The Skull and the Nightingale. Michael Irwin

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СКАЧАТЬ in such gatherings I have as yet heard little of consequence. The prevailing gossip is concerned with petty feuds and scandals. I must wonder whether you would find such stuff worth your attention.

       More rewardingly, I have sampled other levels of London life, attending theatres and auctions, dallying in coffee-houses, listening to mountebanks and ballad-singers. We have been enjoying some brisk spring weather: the April breezes blow, the dust swirls and the shop-signs swing and creak overhead.

       On Tuesday last, near Charing Cross, I was one of a gathering held in thrall by a street-performer. He stood beside a cart, a fat fellow with a hanging belly. His nationality I could not guess, but he knew little English. He claimed attention by a bold presence and a big voice.

       ‘Three Acts!’ he cried. ‘Three Acts!’ – and brandished as many fingers in the air.

       ‘One: I drink!’

       He produced from his cart a bucket, filled with water. Holding it aloft with both hands he put his lips to the brim and began to drink, at first – amid some shouts of derision – quite cautiously, but then with greater confidence. Several times he broke off to draw breath, but always resumed to gulp more mightily, his audience watching with growing respect as it became plain that he would imbibe the entire contents. The contours of his body were visibly altered as the water filled it.

       There was some applause when he finished, but he silenced it with a gesture.

       ‘Two: I eat!’

       Turning the bucket upside-down he placed on it a glass bowl containing several bright green frogs. He took one out and raised it in his fist, squirming and struggling. To the accompaniment of a groan from the spectators, he placed it in his mouth. With a frightful grimace he somehow contrived that two of the legs protruded, twitching, from the corners of his lips. Then he swallowed it. With less flamboyance, but at a stately pace, he proceeded to gulp down four more.

       Having done so he stood for a moment with closed eyes, taking several deep breaths, as though adjusting the contents of his stomach more commodiously. His audience was now watching intently.

       ‘Three,’ he cried, ‘I bring back! I bring back! Pay, pay! Please pay!’

       He held out his hat, and such was his ascendancy that many a spectator tossed in a coin. Having collected what he could, he motioned us to move back and create a space, within which he remained for some moments stock still. After drawing several deep breaths he opened his mouth wide and with one hand twisted his right ear. At once a great jet of water came from his throat, as though from a fireman’s hose, splashing on the cobbles. Checking it, he extricated from his mouth, alive and flailing, one of the frogs he had swallowed, and dropped the poor Jonah back in the bowl. He repeated the process four more times, so that all five were safely retrieved. There being loud applause he attempted a second collection, but it proved less successful than the first since the performance was complete.

       On an impulse I gave him a crown. After all, the poor devil, adrift in a foreign land, was somehow contriving to make an honest living through exercise of a meagre range of personal talents. I could not but wonder about his daily life. He looked weary, and his clothes were well splashed. What refreshment could he enjoy, having swallowed and regurgitated a gallon of water? What woman would consort with this dank mound? Where, if anywhere, does he live?

       I have renewed acquaintanceship with two of my Oxford companions, Ralph Latimer and Nick Horn. Latimer is fashionably languid, but harbours serious ambitions. As a relative of the Grenvilles he hopes soon to turn his back on his present freedoms and prepare for a higher role. It is less likely that Horn will seek respectability. He is a small, restless, nimble fellow, who will attempt anything by way of diversion. I have seen him climb a cathedral tower, half drunk, and on another occasion, for a five-shilling wager, wrestle with a pig.

       The conversation I enjoy with such friends is livelier than drawing-room chatter, but too often deformed by liquor. Let me offer you a recent specimen, chosen because it recalled to me a discussion at your own table. The hour was late, and we had attained the melancholy mode. Latimer pronounced, with great emphasis: ‘Believe me, friends, there is much in this life to make a man uneasy.’

       This gloomy sentiment made us confoundedly grave. The conversation had been raised to a formidable altitude, but one or two of us tried our wings.

       ‘I am of much the same opinion,’ said a heavy fellow. ‘Can even the best of us survive long enough to learn how to live?’

       I myself ventured, with solemnity: ‘Who knows but that one of us, even before the month is out, may be standing before his Maker? Is not that a tremendous thought?’

       Latimer, unimpressed, was disposed to be argumentative.

       ‘You say “standing”, but the word is prejudicial. Can we so confidently assume the existence of legs in the life to come?’

       To keep the shuttlecock aloft I improvised: ‘At the moment of Judgement might we not be mercifully permitted some temporary sense of perpen- perpendicularity?’

       ‘To be followed by what?’ asked Horn.

       Intimidated by this dark prospect, we all stared into vacancy, and our speculations expired.

       It occurs to me that most people seem to shrink from contemplation of the after-life. Even those who are most earnest during divine service, as though glimpsing eternity, promptly revert to their workaday, unconcerned selves at the final blessing.

       I conclude with a further note on the life of the streets. Within five minutes of leaving a polite assembly last evening I saw a man stumbling along with blood streaming from a wound to his head. London life is everywhere precarious. Even when walking to a steakhouse one may be under challenge. Should that shove be reciprocated? Might that urchin be a thief? How remote from the rural life of reflection. Who can philosophize about swimming while compelled to swim? Last week, feeling a tattered pedestrian press too close I flung him from me. On the instant I regretted my reaction, for the wretch went staggering into the dirt. However, his rags falling open and disclosing two fine watches he was seized as a thief and mauled by the mob. My aggression had been justified by the event, but I might as easily have been wrong.

       Daily I immerse myself further in the life of the city: I look about, listen and explore. You will soon hear further from me.

       I remain, &c.

      In adjusting myself to London life I was greatly influenced by a conversation with Latimer. I had asked him whether he knew the whereabouts of our friend Matt Cullen.

      ‘I do not,’ said he, frowning. ‘But I fear he is a lost man.’

      ‘Lost?’

      ‘His prospects have taken a turn for the worse. He was in London last year, but was rarely seen. Then he vanished. Horn heard that he had returned to his native village to contrive a marriage. It seems that he is gone from us – condemned to rural nonentity.’

      ‘Whereas СКАЧАТЬ