Part 1

“OUR STREET.”

BY

MR. M. A. TITMARSH.

LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 186 STRAND. MDCCCXLVIII.

OUR STREET.

Our Street, from the little nook which I occupy in it, and whence I and a fellow-lodger and friend of mine cynically observe it, presents a strange motley scene. We are in a state of transition. We are not as yet in the town, and we have left the country where we were when I came to lodge with Mrs. Cammysole, my excellent landlady. I then took second-floor apartments at No. 17 Waddilove Street, and since, although I have never moved (having various little comforts about me), I find myself living at No. 46 A Pocklington Gardens.

Why is this? Why am I to pay eighteen shillings instead of fifteen? I was quite as happy in Waddilove Street; but the fact is, a great portion of that venerable old district has passed away, and we are being absorbed into the splendid new white-stuccoed Doric-porticoed genteel Pocklington quarter. Sir Thomas Gibbs Pocklington, M.P. for the borough of Lathanplaster, is the founder of the district and his own fortune. The Pocklington Estate Office is in the Square, on a line with Waddil--with Pocklington Gardens, I mean. The old inn, the Ram and Magpie, where the market-gardeners used to bait, came out this year with a new white face and title, the shield, &c. of the Pocklington Arms. Such a shield it is! Such quarterings! Howard, Cavendish, De Ros, De la Zouche, all mingled together.

Even our house, 46 A, which Mrs. Cammysole has had painted white in compliment to the Gardens of which it now forms part, is a sort of impostor, and has no business to be called Gardens at all. Mr. Gibbs, Sir Thomas’s agent and nephew, is furious at our daring to take the title which belongs to our betters. The very next door (No. 46, the Honourable Mrs. Mountnoddy) is a house of five stories, shooting up proudly into the air, thirty feet above our old high-roofed low-roomed old tenement. It belongs to Captain Bragg, not only the landlord but the son-in-law of Mrs. Cammysole, who lives a couple of hundred yards down the street, at “The Bungalow.” He was the Commander of the Ram Chunder East Indiaman, and has quarrelled with the Pocklingtons ever since he bought houses in the parish.

He it is who will not sell or alter his houses to suit the spirit of the times. He it is who, though he made the widow Cammysole change the name of her street, will not pull down the house next door, nor the baker’s next, nor the iron-bedstead and feather warehouse ensuing, nor the little barber’s with the pole, nor, I am ashamed to say, the tripe shop, still standing. The barber powders the heads of the great footmen from Pocklington Gardens; they are so big that they can scarcely sit in his little premises. And the old tavern, The East Indiaman, is kept by Bragg’s ship steward, and protests against the Pocklington Arms.

Down the road is Pocklington Chapel, Rev. Oldham Slocum--in brick, with arched windows and a wooden belfry; sober, dingy, and hideous. In the centre of Pocklington Gardens rises St. Waltheof’s, the Rev. Cyril Thuryfer and assistants--a splendid Anglo-Norman edifice, vast, rich, elaborate, bran new, and intensely old. Down Avemary Lane you may hear the clink of the little Romish Chapel bell. And hard by is a large broad-shouldered Ebenezer (Rev. Jonas Gronow), out of the windows of which the hymns come booming all Sunday long.

Going westward along the line we come presently to Comandine House (on a part of the gardens of which Comandine Gardens is about to be erected by his lordship); farther on, “The Pineries,” Mr. and Lady Mary Mango; and so we get into the country, and out of Our Street altogether, as I may say. But in the half mile, over which it may be said to extend, we find all sorts and conditions of people--from the Right Honourable Lord Comandine down to the present topographer; who, being of no rank, as it were, has the fortune to be treated on almost friendly footing by all, from his lordship down to the tradesman.

OUR HOUSE IN OUR STREET.

We must begin our little descriptions where, they say, Charity should begin--at home. Mrs. Cammysole, my landlady, will be rather surprised when she reads this, and finds that a good-natured tenant, who has never complained of her impositions for fifteen years, understands every one of her tricks, and treats them, not with anger, but with scorn--with silent scorn.

