The Orange Girl

'Of course, he did. I had none – I went to him and reminded him that he had contributed nothing to the maintenance of his wife, and that he must give me whatever the sum was. He was obliged to give it, otherwise I should have informed the clerks of the Counting-house who I was.'

I laughed. 'Well, but Jenny, there was another man – '

'You are persistent, Sir. Why should I tell you? Well, I will confess. This man protested a great deal less than the others. He was a noble Lord, if that matters. He was quite different from all the rest: he never came to the Green Room drunk: he never cursed and swore: he never shook his cane in the face of footman or chairman: he was a gentle creature – and he loved me and would have married me: well – I told him who and what I was – I will tell you presently – that mattered nothing. He would carry me away from them all. I would have married him, Will: and we should have been happy: but his sister came to see me and she went on her knees crying and imploring me to refuse him because in the history of their family there had never been any such alliance as that with an actress of no family. Would I bring disgrace into a noble family? If I refused, he would forget me, and she would do all in her power for me, if ever I wanted a friend. It was for his sake – if I loved him I would not injure him. And so she went on: and she persuaded me, Will – because, you see, when people pride themselves about their families it is a pity to bring the gutter into it – with Newgate and Tyburn, isn't it?'

'Jenny, what has Newgate got to do with it?'

'Wait and I will tell you. I gave way. It cost me a great deal, Will – more than you would believe – because I had never loved anyone before – and when a woman does love a man – ' The tears rose in her eyes, – 'and then it was that your cousin came to the Theatre.'

Poor Jenny! And she always seemed so cheerful, so lively, so happy! Her face might have been drawn to illustrate Milton's 'L'Allegra.' How could she look so happy when she had this unhappy love story and this unhappy marriage to think upon?'

'Will,' she cried passionately, 'I am the most unhappy woman in the world.'

I made no reply. Indeed I knew not what there was to say. Matthew was a villain: there can be few worse villains: Jenny was in truth a most injured and a most unhappy woman.

It was growing twilight. What followed was told, or most of it, because I have set down the result of two or three conversations in one, by the light of the fire, in a low voice, a low musical voice – that seemed to rob the naked truth of much of its horrors.

'I told my Lord, Will,' she said, 'what I am going to tell you because I would not have him ignorant of anything, or find out anything – afterwards – but there was no afterwards – which he might think I should have told him before. He has a pretty gift of drawing: he makes pictures of things and people with a pencil and a box of water-colours. I made him take certain sketches for me. He did so, wondering what they might mean.' Here she rose, opened a drawer in a cabinet and took out a little packet tied up with a ribbon. 'First I begged him to sketch me one of the little girls who run about the streets in Soho. There are hundreds of them: they are bare-footed: bare-headed: dressed in a sack, in a flannel petticoat: in anything: they have no schooling: they are not taught anything at all: their parents and their brothers and sisters and their cousins and their grandparents are all thieves and rogues together: what can they become? What hope is there for them? See,' she took one of the pictures out and gave it to me. By the firelight I made out a little girl standing in the street. In her carriage there was something of the freedom of a gipsy in the woods: her hair blew loose in the wind, her scanty petticoat clung to her little figure: she was bare-legged, bare-footed, bare-headed. 'Can you see it, Will? Well – when I had got all the pictures together, I asked the artist to sit down, as I have asked you to-day. And when he was sat down, I had the bundle of pictures in my hand, and I said to him, "My Lord, this is a very pretty sketch – I like it all the better because it shows what I was like at that age." "You, Jenny?" "Yes, my Lord, I myself. That little girl is myself." "Well!" he cried out on the impossibility of the thing. But I assured him of the truth of what I said. Then I took up the next picture. It represented the entrance of a court in Soho. Round this entrance were gathered a collection of men and women with the most evil faces possible. "These, my Lord," I said, "are the people who were once my companions when they and I were young together." "But not now?" he asked. "Not now," I told him, "save that they all remember me and consider me as one of themselves and come to the Theatre in order to applaud me: the highwaymen going to the pit; the petty thieves and pickpockets and footpads to the gallery." Well, at first he looked serious. Then he cleared up and kissed my hand: he loved me for myself, he said, and as regards the highwaymen and such fellows, he would very soon take me out of their way.'

