"Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed,Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre."
"Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed,Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre."
I shared her feeling about the place, and as we stood taking a final look it occurred to me that such houses are pathetic attempts to assuage a wistful craving for things that have passed. Perhaps, though, it is in their very failure that they score. If one could put back the centuries and meet the real selves of all those people about whom one had been dreaming one might lose something for which nothing gained could compensate.
No. 17 Gough Square, however, isn'talwaysforlorn. There are afternoons when merry tea parties of twentieth-century men and womengather in the garret, or in the "Pink" room sacred to those long ago tea parties when Hannah Williams entertained the Doctor's friends. There are, too, evenings when members of the Johnsonian Club, literary folk, or societies given over to the study of London lore, meet for discussion or conviviality. I hope the Doctor doesn't resent the intrusion: I don't think he does, for hospitality was one of his distinguishing traits.
Mrs. Darling suggested we should go back by the way we came. She feared the magnetic power of The Red Lion, coupled with my propensity for rotating. And so we turned to the right and followed our noses until they brought us out into the bustle of Fleet Street and the sight of the dark archway leading to Middle Temple Lane under the jutting windows of Prince Henry's room.
At the risk of inducing in Mrs. Darling a mood which she describes as the "bloomin' 'ump," I suggested over the tea-cups that, being on the spot, it would only be seemly to visit poor "Goldy's" grave in the Temple.
She said she was in "good sperets" this afternoon and thought she could bear it. Poor Goldy! it seems from the accounts one reads of his end that it was his humble friends who grieved most for him. Neither Johnson norReynolds nor Burke nor Garrick followed him to the grave, and Boswell, writing to Johnson on June 24th (Goldsmith died on April 4th), says, "You have said nothing to me about poor Goldsmith," to which Johnson replied, "Of poor dear Dr. Goldsmith there is little to be told, more than the papers have made public. He died of a fever, made, I am afraid, more violent by uneasiness of mind. His debts began to be heavy, and all his resources were exhausted."
Darkness had fallen when we left the tearooms, and people were hurrying through the Temple on their way home from work. The gas lamps shone on the windows of the circular end of the Temple Church, giving them a frosty sort of glitter, and no one but ourselves heeded the turning which leads to the poet's tomb. The little corner where he lies was deserted and silent, and the inscription on the tombstone could be deciphered easily by the light of the gas lamp near. There is so little of it to read:—
"Here lies Oliver Goldsmith. Born November 10th, 1728, died April 4th, 1774."
As I read it I thought of his own words: "Innocently to amuse the imagination in this dream of life is wisdom."
"This dream of life." Is heawakenow? An idea occurs to me, Agatha: the idea thatthese ghosts enjoy a visit to their old haunts in the same fashion that we enjoy trying to reconstruct their past, but they are only allowed to return during those moments when someone in this life thinks of them. If this is so,Imust be much sought after on the other side, and my obsession with the past is accounted for.
I showed Mrs. Darling the chambers in Brick Court where Goldsmith died, and we looked in through the open door at the crooked, narrow staircase where those poor creatures he had befriended wept for his loss on the morning after his death. No doubt he had given them sympathy as well as alms.Heknew the meaning of poverty from the day when, as a humble physician, he hid the holes in the front of his coat with his hat when paying visits, to the hour when, dying a debtor to the extent of two thousand pounds, he earned Johnson's exclamation, "Was ever poet so trusted before!"
Returning to Temple Bar, we exchanged confidences about our early recollections of the old gate, and I wondered at the barbarity of those times, not much more than a hundred and fifty years ago, when the heads of traitors were spiked over the gate and allowed to rot under the eyes of those who passed to and fro beneath. There's a lot of "frightfulness" in old London. It reads at times very much like a penny dreadful. Thekings and queens, saints and warriors, the men of letters and gentle poets are limned against a tenebrous background of narrow ill-lit streets, of plague and fire, persecution and deeds of violence. There is something of the crudeness of cheap melodrama about it all, but at the same time a virility which satisfies.
But it grows late as I write this, and to quote Goldsmith once more, "Let me no longer waste the night over the page of antiquity ... the dying lamp emits a yellow gleam; no sound is heard but of the chiming clock...."
Meanwhile, dear Agatha,
I am, yours as ever,
GEORGE.
CARRINGTONMEWS,
SHEPHERDMARKET,
November 25th.
DEAR Agatha,—I anticipated your wish that I should make Chelsea the object of my next pilgrimage. Mrs. D. and I went there yesterday.
The gulls were very busy about nothing over the river, and they harmonised with the colour scheme of the afternoon. Pale sunshine, a sky of washed-out blue, a silver river, wharves, and leafless trees in Battersea Park veiled by a curtain which was part autumn mist and part smoke from the factory chimneys on the south side.
The square brick tower of the old parish church makes a landmark to the barges and steamboats on their silent passing, and at night its clock shines out like a full moon above the plane trees which line the Embankment.
A quaint old place it is inside, with a great west gallery that encroaches almost to thechancel. Where the pews leave off the crowding large tombs begin, and where the tombs end the discoloured walls are covered with coats of arms. All this, seen by the homely light of day, which falls through the windows of plain glass, has an intimate and pleasant appearance. Even the ancient tombs in their proximity to the worshippers seem friendly.