On the 18th of December, 1837, for instance, coming gently down stairs, and before my usual wont, I saw you seated in my arm-chair, peeping into a letter that came from my aunt in the country, just as if it had been addressed to you, and not to “M. A. Titmarsh, Esq.” Did I make any disturbance? far from it; I slunk back to my bed-room (being enabled to walk silently in the beautiful pair of worsted slippers Miss Penelope J----s worked for me; they are worn out now, dear Penelope!), and then, rattling open the door with a great noise, descended the stairs, singing “_Son vergin vezzosa_” at the top of my voice. You were not in my sitting-room, Mrs. Cammysole, when I entered that apartment.

You have been reading all my letters, papers, manuscripts, _brouillons_ of verses, inchoate articles for the _Morning Post_ and _Morning Chronicle_, invitations to dinner and tea--all my family letters, all Eliza Townley’s letters, from the first, in which she declared that to be the bride of her beloved Michelagnolo was the fondest wish of her maiden heart, to the last, in which she announced that her Thomas was the best of husbands, and signed herself “Eliza Slogger;” all Mary Farmer’s letters, all Emily Delamere’s; all that poor foolish old Miss MacWhirter’s, whom I would as soon marry as----; in a word, I know that you, you hawk-beaked, keen-eyed, sleepless, indefatigable, old Mrs. Cammysole, have read all my papers for these ten years.

I know that you cast your curious old eyes over all the manuscripts which you find in my coat pockets and those of my pantaloons, as they hang in a drapery over the door-handle of my bed-room.

I know that you count the money in my green and gold purse, which Lucy Netterville gave me, and speculate on the manner in which I have laid out the difference between to-day and yesterday.

I know that you have an understanding with the laundress (to whom you say that you are all-powerful with me), threatening to take away my practice from her, unless she gets up gratis some of your fine linen.

I know that we both have a pennyworth of cream for breakfast, which is brought in in the same little can; and I know who has the most for her share.

I know how many lumps of sugar you take from each pound as it arrives. I have counted the lumps, you old thief, and for years have never said a word, except to Miss Clapperclaw, the first-floor lodger. Once I put a bottle of pale brandy into that cupboard, of which you and I only have keys, and the liquor wasted and wasted away, until it was all gone. You drank the whole of it, you wicked old woman. You a lady, indeed!

I know your rage when they did me the honour to elect me a member of the Poluphloisboiothalasses Club, and I ceased consequently to dine at home. When I _did_ dine at home, on a beefsteak, let us say, I should like to know what you had for supper? You first amputated portions of the meat when raw; you abstracted more when cooked. Do you think _I_ was taken in by your flimsy pretences? I wonder how you could dare to do such things before your maids (you, a clergyman’s daughter and widow, indeed!), whom you yourself were always charging with roguery.

Yes, the insolence of the old woman is unbearable, and I must break out at last. If she goes off in a fit at reading this, I am sure I shan’t mind. She has two unhappy wenches, against whom her old tongue is clacking from morning till night; she pounces on them at all hours. It was but this morning at eight, when poor Molly was brooming the steps, and the baker paying her by no means unmerited compliments, that my landlady came whirling out of the ground-floor front, and sent the poor girl whimpering into the kitchen.

Were it but for her conduct to her maids I was determined publicly to denounce her. These poor wretches she causes to lead the lives of demons; and not content with bullying them all day, she sleeps at night in the same room with them, so that she may have them up before daybreak, and scold them while they are dressing.

Certain it is, that between her and Miss Clapperclaw, on the first floor, the poor wenches led a dismal life. My dear Miss Clapperclaw, I hope you will excuse me for having placed you in the title-page of my little book, looking out of your accustomed window, and having your eye-glasses ready to spy the whole street, which you know better than any inhabitant of it.

It is to you that I owe most of my knowledge of our neighbours; from you it is that most of the facts and observations contained in these brief pages are taken. Many a night, over our tea, have we talked amiably about our neighbours and their little failings; and as I know that you speak of mine pretty freely, why let me say, my dear Bessy, that if we have not built up Our Street between us, at least we have pulled it to pieces.

THE BUNGALOW--CAPTAIN AND MRS. BRAGG.