'But, Jenny – '

'Will, I am telling you what I told his Lordship. Believe me, it does not cost me to tell you half as much as it did to tell that noble heart. For he loved me, Will, and I loved him.' Again her eyes glistened by the red light of the fire.

She took up a third picture. It represented a public-house. Over the door swung the sign of a Black Jack: the first story projected over the ground-floor, and the second story over the first: beside the public-house stood a tall church.

'This,' I told my Lord, 'is the Black Jack tavern. It is the House of Call for most of the rogues and thieves of Soho. The church is St. Giles's Church. As for my own interest in the house, I was born there: my mother and sister still keep the place between them: it is in good repute among the gentry who frequent it for its kitchen, where there is always a fire for those who cook their own suppers, and for the drinks, which are excellent, if not cheap. What is the use of keeping cheap things for thieves? Lightly got, lightly spent. There is nothing cheap at that House. My mother enjoys a reputation for being a Receiver of Stolen Goods – a reputation well deserved, as I have reason to believe. The Goods are all stowed away in a stone vault or cellar once belonging to some kind of house – I know not what.'

I groaned.

'That is how my Lord behaved. Then he kissed my hand again. "Jenny," he said, "it is not the landlady of the Black Jack that I am marrying, but Jenny Wilmot." He asked me to tell him more. Will you hear more?'

'I will hear all you desire to tell me, Jenny.'

'Once I had a father. He was a gipsy, but since he had fair hair and blue eyes, he was not a proper gipsy. I do not know how he got into the caravan with the gipsies. Perhaps he was stolen in infancy: or picked up on a doorstep. However, I do not remember him. My mother speaks of him with pride, but I do not know why. By profession he was a footpad and – and' – she faltered for a moment – 'he met the fate that belongs to that calling. See!' She showed me a drawing representing the Triumphal March to Tyburn. 'My mother speaks of it as if it was the fitting end of a noble career. I have never been quite able to think so too, and Will, if I must confess, I would rather that my father had not been – '

'Not formed the leading figure in that procession,' I interposed. 'But go on, Jenny.'

She took up another picture and handed it to me. It was a spirited sketch representing a small crowd; a pump; and a boy held under the pump.

'I had two brothers. This was one. He was a pickpocket. What could be expected? He was caught in the act and held under a pump. But they kept him so long that it brought on a chill and he died. The other brother is now in the Plantations of Jamaica.'

She produced another picture. It represented an Orange Girl at Drury Lane. She carried her basket of oranges on her arm: she had a white kerchief over her neck and shoulders and another over her head: her face was full of impudence, cleverness and wit.

'That, Will, is the first step upwards of your cousin's wife. From the gutter to the pit of Drury Lane as an Orange girl. There was a step for me! Yes. I looked like that: I behaved like that: I was as shameless as that: I used to talk to the men in the Pit as they talk – you know the kind of talk. And now, Will, confess: you are heartily ashamed of me.'

'Jenny!' Like the noble Lord, I kissed her fingers. 'Believe me, I am not in the least ashamed of you.'

'The next step was to the stage. That, Will, was pure luck. The Manager heard me imitating the actors and actresses – and himself. He saw me dancing to please the other girls – I used to dance to please the people in the Black Jack. He took a fancy in his head that I was clever. He took me from among the other girls: he gave me instruction: and presently a speaking part. That is the whole history. I have told you all – I never told these things to Matthew – why should I? But to my Lord, I told all – '

'Yes – and he was not ashamed.'

'No – but he did not like the applause of the rogues, and the orange girls. While the highwaymen applauded in the pit and the pickpockets in the Gallery, the Orange Girls were telling all the people that once I was one of them with my basket of oranges like the rest – and so it was agreed that I was to leave the stage and go away into the country out of the way of all the old set.'

