THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL.
THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL.
This Sunday morning Mrs. D. and I have been to service at the Foundling Hospital, a place I have never before visited, although I have often, in passing, looked inquisitively through the iron railings at the immense block of buildings at the top of Great Coram Street.
Hogarth has painted the portrait of Thomas Coram, the old sailor who endowed the hospital, and the picture hangs in the gallery there. A kindly gentleman he looks, with ruddy smiling face which may well be the index of a heart large enough to hold the big family he fathers.
That family sits in the galleries of the church on each side of the organ, the girls in their white caps and aprons to the right, to the left the boys in their funny uniform of brown cloth, with red waistcoats and twinkling brass buttons. "Love children!" It always seems to me, by the way, that the term is an aspersion against the institution of marriage. Why can'tallchildren be "love children"?
It is a touching sight, and Mrs. D., who is very soft-hearted, was visibly affected. The cherubic face of the smallest of the children certainly finds out the chink in the armour of even an old bachelor like myself. Mrs. D. said the boys looked like robin redbreasts in their cut-away coats and red waistcoats, and there certainly is something of the perkiness of that bird in the little round heads above the white collars and black bows. I noticed that Mrs. D.'s attention was focussed on the boys. The poor old lady lost two sons in the war, and I expect she was seeing them again as small boys in some of those youngsters in the red waistcoats. For myself, itwas the girls who distracted my attention from prayers and psalms. Those small maidens with their burnished hair under the white caps, their rosy faces and primly clasped hands! How well drilled they were, and how well behaved! No fidgeting or giggling, not even any wandering glances inmydirection. One's eyes travelled along the tiers of faces and figures, noting the variety of types. No two children wore their uniform in quite the same way. The cap and apron on some seemed a badge of servitude, on others the prettiest of adornments, suggestive of musical comedy.
Those same aprons play a quaint part in the ritual of the service when, during prayers, the children raise the aprons and hide their small countenances behind them. The demure gesture has a savour of bygone times, and is no doubt as old as the institution.
As we left our seat in the gallery we met, face to face, the brown-clad boys clattering down the stairs opposite. They all wore trousers, big and little, and one of the smallest of them took a joyous slide over the tiled pavement of the ambulatory. No doubt he was glad to be out of church, and was looking forward to his dinner. We shared his pleasant anticipations. It was the prospect of seeing him and his companions feed which had brought Mrs. D. and myself tothe hospital that morning, and the sight well rewarded us for the journey.
The rooms are long, having a gallery-like effect, with rows of windows on one side, and everywhere is cleanliness and light and space. There was an appetising smell of potatoes baked in their jackets, and cold roast mutton, and down the long tables were placed at intervals a knife and fork, a mug, a piece of bread and a cake. The girls came trooping in and stood each by her place behind the forms, then at a given signal they stepped over the forms and stood to sing grace. At another signal they seated themselves, and the nurses who were serving placed portions of meat and potatoes on plates, which were handed from one to another down the long length of the narrow tables.
The children seemed quite unconscious of the spectators who had come to stare at them whilst they ate their Sunday dinner, and as one watched their contented faces and unconcerned manners one felt that, no matter what tragedies had accompanied their advent into a world of dark problems,here, at least, there was no tragedy.
"An' to think," said Mrs. D., as we followed the attendant upstairs to inspect the dormitories, "to think that there might 'ave bin some of themothersin that very church this mornin'."
"Andfathers," I reminded her.
"Idon't think," answered the old lady. "A father out er wedlock's a very different thing to a mother out er wedlock. Nature never took much account er thefathers.Theyony got a walkin'-on part, and some of them's precious quick atwalkin' orfwhen it's a case er payin' the piper."
The long, long rows of little white-counterpaned beds in the dormitories were an eloquent comment on the old lady's indictment of my sex, and I am glad it was amanwho thought of making a home for the babies. If Thomas Coram's ghost walks, it must sometimes pay a visit to the little sleepers who have no mothers to tuck them up. Those long dormitories, too, must often be haunted at nights by ghosts of the living women, who, in their dreams, look foroneround face on its pillow—the one who istheirs. To visit them in the flesh is not allowed. The surrender of the babies is complete, no alternative being compatible with the working of the scheme which is to save the child and at the same time to hide the mother's shame.
One hears stories of callous behaviour on the part of some of the mothers. But such cases are rare, I should think, and that long pathway leading from the hospital to the iron gates must have been avia dolorosato many a woman who trod it on her way back home with empty arms.
No child is received after the age of twelve months, and they are put out to nurse in country homes until the age of five, when they are returned to the hospital. Would a woman who had parted from her child of a year old know it again at five? Did such women ever go to that prosaic-looking church and search the rows of small faces for the one which belonged to her by rights of the flesh? If she did she must, anyhow, have found comfort in the sight of that happy-looking crowd of youngsters.
Mrs. Darling asked me if I thought the children ever found their parents when, at the age of fifteen and sixteen, they left the hospital? It was a question which opened up all sorts of possibilities and situations. There must be mothers who had died, mothers who, in the course of years, had become reconciled to the loss of their children, but what of those who hadnotforgotten or died?
