COCKERELL'S LODGINGS.
This old place has been from time immemorial frequented by them, and here I was brought one cool September evening by the head clerk of one of the leading publishing houses of London. This clerk was still a young man, but he had the best knowledge of books and general literature that I have ever found in a man of his position. He knew at a glance how much a book would bring, who wrote it, when it was published, andhow many copies were to be got, were they to be dug out of the mustiest book-stall in London. He had a familiar acquaintance with all the members of that strange tribe of litterateurs who contribute to the magazines and weekly and daily press of this the greatest newspaper city in the world. He knew who it was who wrote the last flash novel, how much he got for it, and whether he had drunk the proceeds or not. Every first and fourth class reporter in London, all the dramatic witlings and punsters, the great short-hand guns of the House of Commons, the book reviewers, and the dramatic and musical critics, were to him everyday acquaintances, and they all in turn paid him a cordial respect for his universal knowledge. I shall call him Cockerell, this marvel of booksellers' clerks.
At 8 o'clock I called at Cockerell's lodgings, which were in Rupert street, near Holborn. He lived quietly in a nice, cosy room, filled with rare and curious editions of the works of which he was most fond, and everything around the place, from the brass andirons to the quaint clock in the chimney place, betokened a steady-going, well-informed man. The "Newgate Calendar," "Cruikshank's Almanacs," for twenty years, finely illustrated, "The Slang Dictionary," "The Streets and Antiquities of London," "A History of Signboards," "Hansard's Debates," a folio "Shakespeare," "The Heads of the People," illustrated by Kenny Meadows, "Debrett's Peerage," "The Lords and Commons," several volumes of Balzac, a volume with the wills and autographs of the Doges of Venice, "Macaulay's Lays," some of "Sala's Sketches," a bound series of theSaturday Review, and some volumes of "Punch," were among his collection, besides a complete collection of the British plays, and a number of Gilray's sketches, framed, hung from the walls. "Show me a man's library, and I will tell you what he is," somebody has said, and I believe the above works, picked out of a large library, best explain the character of the head clerk who was to be my companion for the night's adventure. Putting on his collar, gloves, and an old slouch-hat, Cockerell and I reached the hall, where the maid-servant, looking suspiciously at the writer, inquired from her master what time he would be home.
"I don't know, Jenny, exactly," said he, "but it will be some time before the cocks crow."
Having arrived at the "Carlisle Arms," we walked in, passing the bar, and found our way through a low passage into a back room about twelve feet wide by fifteen in length. The ceiling was low, and there was no ornament to be seen with the exception of a steel engraving of the Duke of Wellington on horseback, surrounded by a mounted staff, and surveying through a field-glass the broken columns of the first Bonaparte from an elevation on the plain of Waterloo. There were but three persons in the room, which had a round oaken table in the centre, and a quadrangle of wooden benches,—when I entered. My well-informed friend was saluted with hearty greetings by all present, and was asked what he would have to drink. This is an anachronism in English customs, for the people of this tight little island generally allow a friend to pay for his own drink, as a custom which has long ago been endorsed by the best authorities. There is no such folly known here as may be seen in every American public house, where the free and independent electors stand at a bar each hour in every day, treating one and the other with a promiscuous and reckless generosity. But among Bohemians all over the world it is different. If they cannot pay for a drink, they will call for it and treat each other with a liberality which is, to say the least, a most praiseworthy trait.
A PINT OF COOPER.
I forgot to mention that there were two vases, with faded artificial flowers, on the rusty old chimney-piece, and these flowers seemed to the Bohemians like the waters of an oasis in the desert to a party of Bedouins. All else was a blighted, sandy waste of small talk, tobacco smoke, and weak gin and water. The principal spokesman of the party, who was quite bald-headed and had but two or three teeth, rang the bell behind the door, and presently the pot-boy appeared. In the lowest of London publics the pot-boy waits upon the customers, washes the pewter pots, and cleans the tables with a dish-cloth, for a stipend of ten shillings a week in British coin. The pot-boy had not more than made his appearance when in came the bar-maid, with natural light hair, one of the first bar-maids I had seen in London whose hair was not dyed.
carouse
A BOHEMIAN CAROUSE.
The bar-maid surveyed the room and its occupants calmly, then asked for the orders. The pot-boy, feeling that he was only a subordinate, retired in disgust, with his dish-cloth on his left arm. One man called for "sherry weak," another for "gin and water," and a third for a "pint of cooper." The cooper was brought in a metal mug, with hoops girding it, and for this reason, I believe, the mug is called a "cooper." Pretty soon the room began to fill with stray Bohemians, who dropped in one by one and took their seats as if they feared no eviction.
