 Chapter 11 of The Ghosts of Piccadilly From the Duke it is natural to pass to our greatest sailor. He himself, to be sure, has little part in London. For our memories his place is on the sea, almost wholly. Away from the sea he bore no such part in our life as Wellington bore, nor could he have borne it had he lived after Trafalgar. For our national purpose, so to say, he had his great intellectual gift of consummate seamanship, his great moral gift of devotion to his country, but he can never stand for such a rounded type of Englishman as stands the Duke. The men had one thing in common that both were quickly emotional, but Wellington was the lord of his emotion, and Nelson was the slave of his. The only occasion of their meeting when Nelson exposed the childlike boastfulness which was a weak, if amiable, side of him to the Duke's grim observation is sad to think on, but not surprising. The greatest of our sailors could never have played a great part in the broad world of affairs. For us his place is on the sea. And if his spirit might be supposed to seek the land it would hardly seek Piccadilly, it would go, of course, to that peaceful merton where he longed to rest. But with his Emma it is otherwise. The bustle of Piccadilly may well be imagined congenial to her. Of her life in England, after all, this was the most active and interesting part so far as social things went, and Emma loved social things. Here, too, she gave birth to Horatia. I think she must be supposed to visit Piccadilly. I don't think the traffic would prevent her at all. And so I write of her. And writing of her, I must, perforce, write of Nelson. I really cannot admit that there is any reasonable doubt of Emma Hamilton's character. Men have sometimes written of her as though she were a problem like Mary Queen of Scots. Of whom also, by the way, I have quite a definite view. Mr. Warther Sitchell, for example, to whose copiously informed book I am greatly indebted, writes with a fine air of defending a much wronged woman. He seems to tilt lance in rest in her defence like some champion of legendary chivalry. I admire the attitude, but I cannot induce my old bones to adopt it. I remember, with no disrespect to Mr. Sitchell, what Thackeray said in another connection, of the defence of Nell Gwynne, made by her footmen, that after all, the jade was indefensible, and it is pretty certain her servant knew it. Not that Emma was a courtesan or anything like it. She was the mistress of two men in her youth, and after her marriage became the mistress of another. Poverty in the early cases, passion in the other, may or may not be held a sufficient excuse. For my part, I do not care. I am far from agreeing with Dr. Johnson, who assured the chivalrous bosy, pleading, extenuating circumstances for some other lady. The womans are so-and-so, and there's an end of it. There is not an end of it. It is a narrow view, an unprofitable exaggeration of a part into the whole. Still, one can hardly say that on her record Emma is one's idea of a fine character, putting common frailty aside one does not find in her any clearly noble qualities of heart or head. She was a warm, generous, kindly creature, loving to have dependence, but loving also to cherish them, loyal, courageous. She was clever and appreciative, but the gods be praised. There are hundreds of thousands such women whose conduct is defensible as well. On the other hand, she was vain and vain glorious. A little intoxicated with her power as the wife of an ambassador, the friend of a queen, though it was but the queen of Naples, and the love of a hero. It was a strange fate that turned a serving wench into all this, but happily for the colour of life in all ages, such fates have waited from time to time, on beauty with no very wonderful qualities to aid it. Such as she was, you must imagine her at the beginning of 1801, soon after her return from Naples, setting up house with her husband at what was then 23 Piccadilly, a small house between the Saville Club and Down Street. You imagine her, of course, a very beautiful woman. How many portraits of her have you seen? A host by Romney, no doubt. To my mind, the most sympathetic of these are those he did of her in youth and in a simple mood. There is a reproduction in Mr. Sitchell's book of a sepia study done in 1784, which shows one a girl of compelling loveliness and grace. I could have fallen in love with her as she sat for it more easily than with Sir Joshua's Bajanti, though that perhaps is the most beautiful picture of her we have. In 1801 she was 36, a very beautiful woman still, but started on the road to corpulence. That sad journey so many beautiful women must take. Second-rate painters often give good likenesses and, I dare say, Masquerier's portrait of her at this time shows her much as she was, with large eyes and fine features, and a mass of hair grown darker since her youth, rather heavy with all and with something of a Jewish look about her. Graceful she remained almost perfectly so, I do not doubt. You imagine her bustling about her new abode, arranging the furniture she had sold jewels to buy. In comparative wealth or in poverty Emma was always hard up and singing as she worked and directed. Sir William, her husband, smiles approval and both expect with eagerness the coming of the hero who has a lodging nearby in St. James's Street. It is not polite altogether to ignore this lady's husband. He is a little in the background, to be sure. I dare rather pathetically, planning how to get himself rewarded for his services to his country, interested in art, enthusiastically admiring his beautiful wife and her heroic lover. They, in turn, respected and liked him. I do not think there is any obligation upon us to go about to inquire precisely how much Sir William Hamilton knew. I confess that to me it seems a thing almost incredible in all the circumstances that he did not know everything. A thing quite incredible that he did not know much. He acquiesced in much, and for this acquiescence you are at liberty if you choose to find many hard words. But unless you take your knowledge or ignorance of life from novels and plays you cannot think it monstrous or unique. He was an old man with a fatherly love for the beautiful woman he had so generously, perhaps so foolishly, married with an affectionate admiration for her lover. I am not seeking to excuse, but merely to suggest to you how he may be explained, without any positive necessity for execrating him. Poor Sir William Hamilton. He is a figure of immemorial comedy, of course, a pathetic figure, not altogether unlovable. Only for a short time was Nelson able to frequent 23 Piccadilly. Soon he had hoisted his flag for the expedition which was to end at Copenhagen. But there was no lack of visitors there. Queen Charlotte naturally refused to receive Lady Hamilton. And she was not in society, as the respectively exclusive understood it. But there were many distinguished people who did not consider her interesting career a bar to acquaintance. Old Q, for example, did not mind it in the least. She was a great favourite with that ancient voluptuary and was not omitted from his famous will. Those accomplished cousins, Lady Diana Bocliac and Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire, had for her that admiration which women so often were lined in this regard are wont to have for the beautiful of their sex when they themselves have wit as well as looks. Various other fashionable but less important ladies came to her. Walter Savage Landau came and wrote verses about her. Mrs. Billington came, a pretty creature whose society unhappily could not increase Emma's respectability. Crowds of refugee Italians, crowds of humble relations were delighted to come. George, Prince of Wales, wished to come. But there was a terrible fuss about that which we will attend to in a minute. And he came not. Greville, Sir William's nephew and her old protector, came with cynical thoughts it may be. But I am convinced quite good-naturedly. He was a customer of Lady Hamilton's champions to say harsh things of Greville. But I think their zeal outruns their judgment. Even the professed morality of his day would hardly have condemned his relation with Emma Hart or Lyon when the friendless girl cast out by another man through herself at his head with her What shall I do? Good God, what shall I do? He treated her kindly and educated her attentively if with incomplete success. It is really absurd to suppose that by any standard of conduct known to him we have much better standards now. He ought to have married her or that he ought to have welcomed her as an aunt with reverence joy. They remained friends and that should be enough for the champions. All these people Emma Hamilton entertained with her impulsive kindness and her great powers of amusement. She struck her famous attitudes for them and she danced the Tarantella. Maxall gives us a vivid account of this treat. It happened on the evening of the day that the news of Copenhagen came, the 15th of April, 1801. He looked in at 23 Piccadilly about ten o'clock and found an old cue there and the Duke of Gordon, Cologne, the Duke de Noyre from Naples, John Kemble and his wife, Greville and Nelson's brother, the Parson. An interesting company. Emma, radiant with victory, sang to the harpsichord and danced the Tarantella and it is pleasant to note that what apparently impressed Raxall even more than the lady's grace was the agility of her veteran husband. Sir William began it with her and maintained the conflict for such it might well be esteemed for some minutes, when unable longer to continue it. The Duke de Noyre succeeded to his place but he too, though near 40 years younger than Sir William, soon gave in. Lady Hamilton then said for her own maid servant who, being likewise exhausted after a short time, another female attendant, a copped, perfectly black whom Lord Nelson had presented to her on his return from Egypt, relieved her companion. It would be difficult to convey any idea of this dance but the fandango and sigadilla of the Spaniards present an image of it. We must recollect that the two performers are supposed to be a satire and a nymph or rather a fawn and a backhand. It was certainly not of a nature to be performed except before a select company as the screams, attitudes, starts and embraces with which it was intermingled gave it a peculiar character. I only mentioned it, I forgive him freely, in order to show Sir William Hamilton's activity and gaiety at that advanced period of life. Such doings at the little house in Piccadilly, but life then was not all singing and dancing for Emma Hamilton. In January the 29th she had given birth to Horatia and a fortnight later she was playing host air as though nothing had happened. Not three months later as we have seen she was wearing down four successive partners in the Tarantella. Wonderful pluck and a wonderful constitution truly and if they alone made character one would join with the most fervid of her eulogists. Nelson's correspondence with her about this event is surely as curious as any letters ever hero penned. They arranged an elaborate system of deceit. Could it really have deceived? According to which Nelson had an anxious officer called Thompson, whose wife befriended by Emma was expecting her confinement. Letters come addressed to Mrs. Thompson and the expedient is further used in his avowed letters to her by frequent mention of the Thompson's. I believe dear Mrs. Thompson's friend when Horatia had been born will go mad with joy. He cries, prays and performs all tricks yet dares not show all or any of his feelings but he has only me to consult with. He swears he will drink your health in a bumper. He does nothing but rave about you and her. So he wrote to her whom he thought as a later letter has it, his wife in the eye of God. The dried bones of a passion are always sad to see but a dead passion which was debased by deceit and subterfuge is pitiable. And this passion was debased by something worse