IMPRISONMENT OF ANNE BOLEYN.
In one of the upper stories of the Tower there is an apartment with one grated window and a rough oaken planked floor, where Anne Boleyn was confined when her royal paramour had determined to send her neck to the axe. The unhappy woman, as she passed through the Traitor's Gate, read her fate in its dread aspect, and as she passed beneath its arch she rose in the barge, fell on her knees and prayed God to have mercy on her, and defend her from her Royal lover's rage. When she was shown her apartment, its naked and forbidding aspect terrified her sore, and she cried out in a maniacal frenzy, "It's too good for me, Jesu have mercy upon me." Then she knelt down weeping and laughing like a mad woman. When her head lay on the block the executioner was afraid to strike off her head, as she refused to have her eyes bandaged, and at last he had to take off his shoes, and cause another person to approach her while he came from behind and clumsily hacked off her head.
When the Marchioness of Salisbury, an aged and venerable lady, was led to execution, she stoutly declared she was not a traitor, and refused to lay her head on the block, and the headsman was compelled to follow her all around the scaffold, striking at her as if she was a bullock, until finally her gray head was hacked off.
The Princess Elizabeth, afterwards Queen of that name, having been suspected of complicity in the hasty insurrection of Sir Thomas Wyatt, she was committed to the Tower by order of her sister, Queen Mary.
As she passed under the Traitor's Gate, through which her mother, Anne Boleyn, and Wyatt (who had fought for her) had preceded her, the proud heart of Elizabeth failed her and she burst into tears. At first she refused to get out of the boat, but seeing that force would be used, she cried out to the rowers—
"Here landeth as true a subject, being a prisoner, as ever landed at these stairs; and before Thee, oh God, I speak it, having no other friend than Thee."
Proceeding up the stairs she seated herself, and being pressed by the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Thomas Brydges, to rise, she answered:
"Better sit here than on a worse place: for God knoweth and not I, whither you will bring me."
She lived to be Queen of England, and the mercy which was shown to her she refused to many a poor wretch, whose bones Elizabeth allowed to be gnawed clean and bare in the "Rat's Dungeon."
One more scene of horror.
LADY JANE GREY ON THE SCAFFOLD.
As Lady Jane Gray passed out of the Tower by the postern gate to Tower Hill, she beheld the headless corpse of her husband (who had just been decapitated) carried out on a cart to be buried in the Tower chapel of St. Peter-ad-Vincula.
"All, Guilford, Guilford," said she, "the ante-past is not so bitter that thou hast tasted, and which I soon shall taste, as to make my flesh tremble; it is nothing compared to the feast of which we shall this day partake in Heaven."
Then she passed on to the scaffold.
When on the scaffold she turned to the crowd and said:
"And now good people all, while I am yet alive, I pray of you to assist me with your prayers."
Then she knelt, and turning to Father Feckenham, the Queen's chaplain, asked him:
"Shall I say this psalm?"
And Father Feckenham, who was afterwards Lord Abbot of Westminster, answered:
"Yea."
Then she said the psalmMiserere Mei Deusand stood up and gave her book, gloves, and handkerchief to her two attendant ladies; and she commenced to untie her gown.
The executioner said:
"Shall I assist you to disrobe, Lady Jane?"
She answered him quickly:
"Nay, leave me in peace," and her two ladies advanced and disrobed her.
The headsman then desired her to stand on the straw, after her ladies had tied a kerchief about her eyes, and as she complied with his request, she asked him:
"Will you dispatch me quickly? Will you take it off before I lay me down?"
"No, Madam," said he to the last question.
Then Lady Jane felt for the block, her eyes being bandaged, and groping, she said:
"Where is it? Where is it?"
Laying her head on the block, she said slowly:
"Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit," and at that instant, her neck being bared, there was a glitter of steel, a dull thud, and her head rolled in the sawdust.
The Jewels and Royal Regalia are kept in a glass case, well guarded by a warden, who is never allowed to leave the apartment for an instant, unless when relieved. There is a charge of sixpence extra to see the Jewel House, and a constant stream of visitors may be found in this part of the Tower, the ladies particularly taking a great interest in the splendor of the royal treasures.
St. Edward's Crown, first worn by Charles II, has since his time been worn by all the monarchs who have ascended the throne of Great Britain. This is the identical crown stolen by the daring Col. Blood, and the one which was placed on the head of Queen Victoria when she was crowned in Westminster Abbey, nearly two hundred years after it was stolen. It is a very magnificent one, surmounted with a cross of diamonds. The new crown, made purposely for her Majesty, is also here, and is made of purple velvet, hooped with silver, and richly adorned with diamonds. The ruby in it is said to have been worn by Edward, the Black Prince, five hundred years ago, and the sapphire in it is considered to be of great value; the crown altogether is estimated to be worth £100,000. King Edward's Crown is supposed to be worth at least £200,000.
