We wonder whether Cromwell remembered the wish conveyed in the last line when the old royalist colonel had to petition the Protector for his deliverance from Yarmouth gaol. The letter he sent (now before us) is headed, “To the Protector, after long and vile durance in prison. May it please your Highness,” &c.
Hyde Park is mentioned as early as the reign of Edward VI, and was no doubt enclosed long before that period. During the time of the Commonwealth it was put up to auction and sold in lots, the deer alone being valued at near upon a thousand pounds. At that period it extended to the Acton-road one way, and to Knightsbridge the other; the boundary citywards being, as now, near Park-lane, while the distance it extended westward is at this day unknown. The consort of George II. was allowed to possess three hundred acres of this Park in her day, and early writers state that Queen Anne had enclosed thirty acres within Kensington Gardens.
Hyde Park was the great mustering-ground for the May-day holidays in the olden time. Cleveland, who wrote and fought in the time of the first Charles, makes mention of it in a poem entitled “May-day,” which contains many beautiful lines. He speaks of “Delight beating her silvery wings,” warbling over the “dappled lawns;” of “snow-white milk-maids crowned with garlands;” of the youths and maidens tumbling and rolling upon the grass, and of revelling in the luxuries of “curds and cream.” Even Cromwell, with all his gloomy Puritanism, went to witness the wrestling in Hyde Park, little dreaming that after he had been long dead and buried, his body would be hanged on the neighbouring gallows, which must have loomed ominously above those merry-makings. Gossiping good-natured old Pepys regrets, in his “Diary,” that he could not be in Hyde Park one May-day among the great gallants and fine ladies.
Regent’s Park has greater attractions than its scenery, although many portions of it are very beautiful. Here we find the Zoological Gardens and Colosseum, both important enough to deserve a separate notice in our Sketches of London, had we the space. On entering the Gardens you see a beautiful terrace, which reaches from the rural lodges to some distance, while below are placed the cages which contain the noble animals; and these are very commodious and airy. Beyond this terrace there is a pleasant rustic walk, hemmed in by luxuriant foliage, at the end of which there is an opening commanding an extensive view of the Park. To the right you have the domestic aviaries, well worth visiting, as they contain some fine specimens of the fowls of Peru and Mexico. To the left of the terrace there is a little morsel of real Watteau-like scenery, with its smooth lawn and clear pond, near to which are placed the gorgeous macaws, whose hues out-rival the colours of the rainbow. Further on there is another “green nestling spot,” adjoining a sheet of water, which, with its fountain and variety of aquatic fowls and beautiful beech-trees, tempted us to linger longer. Then there is the mossy rock, where the otter is located, with its silent water, into which live fish are thrown, when the long-bodied inhabitant plunges in after them, compelled to wet his jacket before he can enjoy his dinner. But were we to describe the monkeys and parrots, and every variety of bird and beast which are here assembled, we should require the whole space of our volume. The catalogue sold at the Gardens consists of nearly thirty pages, and to this we refer our readers when they visit Regent’s Park.
The ground occupied by Regent’s Park is not without its interest. The old monastic house of Marylebone stood within its boundaries in former days, and had in the time of Elizabeth its park and deer. Here also was a famous bowling-green, which the Duke of Buckingham in his day visited.
The new Parks which are now forming around the metropolis do great credit to Government, and will, like charity, cover a multitude of minor transgressions; for those who legislate for the benefit of posterity must be influenced by something more noble than narrow and selfish views. Breathing-room has been sadly neglected of late around the metropolis. Let any one cross over London Bridge, and turn up by St. George’s Church in the Borough, along the Old Kent Road, and as far as New Cross, he will find it one continuous and unbroken chain of buildings. Yet here is space ample enough, and grounds of but little value, that might be formed into a spacious park. If this is not done, those who twenty years hence live in this neighbourhood of railways will be compelled to wander as far as Blackheath or Greenwich Park, to obtain a mouthful of pure air. Kennington Common is but a name for a small grassless square, surrounded with houses, and poisoned by the stench of vitriol-works, and black, open, sluggish ditches; what it will be when the promised alterations are completed we have yet to see.