In Sir Thomas More's chapel a certain Arthur Georges, who died in 1660, lies under the feet of the person who happens to occupy the chair which partly hides the inscription on his tomb:—
"Here lies interred the body of that generous and worthy Gent, Arthur Georges, Esq. Here sleepes and feeles noe pressure of ye stone. He that had all the Georges Soules in One. Here the ingenious Arthur lies to be bewailed by marble and our eyes...."
"The ingenious Arthur!" One pictures him. A man who had "a way with women". Apt to get into scrapes, irresponsible, but with a knack of getting out of a tight corner. Kind-hearted, given to take what life offers in the way of pleasure, and always ready to pass on good things, and do a good turn to the under-dog. The inscription goes on to say, "When all the Georges rise he'll rise again," which pious belief set me speculating as to whether I might some day meet the "ingenious Arthur". I'm sure I should like him.
Mrs. Darling was visibly impressed when I told her that the body of Sir Thomas More (whose head had been thrown from London Bridge into his daughter's arms below) was in all probability buried under the church. His tomb in the chancel consists of a ledge and a tablet of black marble surmounted by a flat Gothic arch. On the ledge was a bunch of tawny chrysanthemums and a cross of scarlet immortelles, so the old man who went to the scaffold rather than be a party to the chicanery and concupiscence of Henry VIII is not yet forgotten. Sir Thomas More, it has always seemed to me, carried his asceticism to extreme limits in the matter of his marriage. "Having determined," so says the historian, "by the advice of his ghostly father to be a married man, he was offered the choice of the two daughters of a friend, and although his affection most served him to the second, for that he thought her the fairest and best favoured, yet when he thought within himself that it would be a grief and some blemish to the eldest to have the youngest sister preferred before her, he, out of a kind of compassion, settled his fancy on the eldest, and soon afterwards married her."
More's first marriage, curiously arranged as it was, seemed to have proved happier than his second, and one is driven to the conclusion thatthe great man lacked discrimination in affairs of the heart. Hear his second wife's tirade when visiting in the Tower. "I marvel," says she, "that you, who have been hitherto always taken for a wise man, will now so play the fool as to lie here in this close-fitting prison, and be content to be shut up thus with mice, and rats, when you might be abroad at your liberty, with the favour and goodwill of the King and his council, if you would but do as the bishops and best learned of his realm have done."
Mrs. Darling said that was whatshecalled "a sensible woman," but when I explained the marital complications of Henry VIII, and the particular offence with which the Lord Chancellor was charged, the old lady changed her front, saying she was glad some one had had the "spunk to stand up to that ole rapscallion in the 'tammy'!" Mrs. D. is evidently familiar with pictures of the amorous monarch.
We found our way to that corner of the church where are the chained books. Mrs. D., whose knowledge of literature included, by hearsay, "Foxe's Book of Martyrs," accorded a glance of fearful curiosity at the brown back of the dread old volume. The books, the verger told us, were taken out of the case and dusted once a month, and I envied the person to whom the task was allotted.
I think, though, I'd choose a bright early morning when morbid fancies do not find easy foothold. "Foxe's Book of Martyrs," in the old church at dusk, might raise ugly phantoms which no bell or candle could lay.
In these ancient buildings, which are so jealous of the admission of light, the sunbeams play impish pranks once they gain entrance. They are as elusive as ghosts, and as nimble as fairies. They throw ruddy gleams on discoloured walls, setting old brasses afire, and giving a semblance of warmth to the sculptured features of the dead. The venerable walls are the target for their elfish tricks and wanton caresses, their fugitive withdrawals and stealthy returns. The soundless game was in progress as we left the church, and I shall always picture the quaint homely old building touched to beauty by the tender flitting of these noiseless visitors.
Crosby Hall, that fragment of antiquity, is within a stone's throw of the church, and to anyone not knowing the story of its presence there, it must appear a strange erection standing in the centre of a piece of waste ground surrounded by a hoarding. It was a daring and ingenious idea to uproot it from its native soil in Bishopsgate Street, and if the horrid crime had to be done, no better spot than Chelsea, on thesite of Sir Thomas More's garden, could be found for its transplanting.
We walked all round the hoarding seeking entrance, and at last found a hitherto unnoticed door. The caretaker said the Hall was not open to visitors, except by appointment, but that if we liked we could go in. We went and found the place like a huge, cold barn, its fine oak flooring chalked out for Badminton, whilst into the cavernous old fireplace, decorated with Sir John Crosby's crest—a ram, armed and hoofed—had been put a hideous iron stove. The magnificent timber roof, forty feet above, looked down on these innovations sadly, and the glorious oriel window, with the old glass emblazoned with coats of arms, was eloquent of the times when Richard, Duke of Gloucester, entertained there in 1470, and of such occasions as the visit of Princess Katherine of Aragon to Sir Bartholomew Bird, or the masque performed by the students of Gray's Inn before Queen Elizabeth. What changes of fortune have visited it since! amongst which it has figured in turn as a Presbyterian Chapel and a restaurant! The caretaker's voice echoed hollow in that husk of a building from which the kernel is gone. It had borne its transplanting ill, and even the ghosts, I felt, had deserted it.
Outside, we found the world transfigured bythe setting sun, and I left Crosby Hall behind with a sensation of relief. For once in my delvings into the past I had missed the thrill, but the blood-red sun over the river provided a compensation, and I thought of the little house where J. M. W. Turner died close at hand. If ever he haunts the spot it would be at such an hour, when the wizardry of the sinking sun casts its spell of romance and mystery over the most commonplace objects. All too short are such moments, but Turner, that mad genius who lived with his visions of splendour in the midst of dirt and squalor, "the wizened, meagre old man," has snatched and imprisoned for those who come after him the fleeting miracle.