THE CROWN JEWELS.
The Prince of Wales' Crown is formed of pure gold, withoutmany jewels, while that of the Queen's Consort, formerly worn by Prince Albert, is enriched with pearls, diamonds and other precious stones, and is worth about £80,000.
jewels
1. Queen's Diadem. 2. Prince of Wales' Crown. 3. Old Imperial Crown. 4. Queen's Crown. 5. Queen's Coronation Bracelets. 6. Temporal Sceptre. 7. Spiritual Sceptre.
The Queen's Diadem, valued at £75,000, was made for Maria d'Este, the unfortunate Queen of James II, who stood cowering in the rain and sleet, under the walls of Lambeth Church, that awful night when her husband abdicated, and William, Prince of Orange, landed at Torbay. Before James crossed the river at Westminster, to join his wife in their flight from England, he threw the Great Seal of Britain into the Thames.
St. Edward's Staff, a part of the regalia, is four feet seven inches long, bearing at the top an Orb and Cross, the orb containing, it is said, a portion of the Cross on which our Saviour died.
The Staff is made of beaten gold, to the bottom of which is fixed a steel spike, no doubt intended for defence, as a strong arm would be able to drive it through any assailant. Nothing is known authentically of the history of this Staff, but it is supposed to date back as far as the time of the Crusades, on account of the portion of the cross which it is said to contain.
The Royal Sceptre is of gold, ornamented with precious stones; also with the rose, shamrock, and thistle, emblematical of England, Scotland, and Ireland, all in gold; the cross is richly jewelled, and contains a large diamond in the centre; the length of the Sceptre is two feet nine inches, and it is valued at £40,000.
The other jewelled articles of the regalia are valued at £300,000, and are as follows:
The Rod of Equity is three feet seven inches in length, and is made of gold set with diamonds. The Orb at the top is encircled with rose diamonds, and in the cross, which surmounts it, stands the figure of a dove with wings expanded. This is sometimes called the Sceptre with the Dove. Another sceptre called the Queen's Sceptre with the Cross, though much smaller, is very beautiful in design, and thickly set with precious stones.
IVORY SCEPTRE AND SWORDS OF JUSTICE.
The Ivory Sceptre was made for Maria d' Este, and another sceptre, found behind the wainscotting in the apartment in which the regalia was kept, is said to have been made for the Queen of William III.
jewels
1. Imperial Orb. 2. Golden Salt Cellar of State. 3. Anointing Spoon. 4. Ampulla.
There are also two other Orbs, well worthy of observation, as are also the Swords of Justice, the Ecclesiastical and Temporal; and the Sword of Mercy or the Curtana, as it is called. This is pointless, as so is its title, which could have no point when the sword was wielded by an English monarch.
Then there is the Ampulla, to hold the Holy Oil for anointing the foreheads and palms of the hands and necks of sovereigns. It is said that Queen Victoria dispensed with the anointing of her royal neck, fearing that it might soil a very costly lace chemisette which she wore at her coronation. The Ampulla is made in the shape of an eagle, and the base holds the oil. Besides the jewels already mentioned, there are several others, among which are the Armillae, or Coronation Bracelets, made of gold and rimmed with pearls; the Coronation Spoon, for pouring out the oil, which is very ancient; and the Golden Salt Cellar, shaped like a castle, with Norman turrets, windows and doors. Then there are other salt cellars, a baptismal font, where the royal children are baptised, a silver wine fountain, and many other valuables which I have not room or desire to enumerate. Altogether, the crowns, diadems, sceptres and other articles of the regalia, are worth about seven millions of dollars, and they are of no use whatever, excepting for show.
cellars
STATE SALT CELLARS.
It must be remembered that hundreds of people die annually of starvation in London, while these jewels, valued at seven millions of dollars, are growing rusty, and every shilling whichbought these jewels was wrung from the blood, labor, and misery of the ancestors of the radical voters who compose the English Trade Unions, and follow the standard of John Bright. A just and honest Parliament would order the sale of these Crown jewels, and the sum realized might find many happy homes in the New World for those who now starve in the rookeries and lanes of London.
There is only one attempt to steal the English Crown Jewels, mentioned in history, and that was a most audacious one, and planned with a skill worthy of the man who made the attempt.