In one of the yearly reports which I saw there is mention ofonechild only restored to its mother. I believe instances of this kind are rare, very searching inquiry being made by the governors before they consent to such an application. As a rule, once the institution takes the children they belong to it practically for life. It does not wash its hands of them when it sends them out to service or apprenticeship, but givesthem substantial assistance (when needed, and as far as the means of the Institution permit) to the day of their death.
The situation of these children is not only pathetic but strange in the entire isolation from the ordinary ties and obligations of humanity. No going home for holidays, no parcels from fond parents, no one particular person to whom the small boy or girlbelongs. They do not miss these things because they have never known them, and, at least, they are not burdened with objectionable or tiresome relatives. There must, though, be moments when they feel lonely: moments when they could sympathise with the little drudge I once saw in a play who wrote letters to herself, and put a crape band on her arm for the death of a supposed relative.
The picture gallery, with its polished floor, its great expanse of Turkey carpet, its richly carved plaster ceiling, is a room in which to spend a winter afternoon with a book, watching the light fade through the row of long windows, and finding fresh horrors in Rafælle's "Murder of the Innocents," an enormous cartoon which covers nearly the whole of the wall at one end. The apartment is the Court Room as well as the picture gallery, and it must have been the Calvary of many a woman who parts from her child within its walls.
The "tokens," used as a means of identification in those days when children were received indiscriminately in a basket hung at the gate of the hospital, have a dumb eloquence. In a glass case before the windows are the old coins, pieces of ribbon worked in beads, metal hearts, crosses, and buttons which were attached to the persons of the children when they were left behind. On a mother of pearl shield, dated 1757, I noticed inscribed, "James, son of James Concannon, gent.," the "gent." being scratched in as an afterthought apparently.
Those two Jameses have long ago passed away, but human nature is the same, and there are still such James the firsts to father such James the seconds. Probably many of the children we had been watching in the chapel could write "gent." after their father's name. "Breedwillout," said Mrs. D., and one could see it in the faces and figures of some of the small boys and girls.
There is an autograph of Queen Elizabeth in one of the cases, and if character can be read by handwriting, this autograph should offer a lifelong study. Mrs. D., who is interested in Elizabeth since she saw her wax effigy, said, "No one but a queen could have the cheek to sign her namelike that!" The signature certainly has a regal significance in its largeness and maze-like convolutions. The ink is faded andbrown, the flourishes have the shakiness of age. One would give a great deal for an intimate knowledge of the occasion on which it was written. The Earl of Leicester's autograph is close by, and it bears a marked resemblance to Elizabeth's. Did he model it on that of his royal mistress? Did Elizabeth love Leicester? and if she did, was it with a tragic unconsciousness of his self-seeking? A woman as clever as Elizabeth can lose her head and be strangely blind in matters of sex; also, Elizabeth was vain. But no—I don't think Elizabeth was blind. On the contrary, it was her clear-sightedness which prevented her marriage with the man who appealed to the natural instincts of her sex. She was woman enough to like to love and be loved, but shrewd enough to know where to stop.
Outside the birds were singing, and the light falling through the long rows of windows had in it something of the quality of spring. I should have liked to linger in the old rooms for a while—the Stone Hall, the Picture Gallery, and the Secretary's Room—all of which have treasures demanding a great deal more than a cursory glance. One has tolivewith such things to appreciate them, and these passing glimpses seem to me in the nature of an insult. There is, behind those glimpses, a haunted atmosphere made up of the echoes of laughter long sincesilenced, of words spoken, and dreams dreamed, and to breathe it is to capture romance. True, it is only a mirage, but actually to set foot in a mirage and stay there awhile is an achievement for which to thank the gods.
It occurred to me after lunch that, instead of sitting over the fire with a novel I would go to the National Portrait Gallery. Sir Walter Scott says that portraits of our ancestors enable us "to compare their persons and countenances with their sentiments and actions," and I wanted to see if the Earl of Leicester's countenance fitted the story of his relations with Elizabeth, whether Nell Gwynne was as attractive as I had been told, if Pepys resembled the bust on his tomb, also to renew acquaintance with dear old Sir Thomas More and some other of those "ancestors" whose haunts I had lately been exploring.
Mrs. Darling excused herself. No power on earth will on a Sunday afternoon draw her from the fireside, where she can, in comfort, study humanity through the pages of "The News of the World".
A visit to the National Portrait Gallery isn't exactly a restful experience. Those long rows of faces, each making its appeal for understanding, have an exhausting effect after a time. Theypromise so much to Paul Pry, then baffle him with their underlying secretiveness.
