Originally published in Temple Bar–A London Magazine for Town and Country Readers (Ward and Lock) vol.1 #2 (an 1861).
Readers who, old or young, have never wanted a sovereign, are requested to skip the following veracious story, which would probably be unintelligible to them. I confess, for my part, that I have often wanted one;—more than that, I have wanted two or three; indeed, a bushelful of gold pieces would scarcely have sufficed to relieve me from the persecutions of my creditors when the important incident occurred which I am about to relate. I say a bushelful, without knowing how many sovereigns a bushel would contain; but the expression appears appropriate, because the exact amount of my debts was also unknown to me.
I was living in Paris, Rue St. Jacques, near the Sorbonne, which I did not frequent. The rent of my apartment, unlike the apartment itself, was not high, but such as it was, I owed it. I had no money, and only one friend, who was not rich, or I should have borrowed from him. He, in fact, belonged to the ancient race of Gallic Bohemians, first mentioned by Tacitus in the Germania,[1] and whose habits have been minutely described by Henry Mürger, in the Vie de Bohéme. But the friend must be poor indeed who cannot even give advice; and I must confess that Athanase Risbec had always an abundance of counsel at my service, though he was at the same time considerate enough not to force it upon me.
One day, when a meeting of creditors had just taken place on my staircase—where, to my great annoyance, my bootmaker arrived at the same time as my tailor—I resolved to consult Risbec on the state of my affairs. I was unable to lay before him a full account of my liabilities, nor would there have been any advantage in doing so; but I had already received bills, accompanied by peremptory demands for prompt payment, to the amount of two thousand francs. The sum would not look very important in the budget of a capitalist, but it was nearly eighty pounds more than I could pay, and eighty pounds more than I had at that time any notion of paying. My balance in hand was twenty francs, which Risbec said was a good deal; and, as he always maintained that the only time for deliberating on important affairs was towards the conclusion of a feast, it was arranged that we should, in the first place and without delay, spend ten francs on a banquet, which was served to us at a neighbouring restaurant in that style of magnificence for which the Quartier Latin is notorious. I fancy I see the carte à payer now. Two soups, two entrées, two fishes, two roasts, two salads, two desserts, two bottles of Vieux Maçon (at 1f. 25c.), and a bottle of Pomard (at 3 fr.). It was cheap, but perhaps it was not good. All I know is, that we enjoyed it very much, and that for two hours we forgot we had creditors. It was happiness at the rate of two francs and a half an hour, and I should not mind purchasing some more of the same article on the same terms. After dinner, being firm of purpose, I did not order coffee; but returned, with my ten francs and my friend Risbec, to the Rue St. Jacques, where, as we smoked our pipes, it occurred to us for the first time that we had not yet said a word about the subject which had been the pretext for the dinner. This, said Risbec, was a proof that the entertainment had been a great success.
It may have appeared to some of my readers that, with only twenty francs in the world, and an extensive assortment of creditors, it was imprudent, not to say immoral, to "throw away" ten francs on a dinner, when such excellent bread may be purchased in Paris at four sous a pound. They should have heard Risbec on that point. Twenty francs would not pay my expenses to London, where, moreover, enemies still more dangerous than those who surrounded me in Paris—armed at all points with summonses, writs, and judgments—awaited me. I might defy my creditors, and live for twenty days on a franc a day, which Risbec assured me he had often done himself, and I believed him; but my position was too critical to be allowed to continue for three weeks. If I was to be saved, ten days and less would suffice for my salvation; and in the mean while I might as well do something with my superfluous ten francs. My friend asked me ironically if I proposed to give them on account to Dussautoy, who had honoured me with his confidence,[2} and it was evident that I could not insult the furnisher of His Majesty the Emperor of the French by any such offer.
