“They loved, but whom they loved the graveHath lost in its unconscious womb;Oh! they were fair, but nought could saveTheir beauty from the tomb.”—J. Montgomery.
“They loved, but whom they loved the graveHath lost in its unconscious womb;Oh! they were fair, but nought could saveTheir beauty from the tomb.”—J. Montgomery.
“They loved, but whom they loved the graveHath lost in its unconscious womb;Oh! they were fair, but nought could saveTheir beauty from the tomb.”—J. Montgomery.
AROUND and within London lies a land chequered with lights and shadows, close city courts, and stifling suburban alleys, in which the sunshine only lingers for a few minutes during the day (where it seems imprisoned and in a hurry to escape above the dusky chimneys); and in this vast metropolis these scenes are contrasted with broad green, airy parks, and long lines of palace-like streets, which stretch westward and dip into the open and surrounding country. Its living crowds are ever in motion—now to witness a royal procession; then cleaving a November fog, or rolling eastward to gaze upon a “Lord Mayor’s Show;” or, while darkness still reigns over the solemn-looking streets, from its blind alleys and secluded nooks—haunts of vice and infamy—the uneducated heirs to crime and wretchedness grope their way towards Newgate, to see the black and ominous stage erected, on which a real and living actor is about to die, to glut the gaze of those who are assembled to witness this legal tragedy. From the first hour after the deep-toned bell of St. Paul’s had struck the death-knell of the departed Sabbath, the crowd began to congregate—only a few days ago—at the front of those forbidding barriers, the doors of the neighbouring coffee-houses and gin-shops were thrown open, and those who were not content to mingle with the mob below, and witness the horrible exhibition gratis, began to rush in, and bargain for their places. Then rang upon the ear the cries of “Comfortable room!” “Excellent situation!” “Beautiful prospect!” “Splendid view!” as each in turn recommended what may be termed the box-places at the windows, or the open and airy gallery on the roofs; for the pit lay dark and crowded below, and there the audience had free entrance. From every avenue thishuman crowd rushed in; up narrow courts, and the wide openings of the streets, they came in dusky groups, that passed through light and shadow as they crossed over where the glare of the gas-lamps fell—then merged into the dark mass of human forms on which the gloomy shadow of Newgate settled down.
All night long were the workmen busily employed in erecting the gloomy scaffold: the sound of their hammers and saws fell upon the ear at intervals; these again were drowned by the loud jeers and coarse jests which were ever and anon uttered and responded to by many in that brutal mob. One after another the huge pieces of black wood were brought out and fitted together, until high above the crowd rose the grim stage on which the death-ending drama was to be represented. Even on the countenances of those who erected the pile no expression of pity could be traced; they hammered and sawed as if they were erecting a gay mansion for the living, instead of a place on which the doomed victim was a few moments to plant his feet, look around him, and—die! The posts, which supported the planks on which so many trembling actors had trod, were fitted into the same holes in the ground—foundations which had been dug long years ago, and stood firmly, with all their load of sorrow and crime, through scores of heart-aching executions: spots which the thoughtful man never passes without heaving a sigh, and where the brutal and the vicious only congregate to jest at degraded humanity.
Ranged along the lines of the barriers, like hounds that are ever in foremost at the death, are seen those whom neither rain, snow, storm, nor darkness ever prevented from attending an execution. Their conversation is about their companions of former years—of those who were long ago imprisoned, transported, or hanged; while they alone, though often within the clutches of the law, are still at large, with all their crimes. Some of these, whose hair age and guilt have whitened, remember the days when men were hung up in a row—can tell who died basely and who bravely; and on his memory who met death in sorrow and repentance they cast reproach and shame; while he who plunged daringly into the darkness of eternity, as if he gloried in his iniquity, they hold up as an example to be followed. No rocking nor swaying of the crowd from without can remove these old idolaters of the gallows: the mass of human bodies behind may roll to and fro, like the waves of the ocean—the motion affects them not; they are anchored like rocks at the foot of the gloomy headland, which stands with its dark beam reared high above the billowy multitude. Nearly every countenance along those foremost ranks seems marked with the lines which witnessing such public executions have imprinted there—as if the very cordage had
left its twisted impress upon their visages, and the dark beam its ominous line upon their furrowed brows, giving to them the very reflex of the gallows itself, while watching its workings.