Mrs. Darling, who is tolerant of what she considers my "balmy" propensity for "staring at nothink," occupied herself with watching the craft on the river whilst I meditated before the little green-shuttered house. It lies below the level of the footpath and behind the frontage line of its neighbours, seeking, it seems, as would the man who lived, worked and died there, to evade notice. J. M. W. Turner's action in suddenly and secretly leaving his "den" in Queen Anne's Street to take refuge in Cheyne Walk was dictated by a mad impulse to go into hiding, and one pictures the flight of the strange old man who wanted only to be left alone with his tyrannicalmistress, Art. The house is described as being "next door to a ginger-beer shop close to Cremorne Pier". There is no ginger-beer shop now, only "The Aquatic Stores," and Cremorne has long disappeared.
I looked up at the windows and wondered from which one it was that the dying painter watched the gates of heaven open to let out the mystic flood of colour and take in the departing sun. There was the iron balcony on the roof, erected by Turner himself, so that he should not fall off when busy there at his easel. How well he must have known the limitless moods of the river! The silence of its inexorable tides, its liquid fire under the flaming sun, its pale shiver under the silver moon, and its black despair on a winter's night.
Mrs. Darling interrupted my meditations to inform me that a policeman was observing me with suspicion, and that she thought it would be advisable to move on. She said she had noticed on former occasions that my "ixcentrik 'abits" had attracted unwelcome notice, but that she hadn't liked to mention the matter for fear of making me nervous. Pure imagination on the old lady's part, of course, but she finds a certain pleasurable excitement in such fancies, and so I humoured her by walking on with an air of assumed indifference calculated to allay theapprehensions of any "nosey" member of the force.
4th December.
It was too late when we left Cheyne Walk to go to Carlyle's house, and we have paid another visit to Chelsea to-day. The weather which, so far, has been kind to our wanderings, turned the disagreeable side of its face to us this afternoon. The wind was blowing a gale from the north-east, and pieces of paper and dead leaves flew as high as the topmost branches of the plane trees along the Embankment. Mrs. Darling was quite cheerful. She said the cold weather "agreed" with her feet, but, for myself, old age slapped me insultingly in the face with every spiteful gust of the biting blast.
GREAT CHEYNE ROW AND CARLYLE'S HOUSE.
GREAT CHEYNE ROW AND CARLYLE'S HOUSE.
No. 28 Cheyne Row, built in 1708, has a modest exterior which somewhat belies its interior. I rang the bell, the sound prolonging itself in a tinkle that seemed to take a journey to some remote corner of the house, and almost before its warning voice had ceased the door was opened by a girl whose glance set at rest my fears of intrusion. She ushered us into a dim, drab room wainscotted from floor to ceiling, but before I go any further, Agatha, I have a confession to make. It was not Carlyle whom I had chiefly come to see. If the maid had answeredmy ring and said, "Mr. Carlyle is out, but Mrs. Carlyle is at home," I should certainly not have turned away; indeed, I'm afraid it would have been difficult to disguise my satisfaction at the prospect of atête-à-têtewith Jane Welsh—Jane, who never sunk her individuality to the extent of becoming "the wife of Thomas Carlyle". Jane, who has always been, and always will be, "Jane Welsh" and not "Jane Carlyle" to her admirers.
It was Jane who had lured me to the old house on this bleak afternoon when I should have been sitting over the fire, forgetting my sixty-five years in a novel of youth. Jane, who in her cheery way describes the house as "an excellent lodgement, and most antique physiognomy, quite to our humour; roomy, substantial, commodious, with closets to satisfy any Bluebeard, ..." and who, in an earlier letter on the same subject, says, "I have a great liking to the massive old concern with the broad staircase and abundant accommodation for crockery. But is it not too near the river? And another idea presents itself along with that wainscot—if bugs have been in the house! Must they not have found there as well as the inmates room without end?" I hope, by the way, that the dear lady's fears were unfounded, but judging from her later letters, I have my doubts.
How shall I describe to you the effect of that chill, prim room, seen in the light of the bleak winter afternoon! One thing of living beauty alone made a link with the present—a great bunch of tawny yellow and white chrysanthemums which a worshipper had brought to the shrine on this, the birthday, of the great man. We had chosen an auspicious date for our visit, and inspired by the coincidence, I sought to animate the dry bones with life. Over the fireplace hangs a picture in which Jane is represented sitting by the fire in this very apartment, whilst her spouse, attired in a plaid dressing-gown, stands with his back against the mantel. Here is the identical room, the identical tables and chairs, the horsehair sofa and pictures, but the room no more resembles the home-like one in the picture than do dried rose leaves placed between the leaves of a book resemble the scented freshness of freshly plucked velvety petals. Ah, well! the dead cannot live again inthisworld, and those of us who visit ghosts' houses must leave our more material selves on the doorstep.
Everywhere are portraits of the sad, brooding face of Thomas Carlyle. Mrs. D. said the late Mr. D. used to look like that "when 'e'd lost a bit on a 'orse," and I was moved to explain that identical results may be obtained by widelydifferent causes. Who would choose to be a genius if he realised that loneliness was the price? Loneliness, with Jane by the fireside! Strange problem! I looked at her portrait in youth, the heart-shaped face with the parted lips and frank eyes, the dark curls and beautiful throat, and as I looked sentences in her letters came to mind. Referring to her choice of a husband, she says, "Indeed, I continue quite content with my bargain; I could wish him a littleless yellowand a little morepeaceable, but that is all." And again, when writing to him, she says, "Try all that ever you can to be patient and good-natured with your povera piccola Gooda, and then she loves you, and is ready to do anything on earth that you wish.... But when the signor della casa has neither kind look nor word for me, what can I do but grow desperate and fret myself to fiddlestrings."