Long, long ago, when Our Street was the country--a stagecoach between us and London passing four times a-day--I do not care to own that it was a sight of Flora Cammysole’s face, under the card of her mamma’s “Lodgings to Let,” which first caused me to become a tenant of Our Street. A fine good-humoured lass she was then; and I gave her lessons (part out of the rent) in French and flower-painting. She has made a fine rich marriage since, although her eyes have often seemed to me to say, “Ah, Mr. T., why didn’t you, when there was yet time, and we both of us were free, propose--you know what?” “Psha! Where was the money, my dear madam?”

Captain Bragg, then occupied in building Bungalow Lodge--Bragg, I say, living on the first floor, and entertaining sea-captains, merchants, and East Indian friends with his grand ship’s plate, being disappointed in a project of marrying a director’s daughter, who was also a second-cousin once removed of a peer, sent in a fury for Mrs. Cammysole, his landlady, and proposed to marry Flora off-hand, and settle four hundred a-year upon her. Flora was ordered from the back parlour (the Ground-floor occupies the Second-floor bed-room), and was on the spot made acquainted with the splendid offer which the First-floor had made her. She has been Mrs. Captain Bragg these twelve years.

You see her portrait, and that of the brute, her husband, on the opposite side of the page.

Bragg to this day wears anchor-buttons, and has a dress-coat with a gold strap for epaulets, in case he should have a fancy to sport them. His house is covered with portraits, busts, and miniatures of himself. His wife is made to wear one of the latter. On his sideboard are pieces of plate, presented by the passengers of the Ram Chunder to Captain Bragg. “The Ram Chunder East Indiaman, in a gale, off Table Bay;” “The Outward-bound Fleet, under convoy of Her Majesty’s frigate Loblollyboy, Captain Gutch, beating off the French squadron, under Commodore Leloup (the Ram Chunder, S.E. by E., is represented engaged with the Mirliton corvette);” “The Ram Chunder standing into the Hooghly, with Captain Bragg, his telescope, and speaking-trumpet, on the poop;” “Captain Bragg presenting the Officers of the Ram Chunder to General Bonaparte at St. Helena”--TITMARSH (this fine piece was painted by me when I was in favour with Bragg); in a word, Bragg and the Ram Chunder are all over the house.

Although I have eaten scores of dinners at Captain Bragg’s charge, yet his hospitality is so insolent that none of us who frequent his mahogany, feel any obligation to our braggart entertainer.

After he has given one of his great heavy dinners he always takes an opportunity to tell you, in the most public way, how many bottles of wine were drunk. His pleasure is to make his guests tipsy, and to tell everybody how and when the period of inebriation arose. And Miss Clapperclaw tells me that he often comes over laughing and giggling to her, and pretending that he has brought _me_ into this condition--a calumny which I fling contemptuously in his face.

He scarcely gives any but men’s parties, and invites the whole club home to dinner. What is the compliment of being asked, when the whole club is asked too, I should like to know? Men’s parties are only good for boys. I hate a dinner where there are no women. Bragg sits at the head of his table, and bullies the solitary Mrs. Bragg.

He entertains us with stories of storms which he, Bragg, encountered--of dinners which he, Bragg, has received from the Governor-General of India--of jokes which he, Bragg, has heard; and however stale or odious they may be, poor Mrs. B. is always expected to laugh.

Woe be to her if she doesn’t, or if she laughs at anybody else’s jokes. I have seen Bragg go up to her and squeeze her arm with a savage grind of his teeth, and say, with an oath, “Hang it, madam, how dare you laugh when any man but your husband speaks to you? I forbid you to grin in that way. I forbid you to look sulky. I forbid you to look happy, or to look up, or to keep your eyes down to the ground. I desire you will not be trapesing through the rooms. I order you not to sit as still as a stone.” He curses her if the wine is corked, or if the dinner is spoiled, or if she comes a minute too soon to the club for him, or arrives a minute too late. He forbids her to walk, except upon his arm. And the consequence of his ill-treatment is, that Mrs. Cammysole and Mrs. Bragg respect him beyond measure, and think him the first of human beings.

“I never knew a woman who was constantly bullied by her husband who did not like him the better for it,” Miss Clapperclaw says. And though this speech has some of Clapp’s usual sardonic humour in it, I can’t but think there is some truth in the remark.

LEVANT HOUSE CHAMBERS.

MR. RUMBOLD, A.R.A., AND MISS RUMBOLD.