Well, on our return to the Rue St. Jacques, Risbec, after hearing all I had to say about my chances of getting money from England, proposed for my adoption the following plan: I was to write six letters to six relations or friends—Risbec preferred the latter—representing the true condition of my affairs, and requesting from each a loan sufficient to enable me to settle a few debts which it was impossible to leave unpaid, and to proceed to London. My counsellor calculated that of the six letters, one or two would not be received; that one or two more might be received and not answered; and that out of about three replies, one would contain good advice, another expressions of regret at the writer's inability to accommodate me, and that I should be fortunate if in the third I found an order for the sum I so urgently required. It was an undignified proceeding, Risbec admitted, but he added that it was slightly redeemed by the scientific character of the calculations on which it was based. Whether I agreed with him entirely or in part is not to the point; I adopted his "combination," as he called it, because I saw no other issue from my difficult position; and the next morning, before breakfast, despatched six letters to England, at an outlay of two francs forty centimes for postage. I had now seven francs sixty centimes left. Sixty centimes never did any good to any one (said Risbec); so we smoked the twelve sous in cigars as we came back from the post-office; and, trusting in Providence and the Doctrine of Chances, I prepared to live for a week on seven francs.
Those ladies and gentlemen who may have done me the honour to follow me thus far in my narrative are perhaps wondering what business I, an Englishman, had in Paris without resources. I reply that I might have gone to Paris to study art in the atelier of some painter for whose works I had a particular admiration, and have exhausted the slender sum I had saved for that purpose. Or I might have been a student of medicine, numbers of whom come to Paris every year from all parts of the world, with the view of "walking" the French hospitals, and of whom one or two must, now and then, find it difficult to return home,—some for want of means, others because the place pleases them very much,—which latter supposition, if they are very young men, involves want of means at a later period. Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the American poet, went to Paris to study medicine; and in his charming volume of poems I find two which remind me very forcibly how some of my countrymen, and more of his own (whose scientific visits to the French metropolis are usually for a longer period), occupy themselves when they are thought by their parents and guardians to be assiduous in their attendance at the "Charité" or the Hôtel Dieu. One of these is a comic poem on the subject of the stethoscope; the other a very serious one inspired by the recollection of a young lady, from whom the author parted at the foot of the Rue de Seine, and who appears to have made a much deeper impression upon him than any thing he had seen at the hospitals.
However, it matters very little how I came to find myself in Paris with only seven francs in my pocket, and the chances I have mentioned of obtaining a fresh supply of money. And as this is not the important part of my story, I will tell the reader at once that I did get it, but I spent five bad days waiting for it, and then did not receive half enough.
The great question was, how to pass these five days, or rather seven, which it may be remembered was the precise interval for which I had in my prudence provided. I was in favour of going out early in the morning, and coming home late at night; and for two days I visited the galleries of the Luxembourg and Louvre in the morning, and spent the evening at the library of St. Geneviève, in the Place du Panthéon, the only one in Europe, I believe, that is open at night. And therefore blessed is the name of St. Geneviève to the studious who read for ever, and to those who must needs work all day, and have only the evenings for study; and, above all, to those whose barren homes have neither fire nor candle, and who have to thank the gentle saint for light and warmth, as well as for a certain amount of unavoidable learning—taken in quite as an accessory. Beneath St. Geneviève's hospitable roof I have seen mechanics studying geometry in their after-hours. I have seen poor old women teaching their little children or grandchildren to read by St. Geneviève gas, out of St. Geneviève spelling-books, in the midst of professors, students, and literary men of all kinds, from authors of celebrity down to journalists without journals. And I have also noticed, especially in the winter, a number of young men, not remarkable for their corpulence nor for the elegance of their attire, who seemed to be pursuing no special course of study, but who evidently appreciated the library as a room, and gave up their books with a sigh, and went slowly into the outer air when the first stroke of ten told that the hour of closing had arrived. Risbec used to call the Hall of St. Geneviève "le salon de ceux qui n'en ont pas," and a magnificent one it is, with a palatial staircase, and a vestibule adorned, or rather enriched, made glorious, I should say, by a reproduction of the divine master's "School of Athens."
