Palace and Hovel; Or, Phases of London LifeKirwan, Daniel Joseph
History
Palace and Hovel; Or, Phases of London Life
Kirwan, Daniel Joseph
London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- Social life and customs
After the Duke left England for the Continent, a sale of his effects
was had. Hundreds of purchasers attended the sale out of curiosity,
as they had attended the sale of "Skittle's" furniture, or as the
Parisian dandies and lorettes attended the sale of the household gods
of Marguerite Gautier, afterwards known as the "Dame aux Camelias."
Every article belonging to the Duke realized a value of more than two
or three hundred per cent. over its original value. Crowds of "snobs"
and "cads" bought whips and pipes, riding jackets, cigar cases, canes,
gloves, and boots, pictures of French dancers and German soubrettes,
as well as articles of crockery, at the most extravagant prices,
simply because they had once been in the possession of a real live
Duke, although he was a scamp. One miserable little tea-broker gave
twenty-five pounds for a worn, poorly bound copy of the "Kisses of
Johannes Secundus," with the idea that he was getting something very
immoral--but he was disappointed of course.
I saw him twice, this Duke of Hamilton, once in a low cabaret in Paris,
which had for a name the strange and I thought very inappropriate title
of the "Groves of the Evangelists."
It was in a little street, or rather lane, called the Rue Belle-Cuisse,
which is in the Quartier Breda.
It was a low dingy little hole, this "Groves of the Evangelist," and
the people present were chiefly infantry privates of some of the line
regiments, who serve as a part of the garrison of Paris. They were a
hard-drinking, ruffianly lot, and the women who sat on their laps were
of all the obscene birds of night that I encountered in Paris, the very
worst and most abandoned.
A little girl, with a bold face and wearing a slatternly, torn dress,
with a brazen pair of steely blue eyes, acted as bar-girl in this
place, and measured out to the customers, petit verres of fiery Nantes
brandy.
Two men, young, and fashionably dressed, sat at a table, who appeared
to be strangers in Paris, although they conversed fluently enough, in
French, with each other.
One of these was a fair, girlish-faced, young gentleman, with hair
which is always termed auburn by the poets, while, as a contradiction
it is generally denominated, in police returns--"red hair." This was
the Duke of Hamilton.
[Sidenote: VILLAINY OF THE MARQUIS OF WATERFORD.]
The second person at the table was a tall, athletic, and
handsome-looking fellow, of twenty-four or five years of age, with a
smooth face, daring, black eyes, and a massive head well set upon a
pair of broad shoulders.
This individual was John De La Poer Beresford, Marquis of Waterford,
Earl of Tyrone, Viscount Tyrone, and a Baron five times over in England
and Ireland, a relation of the Archbishop of Armagh, Protestant Primate
of Ireland, and having an income of about half a million dollars,
annually, in his own right.
[Illustration: MARQUIS OF WATERFORD.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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