Walworth Common has vanished; and the little fairy Green before the Swan at Stockwell is now no more; while even Clapham Common seems in our eyes to lessen every year. Wandsworth had set out in good earnest to reach Lambeth, and would soon have been near the Nine Elms station, had not Government stopped its career, by stepping in between at Battersea Fields. Cross the water, and some of the miscalled Parks are like the one named Whetstone—thrust into the corner of a square. Barnsbury Park is in any street which the conductor of the Islington omnibus may please to set you down at; while Islington, Highbury, Pentonville, and King’s Cross are all so jostled together, that you cannot tell which is the beginning or the end of either the one or the other. We have heard of a neighbourhood that stretches somewhere behind Houndsditch and Bishopsgate, and seen something of it while gazing from the dome of St. Paul’s; but from the view thus obtained of it, we should as soon hope to find our way out of the Cretan labyrinth, if once in it, as to extricate ourselves from this maze of streets and alleys. We can imagine some stranger losing his way in this perplexing maze, and ever moving on until he grew grey, without a hope of finding his way out again. The new Park in progress near this neighbourhood may, at last, be something like a landmark by which we can see through such an unknown wilderness. How the inhabitants of such localities as these must pine for
BY way of contrast, we will stride from splendour to squalour—from St. James’s to St. Giles’s, whose names Douglas Jerrold has rendered inseparable in his fearless and life-like novel.
As St. Giles’s folds within its arms a portion of the fashion-frequented neighbourhood of Oxford-street, so do the low alleys of Tothill-fields hem in the palaces of Westminster, creeping up to the very walls of the grey old abbey, and dipping down to the rim of the river; while, eastward, the city of merchants is bounded by the wretchedness of Whitechapel on the one hand, and deep behind again by the thickly-inhabited parish of Shoreditch. Wealth cannot wholly seclude itself; to wheresover it moves poverty follows for companionship, for without its dependents it is useless: riches cannot dwell apart, without looking worse than the gold on gold in bad heraldry. The fungus and the lichen cling to the sound gigantic oak, the same as to the trunk of the decayed pollard. True, the wedge has been driven into the rotten heart of the old Rookery of St. Giles’s, and New Oxford-street has sprung up from the corruption; but what has become of the inhabitants who battened on the core of the decayed tree? Like a nest of ants, they are turned loose to overrun other neighbourhoods. The new houses and splendid streets which have risen above the old sites of sorrow, misery, and wretchedness, have but driven them from their ancient haunts, and compelled them to seek shelter in other quarters, where the poverty-stricken populace
where misery clings to misery for a little warmth, and want and disease lie down side by side, and groan together; where
Let us look these evils steadily in the face for a moment or two without blenching. The air which now blows through the open windows of the emblazoned carriage in which the diamonded duchess is seated, a few seconds ago swept over the poisonous avenues of Church-street and Carrier-street, and is laden with odours from the sink and sewerage of St. Giles’s. Yes, the self-same breeze which now uplifts those dark ringlets, a minute ago filled the lungs of Wiggins; those parted lips inhaled the poison that arose from the rotten garbage of these streets, the gases arising from the churchyard, and every other smell that is born of death and decay. How essential is it, then, fair lady, for thy own sake, to aid us in cleansing these Augean stables, in purifying these pest-houses of poor humanity. You may build yourself a fine house, my lady, and hem it round with a lofty wall; but you must, while in town, still breathe the poisonous air which they breathe, until these grievous evils are remedied.
We will enter these streets and peep into those dark, close, unhealthy, and forbidding-looking rooms. In this narrow alley a dusky twilight reigns throughout the sunny noon of day. We have to feel for the noisome staircases which open on either hand; and now we have found one, we will grope our way through this land of gloom and shadows. What a dead smell floats around us! a close noisome air, such as arises from an over-crowded vault, even more death-smelling than many a vault we have in our day visited. The staircase is encrusted with dirt, a kind of black greasy mud, which has been trampled into toughness, not unlike what covers the City streets after rain or snow in winter; but “that” is “clean” dirt in comparison to this, for here we tread upon old filth, the accumulation, it may be, of years; for by the side of the staircase, where it is least trodden, it is mildewy and mouldy. The smoke of our cigar is the only wholesome aroma that rises amid these stifling rooms. The perfume of flowers could never pierce through the weight of this dense atmosphere, but would fall back again and die amid the petals whence it arose; even the strong sweet-smelling May-blossoms would struggle in vain to disperse the poison of this motionless air.