When Lord Levant quitted the country and this neighbourhood, in which the tradesmen still deplore him, No. 56, known as Levantine House, was let to the Pococurante Club, which was speedily bankrupt (for we are too far from the centre of town to support a club of our own); it was subsequently hired by the West Diddlesex Railroad; and is now divided into sets of Chambers, superintended by an acrimonious housekeeper, and by a porter in a sham livery, who, if you won’t find him at the door, you may as well seek at the Grapes public-house, in the little lane round the corner. He varnishes the japan-boots of the dandy lodgers; reads Mr. Pinkney’s _Morning Post_ before he lets him have it; and neglects the letters of the inmates of the Chambers generally.

The great rooms, which were occupied as the salons of the noble Levant, the coffee-rooms of the Pococurante (a club where the play was furious, as I am told), and the board-room and manager’s-room of the West Diddlesex, are tenanted now by a couple of artists; young Pinkney the miniaturist, and George Rumbold the historical-painter. Miss Rumbold, his sister, lives with him, by the way; but with that young lady of course we have nothing to do.

I knew both these gentlemen at Rome, when George wore a velvet doublet and a beard down to his chest, and used to talk about high art at the Café Greco. How it smelled of smoke, that velveteen doublet of his, with which his stringy red beard was likewise perfumed! It was in his studio that I had the honour to be introduced to his sister, the fair Miss Clara; she had a large casque with a red horse-hair plume (I thought it had been a wisp of her brother’s beard at first), and held a tin-headed spear in her hand, representing a Roman warrior in the great picture of Caractacus George was painting--a piece sixty-four feet by eighteen. The Roman warrior blushed to be discovered in that attitude: the tin-headed spear trembled in the whitest arm in the world. So she put it down, and taking off the helmet also, went and sat in a far corner of the studio, mending George’s stockings; whilst we smoked a couple of pipes, and talked about Raphael being a good deal overrated.

I think he is; and have never disguised my opinion about the “Transfiguration.” And all the time we talked, there were Clara’s eyes looking lucidly out from the dark corner in which she was sitting, working away at the stockings. The lucky fellow! They were in a dreadful state of bad repair when she came out to him at Rome, after the death of their father, the Reverend Miles Rumbold.

George while at Rome painted “Caractacus;” a picture of “Non Angli sed Angeli,” of course; a picture of “Alfred in the Neat-herd’s Cottage,” seventy-two feet by forty-eight; (an idea of the gigantic size and Michael-Angelesque proportions of this picture may be formed, when I state that the mere muffin, of which the outcast king is spoiling the baking, is two feet three in diameter); and the deaths of Socrates, of Remus, and of the Christians under Nero respectively. I shall never forget how lovely Clara looked in white muslin, with her hair down, in this latter picture, giving herself up to a ferocious Carnifex (for which Bob Gaunter the architect sat), and refusing to listen to the mild suggestions of an insinuating Flamen; which character was a gross caricature of myself.

None of George’s pictures sold. He has enough to tapestry Trafalgar Square. He has painted since he came back to England “The flaying of Marsyas;” “The smothering of the little boys in the Tower;” “A plague scene during the great pestilence;” “Ugolino on the seventh day after he was deprived of victuals,” &c. For although these pictures have great merit, and the writhings of Marsyas, the convulsions of the little prince, the look of agony of St. Lawrence on the gridiron, &c., are quite true to nature, yet the subjects somehow are not agreeable; and if he hadn’t a small patrimony, my friend George would starve.

Fondness for art leads me a great deal to this studio. George is a gentleman, and has very good friends, and good pluck too. When we were at Rome there was a great row between him and young Heeltap, Lord Boxmoor’s son, who was uncivil to Miss Rumbold; (the young scoundrel--had I been a fighting man I should like to have shot him myself!) Lady Betty Bulbul is very fond of Clara, and Tom Bulbul, who took George’s message to Heeltap, is always hanging about the studio. At least I know that I find the young jackanapes there almost every day; bringing a new novel, or some poisonous French poetry, or a basket of flowers, or grapes, with Lady Betty’s love to her dear Clara--a young rascal with white kids, and his hair curled every morning. What business has _he_ to be dangling about George Rumbold’s premises, and sticking up his ugly pug-face as a model for all George’s pictures?