Sunday afternoon is not the best time to go. Early on a week-day morning is better, when the gallery is almost deserted, and in the silence you can hear the traffic in the street outside, and the echoes of an attendant's voice in some far room where he gossips to a companion. The rows upon rows of faces staring patiently from its walls give a curiously crowded sense to its emptiness, and one pictures them at closing time when the last visitor has gone, and the attendant has switched off the lights. I think I should give the Duke of Monmouth, painted after his execution, a wide berththen. There are others, too, who would not be cheerful companions—some of those waxen mediæval countenances would glimmer unpleasantly in the dusk, and one would be conscious of a stirring amongst the gathering of kings and queens, poets and statesmen, courtesans and cardinals, at the approach of night.
I found Leicester, next to Elizabeth—a haughty-looking gentleman in his high collar and ruff. I don't like his eyes. They aren't trustworthy—but perhaps that is because Iknow. Anyhow, he has an air which would win favour with women, and he played a big part in the life of his queen from her girlhood's days until his death. There have been sinister storiestold about Leicester. Ben Jonson said the Earl gave his wife "a bottle of liquor which he willed her to use in any faintness, which she, not knowing it was poison, gave him, and so he died". According to the gossip of the times, the Queen's favourite seems to have been accounted a veritable Bluebeard. Well, the secrets of his life were buried with him three hundred years ago and more, and no matter how deep we dig, we shall never discover them.
I found Pepys, and he looks much morematerialin paint than he does in stone. There is, though, an expression of childlike speculation in the eyes, and there one finds Samuel of the Diary. Bunyan hangs next to him, a humorous looking old chap, a man one could trust. The same can be said of Sir Thomas More, with his gentle, clean-cut face, and his kind, intellectual brown eyes.
Nell Gwynne is neighbour to her Charles. She is pert, with a look of the gamin about her as she points a derisive finger in direction of her royal lover. By the by, I didn't know Whitfield squinted! There is a quaint picture of him preaching to an audience of four, and an admiring female in the front row is making a vain effort to catch his eye.
What a mixed company it is! and how do they pair off at nights when, in the darkness andechoing silence of the long galleries, they step out of their frames? Pepys might hob-nob with Bunyan very easily, Sir Thomas More with Hannah More, and Charlotte Brontë with Dr. Johnson, but how about Nell Gwynne with Charles's lawful consort. How about "Bloody Queen Mary" with old John Foxe and Elizabeth with Mary Queen of Scots? Meanwhile Horace Walpole would be quizzing the lot of them (I know it by the bright busy-body expression in his eyes), and writing letters to Madame du Deffand to tell her all about it. I have always been curious about his friendship with the infatuated old Frenchwoman of sixty-nine, and very disgusted with Walpole for causing his correspondence with her to be destroyed. By the way, Madame du Deffand was blind. I wonder who had the privilege of reading Horace's letters to her?
I left the gallery pondering the odd situation, and was met by Mrs. D. on my return with the announcement that she had got crumpets for tea—would I like some? I said I would; moreover, I suggested that I should eat them in her company and have a cup of tea out of her tea-pot. I told her about Horace Walpole and Madame du Deffand as we sat over the fire drinking our tea, and she remarked that there were "no fools like old fools". This was a bit damping, and I saidto myself, "George, you must be averylonely man to seek the company of such an unsympathetic woman!" Nevertheless, I was in no hurry to return to my solitary room, but sat smoking and watching the old lady mend my socks until the bells began to ring for evening service, and I bethought myself of this letter I had in my mind to write to you. Here it is, with the affectionate thought of
Your old friend,
GEORGE.
CARRINGTONMEWS,
SHEPHERDMARKET,
20th January.
DEAR Agatha,—Mrs. D. and I have been exploring Soho this afternoon. I started out with the intention of localising certain houses in certain streets associated with men of letters, but, alas! it was a question of "change" (withoutdecay) "in all around I see". Old landmarks gone, and brand new buildings, mostly offices, in their place. Still, there is enough left to make a visit well worth while, and the weather was perfect. Frowsy old Soho was almond-scented from the great bunches of mimosa in the costers' barrows, whilst the streets smiled under the light of a January afternoon into which Spring had wandered.
There are moods to fit different districts. A mood for the City, one for Piccadilly, a Chelsea mood, one for the East End, and one for Soho. Soho was the one spot in the world for me this afternoon, and Mrs. Darling, who is not subjectto moods, said it was "all the same to her where we went so long as it wasn't a lunatic asylum or a prison".
Soho has an atmosphere distinct from any other spot in London. Blindfold, you would be aware of the fact directly you crossed its borders. Its restaurants smell of savoury dishes and its narrow streets echo gaily to the jangle of piano organs. Its language is cosmopolitan, and its postcards and paper-covered novels have to be taken with a tolerant shrug of the shoulders for the odd taste of "those foreigners". Its shops are dingy, but theyget thereall the same. There is an art in their very carelessness. They invite search and have an air of being at the mercy of the customer.
Mrs. Darling was obviously hoodwinked by this stratagem, and remarked that she supposed you could get "one er them necklaces" (referring to a string of real amber beads in a jeweller's window) for about "'alf a crown". I explained to her that the beads were probably worth £10, to which she replied that perhaps the shopkeeperdidn't know it! I got her away from the window with difficulty, and I have no doubt she will go to her grave thinking she might have bought that necklace for a song but for my impatience.
