Walking in Pimlico

Also by Ann Featherstone

The Victorian Clown
(with Jacky Bratton)

The Journals of Sydney Race 1892–1900

A Novel of Victorian Murder

ANN FEATHERSTONE

www.johnmurray.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2009 by John Murray (Publishers)
An Hachette UK Company

© Ann Featherstone 2009

The right of Ann Featherstone to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

Epub ISBN 978-1-84854-440-6
Book ISBN 978-1-84854-174-0

John Murray (Publishers)
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH

www.johnmurray.co.uk

For my family

To walk in Pimlico
colloq.
to be handsomely dressed

Murray’s Dictionary of Slang, Cant and Flash Words and Phrases
(1857, 3rd edition)

Corney Sage – Whitechapel, London

H
ere is a murder.

And here is yours truly, Corney Sage, comedian, clog-dancer, comic vocalist, actor and all-round funny fellow.

And though I never saw the murder, hardly knew the person what done it (not really), and only nodded to her what was done in, I was there at the beginning. And at the end too, though it cost me my health and reason, and still interrupts my sleep with bad dreams.

But stop me. I cannot tell the end before the start and, as per, I am going on ahead to put on my hat before my stocking. There is some business to be got through first before I can tell about the murder, so like the pro that I am, I thank you for your indulgence and trust to your good offices, and hope that nothing offends.

Or some such.

Now how I came to be doing my season at the Constellation Concert Rooms in Whitechapel is not of much importance, though if I was giving chapter and verse, as the parson utters, I should say that on this occasion I didn’t get my shop through any advertisement in the
Era
newspaper (the Bible of the Acting Profession), but through the good offices of a young woman with whom I was acquainted, Miss Lucy Strong. No one, except the Gov, Mr Pickuls,
would say that the Constellation was the best gaff in London, for it certainly was not, but I was short of a shop, and there was nothing else about, so I was glad to be set on to do a few turns on the platform. This was in the days when my dancing was something to behold. Dan Leno may offer to meet all comers and think he owns the world, but if he’d met me in my heyday there’d have been a different king on the throne! I don’t blow my own horn as a rule, but it strikes me as rum when a man isn’t give the credit for what he does best.

Anyhow, here are the dram. pers., as they give it in the theatre. Mr Pickuls, the Gov’nor, quiet-spoken, if full of himself, and his wife Mrs Gov, dark as the inside of a cow, and twice as mean. The Chinns, Mr on the piano and Mrs on the fiddle. (Not their proper names for they was from Roosher or some such far-off place, but their real moniker was such a tongue-binder that it was cut short – to Chinn.) And then there was the girls – a rum collection of Janes, Pollys, Nancys and Nells, but sweet-natured. Set on to do the poses plastiques which, when I first saw them, made me blush, so natural did those girls appear in their body-pink fleshings, standing stock-still on the stage and pretending to be marble figures of the Six Graces or what have you. There was not much of a stage, only a fiddling platform, and that barely off the floor and leaning to the right on account of the blocks having rotted away and being held up by house bricks. And a rag curtain what truly was a rag, so patched up was it (Mrs Pickuls’s skill with the needle not being remarkable) and rings missing along the top. But it had been red plush (last century) and carried more gold than a Frenchman’s breast pocket, so in a dim light it appeared to look the business.

‘The Six Graces, Corney,’ Gov says, with his chest puffed out, as the Chinns struck up and the girls held steady, some with their arms up, some down, and all of them gazing out to sea and like statues, as if they was made of stone.

But his judgement was to the mark, and no mistake, for the poses filled the Constellation to bursting with swells and City men and young rantans. There were bills up and down the High-street, and certain it was difficult to be ignorant of the ‘startling and edifying display of classical statuary
IN THE LIFE!!!!
’ so industrious were the bill-stickers with their paste and brushes. It all promised to be as rosy as the girls’ cheeks, and I thought I should be settled there for a season, and had worked up a few pieces which brought me cheers of recognition when I stepped upon the stage. Just my dancing and some merry songs: ‘The Industrious Flea’, ‘Alonzo the Brave’ and the like, and borrowings from old pals, like Billy Ross, who I stood chummery with when he was at the Coal Hole. (But of him and his favour to me, more anon, as the story papers say.)

As I said, the Constellation was shining bright with success in its own firmament and would have continued until the appetite for the poses died, but one morning, of a sudden, the Gov decided upon a change. The poses were old sweat. The Judge and Jury was the thing. He had been on a convivial outing with his catering pals, and finished off at the Cyder Cellars in Maiden Lane where he saw performed his first judicial stunner, those naughty mockeries of mi’lords and mi’ladies, put up to inflame and amuse.

‘I have expectations, Corney,’ he croaked to me, looking pale and crusty, and with eyes like pips. ‘My Constellation will be talked of all over the town.’ He was much in earnest and so shabby from the night before, that I didn’t have the heart to argue, and encouraged him, even as he was dragging the girls from their beds before noon and sending a special summons to the Chinns.

Bunting, the carpenter, was called up, to build a dock and bench (no need for plans, Bunting being very familiar with the inside of a courtroom), and Perlmann was given orders for the costumes. This Hebrew was not of the tailoring persuasion, of course, but in the ‘Old Clo’ business, having emporiums over three streets, and what
he could not provide in the overcoat line was not worth having. But judges’ robes were a different matter, of course, and ladies’ down-belows, neither finding their way to Petticoat-lane as a rule. And it was when old Perlmann started about me with his reckoning eye and his pencil stub and asking me whether I could muster a linen shirt, that I clocked that
I
was in line for the Bench too.

‘In case you had forgot, Gov,’ I reminded him, when he was taking a breather in the yard, ‘I am only your comedian, with dancing – clogs and high boots – and comic songs as required. What I know about the Judge and Jury is like Nelly’s drawers: too little to mention. And I am happy to say that I am also unacquainted with the law and the insides of a courtroom.’

But I might have saved my breath, for he had made his mind up. He patted me on the shoulder, mopped his brow, and said it would be in my interest if I conned a good few blue wheezes and read up on recent ripe goings-on in Battersea and Kilburn. Otherwise he’d heard Mr Jolliffe at the Salmon and Compasses in Pentonville was in need of a waiter. That marked it out for me clean as a penny. Either I sat on this Bench, or I could look for another shop, Pentonville way.

I wasn’t the only one objecting, for some of the girls were rowdy about it too, but it was no use. He was like a man possessed, and would hear no argument. All he was bothered about was the show.

‘What you must do,’ he told us for the umpteenth time, ‘is simple – make a mock of the swells and all their goings-on in the courts. It is very easy. Corney here is the Judge, and he will tell the case and introduce defenders and pleaders, and then you girls will act about a bit and make up this and that – Corney will tell you what. And the Jury will decide who’s done right and who’s done wrong – Corney will say. And that’s that.’