The Orange Girl

Disgraced the clerks! What did I say? Why, theirs is the lowest kind of work that the world can find for men. They were disgraced because their Master's son played the fiddle for a living. But I could not afford to consider their opinions.

Ramage knew nothing about my other place, or his entreaties would have been more fervent. I had but one answer, however. I could not give up the only work that I cared for, even to be reconciled to my father. Why, I was born for music. Shall a man fly in the face of Providence, and scorn the gifts with which he is endowed?

My other place was none other than second fiddle, Tom Shirley being the first fiddle, of the Dog and Duck.

I have mentioned the Pleasure Gardens south of the River. There are, as Londoners know very well, a great many such gardens, all alike in most respects. That is to say, there is in every one of them an avenue or walk, lined by trees which at night are festooned by thousands of lights in coloured glass lamps hanging from tree to tree. There is also in most a piece of water with swans or ducks upon it, and all round it arbours where the company take tea or punch or wine. There is a tavern where drink may be had: suppers are served in the evening: there is a floor for dancing in the open air with a place for the band; and there is a Long Room with an organ at one end where the company promenade and listen, and where on hot nights the band and the singers perform. In many gardens there is also a bowling-green: there is sometimes a swimming bath, and in most there is a chalybeate spring the water of which is warranted to cure anything, but especially rheumatism, gout, and the King's evil.

Every one of these gardens employs an orchestra, and engages the services of singers. The number of musicians employed is therefore considerable. There are certainly in the south of London alone more than a dozen Gardens large enough to have a band. Beside the Dog and Duck, there are the Temple of Flora: the Lambeth Wells: the Cumberland Gardens: Vauxhall Gardens: Bermondsey Spa: St. Helena Gardens: Finch's Grotto: Cupid's Gardens: Restoration Spring Gardens – is not that twelve? And there are more. So that it is not difficult for a young man who can play any instrument tolerably to get a place in the orchestra of some Garden.

One would not choose such a position if Fortune gave one a choice. At the Dog and Duck there are visitors to whose pleasure we should be ashamed of ministering: people whose proper place is the House of Correction or Bridewell: they are allowed to attend these gardens with friends who should also be denied entrance: they make the company noisy and disorderly. We gave them music that was a great deal better than they deserved: it was thrown away upon the majority: we gave them songs that were innocent and tender – Tom Shirley wrote and composed them himself: we also had to give them other songs more suited to their gross and grovelling tastes.

It was part of Tom's humour to speak of the audience at the Dog and Duck as the most polite, fashionable, and aristocratic assembly in the world. He declared that their taste in music was excellent: their attention that of a connoisseur: and their appreciation of his own songs all that he could desire. I asked him once how he reconciled these things with their delight in the comic songs which were also provided for them. 'The aristocracy,' he said, 'must from time to time, unbend: they must from time to time, laugh: they laugh and they unbend when we give them a song to which in their more polite moments they would refuse to listen.' I knew very well that the company was chiefly composed of deboshed profligates: prentices who daily robbed their masters in order to come to the gardens: young gentlemen from the country; prodigal sons from the Temple and Lincoln's Inn; and tradesmen who were dissipating their capital. If good music was played they talked and laughed: at the singing of good songs they walked about or left the open platform for the dark lanes of the garden. 'You are lucky, Will,' said Tom. 'To play for such an audience brings good luck, with name and fame and riches.'

It brought me fifteen shillings a week. And as for name and fame I never heard of either.

I did not propose to write my own history, but that of a woman to whom you have already seen me conversing. Yet my own history must be understood before hers can be related. You have been told how for my obstinate adherence to music I was turned out of my father's house: how I found a refuge: how I earned my livelihood by playing the fiddle. Now, before I come to the events which connected my fortunes with those of the lady whom I call my mistress – and that with my wife's consent – I must tell one or two events which befell me. The first of them was my courtship and my marriage. In the courtship there was no obstacle: the course of true love ran smoothly: in my marriage there were no regrets: no discords: always a full deep current of affection on both sides. A simple, plain story, in which nothing happened, so far: would to Heaven that nothing had happened, afterwards.