The robbery was committed by Col. Thomas Blood, in 1673.
He was a native of Ireland, born in 1628.
A DESPERATE ADVENTURE.
In his twentieth year he married the daughter of a gentleman of Lancashire; then returned to his native country, and having served there as a Lieutenant in the Parliamentary forces, received a grant of land instead of pay, and was, by Henry Cromwell, son to Oliver, made a Justice of the Peace. On the Restoration of Charles II, the Act of Settlement, which deprived Blood of his possessions, made him at once discontented and desperate. He first signalized himself by his conduct during an insurrection set on foot to surprise Dublin Castle and seize the Duke of Ormond, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. This insurrection he joined and became its leader; but it was discovered on the very eve of execution, and was rendered futile.
Blood, who was neither afraid of man or devil, escaped the gallows, the fate of some of his associates, and concealing himself among the native Irish patriots in the mountains, and ultimately he escaped to Holland, where he was favorably received by Admiral de Ruyter, the Dutch Nelson.
Always ready for battle and spoil, we next find him engaged with the Covenanters in their rebellion in Scotland in 1666, when being once more on the side of the losing party, he saved his life only by stratagem.
Thenceforward Col. Blood appears only in the light of a mere adventurer, bold and capable enough to do anything hispassions might instigate, and prepared to seize fortune where-ever he might find her, without the slightest scruple as to the means employed. The death of his friends in the Irish insurrection, seems to have left in Blood's mind a great thirst for personal vengeance on the Duke of Ormond, whom accordingly he seized on the night of December 6th, 1676, tied him on horseback to one of his associates, and but for the timely aid of the Duke's servant, would have hanged the astonished and paralyzed noble on Tyburn Tree, where he attempted to convey him. The plan failed, but so admirably had it been contrived that Blood remained totally unsuspected as its author, although a reward of one thousand pounds was offered by King Charles for the discovery of the attempted assassins.
He now opened to the same associates an equally daring but much more profitable scheme, had it been successful: to carry off the Crown Jewels. It was thus carried out—Blood one day came to see the Regalia, dressed as a parson, and accompanied by a woman whom he called his wife; the latter professing to be suddenly taken ill, was invited by the keeper's wife into the adjoining apartment. Thus an intimacy was formed which was so well improved by Blood, that he arranged a match between a nephew of his and the keeper's daughter, and a day was appointed for the young people to meet. At the appointed hour came the pretended parson, the pretended nephew, and two others, armed with rapier blades in their canes, daggers and pocket pistols—a nice wedding party indeed.
FAILURE TO GET A CROWN.
One of the number made some pretence for staying at the door as a watch, while the others passed into the Jewel house, the parson having expressed a desire that the Regalia should be shown to his friends, while they were waiting for the approach of Mrs. Edwards, the keeper's wife, and her daughter. No sooner was the door closed than a cloak was thrown over the old man and a gag was forced into his mouth; and thus secured they told him their object, telling him at the same time that he was safe if he kept quiet. The poor old man, however, faithful to the trust imposed in him, exerted himself to the utmost in spite of the blows they dealt him, till he was stabbedand became senseless. Blood now slipped the Crown under his cloak, another secreted the Orb, and a third, with great industry, was engaged in filing the Sceptre into two parts, when one of those coincidences, which a novelist would hardly dare to use, much less to invent, gave a new turn to the proceedings.
The keeper's son, who had been in Flanders, returned at this critical moment. At the door he was met by an accomplice, stationed there as a sentinel, who asked him with whom he would speak. Young Edwards replied, "I belong to the house," and hurried upstairs; and the sentinel, I suppose, not knowing how to prevent the catastrophe he must have feared otherwise than by a warning to his friends, gave the alarm.
A general flight ensued, amidst which the robbers heard the voice of the old keeper once more loudly shouting, "Treason! murder," which, being heard by the young lady, who was waiting anxiously to see her lover, she ran out into the open air, reiterating the same cry. The alarm became general and outstripped the conspirators.
A warder first attempted to stop them, but being very fat, at the charge of a pistol which was fired, he fell down without waiting to know if he was hurt, and so they passed his post. At the next door, Sill, a sentinel, not to be outdone in prudence, offered no opposition, and they passed the drawbridge.
At St. Katharine's Gate their horses were waiting for them; and as they ran along the Tower wharf they joined in the cry of "Stop the rogues," and so passed on unsuspected till Captain Beckman, a brother-in-law of young Edwards, overtook the party.
Blood fired a pistol but missed the Captain, and was immediately made prisoner.
