Kyril Bonfiglioli - All the Tea in China

Margate Jetty was bewildering and my carefully-learned English Language and Literature deserted me quite. As soon as I set foot upon it I was besieged by a throng of ribald porters competing for the lucrative privilege of carrying my light bags, although none of them seemed so concerned about my exceedingly heavy chest of Delft. Also, there were lodging-house ladies, touts for inns, genteel persons offering me the programmes of circulating libraries, bathing-women thrusting their cards into my pockets, fly-men importuning me in words quite incomprehensible and one saucy young — or almost young — woman who pretended to know me and shouted “Holloa! My young brockley-sprout, now then for the tizzy you owe me from last Easter?” The platform of the jetty was very low and the crowds on the shingly, gas-lit beach added to the uproar with more coarse comments upon me, my breeches, boots and general appearance until I was on the point of tears — or of punching some of them upon their noses.

At that moment there was a sort of eddy at the far end of the jetty and the crowd parted in a respectful way. A little round gentleman emerged, laying about him with his elbows until he had cleared a space around me.

“Vy, vot’s this,” he bellowed, “carn’t a poor foreign young chap pitch up on a British shore without being mocked and jostled? Leave him be, I say, and you two take his box to the shipping-shed.” With that he turned to me and lifted his huge white hat, bowing as well as his roundness would permit.

“John Jorrocks, M.F.H.,” he said. “Merchant of Great Coram Street.”

“Tea-grocer,” said someone in the crowd.

“I glories in the name of tea-grocer,” he retorted magnificently. “I imports none but the finest, both green and black, and has them earlier than anyone helse in the City.”

“My name is Carolus Van Cleef, Sir,” I said when he had finished, “and I am travelling to London to start a business selling Delftware.”

“Vy,” he cried, “ve’re practically in the same perfession: I sells the scandal-water and you sells the cups for the old tabbies to drink it from!” He seized my hand and shook my arm like the handle of a pump. “Come to the White Hart and share my ’umble repast, for the inner man tells me it’s supper time. You might as vell put up there, too; best beds in Margate and does you proud in the matter of wittles.” So saying, he linked arms with me and, having bidden two ragamuffins to carry my bags, marched me off to the inn. I studied him surreptitiously as we walked. He wore a rough-napped, unshorn-looking white hat, a blue coat with metal buttons, ample laps and outside pockets bulging like those of a Dutch burgomaster, a handsome buff kerseymere waistcoat and the tightest pair of dark-blue, stocking-net pantaloons you can imagine: they might have been painted onto his splendid thighs. The costume was completed by a pair of great Hessian boots with tassels, and a white tie around his neck with a gold pin in the form of the head of a fox — a most bizarre touch, it seemed to me.

“This is most kind of you, Mr, ah, Emmeffetch,” I said diffidently. He looked at me puzzledly, then roared with laughter, shaking and wheezing and slapping the splendid thighs.

“No, no,” he cried at last, “Jorrocks is the name, ‘M.F.H.’ is but the title, ‘the guinea stamp’ as Nimrod says. It is mere hinitials and means Master of Fox-hounds: the finest handle anyone could lay to his name. Fox ’unting, my dear young Sir, is my werry life: the himage of war with none of the guilt and only five and twenty percent of the risk to life and limb. If ever I am wisited with the last infirmity of noble minds I fears it will be caused by my ungovernable passion for the chase.” He jingled the silver in his pockets moodily. I was greatly puzzled: his words seemed irrational but the other English seemed to hold him in deep respect. Clearly, I had much to learn. However, I was just old enough to know that I should hold my tongue: some people learn this too late, some never learn it. It was a good thing that I did not speak, for Mr Jorrocks had not done.

“When there’s neither hunting nor shooting going on,” he cried, waving his arms about in a prodigal fashion, “what’s a man to do with himself? I’m sure you’d despise me if I went fishing: the werry word’s a sickener.”

“Yes, perhaps,” I said, “but fish are good to eat, no?”

“You’re a most persuasive young cock!” he cried, slapping his great thigh again, “and I daresay that our host, Mr Creed, may have something of the sort fit for our supper. And, even as I says it, here we are!”

Mr Creed, the landlord of the White Hart, greeted my new friend in an obsequious way and promptly agreed to find me a room — it was, it seemed, merely a matter of turning two bagmen out. They could, he was sure, find lodgings more suitable to their purses and condition in a “flea-trap” further down the street, for he explained that they were but “glass-of-water-and-a-toothpick gents” who “fought every threepence on the bill”.

It was a snug room and the little maid who came to change the sheets whilst I was washing flirted her eyelashes at me in the most promising way. She seemed to be overworked and tired, but contrived to give the impression to me that she was not too tired. When I pinched her tight little bottom she smacked my face so gently that it was almost a caress. For the time being, however, my thoughts were on higher things. Supper , to be exact. When she had gone — after having promised to bring in a warming-pan as I retired — I concealed my store of gulden in various parts of the room, locked the door and made my way downstairs to the coffee-room where my excellent Mr Jorrocks awaited me. We were soon joined by a friend of his whom he addressed variously as “The Yorkshireman”, “Mr York”, “Mr Stubbs” and “Sir Tees”. I could make nothing of all this but I held my tongue for my Mama had often told me that the English were, to speak plainly, not quite like other men.

“Now then, my young cock,” cried Mr Jorrocks, clapping me on the shoulder (this is the mark of an Englishman: Prussians punch you in the ribs to show their friendship, Italians pinch you cruelly on the cheek), “now then!” he cried, “let’s see if a row of Dutch grinders can out-do a British set!”

I was hungry. I was also a Dutchman. Also, I had studied the English Language and Literature.

“Lay on, Macduff!” I cried, “and cursed be he that first cries ‘hold enough’.”

“A werry noble sentiment, worthy of Nimrod himself. Vy, I declares I could eat a helephant stuffed with grenadiers and wash them down with a hocean of malt liquor!”

We settled down at the table and squared our elbows. Mr Jorrocks had been boiling, on the coffee-room fire, an Imperial Quart and a half of Mr Creed’s stoutest draught port, with the orthodox proportion of lemon, cloves, sugar and cinnamon: it was perfection. The table was adorned with beautifully-dressed dishes of shrimps, lobsters, broiled bones, a cold knuckle of veal, an aitch-bone of beef, fried ham, a few grouses and some poached eggs. Having trifled with the shellfish a while to tickle our appetites — there was but one lobster each, although large — Mr Creed brought in a dish of Dover soles which vanished like the dew upon a rose. Now ready for a real gullet-tickler, I speared a grouse and called for a plate so that I might pass it to the good Jorrocks.

“No no , my young Sir,” he cried — but civilly — “Ve don’t do that here, alvays eat the farmer before the gentlemen.” Whereupon he drew the aitch-bone of beef towards him and helped me generously to the lovely, bloody slices encircled with marbled fat. Then we ate the grouses. Then we tried the fried ham with some poached eggs. Then Mr Jorrocks called for “three bottoms of brandy, hot, with” and we took the broiled bones in our fingers and gnawed happily.