Miss Clapperclaw says Bulbul is evidently smitten, and Clara too. What! would she put up with such a little fribble as that, when there is a man of intellect and taste who--but I won’t believe it. It is all the jealousy of women.

SOME OF THE SERVANTS IN OUR STREET.

These gentlemen have two clubs in our quarter--for the butlers at the Indiaman, and for the gents in livery at the Paddington Arms--of either of which societies I should like to be a member. I am sure they could not be so dull as Our Club at the Poluphloisboio, where one meets the same neat clean respectable old fogies every day.

But with the best wishes, it is impossible for the present writer to join either the Plate Club or the Uniform Club (as these _réunions_ are designated), for one could not shake hands with a friend who was standing behind your chair--or nod a how-dye-do to the batter who was pouring you out a glass of wine;--so that what I know about the gents in our neighbourhood is from mere casual observation. For instance, I have a slight acquaintance with, 1, Thomas Spavin, who commonly wears the above air of injured innocence, and is groom to Mr. Joseph Green, of Our Street. “_I_ tell why the Brougham oss is out of condition, and why Desperation broke out all in a lather! Osses will this eavy weather; and Desperation was always the most mystest hoss I ever see.--_I_ take him out with Mr. Anderson’s ounds--I’m above it. I allis was too timid to ride to ounds by natur; and Colonel Sprigs’ groom as says he saw me, is a liar,” &c., &c.

Such is the tenor of Mr. Spavin’s remarks to his master. Whereas all the world in Our Street knows that Mr. Spavin spends at least a hundred a-year in beer; that he keeps a betting-book; that he has lent Mr. Green’s black Brougham horse to the omnibus driver; and at a time when Mr. G. supposed him at the veterinary surgeon’s, has lent him to a livery stable, which has let him out to that gentleman himself, and actually driven him to dinner behind his own horse.

This conduct I can understand, but I cannot excuse--Mr. Spavin may; and I leave the matter to be settled betwixt himself and Mr. Green.

The second is Monsieur Sinbad, Mr. Clarence Bulbul’s man, whom we all hate Clarence for keeping.

Mr. Sinbad is a foreigner, speaking no known language, but a mixture of every European dialect--so that he may be an Italian brigand, or a Tyrolese minstrel, or a Spanish smuggler, for what we know. I have heard say that he is neither of these, but an Irish Jew.

He wears studs, hair-oil, jewellery, and linen shirt fronts, very finely embroidered but not particular for whiteness. He generally appears in faded velvet waistcoats of a morning, and is always perfumed with stale tobacco. He wears large rings on his hands, which look as if he kept them up the chimney.

He does not appear to do anything earthly for Clarence Bulbul, except to smoke his cigars, and to practise on his guitar. He will not answer a bell, nor fetch a glass of water, nor go of an errand, on which, _au reste_, Clarence dares not send him, being entirely afraid of his servant, and not daring to use him, or to abuse him, or to send him away.

3. Adams--Mr. Champignon’s man--a good old man in an old livery coat with old worsted lace--so very old, deaf, surly, and faithful, that you wonder how he should have got into the family at all, who never kept a footman till last year, when they came into the street.

Miss Clapperclaw says she believes Adams to be Mrs. Champignon’s father, and he certainly has a look of that lady, as Miss C. pointed out to me at dinner one night, whilst old Adams was blundering about amongst the hired men from Gunter’s, and falling over the silver dishes.

4. Fipps, the buttoniest page in all the street, walks behind Mrs. Grimsby with her prayer-book, and protects her.

“If that woman wants a protector” (a female acquaintance remarks), “Heaven be good to us--she is as big as an ogress, and has an upper lip which many a Cornet of the Life Guards might envy. Her poor dear husband was a big man, and she could beat him easily, and did too. Mrs. Grimsby, indeed! Why, my dear Mr. Titmarsh, it is Glumdalca walking with Tom Thumb.”

This observation of Miss C.’s is very true, and Mrs. Grimsby might carry her prayer-book to church herself. But Miss Clapperclaw, who is pretty well able to take care of herself too, was glad enough to have the protection of the page when she went out in the fly to pay visits: and before Mrs. Grimsby and she quarrelled at whist at Lady Pocklington’s.