Referring to a birthday present from him, she says, "Only think of my husband, too, having given me a little present! He who never attends to such nonsense as birthdays, and who dislikes nothing in the world so much as going into a shop to buy anything.... Well, he actually risked himself in a jeweller's shop and bought me a very nice smelling bottle!"
Poor little wife! Poor husband, too, when after her death he has so often to say, "Ah me!too late, too late". Yet they loved each other well, and when Thomas Carlyle wrote on her tombstone, "For forty years she was the true and ever-loving helpmate of her husband," and added that she was "suddenly snatched away from him, and the light of his life as if gone out," no one doubts that the words came from the deepest depths of his heart.
In the china closet a glass case contains some pathetic mementoes—a yellowed old lace cap worn by Mrs. Carlyle, a brooch with the portrait of her dog Nero, given by the mistress to "little Charlotte," a sock of Carlyle's with his initials neatly marked in red thread, and two small cardboard boxes, each containing locks of the hair of Thomas Carlyle and his wife. Trivial things, which yet in their haunting intimacy are too sacred, it seems, to be stared at by the curious sightseers.
In a corner hangs an etching that deserves a more prominent place, the desolate picture of a funerealcortègewending its slow way against a bleak background of snow and leaden sky.... Thomas Carlyle is being carried to his last rest, and surely the Great Scene Shifter had well chosen the setting. The simple dignity of the procession approaching over the white countryside, the little group of humble folk awaiting its arrival at the gate of the churchyard, the frozensilence of the dead day—what could be more touching or impressive!
As we mounted the stairs on our way to the upper rooms, Mrs. D., who had said nothing for quite five minutes, remarked that, forherpart, she couldn't see why people weren't allowed to rest in their graves. Even Mrs. D.'s scepticism and want of imagination was not proof against those little mementoes in the glass case, and I think she resented her inability on this occasion to take refuge behind the usual, "'Ow d'yer know it's all true?" The old lady was visibly depressed, and, to cheer her up, I asked her if she had ever worn a "bustle," quoting a letter of Jane Welsh's, in which she wrote, "The diameter of the fashionable ladies at present is about three yards; their bustles (false bottoms) are the size of an ordinary sheep's fleece. Eliza Miles told me a maid of theirs went out one Sunday with three kitchen dusters pinned-on as a substitute."
Whereupon Mrs. D., between laughter and breathlessness, had to pause on the top stair whilst she adjusted her hat at a still more rakish angle, and ejaculated, "Oh, saucy!"
It is well nigh impossible, in the later portraits of Mrs. Carlyle, to recognise the girl in the miniature. The dark brooding face is almost forbidding, and one is forced to the conclusion that the portraits have little real likeness to theoriginal. Jane, with a vitality that upheld her through years of bodily and mental suffering, with a gaiety and wit which won her the admiration and homage of those celebrated men who went to see her husband, and stayed to make friends with her, Jane could never have lookedlike that! No doubt the coal-scuttle bonnet and severe style of hair dressing had a great deal to do with it. The fashions in those days were not kind to the middle-aged woman. All the same, when I looked at a portrait of Lady Ashburton, Carlyle's friend and patron, I found there a woman whose beauty could triumph over such handicaps. Jane thought Lady Ashburton a "cat," and the insolent eyes and disdainful curve of "Harriet's" mouth incline me to think Jane was right. Comparisons are unkind, but one is forced to the conclusion that whilst Lady Ashburton's face might well be her fortune, Jane Welsh would have to draw on her wit and intellect.
The cold wind outside roared round the cold house, and a piano-organ in the street ground out a hymn. Down below the bell tinkled. More visitors were arriving, and wishing to keep in advance of them, we left the drawing-room for Mrs. Carlyle's bedroom.
"Red bed," says Carlyle in a letter to his wife, "will stand behind the drawing-room"—andhere it is! A four-poster with bare laths hung with faded red curtains and flounce. There is nothing more intimate than a bed, but this bed, standing so many years unwarmed by human contact, has outlived all such associations. It was not always a kind bed, either, judging from the tragic account in her letters of Jane's sleepless nights. "Oh!" she writes, "if there was any sleep to be got in that bed wherever it stands!" (alluding to a change in the position of her bed at Chelsea). "But it looks to my excited imagination, that bed I was born in, like a sort of instrument of red-hot torture; after all those nights I lay meditating on self-destruction as my only escape from insanity." A woman who could express her sufferings in such vivid language would be spared no iota of misery. Pin-pricks, which a stupid person might ignore, would to Jane be sword-thrusts.
As one thinks of her one remembers those words written by her husband: "Rest? Rest? Shall I not have all Eternity to rest in?" and there, on the wall close at hand, hangs the photograph of her grave in Haddington Church.