Now we have reached the room, we cannot see what forms are before us, so little light streams in through that “dirt-ditched” and cobweb-covered casement, which appears as if it were never opened,
THE ROOKERY, ST. GILES’S
THE ROOKERY, ST. GILES’S
as if they knew that the noisome air was better kept out than in. There is no ventilation, no “thorough-draft” through any of these miserable rooms; the walls are damp through so many breaths, for where the moist air falls there doth it rest, hanging like cold beaded drops on the brow of one who wrestles sternly with death.
It must have been many years since these apartments were either painted or whitewashed; a black grey hue pervades every thing, as if the very atmosphere had itself grown dark through hovering here so long and motionless, as if it were compelled to stand and sicken between the stench from below and the black vapours above—the one arising from the fœtid cellars, the other hurled down by the rain from the soot-covered roofs—exhalations of the earth earthy—of the sewer sewery—of the filth filthy—poison ever propagating poison—gutters ever generating deadly gases, and creeping into the blood of the inhabitants; and yet strange, in spite of its filth, this neighbourhood was passed over lightly by the “fell destroyer,” compared to others which He ravaged during the last dreadful epidemic.
Behold! the curtain is at last uplifted, and those are living and breathing forms that sit or stand before us, and such—however much we may shun them here—as we shall be doomed to dwell amongst hereafter. That poor girl is tying up her water-cresses in bunches, ready for to-morrow’s sale; she has no other place but the floor to lay them on before she puts them into her little basket ready bunched. The green bunches at her feet will be sold and eaten on the morrow by those who never bestow a thought on the filthy floor on which they now lie. In that room they will be kept all night, amid the breathing of above a dozen sleepers. Those cabbages which the man is piling up in the corner are the unsold remainder of to-day’s stock; he will strip off the outer leaves in the morning to give them a fresh look: they will also be eaten on the morrow, in spite of the poisonous exhalations they are steeped in. He will sleep beside them all night; the man with the three dogs will share his bed, and perhaps the dogs themselves may find a couch amongst the cabbages. The woman who has just brought in that bundle of filthy rags (too late to be sold to-day in Monmouth-street) is also a lodger, and will no doubt make a pillow of her dirty burden. That pile of shavings, sacking, straw, and rags will be dragged out of the corner when they feel disposed to sleep, and one will lie down here and another there, and for a few hours bury their miseries in forgetfulness. How so many manage to sleep in one apartment, especially in hot weather, is only known to themselves. In the bleak bitterness of the chilling winter we can picture them crowding together for warmth. But we must retreat; for we find a difficulty in breathing, and pant like a robin that has flown by mistake into a baker’s oven while it was gradually heating.
Here we are again in the filthy street; for they have no back-yards into which to throw their refuse, so must either keep it to putrify and decay in the overheated rooms, or throw it out, and let their neighbours go “share and share alike” in the sights and smells which pervade the uncleansed neighbourhood. True, there is a man employed to clear away the garbage; but, when this is done, they have no water, saving what they beg, and not a drop can they spare to wash down the gutters. Wherever a sunbeam alights, you see it steaming with the filth, and behold the golden ray dimmed with the vapoury and deadly exhalations.
Yet these poor people are not naturally dirty. From many of the windows you see their tattered garments hanging out to dry, though, from the colour, you have a difficulty in persuading yourself that they have ever been washed, and come to the conclusion that they are only hung there to be aired. The colour is not their fault; such an atmosphere would turn a root of milk-white daisies to the hue of parchment in a month, if it were possible that they could live so long in those breathless and airless alleys, where not a green leaf has grown for years.
Sometimes little Jack, or his half-clothed sister, when playing about the room (for children play even here), catch the end of the prop on which the rags are suspended, when down comes the whole washing into the gutter; and, unless the poor washerwoman is pretty nimble in looking after them, the first dishonest passer-by will be likely enough to pick up the whole wardrobe, and to see what it weighs at the nearest rag-shop. They have not the means of keeping themselves clean; like the Israelites of old, they cannot complete the task without the straw; and in many places what little water there was, has, like other conveniences, been cut off while the new buildings were proceeding. Baths and wash-houses will no doubt in time supply these deficiencies; but until they are opened, we suppose the inhabitants must be left to shift for themselves as they best can, for the “improvements” as they are called have subjected many of the people in this poor neighbourhood to such privations as they never before experienced.
