I do not know how tidings of these furtive gatherings had reached the
Simeonites, but they must have come round to them in some way, for they
had not been continued many weeks before a circular was sent to each of
the young men who attended them, informing them that the Rev. Gideon
Hawke, a well-known London Evangelical preacher, whose sermons were then
much talked of, was about to visit his young friend Badcock of St John's,
and would be glad to say a few words to any who might wish to hear them,
in Badcock's rooms on a certain evening in May.
Badcock was one of the most notorious of all the Simeonites. Not only
was he ugly, dirty, ill-dressed, bumptious, and in every way
objectionable, but he was deformed and waddled when he walked so that he
had won a nick-name which I can only reproduce by calling it "Here's my
back, and there's my back," because the lower parts of his back
emphasised themselves demonstratively as though about to fly off in
different directions like the two extreme notes in the chord of the
augmented sixth, with every step he took. It may be guessed, therefore,
that the receipt of the circular had for a moment an almost paralysing
effect on those to whom it was addressed, owing to the astonishment which
it occasioned them.
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