However, I found that no time was too early or too late for duns who knew their business; and on the third day Risbec advised me seriously to stop at home for the rest of the week, and amuse myself with the peculiarities of my creditors. It requires much moral courage and a long acquaintance with debt to do that sort of thing well; and I confess I could not get rid of the reflection that I had had the men's goods, and really owed them their money. I stopped at home, but I did not find my creditors' peculiarities in the least amusing.
Of course, in this record of temporary poverty (I am rolling in wealth now), I tell the reader as much as I choose, and no more. With all that is said and written about "realism," no one has ever dared to paint extreme poverty in her not merely sad but utterly wretched and disgusting colours. It is almost worse than death, because no man dares to laugh at death (knowing that he also must die, whereas he may think it certain he will never be poor); but until a ragged dinnerless fellow is at his last gasp, he is to the majority of mankind a ridiculous object, especially if he makes great efforts to conceal his poverty. The hero of a novel, to whatever straits he may be reduced in other respects, generally contrives to present a good outward appearance; but if the written lives of some real heroes, poets, painters, and others, be true, these men must occasionally have been in a worse plight even than that very poor hero in M. Ponsard's L' Honneur et l'Argent, who exclaims, "J'ai des gants blancs, et je n'ai pas dîné." This gentleman, by the way, might have sold his gloves after the ball, and bought food with the money. But what would have been his position if, having dined, he had found himself at a ball without white gloves? "J'ai dîné, mais je n'ai pas de gants blancs," sounds to me much more tragic. A story is told of a French poet who had some jelly one night at a "reception" of M. Lafitte's (where he doubtless wore white gloves) when he had not dined, and was sadly in want of a slice of mutton. Frequently it happened to this young man not to have so much even as a spoonful of jelly in the twenty-four hours; and as hungry men get no credit from tailors, what must his costume at times have been? I have read veracious biographies and still more veracious novels, in which the life of the unfortunate hero was related in the greatest detail, and have found him in the former without a habitation, and in the latter have heard him say that he had had nothing to eat all day but a penny roll; but in most works of fiction the hero through all his troubles seems to enjoy the confidence of a good tailor, and, however great his general distress may be, the laundress always sends him home his shirts. Nevertheless, if I had been the laundress of the gentleman who could not afford to dine and wear white kid gloves the same day, he should not have had his shirts,—that is to say, not until he had settled the account which I am sure he owed. And would any realistic writer venture to show a hero in such a plight as my friend of the white kids would have been in then? I fancy I see him with his coat buttoned up to his chin, and with his celebrated gloves (now no longer white) walking down the boulevard, and scowling at the gluttons inside Bignon's and the Maison Dorée, or looking wistfully into the shop of a charcutier! If a novelist wants to exhibit a hero in difficulties, let him take his Alfred into Regent Street (which he has to cross in order to sell his pictures, or his poem, or, better still, to meet his Emily in the Park), and make him, as he by chance casts his eyes towards the ground, perceive a crack of white across one of the knees of his pantaloons, or a gash in the side of his boot. This would be "realism," for such things have really happened; but I don't think Alfred would go down with the public any longer as a hero, particularly if the truthful author informed us that the street-boys called him (as they certainly would) "a swell out of luck."
Nil habet infelix, &c., was said long ago, and heroes must not be made ridiculous. At all events, as I am the hero of my own story, I am not going to make myself more ridiculous than I can help, and therefore shall not tell the reader to what humiliations I had to submit during my three days' eternal dunning in the Rue St. Jacques. I will mention, however, an interview I had with an Auvergnat, whom I can scarcely dignify with the title of coal-merchant, but from whom I had purchased coals.
When this person made his appearance on the morning of the third day of my purgatory at home, the repeated demands of five or six creditors, and the insolence of one or two, had annoyed me to such a pitch that I was resolved, especially as the hour of my deliverance or of my final discomfiture was at hand, to dismiss the next dun who showed his face without the least ceremony. The staircase was steep, but I was determined he should descend it very rapidly—on foot if he preferred it, if not, with his feet in the air. At ten o'clock I heard a clamping of human hoofs on the stairs, and immediately afterwards an ominous but familiar "tapping at my chamber-door."