Let us lift up the flap of this cellar, and see what is going on below; for that gleam of fire, or candlelight, shews that these underground regions are inhabited—that the habits of the ancient Britons are not wholly abandoned, but that the descendants of those old burrowers of hill and rock have but changed the twilight of their dry caverns for the damp and darkness of these sewer-like habitations. Here we behold another human hive busily preparing for dinner, although it is so late in the day; for, like our wealthy merchants, they must get through whatever business they may chance to have on hand before they have (the means or) time to eat. Saw you ever such a medley as is now frizzling in that capacious frying-pan? Parings of a loin of mutton, two beef sausages, a thin rasher of pickled pork, ditto of bacon, the scrag-end of a neck of mutton, a piece of beef-skirt, a small steak, and a kidney. That old fellow with the wooden leg quite enjoys the job of cooking, and has got a jug of water in readiness to make “gravy” for the whole community, who have clubbed towards the contents of the frying-pan. Those who sit on the unboarded and unpaved floor beside the wall, and who look on so wistfully, have nothing to cook—nothing to eat; they paid the last penny or twopence they possessed to be allowed to sleep on the floor of that cellar until morning. When those dinners or suppers are over, the broken table, the bottomless chairs, and old butter-tubs which are used for seats, will be set aside, and the whole of the naked cellar strewn over with straw or shavings, on which they may (if they can)
And right glad will those foodless and moneyless creatures be when all the cooking and eating, in which they cannot become partakers, ceases, and when, amid sound asleep on the unboarded and unpaved floor, some kindly vision may come through the mysterious murmurs of the night, and
In wet weather the inhabitants of these subterranean dwellings sometimes stand peeping through the open cellar-lights at the feet which pass over the pavement; and, while doing so, their faces are spotted like leopards with the mud. They seem as if they were ever looking at other people’s steps instead of taking heed of their own ways. Happy might they be if, like the long-tailed field-mouse, they could, in their burrows, store up provisions for the winter, while in summer they nibbled the herbage or fed on the acorns which fell from the broad hoary oak, quenching their thirst at the woodland brook; and, like the old barbarians who first landed on our island shore, have no care, beyond what they should eat and drink, about the morrow. Yet even they have something to be proud of; for they have only to issue out of their black and breathless courts through the breezy thoroughfares which open into Oxford-street, and there the same window, which the dandy shopman in the “white choker” and neat black suit “dressed” to allure the wealthier classes, is open for their inspection; and more than one merry laugh have we heard while passing by, as some half-drunken Pat pictured his (far-from-sober) Biddy in a long Cashmere shawl and bonnet, plumed with the bird of paradise.
Sometimes you may see one of the inhabitants halting outside the huckster’s shop, and endeavouring to squeeze a penny out of the sixpence (which has to purchase tea, sugar, bread, butter, tobacco, and a candle) for gin; and so accommodating are some of these shopkeepers, that they make halfpenny-worths of every thing they sell, and are ready to cut either a candle or a penny-loaf in two with the same knife.
We well remember passing through the Rookery of St. Giles’s when the work of demolition first commenced; when those who had found no other residence were allowed to remain until the workmen began to pull the houses down. Many of the inhabitants who were then old were born in those tumble-down houses, then doomed to stand no longer. There they had tended the sick couch, and through those dilapidated doorways carried out their dead; smiles and tears had brightened and fallen in those apartments, which to them bore the endearing name of home. We looked up, and through the broken lattices saw the faces of little children—dirty images of innocence—dear to the hearts of their poor mothers. And many houses similar to these are still standing in St. Giles’s, with leaning door-posts and windows all awry; some propped up with beams, on which they rest, as if they had a stitch in their sides, and had placed their hands there to relieve the pain. Many of the door-posts are worn smooth and bright, through the idle loungers, who have rubbed and rested against them while smoking and looking out into the streets, hour after hour, and day after day,—men who seem to have no business upon earth, having to smoke and sleep, and when they awake, to smoke and lean against the self-same doorways until it is time to sleep again. On the steps, and on the edges of the pavement, or at the entrance of those unexplored courts, withered old women sit with folded arms scowling at you as you pass, and proclaiming by their looks that you are an intruder. And fortunate may a decently-clad man consider himself if he meets with nothing more serious than black looks while passing through the still dangerous neighbourhood of St. Giles’s.