From the expression of such countenances we can see that the exhibition they are awaiting has for them no terrors; that it is but calculated to harden their hearts, by making them more familiar with the image of death; and that, instead of repenting, they are more likely to go and take away life; thus following the example which the law itself has set before their eyes. Here and there, mingled among the crowd, are seen the figures of women; some, whose countenances are marked with dissipation, yet bearing faint traces of former beauty, as if Nature was still reluctant to obliterate the fair image which she had first formed, though every trace of the pure spirit, which had once given it such light and animation, has long since perished. If they speak together in tones of pity, it is the besotted sympathy of maudlin inebriety. There is a rocking of the head, a swaying of the body, and a folding of the arms, which tell how low they have sunk,—that the once clear intellect is prostrated before the power of ardent spirits; while the crushed bonnet, the dirty shawl, the gown fastened with a single hook upon the back, and that slip-shod slovenliness of the feet, proclaim that all the pride of the woman has vanished. Girls and youths, too, are there, on whose countenances the impress of innocence is still stamped, though the white purity of the flower is sullied with the trail of the slimy soil in which it has grown. It makes the heart ache—while looking upon these stained and drooping flowers, that are growing amid such a wilderness of full-blown weeds—to reflect upon the deathly blight which must at last settle down and destroy them, unless they are transplanted by some kind and nurturing hand into a more favourable soil. Surely that law which can take away life might throw its protecting power over such as these, and a score or two of policemen be stationed to prevent them from witnessing such a scene as an execution, which is only calculated to brutalise their youthful minds. Pocket-picking, fighting, drunkenness, and profanity in almost every form, are the only examples to be picked up by these young frequenters of the gallows. No man can venture there with a kind and feeling heart, unless impelled by such motives as would lead him to plunge into a pest-house in the hope of restoring again to health some of those whom the plague has stricken down. They think not of the heart-broken relatives who have taken a last farewell as they stood within the massy and low-vaulted corridors behind that forbidding and impassable barrier of iron bars—nor of the condemned cell in which the doomed prisoner has passed so many hoursof bitter remorse, looking with an inward eye of awe into that mysterious future into which he is now to be suddenly launched.
Many a mechanic, who set out with his dinner in his basket and his tools upon his back, on his way to his daily labour, is tempted by those he there meets with to stay beyond his allotted hour—until finding that it is too late to accomplish a full day’s work, he returns to some neighbouring tap-room, and so the time is passed in recounting and listening to a long history of former executions, until night and drunkenness overtake him, at the very hour when the faithful wife, having prepared his evening meal, is sitting with pale cheek patiently awaiting his return. Many an unfortunate man may date his ruin from the day he first witnessed an execution—as the first hour that threw him amid the group who haunt the foot of the gallows; and as human nature is more prone to stoop to vice than to soar aloft to virtue, so from that moment he sank never more to rise again, all his finer feelings blunted, and he himself lowering all who were once endeared to him to his own vicious standard. Such as the herds among have no pity for the dead; they pick out every sentence uttered by the witnesses in favour of the culprit who is about to suffer—they turn not to the widowed wife, the weeping children, and the once happy home which the deed he has done has left dark and desolate. They argue that drink or anger, temptation or poverty, or a weariness of life, drove him to the act, and that, saving the momentary pang which for ever ends his troubles, his last hours were soothed by kindness and attention; and that, for their parts, they would sooner prefer such an ending than to be left to die amid disease, want, neglect, and wretchedness, with no human being near to breathe a word of hope and comfort. Time after time they have witnessed the worst—have seen the law armed, and in full power strike with all its might—and turned aside without a feeling of terror. Life has been taken away before their very eyes; they have seen a fellow-creature hanged “to make an English holiday,” and they have gone and again aroused the vengeance of “Justice,” have destroyed life as they have seen it destroyed, have made that their own act and deed, which the law is more formally—for lack of other merciful modes of punishment—again compelled to follow as an example, taking life for life, and visiting evil with evil, not in a spirit of hatred or revenge, but because custom has sanctioned the necessity. Above the murmur and tumult of that noisy assembly, the lowing and bleating of cattle, as they were driven into the stalls and pens of Smithfield, fell with a strange and unnatural sound upon the ear, calling up for a few moments the tranquillity of green hill-sides, and broad, level pasture-lands, where the fever, and the fret, andthe crime from crowded cities never came. What a contrast to the scene that stretched below, the cold grey dawn of the raw morning breaking upon the dark and weather-stained front of the prison, and giving to those iron-coloured and windowless walls an almost unearthly appearance. The very stones seemed to shape themselves into the faces of the dead, as if from the hard granite had started out the grey and eyeless faces of all the children of crime who had suddenly stept from that gloomy scaffold into the grave. Carts rolled by, bearing the produce of quiet fields and tree-sheltered gardens, to the market; the rustic driver turned his head for a moment; then, with eyes bent upon the ground, went musing along his way. The coach moved slowly along, severing in its course the closely-packed crowd; the warm-clad passengers glanced down the wide thoroughfare, with its dark pavement of human heads, upon the black and ominous beam that went spanning across, like the bridge of death, and ever would the same vision rise up before them all day long. They would see it in the arms of the trees which hung over the winding country-roads: it would fall like a blot upon the leaden-coloured sky, wherever a black and naked spray threw out its arm above the rounded horizon. In the rolling of the river they would hear the murmuring of the multitude; and the echo of the bridge over which they passed would send out from the mouths of its wide-spanning arches curses that would come floating deep and singly, as if from above the heads of that dimly-remembered crowd.
