Will chuckled at my recital, and I went on to tell of my chums' dinner taken at a 'slap-bang', or cheap eating-house, where they ate cow-heel or hot alamode, and offered familiarities to blowsy women waiters, who returned them in kind; I also described their disorderly supper. 'You'll live a very different life when you room with me, Charley,' he said. 'You'll eat and drink of the best, and never have a chum in the world to plague you.'
Will now rented a fine set of rooms in Bartholomew Close, belonging to a fellow by the name of Ayres, and fitted them up in approved style, covering the walls with anatomical charts and models, and laying out two or three hundred guineas on professional works. This was a great convenience to me during my home-studies, and Will did not deceive me by demanding any larger contribution than I had paid at the hole-in-the-wall from winch he rescued me. I drank tea for breakfast out of a handsome china cup, and ate bacon and eggs, or grilled kidneys, or kedgeree and fish (a capital food) off a well-heated plate with excellent table silver. Our rooms were never in disorder, and Will himself showed a particular niceness about his morning dress, which was neat rather than showy; and though somewhat provincial in his manners at the start, he soon learned London etiquette and became quite the gentleman.
So far as I know, he always paid his debts, even to tailors, which many a peer of the realm disdains to acknowledge—as though tailors were not also God's creatures, and entitled to payment for their tedious labours! When not walking the hospital, I stayed at home and studied; but for the first few months Will Palmer did not join me and proved very remiss in his attendance at the Lecture Theatre. I thought this none of my business; for if he chose to make the rounds of the betting-houses and mix with the racing fraternity—already his thoughts were turning to the Turf— at least he did not bring any doubtful characters back with him to Bartholomew Close. He respected my quiet, and showed me the most thoughtful consideration.
One evening, I remember, he said to me: 'Charley, you look fagged. Much study is a weariness to the flesh. Come out with me to supper! I'll stand you treat, and shan't expect any return but the pleasure of your company.'
I could hardly refuse, though I pointed out that if he took me to a more than ordinarily genteel place, I had no suitable togs for the occasion.
'Oh, damn the togs!' he answered. 'Borrow some of mine, if you like—we're much of a height, and your shoulders are as broad as mine.'
So presently we walked down the Strand, where he led me to an oyster shop, described as a 'night house', where scarlet lobsters and crabs like giant tea-roses jostled one another in appetizing profusion on the stone counters; where pickled salmon lurked in shady groves of fennel; where Finnon haddocks, truly Scotch in their hardness and crispness, were ranged in thick layers; where oyster tubs crowded the walls; and where a gilt placard hanging from the flaring gas jet invited us to partake of chops, kidneys, or steaks. At the counter stood a row of swells, cooling their parched throats with Colchester natives, and swearing unrestrainedly at the flannel-aproned attendants. Through the doorway of an inner room I caught sight of many ladies of the Town, in silks, satins, feathers, and plenty of'slab', that is to say, red ochre and bismuth, staining their cheeks.
Will was leading the way in, when he turned sharply about and came out again. 'Let's away,' he muttered, 'there's a fellow here whom I'd as lief meet as the Devil himself.'
'Who can that be?' I inquired, disappointed of my oysters and crab-meat.
'A fellow named Dawson,' he replied, 'who owns a big house near Stafford, and has done me an ill turn. I'm determined to marry his ward, the sweetest and most engaging little girl in the world. But he stuffs her ears with ill-natured tales against me. It's my opinion he wants to make her his third wife.'
We retraced our steps and presently walked across St Martin's Lane, where he led me to a public house, and said: 'Charley, I shall now show you England's greatest living hero, next to the Iron Duke, of course.' He nodded at the publican behind his bar, a white-haired, battered giant who stood ringed about by prizefighters with broken noses, cauliflower ears, and bleary eyes, and by a mixed assembly of dog-fanciers, bookmakers, ratting-match concocters, and the very scum of sporting life generally. Ah, those cutaway coats, the nankeen trousers fitting tightly to the leg, the bell-shaped hats, the blue-and-white neckties, the queer jargon and outrageous oaths!
'Who's your friend?' I asked.
'Who's he, indeed, Charley? Are you really so green? You should be ashamed to ask the question! Why, that's the great Tom Cribb, formerly pugilistic champion of England; who sparred in the presence of the Russian Tsar and the King of Prussia in the year before Waterloo; and who guarded the entrance to Westminster Hall at the disorderly coronation of his late Majesty, King George IV. Though now attained to the age of seventy, he could still, if he pleased, dash all the teeth from your jaw with a mere back-hander.'
Then we turned up Little New Street, even at that late hour blocked by the carts opposite a cheesemonger's; along King Street and the illumined windows of the Garrick Club; then down a steep flight of steps, and into Evans' Supper Room.
'Here you'll find a scene rather more to your liking, I hope,' said Will Palmer. And, in effect, Evans's of Covent Garden is an establishment that has ever since delighted me when I could afford to sup there. You don't know it? Why, it's the finest place of its kind in the metropolis—I rate it far above Rhodes's, or the Cyder Cellars in Maiden Lane, or the Coal Hole in the Strand. It's divided into two parts, do you see? First, the cafe, furnished in truly Parisian fashion—except that it doesn't spill over into the street—and hung around with framed portraits of the most famous theatrical personages in ancient and modern times. The cafe is where men of importance from every walk of life gather to exchange gossip. In fact, so much gossip is exchanged that a 'syndicate', or combination, of newspaper reporters has been formed to spread out among the tables, each secretly cocking an ear to the disclosures of the group sitting nearest him. Afterwards they pool their takings, perhaps less honestly than the members of a thieves' kitchen, but honestly enough to keep the syndicate in being. The newspaper proprietors pay them a fixed sum for their suppers so long as they continue to collect, or at least fabricate, printable news.
Then there's the Singing Room, a hall with a platform at the upper end on which a grand piano is stationed, and to which the singers climb when called upon by the chairman who sits beneath. The important business of eating is solemnly and industriously undertaken here by six or seven hundred men. Ladies are, of course, debarred, owing to the freedom of language which is permitted the performers; and women of the Town equally so, owing to the respectability of the audience. It happened that some most distinguished guests were present on this occasion, including several Members of Parliament, and two titled racehorse-owners whom Will pointed out to me; and (a thing that interested me far more) seated at the next table to us were two men whom I recognized as the famous novelists William Makepeace Thackeray and Charles Dickens! Mr Thackeray, a member of the adjoining Garrick's Club, still makes Evans's, as he has put it, 'my nightly chapel of ease'. He was then engaged in writing his immortal Vanity Fair, though under the misfortune of being married to an insane wife. Mr Dickens, already the author of Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist, had just been offered, and accepted, the editorship of the recently founded Daily News; and Mr Thackeray had been invited to celebrate this success. Mr Dickens lay under the almost equal misfortune of being unhappily married to a woman who had borne him a number of children, while he loved her younger sister to desperation. Will told me all this, sotto voce, observing that domestic unhappiness often positively assisted men of genius to pen immortal works. 'Not that I would ever have read a word written by either of them,' he added, 'had it not been for Dr Stegall and his merry evenings. I find Ruff's Guide to the Turf engrossing enough.'