes. One day I turns up with my wife in a fine carriage with sarvints and orders jewels and pays for ’em in ready cash. Then a few weeks later I comes back and does the same. Now you’re getting very glad to see me, aren’t you? Then one day I finds myself a little short on cash so I pays with a discounted bill — not a big ’un — and you’re a bit doubtful, but you don’t want to lose my custom by offending me. So you takes it and it’s all right for your banker finds it’s a good ’un.
Then a little arter that I offers you a discounted bill for a lot more and you take it. Now you find its credit ain’t as good as you thought it was. And you don’t nivver see me agin.” He and Sam laughed and he went on: “But have I robbed or cheated you? No, for it’s down to the person what drawed that bill to pay you. It’s them what’s robbed you.”
Though I was relieved to know that Barney and his relatives were not involved in anything that was actually illegal, yet I was disturbed by the dishonourableness of what they were doing.
Still chuckling, Sam went out of the room. Barney stared at me and said: “Now that I’ve been so frank, tell us the rest of your story.”
I managed to give him a great deal of circumstantial detail but to avoid mentioning any names. The part he was most interested in was the most recent, for he seemed anxious to know about my mother’s death. It was hard for me to speak of this. To my surprise, he appeared to be particularly concerned to “know where she was buried and under what name. Eventually I told him that the parish was St. Leonard’s and that she had been buried under the name of “Offland”.
After learning this he seemed satisfied and shortly afterwards he left me.
A day or two later — I have no idea whether it was the day or night — I was dozing on my shake-down when I was awoken by whispering voices in the room below. Whoever was there clearly did not know that my rooms were above that one. Then, to my surprise, I realized that the two speakers were Barney and, of all people, Jack.
“Are you sartin?” I heard Barney say.
“I am. In course I didn’t hardly believe it meself, but, like I say, Sal told me without knowing what it meant. If you don’t believe me, Barney, you arst her yourself.”
“I will.”
Then they moved away and I heard no more. What could it mean for the two rivals to be talking in secret? And what were they discussing? I thought 398
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I learned the answer to this only a few hours later, when, with most of the others, I was in the drawing-room when Barney suddenly burst in with Sam behind him.
Barney was shouting: “Where’s Nan?” She came forward and he cried: “You’ve been prigging, haven’t you?”
“No I never!” she exclaimed.
Barney brought a piece of jewellery from his pocket: “We jist found this in your gear!”
“I ain’t nivver seen it a-fore!” Nan screamed.
“I seen you prig it in Bond-street yesterday,” Sally cried.
“You’re lying! It’s a plant!”
“You know the rule,” Barney said. “No private business.”
So my suspicions about the honesty of my new friends were unfounded: Nan had stolen something and was being expelled for it!
The others murmured their assent.
“She planted it!” Nan cried pointing at Sally.
“I never did!”
“Yes you did and I know why. On account of how Jack likes me.” There were some cries of “That’s right!” and, fortified by this, Nan went on: “You’re jealous so you’ve made this up.”
The majority, however, were not sympathetic and remained silent.
“You’ll have to leave the partnership,” Barney said, and glanced at Sam and then Jack.
These two both nodded gravely.
“You’ll have to go, Nin,” said Jack gently. “We have to be able to trust each other.”
Will, Nan’s usual fancy-man, put up a stout defence of her innocence and threatened to leave with her, but when his bluff was called he withdrew. Nan protested, wept, then turned to shouting abuse and threats, but the opinion of almost all was against her and eventually she conceded defeat and, still protesting her innocence, left the house.
As Christmas came closer I heard many references to the party that was to come off at Henrietta-street on Christmas-eve. It seemed strange to me that they were so excited at the prospect for many of them went out nearly every night in a big group led by Barney, returning only towards dawn. They dressed very carefully for it, so that the women looked like ladies and the men almost like gentlemen. Meanwhile, those who stayed behind amused themselves with a kind of continuous party: drinking, dicing, eating and quarrelling.
By now I was familiar with their way of life and since they were guarding their tongues much less in my presence, I became clearer about how they earned their living, though several mysteries remained. Members of the company came and went at all hours, but very rarely brought others there — and these had to be vouched for and were watched carefully. When they weren’t sleeping they were amusing themselves in the ways I have described. Nobody except Jack and Sally ever read, and they had only two interests: either the fashionable papers and the
Court Guide
(for the “family” took a keen interest in the comings and goings of fashionable Society) or the
Hue-and-Cry
(which is a publication of the police which lists crimes and names the individuals sought by the authorities).
One evening Meg and another of the women came back from making a visit to Peg at Newgate and as we all gathered around them in the drawing-room, HONOUR AMONG GENTLEMEN
399
they described how they had spoken to him through a hatch in the wall of his ward.
They reported that his trial was on the calendar for that Sessions and that he was confident that Pulvertaft would buy off his prosecutor, who was the house-holder at Old Ford whose house he had been caught breaking into. Barney, who was sitting a little apart from the rest of us in conference with a stranger, laughed ironically at this and said:
“Aye, just as he done for me in ’17.”
The man with him, who had one of the most villainous faces I had ever seen and that reminded me of Mr Pentecost’s Punch, laughed and said: “I rec’lleck that, Barney. You got knocked down for a seven, didn’t you? It was Limping Jem what blowed on you, and he got a pony of the Cat’s-meat-man for that.”
The conversation turned to the question of which of the beaks were honourable and could be trusted to keep their word. The stranger, whom the others addressed as Mr Lavender, told a story about an “old feller” who had taken a bribe and then gone back on his undertaking by “marinating” the man concerned, and everyone vied to express their outrage at this conduct.
“How’s the lay you’re on now?” Mr Lavender asked the company conversationally.
Some of them glanced down as if embarrassed but Barney said: “Why, you can speak freely a-fore him.”
There was a discussion of the business that Barney had described to me.
In the course of it I heard an allusion to “slang bills” and I asked indignantly: “But Barney, you told me that you were passing real bills and so you weren’t doing anything dishonest.”
There was general laughter in which Mr Lavender joined as heartily as the others.
Then Barney, who had by now drunk a lot, said: “Why, you are green. Slang bills is even cheaper to buy than real ones.”
I was in confusion now. So, after all, they were criminals!
“But then why was Nan sent away for prigging?” I exclaimed.
“Why, don’t be such a flatt!” Barney cried amid jeers from the others. “That was for prigging on her own account when she could have blowed us all up. We’re a swell-mob, see, and that means we has to pass for swells.”
As I was thinking about the implications of this, Barney’s guest took his leave. At first I was horrified to realize the kind of people I was among. Or rather I believed I was horrified. Certainly I knew I should be. But I could not think of these people and what they were doing as evil. What did it mean to be evil? Certainly, there was something I did not at all like in Barney at times, and in one or two of the others at all times — Will above all. But I could not see that the others were anything worse than it responsible and selfish. I remembered Mr Pentecost’s idea that the law is an arbitrary construct designed to protect the wealthy, and now it seemed to me that he was right. How had I ever been so foolish as to accept Mr Silverlight’s view that there is a higher morality which we must obey whether or not it coincides with the law? On the contrary, each of us chooses to obey or break the law simply on the calculus of self-interest. And if these people chose to take the risk of breaking it with all the dangers they knew so well, that seemed rather fine and brave.
“So that’s all right for Henrietta-street at Christmas,” said Mr Lavender at the door of the drawing-room. “Our fellows’ll keep far away that night.”