Chapter 7

“Those are the Maids of Honour,” Godmother explained,“and these”—as a train of gallant noblemen rode by—“are the courtiers who always travel about with the Queen.”

THE ROYAL BARGE

THE ROYAL BARGE

THE ROYAL BARGE

“She’s going to the palace of Westminster, I suppose?” Betty inquired.

“No. Don’t you remember I told you that the kings and queens of England no longer live there? Since we last saw London, a great new palace has risen—the Palace of Whitehall.”

“We drove down Whitehall this morning!”

“We did. And if you remember, I told you to imagine all the houses on the left of it swept away so that the river could be seen. Well, the Whitehall Palace in which Queen Elizabeth lives part of the year, covers all the ground between St. James’s Park and the Thames, as you will see in a moment. The Queen will ride down to the river now, and finish the journey by water, so let us follow her.”

The procession was out of sight by this time, but when Betty reached the river, she saw the Queen just stepping into a huge painted and gilded boat, drawn up against one of the landing stages.

“That’s the royal barge,” Godmother told her. “It’s been waiting there for her. We’ll get into this little boat and follow it up to Whitehall. Little does our waterman know that he will have two invisible passengers to row!”

Betty laughed as she sprang into the boat. It was the first time to-day that she had been on the river, and she could scarcely contain her delight at the beauty of the scene. On the surface of the clear sparkling water, floated numberless barges following the splendid one in which the Queen, her Maids of Honour, and several courtiers were seated. The barges were painted with bright colours and had gilded prows, and brilliant canopies of silk were stretched above them. Swans with snowy wings circled round the barges, from many of which came the sound of music and singing.

Looking back, she saw London Bridge with its quaint houses clinging to it like limpets, and the throngs of people leaning from the windows watching the crowded procession of boats moving towards Whitehall.

“Oh, Godmother, if only the river looked like thisnow—inour time, I mean! All bright and clear, with no smoke about, and with all these beautiful barges on it!”

“Yes, as you see, in Queen Elizabeth’s day people use the river as the means of getting from one part of London to another. It is the great water road of the city, and in this age, one takes a boat, or enters a barge—instead of a taxi or an omnibus.”

“There are ever so many more great houses on the banks than there were in Richard the Second’s time,” Betty exclaimed, looking at the splendid mansions, each one standing in its own garden, stretching in a line along the Strand. The Strand, however, she noticed was still more or less of a country road, with fields and orchards at the back of it.

“The Savoy Palace still stands, you see,” Godmother said, “though it has been rebuilt. That great pile not far from it with the round towers, is Durham House, where Lady Jane Grey was born. Elizabeth has lately given it to Sir Walter Raleigh, the famous sailor and writer. He has a little study up in that turret.”

“He’s one of Elizabeth’s favourites, isn’t he? Oh yes, it was Walter Raleigh who once put down his cloak for the Queen to walk on. What a lovely view over the river he must have from his study.”

“That’s York House,” Godmother went on, pointing to the next mansion, “and there lives another famous man of Elizabeth’s day, Sir Francis Bacon. Later on, in the next reign, it will be the home of the great Duke of Buckingham, and there’s still a tiny bit left of it in our own day, which you can see when you turn down out of the Strand to go to Charing Cross Underground Station.”

“I know! A big stone gate?”

Godmother nodded. “Which of course at that time stood at the edge of the water. It was the Water Gate to the Duke of Buckingham’s palace. But to-day of course we shall not see it, for it isn’t yet built. We’ve passed Somerset House, but——”

“Somerset House?” interrupted Betty. “That’sstill standing anyway! The front of it is in the Strand, and the back looks over the river, doesn’t it? Why, King’s College is part of Somerset House, and people I know, go there for examinations!”

“Yes. Somerset House still stands, and is a fine place, but it has all been rebuilt in quite a different style from the house we’ve just passed.” There was a moment’s silence before Godmother said: “Here is the royal landing-place for Whitehall! The Queen and her train of attendants have gone up the steps into the palace, which, by the way, you mustn’t think of as one big house, but rather as a number of separate buildings, scattered over the ground where now stand all the big Government offices like the Foreign Office, the Home Office, the Colonial Office, where, in our day, the business of governing our country is done. Elizabeth’s father, Henry the Eighth, has not long ago added to, and rebuilt much of the palace which he took from his famous minister, Cardinal Wolsey. Whitehall belonged to Wolsey before he fell into disgrace, and King Henry was only too glad to get such a splendid palace. You can see from here, the line of a great hall he added to it. It’s there that some of the masques of which his daughter Elizabeth is so fond, are often acted.”

“Masques? What are they?” Betty inquired. “Aren’t we going to see the palace?” she went on in the same breath.