than deceit. It is worthwhile since we are on the subject that our idea of Nelson and Lady Hamilton should correspond to the truth and the truth was not as one would suppose from sentimental reflections that their passion, apart from its unhappy conflict with convention and customary standards, was an ennobling and ideal one. Take the most tolerant view which is the wisest as a rule and suppose that what is finest in the relation between a man and a woman may coexist with that which in the eye of the world is wrong. Those of us who will admit this probably know of cases where they are certain of it. Yes, but the least this assumes is that the man and the woman are sure of one another. Can it possibly be an ideal and ennobling passion when the man is wracked with fear of the woman's unfaithfulness? The Prince of Wales intimated his wish to dine with Sir William and Lady Hamilton. It was obviously difficult to refuse and Sir William moreover wanted the Prince's aid in getting a pension. When Nelson heard of the project he was beside himself with rage and anxiety and wrote letter after letter of hysterical protest. He assumes that the Prince's intention was to make Lady Hamilton his mistress and for that assumption there was unfortunately only too much reason. But his letters further mean nothing if he was not afraid that she would consent. Do not sit long at table. Good God, he will be next to you and telling you soft things. His words are so charming that I am told no person can resist them. Hush, hush my poor heart, keep in my breast. Be calm. Emma is true. But no one not even Emma could resist the serpent's tongue. Did you sit alone with the villain? No, I will not believe it. Do not let the rascal in. And so forth a medley of entreaty and fear and protestations of faith which truly protest too much. One hardly knows whether to laugh or cry. Here was a great hero writing to the woman who was the love of his life and he fears to the attractions of a licensed debauchee, a star-coated rapscallion, as Squire Beltum has it, should be too much for her, that it was not safe for her to sit next to him at dinner. Alas one can only suppose that there was little heroic in the woman to whom he wrote. His fear may have been baseless. She had to appease it by giving up the dinner. But that he had it tells us too much for any but a confirmed sentimentalist to go on rhapsodising about their passion. I like the woman, but there is an old tag about liking and truth. Yet Nelson's love for Emma Hamilton, ennobling or otherwise, was the thing nearest to his heart, and no view of her character can equip the English government, or the nation insofar as it knew and made no protest, of the blackest ingratitude and treachery to Nelson in leaving her to starve. I trust if I have seemed cold about her, my sincere warmth in this regard may partly excuse me to the sentimentalists, the stupid, ghastly irony of it. Remember that I leave Lady Hamilton and my daughter to my country. Those were almost his last words. He had lived for his country, and he had died for it. His country loudly acclaimed that he had saved it, and his country made his brother, who had saved no one unless in his calling as a clergyman, an earl and gave him a hundred and twenty thousand pounds, and his country entirely ignored the necessities of the woman and child he had left to its care. By the time they were actually in want, it was thinking of other matters, to be sure. Yet with all her faults Emma Hamilton had not done the country ill service. She might have hindered Nelson from his devotion to it, but she ever added fuel to that fire. The country might have remembered her, but it was content with that magnificent piece of irrelevance in regards to Nelson's brother. Besides when a strict regard for morality positively pays, I suppose it is ingenuous to be surprised. The black days were yet distant when a merchant place was bought, and Piccadilly ceased to be Lady Hamilton's constant abode. Sir William kept on the house, it is true, and she was there sometimes. She lived just out of Piccadilly in Clarges Street for some years later on. Keeping strictly to my theme and its limitations, however, I confine her association with Piccadilly to that eventful year of 1801 when Copenhagen was fought and Horatia was born, and she danced the Tarantella to Old Q and the Kembles. We take leave of her at the end of it the gay, generous, clever, coarse, beautiful creature. End of Chapter 11 Chapter 12 of The Ghost of Piccadilly. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yersley. The Ghost of Piccadilly by G.S. Street, Chapter 12, in London. We who are tired Londoners, tired with too much work or too much play or too much sauntering, know the effect upon us of a hearty visitor from the country. It is not always exhilarating to be sure if our tired feeling has gone too far or if the visitor is unsympathetic and intent only on enjoying himself, if he takes up our time unreasonably himself holiday-making, and insists on taking us with a we-would-not, then no doubt he is a nuisance. But if we like him and he duly remembers that the life he rushes into has, for us, the limitations of normality, then how refreshing is his harshness? How jolly are his ruddy face and strong voice and firm grip and zest in our common experiences. Nay, how pleasant it is merely to watch his remarkable meals. Walter Scott must have been the prince of such visitors from the country. Note, dear Scottish reader, I know he lived partly in Edinburgh and that it was, and is, a great city, still for Londoners he came from the country, and though Abbotsford was not his at the time of his first few visits, Lasswade and Achesdiel were. End note, pleasant indeed to his London friends must have been the sight of his friendly face and the sound of his friendly voice, with the northern accent which can be so charming when the northern lips obey a rich mind and a kind heart. His gaiety and bonomy and humour must have been infectious. His interest in all that was going on and his simple, modest pleasure in the lionising of himself must have done one good to behold. Had I happily been a Londoner of his acquaintance I can imagine hardly any news it would have been more grateful to hear than that Walter Scott was in town and I was to meet him at dinner. As it is I welcome his incursion into these pages, where the atmosphere is before such times a little close, as a wholesome breeze. I rejoice that in most of his visits and the best and longest he was housed in Piccadilly. Walter Scott came first to London at the age of four on his way to Bath where it was hoped, alas, in vain that the waters might cure his lameness. It was twenty-five years before he came again and then he tells us he had kept an accurate recollection of Westminster Abbey and the Tower. No doubt he tells us truly, but we whose memories begin later are apt enviously to suppose that people deceive themselves over this gift. Matt Lewis introduced him to a literary and fashionable society, says Lockhart, but gives us no names, adding only that Scott was much amused with it not patronisingly from a superior Edinburgh standpoint, I'm sure. Nor are we told where he stayed on this occasion and so have no right to linger over it. The death of his father sadly cut it short. Four years later in April, 1803 he was established at number 19 Piccadilly West. This was a bay-fronted house at the corner of Whitehorse Street where now stands the Junior Naval and Military Club, numbered 96 Piccadilly. It was the residence of Mr. Charles Dumairg, an old and intimate friend of Scott's wife and her family. Scott married, if you will forgive my reminding you, Miss Charlotte Carpenter, whose mother, the widow of Jean Chapontier of Lyon, fled to the beginning of the Revolution. Mr. Dumairg was a great friend of his exiled fellow countryman, and befriended Madame Chapontier on this occasion with his special warmth, for he had known her and her husband well in his early days in France. I wish there were more to be said of Mr. Charles Dumairg, who deserves record as a Piccadilly worthy, as does his sister, Mr. Sophia, whom I find living at number 96 Royal's Court Guide, as late as 1825. But beyond the fact of his kindness and hospitality, and his being surgeon-dentist to the royal family, I fear I have nothing to say about him. But Scott made this house in Piccadilly, his London home, until a child of his own was established there, and seeing that he was the last man in the world to accept favors from one he did not like, we know much to the credit of Mr. Charles Dumairg. It must have given a cosmopolitan touch to Scott's London visits, that in this house he found an interesting French society. The time of his lionising in London dates from 1809, when he came in February and stayed two months. Marmian was out, and he was seated firmly on that poetical throne he was to occupy until Byron, with perfect good humour on both sides, displace him. London society threw itself at him, of course. Then, as now, notoriety was the chief thing it cared for. I think, however, that its homage then was rather more of a compliment than it is now, and that Walter Scott was quite right to value it as undoubtedly he did. It was a proof at any rate that his fame had reached the herd, and as a practical man who had an ardent wish, neither unnatural nor discreditable for one of his tastes and opinions, to live as a country gentleman of means, of course he valued the proof. Social success, for its own sake, he was far too shrewd to overvalue. It may be a pleasant gale to sail with, he said, but it never yet led to a port that I should like to anchor in. But no doubt, too, he liked the ornamental side of it. He liked titles and ancient names, which were found together a little more commonly then. Why not? It is really absurd to suppose that a man of his genius could have had a mean admiration for them or a mean pleasure in association with them. He had a passion for historical memories and a keen eye for the picturesque. That was all, unless we may say that his mind, like Dr. Johnson's, who was of opinion that the Duchess of Newcastle may do what she pleases, leaned to fixed positions and privileges as on the whole the happiest condition for humanity. If Scott was happy in London society, London society was doubly happy in him, its lions are so often dull dogs, who repay civility with growls or awkward pretenses of intimacy, that it must have been genuinely charmed to happen on a lion who roared when required, and as it expected. He used the familiar metaphor himself. Well, he would say to his friend Mr. Morritt, who lived in Portland Place, do you want me to play lion today? I will roar if you like it to your heart's content. And he roared with gusto. If people are amused, he said he, with hearing me tell a parcel of old stories or recite a pack of ballads to lovely young girls and gaping matrons, they are easily pleased, and a man would be very all-natured, who would not give pleasure so preferred. What a gay, benevolent, unaffected attitude it was. To watch a great man go through his hoops is not an ideal theory of social intercourse, but since one side had it, how sweet and how rare it was in the other to adopt it with such simple urbanity. Then as the party dwindled, Mr. Morritt says, and we were left alone, he laughed at himself, quoted, yet my one smug the joiner am, no lion fierce, et cetera, and was at once himself again. What a lesson for lions was there. Now go forward to the spring of 1815, and watch Monsieur Dumargue's house in Piccadilly one fine morning in April the seventh, if you will be exact, comes out a tall big man with a broad, intellectual, humane face. He turns up Piccadilly, leaning heavily on a stick, and limping a dog at his heels. I am sure there was a dog, though Camp, the bull terrier who was with him when he first stayed in Piccadilly, was dead. He hobbles up Piccadilly to Albemarle Street, turns up it, and goes in at number 50, where he has an important