Hush! the unceasing murmur of the mob now breaks into a loud deep roar—a sound as if the ocean had suddenly broken through some ancient boundary, against which its ever-restless billows had for ages battered; the wide dark sea of heads is all at once in motion; each wave seems trying to overleap the other, as they are drawn onwards towards this outlet. Every link in that great human chain is shaken; along the whole lengthened lines has the motion jarred, and each in turn sees, coiled up on the floor of the scaffold, like a serpent, the hangman’s rope! The human hand that placed it there was only seen for a moment, as it lay, white and ghastly, upon the black boards, and then again was as suddenly withdrawn, as if ashamed of the deed it had done. The loud shout of the multitude once more subsided, or only fell upon the abstracted ear like the dreamy murmur of an ocean-shell. Then followed sounds more distinct and audible, in which ginger-beer, pies, fried fish, sandwiches, and fruit, were vended under the names of notorious murderers, highwaymen, and criminals, famous in the annals of Newgate for the hardihood they had displayed in the hour of execution, when they terminated their career of crime at the gallows. Threading his way among theseitinerant venders, was seen the meek-faced deliverer of tracts—the man of good intentions—now bonneted, now laughed at, the skirt of his seedy black coat torn across; yet, though pulled right and left, or sent headlong into the crowd by the swing of some brutal and muscular arm, never once from that pale face passed away its benign and patient expression, but ever the same form moved along in the fulfilment of his mission, in spite of all persecution. Another fight followed the score which had already taken place; this time two women were the combatants: blinded with their long hair, they tore at each other like two furies; their bonnets and caps were trodden under foot in the kennel, and lay disregarded beside the body of the poor dog, which, while searching for its master in the crowd, was an hour before kicked to death by the savage and brutal mob.
Another deep roar, louder than any which had preceded it, broke from the multitude. Then came the cry of “Hats off!” and “Down in front!” as at a theatre. It was followed by the deep and solemn booming of the death-bell from the church of St. Sepulchre—the iron knell that rang upon the beating heart of the living man who was about to die; and, with blanched cheek and sinking heart, we turned away from the scene.
WE have again reached the point from which we started at the commencement of our work, leaving behind us undescribed many objects of great interest to such as love to dwell upon the past, beside others of importance belonging to the present, but possessing not those picturesque features which we prefer dwelling upon. Here we shall pause for a while, and, as there is but little around us in the shape of “bricks and mortar” to arrest our attention, take a glance at the lights and shadows of busy life. We have now arrived at Fleet-street, which, with its ramifications to the right and left, is as jagged as a spray of fern. Branching from this busy street you enter courts and alleys, such as if a stranger to the neighbourhood once got entangled amongst, he would scarcely find his way out of again, though he tried for a full hour by the clock, unless he made many inquiries: courts which somehow seem to have run into a knot—so ravelled that you can neither find beginning nor end, so often are you stopped by a dead wall here, and thrown into a whirlpool of alleys a little further on, as if they had been run up by hundreds of builders from different points in the dark, who, when daylight came, found themselves in all sorts of zigzag ways endeavouring to brick up one another. And in these places you will always find “Apartments to let.” True, they are very close, but then they are very central, for what part of London is there that the great main artery of Fleet-street does not lead into? If you are struck by the planet Venus, whatever astronomers may say to the contrary, there you will find that she has her satellites that are ever moving round and round. Should you happen to be overtaken by drink—a demon who ever lies in wait in this neighbourhood—there you have station-houses and policemen at hand; if in debt, there are sponging-houses with their doors open to receive you. Should you even have the honour of being hanged, you cannot well miss finding your way to Newgate.
Whitefriars, in Fleet-street, appears to have been one of the most notorious places in London. We all remember Sir Walter Scott’s description of Alsatia (a name given to this locality about 1600) in theFortunes of Nigel; and from the same work we have so often quoted, we are enabled to bring the spot once more before the “mind’s eye” of our readers, as it was in its decay. It first commences with Salisbury court as follows:
“Every two or three steps we met some old figure or another which looked as if the devil had robbed them of all their natural beauty * * * and inspired (into them) his own infernal spirit; for nothing but devilism could be read in every feature. Theft, homicide, and blasphemy peeped out at every window of their souls; lying, perjury, fraud, impudence, and misery were the only graces of their countenances.
“One with slip-shoes, without stockings, and dirty linen, visible through a crape dress, was stepping from the ale-house to her lodgings with a parcel of pipes in one hand and a gallon-pot in the other; yet with her head dressed up to as much advantage as if the other members of her body were sacrificed to keep her ill-looking face in a little finery. Another, I suppose taken from the oyster-tub and put into (similar) allurements, made a more cleanly appearance, but became her ornaments as a cow would a curb-bridle or a sow a hunting-saddle. Then every now and then would bolt out a fellow, and whip nimbly across the way, being equally fearful, as I imagine, of both constable and sergeant, and looking as if the dread of the gallows had drawn its picture in his countenance. * * * *
“We soon departed hence, my friend conducting me to a place called Whitefriars, which, he told me, was formerly of great service to the honest traders of the city, who, if they could, by cant, flattery or dissimulation, procure large credit amongst their zealous fraternity, would slip in here with their effects, take sanctuary against the laws, compound their debts for a small matter, and oftentimes get a better estate by breaking than they could ever propose to do by trading. But now a late Act [he must here allude to the Act passed about 1696, William III.] of Parliament has taken away its privileges; and since knaves can neither break with safety nor advantage, it is observed that there are not a quarter so many shopkeepers play at bo-peep with their creditors as when they were encouraged to be rogues by such cheating conveniences. * * *
“We came into the main street of this neglected asylum, soverythin of people, the windows broken, and the houses untenanted, as if the plague, or some like judgment from heaven, as well as execution on earth, had made a great slaughter amongst the poor inhabitants.”—London Spy, 1699. Part 7.