When a young man and girl live under the same roof: when they share the same interests: when they have the same affections – Alice herself could not love her brother more than I did: when the home is happy in spite of poverty and its restrictions: when the hearts of the two go out to each other spontaneously, then the time must come when they will resolve upon becoming brother and sister or declared and open lovers.

When I think of this time, this truly happy time, I sometimes feel as if we were too hurried over it. I sat beside Alice every morning at breakfast and at dinner: I played to her: I composed songs for her: I even wrote verses for the music – I have some of them still, and really, though I do not pretend to be a poet, there are things in them which I admire. Poets always speak of the warblers in the grove: so did I. Love, which rhymes to grove, always burns and flames – did so in my verses. As to the rhymes, I abolished the first and third, which was a great relief. Without the necessity of rhyming one could easily become a poet.

I say that the situation being so pleasant and so happy, I might have prolonged it: but there comes a time when a man must take the last step. The uncertainty is sweet. Can she love me? Will she perhaps say nay? Yet the pleasing pain, the charming smart, the raptured flames – I quote from my own verses which were really like many that I have seen used in songs – become in time too much: one must perforce go on to secure the happiness beyond.

In the morning, when the weather was fine, we would walk abroad among the fields and gardens that lie stretched out behind the river bank: some of them are pretty gardens, each with its hedge and bushes filled with flowers in the summer: garden houses stand about here and there: windmills vary the landskip: the lanes are shaded by trees: at the end of one is a great stone barn, formerly part of King Richard's Palace, of which not another stone is left. Beside the river are Lambeth Palace and Lambeth Church with a few fishermen's cottages. Over this rural place we strayed at our will, now among the lanes; picking wild flowers; recalling scraps of songs; listening to the skylark, while the fresh breeze coming up the river with the tide fanned Alice's cheek and heightened the soft colour which was one of her charms. Sometimes we left the fields and walked along the high Embankment watching the laden barges slowly going up or down and the sailing tilt-boats bound for Richmond: or the fishermen in mid-stream with their nets: or the wherries plying with their fares and the swans: admiring, in a word, the life and animation of the river at Westminster and above it. Chiefly, however, Alice loved the fields, where in the morning we were always alone save for a gardener here and there at work. Since the life that she saw around her was such as she saw – made up of debtors' prisons, noisy duck-hunters, prize-fighters and drunken profligates, what wonder if she loved to linger where she was apart from the vileness of men and women? To meditate: to muse: to sing all alone, for my companionship counted nothing: was her greatest joy. So it has continued: even now she loves to wander alone beneath the trees – they are other trees under another sky – and lift up her voice to Heaven, which answers by giving her thoughts, always new and always holy.

It was in the middle of May, the poet's month, when we were thus roaming in the fields. Alice carried a handful of hawthorn. She sang as she went. Dear Heart! how she sang! Yet I know not what. It was Prayer: it was Praise: it was Adoration: it was Worship: I know not what she sang. The larks were dumb because they could not sing with her.

It was the time of which I have spoken – the time of uncertainty. Never had Alice looked so heavenly sweet: she carried her hat by the strings: her hair fell about her shoulders – fair, soft hair, like silk, with a touch of gold in it: her eyes gazed upwards when the light clouds flew across the blue, as if they were things of this world trying to turn her eyes and thoughts away from the things of Heaven. I could endure the doubt no longer. I laid my arm about her waist: the song was troubled: her eyes dropped. 'Oh!' she said. 'What wilt thou?' I drew her closer. The song broke off. I kissed her head, her brow, her lips. We said nothing. She sang no more. But the larks began their hymns of joy: the clouds passed: the sun came out in splendour: the hedges seemed all to burst together into blossom.

Thus it was – so easily – so sweetly – did we pass into the condition of lovers. Yet we had been lovers all the time.

