“She’ll be back soon, and we’ll need to get ready to leave for the performance,” she reminded him.
Rowland Carlton yawned and stretched lazily. He was a tall, lean man in his middle to late twenties with a strong-featured face and a thatch of auburn hair. The grandiloquent name was not his own, but one which had been suggested for his use in his barnstorming days by the proprietor of the company of strolling players.
“Looks well on the handbills, me lad,” this enterprising showman had said. “Take my tip — if you want to get on in this business, you need a grand moniker, not something like Joe Bloggs or Will Smith.”
One name had seemed as good as another to the recipient of this advice, so Rowland Carlton he had remained, though known more familiarly as Rowly to his associates. And though the necessity for a name that looked well on the handbills had never, alas, arisen since his time with the barnstormers, he still clung to the hope that someday it might.
“Reckon so,” he said, in answer to Phyllis’s reminder. “Old cow — pity we can’t find another ken hereabouts.”
Phyllis shook her tangled yellow curls. “No chance o’ that,” she answered gloomily. “Who else wants to take in show folk o’ our sort? Reckon we’re lucky to get this, which we wouldn’t ’ave done if Betty ’adn’t tipped me the wink.”
Betty was one of the washerwomen responsible for the theatrical costumes at Astley’s, a good-hearted creature who had taken a fancy to Phyllis.
Carlton rolled off the bed and began gathering up his scattered garments.
“Who was that swell you was talking to the other night?” asked Phyllis as she watched him.
“What swell?”
“A good-lookin’, dark feller, dressed in fine clothes. ’E was with you in the passage outside the changing rooms — Wednesday, I think it was.”
“Oh, that feller. Don’t know ’is name; ’e didn’t tell me.”
“What did ’e want, then?” asked the girl curiously.
Carlton hesitated, pretending to be taken up with putting on his shoes. He was fond of Phyllis, a pretty little wench and obviously mad about him; but one could never trust females. He was not without experience of the sex, and knew well they were powerful gabsters. To tell one of them anything was to publish it to the world. Besides, he himself knew little enough as yet of what this man’s purpose with him might be, even if a promise of strict secrecy had not been exacted from him. The lure held out to him was a future free from want, an undreamt-of prosperity; but what he must do to attain this Eldorado was as yet unexplained. First he must undertake to place himself unreservedly in the stranger’s hands; it had been explained to him carefully that this would mean that Rowland Carlton must vanish overnight, never to be heard of again. Keen questioning on the stranger’s part had established that there were no family ties to complicate this issue, and he had obviously been anxious to conclude the bargain on their second recent meeting in the Green Park. But tempting though the prospect was, Carlton had hedged. To break free from his present surroundings meant little to him, in spite of Phyllis. There would always be women elsewhere. What made him hesitate was the aura of mystery surrounding the stranger’s proposition and the searching questions which had been put to him concerning his past life. A plain, straightforward offer of employment was one thing, and a very good thing, if it could be had; but this havey-cavey business frankly scared him. He asked for time to consider. The other man tried to press for an immediate answer, but capitulated when he saw that too much haste would only drive Carlton away altogether. Eventually, it was agreed that they were to meet again a month hence at Greenwich Fair, when Carlton would give his final decision.
Maybe he had acted like a fool, thought Carlton, uneasily, to turn down the offer of a job when his prospects were so uncertain. But let his luck at Greenwich decide matters. If he found someone there willing to take him on in any capacity, for however short a spell, then he would whistle this other offer down the wind, and be damned to it. If not — well, there was not much choice but to accept.
Aloud, he said to the girl, “Nothing much.”
“Must have wanted something,” she persisted. “Didn’t seek you out to pass the time o’ day, not a swell like that. You’re keeping something back,” she added, displaying her feminine intuition.
“Well, I thought ’e might be offering me a job, see?” replied Carlton, goaded. “But naught came of it, anyways, so why waste breath?”
“What kind of job — on the road, or what?”