"Be off! What the deuce do you come bothering me for? There's the staircase!" I was about, to exclaim, when, on opening the door, I saw the stupid, good-natured face of the Auvergnat who had never had occasion to ask me for money before, and who certainly did not deserve the treatment I had prepared for him. I said to him abruptly enough, "You must go away; you are the tenth person who has been here plaguing me for money during the last three or four days, and I haven't a sou for one of you."
"Not a sou, sir! That is very serious," answered the man.
"As soon as I have money I shall pay you," I continued, and was about to shut the door.
"Stop! pardon me," said the dun of Auvergne. "Monsieur has not a sou, and he is bothered to pay money? Who is it that has bothered you, sir?"
"Who!" I exclaimed; "simply the baker, the grocer, the wine-merchant over the way, the bootmaker at the bottom of the street—"
"Excuse me," said the Auvergnat, interrupting me before I had half finished my list; "do you mean to say that those people come here to ennuyer you about their bills when you tell them you have no money?"
"Yes, indeed," I answered.
"What assurance!" he continued. "The wine-merchant, above all! Why, he told me himself you were the only customer he had who bought wine at two francs a bottle. . . . . Le gueux!" he was pleased to add.
This was the first of my creditors whose peculiarities had at all amused me.
"I know what I should do," recommenced my friend, as I now began to consider him, "if I were a gentleman, and a parcel of people came pestering me for money when I had none to give them."
"What?" I inquired.
"Je leur ficherais des coups de pied quelque part!"
Having expressed himself as above, the Auvergnat took his leave, but not until he had apologised for troubling me, and had assured me that he knew I should send to him as soon as I had any money to spare. The man had all that naïveté and simplicity for which the Auvergnats—at all events, those one meets in Paris—are remarkable; but if he had been the cunningest tradesman that ever cheated, he could not have taken more certain measures for obtaining the speedy payment of his debt—which proves, for the millionth time, that extremes meet.
The Auvergnat had just gone when I again heard the sound of ascending footsteps on the staircase. I was determined to stand no nonsense. I looked over the balustrade, and, O joy! there was the shiny hat of the postman! It was not a letter merely, but a registered one, that he was bringing up-stairs; for ordinary epistles were always left with the concierge. I signed the postman's book, tore open the envelope, and found inside an order for 250 francs. It was something, and yet nothing; sufficient to enable me to fly, but not nearly enough to enable me to beat an honourable retreat. The letter was from my father. He told me to start as soon as possible for London, where he expected me to arrive the morning after the receipt of his letter, and to leave London by the afternoon train for — in Norfolk, where he was waiting to see me. He added that I must lose no time, as after my journey to —, I should have to return at once to London, for the great case of (my own name) v. Turpingham, on which thousands depended, and which was to be tried in less than a week from the date of his letter. He should have written to me before (he concluded), but did not know where to find me; and it was quite true that I had not communicated my address to my family for some time past.
My father had sent me enough money for my travelling expenses from Paris to -- in Norfolk, and three pounds over; so I was able to take seventy-five francs at once to the charbonnier, to whom I owed a little more than seventy. His family seemed very poor; and when I told him that good actions were always rewarded (which is more or less true), and that the minute after he had assured me he would never trouble me for my account the postman had brought me money from England, the poor fellow's eyes filled with tears. I gave the few francs which I received as change to his children, and asked him if he would like me to send him any thing from England. He replied that he had long wished for an English razor, which astonished me, as he apparently never shaved. Perhaps, however, it was the want of an English razor that caused him to abstain from that painful operation. I promised, at all events, to send him one.