CHAPTER V

WEDDING BELLS AND THE BOOK OF THE PLAY

We were married without delay. Why should we wait? I should be no richer for waiting and time would be passing. We were married, therefore. It was impossible from time to time we should not be reminded of the lowly station in which we lived. When one of my cousins was married, what preparations! what feasts arranged and provided! What troops of guests! What a noble company in the Church! What crowds afterwards – the street filled with beggars come for the broken victuals: the butchers with their din unmusical of marrow-bones and cleavers: the band of music playing outside: the acclamation of the crowd when the bride was brought back from church: the rooms full of guests all with wedding favours: the loving-cup passing from hand to hand: the kissing of the bridesmaids: the merriment and coquetry over the bride-cake and the wedding-ring! All this I remembered and it made me sad for a moment. Not for long, for beside me stood a bride sweeter far than was any cousin of mine: and I was a musician; and I was independent.

We walked over the Fields to St. George's Church and were there married at ten o'clock in the morning. Tom gave away his sister: Alice had no bridesmaids: I had no groomsmen: there was no crowd of witnesses: there was no loving-cup. We were married in an empty church, and after marriage we walked home again to Tom's cottage.

He sat down and played a wedding march, of his own composition, made for the occasion. 'There!' he said, 'that is better than a wedding feast – yet there shall be a wedding feast and of the best.'

It was served at noon: there was a duck pie: a pair of soles: a cowslip tart – a very dainty dish: and fried sweetbreads. After dinner there was a bottle of port.

'Will,' said my brother-in-law, taking the last glass in the bottle, 'who would be one of those unhappy creatures who cannot be married without crowds and noise and a great company? Here are we, contented with ourselves: we have been married: we have had a royal banquet – your sweetbreads, wife, were a morsel for a king. You are contented, Will?'

'Quite.' For I was holding Alice by the hand.

'You never regret the flesh-pots?'

'Never – I have forgotten them.' This was not quite true, but it passed.

'I have sometimes thought' – he looked from me to Alice and from Alice to me again – 'that there might have been regrets.'

'There can be none, now.'

'Good. Hands upon it, brother. We shall miss Alice, shall we not, wife? But she will not be far off. So.' A tear stood in his eye while he kissed his sister. 'Now,' he said, 'enough of sentiment. The day is before us. I have got a man to take my place to-night and another to take yours. On such an occasion, Will, we must not spare and grudge. We will see the sights of London and then – then – none of your Pleasure Gardens – we will – but I have a surprise for you.'

We sallied forth. Never was a wedding-day kept in so strange a fashion. We took oars at the Falcon Stairs to the Tower. Now Alice had spent all her life in or about the Rules of the King's Bench, but she had never seen London City or the Sights of London. To her everything was new. We showed her the Tower and the wild beasts and the arms and armour and the Royal Crown and Sceptre. After the Tower, we walked along Thames Street where are the Custom House and Billingsgate Market and the Steelyard and the Monument. We climbed up the Monument for the sake of the view: it was a clear day, and we could discern in the distance Lambeth Palace and the Church and perhaps even, one was not sure, the cottage which we had taken on the Bank. After this we went to see the Guildhall and the famous Giants: then the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange: we looked at the shops in Cheapside: they are the richest shops in the world, but the mercers and haberdashers do not put out in the window their costly stuffs to tempt the shoplifter. 'You must imagine, Alice,' I told her, 'the treasures that lie within: some time if we ever become rich you shall come here and buy to your heart's content.' Then we entered St. Paul's, that solemn and magnificent pile: here we heard part of the afternoon service, the boys in their white surplices singing like angels, so that the tears rolled down my girl's face – they were tears of praise and prayer, not of repentance. From St. Paul's we walked up the narrow street called the Old Bailey and saw the outside of Newgate. Now had we known what things we were to do and to suffer in that awful place, I think we should have prayed for death. But Heaven mercifully withholds the future.

It was then about five o'clock. We went to a coffee-house and took some coffee and ratafia. The animation of the place; the brisk conversation; the running about of the boys: the fragrant odour of the coffee: pleased us. There were coffee-houses in the High Street, but they lacked the vivacity of this on Ludgate Hill, where Templars, Doctors of Divinity, and the mercers and goldsmiths of Ludgate Hill and Fleet Street were assembled together to talk and drink the fragrant beverage which has done so much to soften the manners of the better sort.