“I think we’ll leave the palace till the next of our magic visits to London, when we shall see it at the height of its glory. We can land here though, and sit in this part of the royal garden while I tell you something about the Court Masques.”

Betty followed her godmother up some steps from the landing-stage, and sat down beside her on a marble bench behind which ran a yew hedge, shutting off the view of the palace beyond.

“Let me see if I can guess where we are now, if we were back in our own time, I mean,” she began. “I suppose this shady walk would be the part of the Victoria Embankment near Westminster Bridge?”

“That’s about right,” agreed Godmother approvingly. “Right and left of us we should see bridges crossing the river where now we see none at all. For London Bridge is out of sight, and that’s the only one that yet exists.

“But now let me tell you a little about the Court Masques.... You saw how very roughly and simply the splendid plays of Shakespeare and the other play-writers, are performed in the newly-built theatres on Bankside? Well, there’s nothing roughor simple about the performances calledmasqueswhich take place sometimes in the palace yonder, sometimes in one or other of the beautiful halls of the great houses scattered about the city. These masques are not true plays. They are generally little scenes written for special occasions—the Queen’s birthday perhaps, or the anniversary of the day she came to the throne, for instance. They are usually written in the form of an allegory, in which such figures as Justice, Mercy, or Love appear. But they are presented with the utmost magnificence in the way of dresses and scenery, and beautiful surroundings, and it has become the fashion for the great noblemen as well as the Queen to keep companies of well-trained actors ready to perform whenever a masque or a play is to be given at Court. The Queen has groups of children trained to act in these masques, some of which are written by true poets, like Ben Jonson, and the scenery and costumes are designed by true artists. Inigo Jones is one of them. But the best of the masques written by Ben Jonson and ‘produced,’ as we say, in our century, by Inigo Jones, will be given in a few years’ time, when James the First is king. I want you to remember, however, that the sixteenth century is the great time for plays of all sorts. We saw how the theatres on Bankside were crowded. Everywhere, not only in the theatres, but in private houses, and public halls, acting is going on, and plays are being written to meet the taste for it. This is the great age of the drama and London is full of geniuses who are play-writers and poets.”

“Oh! I think it’s even more interesting than the last time we saw it—in the Middle Ages,” Betty declared, as they stepped again into the boat whose waterman seemed to have been waiting for them. “I should love to stay in Queen Elizabeth’s London for weeks.”

“We’ve only had a glimpse of it,” said Godmother, “but even this glimpse is enough, I hope, to show you that London is full of life and energy in the sixteenth century. Full of great men who love and are proud of England, and have already made her a famous country. If we had stayed longer just now at the Globe theatre whereKing Richard the Secondwas being played, we should have heard what Shakespeare wrote this very yearabout England. He put his own thoughts about our country into the mouth of the dying John of Gaunt, who calls England ‘this little world, this precious stone set in the silver sea,’ and, later in his speech,

‘This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,Dear for her reputation through the world ...... England bound in by the triumphant sea.’

‘This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,Dear for her reputation through the world ...... England bound in by the triumphant sea.’

‘This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,Dear for her reputation through the world ...... England bound in by the triumphant sea.’

‘This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,

Dear for her reputation through the world ...

... England bound in by the triumphant sea.’

It is good to think that Shakespeare is living in London now, and has been for many years a Londoner.”

“I do wish we could see him!” sighed Betty.

It was growing dusk. Lights were already twinkling from the windows of the great houses on the Strand, but the last glow of sunset lingered on the river, where the swans floated between the stately barges that passed to and fro.

“‘Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,’” quoted Godmother, after a long silence.

“What is that?” Betty asked.

“It’s the line with which each verse of a beautiful poem ends. It was written not long ago by Edmund Spenser, who is one of the great poets of this marvellous time, and he composed it in honour of the marriage of two girls, the ladies Elizabeth and Katherine Somerset. We are passing their home,” replied Godmother, pointing to Somerset House.

“The Thamesisrunning softly,” said Betty, as they drew near to a landing-stage on the Southwark side of London Bridge. “Isn’t it all quiet?”

And indeed there was a strange hush everywhere. Even the boatman’s oars made no sound as he drew them out of the water, and when they landed and walked up a lane with a row of gabled houses on one side of it, the people they passed, flitted by like ghosts.

It was nearly dark now, and only one dim lantern slung on a rope across the lane showed the way. Every now and then, however, a man or boy passed, carrying a lighted torch which flung a ruddy glare across the road.

“We are passing St. Saviour’s Church,” said Betty, looking up at its tower dark against the stars.

Just as she spoke, a man wrapped in a cloak hurried by, making no sound, and entered a house opposite the church. The light from a torch fell for a moment upon him, giving Betty a glimpse of him before he closed the door.

“That’s William Shakespeare,” whispered Godmother.

Betty rubbed her eyes.