engagement. Mr. Murray, the publisher, is to make him known to Byron. And knows how quickly the poets took to one another, how John Murray, the second, then a boy, remembered them stomping downstairs side by side, how they met almost daily in Albemarle Street and talked for hours at a time, and how when they had parted for the last time they exchanged gifts. Like the old heroes in Homer, as Scott himself says, he gave Byron a Turkish dagger, and Byron gave him a silver vase full of dead men's with a kind letter which Scott cherished in the vase, until some accursed guest or unbidden tourist stole it. A meeting of heroes, to be sure, and I think we may easily mistake its nature for that reason, fancying a solemn sort of occasion. Really, I suspect these meetings at John Murray's were hilarious. Neither man, in my opinion, would have sought them so often for intellectual or literary entertainment. Scott was only 43 after all, and Byron only 27. Both had humour and a love of fun, and both knew much of the world. I am sure they laughed heartily. They laughed, Scott tells us, over those gloomy and ominous gifts, and what the public might think of them. Indeed, it would be very like the public not to know that only gaiety could prompt that vase of dead men's bones, even at 27. It is certain that they had merry-makings in general society. Our friend Captain Gronell tells us how he met them together at dinner, at Sir James Bland Burgesses in Lower Brook Street in the autumn of this year. Scott was quite delightful, full of fire and animation. Byron was in great good humour and full of boyish and even boisterous mirth. Even John Wilson Crocker was agreeable on this occasion. They sat late and drank a great deal of wine, and Walter Scott recited some of his old ballads. It was Byron's gaiety, too, which most impressed Scott when he saw him for what proved to be the last time at Longs, in Bond Street, lunching or dining with Charles Matthews the comedian to help the fun, and we may be sure that Scott responded. If they never stumped down Piccadilly Homewoods together, assuredly Byron must sometimes have given Scott a lift in his vis. They were such near neighbours, picture it stopping at 96 and Scott turning round on the pavement with a parting joke. It was during this visit to London that he made an acquaintance, which with all his loyalty I hope he valued less. He was presented to the regent and asked immediately afterwards to dinner at Carlton House. There is no doubt that George could do this with a winning grace when he chose, and we know that he captivated Scott. He called him Walter before the evening was over, drank to the author of Waverly, and when Scott disclaimed the honour to the author of Marmion. Now, Walter, my man, I have checkmated you for apes, alluding to the brutally humorous Scotch story of the judge and his old chess-playing friend in the dock, which Scott had just told him. A delight for the evening, certainly, though I would rather have been at Sir James Bland Burgesses, and altogether an interesting stay in Piccadilly for Walter Scott, this of 1815. He was there in 1820 when an uproar about Sir Francis Burdette, who lived at number 18, was going forward, and he writes to his wife of the hellish, yes, literally hellish, bustle. My head turns round with it. The whole mob of the middle-sex guards pass through Piccadilly twice a day, and almost drive me mad with their noise and violence. He writes to James Ballantine also, dating, by the way, from 96 Piccadilly, no longer 15 Piccadilly West. I cannot write much in this bustle of engagements, with Sir Francis' mob hollowing under the windows. I find that even this light composition demands a certain degree of silence, and I might as well live in a cotton mill. Clearly this note about the noise shows that his nerves and spirits were not quite so wonderful as they had been. That is more clearly suggested by a waning fascination of the London world and its habits. I find, he writes, I cannot bear late hours and great society as well as formerly, and yet it is a fine thing to hear politics talked of by ministers of state and war discussed by the Duke of Wellington. He had been dining at our house to meet the Duke, and took his son Walter, the Cornette, with him to hear the Great Lord in all his glory talk of war and waterloo. Three notable things happened to him during this visit. He was made a baronette, and had his portraits done by Lawrence and his bust by Chantry. Lawrence relates that Scott, like the Duke, chose seven in the morning for his sittings and would talk about all sorts at that hour. What a man! And the painter found it difficult to make him look solemn, though he used to lure him by quoting poetry at him. The Chantry business was prefaced by a characteristic incident. Chantry sent Alan Cunningham, his clerk of the works and a poet, who had started life as a stonemason, and had walked from Nithsdale to Edinburgh for the sole purpose of seeing Scott, to ask him for a sitting, and Cunningham has left a fine impression of his hearty, genial way. It was about nine in the morning that I sent in my card to him at Miss Dumerg's, in Pictilly. It had not gone a minute when I heard a quick, heavy step coming, and in he came holding out both hands, as was his custom, and saying as he pressed mine, Alan Cunningham, I am glad to see you. I said something about the pleasure I felt in touching the hand that had charmed me so much. He moved his hand, and with one of his comic smiles brownhand it is. And then he put Alan at his ease and praised his ballads, and won his heart. I think I will leave Walter Scott at this moment, at the height of his fame and happiness, talking with his devoted countryman at 96 Piccadilly. Great troubles were in store for that kind heart, as we know, the loss of his wife, and the crash of his material fortunes. We need not distress ourselves by thinking of them. They were some years off, and it happened that this visit to London in 1820 was the last he spent in Piccadilly. Only memories of kindness and joy, and zest in life, and a multitude of honors and interests had the bay-fronted house at the corner of Whitehorse Street for him, and only on these need we muse, as we think of him in Piccadilly. End of Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Of the Ghosts of Piccadilly This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yersley. The Ghosts of Piccadilly by G. S. Street Chapter 13 Harriet Mellon Heads I may, tails I may ent. Heads it is. When you have to settle a point in casuistry for practical purposes, and really cannot make up your mind, the spin of a coin is as good a method as another. Deliberately to break my rule against turning up side streets would make the whole affair chaotic and amorphous. If in this case why not in others? But then there had been material for a book five times as long, which it was not convenient for me to write. In the case of the Coot's house, however, it was doubtful if the rule applied. It is numbered number one Stratton Street, but it might just as well have had a number in Piccadilly, even as Bathhouse, which has its entrance in Bolton Street. Its portly side bulges along the Piccadilly pavement. I think any doubt of its proper inclusion was one fairly to be submitted to a coin. But perhaps if we have occasion to look inside we ought to clamber up the railings in Piccadilly, and not go in by the Stratton Street door. It would have been hard to forego such a glorious, gorgeous creature as Harriet Mellon, who became Mrs. Coot, and afterwards Duchess of St. Albans. Her bright comely face and jolly presence are in their way as joyful a memory of Piccadilly as Walter Scott's wiser geniality, whom it is me that she should follow in my pages, since they were great friends in their lives. To write much of her earlier history is beyond my province, but something of it you must know if you are rightly to appreciate her. If you would know more, I commend to you the two volumes about her published in 1839, soon after her death, by Mrs. Cornwall Baron Wilson, reasonably well written, and full of curious glimpses of the life led by poor strolling players and successful London players of those days, with their patrons and parasites. There's her mother, for example, a character I wonder Thackeray never made his own. An Irish peasant turned hangar on of the boards, enormously vain, violent, greedy, exceeding beautiful, not without a sense of duty towards her daughter, and full of great ambitions for her. She was the more beautiful of the two, as Harriet always maintained, a brunette like her daughter, but with a fine oval face, whereas Harriet was of a merry Irish roundness. Like her daughter, she had beautiful teeth and black hair, and a sweet voice. As for Mellon Pair, he was an agreeable mystery. The known fact was that a handsome young man, calling himself Lieutenant Matthew Mellon, came to Cork where Harriet's mother was a girl in a Mantua shop, and became the father of Harriet. The mother said, firstly, that he made her an honest woman, and secondly, that his name was not really Mellon at all, but that he was a great young man incognita. Harriet, a person of sense, liked to believe the former statement, and laughed at the latter. But her mother, though she never saw Mr. Mellon again, insisted always on his noble birth. Why did not Thackeray draw her, and would end her scoldings of Harriet with, you to do so, Harriet, with such high blood in your veins? Like any other excellent comedians in private life, she was no use on the boards. Never, in fact, got beyond being dresser and money-taker. Whether she married Mr. Mellon or not, it is certain that she married a few years later, one Mr. Entwistle, who is pleasantly described by Mrs. Baron Wilson as the son of a very respectable person who occasionally played the organ at Wigan. Music ran in the family more or less, for how Mr. Entwistle performed in the orchestra at the theatre. Otherwise he was not of much account. When Harriet became prosperous, she got him the position of postmaster at Cheltenham, where he passed his declining years in the neglect of his duties and the consumption of beer. I must not linger over these good people, but it is to be said for them that though they were not always kind to poor Harriet, the mother was often brutal and were always eager to sponge Harriet. They educated her as well as they could and were efficient guardians of her respectability. Few young women have been better fitted than Harriet Mellon was to make the best of the rough and tumble in a strolling player's life. She had health and high spirits. Like her mother, she was hot-tempered, but at this period at least she was placable and, then and always, the soul of good nature. She was popular with her comrades and made good friends with respectable people whom her playing first attracted and her merry, kindly nature confirmed in affection. She was bred to live hardly when it was needful and born to live heartily when it was possible. Yes, beyond question, Harriet enjoyed herself very well as a strolling player. Also, she was a good girl. It was at Stafford that Harriet Mr. Sheridan saw her and promised her an engagement at Drury Lane. He was member for Stafford then in 1794 and had come down to act as steward for the races, but Sheridan's promises were frail things and it took much reminding from constituents who loved Harriet before he kept this one. Eventually, however, he kept it and three years later she was installed in Drury Lane and there she stayed for twenty years. It is improbable that she was anything like a great actress. She was fortunate in having been brought up to read for herself and to admire and in having a quick and retentive memory. A quick study was in those days when plays changed so often more valuable than now and Miss Mellon profited much by the accidental or unforeseen abstention of others. Then she was clever and had constitution and good looks. That she was a great beauty. She was a contemporary player records merely a countryfied girl blooming in complexion with a very tall, fine figure, raven locks, ivory teeth, a cheek like a peach and coral lips. Ah, well, these be good things truly, even though as he says all they put you in mind of was a country road and a pillion. Naturally, though she played a multitude of parts, she was a country bouncing ones. Was a famous, Audrey and a splendid Peggy in The Country Girl. I cannot keep my hands off one behind the scenes story because it gives one the air and atmosphere of the life and brings in Dickie Suet, a comedian whom Charles Lamb has made a lovable memory. She was playing Lydia Languish and determined to make up fair for like other brunettes as Mrs. Baron Wilson says Harriet of all things admired a transparent complexion so she covered her face with powder and covered the powder with rouge and made herself a perfect fright and so played a couple of acts. Dickie, who was to act later in the evening, watched her from the front and came round to remonstrate, Why, Peggy Child! I suppose he called her Peggy from her famous part. What a fright you've made yourself! Your little nose, glaring with white looks broader than it is long and as for your fat cheeks they look like two of your landlady's muffins. How dare you put on so much white paint? Harriet said indignantly that it was only a little powder but Dickie persisted. Just let me lengthen the corners of your mouth upwards and then you will be ready to act as clown in the pantomime. Go and wash your pretty face, Peggy. And Mary face. And Harriet furious but knowing that Dickie knew went to do as she was told. Alas, washing only made the matter worse. For the powder turned into little rolls all over her face. She was barely made presentable in time, but Dickie Suet applauded. You bear a scolding very well, Peggy and you've played your character very well also. Now go home and eat some muffins. One has the idea of a cheerful, homely little society behind the scenes of the Great Theatre and that leading ladies of those days did not adopt what they believed to be the heirs of great ladies. Yet a great lady, Peggy Child was to be. For towards the end of her time at the lane there entered the figure of Mr. Coot the great banker. Of himself I have not very much to say. His record is one for Mr. Samuel smiles his pages rather than for mine. Men who come from Scotland young and poor and die enormously rich in London command my respect, but not necessarily my affection. It is to be said in Thomas Coot's favour that since his first wife was a housemaid. My apologies to the first Mrs. Coot and her descendants. I am informed on the authority of Mr. Francis Coot's that she was not a housemaid. She was the daughter of a farmer. Still it may be claimed at least for Tom Coot's that he did not marry to better himself. End footnote. It is to be said in Thomas Coot's favour that since his first wife was a housemaid and his second an actress he seems to have had the courage to live his own life which should be possessed by those who live in Piccadilly. He was not a vulgarian either, which and self-made men of his generation were frankly proud of their riches and on the whole I prefer that to the bland irony about money practised by their successors. But if Thomas Coot made no secret of his wealth when he entertained his friends and I think the joyous Harriet helps to reveal it he was a man of taste and dignity. He loved to be taken for a poor man. In those happy days for millionaires charity might be promiscuous and casual and unscientific. You could go out in poor array and some charitable and really poor man would press a guinea on you and you slyly chuckling would go home and drop him a handsome check. Such things are recorded of Thomas Coot's a lean, ailing shabbily dressed figure with a kind face. That is Thomas Coot's if you meet his ghost at the corner of the street. He was a very old man when he encountered Harriet Mellon it might not be unfair to speak of senile passion but I think his love was mainly a strong fatherly affection and if it is not uncharitable either to suppose that she looked with joy to marrying this wealthy old man when his wife, who was a lunatic should die she certainly had for him a true affection. Her manner towards him and her tone in speaking of him were always perfect, always dutiful and grateful. When at last his wife died he was for marriage at once but she would not. She consented at length to a private marriage in order to nurse him through a serious illness and the marriage was publicly announced and celebrated on March the 2nd 1815. She had taken leave of Drury Lane forever where one of her last actions was secretly to relieve the necessities of Edmund Keane at the beginning of his career. So, behold Harriet install that number one Stratton Street, Piccadilly it is pleasant to think of her there frankly enjoying her wealth and splendour and the good things of life generously sharing them with her friends she was nearing forty now and the fine figure was something filled out but she was handsome and lively and hearty. Hospitality in Piccadilly and at Holly Lodge, Highgate and at Brighton hospitality sometimes abused but taken very kindly by the great world Royal Dukes came but old friends were not sent away there are various stories of the Coots's Menage Gronnais has one of the eminent jeweler Hamlet being brought into the dining-room while they were at dinner and showing a magnificent diamond cross which had been worn the day before at the coronation of George IV by the Duke of York Harriet admired it and Hamlet wanted for it fifteen thousand pounds bring me a pen and ink cried Thomas Coots well, we should call it vulgar now but it is pleasant as we stand on the railings in Piccadilly and look in at the window to observe the smiling old gentleman the grateful Harriet the admiring guests there is a touch of malice in Gronnais here there's another story of Harriet's dressing up as Morgana and prancing around with a dagger all very jolly and gay Mr Coots was eighty when he married but he enjoyed Harriet's society till 1822 when he left her his fortune she continued her generous, expansive, somewhat flamboyant life it was not all untroubled blackmailers have shot up like rockets are seldom untroubled blackmailers marked her for their prey especially blackmailing literary blackards one of them wrote the secret memoirs of Harriet Pumpkin which was bought up as a rule she resisted these gentry with a stout front and affected a brave indifference keeping on her table the rags which printed paragraphs about her another trouble was that her health lasted as it had been and she lamented that she might no more drink a glass of bitter beer even as Byron much about the same time was lamenting the absence of beer in Italy but I think we can be sure that she enjoyed herself pretty thoroughly she gave much, much openly and more in private as kind in her way though far less wisely as the beneficent lady her husband's granddaughter who died in Stratton Street so lately and it is idle to pretend that the good Mrs. Coots was not ostentatious and indeed I think it more fitting to the jolly radiant picture of her that she should have been Walter Scott her friend said she was without either affectation or insolence in the display of her wealth and no doubt he spoke truly there was no insolence in the display she just enjoyed her wealth frankly and openly Lockhart describes her arrival at Abbotsford although she was considerate enough not to come on him with all her retinue leaving four of the seven carriages with which she travelled to Edinburgh the appearance of only three coaches each drawn by four horses was rather trying to pour Lady Scott they contained Mrs. Coots her future lord the Duke of St. Albans one of his graces sisters a damned acampagne vulgally called a toady a brace of physicians for it had been considered that one doctor might himself be disabled in the course of an expedition so adventurous and besides other menials of every grade two bed-chamber women for Mrs. Coots' own person she requiring to have this article also in duplicate because in her widowed condition she was fearful of ghosts and there must be one Abigail for the service of the toilet a second to keep watch by night if Dickie Suet could have foreseen all this when he told Peggy Child to go and wash her pretty face the superstition by the way if in these obscurantist days one is allowed to call anything superstition is truly alleged she had many superstitions not being born of an Irish peasant and bred on the stage for nothing I like the story of this Abbotsford visit there were several ladies of high berth and rank in the house and these were sniffy and stuffy as we say with poor Mrs. Coots happily for her Walter Scott was a gentleman he took a Marchionesse aside after dinner and told her plainly that if she and the others were not disposed to be agreeable to his guest they ought to have left before she came she told the others and they came to heal and presently Mrs. Coots her sensitiveness appeased was telling stories of the stage and joining in the Laird of Cockpen but we must get back to the corner of Stratton Street which was soon to have a new inmate in the Duke of St. Albans Mrs. Baron Wilson gratifies sentiment in saying that he fell in love with Mrs. Coots and why not I too might have fallen in love with her at his age for he was much younger than she at mine if the dogma-dists say true one would have loved her better when she was Peggy Child and if the sentimentalists demand it there is no reason why she should not have loved the Duke let us suppose that the fair exchange of rank and money was merely a convenient addition to a union of hearts in our days when rank means so much less a renowned mistress of millions would not be thought to have made a tremendous advance in becoming a Duchess then of course it was a nine days marvel and even now it seems a pretty picturesque end to an old tale the old tale eternally new of the humble being exalted however much she may have loved her Duke Harriet cared little for his milieu she contrasted it with the atmosphere of the Boards where it was all cheerfulness all high spirits all fun, frolic and vivacity whereas here everything was weary, stale, flat and unprofitable the friend she was speaking to made the tactless suggestion that the difference was only that she was older but Harriet would not have it in high life said she there is no such thing as youth people are old when they first come out they are too fine and fastidious to enjoy anything since youth is always youth it would seem that the youth of her new circle was not frank and familiar with Harriet which was stupid on its part and a great pity ten years of her Duke and his milieu she had and then she died in 1837 at the age of sixty she fell ill at Holly Lodge but insisted on being taken to Stratton Street they made her bed in the drawing room for the advantage of the air but she battled them to take her to the living room to die on his bed when Lady Guilford one of Mr. Coots' daughters came to her she said that he had taken the shape of a little bird singing at her window just as he said he would if he could and it is related that the old man had really made her this strange promise on his death bed and that even when well and strong she had believed in it and would be happy when a bird had fluttered near her window but here at least we are I think at one with the biographer in seeing true love and kindness yes it is a strange and true romance that of old Tom Coots and his Harriet a strange and gracious memory for Piccadilly End of chapter 13 Piccadilly by G. S. Street Chapter 14 Some Other People Had I been willing to pad my book this chapter with a tolerably plausible demand on the reader's patience might have served me for three or four a long chapter assuredly might have been written on Charles Fox who had a Piccadilly lodging with his friend Richard Fitzpatrick for a while in his youth but it would not really have been fair. It is only for that while in his youth that Charles belongs by right of domicile to Piccadilly and I really must not take you through his career and discourse on his matured character then there is George Selwyn in exactly the same case and Beckford that weird wonderful morbid creature he too is said to have lived here for a time but he does not truly belong to our theme yet I hope he will not grudge me a short chapter between them I permit myself then a rough sketch of Charles Fox as he was when he and Fitzpatrick took lodgings at one Mackay's an oilman precisely where Mackay's was I have not been able to discover but we may take it to have been east of St. James's Street and handy for Brooks's it was prophesied that Charles and his friend would ruin the unfortunate oilman but George Selwyn said no they would make his fortune for he will have the credit of having the finest pickles in his house of any man in London so he had no doubt whatever never lived a finer pickle than Charles Fox in his youth since Mark Antony in his but Antony was a less agreeable mixture never was there such a gay pleasure of life as when Charles Fox came upon the town in 1767 or so it makes one almost young and ardent to think on it he had inexhaustible spirits a beautiful temperament an iron constitution he was indulged and adored by his friends men and women alike he had ambition and a certainty of achieving it he had a zeal for pleasure both hot and catholic he was pleased with all judgment and humour life opened before him many coloured and dazzling and he was not yet twenty picture him coming out of Mackay's of an afternoon only just up, be like having gone to bed at a dreadful hour but fresh and happy his black eyes twinkling and bright with the thought of the speech he is to make in the house or the money he is sure he will win at Brooks's or the woman who will never resist him with the swarthy face and the heavy harsh features that so belied his nature with a smile on his lips and his whole aspect radiating health and good temper he, who was to be known for his slovenly dress is still in his macaroni period and is wonderfully and laboriously attired wearing very probably the pattern of embroidered waistcoat he had driven all the way from Paris to Lyon to a choir a gay figure all together oh yes, trouble is to come upon him long years of disappointment many waves of debt sweeping over him but the swarthy face will ever come up smiling and with him truly a cheerful heart goes all the way like his contemporaries we will repress our insurgent morality realising that Charles is unique and being thankful so rich and genial a nature should be it is interesting to note the influences which had gone to fashion this prodigy of genius and kindness and recklessness who was now freely to try his powers on so greater stage at a time of life at which nowadays he would be called a boy for the next ten years or so he was the son of a capable unscrupulous kindly man and a high spirited woman his mother, Lady Caroline Lennox was a great granddaughter of Charles II and a fanciful writer has indulged in a parallel between the king and the later prodigal remarking traits common to both such as a love of walking and a power of ready sleep and hard features contradicting a soft nature there may not be much in the speculation but perhaps alleged throwbacks are a rather attractive study another point in Charles' parentage is that his grandfather old Stephen Fox who started life as a choir boy saw the execution of Charles I and begot Henry Charles' father when he was 76 he had married his first wife when young and a daughter of that marriage died a baby Lady Sarah Lennox Lady Caroline's sister whom George III wished to marry and who was the mother of the Napiers did not die till 1826 consequently as Sir George Trevelyan says the tradition may well be true that Charles Fox had two aunts who died 170 years from each other my apologies I know it is irrelevant but I cannot resist that sort of anecdote Henry Fox and Lady Caroline made a runaway match of it and the affair was a great scandal they did not repent at leisure but lived in unbroken happiness for more than 30 years so that Charles had the unspeakable advantage of living his babyhood and boyhood in a peaceful and affectionate home and then we come to the strange and almost unique facts of his upbringing there have been other indulgent fathers besides Henry Fox afterwards Lord Holland but none so far as records go who carried indulgence so far as he his theory of the proper management of children was that they should have everything they wanted and do whatever they chose an old story true or false really epitomizes his treatment Charles said he was going to destroy a watch and well if you must said his judicious father Charles decided for himself that he would go to school at Wandsworth and later to Eaton and so forth for my part I think all this a fault on the right side given a sensible and affectionate child as Charles was another might have grown into a monster of selfishness and callousness but Charles reckless and unthinking as he might be at the moment was never that and the mischief had surely much to compensate it in that atmosphere of fondness which was the quality of Lord Holland's defect and than which parents can give their children no more precious memory I dined at home today tetetet with Charles intending to do business but he has found me pleasanter employment I grow immoderately fond of him Charles was rising at three when that was written unfortunately Lord Holland's theory was not followed just when it should have been when Charles first went to Eaton he was a good boy anxious to learn his affectionate father took him away from his books to spar sent him nightly with a pocket of gold to the gaming table that pretty gaudy gay room I suppose which Belgian killjoys have lately abolished I can see the boy punting in it and if Charles his biographer Lord John Russell recorded truly arranged for him to take a still more serious step in a man of the world's education it is not surprising to learn that the discipline of Eaton suffered on Charles' return the same thing happened with Oxford he wanted to read but his reading was interrupted in the same manner Charles is now at Oxford studying very hard after two months at Paris which he relished as much as ever such a mixture was never seen but extraordinary as it is it seems likely to do very well so wrote the judicious parent and presently followed the two months with two years on the continent the wonder is that Charles read at all but read he did and gained scholarship enough to give him a solace and pleasure all his life you cannot calculate the effects of system on genius and I do not doubt that Lord Holland could have made a lively defence of his if the reader would know more about it all he must go to Lord John Russell or preferably I think to the fine and sagacious work granted it's wiggory of Sir George Trevelyan I shall be accused of padding as it is so this strange education over his novitiate in gambling and raking done ardent for more a store of scholarship in his head more than one foreign language fluent and correct on his lips hearty and brilliant in a way a finished man of the world not yet 20 Charles Fox came to the shelter of Mackay the oilman in Piccadilly with him came Richard Fitzpatrick like him in tastes and habits and parts distinguished for a peculiar sweetness and grace of manner old Q left him a legacy merely as a recognition of it but remembered chiefly as Fox's bosom friend I may add a word about his afterlife since it is I fear more or less forgotten he served with credit in the American war of which he disapproved but put his duties as a soldier before his opinions as a politician and was of some account as a writer being author of the best part of the Roliad also he spoke on occasion in Parliament but mostly he was a man of pleasure his own and others for he was universally popular he could not stand the pace as Charles stood it the gossip Crevy was present in 1803 at a meeting of Fox's friends including Fitzpatrick and says they had all the air of shattered debauchies all perhaps the indomitable Charles for the old leader of the gang might really pass for the pattern and effect of domestic good order however he lived till 1813 and we have it on the same authority that his last words were la pièce effini uttered in the usual cool and determined tone Crevy adds that he was by far the most clever of the quiet class I have ever seen and the most perfect judgment of any class how did the gay and humorous Charles and the quiet and sweet Manard Richard pass their time when they lived in Piccadilly cards as we know consumed a terrible amount of it and all the money they could borrow remembering their youth and their persistent ill luck one can hardly doubt that they were plundered especially since it was at games of pure chance that they always lost had he stuck to whist and piquet Charles it was said would have made an income by his skill then as a consequence there were hours spent in the dismal offices of the cent per cent fraternity arranging complicated systems of bonds and anuities and heaven knows what devices then the bottle I am afraid consumed time and health to a deplorable extent much time went in wagering not always unconnected with the former pursuit as the signatures in the betting book at Bruxy's occasionally testify horse racing if not less obnoxious to morality was at least an amusement less harmful to health and of course it would be absurd to pretend that there was not on the scene an appearance now and then of some Perdita Robinson or other the House of Commons had to take its chance with all this but political ambition was less exigent in those days than it is now at this time Charles was in his chrysalis stage as a supporter of the wicked Duke of Grafton whose vices I regret to say failed to shock him and a bulwark of privilege and corruption it was a cult's exercising canter when he took to real racing he found out what he really thought there remains one occupation to notice which is agreeably innocent in the midst of all this rakishness Charles and his friends were devoted to amateur theatricals and took with them the profound gravity and sense of importance which that fashion seems always to impose on its followers they worked at acting with enthusiasm frequently exchanging parts Fitzpatrick was the better of the two in genteel comedy Fox in Tragedy it is probable by the way that the training of memory and voice his acting involved was of great service to Fox afterwards as an orator because as Sir George Trevelyan acutely and truly remarks he was the last man in the world consciously to study for effect in speaking there is a tradition that Garrick snubbed amateurs and Sir George surmises that Fox dropped acting when he became a friend of the master in any case he gave it up when he was 24 but at the period we are concerned with he took it with immense seriousness rebuking his elder brother for a falling off in enthusiasm and persuading people to act wherever he went and so gaily squandering his time and money and splendid abilities in these various distractions I take leave of the young Charles Fox George Selwyn's sojourn in Piccadilly was when he also was a young man some 20 years earlier than Charles Fox in 1746 a correspondent writes to George Selwyn Esquire in Piccadilly opposite St. James's church and another in 1747 to him at Mr. Lane's in Piccadilly and I think we may suppose it was the same lodging I trust the nearness of the church profited George but I am inclined to doubt it this was soon after the time when he was sent down from Oxford for a prank which the donnish view of the day considered blasphemous and which in any case was probably tipsy in London he lived the life of a man about town and it was long before the day when he gave up cards as consuming too much of three good things time, health and money it was indeed much the same life as Charles Fox's only led more indolently and ironically and with much less zest I think the evidence of the Selwyn correspondence those delightful four volumes of letters to him I mean for his own letters which the historical manuscripts commission unearthed some years ago are all of his later years shows that he was much the same as a young man as he always was a calm amused mocking but not unkindly George Selwyn needing excitement and so gambling but extremely vexed with his folly when he lost a good friend an exceedingly inactive citizen he can hardly have developed at this time that extraordinary worship of children which later on distinguished him but he had already I think that morbid interest in crime and criminals and executions and death generally which report probably exaggerated as he almost vehemently for him once protested but which certainly existed in him if Mr Selwyn calls said the first Lord Holland on his death bed show him up if I am alive I shall be glad to see him and if I am dead he will be glad to see me it was a really curious trait really hard to reconcile with his devotion to youth and freshness and innocent gaiety another he had and paid a heavy toll in chaff for was rare in young men of that day or indeed of any day except as friends he was absolutely indifferent to women altogether the psychology of George Selwyn presents the attraction of the abnormal he is a graver ghost than the general for Piccadilly even in his early days when he lived there a benevolent figure greatly loved full of humour and yet having about him with all a faint vague intangible suggestion of the sinister any abnormality there may have been in George Selwyn is slight indeed beside that of William Beckford who wrote Vathec so wonderfully well and built Fonthill so wonderfully foolishly there was a strain of madness in Beckford we can hardly doubt and by the way George Selwyn himself seeing him of course when Beckford was a very young man prophesied he would die in a madhouse as a fact he only built one for surely to impoverish an immense fortune by building an enormous pile and stuffing it full of rare things is an action less than sane a weird and definitely sinister figure this for all his imagination and taste one with whom it is not pleasant to dwell we need not for he is only vaguely said to have lived in Piccadilly and he does not belong to London at all he was one whose life the world was quite content should be spent in privacy and Piccadilly is not a private place I want a nicer person to end the chapter sweetly Fanny Burney comes into mind did she really live at number 89 at the corner of half moon street I have Mr Wheatley's authority for saying so but her biographers are silent about it certainly she lived in the neighbouring Bolton street in the last years of her life but Mr Wheatley says she lived at 89 Piccadilly at the corner of half moon street a house which had been a tavern giving it's name to the street was in her time a linen draper and now after being a brush warehouse when Mr Wheatley wrote is a linen draper again and I refuse to disbelieve him it must have been in her old age when she was Monsieur d'Arblay's widow the wit which had inspired Evelina and her far more memorable diary no doubt remained with her though active no longer Walter Scott who met her at this time describes her as an elderly lady with no remains of personal beauty but with a simple and gentle manner a pleasing expression of countenance and apparently quick feelings she told me she had wished to see two persons myself of course being one and the other George Canning this really was a compliment to be pleased with a nice little handsome pat of butter made up by a neat handed phyllis of a dairy maid instead of the grease fit only for cartwheels which one is dosed with by the pound a charming old lady to talk with one cannot doubt telling one demurely humorous stories of that appallingly dull court of George III at which she had a post for some depressing years and commenting cleverly on things in general a nice lady like and religious person to stand beside and throw into relief the irresponsible Charles and the worldly George and the wonderful weird Beckford End of Chapter 14 Chapter 15 of The Ghosts of Piccadilly This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Peter Yersley The Ghosts of Piccadilly by GS Street Chapter 15 Some Other Houses This is a book of personalities more than of anything else but one must not be too exigent in the matter or omit altogether this or that building or event because no decisively individual person comes out of it buildings too may have a personality of their own which provided they are gone from our visible life may fit these pages there's the St. James's Hall for example which stood for something definite while it lived and is now no more when the loot is broken sweet sounds are remembered not says Shelley but many a lover of good music must sigh as he passes in Piccadilly the place where it stood is even she than he I suppose since one's recollection of Monday pops is of audiences mostly feminine for my part I fear my association with the hall chiefly relates to the Christy Minstrels whose agreeable mixture of sentimental ballads and comic songs interspersed with the lively dialogue of the funny man at the corner and the serious man in the middle delighted my youth dear creatures I can still realize then there was the Egyptian hall on the other side of the way so lately abolished where an earlier generation flocked to Albert Smith and a later to masculine and his wonders happily still with us somewhere else and now am I rewarded for my latitude for by right of the Egyptian hall there comes to haunt Piccadilly a personality most distinct sad touching and tragical I mean poor Hayden the painter in 1846 he exhibited here his burning of Rome by Nero and the banishment of Aristides and at the same time as the luck of his life had it Tom Thumb was being shown here to our enthusiastic and intelligent public poor Hayden they rush by thousands he wrote in his diary to see Tom they push they fight they scream they faint they cry help and murder and oh and ah they see my bills my boards my caravans and don't read them their eyes are open but their sense is shut it is an insanity a rabies a madness a furor a dream Tom Thumb had 12,000 people last week be poor Hayden 133 and a half the half a little girl exquisite taste of the English people two months later he killed himself in his studio well may his spirit linger here where this last failure with the rejection of his cartoon for the decoration of the palace at Westminster finally broke his heart and yet I do not know if one would speak of poor Hayden for all his disappointments and embarrassments he was a born and incessant fighter and such men generally find a pleasant saver in life fighting debt and disappointment may be sad work but fighting people is glad work and Hayden was always fighting people moreover he was fighting academicians and artists who fight academicians always seem to have a peculiar best and delight in the business nor whatever his personal fortune was he always unsuccessful in a cause when Lord Elgin brought the marbles which go by his name to London and stored them in Gloucester house which was 137 Piccadilly the academicians poohood them and Hayden took the lead in enthusiastic eulogy and as we know it was Hayden who prevailed then too he had a complete and indomitable belief in himself in all that he did and all that he said his theory of the painter's art which to put it simply was that portrait painting was rubbish and that imaginative historical pictures were high art the real thing has gone the way of other dead theories and of his practice a specimen or two may remain obscurely one hangs in a strand restaurant but he believed thoroughly in both that alone is enough to make a normally healthy man a happy one again his method of fighting debt which was simply incurring fresh debt from friends or patrons or moneylenders indifferently however much it may prolong the deplorable situation does not involve on the whole the maximum of discomfort he is said with verisimilitude if not with truth to have been the original of Charles Lamb's great borrower the man who went splendidly forth borrowing and to borrow who anticipated no excuse and found none the description of his appearance a cheerful open exterior a quick jovial eye a bald forehead just touched with grey canna fides applies to Haydn's and can such an appearance be that of an unhappy man one pities the last moments the tragic end which a definite melody of the brain induced but on the whole this was a happy man I revised my description of his ghost even in Piccadilly outside the scene of his defeat at the Egyptian Hall I think he still carries himself bravely angry no doubt and perhaps violent but not poor Haydn being on this subject we may as well go down to the corner of Park Lane we're stood close to house until only the other day there was a scene of pleasant enthusiasm there when Haydn took Fuseli to see the Elgin Marbles and the latter capped everything the other enthusiast would say with his otherwise this house was remarkable only as that of the late Duke of Cambridge as indomitable as our painter in his way he had happily since the Crimea nothing personal to fight against but time and time had seldom a tougher antagonist it is agreeable to think of this fine ultigenarian enjoying his happy life his stiff opinions and his splendid Guelph constitution to the last let us cross the road the Green Park is not as a whole part of our subject but the Rangers Lodge or more properly the Deputy Rangers Lodge which stood inside it opposite Down Street until 1841 was numbered 150 Piccadilly a cheerful not uncomely house to live in white with a dome over part of it surrounded by trees built in 1768 by Robert Adam but designed according to a popular and rather improbable belief by George III George Selwyn wanted the deputy rangership so that he might live opposite his friend old Q but it was given to Lord William Gordon one of three remarkable brothers really an interesting trio those three Gordon's the third Lord George dwarfs the others in notoriety for he was the Lord George of the Gordon Riots of course it may not be the kind of distinction a family would most care about that a member of it should incite a mob of bigots assisted by a mob of criminals to terrorize London for days and burn an immense amount of property and that he should subsequently be sentenced to Newgate for a libel on the Queen of France and die there a convert to Judaism the distinction however cannot be denied the eldest brother the third Duke of Gordon wrote that excellent and famous song Theus called Kyle in Aberdeen and Duke poets are not frequent also he was the husband of Jane the rival on the Tory side an inferior rival it must be said but still a rival of Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire on the wig a handsome woman this Duchess of Gordon and a very potent lady a fair woman illumines the life of our Lord William also none other than Lady Sarah Lennox who ran away with him from her first husband Sir Charles Bunbury the father of the turf the union was but temporary and divorces not perhaps as rare an incident as poetry certainly was not then in the life of the aristocracy still to run away with the most beautiful woman of one's time the beloved of a king and the mother of heroes is a distinction however much to be regretted reader by you or me in the life of any man there is no mention of Lord William in Lady Sarah's charming letters her worthy and affectionate husband and her sons the Napiers banished from her mind all sentimental regret for this lover of her youth whether she left him or he her does not appear a romantic reader is permitted to fancy her sighing in after years when she went along Piccadilly and past the Rangers Lodge Lord William did not die until 1823 when if I remember rightly Lady Sarah was living in London old and blind we return to