'And then.'

'Then I could no longer oblige my Lord. I left it to oblige myself and to marry Matthew.'

She sat down and buried her face in her hands. 'But I loved my Lord,' she said. 'I loved my Lord.'

CHAPTER V

THE BLACK JACK

Jenny finished her story, much as you have heard it, though some has been forgotten.

'And now,' she said, 'I will take you to the very place where I was born. You shall see for yourself the house, and my mother and my sister and the company among whom I was brought up. Wait for a moment while I change my dress. I cannot go like this. And I do not want all of them to learn where I now live.'

She returned in a few minutes dressed in the garb of an orange girl of Drury. Everybody knows how these girls are attired; a frock of the commonest linsey-woolsey; a kerchief over her head tied under her chin: another kerchief round her neck and bosom; her sleeves coming down to her elbows; on her arm a round deep basket filled with oranges. But no orange girl ever had so sweet a face; so fine a carriage; hands and arms so white. Nor could any disguise deprive this lovely creature of her beauty or rob her face of its pure and virginal expression. That such a being should come out of the Black Jack! But then we find the white lily growing beside a haystack or a pigsty and none the less white and delicate and fragrant.

The tavern called the Black Jack stands over against the west front of St. Giles's Church, at the corner of Denmark Street, with a double entrance which has proved useful, I believe, on the appearance of constables or Bow Street runners. The Church which is large and handsome, worthy of better parishioners, stands in the midst of a quarter famous for harbouring, producing and encouraging the most audacious rogues and the most impudent drabs that can be found in the whole of London. As for the Church, of course they never enter it: as for religion, they have never learned any: as for morals, they know of none; as for the laws, they defy them; as for hanging, whipping and imprisonment, they heed them no more than other folk heed the necessity of death or the chances of pain and suffering, before death releases them.

Every man must die, they say. Few people among them live naturally more than forty years or so. Fever, small-pox, ague, carry off most of their class before forty. If, therefore, one takes part in the march to Tyburn at five-and-thirty one does but lose two or three years of life. Then, again, there is the punishment of the lash – that seems very terrible. But every man, rich or poor, has to endure pain; very often pain worse than that of the lash. Certainly, the agony of the whip is not worse than that of rheumatism or gout: it is sooner over: it makes no man any the older: it does not unfit him for his work: after a day or two, he is none the worse for it. As for imprisonment; a prison, if your friends look after you, may be made, with the help of a few companions, as cheerful a place as the kitchen of the Black Jack with drinking and singing and tobacco. This kind of talk is the religion of Roguedom, and since it is so, we may cease to wonder why these people are not deterred by the severity of their punishments. For no punishment can deter when it is not feared: that is beyond question: and since after punishment, the rogue is still regarded as a rogue, whom no one will employ, punishment does not convert. Nor does the prison chaplain effect any miracles in conversion, because no one listens to his exhortations.

Over against the church of St. Giles's, the tavern of the Black Jack lifts its shameless head: the projecting upper windows bend threatening brows against the west end of the Church with its pillars of white stone: the house has villainy written large over all the front: it is covered with yellow places breaking away in lumps and showing the black timbers behind: the roof, of red tiles, is sunken in parts: many of the windows are broken and stuffed with rags.

The ground floor consists of a long low room: at one end is a bar with a counter, behind it casks of beer and rum and shelves with bottles containing cordials: there is a door behind the bar opening to a cellar staircase: and is said to communicate with a subterranean passage leading one knows not whither. It is also rumoured that the cellar, into which no one but the landlady of the Black Jack and her daughter has ever penetrated, is a large stone vault with pillars and arches, the remains of some Roman Catholic building. The kitchen, or public room, is on the ground floor about twelve inches below the level of the street: it is entered by two steps: the window is garnished with red curtains, which on wintry evenings give the place a warm and cheerful look: the bright colour promises a roaring fire and lights and drink. Both in the summer and winter the place is always cheerful because it is always filled with company.