“Oh! I’m so sorry to come back!” she exclaimed, glancing round the parlour.

“To comeforward, you mean,” Godmother corrected her, smiling. “We’ve leapt more than three hundred years onwards since a second ago.”

“Can’t we go at once to Southwark while it’s all fresh in my mind?” urged Betty. “I should like to see how that part of London where we’ve just seen Shakespeare, looks now.”

“Very well. We can’t have the car out again, but we’ll go on the top of an omnibus that runs over London Bridge, and you shall see all that remains to be seen, of the Southwark Shakespeare knew when he lived there.”

Rather more than half an hour later as they approached the south end of the bridge, Godmother pointed to the right. “That’s where you saw the Globe and the Rose theatres, and farther down the river, you remember we saw in the distance Paris-Gardens.”

“Oh, how different it is now!” Betty said, looking at thecrowded warehouses and dingy houses along the waterside. “There’s nothing of it left.”

“Nothing but the names of streets. Come down this one, now called Park Street. Look. That turning is Rose Alley.”

“Then here was the Rose Theatre?” Betty exclaimed, glancing up the dingy, grimy little road.

“Now look at the tablet on this brewery which tells us that here stood the Globe Theatre. It may have done; though some people think it is not the exact site.”

They walked farther along by the river’s edge, towards the next bridge, till Betty saw painted up at the entrance to another dingy street,Bear Gardens.

“From that name you know that you are on the spot where some of the poor bears were baited,” said Godmother, “and having so recently seen Southwark as itwas, you can in imagination sweep away all these dreary streets and see the green fields and gardens round each of the separate buildings. Now we’ll go back to London Bridge, and walk straight on from it up what is now called the Borough High Street in Southwark.

“This,” she explained when they reached the crowded thoroughfare, “as you remember, was the country road along which, in the fourteenth century, the pilgrims passed on their way to Canterbury. Look on the left of the street for names of turnings which will bring the line of inns back to your memory. Here,”—she stopped at a turning called Talbot Yard—“was theTabardyou visited in Chaucer’s day, and as it was standing when Shakespeare lived here, he too must often have visited it.”

“But why isn’t it calledTabardYard?”

“It was burnt down about seventy years after Shakespeare’s day, and rebuilt and re-christened, but this is the actual place on which the old Tabard stood. Let us cross the road. Do you see that Court nearly opposite?”

“St. Margaret’s Court,” Betty read as they turned into a dingy-looking place with rather old but very poverty-stricken houses on either side. “Why, this must be where St. Margaret’s Church stood, and where we saw the Miracle play in the Middle Ages!”

“It is. The church was still there when Shakespeare lived,though I doubt whether he saw a Miracle play acted. They had gone out of fashion in his day.”

“Well, I’m glad that at least thenamesof the old places are kept,” sighed Betty, “for there’s nothing else, is there? It’s all ugly and dirty andmodernnow. How I wish even one bit of an old inn was left!”

“Well, you have your wish,” said Godmother. “Thereisone tiny bit of an inn left standing. Come in here.”

They recrossed the road, and at No. 77 in the High Street entered a yard, the end of which was occupied by the carts and other belongings of a railway. But on the right, with its two rows of wooden galleries still there, stretched one wall of an ancient tavern.

“This is the George Inn, and, so far as I know, the only old one left in Southwark,” Godmother said. “Having seen the Tabard Inn as it looked in the days of Chaucer and Shakespeare, you can sweep away in thought, all the railway part of the yard, and see it as it used to be. But I agree with you that except for its memories, Southwark is dreary enough, though even now at the back of this High Street where in ancient times so many processions have passed in and out of London, there are old houses still standing.”

They took an omnibus again at the beginning of London Bridge, and looking back towards St. Saviour’s Church, she added, “There’s the only building which Shakespeare would recognize to-day, and eventhatis much altered since he lived near it three hundred years ago or more.”

“You said you’d take me to see the Charterhouse. Can’t we go now?” urged Betty, almost before they were off the bridge.

Godmother laughed. “Haven’t you had enough sight-seeing yet? Well, as what we’ve just been looking at isn’tbeautiful, however interesting it may be, we’ll end our excursion at Charterhouse. You shall see there, not only a really lovely place, but the only one of the great London schools which in our day looks more or less as it did in the sixteenth century. This same omnibus will take us near it, so on the way I’ll tell you a little of its history.”

“You said it was a monastery before it was a school, didn’t you?”

“Yes, it was a monastery when your friend Richard the Second was reigning, and remained a monastery till the time of Henry the Eighth, when the monks were turned out. In Elizabeth’s reign, the place was sold to the Duke of Norfolk, who altered it to make it suitable for a private house. A little later—and here the school part comes in—the Duke of Norfolk sold it again to a rich man called Thomas Sutton, who turned it into a home of rest for old gentlemen and a school for boys. The school, as you know, has in our day moved into the country, but as a home for poor gentlemen who are still called ‘the Brethren,’ Charterhouse goes on to this day.