All are not idle, be it remembered, who frequent such haunts as these; many have seen “better days,” and only fell because they possessed not fortitude enough to struggle against unfortunate circumstances. Others had never been taught any trade, and when they lost such situations as ten thousands were capable of taking, they never raised their heads again, although they went many a weary day, week, and month afterwards in quest of employment, returning at night to sleep in such dens as we have here described, sick and sad at heart. At length their attire became too shabby for their admission into respectable houses only to ask for employment, and then they sank with a kind of sullen recklessness amid the filth and squalor of St. Giles’s, and from that wretched state never emerged again. But these are the exceptions; the majority of the inhabitants are “to the manner born.”
Glancing at the remote past, it was in St. Giles’s where the criminal stopped in ancient times, and drank his last draught of ale on his way to Tyburn tree; and about the time when Chaucer died, the gallows was removed from Smithfield into this parish, probably because here it was more frequently needed. In the reign of Charles II. an attempt was made to improve this neighbourhood by a better class of houses, and for years some of the streets wore a look of respectability; then a change took place, and the old primeval dirt and darkness settled down again. Our modern improvers have commenced by rooting out the inhabitants; may we not expect a new St. Giles’s to rise up in some other corner of this vast metropolis?
The following description of the Church of St. Giles’s is quoted from Vol. V. of the Illustrated London News:
“Many a reader may start at the adjunct of ‘in the fields,’ to the dedicatory name of this metropolitan church; and the surprise is natural enough when we recollect that the structure is situated on the south side of the High-street, St. Giles’s, which probably was one of the narrowest roadways in this overgrown city. The name of the church receives its addition from the circumstance of being formerly in the fields, and to distinguish it from the Church of St. Giles’s, Cripplegate. This parish was anciently a village of the same name, and its church is supposed to owe its origin to the chapel which belonged to the hospital founded about 1117, by Queen Matilda, consort of Henry I., for the reception of leprous persons belonging to the City of London and the county of Middlesex. In 1354, Edward III. granted this hospital to the master and brethren of the order of Burton, St. Lazar, of Jerusalem, in Leicestershire, for certain considerations, for which it became a cell to that order, till the general dissolution of religious houses by Henry VIII., who, in 1545, granted it to Lord Dudley. Soon after this period, the chapel or church was made parochial; and on the 20th of April, 1547, William Rawlinson was instituted rector.
“The ancient church being very small, and much dilapidated, was taken down in 1623, and a church of brick was erected in its stead. This also became in its turn too small and inconvenient, when the inhabitants applied for an Act of Parliament to enable them to rebuild it; accordingly, the old fabric was taken down in 1730, and the present very handsome edifice was erected and completed in 1733; this being the third church built upon the site.
“Mr. Elmes, in his diligently compiled Topographical Dictionary of London, attributes the design to Gibbs; but the following statement is more circumstantial: ‘It is curious that this edifice, which has given to Flitcroft his reputation, should be attributed, in the Report of the Church Commissioners to the House of Commons, to Hawksmoor, who, they say, expended 8605l. 7s. 2d. upon it; but there is no doubt but Walpole, and the View, published in 1753, are correct in ascribing it to Flitcroft, who was probably employed by Gibbs, and not by the commissioners.’—Knight’s London.
“The church is built of Portland stone, as are also the tower and the tall and graceful spire, which are 160 feet high to the vane. The interior is 75 feet in length, exclusive of the recess for the altar, and 60 feet in width: it has a wagon-headed ceiling, and is divided into nave and aisles by fluted stone Ionic columns, which assist the main walls in carrying the roof. The effect of the entire composition is more than usually chaste and beautiful.
“A new entrance-gateway, of considerable beauty, has, within these forty years, been erected from the designs of William Leverton, Esq., in which is introduced an ancient piece of sculpture, of more curiosity than beauty, representing the last judgment. This work was taken from ‘The Resurrection Gate’ of the old church, which had also many rich monuments, one of which, to Sir Roger L’Estrange, the well-known loyalist and writer, still remains. Andrew Marvel was also buried here, ‘a man in whose reputation the glory of the patriot has eclipsed the finer powers of the poet.’ St. Giles’s also preserves the ashes of Chapman, the translator of Homer; and Flaxman, the truly great sculptor, was buried here on December 15, 1826, his body accompanied to the grave by the president and council of the Royal Academy. For once, an inscription speaks simple truth; we read here, ‘John Flaxman, R.A., P.S., whose mortal life was a constant preparation for a blessed immortality: his angelic spirit returned to the Divine Giver on the 7th of December, 1826, in the 72d year of his age.’