When I returned home to pack up a few necessaries for the journey, I found my bootmaker and a huissier waiting for me. The latter arrested me for a hundred francs at the suit of the former. I had no choice but to pay the money or go to prison; and after settling the claim I found myself with five francs less than the sum demanded by the Northern Company of France for booking passengers by their mail-train from Paris to London. Here the kindly Risbec came to my assistance. I knew he had not received any money recently; but when I told him what had happened, he looked supremely disgusted, went out, and returned with twenty francs, which he insisted on lending me. He would not tell me where he obtained them; but I hope for his sake that he was not invited that night to a ball at the Tuileries, for he had no jewellery and not much wearing apparel of any value; and I am afraid he had found it necessary, for my sake, to make the perilous ascent of the Mont-de-Piété. I had now fifteen francs over and above my fare to London. Risbec dined with me that afternoon, and the next morning I reached London-Bridge Station, whence I drove to the residence of an ancient landlady of mine in Craven Street.
"§o you have come back to us at last, Mr. Smith" (as I will call myself), she said. "We thought we should never see you again. Go out, Jane, and see that Mr. Smith's trunks are brought in all right, and take them up to the first-floor. I suppose you would like to have your old rooms, sir?"
"Yes, Mrs. Rentleigh," I replied, "if they are disengaged; but I have no trunks, only this one carpet-bag. I have come to take your rooms for a day," I added, as we went up-stairs, "and to borrow some money from you to go down to Norfolk."
"Certainly," she replied; "whatever you want."
"Thank you," I answered, with my usual urbanity. "I am going out presently for a few minutes, and I will speak to you when I come in."
"We have been expecting you all the morning, sir," said Mrs. Rentleigh the moment afterwards.
"Expecting me!" I exclaimed. "Why I only knew yesterday that I was coming to London. What could make you expect me?"
"There was a man from Ritson and Sheddle's here to-day, sir," she explained, "wanted to see you particularly."
"Confound it!" I answered. "I hope you told him I was abroad, Mrs. Rentleigh."
"I did indeed, sir; but the man said he would call again."
"Well, if he does, I hope you will send him about his business. I didn't come to London for this sort of thing." This was all I could say, and it was enough; for Mrs. Rentleigh knew as well as I did that Ritson and Sheddle held a bill of mine for seventy-five pounds. But how could they have known that I was on my way to London? Could my arrival on English soil—that soil which the slave has only to touch in order to be at once free—have been telegraphed by some wretched accomplice at Dover to the lawyers, who for two years had been longing to throw me into prison? No; the thing was inexplicable. All that was certain was, that my position in London was quite as desperate as it had been in Paris; and that if by ill-luck I got arrested, my father would pretend that I had disgraced him, and would probably cut me for ever. However, all I had to do was to evade the vigilance of Ritson and Sheddle for a few hours, and start by the five o'clock train for Norfolk, where, in my character of prodigal son, I was sure to have a fatted calf of some kind offered to me.
I waited until nearly three o'clock, and, having heard nothing of Ritson and Sheddle, or of the bill for seventy-five pounds, went out to pay a hasty visit to a friend in the Temple; when, lo, there stood the clerk of the hateful firm, writ in hand, at the corner of the street! A lawyer's clerk can do a good deal, but he can't jump over a brewer's dray; and fortunately that impediment barred my enemy's passage from the west to the east side of Craven Street. He actually had the coolness to nod to me as he held out his confounded document, on which I could almost read from the other side of the way, "Victoria by the grace of God," &c.
There was a four-wheeled cab close to me, in the Strand; I hailed it, jumped into it, and told the cabman to drive me as fast as possible towards the City. In a quarter of a minute the representative of Ritson and Sheddle was after me, in a Hansom. I stopped my cab at the first cabstand, threw the driver my last shilling, and myself sprang into a Hansom. At that moment the clerk passed me at the rate of twelve miles an hour. Fortunately, my horse's head was turned the opposite way. I told the cabman to make for Waterloo Bridge (having read in old magazines that it was a good thing in such predicaments to get out of Middlesex) and passed the toll-gate about thirty yards a-head of young Ritson and Sheddle. Arrived safely on the other side, I found myself still pursued. I concluded that the clerk must have a double-barrelled writ, for bringing me down either in Middlesex or in Surrey, and that my only chance of safety now lay in the swiftness of the horse before me.