“We must get down here, at the Church of St. Sepulchre’s in Holborn, and walk through Smithfield,” she broke off to say, as the omnibus at the moment, stopped.

“Smithfield? Is this where the martyrs were burnt?” asked Betty while they crossed a wide space in front of the modern market.

“Yes. It’s full of memories, and all round about it there are wonderful buildings that we shall have no time to see to-day. Here we are at the entrance gate of the Charterhouse.”

They passed into a courtyard so quiet and old-world that for the moment Betty forgot that “the magic” was not working now, and thought herself once more back again in the sixteenth century. Indeed but for the modern clothes of the porter who showed them the place, shewasas completely there, as she had been a few hours previously.

As they presently went up a splendid carved oak staircase, Godmother said, “You see here a beautiful private house and the remains of a monastery and of a great school, all in one, and that’s what makes Charterhouse specially interesting.”

A little while later Betty cried out in delight when they entered the dining-hall where once upon a time Queen Elizabeth was entertained by the Duke of Norfolk in the sixteenth century, and where that very evening of thetwentiethcentury the poor gentlemen, “the Brethren” as they are still called, would dine as usual.

“What a beautiful room!” she exclaimed, looking at its arched roof and panelled walls.

“It’s a very fine example of a sixteenth-century hall,” Godmother agreed. “There’s the minstrels’ gallery opposite us, you see, where no doubt the musicians played their best when Queen Elizabeth was here to listen to them.”

“I don’t know which I like best, the Chapel we’ve just seen, or this Hall, or the Library, or the pretty Gardens where ‘the Brethren’ are walking or sitting,” Betty declared. “What a lovely place for them to have. I’m so glad Sir Thomas Sutton left it to be a home always for poor gentlemen. But what a pity that the boys have all gone!”

“Yes, it’s sad, but even the present Charterhouse boys, who have, of course, never lived in this old place at all (because it’s fifty years since the school was moved to Godalming), are very proud of this ancient dwelling which they feel still belongs to them. Did you notice that new marble tablet in the stone passage orcloister, as it is called, leading to the Chapel? On it are written the names of Charterhouse boys who fell a year or two ago in the Great War and are commemorated in the old school-house. Many famous men have been educated here, of whom you’ll learn something when you know more about the literature and history of our country. But there’s one of whom you may have heard. He was a boy here and afterwards wrote a celebrated novel in which Charterhouse plays a part.”

“Thackeray wrote about it inThe Newcomes, I know! and I’ve just read it!” Betty exclaimed. “In the book, Colonel Newcome comes here and is one of the poor brothers. Thackeray was alive not so very long ago, wasn’t he?”

“It seems to me a very little while ago,” Godmother answered, “but it’s considerably over fifty years since he died, as I discovered just now by looking at the tablet to his memory in the Chapel Cloister.”

“Oh! I’m so glad I’ve seen this place,” Betty said as they were leaving, and she turned at the gate to look back at a sunny courtyard with a glimpse of green lawn beyond. “I shall readThe Newcomesagain now, and imagine old Colonel Newcome walking just here. I had no idea there were such beautifulplaces in London, Godmother—even without the magic, I mean,” she added.

“Thousands of people live in this wonderful city of ours andneverfind them—never even take any trouble to know of their existence,” was Godmother’s reply. “And that seems strange to me, and also a great pity. They lose much pleasure.”

Betty would gladly have lingered in Smithfield, and was full of questions about various buildings which attracted her attention, but Godmother hurried her away even from the great beautiful church of St. Bartholomew near the Charterhouse.

“We must visit that another time,” she declared. “We’ve done enough for the present. But before next Saturday,” she added, “go to the London Museum. You will find all sorts of things in it to interest you if you keep in mind what we’ve seen to-day. Go to the gallery in the basement and look at the model of London in the sixteenth century. You will see the bridge with the quaint houses clinging to it, and recognize some of the buildings we saw on our magic visit. Then look at the big model of the Tower in another room. Because it was more or less like that model in Elizabeth’s day, and indeed except for the water in the moat, it has nearly the same appearance now.

“Don’t forget also to look for the life-size figure of Queen Elizabeth on horseback and one of the courtiers leading her horse. That also is in the basement of the Museum, and will remind you of how you saw her riding through the Chepe. There are, in fact, dozens of things in the Museum belonging to London of the sixteenth century that ought to be full of meaning to you now.”

“And Shakespeare’s plays will be more interesting too, and Edmund Spenser’s poetry, and all about Raleigh, and Drake,” exclaimed Betty rather incoherently. “Oh, the magic makes all the difference, Godmother!”

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