The unusual mildness of the afternoon was indicated in the number of figures seated on thebenches in St. Anne's Churchyard. Drink has stamped its sinister hall-mark on most of them. Dirt and disease, the companions of drink, are there too. Despair, which one might reasonably look for, is absent. Despair argues sensibility, and these human wrecks seem to have got beyond that stage. They exist in a comatose state, feeling perhaps a momentary amelioration of their misery in this hour of Spring, and not looking beyond it.
They have a companion in adversity in the royal pauper, Theodore, King of Corsica, who died in Soho, and who, as Edward Walford says in his "Old and New London," was buried at the cost of a small tradesman who had known him in the days of his prosperity.
We found the tablet without difficulty at the base of the church tower, close to that of William Hazlitt. The epitaph is by Horace Walpole, and runs:—
"The grave, great teacher, to a level bringsHeroes and beggars, galley slaves and kings,But Theodore this moral learn'd ere dead;Fate pour'd its lesson on his living head—Bestow'd a kingdom and denied him bread."
"The grave, great teacher, to a level bringsHeroes and beggars, galley slaves and kings,But Theodore this moral learn'd ere dead;Fate pour'd its lesson on his living head—Bestow'd a kingdom and denied him bread."
Unfortunate Theodore, who, on leaving the prison without a sixpence in his pocket, took refuge with a tailor in Soho, where three dayslater he died. Who out of those passing through the churchyard pause to give a thought to Theodore or to ponder Walpole's reflections on "The grave, great teacher".
We found we should have to make a detour to get inside the church, which lies at a level below the churchyard and is shut off by an iron railing. So we retraced our steps along Shaftesbury Avenue and into Dean Street. The church door was open and some one inside was practising on the organ. The sound came faintly as we entered the porch, and rushed out to meet us with a burst of melody as we pushed back the inner door. The player was performing to an empty church, and I recognised the rhythm of the tumbling notes as Bach's. How many times have I clambered the gallery stairs of this same old church to listen to the music of John Sebastian! Strangely enough, it was the recollection of those occasions which had prompted my visit this afternoon. Good old John! who can sweep away the cobwebs like a March wind with one of his fugues, set one smiling at the tender grace of a pastorale, or thrill one with that solemn and awful summons to Calvary in the dramatic opening of the Passion Music.
The fugue gave place to a quaint old dance, and Spring, which was paying a premature visit to the Soho streets outside, stole with the sunshinethrough the windows into the church. With it came a dream, and as I listened to the music, ladies in silk petticoats, with patches and powder, and gentlemen in wigs and knee breeches paced gravely through a minuet in the aisle. It was irreverent, but John Sebastian was to blame, and somehow the dancers seemed no more out of place than did the sunbeams which found entrance through the dusty windows.
Mrs. Darling had gone to read the "Roll of Honour" in a corner of the church decorated by flags. She has sounded depths in life which are outside my experience, and I do not like to obtrude my presence at such moments. I could see her from where I sat wiping her eyes, yet I knew that presently she would come back with a cheerful face and some soul-destroying remark which would knock the bottom out of my dreams. There is no pose with Mrs. Darling.
It was as I expected. She wanted to know if the man was tuning the organ? Oh, Mrs. D.! What is the tie which binds me to your prosaic, plush-jacketed person? Why do I court your unappreciative companionship, and sacrificeyouto my mania for imparting information?
Perhaps the answer was supplied by the old lady herself when we issued from the church. "I 'spose you'd 'ave stopped in that old church all the afternoon if I 'adn't tipped you the winkto git out, sir," she said. "No one could accuse you er bein' a rollin' stone. If it wasn't formeyou'd bechoked upwith moss."
When I leave Shaftesbury Avenue for Berwick Market I always think of Hogarth, which, by the way, reminds me that I saw a bronze bust of him at the Portrait Gallery. A keen, small-featured, refined face, with a penetrating, bad-tempered expression about the eyes—not the face one would picture of the creator of "The Rake's Progress" or "Marriage à la Mode". But when is the occasion on which one does not have to readjust one's mental attitude towards the artist (known only through his works) on first making acquaintance with his face and features?
BERWICK MARKET.
BERWICK MARKET.
