St. Bernard's: The Romance of a Medical Student. Edward Berdoe

few hard terms – on easy terms – to keep,

      Then brown stout, billiards, half-slew’d and sleep!

– Cruikshank’s Almanack.

      Lindsay Street, where Elsworth took lodgings, was an old thoroughfare at the back of the hospital grounds, and was largely occupied by lodging-houses, in which those students boarded who desired to be handy for their work, and have their fellow-students near neighbours. It was a dull and a grimy old place, but it had many conveniences, and was quite historic as a residence for young medicos, – indeed, it was always held to be a kind of precinct of the hospital. The landladies were for the most part elderly widows with no encumbrances; those who had husbands kept them out of the way, and the students, if they paid up promptly, did pretty much as they liked in their diggings. It has often been a subject of wonder what becomes of the husbands of lodging-house-keeping ladies in the daytime, so seldom do they show their faces to the lodgers. Perhaps the most plausible suggestion is that they spend their time hearing the trials in the law courts, or the police cases. It must be some such persons who are able to devote so much leisure to these matters.

      Mrs. Harper occupied Number 15 in this street of students’ lodgings, and was one of the oldest and best-known inhabitants. She was a widow, her late husband having been for twenty years night porter at St. Bernard’s; and she was sister to the famous Podger. A sharp woman of business, with a keen eye to the pence, she did well at her business, and made an excellent income out of the rooms. Her life had been spent amongst medical men, and not even Podger herself was happier at her work than Mrs. Harper “doing for her gents,” as she always called it. Her rooms were decidedly frowzy, and her furniture, which had been picked up at auctions, and was very mixed, was rather dilapidated. What wonder, considering the treatment it received from those who used it! The front parlour, with bedroom at the back, was just now occupied by Jack Mahoney, a merry little fellow, full of good nature, witty, smart at learning, and mad for sprees. “He was always up to his tricks,” his landlady said, but she didn’t mind ’em, not she, not even when he brought home that steak for his tea, and bade her cook it, and then laughed till his sides must have split, as he told her what it was, and where it came from. “And my new frying-pan spoiled as cost me two-and-ninepence in the Row last week; and as for the plates, and the knives and forks, I sha’n’t use ’em agen, you may keep ’em, and I shall put ’em all down in the bill. I wonder when you’ll ever leave off your tricks; a nice sort of doctor you’ll make! I call it sickening – I do.” But Harper, like her sister Podger at the hospital, could be settled. “Hang it all!” cried Mahoney, as he put his feet on the mantel-board, and roared again, “it’s worth a whole shopful of crockery to have sold Harper like that. O Jane, sister of the immortal Podger, and you to be had by a latissimus dorsi; you, who declared you knew your anatomy as well as we did. O Jane! O Jane! you’ll never pass your ‘final,’ not even in your winding sheet!”

      “Go on with your impidence, Mr. Mahoney; it was the new girl as was had, not me; I am too old a bird to be caught a second time. Mr. Redway served me that trick once, and I never forgave him-well, at least, not for some time after.”

      All this was great fun for Mahoney and his pal Murphy on the other side of the fireplace, and they laughed consumedly, for they knew the worthy dame had been sold that time. But a glass of whisky, which she would not drink before them, but declared she would take the last thing at night, as a precaution against spasms, soothed her down, and a promise of a brace of pheasants out of the next hamper of game from home, sent her to the kitchen in a good humour. She could not be angry with the boy long together. He paid well, and her sister Podger loved him as her own son. Her first floor was occupied by two students, Rice and Higgins. They were both of Mahoney’s set, lively boys all. Sons of wealthy parents, they had usually money enough to squander; but there were times when funds sank low, and they were reduced to amazing shifts to extract the needful amusement which every succeeding night demanded. The ups and downs of the life they led might serve to prepare them for the vicissitudes of the future, and to accustom them to the readiness of resource which is so characteristic of all medical men. To-night they would be feasting at a West-end restaurant, and drinking costly brands of champagne; to-morrow, as likely as not, would find them supping on a few pennyworth of fried fish, and drinking porter out of a pewter pot. It was all the same to them, even if it were not more congenial to be associated with rowdies in a Whitechapel bar-room, than to be dining with their equals in civilised society.

      Mrs. Harper, as we said, was not at all particular in the matter of larks, though she was rather annoyed when she went into Mr. Murphy’s sitting-room one morning to lay the breakfast, and saw, over the fireplace in front of her new looking-glass, a great black board, painted in large white letters, “To be Let or Sold, this desirable semi-detached Villa Residence. For cards to view, apply Buggins & Son, 113 Great Mowbray Street, E.C.”

      She knew at once this was one of the trophies of last night’s spree. Knockers and bell-handles, brass plates of moderate size, stolen from milliners’ and dressmakers’ doors – to these there could be no objection; but sign-boards, barbers’ poles, doctors’ lamps (for even the profession was not sacred from the attacks of “the boys”), were “dead agen her rules,” as she was always insisting, because, being so big, they could hardly be got into the house without exciting observation, and perhaps might bring discredit on the hospital.

      “Look here, Mr. Murphy, I have told you over and over again, I can’t have them things in my house. You will be caught like Mr. Hodder was when he stole the big gold coffee pot from over the grocer’s door, and a bobby as didn’t know him, and wouldn’t take no bribe, run him into Bow Street, and if he hadn’t been the son of a member of Parliament, and known to the beak, he’d ’a had to ’a gone to jail, he would; for the grocer was mortal angry, as he had had two coffee pots and a bell handle stole the winter before, and he always suspected the students. No! I draws the line at things like this. I have too much respect for you, and the character of my house, to harbour the likes of ’em, so don’t do it.” Not even “a toothful of summat short,” as Murphy phrased it, could appease the good woman. “No, bell-handles and sich is good enough sport,” she persisted, “for anybody. I have nothing to say agen them; you gents must have your larks, and bell-handles and knockers goes in your pockets, but I draws the line at these here; take it away. Stay, I’ll put it in the cellar. Why, the taxes, or the gas, or the water rate might see it, and give information. They’re none of ’em any too fond of you boys, and they are quite equal to it.” And so with much regret, Murphy gave up his “Desirable Villa Residence,” merely extorting a promise that it might appear on the mantel for one night only – the “trophy supper” he was to give at the end of the winter session, when he was to exhibit his museum of stolen curiosities to his companions in the midnight revels.

      Murphy was very proud of his museum. He had twenty-nine brass and iron knockers, fifty-seven bell-handles, fourteen brass door-plates, three small and very neat Royal Arms, gilt and coloured, one pretty figure of a Scotchman in Highland costume taking a pinch of snuff, several gilt carved wood letters, which once formed parts of names over shop doors, and this latest acquisition, the “Villa Residence” board. Everything was neatly labelled and numbered, and a register kept, recording in the most methodical manner the story of its capture. Many hair-breadth escapes were recalled by a glance at some of these treasures; and to hear little Jack Murphy tell some of the stories connected with them was a treat that many a freshman yearned for with all his heart. Most of the men would rather have had the honour of which this stolen hardware was the symbol than all the medals and certificates of honour the hospital could bestow. Their friends sent them to earn these latter – that was task-work; their own inclination and Bohemian instincts urged the acquisition of bell-handles and door-knockers – in this was danger, and their love of surmounting it was gratified. They had yet to learn the nobler outlets for sentiments that have made the name of Englishman a proud distinction, especially in the practice of a profession on which they have shed so much glory.

      CHAPTER IV.

      HIS ’PRENTICE HAND

      Knowledge after all, is not the greatest thing in life; it is not the “be-all and the end-all” here. Life is not science. The moral nature of man