The Making of a Novelist | Page 8

asking to be excused for an hour or two.
'Take back that card,' said the special (I was a witness of the scene), 'say that I represent' (he named one of the most influential of the London dailies), 'and that I insist upon an interview.'
This time a sufficiently discourteous message came back; and the mighty personage, after loafing about for an hour or two, retired and wrote an article in which he described the people of the Black Country as savages, and revived a foolish old libel or two which at one time had currency concerning them. The old nonsense about the champagne was there, for one thing. I know the Black Country miners pretty well--I ought to do so, at least, for I was born in the thick of them and watched their ways from childhood to manhood--and I never knew a working miner who had so much as heard of champagne. Now and then a prosperous 'butty' (Anglicè, chartermaster) may have tried a bottle; but the working collier's beverage is 'pit beer.' The popular recipe for this drink is to 'chuck three grains of malt into the cut, and drink as much as ye like of it.'
I remember the story of one wine party which met at the Scott's Arms at Barr. I dare say Mr. Henry Irving knows the house, for he is President of the Literary Society there. The tale was told me by the landlord. Three chartermasters sat at a table in the bar, and old Pountney overheard their whispered talk.
'Didst iver drink port, Jim?'
'No; what is it?'
'Why, port--port wine; it's a stuff as the gentlefolks is fond on.'
'I reckon it'll be main expensive, then.'
'Oh, we can stand it amongst the three on us. Got any port wine, landlord?'
'Yes, some of the finest in the county.'
'What's it run to?'
'Seven-and-six a bottle.'
'They figured it out,' the landlord told me, 'with a bit of a stump of an ode pencil on the top o' the table, and when they'd made up their minds as siven and sixpence was half a crown apiece amongst the three on 'em they ordered a bottle. I sent my man down the cellar for it, and I went out to look at my pigs. When I come back again there they was sittin' wry-mouthed an' looking at one another, wi' some muddy-lookin' stuff in the glasses afore 'em. "Gentlemen," I says, "ye don't seem to like your liquor." "Like it!" says one on 'em; "if this is the stuff the gentlefolks drinkin', the gentlefolks is welcome to it for we." I turns to my man, and "Bill," says I, "where did ye get this bottle o' port from?" "Why," he says, "I got it from the fust bin on the left-hand side." "Why, you cussid ode idiot," I says, "you've browt 'em mushroom ketchup!"'

III
It was on May 25, 1865, that I enlisted in her Majesty's Fourth Royal Irish Dragoon Guards. I was just past my eighteenth birthday, and, for reasons not worth specifying nowadays, the world had come to an end. Civil life afforded no appropriate means of exit from this mortal stage, and I was in a condition (theoretically) to march with pleasure against a savage foe. I was ignorant of these little matters, and was not aware of the fact that the Fourth Royal Irish was mainly a stay-at-home regiment.
My ardour for the military life was cooled pretty early. I dare say that things have mended somewhat in the last seven-and-twenty years; but my experience was in the main a record of petty tyrannies and oppressions, at the memory of some of which my blood boils even unto this day. There is a comic side to everything, however, and I can laugh over a good many of my own experiences. I had a dinner engagement that day with a friend in the Haymarket, and finding myself a little too early for it, I stood to watch the fountains playing in Trafalgar Square. My mind was in a state of moody grandeur, which is both comic and affecting to recall at this distance of time. I was quite a misunderstood young person, and was determined to be revenged for it, on all and sundry, myself included. The blue-coated brass-buttoned old spider who came to weave his web around me had no need to be elaborate. I closed with him at once, and he led me with a stealthy seeming of indifference into a back yard, where he put the statutory questions and handed over the statutory shilling.
I had supposed that I should at once enter upon my military career, but, to my surprise, I was ordered to report myself at the depot at St. George's Barracks on the following day at noon. Failing this, I was instructed that I should be held