The Crown was found under his cloak, which, prisoner as he was, he would not yield without a struggle.
"It was a gallant attempt, however unsuccessful," were the witty and ambitious fellow's first words; "it was for a Crown!"
Not the least extraordinary part of this affair was the subsequent treatment of Col. Blood. Whether it was that Blood had frightened Charles II, by his audacious threats of beingrevenged by his numerous associates, in case of his death on the scaffold, or else captivated him by his brilliant audacity and flattery combined, it is certain that Blood, instead of being punished as he should have been, was rewarded with place, power, and influence, at court. Instead of being sent to the gallows, he was taken into especial favor, and all applications through him to the King, for favors, were successful.
It is said that Blood had told the King that he had been engaged to kill his Majesty, from among the reeds by the Thames' side, above where Battersea Bridge now spans the river, but was deterred from the crime by the air of Majesty which shone in the King's countenance.
What more delicate flattery could be administered to a King than this?
Blood died peaceably in his bed in the year 1680.
It was not to be expected that the notorious favoritism of the King toward Blood should escape satirical comment, and the Earl of Rochester, a shameless scoundrel himself, wrote, on the attempt to steal the Crown:
"Blood, that wears treason in his face,Villian complete in parson's gown,How much he is at Court in graceFor stealing Ormond and the Crown!Since loyalty does no man goodLet's steal the King, and outdo Blood."
Edwards and his son were awarded £300 by a not over generous Parliament, but the delay in payment of the sum was such that Mr. Edwards was compelled to sell his claim for £120 to a Jew. In this case virtue had its own reward, but no other.
BIRTH-PLACE OF WILLIAM PENN.
On the neighboring Tower Hill, which is now covered by fine mansions, and where the shaft has just been sunk, giving admission to the Thames Subway under the River, in the old days of violence and blood, many a noble head was brought to be hewed off by the executioner's shining axe. Lady Raleigh lived here on Tower Hill after she had been forbidden to visit her husband in the Tower. William Penn was born in a little old house in a little old dusty court on Tower Hill, and it washere that he first imbibed his horror of bloodshed and capital punishment. At the "Bull," a public house on Tower Hill, on April 14, 1685, died Otway the poet, of starvation, and around the corner in a cutler's shop, which is numbered with the things that were, Felton bought a large jack-knife for ten-pence, with which he assassinated the magnificent Duke of Buckingham. At No. 48 Great Tower street, is situated the Tavern called the "Czar's Head," built on the site of an old pot-house, in which the Emperor Peter the Great, and some low companions, used to meet to drink fiery potations of brandy and smoke clay pipes.
In the very same spot, where the scaffold was formerly erected, and where the gouts of blood fell dripping from the severed necks of victims of the axe, marine stores are now sold, and sea-biscuits, pea-jackets, hour-glasses, and quadrants are offered for sale.
The scaffold was generally built on four strong posts with a platform, five feet high, and in the centre of the platform was placed the block. The victim was generally bound, unless by desire the binding was omitted.
For the gratification of those curious in such matters, it may be as well to give the bloody head roll of the most illustrious of the victims executed on Tower Hill, and the date of their decapitation.
June 22, 1535, Bishop Fisher; July 6, 1535, Sir Thomas Moore; July 28, 1540, Cromwell, Earl of Essex; May 27, 1541, Margaret Pole, Countess of Shrewsbury; Jan. 20, 1547, Earl of Surrey, the poet; March 20, 1549, Thomas Lord Seymour, of Sudeley, by order of his brother, the Protector Somerset, who was beheaded Jan. 22, 1552; Feb. 12, 1553-4, Lord Guildford Dudley; April 11, 1554, Sir Thomas Wyatt; May 12, 1641, Earl of Strafford; Jan. 10, 1644-5, Archbishop Laud; Dec. 29, 1680, William Viscount Stafford, "insisting on his innocence to the very last;" Dec. 7, 1683, Algernon Sydney; July 15, 1685, the Duke of Monmouth; Feb. 24, 1716, Earl of Derwentwater and Lord Kenmuir; Aug. 18, 1746, Lords Kilmarnock and Balmerino; Dec. 8, 1746, Mr. Radcliffe, who hadbeen, with his brother, Lord Derwentwater, convicted of treason in the Rebellion of 1715, when Derwentwater was executed; but Radcliffe escaped, and was identified by the barber who, thirty-one years before, had shaved him in the Tower. Mr. Chamberlain Clark, who died in 1831, aged 92, well remembered (his father then residing in the Minories) seeing the glittering of the executioner's axe in the sun as it fell upon Mr. Radcliffe's neck. April 9, 1747, Simon Lord Lovat, the last beheading in England, and the last execution upon Tower Hill, when a scaffolding, built near Barking-alley, fell with nearly 1,000 persons on it, and twelve were killed.
tailpiece
CHAPTER XIV.