But, dear me, Agatha, this won't do! I don't want (to quote my pal, Mrs. D.) to give you the "bloomin' 'ump". One must remember that Jane was not always ill or unhappy. Jane had her bright days and her friends, "danderingindividuals dropping in," Charles Dickens, Thackeray, Alfred Tennyson. Note this little vignette of the latter: "Passing through a long, dim passage" (she was at the theatre) "I came on a tall man leant to the wall, with his head touching the ceiling like a caryatid, to all appearances asleep, or resolutely trying it under most unfavourable circumstances. 'Alfred Tennyson,' I exclaimed in joyful surprise. 'Well,' said he, taking the hand I held out to him and forgetting to let it go again, 'I should like to know who you are. I know that I know you, but I cannot tell your name.'"
Then, too, there was Macready, D'Orsay, Lord Houghton, and Mazzini. Of the latter she says, "He told me there was nothing worth recording except that he had received the other day a declaration of love. Of course, I asked the particulars. Why not?—and I got them fully." And again, "He had had two other declarations of love! 'What, more of them?' 'Ah, yes!—unhappily! They begin to rain on me likesauterelles!'"
Mrs. Darling said there was "nothink inthat!"Herold man had had six proposals beforesheherself annexed him. I inquired how she had succeeded in capturing such a shy bird, and she said it only needed a bit of confidence and a lot of soft soap.Anywoman could marryanyman if she properly set her mind to it. The news was rather disquieting; also, it was not exactly flattering to one's vanity to reflect that, apparently, no woman had been anxious enough to marry me to set her mind properly to the task.
When we mounted the last flight of stairs and entered the attic study we seemed to leave Jane behind. Carlyle himself met us on the threshold of this refuge, fondly planned with dreams of quiet in which he could work unmolested. As a matter of fact, it did not repay him for the discomforts endured whilst it was being built. "My room," he writes, "is irremediably somewhat of a failure, and 'quiet' is far off me yet."
The afternoon was beginning to draw in and a little fire glowed in the old-fashioned grate. Perhaps that was why the attic study seemed the most cheerful room in the house. It might not be "sound"-proof, but, at least, the wail of the north-east wind, as it careered round the old walls, was lost here, and through the ground glass window came a warm light which suggested a fragment of sunset somewhere out in the stormdriven sky. The apartment had a hermit-like atmosphere, although there could have been but little peace for the man who travailed as Carlyle did over his gigantic tasks. One recalls to mind such words as "I was in the throes of the French Revolution at this time, heavy laden in manyways and gloomy of mind...." "I, in dismal continual wrestle with 'Friedrich,' the inexcusable book, the second of my twelve years 'wrestle' in that element." ... "Hades was not more laborious than that book, too, now was to me."
What must it have been to one, who so travailed in the birth of those children of his brain, to lose as he did, through the "miserablest accident" of his whole life, the first volume of the French Revolution? And surely never man behaved so chivalrously to the friend who was the innocent cause of the disaster as did Carlyle to the unfortunate Mill. Poor John Stuart Mill! One imagines with a shudder his feelings when, with the black consciousness of the awful news he had to impart, he stood on the doorstep of No. 5 Cheyne Row waiting admittance! A visit to the dentist would, in contrast, have been an occasion of happiness. The thought of what that wretched man must have suffered diverts my mind from the contemplation of the cruel blow to the victim. The picture of Mill as, after having made his terrible disclosure, "he sat three hours trying to talk of other subjects," passes the bounds of tragedy and almost verges on the ludicrous. How he must have longed to go! and how Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle must have ached to see the back of him!
Dusk was gathering on the stairs and in the grey empty rooms as we left the attic, and we had to go carefully round the corners. Was it the whisper of a silken gown, or the swish of the wind through the branches of the bare trees in the little garden which accompanied us? Who can tell? Whowantsto tell? Leave us some room for speculation—some peg on which to hang our hopes of things beyond which we can see and handle.
We walked down the little street at the end of which is the Embankment gardens, and there, in the blue twilight amidst the purple branches of the bare trees, is a seated figure. A figure of which even the distant view conveys a suggestion of profound and brooding melancholy. There sits Carlyle, watching for ever the silent passing of the river. Silver lights dotted the wharves opposite, and in the west, behind the four tall chimneys of the power station, there was yet a smouldering red amidst the almost extinct fires of sunset.
Perhaps if the mute lips could speak they would echo the once written words, "Yes, poor mortals, such of you as have gone so far,shallbe permitted to go farther: hope, despair not".
And on that note I close this long epistle.
Ever your friend,
GEORGE.
CARRINGTONMEWS,
SHEPHERDMARKET,
6th December.
DEAR Agatha,—Mrs. Darling has announced that she doesn't want to go to any more dead people's houses. She says they give her a "nasty, sleepy feelin'". She is, moreover, of the opinion that, in these days, when living people can't get homes, it's downright wicked to waste bricks and mortar on ghosts.
She said she wanted to go to St. Paul's Churchyard to see the shops, and in a moment of weak amiability I consented to accompany her. If my good nature had stopped at that point all would have been well, but putting on the brakes halfway down hill is a thing I've never been able to accomplish, and I was lured into a draper's to help the old lady choose a blouse for Christmas.
I had never in my most imaginative moments thought of Mrs. D. as a vain woman, but her conduct over the purchase of that blouse was a revelation! If she looked at one she looked attwenty; moreover, she insisted on trying some of them on with disastrous results. Blouses that looked quite attractive off, assumed a curious appearance of bodginess when on. The little minx who served us could, I suspect, have explained the reason.Icould only grope for it whilst I watched Mrs. D., with the help of the little minx, push a fat arm clothed in a cloth sleeve into another sleeve composed of gossamer fabric which the assistant called "Georgette"!