Three or four candles in sconces light up the room, and, in addition, a generous fire always burning every night, adds to the light of the place. The fire is kept up partly for warmth: partly for the convenience of those who bring their suppers with them and cook them on the fire. Also, for their convenience, frying-pans and gridirons are lying ready beside the fireplace: and for the convenience of the punch-drinkers a huge kettle bubbles on the hob. Two tables stand for those who take their supper here. As the food principally in favour consists of bloaters, red herrings, sprats, mackerel, pig's fry, pork, fat bacon, beefsteak and onions, liver and lights and other coarse but savoury dishes, the mingled fragrance makes the air delightful and refreshing. As the windows are never open the air is never free from this fragrance, added to which is the reek, or stench of old beer, rum, gin, and rank tobacco taken in the horrid manner of the lower classes, by means of a clay pipe, not in the more courtly fashion of snuff. Nor must one forget the – pah! – the company – the people themselves, the men and women, the boys and girls who frequent this tavern nightly. Taking all into account, I think it would be difficult, outside Newgate, to find a more noisome den than the kitchen or bar-room of the Black Jack.

All round the room ran a bench: the company sat on the bench, every man with a pipe of tobacco and a mug of drink: the walls were streaming: one felt inclined to run away – out into the fresh air for breath. The space in the middle was mostly kept open for a fight, perhaps: for a dance, perhaps, if a fiddler could be found. Every evening, I believe, there was a fight either between two men, or between two women: or between two boys. What would an Englishman of the baser sort become if he were forbidden to fight?

I describe what I saw after we entered. When Jenny pushed open the door and the breath of that tavern ascended to my nostrils I trembled and hesitated.

'Strong, at first, isn't it?' said Jenny. 'Cousin Will, to stand here and breathe the air that comes up carries me back to my childhood. You are ready to face it? After a little one grows accustomed. They like it, the people inside.' She stood with the handle of the half opened door in her hand. 'Now,' she said. 'You shall visit the Rogues' Delight: the Thieves' Kitchen: the Black Jack: the favourite House of Call for the gallows bird. You shall see what manner of woman is the old lady my mother: and what sort of woman is the young lady my sister.'

'I am ready, Jenny,' I replied, with an effort. One would join a forlorn hope almost as readily.

'Don't mind me. Take no notice whatever I say or do,' she whispered. 'I must humour the wretches. It is more than twelve months since I have been among them. They may resent my absence. However, you keep quiet, and say nothing. Call for drink if you like, and pretend to be an old hand in the place.'

Jenny threw up her head: opened her lips: laughed loudly and impudently: looked round her with an impudent stare: became, in a word, once more, one of the brazen young queans who sell oranges and exchange rude jokes with the gentlemen in the Pit of Drury Lane Theatre. It was a wonderful change. I saw a girl who would perhaps be beautiful if she had preserved any rags or the least appearance of feminine modesty: as for Jenny's sweet and attractive look of innocence, that had vanished. She had, in fact, resumed her former self, and more than her former self. I saw her as she had been. Was there ever before known such a thing that a girl who had never been taught what was meant by feminine modesty should be able to assume, at will, the look of one brought up in a convent – all innocence and ignorance – and, at will, be able to put it off and go back to her former self? No – it is impossible: the innocence of Jenny's face proclaimed the innocence of Jenny's soul.

'Follow me,' she said. 'Keep close, or expect a pewter plate or a pot hurled at your head. They love not strangers.'

She pushed open the door: she descended the steps: I followed. The room was quite full, and the reek of it made me sick and faint for a moment. But to the worst of stinks one quickly grows hardened.

'By – !' cried a voice from out of the smoke. 'It's Madame.'

'Lawks, Mother' – this was a girl's voice-''tis Jenny. Why, Jenny, we all thought you was grown too proud for the Black Jack.'