They Hanged My Saintly Billy by Robert Graves Page A

that interested me far more) seated at the next table to us were two men whom I recognized as the famous novelists William Makepeace Thackeray and Charles Dickens! Mr Thackeray, a member of the adjoining Garrick's Club, still makes Evans's, as he has put it, 'my nightly chapel of ease'. He was then engaged in writing his immortal Vanity Fair, though under the misfortune of being married to an insane wife. Mr Dickens, already the author of Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist, had just been offered, and accepted, the editorship of the recently founded Daily News; and Mr Thackeray had been invited to celebrate this success. Mr Dickens lay under the almost equal misfortune of being unhappily married to a woman who had borne him a number of children, while he loved her younger sister to desperation. Will told me all this, sotto voce, observing that domestic unhappiness often positively assisted men of genius to pen immortal works. 'Not that I would ever have read a word written by either of them,' he added, 'had it not been for Dr Stegall and his merry evenings. I find Ruff's Guide to the Turf engrossing enough.'
    He ordered 'Black Velvet' (which proved to be champagne mixed with stout), a couple of dozen oysters, and thin slices of buttered wholemeal bread as a commencer; to be followed by rump-steak and a good claret. On the other side of our table sat a party of provincials, Wolverhampton tradesmen by their accent and garb, who gazed at Will with veneration and astonishment, until presently one of them recognized him. Will bowed gravely but paid no further attention, though it appeared that this was an old schoolfellow; and the chap's 'Dang me, if it isn't Billy Palmer of the Rugeley Yard!' got drowned by a growl from his mates: 'Howd thy rattle, Tinny!' For now the Chairman had rapped on the table with his hammer and was crying: 'Attention, pray, my lords and gentlemen, to the music from Macbeth, No. 63 in the books, if you please!'
    Up came the singers, half a dozen of them being boys with well-controlled trebles, and their rendering of Locke's beautiful melodies entranced us all. A decorous silence reigned, the audience abstaining from any clatter of hardware; but at the end broke into tumultuous applause, clapping their hands and beating on the table with fists and knife-handles.
    I kept my ears open for some sublime or witty remark from the famous novelists, but apart from 'May I trouble you, Sir, to pass the mustard?' or 'These arc indeed capital chops,' I heard nothing of interest except Mr Dickens's discourse on the beneficial effect of Sunday Schools in increasing the number of children who can read and write, thus yearly swelling the literate public. 'I rely upon these former Sunday School pupils to keep my young brood in beef, mutton and potatoes, my dear Thackeray,' said he, 'not upon th e University men and their famili es.'
    'So I judge by your style and your subjects,' Mr Thackeray replied with a sigh that doubtless referred to his own childless state; though it would have sounded deuced crushing to any writer who had a lower opinion of his talents than Charles Dickens.
    The Chairman then rapped for a comic singer, whose name escapes me, but I remember that he sang 'The Derby Ram' in a very arch manner, persuading the audience to expect obscene words because of the rhymes that led up to them, yet shutting his mouth fast like a freshwater mussel when he came to the point, and treating us to a most prodigious wink, as who would say: 'If you know the missing words, laugh by all means, gentl emen, but do not blame me for indecency—for I did not teach you them myself.'
    Will kept replenishing my glass, only occasionally sipping at his own, and derived considerable amusement from the calf-eyes which a great, bearded, bald-headed Fellow of the Royal Academy was making at a handsome boy-soloist, as he sang:
    Mother would have wed me with a Tailor
    And not gi ’ en me my heart's delight,
    But give me the lad with the tarry