Shrewsbury Part 9

I told him a schoolmaster.

"_Exempli gratia_," he answered quickly, and turning to the nearest stall, he indicated the t.i.tle-page of a book. "Read me that, Master Schoolmaster."

I did so. He grunted; and then, "You write? Show me your hand."

I said I had no paper or ink there, but that if he would take me----

"Pooh, man, are you a fool?" he cried, impatiently. "Show me your right hand, middle finger, and I will find you _scribit_ or _non scribit_. So! And you want work?"

"Yes," I said.

"Hard work and little pay?"

I said I wanted to make my living.

"Ay, and maybe the first time you come to me, you will cut my throat, and rob my desk," he answered gruffly. "Hm! That touches you home, does it? However, ask for me to-morrow, at seven in the forenoon--Mr.

Timothy Brome, at the sign of the Black Boy in Fleet Street."

Now I was overjoyed, indeed. With such a prospect of employment, it seemed to me a small thing that I must pa.s.s the night in the streets; but even that I escaped. For when he was about to part from me, he asked me what money I had. None, I told him, "except the clipped guinea."

"And I suppose you expect me to give you a shilling earnest?" he answered, irascibly. "But no, no, Timothy Brome is no fool. See here,"

he continued, slapping his pocket and looking shrewdly at me, "that guinea is not worth a groat to you; except to hang you."

"No," I said, ruefully.

"Well, I will give you five shillings for it, as gold, mind you; as gold, and not to pa.s.s. Are you content?"

"It is not mine," I said doubtfully.

"Take it or leave it!" he said, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up his eyes, and so plainly pleased with the bargain he was driving that I had no inkling of the kind heart that underlay that crabbed manner. "Take it or leave it, my man."

Thus pressed, and my mind retaining no real doubt of the knavery of the man who had entrusted the guinea to me, I handed it to my new friend, and received in return a crown. And this being my last disposition of money not my own, I think it a fit season to record that from that day to this I have been enabled by G.o.d's help and man's kindness to keep the eighth commandment; and earning honestly what I have spent have been poor, but never a beggar.

In grat.i.tude for which, and both those good men being now dead, I here conjoin the names of Mr. Timothy Brome, of Fleet Street, newsmonger and author, whose sharp tongue and morose manners cloaked a hundred benefactions; and of Charles, Duke of Shrewsbury, my honoured patron, who never gave but his smile doubled the gift which his humanity dictated.

The reader will believe that punctually on the morrow I went with joy and thankfulness to my new master, whom I found up three pairs of stairs in a room barely furnished, but heaped in every part with piles of ma.n.u.scripts and dogs-eared books, and all so covered with dust that type and script were alike illegible. He wore a dingy morning-gown and had laid aside his wig; but the air of importance with which he nodded to me and a sort of dignity that clothed him as he walked to and fro on the ink-stained floor mightily impressed me, and drove me to wonder what sort of trade was carried on here. He continued, for some minutes after I entered, to declaim one fine sentence after another, rolling the long words over his tongue with a great appearance of enjoyment: a process which he only interrupted to point me to a stool and desk, and cry with averted eyes--lest he should cut the thread of his thoughts--"Write!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HE WORE A DINGY MORNING-GOWN AND HAD LAID ASIDE HIS WIG"]

On my hesitating, "Write!" he repeated, in the tone of one commanding a thousand troopers. And then he spoke thus--and as he spoke I wrote:--

"This day His Gracious Majesty, whose health appears to be completely restored, went, accompanied by the French Amba.s.sador and a brilliant company, to take the air in the Mall. Despatches from Holland say that the Duke of Monmouth has arrived at the Hague and has been well received. Letters from the West say that the city of Bristol having a well-founded confidence in the Royal Clemency has hastened to lay its Charter at His Majesty's feet. The 30th of the month began the Sessions at the Old Bailey, and held the first and second of this; where seventeen persons received sentence of death, nine to be burned in the hand, seven to be transported, and eleven ordered to be whipped. Yesterday, or this day, a commission was sealed appointing the Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys----"

CHAPTER XI

In a word, my master was a writer of Newsletters, and in that capacity possessed of so excellent a style and so great a connection in the Western Counties that, as he was wont to boast, there was hardly a squire or rector from Bristol to Dawlish that did not owe what he knew of His Majesty's gout, or Mr. Dryden's last play, to his weekly epistles. The Popish Plot which had cost the lives of Lord Stafford and so many of his persuasion, no less than the Rye House Plot, which by placing the Whigs at the mercy of the Government had at once afforded those their revenge, and ill.u.s.trated the ups and downs of court life, had given so sharp a stimulus to the appet.i.te for news, that of late he had found himself unable to cope with it. In this unsettled condition, and meditating changes which should belittle Sir Roger and _The London Mercury_, and oust print from the field, he fell in with me; and where another man would have selected a bachelor whose ca.s.sock and scarf might commend him at Wills' or Childs', his eccentric kindness s.n.a.t.c.hed me from the gutter, and set me on a tall stool, there to write all day for the delectation of country houses and mayors' parlours.