"London Bridge, and then to the Commercial Road," I shouted out to the cabman, "and like lightning!"
I saw that he understood the whole business, by the way he made the horse gallop along the road that leads to the Surrey Theatre. But I will give no more of the details of this ignominious chase, further than to say that we passed over London Bridge without finding the usual labyrinth of carts and carriages, in which I had hoped we should get entangled; and finally, that, just after the second milestone down the Commercial Road, my horse stumbled and fell. At that moment four o'clock struck, and I felt that I was ruined; for now, even if I could prevail upon the man not to arrest me, which was utterly improbable, I should not have time to go back to Craven Street for money, and return to the Eastern Counties Railway Station in time for the five o'clock train; and to miss meeting my father that evening would be to offend him mortally, to say nothing of disarranging all his plans, an effect my absence would certainly have.
I was in despair; but I walked with an appearance of coolness towards the clerk, who had also got out of his cab, and said to him,
"You have beaten me; now show me the writ. The writ, mind! The writ itself. A copy will not do."
"Writ, sir? It's a subpœna," he replied; and he handed me a paper, giving me at the same a guinea.
It was indeed a subœna, requiring me to appear and give evidence in the case of -- v. Turpingham. And it was this I had been avoiding. Without a farthing in my pocket, I had been endeavouring to escape from a guinea!
"Such," I said to myself, "is fortune! Follow it, and it flies from you; run away from it, and it pursues you!"
"The plaintiff informed us, sir, that you would be in London for the trial," said the clerk; "and as we knew where you generally stayed, we thought it would be more regular to serve you in the usual way. I am afraid I gave you a great deal of trouble."
I was glad to find the young man so civil, because it looked well for the issue of the suit; and I was delighted to get the guinea, for other wise I should have had no money either for the cab or for my railway fare.
* * * * *
How well I remember taking my ticket! It was the afternoon of some great race-day, and the office was crowded with sporting men and others returning to the country. I was obliged to travel third class; and just after I had paid my fare, a lively gentleman by my side called out to the clerk,"Third class to Cambridge! How much?"
"Five shillings," said the clerk.
"Five shillings! It must be very nasty. Will you be kind enough to write 'Ratstail' on the ticket?"
"Did 'Ratstail' win the race, sir?" asked the clerk.
"No, indeed," answered the unfortunate gentleman condemned to third-rate travelling. "If he had, I should have taken two first-class carriages for myself and friends."
The speculator, who had laid out all his money on "Ratstail," was my fellow-passenger as far as Cambridge, and, though by his own account quite penniless, he was very cheerful and even facetious over his poverty; and had plenty of excellent cigars, which I helped him to smoke.
I will not introduce the reader to my father, whom I met punctually at the time fixed by himself; nor will I say more about the lawsuit than that we won it, and that soon after my arrival in London I found myself the possessor of a good many thousand pounds.
Of course I wrote to Risbec, and lent him a little money, which I hope, but do not expect, he will turn to some useful purpose,—such as paying his fees at the Ecole de Droit, when he has passed his examination, and buying a library of law-books. To the faithful charbonnier I sent a pipe and tobacco-pouch, a case of razors, and a large clasp-knife of superfine manufacture, with which I know he will not kill his creditors, and which will be useful to him fer cutting his bread and cheese, his garlic, and his fire-wood. All I am afraid of is, that, encouraged by my gratitude, the poor fellow will accord credit on sentimental grounds rather too freely, and that some swindler will rob him. However, he has moved from the Rue St. Jacques, and I shall not give either his name or his address.
Honest old charbonnier! The only creditor I ever loved! If ever I am ruined and driven myself into the coal-trade, for thy sake I will give trust to some customer with worse prospects even than mine were on that memorable third day of purgatory in the Rue St. Jacques.
S.E.
1. "Boii, Gallica gens. . . . manet adhue Boiemi nomen, significatque," &c.
2. And who has since been paid.