It seems strange that such a lawless community should then have dwelt almost within the very sanctuary of the law, for the author (Ned Ward) just quoted tells us, that “he passed through the little wicket of a great pair of gates into the Temple.”
We must not pass without noticing St. Bride’s Church, situated by the office of our merry neighbourPunch, who does his “spiriting gently,” and is as great a “terror to evil-doers” as the constables were in the olden time to the sinners of Alsatia.
This is another of Wren’s beautiful churches, and is enriched by stained glass, copied from Rubens, the subject the Descent from the Cross. The steeple was struck by lightning in 1764, and when repaired was reduced in height, though it still towers a graceful and noble monument above the surrounding houses, as it
“Points its silent finger to the sky,And teaches grovelling man to look on high.”
“Points its silent finger to the sky,And teaches grovelling man to look on high.”
“Points its silent finger to the sky,And teaches grovelling man to look on high.”
In the old church, destroyed in the Great Fire, was buried the famous printer Wynkin de Worde, whose works are now worth their weight in gold, and are almost as scarce as those which were issued from the press by Caxton. Here also was buried the notorious Mary Frith, commonly called Moll Cut-Purse. On her adventures Dekker and Middleton founded the play entitledThe Roving Girl, or Moll Cut-Purse. She died in the seventy-fifth year of her age, at her house in Fleet-street, next the Globe tavern, in 1659. In her will she left 20l.for the conduit to run with wine at the Restoration of Charles II. It was Moll who robbed General Fairfax on Hounslow Heath. Her life was published in 1662. She was, says Granger, “a fortune-teller, a pickpocket, a thief, and a receiver of stolen goods.” She died of the dropsy, and her life is supposed to have been prolonged through the large quantity of tobacco which she smoked. Our great Milton at one time lodged in St. Bride’s churchyard. It would form a goodly catalogue of celebrated names to enumerate all who have been buried in St. Bride’s, or lived in the adjoining neighbourhood.
Many of the houses, as in the time of Milton, in the back streets and alleys are let out in lodgings; and we will now give, from our own experience, a specimen of a downright London lodging-house—we mean, one in which the landlord lives entirely by letting lodgings—forwe allude not to hotels, or respectable boarding-houses, but to places where you are “taken in and done for.”
An author, during his early career, is compelled to become acquainted with the “ins and outs” and “ways and means” of London lodging-houses; and as his occupation keeps him more within doors than those who hold situations, or are otherwise engaged, he is, to use a more expressive than elegant phrase, “Up to their moves and down to their dodges.” We have in our day known more than one gentleman who kept his own gridiron, and brought home his rump-steak—taught by experience that half a pound of his own cooking was equal to a pound after it had been entrusted to the Cinderella or the Cerberus of the kitchen. We have known whisky in such places (which overnight was above proof) become so weak in a single day during our absence, as never to require water; and have seen a shoulder of lamb, which, after our frugal dinner, was carried away with a gap in it scarcely wide enough to admit of our two fingers, return at supper-time with a hole in the middle big enough to shake hands through, without touching any thing on either side except the knuckle, or the edge of the bare blade-bone. It was wonderful how often the cat got to our meat, and what trouble our landlady had been at, according to her account, to cut off the portions puss had mangled, before it was again fit to appear on the table. Cruel woman! she was always beating the cat whenever we had a cold joint. As for our tea-caddy, we tried half-a-dozen various kinds of locks; but they were picked with far more ease than the clever American managed to pick Chubb’s patent. When we did at last get an unpickable lock, caddy and tea went altogether, and Cinderella said her mistress had had a strange sweep, and that sweeps were always sure to carry something or another away in the soot. The next day we found a sixpenny tin tea-caddy in our cupboard, so took the hint, and never sent out for more than two ounces at a time; and the landlady seemed to settle down satisfied with little more than half of it, so we had it “fresh and fresh” every day. We found that a twopenny French roll went as far as a half-quartern loaf, as we were never allowed to look a second time upon the remains of either. They charged us for cream and gave us milk-and-water; but perhaps this was done out of a tender regard for our health. How broth was made in these old model lodging-houses, we never could clearly comprehend; but the landlady had an herbalist book, and we believe made out her bill from the index, beginning at agrimony and ending at yarrow-root. A bottle of wine when decanted in the kitchen cost about eighteenpence a glass; walnuts, a penny each; filberts came up so ripe that we found one in a cluster where four or five had originally nestled together; lobstersalways lost their claws down-stairs, and very often came up with one side of the shell empty. Bottled stout was always going off in the cellar, and they shewed us the corks which had been blown out—indeed in these matters they were rather particular. They were dreadfully troubled with bluebottles in summer, and the largest joint would not keep beyond a day.
