UNDERWORLD
Aidees. That’s what some calls the underworld. The old driver gets us the rino at darks, so as we be caught like bait on the hook. Fences, gangs o’ low pads, old Mother Cocksedge, perhaps her bel nuns too, them does as desired. Like romping Jack tars that bed the flowers o’ Covent Garden. Mrs Grafton charges five shilling, but a sea-captain’s pay runs to twenty shilling per day. Not all us are in the same boat. Not the climbing kinchen sooties, nor the gallowsbirds what gets transported, neither the Billingsgate fishfags. As for the misfortunate chums, them what knaps a bellowser or dances upon nothing in a hempen cravat, that’s to say doing the nipping jig with the death hunter – aidees is death. Make the crossing from Gravesend to Tilbury fort, boatmen’d shake thee out of a tilbury or coachwheel. I meantersay an honest sixpence. Spithead to Botany would cost thee nix, free gratis. Who wins the mare and loses the halter? A free object settling New Holland or a pinchgut lag fee’d at the King’s expense? Slipping over them mackerel mountains on the horizon, then sinking deep down into the southern hemispheres, the under-belly of the world; that’s aidees. How couldst thou steer by stars unseen? ‘Tis no wonder travellers cadge a quaff o’ south-sea mountain when they cross t’other side? Aidees is the dark side of thy dreams, the darker regions, the nightmare of Seven Dials. In which our hero introduces himself A knight of the elbow, me, one of the sharping tribe. Play deuces with the devil’s bones. Ivory, sometimes, but not at Ranelagh’s gaming-tables. Them places with their gardens and gondolas and gilt amphitheatres are only for the heavy swells. They don’t embrace a Scaramouche unless he be an aristo in mask. No cropped heads there, nor shoe-string airs. I’m no dancing-dog, but given the chance I wouldst trip to tabor and pipe with silks and satins at Ranelagh. Nay, I dice in the shady groves of the great wen, where the old sundial was situate. Seven Dials.
St Giles’ Breed Egad, the wicked wiles of Seven Dials Where ne’er-do-wells do wamble round St Giles And Garden ladies flash and trade their wares Alonger Venus fields to Southark stairs Twixt Fore and Chiswell gabble-grinding whores Go toy in alleys, courts, dark side-doors Where boobies gape at bubbies double-dugged While kinchen-morts in padding-kens get mugged Rent double beds three pennorth a night To lie with vagabonds in gay delight Then bolt through cellars, rat-holes, traps, spiked nails O roist’rous rookery that’s Seven Dials Whereupon our hero flashes his gab upon the game of chance One side of the die is marked with two spots or pips. With stiff bristles, there’s luck under the deuce but none under the trey. Bristle hairs secreted are finer than lead. Albeit often-times I put the doctors on with lead loaded at the corners. Got up clever and clean, a high fullam turns up 4, 5 or 6, as against a low fullam that shows 1, 2 or 3 on the face. My lancret is a die of vantage too, neat as ninepence, for it appears sound and square to the green eye of nick-ninnies not awake to the sharp dodge. Yet, ‘tis slung measures, drawn out a shave on the quater and the trey. Ah, how those blessed little doctors give cure to fits of melancholy! Bless my stars, I have push and pull and not a little pish to piss down the devil’s back. I have an aching tooth to turn ace up like Old Mr Goree. And cut a splash at Ranelagh.