THE CADGERS OF LONDON BRIDGE.
AFTER leaving the Old Jewry Lane and passing up Cheapside, we came into the Poultry just as the rain had ceased, and as great rifts in the masses of fog were breaking through the opaque atmosphere. The Poultry is a short street which runs up to the Mansion House, and during the noon of the day is nearly impassable from the amount of traffic done there. Now the shops were all closed, and the bell of St. Paul's rang out for midnight, the echoes stealing over the city and the river in a ghostly way that thrilled through the hearts of the pedestrians who were darkness-bound in the streets. We passed through the Poultry into King William street, and on past Cannon street, with its warehouses and retail stores, by East Cheap, until we could see London Bridge, in all its vastness, looming up like a sleeping giant, the dark arches girding the river in seemingly everlasting bands.
The detective said: "Let's go down the stairs of the bridge and see some of the characters that find board and lodging down the steps. They're a hawful set, some on 'em."
The Thames lay at our feet, spread out like a map. The sky was clearing, and the river was very quiet. Now and then the sullen waters, driven in an eddy against the huge piers, could be heard plashing in a secret, stealthy manner, and anon they would recede and come back again, plash! plash! plash! All about us was so still; not a sound to be heard as we leaned over one of the alcoves in the bridge. Below us, to the left,the Catharine Docks, full of shipping; the London Docks, full of shipping; Shadwell lined with lighter craft—all so still, and the million of masts looking ghostly in the holy light of the midnight. Over on the right, Bermondsey-way, more shipping—countless spars pointing up to the midnight skies; the Pool choked with shipping—coal barges, eel-boats, East India vessels, brigs and schooners, barks and black-hulled packets, lying high in the water; flat-bottomed barges for carrying sand and for dredging; the gray coping stones of the Tower hanging over the water, and the stillness of death on noisy Rotherhithe, and a pall over the immense West India docks.
This great river, this river of all the nations of the world, with their tributes laid at her docks and their gifts on her broad bosom—how quiet it is just now. A matchless stream for its congregated wealth. Miles of warehouses, miles of stone docks, miles of shipping, and thousands of seamen. And yet a dirty and turbid and ungrateful river at times, when it overflows the fish-stalls, when it overflows the high street in Wapping and drowns myriads of rats in Upper and Lower Thames street.
VAGRANCY AND PAUPERISM.
We went down the "London Stairs." Every bridge that spans the Thames has four stairs or flights of stone-steps running down to the water's edge. These stone stairs are generally twenty or twenty-five feet wide, and they run down, for a hundred broad, massive and capacious steps, to where the tide comes in. There are turns in the stairs, and stone platforms—where the magnificent stone embankment has not been completed, as it is at Westminster Bridge down the river—under whose vast arches hundreds of human beings find shelter from the inclemency of the weather. I may say here that there is not such a city in the world as London for vagrancy and vagabondism of the worst kind despite the fact that there are 7,000 police in the metropolitan district; and besides this force for prevention, the work-houses in the West District, composing Kensington, Fulham, Paddington, Chelsea, St. George's, Hanover Square, St. Margaret, and St. John, and Westminster, furnish in and out door relief to 18,000 persons. Marylebone,Hampstead, St. Pancras, Islington, and Hackney, in the North District, provide for 24,820 persons. St. Giles, St. George, Bloomsbury, the Strand, Holborn, and City of London, in the Central District, provide for 19,127 persons. Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, St. George in the East, Stepney, Mile End Town, and Poplar, provide for 28,713 persons, in the East District. In the Southern District, St. Saviour, Southwark, Rotherhithe, and Bermondsey; in St. Olave's, Lambeth, Wandsworth, and Clapham, Camberwell, Greenwich, Woolwich, and Lewisham, there is provision for 38,487 persons. Here we have a total of 128,880 men, women, and children, occupants of the union work-houses of the metropolis of London, with a population of less than three and a half millions. Besides this number, there are thousands of casuals who receive lodgings in the work-houses; and outside this fearful aggregate there are roaming in and about London at least 15,000 vagrants—or, as they would be called in America, "bummers"—who do not frequent the work-houses from various reasons, and consequently have to "bunk out," as we would call it in New York.