In half an hour there were a dozen present, and the room was so crowded that two of them had to stand up. One or two were dandies, and wore heavy scarfs and pins, and talked French because, forsooth, they had been on the Continent.Some of them were artists on the half score of comic weeklies which are to be seen in the windows of every news-shop in London. Some were wood-engravers, some were painters in a small way, and there were correspondents of the Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool papers also present. All were in the literary or artistic line, and a few had been in the gallery of the House of Commons as reporters, doing short-hand work, and there was one really clever artist, who had illustrated books by some of the best authors in England. This man was a little scant of hair on the top of the forehead, and had a light moustache. He had been to many prize-fights, and had gloated over many a frightful murder, through his sketches in the weekly illustrated newspapers. He was a merry, good-natured fellow, with a genuine fund of pleasant anecdote and a liking for Burton ale.
There was another man very quiet in appearance, and wearing a gray mixed sack coat, with his bosom open in the style of Walt Whitman. He puzzled me when I first looked at him, but after a while I found that he was a German by birth, very recondite,—from Lower Prussia, domiciled in London for many years, who had written a work with the mystical title of "Entities of God." None of his intimates had ever even read this book; with the exception of one man, (a dear friend,) who was in his debt, and had honored his friendship so far as to read the preface, but could not get any farther for a different reason from that assigned by the Heidelberg student, who, after reading a work of John Stuart Mill, threw down the book in disgust, saying that "it was too clear;" yet he was respected in this mixed assemblage of topers and clever fellows, because he had written a book that no one could understand. Such is the force of intellect.
There were two Irishmen present who sat in a corner together, drank together, gave each other a light for the pipes which they smoked, and quarreled with a fraternal regard.
THE RADICAL AND CONSERVATIVE.
One was an old man with a grey moustache, an Orangeman, who had been in America in the old days when Virginia and South Carolina ruled the Senate of the republic, and since thenhe had been a correspondent by turns for some of the London newspapers abroad, and again a literary hack for the shabby sheets that are read in the obscure holes of the city. His friend was a much younger man, full blooded, and a thorough Irish Nationalist, although he disclaimed Fenianism. He was a reporter, and had an extensive knowledge of his professional associates on the London press. His name was Fitzgerald, and his venerable friend was known as Dawson. The German of the profound intellect was called Meyer, or Herr Meyer. The names of the French dandies I have forgotten; they were but poor specimens, and did not furnish any entertainment during the evening.
There were two reporters of the morning press at this feast of reason and flow of beer, but they did not contribute much amusement to the party, as they were discussing the respective rates of salaries on theDaily Bludgeonand theMorning Budgetduring the entire evening's conversation. The two Irishmen were perpetually at loggerheads about politics, "Fitz" being a Radical, Dawson a Conservative Churchman of the old school. Occasionally they gave each other the lie, and then I expected to see them striking out at each other; but in three minutes after they would vow eternal friendship, and shake each other's hand with great warmth. The name of the artist was Sullivan. Sullivan hailed the head clerk with great feeling, and as he sat down there was a drink all around.
"Well, old Cockerell," said the vivacious Fitz, "how is Slogger's book getting on with yeer people?"
"It 'ill soon be published. We have it on hand now, and expect to sell twenty thousand copies. The pictures will sell it alone, although, I must say, Slogger's text is very good for his subject. We are getting all the trade now. Every fellow that thinks he can scribble comes to us, and the big fish are also in our net. Murray must have been cut up pretty bad to find Gladstone leaving him and going to McMillan. It all comes of having a magazine. A publishing house that can command the columns of a well circulated magazine can print as many books as they like, and, what is better, they can sellthem. Our house does the heavy flash business, and it pays well. Old 'Swoslam' is a keen blade, and is always on the lookout for a novelty. McMillan has sold, I'm told, four editions of their magazines having the Byron article. Well, old fellow, how are you (to Sullivan), and what are you doing?"
"I'm fhoine, me dharling, and me appetite is just as good as ever, but me powers of dhrinking are failing fast. As for what I'm doing, Miss Sthabber has got me to make pictures for her new novel, which she got a hundred and fifty pounds for in the 'Thames Mag.,' and now she is going to publish it in book form. It's a nice title she has for it, 'The Red Divil of the Yallow Mountin; or, the Ghost of the Place de Greve.' I sometimes think the woman is going crazy whin she sinds for me in the mornin' to talk to her about her new books down Brompton way, where she lives. I generally find her in bed with a decanther of brandy, a pot of coffee, and a square box of cigarettes by her bedside on a table. 'Soolivan,' said she, 'I want two Convent scenes in the sixth chapter; a rocky pass, with a skeleton standing in the middle of the gap, his grisly arms outstretched, for the ninth chapter; and in the fifteenth chapter you must give me a powerful tableoo where the chief butler is discovered in the room off the banquetting hall poisoning his misthresses's wine.