“Oh, Gawd, let me alone, will ye?” the now exasperated man shouted. “I’ve told you all there’s to tell, wench — ’ave done!”
“Hush! Ye’ll bring Ma Gerridge up. She’ll be back any minute.”
She twined her arms about him, closing her mouth over his. He responded mechanically, shaking himself free in a moment, and making for the door.
She closed it behind him; but she stood looking into space thoughtfully for several minutes before eventually beginning to straighten up the room and make herself ready to leave for the next performance at Astley’s.
When James Somerby began walking the wards, Mr. Guy’s Hospital in Southwark had been in existence for ninety years. Mr. Thomas Guy was a successful bookseller of charitable inclinations who late in life had become possessed of a considerable fortune through wise investments. Upon being appointed as a Governor of St. Thomas’s Hospital in 1704 he began to give serious attention to this form of charity. He first created three new wards at St. Thomas’s and donated one hundred pounds per year for the relief of indigent patients after their discharge from the hospital. It later occurred to him that a second hospital was needed, situated close to St. Thomas’s, and accordingly he set about having one built.
The new hospital was surrounded by mean, tortuous streets and alleys crammed with old, tumbledown buildings where epidemics flourished. There was much work to be done, yet the training of medical men was still in its infancy. Gradually over the succeeding years medical and surgical training was taken in hand at the United Hospitals of the Borough, as the two hospitals came to be designated. Lectures were given on medicine, anatomy and surgery; students walked the wards with physicians and surgeons, and were able to watch operations being performed in the hospitals.
There were three classes of students — apprentices, dressers and pupils. The apprentices served the whole of their time with one or other of the surgeons at the hospitals, and hoped eventually to succeed to their master’s post. The dressers and pupils had already served their apprenticeship with a doctor elsewhere, and came to the hospital for six months or a year to study anatomy and learn something of surgery. Dressers held a superior position to pupils; they were attached personally to a particular surgeon to assist him in operations, and sometimes had patients and accident cases confided to their care. They were also responsible for all dressings in the wards. For these privileges they paid a higher fee than the pupils, who were not under the personal supervision of any surgeon and merely looked on and asked questions, pushing their way to the bedside or into the standings at the operating theatres in both hospitals as best they could.
At one o’clock on the day of his sister’s coming out ball, James had been attending an operation in the small, airless theatre of the hospital. A semicircle of railed standings packed with students surrounded the central area where the operating table, made of wood with a movable headrest, was placed directly under a large skylight. The patient, a man of middle years whose left leg was to be amputated, had previously been dosed with the only anaesthetic available, a stiff shot of gin. Beside the table stood the surgeon, Mr. Astley Cooper, calm and confident, attended by his dressers and apprentices. James was carrying a dresser’s receptacle containing plasters, bandages and other dressings, which besides being necessary to the business in hand, was a much valued symbol of his office.
The students in the standings kept jostling for position and calling out, “Heads! Heads!” every time those around the table impe
ded their view of the proceedings. The noise and confusion abated a little as the surgeon began his task. It was all over in a matter of minutes, for Mr. Cooper’s skill in the business was famed. Afterwards it was for James and the others to play their part, and then the patient was removed to the wards. The surgeon washed his hands at a side table on which stood a china ewer and basin; removed his operating coat, which was hung on a hook in the wall; and resumed his street coat. Meanwhile, the students fought their way out of the theatre to rush down the stairs and across the street to St. Thomas’s, where the jostling and pushing began all over again as they crowded into the lecture theatre.
James had accompanied the groaning patient into the ward, offering such solace as he was able, before making his own way to the lecture at St. Thomas’s, one of a series on the bones of the skull. Striding purposefully along the central colonnade, which gave access under cover to the outlying buildings, he paused for a few minutes to speak a friendly word to a woman on crutches whom he was passing.
“Good day to you, Mrs. Dorston. You seem to be swinging along at a great rate on your crutches.”