The game you brought home yourself was never sweet; what the landlady purchased for you was always good. Many cheap game-hawkers came to the door; and sometimes the landlady was dining off a fine pheasant, while your own was thrown into the dust-bin.
The whole household were troubled with bad memories, and were always making mistakes. If you laid out a pair of trousers or a coat to be repaired, you found sixpence or ninepence on the mantelpiece a morning or two after, which was all the old clothesman would give for them. Then they were very sorry, but that stupid girl was always making some mistake or another, and the landlady would call on the tailor herself another time. There were no queen’s-heads in those days; and when we sent the money to prepay a letter, they invariably forgot to stamp “paid” on it at the post-office, though the girl knew to an inch where she had put the money at the time, and could remember every thing that was on the counter; and sometimes she said she had put the money in the scales, and was sure it could not have rolled off and fallen on the floor. Butter in these houses was very solid: it was wonderful what a thin slice you had for half a pound, though the Cinderella of the establishment swore that she saw it bump the scale down. Your linen wore out very fast, and, after the buttons began to come off, they were never fit to be sent to the laundress again. Your stockings stood darning twice; pocket-handkerchiefs and light gloves the landlady was kind enough to purchase for you every week. Your brushes, hair-brushes, combs, &c. were, of course, common property. They sent you up the newspaper about five minutes before the boy called for it, provided every body below had done with it.
In some of these houses every thing about you is cold, hard, bright, and uncomfortably clean, as if always ready to be let—“got up,” as it were, to strike every new comer. If you drop a crumb on the carpet it is picked up before your face, by way of a gentle hint; a stain of ink on the table-cover you would never hear the last of. Some mysterious kind of white cabbage-network covers the back of the easy chair, and lies grinning at you, full of holes, all over the sofa; you see nothing but knots, and would as soon think of finding ease were you to lie down on a stone floor strewn with bullets as on that hard white knotted cordage. Everything in the room is for show, nothing for comfort. The mantelpieceis covered with articles which are neither ornamental nor useful: shells, four a shilling; a couple of white delf candlesticks; two old hand-screens, picked up dirt-cheap at an auction; in the centre three ugly-shaped earthenware articles, red, blue, and gilt tarnished, holding about a dozen spills each, which are never used—you are sick of seeing them reflected in the long mirror which was bought a bargain. If you have a handful of fire in the cold glittering grate on a bitter winter night, it makes you shiver to look at it: the poker looks so bright and chilling, you are afraid to touch it; and if a piece of coal falls out, they come in to see if you called, for they are always listening. Sometimes you shove your boot toe into the fire in utter desperation, or walk up and down the room, and storm heartily for exercise. You feel as if you would like to kick the couple of cursed carpet-covered hassocks about to warm you, and end by knocking down the fire-irons, to break the homeless silence. Never, in such places, on any account, begin to sharpen your razors near midnight, for the Evil One seems ever to be lurking in the gloomy corners of such cheerless houses, and there is no knowing what thoughts he might put into your head.
These are the class of houses in which you see neat bills in the windows, announcing “Respectable Apartments for Single Gentlemen.” They never admit children into these old, keen, money-making lodging-houses: the echoes of those houses are never broken by childish laughter, nor these creaking floors shaken by merry romps; they like your shy, silent, bashful man, who submits quietly to every imposition; for they care not what he thinks, so long as he complains not openly.
In some streets you find lodging-houses inhabited by three distinct classes, who are as much separated from each other as if they lived fifty miles apart. The poor inhabitant in the attic may be dying while the first-floor lodger is entertaining a party of friends; and although they have both dwelt under the same roof for years, it is likely enough that not a single word was ever exchanged between them.
The lodger who occupies the first floor seldom condescends to speak to the “common people” who live in the garrets, for there is almost as much difference in their habits as there is between the aristocracy and the quiet plodding citizen. He who occupies the attic is very probably an honest hard-handed mechanic, who comes home to his dinner regularly at twelve o’clock, gives one loud single knock at the door, and is admitted by his poor but clean-looking wife: he wipes his feet carefully before going up stairs—first and second-floor doors never by any possible chance opening in the mean time. Second-floor comes with a bold double-knock, something between a bum-bailiff’s, a postman’s, and a tax-gatherer’s; he dines at one or two, and is on nodding terms with the first-floor; he persevered for months trying ona “Fine morning, sir,” and at last was made happy by a most surly “Very, sir.” He progressed a step farther one day by saying something unpleasant about the “common people up-stairs.” First-floor dines at three or four, if he is a clerk or holds some slight situation under government, obtained, perhaps, through his father selling his vote at a country election: he gives a regular “ran-tan-tan-tirra-irra-tir-tir-tir,” for he keeps a little draggle-tailed, dirty, poor parish-child, and she answers the door—that is “our servant.” The ground-floor people—that is, generally, the landlord and his family (if they do not live in the kitchen)—bow and smile at the first-floor from the parlour window: he is such a respectable “gent,” and pays so regular; has a gallon of spirits sent in at a time, and never disgraces the house by having in such beggarly things as half-a-hundred of coals and two bundles of wood.