"'For the details I'll trust to your powerful Irish imagination; and now, Soolivan, you low blackguard, turn your back and help yourself to the brandy while I'm putting on me wrapper, as I don't wan't you to be making fancy pictures of 'Vanus going to the Bath,' or any such gammon as that, for pot-houses, with the great female London novelist—I believe that's what they call me, isn't it, Soolivan?—as an original.' Indade, I think that Miss Sthabber is more nor half mad, but I must say that she is the divil at plots and incidents, and she drinks excellent brandy."
THE SHORT-HAND REPORTER.
"Stabber is a clever woman," said Cockerell, the head clerk. "Whackem & Co., Paternoster Row, sold thirty-two thousand copies of her 'Blue-Eyed Demon' in three months, and she refused £950 for it from an Edinburgh house, so Whackemmust have given her more. By the way, do any of your fellows know the name of this man who has written the last new novel 'Girded with Steel?' I fancy he must be one of your newspaper fellows, because he has a lot of stuff in it about 'leader writing,' 'my note-book,' 'two columns is more than earthquake should be allowed in a newspaper,' and there are, besides, the details of editorial life which an outsider could not know. Who is he?"
"Oh, he's a young reporter on theOmniverous Clam, but I could not give his name on a pint of honor," said Fitz. "He's a clever chap, though, and will make his way. He's only been two years in the professhion, and he's the best short-hand man on theClamnow, so maybe you know who I mean now."
"It's Billingsgate," said one.
"No, it's Gravelly," said another.
"Boys, ye are not right; it's Goby, and he's five hundred and fifty pounds the betther of it, which is a nice little lump for a reporther who gets five guineas a week, and has to work like a horse for that in the session," said Fitzgerald.
"Reporthers have harder work now then they had whin I first went in the Gallery," said old Dawson. "Me father, as yez know, boys, was a reporther before me; and I might say it runs in the family. Ah! thim were good times, boys, when the ould man did his short-hand wurruk. He knew all the great reporthers of the day; and fine fellows they were, too. There was William Radcliffe, the husband of the woman who wrote all the bloodthirsty novels. Radcliffe was a mimry reporther, and he'd go to the House and sit the debates out, and nivir take a note at all, at all. Then he'd go to the office and dictate two different articles at a time to the juniors who took it all down, and out it came, sphick-and-sphan, in the morning, without a flaw.
"Then there was another grate fellow, ould Billy Woodfall, who had a paper of his own called theDiary; and that was before the House allowed the reporthers to take notes during the debates. They used to call him "Mimory Woodfall," because he'd never forget anything that he had heard; and whenstrangers would come from the country to visit the House the first questions they would ask would be, 'Which is Woodfall?' 'Which is the Sphaker?' Me fawther told me many a story about him. He had a fashion of bringing hard-boiled eggs with him, which he carried in his hat, and whin he came to the House he'd take off his hat carefully, put it between his knees, take the eggs out, keeping his head well down for fear the Sargint-at-Arrums would see him eating, and then he'd brake the shells and eat the eggs with as great relish as if they were game pies. A reporther on an opposition paper wanted to play a joke on Billy one night, and when he laid his hat down he took the two hard-boiled eggs out and put two in the hat that had nivir been boiled at all, and when Billy wint to crack the shells the yoke sphattered all over his breeches, bedad, so it did. Billy nivir forgave the joke until the day of his death. Woodfall did all his own reporthin', and theDiarydid well for a time, until theMorning Chroniclestarted in opposition, with Perry at the head of it. Perry hired a lot of reporthers to take notes of the debates and write them out, and by the time that Woodfall had his notes written out, theChroniclewas selling in every sthreet in London; and that was what took all the wind out of poor Billy's sails."
"Perry was a foine reporther himself, and when the House was thrying Admiral Palliser and Admiral Keppel for their loives, Perry'd send in eight or ten colyums every week of the debates, without any assistance; but, bedad, we wouldn't think much of that now. Woodfall used to say, in a joking way, that 'he had been fined by the House of Commons, confined by the House of Lords, fined and confined by the Coort of King's Binch, and indicted in the Ould Bailey,' for his offinces. Oh, them were foine times, bedad, whin you could go in and get yer nice chop and yer glass of sherry, or a sweet little sthake fresh from the rump, and maybe have the Juke of Wellington and George Canning sitting at the same table wid ye; and they'd be at the chops and sthakes too."
A SONG FROM THE SPEAKER.
"Dawson, me boy, tell us about Mark Supple and the Quaker, and take another jugfull of beer to wet yer whistle," saidthe artist, who had just withdrawn his nose from the pewter pot which he was now sadly contemplating in its mournful emptiness.