At the bottom of some of the bridges there are heaps of rubbish and old rotting planking, some of which rubbish is carried off when the tide leaves the stones of the bridges. Then there are old boat-houses, and rows of long, stout-built boats for hire; but at night there are no persons to watch these boats, and they are used as berths to sleep in by the vagrant vagabonds who haunt the recesses of the bridges. When the tide recedes in the Thames, it generally leaves a space of twenty to two hundred feet of the inshore bottom of the river bare on the Surrey side, and this is generally a soft, drab-looking mud, with a treacherous look, where man or beast might be swallowed up without any warning. When the detective and I went down into the dark recesses of London Bridge, that night, the river was at the flood, and the rubbish was being carried away by the incoming tide. This was on the Surrey side of the river. There were about a dozen persons beneath the first archway, making, in fact, a perfect gypsy encampment. Eight of these persons were of the male sex, and beside these there were twoold haggard-looking women and a grown girl of twenty years or thereabouts, and a child of ten years, in all the glory of rags and destitution. The oldest man in the party might have been fifty years of age, and the others were younger, one of them being a stout, able-bodied young fellow of eighteen or nineteen. Some of the party were asleep, and were snoring most comfortably, as the rain did not penetrate to their place of sleeping; but every few minutes a gust of wind came howling down the river and burst through the arches with a mad fury, making the sleepers turn uneasily on the stone steps.
meal
THE CADGER'S MEAL.
The old fellow, who seemed to be a confirmed vagrant, from his slouchy look and greasy, unpatched clothes, had built a small fire of the refuse which abounded in the arches, and he was drying pieces of driftwood that had floated from the scaffolding on the new Blackfriar's Bridge down the river. He was warming his hands and slapping them, and the little girlof ten years was stooped over the fire, toasting an enormous potato on the end of a splinter of wood.
THE LOST GIRL.
"What are you herding here for, Prindle," said the detective to the old fellow, who looked up in a morose way and muttered something under his teeth which sounded like "D—n the bobbies."
"I'm a trying to get somethink to heat. Vy vill yer foller a cove everywheres as wants to get a mouthful to heat. I haint done nothink as should bring you here arter me. I'm not hon the pad now hany more."
"I don't want yer pertikler, I don't; but stop yer jaw and keep a civil tongue in yer head, will ye," said the sergeant. "Whose gal is that ere a toasting the taty with the skiver?"
"I'm blessed hif I knows whose gal it his. Ye don't suppose that I'm the man as makes the Post-hoffice Di-rek-te-ree. She haint mine, I know, cos I'm not a fool, nor never vos, to have any children. I must say she is werry 'andy at the taties when a feller wants to get some winks. But, I say, you got nothink aginst me from the Beak, 'ave you?"
"No, I have nothing against you just at this partickler moment, but I dunno how soon I'll have," said the sergeant. "But I have brought a gentleman here who wants to get some information about this 'ere precious family of yours, and how you contrive to live, and I want you to answer him civilly, or I may find something against you that would hurt your tender feelings, you know."
"He wants some hinformation habout me and my family, does he? That's a precious lark, that is. Why doesn't he stay in his bleeding bed and cover his nose hup in the sheets. I never asked 'im about his familee, as I knows on. Wot a werry pecoolier taste he has, to be sure. Maybe he's one of them rummaging Paper chaps as is halways a torkin about the rights and dooties of the vorkin' classes, and is a-ruinin' of the country's blessed prosperity?"
"Father, answer the man civilly, will ye. Yer halways a-making trouble for yourself by yer bad tongue, and it doesother people harm as well as yourself. Tell him wot you have got to tell, and he'll go away."
This was said by the young girl, who now came forward and stood looking at the old man eagerly. She was robed in an old calico gown, rather tattered at the bottom, and quite besmirched with the washings of the Thames mud which had clung to the stone stairs of the bridge. The girl was well formed and tall, and her dress hung from a good figure. Her eyes were black and glittering, and her bold, coarse, handsome face was seared with the traces of evil passions, hardship, and reckless despair. The girl's face told her story before she had spoken. Childhood and girlhood reeking with the foulness of the gutters, and then the matured woman a castaway in the deadly miasma of the London slums.
"There, aint that a precious daughter for a loving father like me. Oh, she's a comfort to me in me hold hage, so she is. And she talks of wirtue and gets on the 'igh 'orse with her poor old father sometimes, and makes him veep. Oh, vot an ungrateful family I've got, to be sure. She's no better than she ought to be, anyhow."
"Oh, stop that bloody talk, old man," said the stout, able-bodied young fellow, who seemed to be a person of influence in the out-door establishment. "W'ats the use of throwin' sich things in the gal's face. Molly's a gal jest like any one else's gal when she can't get anything to eat. I don't blame her a bit."