'And now,' said Tom, 'for my surprise.'

He called a coach and we drove not knowing whither; he was taking us to Drury Lane.

We were to celebrate our wedding-day by going to the Play.

For my own part I had never – for reasons which you will understand – been allowed to go to the Play. To sober-minded merchants the Play was a thing abhorrent: a hot-bed of temptation: the amusements of Prodigals and Profligates. Therefore I had never seen the Play. Nor had Alice or her sister-in-law, while Tom, who had once played in the orchestra, had never seen the Play since his debts carried him off to the King's Bench.

We found good places in the Boxes: the House was not yet half full and the candles were not all lighted: many of the seats were occupied by footmen waiting for their mistresses to take them: in the Pit the gentlemen, who seemed to know each other, were standing about in little knots conversing with the utmost gravity. One would have thought that affairs of state were being discussed: on the contrary, we were assured, they were arguing as to the merits or the blemishes of the piece, now in its third night.

Presently the musicians came in and the cheerful sound of tuning up began: then the House began to fill up rapidly; and the orange girls made their way about the Pit with their baskets, and walked about the back of the boxes calling out their 'fine Chaney orange – fine Chaney orange.' Why do I note these familiar things? Because they were not familiar to me: because they are always connected in my mind with what followed.

The play was 'The Country Girl.' The story is about an innocent Country Girl, an heiress, who knows nothing of London, or of the world. Her guardian wants to marry her himself for the sake of her money, though he is fifty and she is twenty: as he cannot do so without certain papers being drawn up, he makes her believe that they are married by breaking a sixpence, and brings her to London with him. How she deceives him, pretends this and that, makes appointments and writes love-letters under his very nose, wrings his consent to a subterfuge and marries the man she loves – these things compose the whole play.

The first Act, I confess, touched me little. The young fellow, the lover, talks about the girl he loves: her guardian is introduced: there is no action: and there were no women. I felt no interest in the talk of the men: there was an old rake and a young rake; the soured and gloomy guardian, and the lover. They did not belong to my world, either of the City or of St. George's Fields.

But in the second Act the Country Girl herself appeared and with her as a foil and for companion the town woman. Now the Country Girl, Peggy by name, instantly, on her very first appearance, ravished all hearts. For she was so lovely, with her light hair hardly dressed at all, hanging in curls over her neck and shoulders, her bright eyes, her quick movements, that no one could resist her. She brought with her on the stage the air of the country; one seemed to breathe the perfumes of roses and jessamine. And she was so curious and so ignorant and so innocent. She had been taken, the evening before, to the Play: she found the actors 'the goodliest, properest men': she liked them 'hugeously': she wants to go out and see the streets and the people. Her curmudgeon of a guardian comes in and treats her with the barbarity of a natural bad temper irritated by jealousy. There was a charming scene in which the Country Girl is dressed as a boy so that she may walk in the Park without being recognised by her lover – but she is recognised and is kissed by the very man whom her guardian dreads. There is another in which she is made to write a letter forbidding her lover ever to see her again: this is dictated by the guardian: when he goes to fetch sealing-wax she writes another exactly the opposite and substitutes it. Now all this was done with so much apparent artlessness and so much real feminine cunning that the play was charming whenever the Country Girl was on the stage.

It was over too soon.

'Oh!' cried Alice. 'She is an angel, sure. How fortunate was the exchange of letters! And how lucky that he was made, without knowing it, to grant his consent. I hope that her lover will treat her well. She will be a fond wife, Will, do you not think?'

And so she went on as if the play was real and the Country Girl came really from the country and the thing really happened. The name of the actress, I saw on the Play Bill, was Miss Jenny Wilmot. I am not surprised looking back on that evening. The wit and sparkle of her words seemed, by the way she spoke them, invented by herself on the spot. She held the House in a spell: when she left the stage the place became instantly dull and stupid: when she returned the stage became once more bright.