"Oh! is it Supple ye mane, Jimmy. I'll tell ye all about him, yer riverence, and I'll take a pint of sthout to strinthin' me nerves afore I begin. Ye see," said Dawson, after he had taken a long pull at the mug, "Mark was fondher of a joke than he was of his breakfast. He was a good reporther, too, and liked a little dhrop now and thin, like more of his counthrymin, God forgive thim. One night Mark was in the gallery reporthing for theMorning Chronicle, when Mr. Addington was the Sphaker. Mark was a big, raw-boned native of sweet Tipperary, and was fond of hearing a song at all times. He used to take a glass of wine or two in Bellamy's, and thin go up in the gallery and take out his note-book and whack away with the pot-hooks and colophons. Mark was a foine scholar and a janius. They say he'd dhress up a mimbir's speech, and put retterick and flowers and poethry into a dull six-mile oration, and it used to puzzle the mimbirs so that they would hardly know their own words again. Of course, they all liked Mark, and he sometimes took a good dale of freedom with thim.
"He had a mighthy quare style intirely with him, and an English mimbir who was fond of a joke, like Mark's self, said that Mark's style of reporthin' was 'a mixture of the hyperbolical, with a vane of Orientalism and a dash of the bog-throtter.' They are quick enough, God knows, to sneer about the poor bog-throtters. Well, this night was a quiet one in the House. A number of the mimbirs were asleep, some were nodding, some were at their dinners; and when Mark looked down from the gallery the Sphaker, Mr. Addington, had nothing to do, and there was a silence in the House so that you might have heard a pin dhrop. All at once Mark called out in a reckless loud voice:
"'A song from Mr. Sphaker.'
"You can imagine the horror of Mr. Addington as he stood up, his tall, thin figure stretched to its full linth, and hispeevish eyes scanning the House from top to bottom. Every one roared out laughing, and William Pitt had the tears sthraming down his ould, withered cheeks. After a while the House recovered its gravity, or rather its stupidity, and the Sarjint-at-Arrums began his search for the man who had hallooed in the sacred place. He went up among the reporthers, who all knew the offindhir; but none of the boys would tell on Mark, who was well liked; and, bedad, the Sarjint-at-Arrums was bursting his skin with rage. Seeing that he could not get any information, he turned to Mark, who was looking as solemn as a toomstone, and asked him if he knew who had called for a song.
"Mark purtended that he was very busy with his pencils, and, nivir sayin' a wurd, pointed his finger to a fat Quaker who sat asleep, two or three seats off, with his hands clasped quietly over the pit of his stomach. The Quaker was seized in a minute, and given into the custody of the House, vainly declaring his innocence, and was kept in confinement two hours, until Mark, in a manly way, acknowledged his crime, and was put in the Quaker's place, to meditate on his foolishness. He was brought to the Bar of the House thin, and let off, whin he promised to do betther in the future, and nivir call upon the Sphaker for another song."
"Tell us about Supple and Wilberforce, Dawson," said Fitzgerald to the veteran.
"Oh, that wasn't Supple that played the thrick on Wilberforce: that was Pether Finnerty," said Dawson. "Pether was on theChronicle; and one night, when the House was full of business, Pether sat drinking too long in Bellamy's and lost his turn. When he got into the House, he asked some of the boys, who had been sphakin'? One of them who had been present told Pether that Wilberforce had been sphakin' for an hour.
"'What did he say?' says Pether.
"'Take out yer book, and I'll give it to ye, me boy, in a jiffy,' says the other. Pether was so far gone that he would have made Wilberforce say anything, however ridiculous, and when the other reporther began as follows, he did not see the joke:
"'Potatoes make men healthy, vigorous, and active; but, what is still more in their favor, they make men tall'—
"Did he say that, the jewel?" said Pether, who was touched with this tribute to the esculent of his native isle.
THE BEAUTIFUL POTATO.
"I'll give you my word, he said it,—'and when I look around this house, and see before me such fine, vigorous specimens of Irish manhood, all reared on the potato, and think of my own stunted, weak figure and attenuated frame, I must always regret and lament that my parents did not foster me on that fragrant and genial vegetable, the beautiful potato.'"
"'Oh! murther!' said Pether; 'but Wilberforce is the fine fellow to use such poetical language;' and off he wint to theChronicleoffice to write out his notes. And the next morning there it was—the thribute to the potato and all the rest of it—and all London was laughing at Wilberforce, and every one believed that he was drunk when he spoke the words. The next day Pether was brought before the bar of the House to stand his trial, and Wilberforce rose and said:
"'Mr. Speaker and Gentlemen: Were I capable of using such language as was attributed to me in a morning journal, in its reports of yesterday's debates, I would be unworthy of the attention which I now claim from this House and unfit to occupy a seat in this honorable body. Rather would I be worthy of a straight-jacket in a lunatic asylum, where I might learn better sense of the dignity of this House.' Pether was let off, like Mark Supple, and he was ever afterwards very careful in his reports. But the joke stuck to Wilberforce's coat for many a long day afther."