THE YOUNG CADGER'S STORY.
"If I am bad, Jem," burst out the girl, raging with passion, and her eyes filled with tears, "who made me so? Who kept chiming into my ears that I had a pretty face and that I ought to sell it? Who, I say? Who was it," continued the girl, clenching her hands, and her face blazing with excitement, "that struck me last Christmas night, come two years, and pitched me out of the hole that we lived in on Saffron Hill? And then I had to seek a livin' in the streets, and when I was hungry I took money and sold myself to perdition; and then I had a father who used to steal it from me when I'd come home to sleep, and he'd take the few shillings that I earned by myshame, to go and drink it, and none of ye were ashamed to live on the money that lost my poor soul. Not one of ye." Here the girl, utterly exhausted, sat down on the stones and wept as if her heart was going to break, while the ragged child, who had by this time succeeded in burning her fingers a number of times, looked on in wonder at the sudden turmoil of vagabondism. The son, a powerfully built fellow, looked up and said:
"Molly, I wish your devilish trap ud shut. Wot good does this do any of ye, I'd like to know. Here I've been hon the aggrawatin' tramp for two weeks, and I hexpected to see yes all comfortable like, when I kum home, in Saffron Hill, down St. Giles way, and here I finds yes hall a-living hunder London Bridge by night, and a-beggin, or doin' wuss, in the day time. Hits enuff to make a saint swear at his blessed liver."
"Wuss luck, Jem; wuss luck, Jem; I halways knew as how it would come to this, a-sooner or a-later," said an old crone in the corner of the archway, who was smoking a pipe and whom I believed to be fast asleep.
"Well, sir, if ye'v got no hobjection," said the stout young man, "I'll tell you our story. It isn't much of a story to tell, after all. The old man there went to be a navvy and got two shillings a day until he took to drink; when he had work on the Great Western. They used to swindle him in the Tommy shops. Them's the shops, you see, where a contractor who 'as the job to bulk it, keeps the groceries and grub for the navvies. They skin the navvies so terribly, do these Tommy shops, and when his week is up, a man has nothing left out of his vages, cos', you see, they halways manages to run up the bill as high as the week's vages. Oh! they are precious scoundrels!"
"Don't call them scoundrels, Jem. Hit's too good a name for them haltogether," said the old man, who was beginning to doze.
"Will you shut up?" savagely said the hopeful son; and then he continued, when he had taken a whiff at the pipe: "Well, by and by the old man got to drinking so much beer that the whole of the wages was drawn for lush, and he hadnothing to eat during the week excepting what the other men gave him for charity."
"Hevery word of that's a lie, Jem. Wot a precious talent you have, to be sure, for habusin of your poor old fayther."
"Will you shut up, d—n you?" said the dutiful son, who was fast losing his temper at being interrupted so often by his fond parent. "I wos away at sea down on a Cardiff coaster, when the old man came home, and the gal, there, Molly, was a lace-maker, and wos making eight shillings a week, and the old woman used to make penny baskets to carry fish home from the markets, and she got, I suppose, as much as—how much did you make on them ere baskets, mother?"
"Two and sevenpence ha'penny a week, Jem, and some of the stuff wos rotten has an egg, Jem, and I halways had bad hies, Jem—you know I had—a-crying for you when you wos a blessed baby."
"There, stop that bell-clapper of yours, will ye? Yez are all crazy, I think. Well, the short and the long of it wos, that the old man came home and began to drink everything that he could put his hands on, and Molly lost her place because the old unwouldcome haround her place of business, in Tottenham Court road, and her hemployer as was said as 'ow he's blessed if he'd stand hit hany longer, 'aving such a drunken old bloke a-comin around his shop; and then the gal took to the street, and she got two months in the Bridewell for wagrancy, and when she came hout she was wuss nor ever, and then the family got put hout cos' they could not pay the rent in Saffron Hill, four bob and a tanner a week; and it all comes of that hold man a-drinking like a swine that we are here to-night hunder London Bridge."
"Howcanyou tell sich voppers, Jem, about yer poor old fayther? Ven you was about two hinches 'igh I used to dandle ye hon me knee, and now look at yer hingratitude to the hauthor of your beink."
TWENTY-FIVE HUNDRED CADGERS.