Berwick Market, with a Spring sky above the costers' barrows of fruit and flowers making splashes of colour amidst the motley crowd peopling its narrow confines, might have stepped straight out of an Italian canvas on this delectable afternoon. Busy sellers and loitering buyers seemed to be making a pleasant pastime of it all. The stall-keepers, with an artless intimacy and a reckless confidence in the weather, had hung out on lines silk stockings, articles of lingerie, yards of ribbon and laces. Everything here is open to the world, even the little shops on either side of the gutter arewindowless. What happens in Berwick Market on wet days, I don't know. I always choose the time of my visits, carefully avoiding it when there's a blizzard or a downpour. I want to keep the memory of its cheeriness intact, undimmed. When I pine for a continental trip, which my purse will not allow, I go to Berwick Market and stare at the long French loaves in the bakers' shops, at the weird, dirty-looking sausages enclosed in a network of string, the ropes of garlic, the spaghetti and salad dressings in the Italian provision dealers, listening meanwhile to the chatter of foreign tongues all round. Berwick Market lives out of doors and it doesn't wear hats. It takes the stranger into its confidence and is never dull. It thrusts fur coats, frocks, and blouses under your nose as you walk. It will supply you with butcher's meat, cabbages and potatoes, flowers and fruit, ironware, books, music, toys, jewellery, leather goods and trinkets, all within the space of a few hundred yards, and if you buy any of these things you will go away under the pleasant but false impression that you have taken advantage of an ingenuous huckster who didn't know the value of his goods.
Mrs. D. bought a flat-iron, two saucepan lids, and a hat shape. In view of these articles having to accompany us on the remainder of our journey, they seemed to me an unwise purchase,especially as it was problematical whether the lids would fit the saucepans for which they were intended. She was, however, so convinced that never again would the opportunity occur for securing ironware at so low a price, or a hat of such a becoming shape, that I shouldered my share of the burden (the flat-iron and saucepan lids) and refrained from putting a damper on her satisfaction.
At the top of Greek Street is the house where De Quincey lived, and it is always of De Quincey and poor Ann that I think when meditating in Soho Square. The story of that poor child of the streets, who, out of her penury, befriended her companion in misfortune and afterwards disappeared so mysteriously, is one of undying interest and pathos. "For weeks," says De Quincey, "I had walked with this poor friendless girl up and down Oxford Street, or rested with her on steps under the shelter of porticoes...." What a picture of the misery of these two children the words call up! Speaking of that night in Soho Square when he fainted in her arms, and she rose and fetched the glass of hot spiced wine which he was convinced saved his life, he continues, "We sat down on the steps of a house, which, to this hour, I never pass without a pang of grief and an inner act of homage to the spirit of that unhappy girl, in memory of the noble action which she there performed".
I told Mrs. D. the story, and we speculated as to the particular doorstep on which the outcasts sat. Mrs. D., who treats all facts more than fifty years old as fiction, said it was "very touchin'," and that she hoped the young man found Ann in the end and married her. I did not insist on the truth of the story or the sadness of the end. There are times when I envy Mrs. D.'s limitations, and this was one of them. I would give a good deal to know that De Quincey found Ann again. I picture him after his short absence from London, going at six o'clock to the bottom of Great Titchfield Street (the appointed place of rendezvous) in the sure expectation of meeting her. The minutes would pass and he would watch for the familiar form, at first with confidence, then with a disappointment which grew minute by minute, and was accompanied by foreboding conjectures as to the cause of her absence. When the last hope of her appearance had fled he would seek consolation in the thought that she who had never failed him in the past must have had some good reason for not keeping her tryst to-night. She would come to-morrow. But to-morrow night and all other to-morrows came without bringing Ann. "I sought her daily," he says, "and waited for her every night so long as I staid in London, at the corner of Titchfield Street.... But to this hourI have never heard a syllable about her...." "Some feelings," he records in another passage, "though not deeper or more passionate, are more tender than others, and often when I walk in Oxford Street by dreamy lamplight and hear those airs played on a barrel organ, which years ago solaced me and my dear companion, as I must always call her, I shed tears and muse with myself at the mysterious dispensation which so suddenly and so critically separated us for ever."
We went and looked at the house in Greek Street, on the front of which is a tablet stating that De Quincey lived there. One has a feeling of gratitude towards the Society of Arts which in such fashion strives to keep green the memory of those men and women who trod the streets of the great city, dreaming their dreams, and leaving for those who came after them great deeds to inspire, romance to allure, thoughts of beauty to refresh the mind, and visions of colour to delight the eyes.
Frith Street was noisy with the play of children just released from school, and there was a hint of the slackening of the day's activities. We left Frith Street for Old Compton Street, and from thence into New Compton Street, which has a dreary "end of the world" sort of atmosphere. Cheery Soho loses heart at this point, where it is about to take leave of you, and Church Passage,which terminates in a little flight of stone steps, and an iron gateway leading into the churchyard of St. Giles's in the Fields, has a Dickens'-like suggestion of "Joe" and "Bleak House".
When I told Mrs. D. that St. Giles was the patron saint of lepers, and that the present church stood not very far from the site of a hospital for lepers built by the wife of Henry I in 1118, she said she could well believe it. She was also not surprised to hear that the plague broke out in St. Giles's, and that the gallows named "Tyburn Tree" was set up near the aforesaid leper hospital.
I asked her if she had ever read the "Newgate Calendar". She replied with regret that she hadn't, admitting that if therewasa book she would enjoy it was this particular one. In her estimation there was nothing like a good murder trial for taking you out of yourself.