But the picture is not complete without the children. First-floor have their hair plaited behind (if they are girls), and the ends of these long tails are tied with either blue or pink ribbon; they also wear little trousers, frilled about the ankles like little bantam-cocks, and strut about before the door like the above-named bird. Second-floor children are very tidy, as most of the washing is put out, and the mother can spare time to look after them; they are taught to “toady” to first-floor as soon as they have learned to talk; to call them “miss” or “master,” and their father and mother “pa” and “ma.” Your heart aches while you look on the canting little creatures, whose every motion is watched by the eyes of the parents. Second-floor’s children are always to blame if any thing goes wrong, and the lick-spittle parents chide their children for the faults of the others, to keep in with first-floor. You have in those dear children a true picture of the humbug and hollow-heartedness of the insincere portion of mankind.
Mean time, third-floor are sitting on the top landing, eating dry bread, their hands and faces very dirty through playing with the coal-scuttle, while their poor, pale, industrious mother is busy washing. But they will be taken out for a walk somewhere on Sunday, and for one day in the week be the happiest party under that roof. We are sorry that this savage-looking picture is true to nature; but on scanning it narrowly, there is not a single feature that we ought to soften down.
Happy are they who can find lodging-houses in London in which they can feel “at home.” That there are thousands of these comfortable places, we entertain no doubt of; the worst of it is, young men are too fond of shifting about, and have not patience to wait until they become accustomed to the ways of these really respectable people.“Slow” has become a bad word of late; and they are generally empty-headed, think-much-of-themselves, “fast,” frothy fellows, who use it. “Slow and sure” was an old saying, often quoted by our wise forefathers.
Considering how cheerless and comfortless many of these lodging-houses are, we cease to wonder at the number of taverns and coffee-houses which abound in London, and should be glad to see a few more such admirable institutions as the Whittington Club, for we here see at least one cause why they are so much frequented. How lonely seems a place (except to a man whose studious habits require solitude), on a long winter night, where a young man has to sit five or six hours without having a living soul to speak to. He lights his lucifer-match, and, as the faint blue speck slowly bursts into flame, he looks round upon the voiceless solitude, and sighs. He sets a light to the sticks and coal which the char-woman or the dirty Cinderella placed in the grate, after they had arranged his bedroom in the morning, and for a time the crackling of the fire seems like pleasant companionship. Then the church-clock tolls slowly and sadly, and he yawns while he thinks of the weary hours that have yet to pass away before bedtime. He makes his own tea—or, perchance, the little dirty servant, who has sixpence a week and her “wittals,” brings it up: when he has finished, he rings the bell, the things are cleared away, and then he may hang himself if he pleases, quite certain that the deed would never be discovered until the morrow. Were he taken ill, and to ring the bell, the little servant would be sent to fetch a doctor, if the lodger had the wherewithal to pay; if not, they would advise him to go to one of the hospitals. If he required attendance, some old woman (fond of gin), who had perhaps been discharged from the hospitals for drunkenness, would be hired to nurse him, grumbling every time she entered the room, and declaring that she could not find a single thing she wanted in the house. Perhaps on the first day of his illness he would receive notice to quit the apartments at the end of the week: we have witnessed such conduct in a keen money-making London lodging-house in our day, and had much ado to prevent ourselves from throwing the mercenary wretch down-stairs who had given the helpless lodger warning to leave. In such houses as these there are always apartments to let, for very few stay a day longer than they are compelled.
We have here described the worst class of London lodging-houses, such as are kept by unprincipled persons who have no other means of living except what they make by their apartments and by robbing their lodgers. A stranger cannot wholly avoid these man-traps; but, if he take our advice, he will stay at some decent coffee-house or tavern until he gets settled, and not venture into apartments, unlessthose who have them to let can be recommended by such acquaintance as he is pretty sure to meet with when he has once found employment. Poor people do not rob each other in this manner; it is that hungry class which “apes gentility”—who “smile, and rob while they do smile.”
There are thousands of places to be found in London where it is their study to make a lodger feel “at home;” where a man may sit and sun himself in the smiles of a warm domestic hearth, and, though a stranger, never know what it is to feel lonely. But these are not houses in which people live alone by letting lodgings, neither will you find more than one or two lodgers under such a roof. Changes, such as they foresaw not, compel them to add a few shillings a week to their income—for they have lived so many years in the same house that it would make them miserable to leave it. A son is in a situation, or a daughter has got married, and they have no longer any use for the rooms they occupied; or the landlord cannot do so much work as he formerly did. These, and a hundred other causes, open the door to the most comfortable of all London lodgings, and fortunate is the stranger who finds a home under such a roof. Such people would scorn to take away the value of a pin that was not their own; and the only discomfort you feel is in the fear that they do not charge enough to remunerate them for their kindness and attention.