By this time the greater part of the Bohemians had left for their homes, and after a song and a few more stories from Fitz and Sullivan, the erratic band broke up, and the tap-room was deserted. Such was the scene—a singular one—which occurs in the old dingy Public House night after night among the wandering journalists and penny-a-liners of the London press and their associates of kindred professions. The old, haunted Public could tell many a ludicrous story of a like kind had it a tongue to speak—of the amusing, wandering, never-do-well Free Lances,of the Press, who find food and clothing, and a good deal to drink, by their ephemeral contributions to the journalistic and light literature of England's metropolis.
In addition to the "Carlisle Arms" there is another resort of the higher class of writers, authors, and artists, in the neighborhood of the theatres, and this place is known to those who frequent it as the "Albion." At the Albion, there is an excellent restaurant, and well-cooked viands, and wines of the best quality, may be obtained there at reasonable prices. Choice little dinners, illuminated by wit and humor, are given here by journalists to each other.
tailpiece
CHAPTER XIII.
TOWER, PALACE, AND PRISON.
THE sun has risen and set for a thousand years on its gray walls; the grime and verdure of a thousand years have cemented its hoary stones; nations have grown and decayed; dynasties have been founded and wrecked irretrievably; a New World has been discovered, and inventive genius has almost changed the face of the earth and yet the Tower of London, (cemented by the blood of beasts, as the fable has it,) which saw the beginning and progress of these changes, still endures, and will no doubt endure to the end of time.
tower
TOWER OF LONDON.
It seems a long, long time ago, that bleak Christmas day of the year 800, when the Pope of Rome placed the Iron Crown of Lombardy upon the annointed head of Charlemagne under the dome of St. Peter's, amid the huzzas of the multitude of Frankish warriors and barons who witnessed the sacred ceremony, and yet far back in that nearly barbarous age, the chroniclers tell us in their scholastic volumes of the monasteries, that a Tower existed in London and on the same spot where now the wardens patrol in their red tunics and explain historical conundrums to dull Cockneys.
And some of the chroniclers go farther back and profess to believe that the Tower is as old as the Roman occupation of Britain, and do not hesitate to say that Julius Cæsar, who has been accused of so many good and bad deeds, was the founder of the old forbidding pile of masonry.
Be that as it may, it is old enough to have earned a lasting infamy, only once deserved in history by another grim fortress,—its twin brother and accomplice in blood and oppression, the Bastile Of Paris. That foul excresence on the fair face of the Earth has been swept away by the stormy sea of a people's vengeance, while the Tower of London still remains as a lesson of tradition, to tell of the crimes that God has permitted kings and dwellers in high places to perpetrate against the people, who have suffered and died and made no sign.
The charge to see the Tower of London is only sixpence in these days, and for a sixpence a visitor may see everything; dungeon and trap door, axe and scaffold, crown jewels and prison bars, the cages and the dungeons and graves of those who suffered and died here during the long night of centuries,—and all this for a paltry sixpence.
Amid the tramp and thunder of a hundred battles it has stood unshaken; it is too strong for the destroying hand of man; and time, as if in reverence, has trod lightly as he has stepped over its massive walls.
I saw its towers; four of them, standing up against the sky, bellshaped and surmounted by weather vanes, one day from London Bridge, and having a curiosity to see a structure, which even more than Westminster Abbey is coeval with authentic history, I walked slowly to Tower Hill, passed along the firm drawbridge, paid a sixpence and entering under the spiked portcullis, I found myself in the Lion Tower which stands at the corner of the moat or Tower ditch facing the Thames.
DELIVERING THE KEYS.
The extent of the Tower within the walls is twelve acres and five roods. The exterior circuit of the ditch—now a garden, or rather an apology for a garden—surrounding it, is three thousand one hundred and fifty-six feet. On the river side is a broad and handsome wharf or graveled terrace, separated by the ditch from the fortress and mounted with sixty pieces of ordnance, which are fired on the royal birthdays, or in celebration of any remarkable event. From the wharf into the Tower is an entrance by a drawbridge. Near it is a cut or short canal connecting the river with the ditch, having a water entrancecalled the "Traitor's Gate,"—State Prisoners having been formerly conveyed by this passage to Westminster, where the two Houses of Parliament now sit, for trial. Over the Traitor's Gate is a building containing the waterworks which supply the interior with water.
Within the walls of the fortress are several streets. The principal buildings which it contains are the White or principal Tower, the ancient Chapel of St. Peter-ad-Vincula, the Ordnance-Office, the Record Office, the Jewel's House, the Stone Armory, the Grand Storehouse, and the Small Armory, besides the house belonging to the Constable of the Tower and other officers, the barracks of the garrison, and the sutler's shops, commonly used by the soldiers. It is generally a regiment of the line which serves as a garrison for the tower.