We went back by water: it was a fine evening: a thousand stars were gleaming in the sky and in the water: we were all silent, as happens when people have passed a day of emotions. At my brother-in-law's cottage we made a supper out of the remains of the dinner, and after supper Alice and I went away to the house we had taken at Lambeth, beside the church. And so our wedded life began.

There was another incident connected with my wedding which turned out to be the innocent cause of a great deal that happened afterwards.

Among my former friends in the City was a certain Mr. David Camlet who had a shop in Bucklersbury for the sale of musical instruments. He allowed me the run of the place and to try different instruments; it was he who first taught me to play the harpsicord and suffered me to practise in his back parlour overlooking the little churchyard of St. Pancras. The good old man would also converse with me – say, rather, instruct me in the history of composers and their works. Of the latter he had a fine collection. In brief he was a musician born and, as we say, to the finger tips; a bachelor who wanted no wife or mistress; one who lived a simple happy life among his instruments and with his music. Whether he was rich or not, I do not know.

He knew the difficulties which surrounded me: I used to tell him all: my father's prejudice against music: my own dislike of figures and accounts: my refuge in the highest garret when I wished to practice – only at such times when my father was out of the house: my beloved teacher in the King's Bench Rules: he encouraged me and warned me: he took the most kindly interest in my position, counselling always obedience and submission even if by so doing I was forbidden to practise at all for a time: offering his own parlour as a place of retreat where I could without fear of discovery practise as much as I pleased.

When I was turned out of the house, I made haste to inform him what had happened. He lifted up his hands in consternation. 'What?' he cried. 'You, the only son of Sir Peter Halliday, Knight, Alderman, ex-Lord Mayor, the greatest merchant in the City: the heir to a plum – what do I say? Three or four plums at the least: the future partner of so great a business: the future owner of a fleet, and the finest and best appointed fleet on the seas – and you throw all this away – '

'But,' I said, 'I will be nothing but a musician.'

'Thou shalt be a musician, lad. Wait – thou shalt have music for a hobby. It is good and useful to be a patron of music: to encourage musicians.'

'But I would be a musician by profession.'

'It is a poor profession, Will. Believe me, it is a beggarly profession. If you think of making money by it – give up that hope.'

That day I had ringing in my ears certain glowing words of Tom Shirley upon the profession and I laughed.

'What do I care about poverty, if I can only be a musician? Mr. Camlet, you have been so kind to me always, do not dissuade me. I have chosen my path,' I added with the grandeur that belongs to ignorance, 'and I abide by my lot.'

He sighed. 'Nay, lad, I will not dissuade thee. Poverty is easy to face, when one is young: it is hard to bear when one is old.'

'Then we shall be friends still, and I may come to see you sometimes when I am a great composer.'

He took my hand. 'Will,' he said, with humid eyes, 'Music is a capricious goddess. It is not her most pious votary whom she most often rewards. Be a musician if she permits. If not, be a player only. Many are called but few are chosen. Of great composers, there are but one or two in a generation. 'Tis an eager heart, and an eager face. The Lord be good to thee, Will Halliday!'

From time to time I visited this kind old man, telling him all that I did and hiding nothing. At the thought of my playing at the riverside tavern for the sailors to dance he laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. 'Why,' he said, 'it was but yesterday that I looked in at Change, because it does one good sometimes to gaze upon those who, like the pillars of St. Paul's bear up and sustain this great edifice of London. Among the merchants, Will, I saw thy respected father. Truly there was so much dignity upon his brow: so much authority in his walk: so much mastery in his voice: so much consideration in his reception: that I marvelled how a stripling like thyself should dare to rebel. And to think that his son plays the fiddle in a sanded tavern for ragged Jack tars to dance with their Polls and Molls. I cannot choose but laugh. Pray Heaven, he never learn!'

But he did learn. My good cousin kept himself informed of my doings somehow, and was careful to let my father know.

'Sir Peter looks well,' Mr. Camlet went on. 'He is perhaps stouter than is good for him: his cheeks are red, but that is common: and his neck is swollen more than I should like my own to be. Yet he walks sturdily and will wear yet, no doubt many a long year. London is a healthy place.'