Young men and “fast men!” if you are fortunate enough to dwell in such a home, where their circumstances will not allow them to keep a servant, but where a modest daughter honours you by her attendance, respect her as you would a sister. Remember, also, that it is poverty which compels the servant to wait upon you, and that it is your duty to respect her for those services. Remember that
“He prayeth best who loveth bestAll things both great and small;For the dear God who loveth us,He made and loveth all.”Coleridge’sAncient Mariner.
“He prayeth best who loveth bestAll things both great and small;For the dear God who loveth us,He made and loveth all.”Coleridge’sAncient Mariner.
“He prayeth best who loveth bestAll things both great and small;For the dear God who loveth us,He made and loveth all.”Coleridge’sAncient Mariner.
Although the old “memories” that float about Fleet-street would fill a volume, we must not pass on without glancing at St. Dunstan’s Church, though it is a new building, and the figures, so often gazed on in “wonderment” by the gaping crowds of other days, no longer step out in their wonted place to strike the hours. For the origin of these wooden “puppets,” see Douglas Jerrold’sSt. James’s and St. Giles’s, in which he reads as severe a lecture to hard-hearted overseers as the old ballad ofThe Babes in the Wooddoes to “wicked uncles.” Before the statue of Queen Elizabeth, which stands over the doorwayfronting Fleet-street, a poor simple-hearted Irishwoman was one morning, not long ago, observed kneeling, and repeating her prayers: she mistook it for the figure of the Virgin. This statue is supposed to be the only relic preserved when Ludgate (one of the city-gates that stood on Ludgate-hill,) was taken down in 1760. It ornamented the old church of St. Dunstan, as it now does the present one.
Nor must we omit a word or two before we pass through Temple-Bar about the Cock Tavern, to which our living poet laureate Alfred Tennyson does “most resort,” according to his own confession, in “Will Waterproof’s lyrical monologue made at the Cock,” in an old box
“larded with the steamOf thirty thousand dinners.”
“larded with the steamOf thirty thousand dinners.”
“larded with the steamOf thirty thousand dinners.”
Many of the old taverns in Fleet-street—Dr. Johnson’s favourite “Mitre” for example—have rich recollections of the wit and wisdom of the wits and sages of former days. With many of these our readers are doubtless familiar, but they perhaps never heard of the “Cock” before reading Tennyson’s poems. Nevertheless there is a fact in the history of this old tavern worth knowing. The bird that gives name to this “haunt of hungry sinners” was, according to our laureate,
“Of a larger eggThan modern poultry drop,Stepped forward on a firmer leg,And crammed a plumper crop.”
“Of a larger eggThan modern poultry drop,Stepped forward on a firmer leg,And crammed a plumper crop.”
“Of a larger eggThan modern poultry drop,Stepped forward on a firmer leg,And crammed a plumper crop.”
He was, indeed, a regal fowl, for he not only coined copper money, but stamped it with his own effigy and circulated it amongst his customers in the form of tokens. If a man who had newly dined required change out of the money for his dinner, he received it, not in pence, but in copper cocks, which were afterwards duly honoured by the worthy landlord, who gave to their bearer full value in generous food and liquor. This currency was so extensive that when, during the ravages of the Great Plague in London, the door of the Cock was closed, “when the plump head waiter” and all other subordinates were dismissed, and the landlord had fled to the country to escape the scourge, public notice was given of the time when the house would be again opened, and that the copper tokens would be duly honoured. One of these is still carefully preserved as “a relic of the olden time.”
The Temple alone would occupy a long chapter, and detain us in this locality far beyond the limits that our pages allow, so we shall without further apology pass through Temple Bar and enter the Strand.
WE have now quitted the City and entered the Strand; before us stands the Church of St. Clement Danes, on the right of which an archway opens into Clement’s Inn; beyond that is the old Angel Inn, from which Bishop Hooper was taken before he suffered martyrdom at Gloucester three centuries ago. Justice Shallow says: “I was once of Clement’s Inn, where I think they will talk of mad Shallow yet;” and no sooner is his back turned than Falstaff says: “I do remember him at Clement’s Inn, like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring;” * * * “he was for all the world like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife.”