“There is a peculiarly interesting circumstance connected with his death, told by Allan Cunningham in his Lives of the British Sculptors (p. 359), which we cannot resist the temptation of transcribing. He says ‘the winter had set in, and, as he was never a very early mover, a stranger found him rising one morning when he called about nine o’clock. ‘Sir,’ said the visitant, presenting a book as he spoke, ‘this work was sent to me by the author, an Italian artist, to present to you, and at the same time to apologise for its extraordinary dedication. In truth, sir, it was so generally believed throughout Italy that you were dead, that my friend determined to shew the world how much he esteemed your genius, and having this book ready for publication, he has inscribed it Al Ombra di Flaxman. No sooner was the book published than the story of your death was contradicted, and the author, affected by his mistake, which, nevertheless, he rejoices at, begs you will receive his work and his apology.’ Flaxman smiled, and accepted the volume with unaffected modesty, and mentioned the circumstance, as curious, to his own family and some of his friends. This occurred on Saturday the 2d of December, when he was well and cheerful; the next day he was taken suddenly ill with cold, and on the 7th was dead.
“In the churchyard, too, is the tomb of the Pendrells, who aided in the escape of Charles II.; and a few years since was revived the custom of decorating this tomb on Restoration Day (May 29), with branches of oak, in commemoration of Pendrell’s loyalty and attachment to the ‘unkingship.’
“In the tower is a clock, the dials of which are illuminated at night with gas; this being, if we remember rightly, the first improvement of the kind introduced into the metropolis.
“The church is a rectory, in the county and archdeaconry of Middlesex, in the diocese of London, and the patronage of the Lord Chancellor. “Although the church is very capacious, it is altogether inadequate to the spiritual wants of the parish.
“It was in front of the site of St. Giles’s Church that Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, was so savagely burnt during the reign of Henry V., his early friend. The phrase, ‘St. Giles’s Bowl,’ will remind many of the custom that formerly prevailed here of giving every malefactor on his way to Tyburn a bowl of ale, as his last worldly draught. Thus is the site associated with the fierceness and coarse spirit of bygone ages; and probably the most grateful relics are the trees in the churchyard, which carry the mind’s eye back to ‘the fields.’ The illuminated clock and the wood pavement of the roadway are unquestionably of our own time.”
Besides the church, there is a curious old bath in the neighbourhood of St. Giles (of which we give an engraving), accompanied with the following quotation from the Times:
“In the thick of the once renowned ‘slums’ of St. Giles’s there has existed one of the finest springs in the metropolis, which has been ‘known to local fame,’ and esteemed for its medicinal properties, for the last two centuries; and, if the gossip of tradition may be relied on, it was once the favourite bagnio of Queen Anne, whose name it still bears to this day: it is to be seen at No. 3 Old Belton-street, between Holborn and Long-acre, in the direct line of the new street between Holborn and the Strand; one side of the street in question has already been pulled down, so that the bath is now once again brought to light, though sadly shorn of its ancient splendour. It is a curious and interesting relic of bygone days: it is a large tank, paved at the bottom with black and white marble, and lined throughout with good Dutch tiles, of the time apparently of William III. or Queen Anne, having a lofty French groined dome roof. Being supplied direct from the spring, which is perpetually running into it, so that it is always fresh, it is much used by the inhabitants in the neighbourhood, as it is supposed to be a good cure for rheumatism and other disorders, is a powerful tonic, and, from its colour, evidently contains a considerable trace of iron. The spring from which the bath is supplied has been traced, I believe, from Highgate; and as it does not appear to be known to, or treated on by antiquaries who have written on these matters, I have been induced to direct your attention to it, in the hope that such a valuable spring may be rendered available for the benefit of the poor inhabitants of this great metropolis.”
QUEEN ANNE’S BATH.
QUEEN ANNE’S BATH.