"It's too tight," said Mrs. D. "'Tisn't my colour neither. 'Aven't you got somethink in a red silk, with a bit er lace on it?"
At this moment I became conscious of a perfume with familiar associations, and some one put a hand on my sleeve from behind. "George!" Then a laugh—you know Katherine's laugh. It used to be one of her assets, but there's a thin note in it now which betrays her age. "You look so absurd," said she. "Whatareyou doing?"
"Helping Mrs. Darling to choose a blouse," said I, with a nod in the direction of Mrs. D., who at that moment was entangled in the georgette creation which the little minx was removing from above.
Now Katherine may be a cat, but she knows how to behave, and she didn't turn a hair.
"How sporting of you!" she exclaimed,with a sympathetic glance towards Mrs. D., who emerged from the entanglements of the blouse like a diver coming to the surface to take breath.
"That'll be ninepence, and you can keep the change," remarked the old lady, with a satirical glance towards the saleswoman. (I may add, in parenthesis, that the offer was not intended to be taken seriously.) "Talk about skinnin' a rabbit! I dunno who they make these blouses for!" Then she caught sight of Katherine, and assumed what one might call her "company smile" with a jerk of her facial machinery.
"This is my sister, Mrs. Darling," said I, "the one who lives in Curzon Street."
There was a moment's pause whilst Mrs. D. adjusted herself to the situation, then, getting on the stilts with much more ease than she had got out of the blouse, she said, "Hindeed! I 'ope you're well and can get wot you want, mam. Shoppin' ain't ixactly a dream in these days. They don't seem to make anythink suitable for middle-aged people like your ladyship and myself."
"But don't you think that's very kind of them," argued Katherine with undiminished amiability. "You see, they want to help us keep up the illusion of youth."
"Well, I got a few grains er common sense,"announced the old lady, "and ain't goin' to make a igiot er meself in one er them tom fool blouses. I know what I want. I got in me mind's eye, but I ain't seen it in this shop."
"Why not take the advice offered with such dreary persistency in the tube, 'Get it at Harrods'!'" suggested Katherine.
"A good idea," said I to Mrs. D., "and we'll explore Kensington at the same time. We haven't been there yet."
Katherine glanced from Mrs. Darling to myself. I foresaw that the scene would be reproduced for the benefit of her guests next time she gave a dinner party. She had already grasped the situation andgotMrs. D. You know Katherine's powers of mimicry. Well, I don't grudge her the fun. She's entitled to a little return for the two hundred a year she allows me, and she has a pretty dull time with her eternal round of so-called gaieties.
"No, we'aven'tbin to Kensington," agreed Mrs. D., "and wot's more, you know quite well, sir, we ain't goin'," with a warning glance in my direction. "It's quite a haccident your ladyship finds me 'ere with your brother," the old lady went on. "I little thought when I come out this mornin' ter buy a blouse I should meet Mr. Tallenach in the shop." Oh, Mrs. Darling, and I had imagined you a truthful woman!
"Fate arranges such meetings for us," declared Katherine fervently, and her self-congratulation was obviously genuine. I had provided her with that most desirable thing in life, asensation, and it is long since she bestowed on me any invitation so genuine as the one she gave for dinner that night.
But I had no intention of satisfying her curiosity, and excused myself on the plea that my dinner jacket had gone to the tailor's to be pressed. She said there was no need to dress as she would be alone, and Mrs. D. signalled frantically to me to accept.
I, however, persisted in my refusal, and, with a growing feeling for the dramatic possibilities of the situation, mentioned that, as a matter of fact, Mrs. Darling and I usually went to the pictures on Wednesday evening. There is no telling to what further lengths I might have gone had not Mrs. D. began to display symptoms of apoplexy, whilst Katherine's desire for my company became so urgent that, to get rid of her at the moment, I promised to go to Curzon Street on the morrow.
"I seethiscomin' all along," remarked Mrs. D., with tragic emphasis, as we made our way down Cheapside. "You bin and done it with a vengeance now, sir. I drempt I 'ad a tooth out last night, and that's a bad sign. I shouldn'twonder if the Countess didn't wash 'er 'ands of you afterthis!"
I reassured the old lady by telling her the Countess hadn't been so gracious for years—not since the occasion on which she tried to manœuvre me into marriage with a rich woman old enough to be my mother.
In Bishopsgate Street we came to a halt before the giant pair of spectacles placed over the fronts of the two ancient shops which stand in the porch of St. Ethelburga. There is no more gracious surprise in the whole city than that bit of antiquity which breaks the long line of new buildings in Bishopsgate. So unexpectedly does it occur, and so unobtrusive are the quaint little shops in their unique situation, that thousands of people must pass the place daily without noticing them, or being aware that behind them is the smallest of the eight churches that escaped the Great Fire. From the opposite side of the road one can see the west front of the church rising behind the jutting first floor of the shops, and an inscription that this is "The Church of St. Ethelburga" invites the curious to cross the road and pass through the gateway leading to the tunnel-like entrance.
The charm of this hidden sanctuary will reward him for lingering by the way. It has an atmosphere all its own, entirely unlike the atmosphereof the typical City churches, with their chill air of having survived the worship of long dead days. Tucked away so cosily and standing its ground so sturdily amidst the pushing, elbowing crowd of new buildings all round, St. Ethelburga's has ready for each person who enters a glimpse of beauty to refresh the eyes, and a garment of peace in which to enwrap the spirit.
You pass under the low west gallery, and looking down the nave, with its pointed arches and clustered columns, see through the fretted screen at the east end, a red lamp burning dimly against the dull blue altar hangings. The windows of the nave are almost entirely blocked up, and pictures hang on the old grey walls. Through the clerestory a chill light mingles with the yellow gleam of the electric burners below, and the little building is full of soft shadows, picturesque vistas, and mystery.
The monuments are few and the names on them unknown. There are no ghosts with claims for recollection on one's affection or homage. Those obscure citizens who lie buried within the church or outside it, in what one might call the church's little "back garden," are content to be forgotten, but some of their names figure in the parish records, and in the paper-covered book which one can buy in the church there are such entries as:—
"John de Weston, called 'de St. Ives,' brewer of Colmanstrete, left 13s. 4d. for the repair of the belfry in 1374, and Matilda Balsham left 10s. for the building of a porch over the entrance in the year before!" Ten shillings for building a porch! Money must have gone farther then than now! Witness the fact that in 1570 the "little shop" on the south side of the porch was let at a rent of 5s. a year!
Rents, however, went up, even in those days, and in 1577 a certain George Clarke paid 6s. 8d. a year for the same premises, whilst in 1616 a Mr. John Miller, the sexton, paid £1. Meanwhile the shop on the north side had been built in 1615, and let at a rent of £4. One would like to know the character of the business carried on by the numerous tenants mentioned, but save for one reference to "the eye-man" (which looks as if the present spectacle-makers are carrying on the traditions), another to the "little shop," in 1832, as the "Gold Beater's House," and the mention, 1592, of "Samuel Aylesworde, a glover," no light is thrown on the subject.
In this same paper-covered book there is recorded the loss of "a curious sculptured figure of stone," which a few years ago was removed from the tower to "serve as a guide to the modeller in the preparation of a silver figure which now crowns the beadle's staff". Whocould have stolen the old figure? What was the motive? Where is it now? Huddled in a dusty corner in the shop of some dealer in antiques perhaps. Or was it seized by some zealous Roman Catholic as lawful booty? The ghosts maybe themselves have appropriated it? I shall never think of St. Ethelburga's without pausing to speculate, with a pleasant little thrill, on the fate of "the curious sculptured figure of stone". To find it would be an adventure after my own heart. One would take up such a quest as a hobby and continue it until it became an obsession. Think of the hunt for antique shops where such a thing would be likely to make a temporary halt. The more obscure the shop, the more heterogeneous its contents, the more likely to contain the treasure. "Imidges," as Mrs. D. calls them, would haunt one's dreams by night and lure one to strange journeys by day. The particular "imidge" which had bewitched you would take on the attributes of the Philosopher's Stone, and the pursuit of it become what the winning number in a lottery is to the gambler who hopes with every fresh stake to retrieve his fortunes. Then, one day, perhaps, success (which in your heart you had never expected, or, let me whisper it,reallywanted) comes. The solution of the riddle was quite ordinary, the——
In the middle of my meditations the old lady, who had been making a tour of the church examining the pictures, tapped me on the back, announcing she had seen all there was to be seen and that, judging from my looks, I must have gone out that morning before I got up. The interruption was not unwelcome, arriving as it did at the moment of disillusionment, and I followed her out of the church.
Being in the neighbourhood of St. Mary Axe, it occurred to me we might go on to St. Andrew Undershaft to see Stow's monument. The church is open from 12 to 2, and I asked Mrs. D. whether she would have lunch before, or after, the visit. She said she thought "two churches running" might be "rather dry," and, taking the hint, I came to a halt at the nearest restaurant.
The beefsteak was tough but the ale was good, and Mrs. D. declared, as we rose from the table, that she felt quite equal to another church, but she hoped it was not an underground one. She seemed to connect the word "Undershaft" with coal mines, and I hastened to tell her the story of the Maypole, which used, on May Day, to be set up hung with flowers opposite the south door of St. Andrew's. It must have been a very tall one, for Stow says of it that the "shaft when it was set on end and fixed in the ground was higher than the church steeple".
St. Andrew's is spacious, dignified, and rather chill. The windows are a special feature, and some of them display the coats of arms of various of the city guilds. I never, by the way, think of those guilds without smelling in imagination that odour reminiscent of centuries of past dinners, which hangs about their old halls, remembering, too, Hallam's words, "The common banquet and the common purse". Here is the coat of arms of the Merchant Tailors, the Haberdashers, Wool Staplers, and Merchant Adventurers. (I should have liked to have been a "Merchant Adventurer".) There you have the ideal mingling of Commerce with Romance—Romance, with nothing behind it, is as evanescent as the rainbow, a lopsided article which satisfies no one for long, but that Romance which is an integral part of the business of living makes for a solid happiness that wears well.
I am afraid John Stow did not achieve it.Hiswork could not have been of a lucrative nature seeing that, at the age of 78, he obtained from James I a licence to beg! There, in the far corner at the east end of the church, he sits at his writing table, the implement of his craft, a quill pen, in his hand. A funny little squat figure with a ruff, framing a small, delicate face, not the face of one able to battle successfully with a hard world. I wondered how his widow,who erected the monument, found the necessary cash. But Mrs. D. remarked that no matter how the poor lived, they always contrived the means to pay respect to their dead with the "insurance money".Herhusband had had three coaches, with a pair of horses in each, to follow him to the grave, although, on account of his long illness, she owed two months' rent at the time of his death, and had pawned the parlour clock and the fire-irons. Such talk seemed to savour of bad taste, under the circumstances, and I sent an apprehensive glance in Stow's direction, but he was too absorbed with his task to look up. How often must he have sat thus in his lifetime writing those endless pages without which we should know so little of the intimate history of the middle ages! In his love of detail he was, like Pepys, chosen to preserve for future generations living documents made of small homely details. The sculptured face gives testimony to the patience and concentration of the historian who wrote "The Survey of London". It is the face of one who, if he made up his mind to discover the difference between two blades of grass, would pursue that study with the world tumbling about his ears. It is consistent with the neglect with which he was treated in life that in 1732 his body was removed from its resting place "to make way for another". Who that "other"was I don't know, but this much I am sure—he was a beastly interloper who had no more right to usurp poor old Stow's last resting place than has the cat to turn me out of my armchair.
We left the painstaking worker at his task, the white feather of the quill being the last thing I saw as I turned my head for a parting look. Does the quill move sometimes in the silence and darkness of the long nights in the old church? and could I, if I had the eyes, read what it writes?
On our way back we went into St. Peter's, Cornhill, where the dusk of the sombre interior makes a rich setting for the lovely peacock blue of the windows at the east end. As we pushed back the door we were greeted with the solemn chant of Wagner's "Pilgrims' Chorus," a strange and beautiful substitute for the roar of the traffic in Cornhill. Who shall say the City churches are of no use when they provide such interludes of rest and refreshment for men and women working in the offices at their doors?
St. Peter's lives in my memory not because it claims to be the first Christian church founded in London, but by reason of a tablet which I once discovered there in a dark corner. On it is described a story that for pathos and terror stands alone in my experience of such things. At the conclusion of the organ recital I took Mrs. Darling to that spot at the south-east endof the church where the sinister record is to be seen. Below the sculptured heads of seven cherubs is the following inscription:—
"Jane, born 1773. May, 1774. Charles, 1776. Harriet, 1777. George, 1778. John and Eliza, twins, 1779.... The whole offspring of James and Mary Woodmason, in the same awful moment on the 18th January, 1782, were translated by sudden and irresistible flames, in the late mansion of their sorrowing parents, from the sleep of innocence to eternal bliss.
"Their remains, collected from the ruins, are here combined. A sympathetic friend of the bereaved parents, their companion during the night of the 18th January, in a scene of distress beyond the powers of language, perhaps of imagination, devotes this spontaneous tribute of the feelings of his mind to the memory of innocence."
We turned away in silence, and we had got the length of the church before Mrs. D. said, "I wonder wot them parents 'ad done to be treatedlike thatby the Almighty. 'Tisn't as if you paid yer money and took yer choice about livin' in this ole world. They didn't ask to be born neither, did them poor lambs that was burnt."
I wondered too. Did those parents continue to live in an empty world? Did they even live long enough to forget that night of surpassing horror?
There was no one to answer these questions, and catching sight of the caretaker it occurredto me that I had another question to ask which she would certainly be able to answer.
I had heard there was a subterranean passage entered by a flight of steps from the belfry, and I wanted to know if it was true.
"Yes, it is quite true," she answered. The passage led "right across to St. Helen's," but this may be only hearsay, as it has been bricked up a number of years. Why brick up such relics of mediævalism? They are of no use, answers the practical person, so why keep them? and he might add, just for the edification of a few Paul Prys like yourself. Subterranean passages, secret drawers, sliding panels, concealed cupboards, all, alas! have gone out of fashion. They belong to a childish age which we have outgrown.
Mrs. D. said she had no patience with people who were always putting their noses into holes and corners, expressing her conviction that such passages had dark histories in connection with "them monks," and after this I had not the courage to name my desire to explore the flight of steps leading from the belfry to the passage.
I think some day, though, I must return, without Mrs. D., and see if I can get round that caretaker to show me the spot.
How infinitely poorer the city would be without these old landmarks which have stood theirground so obstinately against the pushing, vulgar spirit of progress. What would the streets be like without the surprises they provide? An ancient wall in which there is a door leading to silence and the company of those for whom the fight is over. A sooty graveyard where the sparrows quarrel in the plane trees at dusk, and the mouldering tombstones stir the imagination to dreams and reflection. A spire or tower rising like a challenge above the roofs of offices and warehouses. Those old churches—one never goes a walk in the city without playing hide and seek with them. They lurk round corners and materialise under one's very nose out of blank walls. They are as much a part of this city of ours as are the men and women who in the dim ages trod its streets and made its history. Yet those same sturdy old churches are, to-day, as criminals awaiting their death sentence in the dock. There are those who would treat many of them, as poor old Stow's body was treated when it was moved, "to make room for another".
May such an act of vandalism be delayed until I too have to go that another man may take my place. Meanwhile, dear Agatha,
I am ever your devoted,
GEORGE.
CARRINGTONMEWS,
SHEPHERDMARKET,
19th December.
MY Dear Agatha,—I am sorry you accuse me of levity. It wasn't in human nature to resist the unique opportunity for mischief provided by the meeting between Katherine and Mrs. D. I followed it up with lunch in Curzon Street, during which I discovered in myself a quite new and marked talent for fiction. I won't say more out of consideration for your scruples, but I may mention it's a long while since I had such an excellent lunch. It must be many days, too, since Katherine was provided with so surprising a succession of thrills in the course of an hour and a half.