Of the early church that occupied the site of the present one but little is really known. Stowe tells us that it was “so called, because Harold, a Danish king, and other Danes, were buried there.” There is a doubt whether Harold, who ascended the throne after Canute, was in any way related to the latter; his pretended mother, Algigiva, was never married to Canute, and it is recorded that she never had a child, but that Harold, who passed for her son, had no higher origin than a poor cobbler for his father. Harold was buried at Westminster; but when Hardicanute (the legitimate son of Canute) came to England, he ordered the body of Harold to be disinterred, decapitated, and thrown into the Thames. The body was taken out of the river by some Danish fishermen, and again interred in a cemetery in London, where only the Danes buried their dead. We have not entered into the reign of Harold at all; these few facts are all that history records of the origin of St. Clement Danes. The present church was built by Pierce under the guidance of Wren. The old church was pulled down in 1660. Dr. Johnson had a sitting in thepresent church. The interior is heavily decorated with festoons and drops, and contains two tolerable statues of Moses and Aaron. Facing this church stands the office of the far-famedIllustrated London News, in the columns of which paper the greater portion of these sketches originally appeared.
You still hear a few of the old London cries in the by-streets that branch out of this busy neighbourhood, though many, which the “oldest inhabitants” can just remember, are heard no more.
The cry of “green boughs” to deck the summer parlours, and “green rushes” to strew upon the floors, has long since ceased. The fire-place is no more adorned with bunches of the blossoming hawthorn, branches of sweetbrier, and huge pots filled with the fragrant and trailing honeysuckle: art, with its paper ornaments, has driven away these beautiful products of nature, and the less healthy carpet has carried off the meadow-like smell of the rushes. “Cherry ripe” we occasionally hear, sung out as clear and silvery as when Herrick composed his inimitable little song, though Ben Jonson, by the way, wrote one long before Herrick, on the same subject. “Watercresses,” though no longer borne by a nymph, who paused every now and then to throw aside the long hair which fell over her nut-brown and weather-stained cheeks, is a cry we still hear; but the figure that conjured up Sabrina and the “glassy cool translucent wave” has long since departed. Lemons and oranges are cried by the wandering race, whose dark-haired mothers, in ancient days, poured forth their songs in the land of Israel. The primroses and violets of spring are still sold in these streets, but the cry of “Come buy my pretty bow-pots” is now rarely heard. The apple-stall, with its roasted chestnuts, the oyster-stall (a simple trestle), and the pieman who is ever ready to try his luck at pitch-and-toss, still haunt the corners of a few of our obscure streets, as they did in bygone days. The grinder and the tinker, and those who yet follow many a primitive old calling, and who set up their workshops in every open street where they can find a job, have been driven, with their quaint cries, into the suburbs, and the men themselves are but shadows of the jolly tinkers and merry pedlars who figure in our ancient ballad lore. The rattle, and roll, and thunder of our modern vehicles have drowned their old-fashioned cries in the great thoroughfares of Fleet-street and the Strand.
But though many of these old cries are heard no more, there is still many a poetical association thrown around this busy neighbourhood.
Who has not heard of the May-pole that stood in the Strand, how it was removed by command of the stern protector Cromwell, and how, at the restoration of Charles, a new one was erected, amidthe beating of drums and loud-sounding music, and the cheers of assembled thousands, who were weary of the puritanic gloom which had so long hung over merry England? What a buzzing there would be in that neighbourhood on the occasion, while May-garlands hung across the streets, as we have often seen them in our day, in a few out-of-the-way old fashioned towns, where the manners and customs of the people have undergone but little change during the last two centuries.
In an old volume printed before the Great Fire of London, entitled,The Citie’s Loyalty displayed, we find the following account of the May-pole that stood in the Strand.
“This tree was a most choice and remarkable piece (134 feet high): it was made below bridge, and brought in two parts up to Scotland-yard, and from thence it was conveyed, April 14th, to the Strand to be erected. It was brought with a streamer flourishing before it, drums beating all the way, and other sorts of music. It was supposed to be so long, that landsmen could not possibly raise it. Prince James, the Duke of York, Lord High Admiral of England, commanded twelve seamen off aboard to come and officiate the business; whereupon they came, and brought their cables, pullies, and other tacklins, with six great anchors. The May-pole then being joined together, and hooped about with bands of iron, the crown and vane, with the king’s arms richly gilded, was placed on the head of it, [and] a large top like a balcony was about the middle of it; this being done, the trumpets did sound, and in four hours space it was advanced upright.” [Four hours to draw up a May-pole! a slow age, my masters; they could not have built Hungerford Suspension-Bridge in those days, which is a toy compared to that now stretched across the Menai Straits. But to proceed with our extract.] “After which, being established fast in the ground, six drums did beat, and the trumpets did sound: again great shouts and acclamation the people gave, that it did ring throughout all the Strand. * * * * It is placed as near at hand as they could guess in the very same pit where the former stood, but far more glorious, bigger, and higher than ever any one that stood before it. * * * Little children did much rejoice, and ancient people did clap their hands, saying, ‘Golden days begin to appear.’ ” This was in 1661. Whether a May-pole was erected after the one given to Sir Isaac Newton, it “being old and decayed,” we have not discovered. The one given to Newton was afterwards used for raising a telescope at Wansted in Essex.
Cleveland, the bold cavalier colonel under Charles I., has a few spirited lines on the May-pole, but which are scarcely quotable, sohard does he hit the puritanical Tabithas and Obadiahs; we quote a few lines: