Hence the unsavoury reputation of the place. For not only did it supply a convenient receiving house for smuggled goods, but a convenient rendezvous for the more lawless characters of the neighbourhood--a back-of-beyond and No Man's Land where the devil could, with impunity, have things very much his own way. In the intervals of more serious business, the vaults and cellars of Tandy's frequently resounded to the agonies and brutal hilarities of cock-fights, dog-fights, and other repulsive sports and pastimes common to the English--both gentle and simple--of that virile but singularly gross and callous age. Nevertheless to Thomas Clarkson Verity, man of peace and of ideas, Tandy's represented--and continued to represent through over half a century--rescue, security, an awakening in something little short of paradise from a long-drawn nightmare of hell. He paid an extortionate price for the property at the outset, and spent a small fortune on the enlargement of the house and improvement of the grounds, yet never regretted his bargain.
For, in good truth, when, in the spring of 1794, the soft, nimble, round-bodied, very polite, learned and loquacious little gentleman first set eyes upon its mean roofs, prick ears and vacant whitewashed countenance, he had been horribly shocked, horribly scared--for all the inherited valour of his good breeding--and, above all, most horribly disappointed. History had played very dirty pranks with him, which he found it impossible as yet to forgive.
Five years earlier, fired, like many another generous spirit, by extravagant hope of the coming regeneration of mankind, he hurried off to Paris after the opening of the National Assembly and fall of the Bastille. With the overture to the millennium in full blast, must he not be there to hear and see? Associating himself with the Girondist party he assisted, busily enthusiastic, at the march of tremendous events, until the evil hour in which friend began to denounce friend, and heads, quite other than aristocratic--those of men and women but yesterday the idols and chosen leaders of the people--went daily to the filling of _la veuve_ Guillotine's unspeakable market-basket. The spectacle proved too upsetting both to Mr. Verity's amiable mind and rather queasy stomach. Faith failed; while even the millennium seemed hardly worth purchasing at so detestable a cost. He stood altogether too close to the terrible drama, in its later stages, to distinguish the true import or progression of it. Too close to understand that, however blood-stained its cradle, the goodly child Democracy was veritably, here and now, in the act of being born among men. Rather did he question whether his own fat little neck was not in lively danger of being severed; and his own head--so full of ingenious thoughts and lively curiosity--of being sent flying to join those of Brissot and Verginaud, of wayward explosive Camille and sweet Lucile Desmoulins, in that same unspeakable basket.