The "Newgate Calendar" had occurred to me in connection with "Tyburn Tree" by reason of references in that gruesome volume to the "last drink," a glass of ale which used to be presented to the criminals on their way to the gallows when they passed the gate of the leper hospital. Yes, there reallyissome foundation for the eerie atmosphere of the churchyard of St. Giles. I always remember coming upon that gate at theend of Church Passage one autumn evening when twilight was merging into dusk. I had no idea where it led, and I mounted the steps and found myself in the old churchyard with something of the sensation which characterises the initial stage of a nightmare. The backs of squalid houses overlooked the place, and still figures, sunk in abysmal meditation, sat about on the benches. In the window of a studio-like building were some plaster casts of heads, and the white glimmering faces stared into the glimmering shades of evening which were stealing across the dingy burying-ground. I left the place without identifying it, and did not see it again for years. Then one day I stumbled on it unexpectedly, and discovered that my ghostly churchyard was St. Giles's in the Fields.
Even on this afternoon of sweet promise St. Giles's straggling graveyard was not a cheerful spot. I have, by the by, never seen so many cats congregated in any corner of London as I saw in St. Giles's Churchyard. A villainous-looking old tom, with torn ears, the hero of many a fray, was seated on a large tomb abutting on to the path, and the first line of the epitaph chiselled on the stone arrested my attention. "Hold, passenger!" it began peremptorily, and I barred Mrs. D.'s path whilst I read:—
"Hold, passenger, here's shrouded in his hearse,Unparallel'd Pendrill through the universe."
"Hold, passenger, here's shrouded in his hearse,Unparallel'd Pendrill through the universe."
"Pendrill," said I to myself—"who's he?" and, ashamed of my ignorance of a person so eulogised, I inquired of Mrs. D. if she knew anyone of that name. She said there was a man named Pennybill who used to sell Ostend rabbits in Shepherd's Market, but he hadn't been dead long enough for his tomb to have got so dirty. As she spoke, enlightenment came. Ostend, Holland, the battle of Worcester, Charles II, and yes, on the other side of the tomb was the inscription to Richard Pendrill, the preserver of the life of Charles II.
What an odd, unexpected link with the past that forgotten old tomb made, standing solitary amidst the sooty shrubs in the cat-haunted churchyard! The escape of Charles from Worcester to Shoreham, where he found a coal boat that carried him over to Normandy, might well be a page out of some romance for all one realises it, as a rule. There are times when I share Mrs. D.'s scepticism about the past, and Charles, Cromwell, Queen Elizabeth, Henry VIII and the Gunpowder Plot, wars, plagues, and fires are just so many incidents in a story book. Then I stumble on an ancient tombstone with such an inscription as this, almost obliterated by the winds and rains, the frosts and heats ofcenturies, or I open Pepys and read how, on 27th February, 1659, the old chap was "Up in the morning, and had some red herrings to our breakfast, while my boot-heel was a-mending, by the same token that the boy left the hole as it was before," and I say to myself with the shock of coming up bump against something solid where one had anticipated vacancy, "Then itwasall true!"
The church was closed, but we found the "Resurrection Gateway," where it rears itself in dignified isolation above the iron railings on the western side of the church. There is, over it, a curious carving in oak of the "Last Judgment," depicting that day when long-dead citizens, endowed with renewed strength, will throw off their earthen trammels, and shouldering their tombstones with the ease of a Samson, rise to disclose those secret thoughts and deeds which the kindly grave had hidden for centuries.
Mrs. Darling remarked that, for her part, she had no fear of death or judgment. "If I wos to go to bed this night and never git up no more," she stated, "there ain't a livin' soul can say I owe them a brass farthin'. I never done one er my fellow creatures a hinjury, and there's the things all ready to lay me out in the bottom drawer ner the washstand."
She flourished the paper bag containing the hat shape with an air of conscious virtue, but I could not emulate her action with the flat iron, which weighed seven pounds! To tell the truth, I was looking out for a friendly tombstone behind which that article, together with the saucepan lids, could be conveniently lost, but some children playing in the churchyard were watching me as if they suspected my designs, and I had to abandon the idea.
We took a 'bus down Shaftesbury Avenue to Piccadilly Circus, and had tea in Jermyn Street at a little confectioner's for which we have an affection. The cakes are home made and the tea and bread and butter are good. There is an inner sanctuary with coloured prints of old London on the walls where one can talk cosily, and is admitted to an amusing intimacy with the workings of the establishment. Now and again a man in a white jacket comes and delves into a corner cupboard, and we have glimpses of pots of jam and groceries. Young men and women drop in from neighbouring businesses for tea, and everybody knows everybody else. The waitress has admitted Mrs. D. and me to the family circle, and with a "Same as usual, sir?" goes to fetch our pot of tea and two plates of bread and butter. This afternoon she did noteven trouble to make the formal inquiry, but appeared before us with the tea-tray almost as quickly as we had seated ourselves.
Piccadilly was like fairyland as we walked down it on our way back to Shepherd Market, and I wished you were with me. The red lights in the rear of the vehicles, and the silver ones in front, were dancing like fireflies in one of the most wonderful gloamings I have ever witnessed. The perfect day, drawing its garments of smoke and rose over the mauve sky, was making its tender, reluctant farewell, whilst above the sadness of its passing hung the evening star, companioned by the most slender of new moons. We turned our money, and felt that Fortune was about to smile on us.
In the quiet of Half Moon Street, whom should I encounter but Katherine, in her car? The first intimation I had of her neighbourhood was a white-gloved hand waving a greeting from the window of the car, then a face appeared eloquent of a satirical enjoyment of the picture presented by Mrs. D. and myself with our respective parcels. The incident was over in a flash and Mrs. D. none the wiser. I am reminded to mention it by reason of an odd but peculiarly vivid impression I received of Katherine having suddenly become an old woman. It may have been some trick of light as the car shot by in the dusk,or a moment of prophetic insight on my part. But whatever it was, it made me feel I wanted to take up the cudgels for her and keep the enemy at bay. Blood, after all, is thicker than water, and Katherine has no weapons with which to fightthatspectre.
Shepherd Market is almost deserted at this hour in the late afternoon. The old coaching yard is full of black shadows, and there are no customers in the shops. Lights are dim, and the echoes of footsteps in neighbouring courts and passages can be heard a long way off. In Carrington Mews some warmth of the fading sunset still lingered, and I left it with reluctance to mount the dark staircase to my room. There are days when one feels all is well—not only withthisworld, but with the next, which is presumably more important. Youth, on such days, returns to whisper flatteries in the ears of Old Age. Is it wisdom or foolishness on the part of Old Age to listen? I leave you with that question on the thirty-fifth anniversary of our friendship. Do you remember?
GEORGE.
CARRINGTONMEWS,
SHEPHERDMARKET,
17th February.
MY Dear Agatha,—So you, too, remembered! Strange, after our having overlooked the anniversary for so long! The violets you picked for me in your gardenthatafternoon scented my room for days. Thank you.
Acting on your advice, I took Mrs. D. to the London Museum yesterday. You are quite right, the place was made for children, and the old lady thoroughly enjoyed herself.
The basement, with its long stone-paved corridors, its gloom (dispelled, I am forced to admit, by electric light), is the right place for the models of ancient London, old doorways, knockers, horn lanthorns, oak panelling, relics of Newgate, prison cells, and yellowed news sheets containing the accounts of the execution of celebrated criminals.
One catches the mood of the place when onegets to the bottom of the stairs and sees the row of wooden figures each of which has weathered many a storm from its post outside some shop in the London streets of a hundred and fifty years or more ago. The grocers' Chinaman, the tobacconists' Highlander, and the scale-makers' figure of Justice. Now and again, at rare intervals, we may meet the Highlander outside a tobacconist's, or the figure of Justice over the scale-maker's window, but the Chinaman seems to have completely disappeared.
To go into the basement of the London Museum is like opening the door of some dim, dusty lumber-room and unearthing the forgotten toys of our childhood. Things which we greet with an indulgent smile, and now and again a sigh. The basement is a place to visit on that sort of idle afternoon in early Spring when one is moved to turn out old letters, to bring to mind the playmates of one's youth, and muse, while the light wanes, on the changes the years have brought.
Here is a shop-front of George III's time, and behind the small-paned window a grotesque collection of ragged puppets, the property of some long-defunct proprietor of a Punch and Judy show. Many a time must those grimacing dolls have played in the immortal drama to an audience of our great-great-great-grandfathers.
The oak-panelled, seventeenth century parlour where a man sits drinking by candle-light sets one speculating. There are his gloves on the table and his pipe, which he has removed from his pocket. His wife has filled his glass with wine, and stands telling him what has been happening during his absence. He sits back in his chair, too intent on her news to fill his pipe or lift the glass to his lips. The Great Fire, perhaps, is raging at that very moment, and the wife may be telling her husband that three hundred houses are already burnt, and how the churches were all filled with goods and people. Or maybe it is of the outbreak of the plague which the man learns, and the fear of which makes him forget his pipe and the wine poured out at his elbow. Every time I go to the London Museum I visit the pair, and always they are carrying on that same conversation. The woman's dress gets dustier and dustier, and the wine in the glass does not grow less. People come and stare and go away, leaving the couple unmoved. Is it my fancy, that whenIcome, the conversation in that oak-panelled room becomes more tense, and if only I stayed long enough I should discover what it was about?
In the model of old London Bridge Mrs. D. found something with which she is now familiar, and my character for veracity with her wentup by leaps and bounds. The spiked heads on the battlements might have belonged to objectionable relatives, with such satisfaction did she greet them. The model of the old bridge clothed the dry bones of the past with flesh, and Mrs. D., as a student of history, got a move on. One can sympathise with her scepticism when one looks across at Bankside with its gabled houses sleeping in the sunlight, and the glimpse of a white country road shaded by green trees. That, Bankside! Surely, never! I did not voice the thought, not wishing to quench the flax of the old lady's newly acquired faith.