I remember that at first it seemed to me so easy a trick (this noting the news of the day in plain round hand) that I wondered they paid him to do it, more than another. But besides that I then had knowledge of one side of the business only, I mean the framing the news, but none of the manner in which it was collected at Garraway's and the c.o.c.kpit, the Sessions House, the Mall, and the Gallery at Whitehall. I presently learned that even of the share that fell to my lot I knew only as much as a dog that turns the spit knows of the roasting of meat. For when my employer, finding me docile and industrious--as I know I was, being thankful for such a haven, and crushed in spirit not only by the dangers through which I had pa.s.sed, but also by my mistress's treachery--when I say, he left me one day to my devices, merely skimming through a copy and leaving me to multiply it, with, for sole guide, the list of places to which the letters were to go, as Bridgewater, Whig; Bath, Tory; Bridport, Tory; Taunton, Whig; Frome, Whig; Lyme, Whig, and so on, I came very far short of success. True, when he returned in the evening I had my packets ready and neatly prepared for the mail, which then ran to the West thrice a week and left next morning; and I had good hopes that he would send them untouched. But great was my dismay when he fell into a rage over the first he picked up, and asked me bluntly if I was quite a fool.

I stammered some answer, and asked in confusion what was the matter.

"Everything," he said. "Here, let me see! Why, you dolt and dunderhead, you have sent letters in identical terms to Frome and Bridport."

"Yes," I said faintly.

"But the one is Whig and the other is Tory!" he cried.

"But the news, sir," I made bold to answer, "is the same."

"Is it?" he cried in fine contempt. "Why you are a natural! I thought you had learned something by this time. Here, where is the Frome letter? '"_The London Gazette_" _announces that His Majesty has been graciously pleased to reward my Lord Rochester's services at the Treasury Board by raising him to the dignity of Lord President of the Council, an elevation which renders necessary his resignation of his seat at the Board_.' Tut-tut! That is the Court tone. Here, out with it, and write:--

"'_The Earl of Rochester's removal from the Treasury Board to the Presidency of the Council, which is announced in_ "_The Gazette_," _is very well understood. His lordship made what resistance he could, but the facts Were plain, and the King could do no otherwise. Rumour has it that the sum lost to the country in the manner already hinted exceeds fifty thousand guineas_.'

"There, what comes next? '_Letters from the Continent have it that strong recommendations have been made to the Court at the Hague to dismiss the D---- of M----, and it is confidently expected that the next packet will bring the news of his departure_.' Pooh, out with it.

Write this:--

"'_The D---- of M---- is still at the Hague, where he is being sumptuously entertained. Much is made of His Majesty's anger, but the D---- is well supplied with money from an unknown source, which some take to be significant. At a ball given by their Highnesses on the eleventh, he danced an English country dance with the Lady Mary, wherein his grace and skill won all hearts_.'

"That is better. And now what next? '_This day an Amba.s.sador from the King of Siam in the East Indies waited on His Majesty with great marks of respect_.' Umph! Well leave it, but add, 'Ah, _si sic propius_.'

"And then, '_There are rumours that His Majesty intends to call a parliament shortly, in which plan he is hindered only by the state of his gout_.'

"Out with that and write this:--'_In the city is much murmuring that a parliament is not called. Though His Majesty has not played lately at tennis, he showed himself yesterday in Hyde Park, so that some who maintain his health to be the cause deserve no weight. In his company were His Highness the Duke of York and the French Amba.s.sador_.'

"There, you fool," my master continued, flinging two-thirds of the packets back to me. "You will have to amend these, and another time you will know better."