“Good day to you, doctor.” She bobbed her head, the nearest approach she could make to a curtsey. “Yes, I’m getting about a bit now. I’ve been to the service in the Chapel the last few days.”
“Good. You’ll soon be home. I daresay you’ll not be sorry for that.”
She pursed her lips. “Many ways, I’m better off here, though there’s no rules at home.”
He frowned, knowing something of the neighbourhood from which she came. The hospital, rough though it seemed to anyone accustomed to a genteel background, must appear a haven to such as Mrs. Dorston. He was too much his parents’ son not to feel compassion for the patients’ sufferings, however much experience had taught him that an objective, practical approach generally served their interests best. He was always ready therefore to spare some of his time for listening to them, in the hope that easing the mind might contribute to ease of body.
“But you will be glad to rejoin your family,” he suggested.
She snorted. “I’ve no family, sir, leastways only a grandson I’ve not set eyes on these eight years. Last time I did see him was at Bartholomew Fair — he was playacting in a booth there. He didn’t know me at first, doctor, because it was five years since I’d left him with some fairground folk to get a living. He was twelve, then, or thereabouts.” She sighed. “I didn’t want to leave him, but it was the best I could do at the time. I’d a drunken husband, y’ see, sir — my second: a bad mistake on my part, but how’s a woman to know? He knocked the child about, so it was best to send him away. I kept my promise to my poor girl — she died giving birth to him. I said I’d look after the little lad, and I did my best,” she repeated, dully. “No notion where he is now, but he’s a man full grown and can look out for himself.”
“I’m sorry,” he replied, feeling the inadequacy of the words. “And your husband?”
“He’s been gone these ten years. Killed in a street brawl, doctor, and nothing any of you medical gentlemen could have done for him. Someone split his head with a cleaver. I hope I’m a Christian woman, sir, but many’s the time I’d been tempted to do the same myself. He brought me low, spent all my money, left me to scratch along as best I could. I should have had more sense than to take up with him, but a body gets lonely. Ah, well, no point in going back over the past,” she concluded, shifting one of the crutches into a more comfortable position under her armpit. “You’re very kind to listen to an old woman’s mitherings, but I mustn’t take up any more of your time, and Sister will be keeping a sharp look out for me in the Ward. A real Tartar, that one, though I don’t mean to complain. Good day, doctor.”
She made an awkward bob again, and swung away.
James continued along the colonnade, reflecting, as he so often did, on the lot of these people who came under the care of the hospital. Sometimes their bodies could be healed; but who could do anything to improve their lives? If every wealthy man in the country turned philanthropist, the combined means would scarcely suffice to tear down every mean hovel and neglected tenement, to open up the foul alleys and courts to air and sunlight, to give the miserable inhabitants better sanitation, better food, and adequate clothing. He had often talked on this subject with other medical students from the Northern and Midland towns, where the growing requirements of mechanised industry for labour were producing mushroom housing of insanitary back-to-back dwellings, to add to the existing squalor of the overcrowded conditions already existing in the older parts of these towns.
He thought of Alvington, where the air was pure and sweet; and where, even if many of the cottages had the same lack of satisfactory sanitation, at least they had gardens and were not all huddled together in one vast block so that their occupants could breathe nothing but foul air. And from Alvington he passed on to thinking of the handsome town houses in Cavendish Square, spacious homes of elegance and taste, well-appointed and run by servants whose lot was far superior to that of Mrs. Dorston and her like.
His abstraction was broken into as he ran down the steps leading from the colonnade into the front square, and saw a coach standing there with a familiar crest on its panels. A moment later its occupant alighted and came towards him with a cheery greeting. He recognised Shaldon with some surprise.