paint and painters for a moment Lord William Gordon had a lovely daughter who sat to Sir Joshua Reynolds for his Heads of Angels of which most of us have seen a print in 1786 the picture was in the lodge until Lord William's death and is now in the National Gallery it is somewhat melancholy to relate that the original of the lovely child in the picture died in the lodge an old maid in 1831 10 years later Lady William the last survivor of the household died also and then the house was pulled down two figures of fallow deer which adorned it cast in the old sculpture yard in Engine Street now Brick Street are all that remain of it or so far as I know of the famous yard itself they are to be seen on either side of Albert Gate as you go into Hyde Park at Nightsbridge and of the Deputy Rangers Lodge let much have been said we go up Piccadilly again as far nearly as Stratton Street because I have not yet discoursed on the stirring and noisy event which happened at number 80 in 1809 Sir Francis Burdette had married a daughter of Thomas Coots by whom as everybody knows he was the father of the Baroness Burdette Coots and lived next door to his father in law it is to the credit Thomas Coots that he supported his son in law in his political activity by which he had nothing to gain on the contrary it is said George III withdrew his account from Coots's bank when Thomas had paid Sir Francis's election expenses Burdette was a sincere and disinterested reformer of undoubted abuses and even in his heyday would have seemed to us a very mild politician in his later years he was on the conservative side but up to 1830 or so he was regarded as a dangerous radical who are now the people's men my boy Hobbio there's I and Burdette gentlemen and Blaggard Hunt and Cobbio as Byron said in the ballad which so infuriated his friend Hobhouse the trouble which ended in one of the greatest uproars Piccadilly has known arose simply from Burdette's printing booklet after it had appeared in Cobbett's register a speech he had made in the House of Commons the government saw a chance of annoying Sir Francis who had so often annoyed the government he was accused of breach of privilege and the speaker issued a warrant for his arrest then the fun began Burdette refused to surrender and entrenched himself in number 80 which was garrisoned by volunteers the government was not sure of its position volunteers did not know what to advise the very troublesome body known as the Westminster mob Westminster was Burdette's constituency saw its opportunity for a congenial row and flocked to Piccadilly then the government turned out lifeguards in spite of the prayer of the sheriff Matthew Wood and the Westminster committee went to support Sir Francis with the ingenious idea that the civil powers should arrest the officers what with this and that it is not surprising that there was a riot and Wyndham notes in his diary found lifeguards hunted by and hunting the mob good deal of disturbance there must have been nearly as much noise and hubbub in Piccadilly as the motor omnibuses make now the guards charged and the mob retaliated with the nickname Piccadilly Butchers on the fourth day after the issue of the warrant number 80 and Sir Francis who evidently had a sense of drama was found in an attitude of studied calm teaching one of his children the provisions of Magna Charter and supported by the ladies of his family a verse of the day commemorates the scene the lady she sate and she played on her loot and she sang will you come to the bower the sergeant at arms had stood hitherto mute and now he advanced like an impudent brute and said will you come to the tower to the tower they took him and there he stayed for several weeks and when he came out Piccadilly enjoyed another rumpus people lined the streets all the way from the tower to Stratton Street scaffolding was put up in Piccadilly banners were made ready with Magna Charter the constitution birdette forever and so forth inscribed on them and the crowd looked forward to an entertaining procession Sir Francis however seems to have had enough fuss and went away secretly from the tower by water a neglect of a politician's first duty which brought upon him much unpopularity but the crowd was not to be cheated it expected a procession and a procession it would have so an empty car accompanied by the banners was dragged along to Stratton Street which it reached about eight o'clock and later on the mob really enjoyed itself it ordained a general illumination and smashed the windows of those who refused to light up so all ended happily Sir Francis Birdette continued to be a reforming member and his house in Piccadilly was more than once the centre of an uproar Walter Scott was plagued by one in 1820 as was told in the chapter on him gradually however he ceased becoming a model fox hunting country gentlemen and quiet but for the cobblestones and the traffic would have rained outside number 80 I protest I have well nigh exhausted the private houses in Piccadilly which gave us personalities or events I shall be grieved if I improved mistaken but I think only two remain one was a very splendid house built on the sites of 146 and 147 towards the end of the 18th century and it housed a very splendid personage Monsieur Charles Alessondre de Calonne had been comptroller of finances in France and brought with him something more material than financial knowledge when he removed to England in 1787 where he was able his excellent taste leading him to Piccadilly to take the two numbers mentioned one not contenting him and to make a fine house of the two and to set about furnishing it in a manner conforming unfortunately he had not time to finish a noble gallery for his pictures when the revolution broke out and loyalty sent him to coblents to join the princes his property also he devoted to the cause and his pictures were sold by auction so brief was the period of his splendour in England but he gives a fine touch to 146 and 147 the other house gives a dramatic and lurid finish to this chapter I have gone for my knowledge about it by the way to a source so little lurid and dramatic as the economic journal for 1891 in which Mr Henry Higgs has an essay on Richard Cantillon Richard Cantillon's importance for the study of economics need not concern us it is enough to mention that he was of importance among the physiocrats and had a considerable influence on Adam Smith in a word that he was distinctly somebody from an intellectual and scientific point of view like Calan a financier like him also he was a magnificent man he was of an ancient Irish family but was always associated with France where he made his money and he wrote his economic work in French he grew enormously rich by banking his enemies said by usury in fact they went so far as to prosecute him both in France and England on this count he won his cases but there is no doubt that he made large sums by taking advantage of other people's need for ready money we won't quarrel about names in any case he gained much money and spent it splendidly after 1720 he lived chiefly in London but his residence among us does not concern my pages until 1734 when he was living in Piccadilly the corner of Albemarle street having got him there unlike Calan we need not so to speak let him go again for in his house at the corner of Albemarle street he was both murdered and burned on May the 14th a Monday 1734 Cantillon's up in Queen's Square Westminster and at 10 o'clock was set down at his own door the evidence of a servant tells us in the old Bailey sessions papers that for about three weeks past his master had taken the key of the street door up into his bed chamber and the examinant believes his reason for doing so was upon some distaste he took to a servant discharged three weeks ago but that last night he left the key together with his watch below in the parlour and believes it was on account of this examinance being to go early in the morning to take a box for him in the opera with a glimpse of his artistic tastes because that he gave him directions for that purpose his master last night undressed himself in the parlour as usual I conjecture the coldness of an English May took his candle and book and went up to bed soon after and told the examinant he would read and then there was a fire which consumed the house and Cantillon with it at first his blame worthy practice of reading in bed was supposed to have been the cause but it was found out afterwards that the discharged servant of the narrative one Joseph Denier alias Leblanc had entered the house with the connivance of the other servants had murdered Cantillon and set fire to the house after robbing it to conceal the crime he escaped to Holland the others were tried and acquitted Cantillon had had a great reputation for wealth and the Londoners of that day thought his house must have been full of money and so we have a weird picture for a Piccadilly May morning people bending over the ashes sifting, sifting them for gold End of Chapter 15 Chapter 16 of The Ghosts of Piccadilly This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Peter Yersley The Ghosts of Piccadilly by G. S. Street Chapter 16 The Prejudice Against Trade The Prejudice Against Trade is quite a modern sort of snobbishness down to the 18th century and there are later instances still it was common for country gentlemen to apprentice their younger sons to tradesmen in the nearest town and everyone knows that the city merchants of old days were very often men of ancient family and gentle breeding when there was a court party in bitter opposition to the city party The Prejudice had some natural and excusable reason in it Nowadays I imagine its chief motive force is the desire of people in our tiresome and incessant social scramble to make the most of their own advantage by insisting on a social disability in others and it exposes its meanness and futility by ceasing immediately when the trading is on a large scale Happily it is nearly dead among the intelligent but its stupidity annoys me and I am sorry therefore that I cannot help to slay it in my remarks on the old shops of Piccadilly by pointing to a number of bygone tradesmen with beautiful or at any rate interesting qualities Alas I cannot Men who build up and run successful businesses have intelligence and strength of character and most often prudence and temperance but these are cold virtues not striking or picturesque their useful lives are necessarily a little humdrum more so nothing very passionate or romantic is likely to be recorded of them so one falls back on the characters of the shops which of course may have an individuality of their own partly made up of association with famous customers their present functions where they still exist are of course beside my theme but they have ghostly memories among the shops of Piccadilly booksellers have been from very early days honourably prominent there was writes at 169 for example where the anti-jackabin was published and where indeed the editors laboured on the first floor I fear that few of my readers to whom this is news are likely to go and gaze reverently on the building social satire when it is really good is more or less for all time but political satire dies we all know the needy knife grinder but how many of us know anything else which appeared in the anti-jackabin however George Canning was greater than the paper he inspired and Wright's shop as Hatchards a little later must have known him well he lived for a while nearly opposite in Albany and must have been a familiar figure crossing Piccadilly in and outside Wright's shop there took place a famous row one might have had a separate chapter on the rows of Piccadilly a violent row but not on a great scale like Sir Francis Baudet's or a romantic attempt at murder like bloodses on the Duke of Ormond or even a gentlemanly row like my lord's bath and hervy's duel just inside the Green Park and only one of those unseemly scuffles which were all that literary men in past ages of course I mean were