The principal entrance to the Tower is to the west. It consists of two gates on the outside of the ditch, a stone bridge built over the ditch, and a gate at the end of the bridge.
These gates are opened every morning with a strange, and for the Nineteenth century, a very fantastical ceremony.
The Yeoman-Porter with a sergeant and six men march to the Governor's house for the keys.
Having received them, he proceeds to the innermost gate, and passing that, it is again shut. He then opens the three outermost gates at each of which the guards rest their firelocks while the keys pass and repass. The gravity with which the guards perform this ceremony, and the nice precision with which they manoeuvre, is calculated to make everybody but an Englishman laugh.
On the return of the Yeoman-Porter to the innermost gate, he calls to the warden on duty to take the Queen's keys, when they open the gates, and the keys are placed in the warden's hall.
At night the same formality is used in shutting the gates; and as the Yeoman-Porter and the guard, return with the keys to the Governor's house the main guard which, with its officers, is under arms, challenges him saying:
"Who comes there?"
He answers:
"The Keys."
The challenger replies:
"Pass Keys."
The guards by order rest their firelocks and the Yeoman-Porter says:
"God save the Queen."
The soldiers then answer back:
"Amen."
The bearer of the keys then proceeds to the Governor's house and there leaves them.
After they are deposited with the Governor no person can enter or leave the Tower without the watchword for the night. If any person obtains permission to pass, the Yeoman-Porter attends him and the same ceremony is repeated.
The Tower is governed by its constable, called the Constable of the Tower, and the Chief Nobleman or principal person next to the blood royal, not including the Archbishop of Canterbury, is chosen to hold this office by the Queen. At coronations and other state ceremonies this officer has the custody of and is responsible for the regalia. Under him is a lieutenant, deputy-lieutenant, commonly called governor, a fort-major, gentleman porter, yeoman porter, gentleman gaoler, four quarter-gunners, and forty warders. The warder's uniform is the same as that of the Queen's Guards, or Beef Eaters.
It is rarely that the Tower is used as a State Prison, in these days. When prisoners are detained here, by application to the Privy Council they are usually permitted to walk on the inner platform during part of the day, accompanied by a warder.
IN THE LION'S MOUTH.
The fire which took place toward the winter of 1841 destroyed a great portion of the grand armory, and materially altered the features of the Tower. The armory, said to have been the largest in Europe, was three hundred and forty-five feet in length, and was formerly used as a storehouse for the artillery train, until the stores were removed to Woolwich. A very large number of chests with arms ready for any emergencywere in a part of the room which had been partitioned off; and in the other part a variety of arms were arranged in elegant and fanciful devices.
A fearful destruction of property, at once curious and valuable, took place in this department; but one beautiful piece of workmanship being preserved.
This was the famous brass gun taken from Malta by the French in 1798, and sent with eight banners which hung over the gun, to the French Directory by General Bonaparte, inLa Sensible, from which vessel it was captured by the English man-of-war,Seahorse.
In the Lion Tower, at the entrance, were kept the wild beasts in the olden times, for the amusement of such monarchs as James I, who was too cowardly to look upon any strife but that of chained or caged animals. Here were kept lions, tigers, bears and bulls, wild boars, dogs and fighting cocks. About one hundred and fifty years ago a young girl who was employed as servant by one of the keepers, being of a rather bold and courageous temper, she took pleasure now and then in feeding the lions, and with great imprudence one day ventured to be a little more familiar than usual with the king of beasts, relying upon his gratitude because she was in the habit of feeding the animals. This time she went too close to the cage of the lion, who caught hold of her arm and tore it from the shoulder like a shred of rotten cloth, and before any one could come to her assistance, he gave her a terrible gripe and killed her instantly.
Another individual who had charge of the lions and fed them had a very narrow escape from their claws, and he has related his story as follows:
"'Twas our custom," he says, "when we cleansed the lion's den to drive them down over night into a lower place in order to rise early in the morning and refresh their day apartments by cleaning them out; and having through a mistake, and not forgetfulness, left one of the trap doors unbolted which I thought I had carefully secured, I came down in the morning before daylight, with my candle and lantern fastened before me to mybutton, with my implements in my hands to despatch my business, as was usual, and going carelessly into one of the dens, a lion had returned through the trap door, and lay couchant in the corner of the den, with his head toward me. The sudden surprise of this terrible sight brought me under such dreadful apprehension of the danger I was in, that I stood fixed like a statue, without the power of motion, with my eyes steadfast upon the lion and his likewise fixed upon mine.