In which our hero blows the gaff on the parlous game of paroles in the game of gaff, ‘tis not a half-penny matter nor chuck-farthing in the game of hazard, i run upon the chance of deuces in the game of life, i haze about with trifles and fancies in the game of death, some chums would even chance the choker to get transported in the game of geese, ‘tis the wench what plays her ace and takes the Jack in the game of numbering the waves, the die is cast for most of the scrapings and sweepings of us black beetles, the mobocracy, what wait for dead men’s shoes or that deadly nevergreen
by the bye, WHAT GAME DOST THOU GO UPON? then i would give thee upon the humble suit Unbeknownst to him, our hero sets all at cinques and sices To say sooth, my nabs am a knight and barrow pig in boozing kens. ‘Tis here Satan stays when the dice tumble and roll among us sharps. S’death, he plays the deuce with us, his very blackguards! I have a passion for the spinning die – and indeed for spinning a twist - but one plaguy rub is that I am become the sport of fickle fortune and old Harry both, that sneaking tempter and trial of our own philosophies. I live too close to the wood to be frighted by owls, but I have come within an ace of sitting on the penniless bench or gone to Rot-His-Bone in the Fleet, beat hollow like gourds. Even making a die at my own hand when the rough nails put the nips in. What sayest thou? Have I fooled away all my
chinks? Many a spark piques his nibs on the plenitude of his breeches pocket. Fears are I have coveted dead cargo. How our hero deals with the hollow die Then I fell in with a school at Bushy Park. This nob-pitcher hailed from Fulham, but seemeth not high fullams but a boman ken bang up to the mark in a scarlet waistcoat and strummel faked in twig, more inclined to shake heels with whores than shake elbows with gamesters. Mind, methought Jack-a dandy was in alliance with a swivel-eyed pug, a prize scrapper if ever was, whose mug was flattened by a mashed-in conk and whose darkened, screwed ogle appeared to tip the wink in that greasy glim what was shed by the flicker of candles. As if this bullet-head were in half-mourning. Like as not he worked the piazzas of Covent Garden armed with bludgeon or couteau. Round his scragger, he’d strewn a blood-red fancy. This devil would set the dice upon you soon enough. Both spoke pedlars’ French, thieves’ cant. I gab some parleyvoo myself. O what an infinitude of sharps lurk in a hazard-drum! Making a fourth gamer was a fop in laced ruffles and silver trimmings and red highheeled shoes, what prated but little save through his purse. Distrait by the glow on the link-boys’ cheeks, puff-guts would have found White’s Chocolate House more commodely. But we were a world away from St James’s Street, though knights of the pad frequent both. The four on us plus a trio o’ young squibs or prenticed puffs played a few bouts of crabs, two aces, each winning as much as he lost. I danced to Mr Fulham’s lead. Under pretence of a jolly, jovial air, he sent for half a dozen bowls of bishop – a mixture of red wine, bitter oranges, spices and sugar. ‘My game is seven’s-the-main,’ he said, giving me the bag to hold. Seven and eleven are the two casts upon which the seven is the main. Me, I stood a queer lay, but such is the fever of dicing. Then he took up his dice-box with the two familiar cones. Those pearl-pale ivories held a strange lure and lustre in that guttering half-light. He cast three dice. Each die turned up trey. Despair was writ large on the sharp’s dial. Scarcely could I contain my glee. I went it blind. As the dice ran not to his purpose, I eagerly lay twenty guineas the touch on the table, the sum total of my purse. The chance was mine.
‘You lay high stakes,’ quoth Fulham, full of himself. All squinters fell hungrily on the dice-box. Fulham shook the box with twitchety fives and final flourish. Lice were playing at prick-the-garter on my skin. The dice rattled a skeleton’s jig, then went a-twirling through the airs of Goddess Fortune, rolled crankily with hiccup and sliding, not true and straight, and settled with glum solemnity. ‘A nick,’ smiled the caster. The pug’s half-shut eye tipped another wink in the lurid glim of candle. ‘Twas I what now had the shakes. Distrait in my haste and heat, my peepers had failed to spy the sharper’s sleight of hand. Plain as a pipe-stem, the scab had swapped cubes with dice secured under board. ‘Come now, tip us the dues,’ said the cro, his viz black as a pitch-kettle. ‘Nouns, I am quite cleaned out!’ cries me, man a-hanging, opening up my empty purse. ‘Nix to shake with a wench even.’ Scot and lot loomed like Marshallsea out of the blackest o’ fogs. ‘What!’ he railed. ‘Skinned! Where’s the blood thou goes a-gusseting with? Pize take it! Fetch the army captain! Get the porter too!’ The cony-catcher’s dog jumped to it. ‘I’ll bash ‘im i’ the bone-box, the bell-bastard! Give ‘im a bellier or two fer three skips ov a louse!’ The pug lost his bout with a punk of break-teeth words. ‘Nay, get one of the roaring boys to darken his daylights!’ ‘I’ll go get that harman-beck what eats fist-meat, Will. An’ rub this ‘ere maggot-brain to the nubbin’-ken.’ ‘Thou hast stung me with thy cogs. Those little doctors are a palsy upon one’s purse,’ says me, bar the bubble, honest as the skin between the horns. Of a sudden, brazen-face lay at me with fists flying, dealing me a right nozzler. ‘Thou trimmest me and I’ll trim thy jacket! I’ll make dice of thy bones!’ Bloody end to me! ‘Twas true. Clubs were indeed this bilker’s trumps. ‘You gammoned me with your dispatches! I wish my bloody eyes may drop out of it if it be not true!’ Which they might have on account of his throttler.