"Guv us a taty, Jenny," said the son to the little girl, who was now engaged in pulling three or four from the dying embers of the fire; and he snatched one and tore a piece out of iteagerly, hot ashes and all. Just then a low steamer went past, with her red signal light shining like a huge glow-worm out upon the surface of the dark river, and as she went under the bridge her whistle shrieked out on the night air like a demon, and at the same moment the bell of St. Saviour's in Southwark, on the Surrey side of the river, tolled in a brazen tone the hour of one o'clock, and Sergeant Scott suggested to me that we might as well go about our business and leave the Cadgers to themselves. "Cadger" is a Cockney term for people who will not work and have no habitation, but go from one place to another, roaming loosely, picking up anything they can get, honestly if they can get it that way, and if not they will not hesitate to steal for a living, or beg when they find people charitable enough and willing to commiserate their supposed sufferings.
There are about 2,500 of this class in and around London, continually changing their places of residence, and to this class the hopeful family under London Bridge belonged.
tailpiece
CHAPTER XV.
THE LUNGS OF LONDON.
THE Lungs of London, through which her large masses of population find respiration and ventilation, are her parks, gardens, and pleasure grounds.
The city is admirably provided with these oases, which occur frequently in the great desert of brick and mortar.
Nothing can be more grateful to the eye of the stranger sojourning in the English metropolis, than the frequent views which he encounters of smooth bits of lawn, upon which large numbers of sheep browse peacefully; acres of flower beds, in the care of the most celebrated florists; sheets of water in which nude bathers are disporting with perfect freedom; or long and wide expanses of green trees and shrubbery, enclosed by high iron railings, but free to all the citizens to enjoy and to hold forever.
REGENT'S AND HYDE PARKS.
Beside the parks and gardens, London has an infinity of squares, commons, and crescents, which are surrounded by private residences and inclosed by railings and walls—such as Trafalgar Square (public), Bedford, Cavendish, St. George's, Grosvenor, Leicester, Soho, Belgrave, Euston, Finsbury, Fitzroy, Portman, Russell, Wellclose, Hanover, Brunswick, Eaton, Berkeley, Golden, Mecklenburg, Red Lion, Tavistock, and a great number of other squares which I do not now call to mind. The majority of these places have plots of grass and trees, withfountains and flower-beds, varying in size from a quarter of an acre to three acres in extent. Then again others have not a blade of grass or a single shrub to dignify their lonely aridness, and the hum of cartwheels and the noise of brawling men and women, are heard all day and into the night ascending from them. Half a dozen of them, like Belgrave, Grosvenor, and Berkeley Squares, are hemmed in on all sides by the gloomy and palatial dwellings of the governing class of England, who seek to absorb even a stray blade of grass, or the leaves of a scantily clothed tree, sooner than allow the poor and degraded to enjoy them.
And so we have green spots, like Golden and Soho, and Wellclose Squares, exhibiting the various gradations from squalid poverty to shabby gentility; and in Belgrave and Grosvenor Squares we have all the indications of refinement, wealth, perfumery, silks, and satins, combined with a resolve which says to Golden and Wellclose Squares,
"You are of a different nature from us. We belong to a class which knows you not, and with whom you can never mingle—never. You are polluted and degraded. We are the salt of the earth. We lock the iron gates of our private squares, and you must not enter them; and yet we have parks and preserves, and Swiss Chalets, and villas at Mentone and Rome, and spas at Hombourg and Baden."
And accordingly and most dutifully misery shrinks by high iron walls in the heart of London, or at most will only peer furtively through the iron grating of Grosvenor and Belgrave Squares.
But the public parks belong to the people, and by the people they are enjoyed most thoroughly. Children, old and young, gray-beard and adolescent, all flock to these parks; and Regent's Park or Hyde Park, on a summer Sunday afternoon is a splendid sight, and a similar one cannot be obtained anywhere else but in Paris pleasure grounds, on a Sunday, and it was Paris that first taught London to respire through these public lungs of hers.
The dimensions of the public parks and gardens of London are as follows:
Here are five thousand acres of parks, pleasure grounds, gardens, and cricket fields, all in fine order, and under careful and economical supervision. Surely London is well provided for in the way of open air amusement. Besides, bands play in the different parks and squares almost daily. In St. James Park, Regent's Park, and Hyde Park, bands play every afternoon in inclosures set apart for that purpose. Some of these bands are formed of old musicians and veterans who have served in the Crimean and Indian wars. There is a body of men distributed over London, who wear a uniform of semi-military fashion, and are called the "Corps of Commissionaires," who can be sent on errands, with or for packages or letters, and from this body two full bands have been formed, who earn a decent subsistence by playing in St. James Park and Regent's Park, every pleasant afternoon during summer.