“James! How are you, old fellow?” Shaldon took his hand in a firm grip. “So this is where you torture your victims, you old bonesetter, is it? Not a bad place,” he went on, looking appraisingly about him. “Quite a pleasant building, in fact — might almost be a gentleman’s desirable residence, to employ the terms of the house agents. And is this your founder over here, perched up on this plinth — Mr. Thomas Guy himself, what? Looks a bit worried, don’t he? But I daresay he’s a good deal on his mind. Come to that,” concluded Shaldon, with a change of tone as he looked shrewdly into his friend’s face, “Come to that, James, so do you.”
“I? No, I’m as right as a trivet,” James assured him. “Might have been brooding a trifle over conditions prevailing in the slum quarters of the town. Hits one, sometimes.”
Shaldon cocked an eyebrow at him. “Need to talk about it for a while, get it off your chest, what? I’m your man, James. But we can’t talk here. What d’you say we adjourn to the George for a while? Can you spare the time?”
James hesitated. “I’m on my way to a lecture, in fact.”
With a sudden flash of inspiration, he realised that it might be no bad thing to try to interest Shaldon in the matters over which he had just been brooding. Shaldon was already a wealthy man, and when he inherited the title and estate one day, he would be even wealthier. If conditions were ever to be improved for the poor either in London or elsewhere, more philanthropists like Thomas Guy were needed. Why should not Viscount Shaldon be one of them? James, who knew him well, realised that he was not simply the somewhat cynical man-about-Town he appeared. There was more to Tony than that; at Oxford and since he had shown himself receptive of new ideas, ready to listen to those who could expound them. Why should he not listen to James on this subject, perhaps with the most desirable results? One lost lecture, even to a conscientious student like James Somerby, seemed a small price to pay for the achievement of an ideal.
“But I daresay I could miss it, for once,” he added, hastily. “I can get the notes from John Keats, who shares my lodging in St. Thomas’s Street. He’s a reliable student, for all he writes poetry in his spare time, and we’re tolerably good friends.”
“Poetry? That certainly seems a strange accompaniment to medical studies. But after all, you’re of a literary turn of mind yourself. I don’t wish to encourage you in a dereliction of duty, but if you’re quite sure…”
James insisted that he was, so the two made their way on foot to the nearby George Inn, Shaldon having instructed his coachman to tool around for a bit and come back later. Once inside the bustling hostelry, Shaldon engaged a private room, and over some refreshment listened wh
ile his friend talked long and earnestly.
“You’ve only to walk around the poor quarters of the Borough,” finished James, at last. “See the filth and squalor, the children’s heads covered in ringworm, their faces with impetigo, the men suffering from glanders—”
“What the devil is that?” interrupted Shaldon.
“It’s a disease contracted from horses — attacks people in the leather trade, too, and there are quite a few saddlers in the area.”
“Well, you’ve convinced me, old chap. I’ll make a donation to your hospital. Get my man of business to see to it at once. No, damn it,” he amended, finishing his tankard of ale and standing up purposefully. “See to it myself. Take me to this Treasurer of yours whom you seem to think so much of. What d’you say his name is?”
“Harrison. Mr. Benjamin Harrison. He’s a first rate administrator, even though some complain that he’s too autocratic. But I think perhaps a good administrator needs to be autocratic at times.”
“Well, I’ll give him leave to be as autocratic as he wishes in administering my blunt — so long as it does some good. Come, let’s be on our way.”
Accordingly they returned to the hospital, where Shaldon sent in his card to Mr. Harrison, reflecting as he did so that it would do James no harm for the Treasurer to discover that one of the students under his authority possessed friends of rank. Knowing that such a thought was unlikely to cross the less worldly mind of James, he made no mention of it.
The business concluded, both young men stepped out into the forecourt just as Shaldon’s coach turned into the entrance gate.
“And now, can I drop you at your lodging?” asked Shaldon.
“No, I thank you, not yet. There are still matters awaiting my attention here. Besides, it’s only a step away.”
“You’ve not forgotten that we are both due at your sister’s ball this evening? My original purpose in coming here was to offer to convey you to Cavendish Square.”
A Regency Scandal Page 29