"I expected nothing but to be torn to pieces every moment, and was fearful to attempt one step back, lest my endeavor to shun him might have made him the more eager to hasten my destruction. At last he roused himself, as though to have a breakfast off me; yet, by the assistance of Providence, I had the presence of mind to keep steady in my posture, for the reasons before mentioned.
"He moved toward me, but without expressing in his countenance either greediness or anger; but, on the contrary, wagged his tail, signifying nothing but friendship in his fawning behavior; and after he had stared me a little in the face, he raises himself up on his two hindmost feet, and laying his two fore paws upon my shoulders, without hurting me, fell to licking my face, as a further instance of his gratitude for my feeding him, as I afterwards conjectured; though then I expected every moment that he would have stripped my skin, as a poulterer does a rabbit, and have cracked my head between his teeth, as a monkey does a walnut.
"His tongue was so very rough, that with the few favorite kisses he gave me, it made my cheeks almost as rough as a pork griskin, which I was very glad to take in good part without a bit of grumbling, and when he had thus saluted me and given me his sort of welcome to his den, he returned to his place and laid him down, doing me no further damage; which unexpected deliverance occasioned me to take courage, that I shrunk back by degrees till I recovered the trap door, through which I jumped and pulled it after me, thus happily through an especial Providence, I escaped the fury of so dangerous a creature."
THE BISHOP OF DURHAM A PRISONER.
The Tower was for many hundreds of years an object of suspicion to the good citizens of London, who deemed the massive fortress a standing threat against their rights and privileges. Whenever a monarch wished to wrest concessions from the Londoners, to wring a large sum of money from their fears, or commit some other act of despotism, it was customary, just previous to the attempt against the people, to strengthen the Tower in its weakest part, and a ditch, or a wall, or a bastion was constructed, to enable the Governor or Constable of the Tower to hold the fortress for his Lord the King, in case the citizens should resist the attempt on their purses or their liberties.
How little the gaping Cockneys and bulbous-eyed rustics, who stroll around through the different apartments of this mighty castle, know or even dream of the great deeds, terrible crimes, and high resolves of those who have inhabited this Tower of London during a thousand years of its most eventful and troubled history.
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TRAITOR'S GATE.
One dark night during the first years of the reign of Henry I, before the Traitor's Gate had attained such a terrible fame as it afterward obtained from the number of the victims who have passed under its grimy arch, never to pass out except to the block on Tower Hill, a shallop with two men whose arms lie between their feet at the bottom of the boat, and a third whose arms are bound, stops at the wall where the Water Gate is now shown, and in reply to the summons of one of the armed men, the portcullis is hoisted, and Ralph Flambard, the fighting, choleric, and rebellious Bishop of Durham, passes under the arch a prisoner to the King, and the massive iron gates, rusty even then, are shut firmly ere the sound of the boat's oars have been heard by the wardens in the Inner Tower.
In a few days he makes a number of friends among the officials of the Tower by his merry temperament, and as state prisoners were always allowed to furnish their own tables in the fortress, the jolly bishop has many a heavy carouse. Tun after tun of hippocras, canary, and sack is conveyed to him, and he dispenses those medieval beverages to the knights and men-at-arms—pages and guards, with no stinted measure. One evening the Bishop receives a long and strong coil of rope in a puncheon of Malmsley, and that very night, after he had drank all the knights, men-at-arms and wardens under the oaken tables, the jolly bishop flies to the ramparts, lowers himself down into the ditch, and like the plucky prelate that he was, escapes from Henry's wrath.
One fine summer day when Henry III is King of England, Cardinal Pandulph, the Legate of the Pope, presents himself and a long train of attendants, with sumpter and service mules, at the land postern of the Tower, and after a loud flourish of trumpets to announce his arrival, the Cardinal is admitted to the presence of the King; and throws a bag of Rose nobles on the table before the young monarch, for in those days the Majesty of Britain did not scorn to borrow 200 marks of Cardinal Pandulph, and one hundred marks of Henry, Abbot of St. Albans. The money market was very tight in those days, and Kings often held dealings with pawn-brokers, for we find Henry VIII pledging or melting down nearly all the crown regalia to satisfy his creditors.
COUNCIL CHAMBER OF THE TOWER.
There is an apartment of very large and fine proportions in the third story of the White or Main Tower, supported by two rows of beams. The timber ceiling is flat, and the walls are pierced with windows on one side and heavy arches appear on the other side; the whole structure being of the rudest construction, yet grand looking withal; and this is the great Council Chamber of the Tower, in which some of the most startling and memorable scenes in English history have occurred.
It is Monday, September 29, 1399. The day, which was overcast in the early morning, has turned out fair and bright, and the Council Chamber and all the approaches to it are crowded with the highest nobles, temporal and spiritual, in the land; steel clad knights, mitred abbots, proud bishops, grave judges in cap and ermine, peers and lackeys, stand on the stairs and in the ante-rooms, to catch a word or get a look at the coming grand historical farce which is to end at last in a terrible tragedy.