‘I’ll be one up on your taw when the dunners come collect your debts!’ False as a bulletin, faker Fulham knew how to push his face by bluff and bluster. By which our hero leads the reader into the underworld by doubtful means In the great stink we kicked up, I fair took to my heels – Little Earl Street, Great White Lion Street, Queen Street, Great Earl Street, Little Earl Street - how mazed I was in my plight! - through underground cellars, over railings spiked like Lord Mansfield’s teeth - a glaring obstacle for the constables – round the Woodyard Brewery between throngs of hawkers selling halfpenny ballads and area-rogues and their pullets plotting knavish tricks - ‘Pennorth o’ gin, luv?’ – skulked sideways through squinty alleys heaped with slops from slums and rotting rubbish and bodies what had swallowed tavern-tokens robbed blind by a covey of Covent Garden nuns in new-sower’d manteaus and tawdry ribbands alonger star-gazing bodies of Fulham virgins boarded and bearded by grunting pig-tails, past the bawdy-houses of buttock-brokers – ‘Hello, dear, fancy a frisk?’, ‘Watcha, charmer, gi’me a slip-slop!’ (o what bubbery!) – swam through a tide of hacks of Bartholomew beaus and barrow-men built like Bartholomew boars – ‘Hey, ‘old up, yer blind dog!’ - weaved twixt carmen hawking brawn and chirpy birdcage sellers and pedlar sneaks on the bustle - rode on Shank’s nag down a steep lane from the Strand to the stairs at bankside - ‘Black yer crabshells, yer ‘onour?’ - procured a son of Neptune, nay, a weary, woeful waterman, and with my last sixpence buried in my breeches cly took boat for Lambeth. ‘Lay the axe to the roots of gambling!’ cried a pudding-sleeves in a penthouse-nab through the murk. ‘Albion’s finest oaks all shaken down! We diced away America with tokens of vice!’ Then his brimstone served warning: ‘Living by the die for the craps will end by dying on the craps!’ In a pig’s whisper I fancied myself branded with a red-hot iron on the ball of my righthand thumb – a stark black T! I could not but despise myself e’en at the shame of a cold iron. ‘God is not servant to our pastimes and sports and peccadilloes! Repent, all ye sinners! Passions play the devil!’ Ruined by the die, how could I keep back and belly? I had diced myself into a spunging house.
Our hero shows his ingenuity at last But not afore I had prised the two counterfeit threepences hid in the heel of my stocking. The man in black had me remember that the Methody’s religion was more fashionable than anything but the brag-party. When I stumbled across a huddle of braggers on the south bank, I seized my chance to make a saving game of it. In my trick and a half of shuffling, I slyly fingered the deck lest chance itself should choose the card. A pair of aces proved the best brag. With a guinea gained, I could swagger along the Grand Walk and arcades at Vauxhall ahind my vizard. How our hero solaces in Vauxhall Gardens Take boat to lewd Lambeth, the gardens at Fox Hall Philander in mask like a liquorous cock-fool Strum Phyllis and Phoebe atop o’ Mount Venus And Philomel busting sans stays in snugs heinous Neath patches and powders and paints and sensation Champagnes under lanthorns, cascades, cold collation Such gambling and gambols of wanton preambles With nymphs of the pave and swains from the shambles To songs of sweet nightingales, sighs of the nightshade Molls trip and coves troll on their amorous prom’nade The art of dissembling or doubling one’s station Affecting the air of milord or Alsatian O masques and ridottos, ham slices of Vauxhall What ardent adventures in abbesses’ fox-holes!
Our hero speculates on the nature of true die there be divers kinds of cogging the counterfeit coiner faking queer screens the masked maid like an owl in an ivy bush decked out as duchess in velvet cardinal the mirror secreted in the palm of the sharp what faces it out with a card of ten pips the bag wig of a bald nymph of the night the mechanic cascades of Vauxhall prompted at nine of the clock Mr. Walpole’s folly at Strawberry Hill Jonathan Wilde, thief-taker as well as thief, at the cover of buckle-maker to screen his gangs from the justass; a black diamond, Wilde, what buckled with the courtesan Mary Milliner, her what entertained his gulls in the fooleries of the flesh down dark alleys, afore the humbug himself was put in buckles by the watchmen the rhyming scribbler what screeves in fancy ways upon pretence yet cannot aver the truth viz. Ranelagh, Ranelagh, ever so mannerly etc. Argal what argufies true die?
Michael Small .
December 29, 2007-February 15, 2008