generally able to accomplish Gifford was a great critic and editor as you know and Walcott known as Peter Pindar was also a great critic and they hated one another Gifford wrote an epistle Peter Pindar in which he remarked that thou canst not think nor have I power to tell how much I scorn and loathe thee so farewell it was rather a boyish insult and I can lay my hand on my heart and say that if anyone said it to me I should laugh Walcott however was furious and waited for Gifford outside Wright's and rushing after him into the shop gave him one on the knob with a stick but Gifford who in boyhood had used his hands at sea and in a bootmaker's shop was too strong for Walcott and rolled him in the gasser I hope he did it without assistance but there is a regrettable mention of a bystander seizing Walcott's arm he was really very silly to mind Gifford's loathing him no such painful scene ever troubled the piece of hatchards which was originally hard by 1773 for my knowledge of this famous shop's history I am indebted to an interesting book about it written by Mr Arthur Humphries who does well to be proud that the business over which he presides has such a long and full tradition of the original hatchard however who had his training as a bookseller with the celebrated Tom Payne and set up for himself at 173 in 1797 paying 31 pounds 10 shillings for the goodwill and 40 pounds rent I do not find much to repeat in fact I think the most interesting thing Mr Humphries gives us about the man himself is a detailed description of his dress for that allows us to picture him accurately as he moved among his customers he was invariably dressed in black his coat was of the style of a bishops frock coat waistcoat buttoning to the throat entirely plain front and knee breeches and gaiters a most respectable figure indeed he did a thriving business in pamphlets publishing in the very first year one which was an immense success to wit reform or ruin take your choice which appears to have been a spirited exhortation to respectability and was written by no lesser person than John Bowdler father of the more notorious Thomas Hatchard moved to 190 in 1801 and later to 187 where the business now is the political pamphlets were in the Tory interest and the people who frequented Hatchards to loaf and gossip therein the pleasant fashion of that day were mostly on the Tory side Sidney Smith glanced at them with unkind humour in an Edinburgh review article in 1810 there is a set of well-dressed prosperous gentlemen who assemble daily at Mr. Hatchard's shop clean civil personages well in with the people in power delighted with every existing institution and almost with every existing circumstance and every now and then one of these personages writes a little book and the rest prays that little book expecting to be praised in their turn for their own little books and of these little books thus written by these clean civil personages so expecting to be praised the pamphlet before us appears to be one we have heard of such societies mutually helpful in the book-pushing way since that date equally clean and civil let us hope Hatchards was also the rendezvous of societies more formally constituted the Royal Horticultural Society which was formed there and so was a much more amusing society called the Outinian this was a body for the promotion of marriages an object it was to attain by the dubious process of inquiring into the suitability of the contracting parties and supplying helpful information to members who intended to marry it began its meetings by the consumption of tea and buns John Hatchard it appears to this agreeable little institution and Mr Humphries wonders how he could have mixed himself up in so absurd an affair I hope I may suggest without disrespect to the notoriously altruistic nature of publishers that John charged something as for the appearance of Hatchards when the clean and civil personages and the Outinians met there it was much as it is now with a bench outside for servants a fireplace those features restored by Mr Humphries a table with the daily papers on it and chairs for the weary and sleepy it was lit of course by oil lamps one may imagine all sorts of celebrities buying books at Hatchards of those more particularly associated with it were McCawley who used to be sent in his youth to buy books there by Hannah Moore Hannah herself who longed as a girl to go to London to see bishops and booksellers and William Wilberforce booksellers like brave men need a bard if their memories are to live and it is thanks to Mr Humphries that I have lingered over Hatchards but there are others who at least must be mentioned Ridgeways was already established when Hatchard went to Piccadilly opposite Burlington House also was gone, succeeded by DeBrette who had been in partnership with him. A letter to Edmund Burke in 1782 refers pleasantly to that common sink of filth and fiction the shop of Almond and DeBrette in Piccadilly the reason of this description was that Almond's a great wig firm had published the letters in favour of Wilkes et cetera in 1764 I wish we had still those political antagonisms in shops a shop which has followed Mr Humphries good example and issued an account of itself is that of Fortnum and Mason ministering to the body as Hatchards to the mind AMB has written an informing little brochure with interesting pictures about Piccadilly and this ancient house of good things to eat it beats Hatchards indeed in point of antiquity for the business was started appropriately in the days of Queen Anne who as we know liked tea and things to eat and drink generally and it has been in Piccadilly for 150 years Stuart too the confectioner at the corner of Bond Street is an ancient affair but I want a hero or at least a character I'll therefore take our ancient friend Hobie the boot maker who was deservedly thought a character in his day my seemingly irrelevant quotation was in fact a subconscious inspiration for there is a reference to Hobie in one of Byron's letters it was in 1820 at the time of Queen Caroline's trial and Byron writes I hear Mr Hobie says that it makes him to see her she reminded him so much of Jane Shaw Jane Shaw was a popularly pathetic part in the theatre of the time but certainly it was not a happy simile for Hobie to make and Byron wrote a verse on it Mr Hobie the boot maker's soft heart is sore for seeing the Queen makes him think of Jane Shaw and in fact he has two lines more but in another letter omits them and so will I on the whole Hobie was in business at 160 Piccadilly in 1808 as an advertisement in the strangers guide to London of that date informs us he was a humorist Hobie as well as a man of sentiment when a dissatisfied young Ensign threatened to leave him he turned to his shopman with an order to put up the shutters for that was all over he was a ruined man a King among boot makers was Hobie to discourse much further of shops might bring me to near to writing a strangers guide to London of my own but I must not forgo a compliment to Lincoln Bennett's hat shop for the distinction of standing where stood the house of Sir William Petty founder of the Lansdowne family and friend of Samuel Peeps one might think in one's haste that taverns would make a livelier subject but the thoughtful reader is aware that few reflections are more melancholy than those suggested by long gone feasting and drinking it is sadder to think that those who laughed than that those who wept are dead happily however the local associations of good cheer have a way of persisting the white bear in for example had a history of nigh 200 years before it disappeared and the criterion restaurant keeps up the general association on its site the white bear had memories of art about it Benjamin West lay there when he arrived from America and Luke Sullivan who engraved Hogarth's march to Finchley died there so died another engraver one Chateleon in 1744 he had in excess what I suppose the enemies of artists mean by the artistic temperament he engraved for Mr. Tom's who paid him a shilling an hour having worked for half an hour he would demand his sixpence and spend it forthwith in drink as Mr. Wheatley says this was a very improvident man Deus sit propitius it was fitting he should die in a tavern there was a black bear as well as a white bear at this end of Piccadilly the black rival was nearly opposite until 1820 not knowing its exact site I am feigned to hope some restaurant or other stands on it there is no such doubt about the Gloucester coffee house and hotel for that was at the corner of Barkley street where is now the Barkley sometime called the St. James' Hotel the Gloucester was a very old house and I find it flourishing in 1805 when a dear little book called The Picture of London advertises it as supplying good soups, dinners, wines and beds the soups suggest a warm refreshment before starting by coach in the morning and of course these Piccadilly inns were famous for coaching connections there was the three kings at number 67 whence General Palmer started the first male coach to bath and the present hatchets there was the old white horse cellar at 155 the Ritz now occupies that site it is mentioned by Stripe in 1720 and my picture of London tells us that this house is well known to the public on account of the great number of stagecoaches which regularly call there in a pleasant coffee room passengers can wait for any of the stages and travellers in general with beds one imagines of course a great deal of bustle in these taverns and coffee houses of old it has been called to life in books often enough the English it is said and truly I think have grown more reserved in manner and certainly have grown more to a pattern one must imagine many more eccentrics much more shouting and advice and protest and argument than one can hear now at a railway station a variety and colour of dress too and altogether a livelier and gayer scene while we are imagining too we must not forget the common place that the taverns were crowded with folk well acquainted with one another and talking intimately together who now would go to clubs that is still to some extent the case with the lower classes but with no others even Bohemia has left the tavern for the club although I have known more than one public house where artists of one sort or another were to be regularly found certainly no Squire Weston of today coming to London would drink and collogue with the landlord of an inn as Fielding's Squire Weston did with him of the Hercules Pillars that famous inn was at Hyde Park corner and stood there as late as 1797 being mentioned as early in his plain dealer as 1676 the great Marquis of Granby who gave his name to so many other inns used to frequent it and as I said in my first chapter Sheridan and Captain Matthews went there when they were interrupted in their duel about the melodious Miss Linnley there was many another tavern at Hyde Park corner a red lion and a golden lion and so forth and by the way at the beginning of the 18th century a place called Winstanley's Water Theatre where mechanical contrivances astonished our simple ancestors it advertised as its great attraction in a Guardian of 1713 six sorts of wine and brandy to drink the Queen's Health all coming out of the barrel with biscuit and spar water and as pieces enlarged there will be added claret, pale ale playing out of the head of the barrel when it is in the pulley the ingenious Henry Winstanley among other devices in his house at Littlebury had one passing strange if a visitor, so it is said kicked an old slipper lying on the floor a ghost started up before him Winstanley's ghost if it walks must pass from the scene of his entertainment at Hyde Park corner to the sight of the Egyptian Hall and muse over conjuring improvements man and his marvels pass away and it is not strange that Water Theatre and Egyptian Hall should be gone but it does seem odd that of the eight or so public houses at Hyde Park corner not one remains the fact must sadden many a ghostly toker chapter 16