It is the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel, and as the sun streams through the stained glass of the oriel windows, and the shouts of the London prentices at their games of ball, are wafted to the warder on the battlements, who carries his partisan to and fro; a deputation from each house of Parliament, headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and other great Nobles, enters the Council Chamber to hold a conference with the reigning Monarch Richard II, now about to resign his Crown to the Protector Bolingbroke, who afterward as Henry IV, will encounter more vicissitudes and suffering than the monarch he is about so cruelly to depose.
The nobles seat themselves, the Protector enthrones himself, and a ghastly figure, that of Richard II, stalks moodily into the Chamber, clad in kingly robes, his sceptre in his hand, the Crown upon his head, and there is silence for a moment among all present. Then Richard says in a broken voice, but distinctly, "I have been King of England, Duke of Aquitaine, and Lord of Ireland about twenty-one years, which Seigneury, Royalty, Sceptre, Crown and Heritage, I now clearly resign here to my cousin, Henry of Lancaster, and I desire him here, in this open presence, in entering of the same possession, to take the sceptre;" "and so," says Froissart, "he delivered it to the Duke, who took it," and kept it, also, he might have added.
Before a year had elapsed the unfortunate monarch was put to death in Pontefract Castle by order of his successor, Henry IV.
On a May day, in 1471, the streets of London resound with music, and the populace are all in holiday attire to welcome Edward IV, who returns victorious from the battle of Barnet, where he has slain, in cold blood, Prince Edward, son to Henry VI, who is a prisoner in the Tower. Next day Henry dies in a suspicious manner, and Edward has leisure for a little while to found the Order of the Garter.
Edward dies, and he is not cold in his tomb before Richard III ascends, or rather usurps the throne.
Edward has left two boys, the eldest of whom is lawful heir to the Crown, by Elizabeth Wydville, his wife.
One dark night, the wind soughs in the trees and moans around the battlements of the fortress, as two men, Miles Forest and John Dighton, hired assassins, enter the sleeping chamber of the two young princes. They steal to the bed, and having covered the mouths of the lads with the bed-clothes and pillows, they throw their heavy bodies across the couch. There are some faint, stifled moans, for a few minutes, and then all is still but the mournful music of the storm without, for the murderers have done their work but too well.
Sir James Tyrrell, who has been in waiting outside to see that the bloody deed is accomplished, walks in, looks at the distorted features of the children, gives an order in a whisper, and the still warm bodies are carried out, and down a dark stone staircase, and are buried there beneath a heap of stones to moulder till the Resurrection.
Here comes William Wallace, patriot and hero, to the Traitor's Gate, in the year 1305, and after languishing in prison for months he is tied to horses' tails and dragged forth, through Cheapside, and thence to Smithfield, to die the death of a dog, his mutilated body being torn to pieces in the presence of a noisy and hostile rabble.
From this place, Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, is also dragged forth to St. Giles, in the Fields, and having been hungup over a slow fire by a chain from the middle of his body for two hours he is slowly roasted to death. He was a follower of Wickliffe.
The Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV, is hurried to his death in the Tower by Richard III, who orders him to be drowned in a huge hogshead of sweet wine! A mode of death chosen, it is said, by the victim himself in preference to any other.
The good and pious Sir Thomas Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, eighty years of age, is imprisoned here, and is left to starve and rot in a dungeon of this place of infamy. His misery is such that the man of God has to write Secretary Cromwell, minister of Henry VIII: "Furthermore I beseech you to be good, Master, in my necessity, for I have neither shirt, nor yet other clothes, that are necessary for me to wear, but that be ragged and rent too shamefully. Notwithstanding, I might easily suffer that if they would keep my body warm. But God knoweth, also, how slender my diet is at many times. And now, in mine old age, my stomach may rot away but with a few kinds of meat, which if I want, I decay forthwith."
When this God-fearing man was taken out to be beheaded, his bones showed through his skin, and women wept and fell fainting at the cruel sight.
In the Beauchamp Tower, at the very bottom or foundation, is a subterraneous cell known as the "Rats' Dungeon," a hideous hell-hole, below low-water mark, and dark as the despair of the human souls who were confined there in the days when men were fond of cutting each others' throats for conscience sake. At high water, thousands of rats sought shelter in this dungeon until the floods subsided. Woe be to the poor wretches there confined when the rats swarmed in, screaming like human beings in agony.
In this den, prisoners were starved when the rack had failed to wring a confession from them. Here all their shrieks and struggles were drowned deep in this infernal hole with only the eye of the Almighty to look upon the maddening horrors which the wretched prisoners had to endure before Death came to relieve them.
One night with the rats was enough,—at break of day only a heap of gnawed bones remained to tell the tale.