The fire of London next engaged her attention. To myself it is the least successful of the models, although I confess to a childish pleasure in watching old St. Paul's and its neighbourhood all aglow, like one of those pictures one sees in the heart of a burning log. I thought, as I looked at it, of the words of a writer of the times, quoted by Walter Thornbury. "It was in the depth and the dead of the night," says the Rev. Samuel Vincent, "when most doors and senses were lockt up in the city, that the fire doth break forth and appear abroad." This is just the thing one would expect of those "penny dreadful" days, and the progress of the ghastly monster is described with a living terror as it "rusheth down the hill (Fish Street Hill) towards thebridge, crosseth Thames Street, invadeth Magnus Church at the bridge foot ... marcheth back towards the city again, and runs along with great noise and violence through Thames Street westward.... Rattle, rattle, rattle, was the noise which the fire struck upon the ear round about, as if there had been a thousand iron chariots beating upon the stones.... You might see in some places whole streets at once in flames, that issued forth as if they had been so many great forges from the opposite windows, which, folding together, were united in one great flame throughout the whole street; and then you might see the houses tumble, tumble, tumble from one end of the street to the other with a great crash, leaving the foundations open to the view of the heavens."
There was nothing half-hearted in the thrills provided for Londoners inthosedays, and the quaint little toy behind the plate glass revives a ghostly repetition of them to an imaginative spectator. Mrs. D. said she hadn't seen "anythink so pretty for a long time," and I left her glued to the spot while I looked at Frost Fair on the Thames, with the Globe Theatre behind, and sought in vain to find any of to-day in the models of old Cheapside and Charing Cross.
I got Mrs. D. away from the Great Fire with a promise of prison cells and relics of Newgate,and I must admit to a sensation myself when face to face with the door of the condemned cell of Newgate Prison. This particular corner of the Museum makes a bid for popularity with those with a taste for horrors. The prison cells from Neptune Street, in which debtors were confined for indefinite periods for small debts, are an example of old London's cruelty to those of its unfortunate citizens who couldn't pay their way. "Sly House," as the place was called, because of the many who were seen to enter it and never seen to leave it, must have been an object of terror to the impecunious. "Sly House" possessed a subterranean passage to the Tower and the docks, and prisoners were taken thence and embarked on the convict shipSuccess. The wooden walls are scored with the names of some of those wretched human beings who passed months and years in this living tomb. Apparently, they were not all treated as is the man who lies chained from both wrists in the outer cell. He could not have found temporary diversion from his misery in such a task, but this other sitting at a table in the inner cell might answer to one of those names. It is rather difficult to decipher them in the dim light of the lantern which hangs in a corner of the cell, and as I stooped forward my foot inadvertently came in contact with the foot of the frowsy prisonerseated at the table. For an instant I was conscious of an odd sensation of something like fear: not fear of the poor lay figure, but fear of those dark days which, in some curious fashion, the momentary contact had broughtquite close. It was as if I had stroked a stuffed tiger and it had suddenly snarled and showed its teeth! Quite absurd, of course; a touch of Frankenstein, born of my ambition to make the dry bones live.
There is a portrait sketch of Jack Sheppard by Sir James Thornhill in the adjoining room. The audacious young rascal has a curious face in which there is intellect, even soul, and an animal sort of alertness, and the account of his daring escape from Newgate, where he was loaded with irons and chained to a staple in the floor, reads like a page from Dumas. He had, too, the sort of luck that attends heroes in fiction when he found that small nail with which he freed his chain from the floor staple. This done he got up the chimney, broke into a room over the chapel with the aid of another large nail, which was provided by Providence for the purpose, and with the help of an iron spike from the chapel door, hacked a hole in the wall, through which he climbed on to the leads. One holds one's breath when, these obstacles surmounted and liberty almost within his grasp, Jack is confronted with the need of a rope, and goes backto his cell by the way he had come to fetch his blanket! It is not only the courage, but the optimism of the act which strikes one, an optimism which was justified. He got the blanket, made the rope, and with its aid descended to the roof of a turner who lived in a house adjoining the prison. One must bear in mind, too, that Jack was still handicapped by his irons! Picture him, having effected an entrance into the turner's house by means of a garret window, slinking down the stairs, past closed doors which might open any moment to wreck his project at the moment of consummation.
According to that same account of his escape, a woman heard the chink of his irons as he passed one of those doors, and thought it was the cat! Maybe she was sitting by the fire nursing her baby, or reading some tale of adventure, little dreaming that as exciting a story as any in fiction was being enacted at her elbow.
One hears with regret that Jack's liberty was short-lived. Not a week had passed before he was at his old game of burglary, and being captured whilst drunk was once more imprisoned in Newgate, only to leave it this time to be hanged at Tyburn.
Whilst I sought to read the riddle of the young reprobate's strange physiognomy, Mrs. Darling was browsing with dark satisfaction amongst themurder trials and executions. There she stood, spectacles on the tip of her nose, hat perched at a jaunty angle, her lips forming the words of the "Sorrowful Lamentation and last Farewell to the world of four robbers," as she read:—