Which showed me that I had still something to learn; and that as there are tricks in all trades, so Mr. Timothy Brome, the writer, did not enjoy without reason the reputation of the most popular newsvendor in London. But as I addressed myself to the business with zeal, I presently began to acquire a mastery over his methods; and my knowledge of public affairs growing with each day's work, as in such an employment it could not fail to grow, I was able before very long to take the composition of the letters in a great measure off his hands; leaving him free to walk Change Alley and the coffee-houses, where his snuff-coloured suit and snappish wit were as well known as his secret charity was little suspected.

In private, indeed, he was of so honest a disposition, his faults of temper notwithstanding, as to cause me at first some surprise; since I fancied an incompatibility between this and the laxity of his public views; which he carried so far that he was not only a political skeptic himself, but held all others to be the same; maintaining that the best public men were only of this or that colour because it suited their pockets or ambitions, and that, of all, he respected most Lord Halifax and his party, who at least trimmed openly, and never cried loudly for either extreme.

But as his actions in other matters bettered his professions, so I presently found that in this too he belied himself; which was made clear when he came to the test. For the death of King Charles the Second occurring soon after I came to serve him--so soon that I still winced when my former life was probed, and hated a woman and trembled at sight of a constable, and wondered if this were really _I_, who went to and fro daily from my garret in Bride Lane to St.

Dunstan's--the death, I say, of the King occurring just at that time, we were speedily overwhelmed by a rush of events so momentous and following so quickly one on another that they threw the old see-saw of Court and Country off its balance; and upset with it the minds of many who had hitherto clung firmly to a party. For the King had been scarcely laid very quietly--some thought, meanly--in his grave and the Duke of York been proclaimed by the t.i.tle of James the Second, when those who had fled the country in the last reign, either after the Rye House Plot, or later with Monmouth, returned and kindled two great insurrections, that of the Marquess of Argyle in the north, and that of the Duke of Monmouth in the west. Occurring almost simultaneously, it was wonderful to see how, in spite of the cry of a Popish King, and the Protestant religion in danger, which the rebels everywhere raised, these outbreaks rallied all prudent folk to the King; whose popularity never, before or afterwards, stood so high as on the day of the battle of Sedgmoor.

And doubtless he might have retained the confidence and affection of his people, and by these means attained to the utmost of his legitimate wishes--I mean the relief of the papists from penal clauses if not from civil disabilities--had he gone about it discreetly, and with the moderation which so delicate a matter required. But in the outset the severity with which the western rebels were punished, both by the military after the rout and by the Lord Chief Justice at the a.s.sizes which followed, gave check to his popularity; and thenceforth for three years all went one way. The Test Acts, abrogated at the first in a case here and there (yet ominously in such, in particular, as favoured the admission of papists to the army), were presently nullified, with other acts of a like character, by a general declaration of indulgence; and that, to the disgust of the clergy, to be read in the churches. To this main a.s.sault on the pa.s.sive obedience which the Church had so often preached, and to which it still fondly clung, were added innumerable meaner attacks perhaps more humiliating; as the expulsion of the Protestant Fellows from Magdalene College, the conversion of University College into a Romish Seminary, and the dismissal of my Lords Rochester and Clarendon, the King's brothers-in-law, from all their places because--as was everywhere rumoured--they would not resign the creed in which they had been born.

It were long to recount all the other errors into which the King fell; but I may lay stress on the dissolution of a most loyal Parliament, because it would not legalise his measures; on the open and shameless attempt to pack its successor, on the corruption of the Judges, and on the trial of the seven bishops for sedition. It were shorter and equally to the point to say that an administration conducted for three years on these lines, sufficed not only to sap the patient loyalty of the nation, but to rouse from its rest the political conscience of my employer. Mr. Brome, after much muttering and many snappish corrections and alterations, all tending (as I soon perceived) to Whiggery, resigned, on the day the Fellows of Magdalene were expelled, his time-honoured system of duplicity; and thenceforward, until the end, issued the same letter to Tory squire and Whig borough alike.

What was more remarkable, and, had the King known, it might have served his obstinate Majesty for a warning, we lost no patrons by the step; but rather increased our readers; the whole nation by this time being of one mind. When the end came therefore, and in answer to the famous Invitation signed by the Seven, the Deliverer, as the Whig party still love to call him, landed at Torbay, and with scarcely a blow, and no life lost, entered London, there were few among those who ruffled it in his train, as he rode to St. James's, who had done as much to bring him to his throne as my master; though he, good honest man, wore neither spurs nor sword, and stood humbly a-foot in the mouth of an alley to see the show go by.

CHAPTER XII