SUCH of our readers as have never been in London in November can scarcely imagine what it is to grope their way through a downright thorough London fog. It is something like being imbedded in a dilution of yellow peas-pudding, just thick enough to get through it without being wholly choked or completely suffocated. You can see through the yard of it which, at the next stride, you are doomed to swallow, and that is all. It is a kind of meat and drink, and very sorry sustenance for those who are asthmatical, as you may tell by hearing one old cough answering to another from opposite sides of the street, and which, although you cannot see the passengers, you can tell, from their grumbling, that they do not like the fare at all. You have the same soft-soapy atmosphere served up at breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper; every time you open your mouth you partake of it, and all day long you are compelled to burn lights, and, in addition to the fog, inhale the fumes from gas, candle, or lamp, which have no more chance of escape than you have, so burn on dim, yellow, and sulkily, as if the very lights needed all the warmth they could obtain, and thus confine themselves to illuminating the smallest possible space. The whole city seems covered with a crust, and all the light you can see beneath it appears as if struggling through the huge yellow basin it overspreads. You fancy that all the smoke which had ascended for years from the thousands of London chimneys had fallen down all at once, after having rotted somewhere above the clouds; smelling as if it had been kept too long, and making you wheeze and sneeze as if all the colds in the world were rushing into your head for warmth, and did not care a straw about killing a few thousands of people, so long as they could but lodge comfortably for a few hours any where. You blow like a grampus in a quicksand, with the keel of a seventy-four on his back, and get about as much fresh air as if you were in his situation: a pair of bellows with a hole in the side, through which you might cram your double fist, would make perfect music, when blown, compared to the noise of your own breathing. You seem as if you had swallowed six broken-winded horses; that they were inside of you alive and kicking; and, for the soul of you, you cannot get rid of one.
You step gingerly along, feeling your way beside the walls, windows, and doors, whenever you can, until at last you tumble headlong into some cellar—perhaps on the shoulders of the little cobbler who is at work below, and who chances to have his sharp awl uplifted at the moment; or perhaps it is an underground coal-shed, and you alight on the back of the black-looking woman weighing coals, and double her up in her own scale—receiving, in return, a couple of black eyes from her husband. After a hearty drubbing, you escape once more into the street; and, as you cannot see a yard before you, break your shins over a milkman’s can, and upset the contents on the greasy pavement; he tries to collar you, but your blood is now up, and you give him a “straight-armer,” which sends him into the area, upsetting the fat cook as he falls. You then run for it, and come full butt against the “bow-window” of a respectable old gentleman, with whom you have a roll or two in the gutter, thankful that you did not fall on the other side, and stave in the shop-front. You shake yourself, and are glad that you are as you are; for a foot beyond where you fell there yawns an open grating, beneath which runs the huge sewer that empties itself into the Thames; and you wonder how many have slipt in during the day. You tumble into a heap of unslacked lime; but that you think nothing of, too thankful to find it was not a fire. You turn up what seems to be a court, to give yourself a rub-down, and run your head against a pail of whitewash, which hangs suspended from a ladder: the whole contents flow over you, and, before you can see where you are, you fall over a sweep, who is tying up his blanket of soot, roll into the midst of it, and come out a pretty picture—something like the inside of an old chimney and the outside of a rough-cast wall, just mortared.
Some good Samaritan in the court takes pity on you by lending you a towel, and furnishing you with a pail of water, and you make the best of a bad job by cleansing yourself as you can. This done, you sally out again, more cautious than ever—the deep yellow darkness meantime increasing; you proceed slowly, and feel every foot of your way, for seeing is out of the question beyond arm’s length. Cautiously you grope along by the board of a fishmonger’s shop, on which lie three or four large black live lobsters; one with his claws open closes on your hand like a vice, and you run shrieking for very life. The fishmonger catches sight of the lobster dangling from your hand, and, believing you have stolen it, follows with a loud cry of “Stop thief!” He is brought up, with his head in the tar-barrel, at the front of his neighbour the oilman’s door; and the monster, by being banged against the wall, having by this time loosed his hold, you go along writhing and groaning, and wondering what will next befal you.
Porters with heavy burdens, women and men with fish, watercresses, &c., you run against every few minutes, and think nothing of. Sometimes you are knocked down, then again it is their lot to fall; and finding that the average runs pretty fair for and against the feller and the fallen, you rest contented on that score—considering the running of the edges of half a dozen umbrellas into your mouth as so many little ones in. If you mistake a dimly-lighted shop-front for some turning, and chance to shove your head through a pane of glass, all you can do is to walk as quietly on as if nothing were amiss—two strides and you are in safety, and as far out of sight as if buried in Egyptian darkness; and they are sure to seize the first unfortunate fellow they can lay hands upon, who might have been just as likely to have made the mistake as yourself—to know which is some comfort. That two or three dogs have run full gallop between your legs, and thrown you down as many times, are accidents too common to need recording. As for your watch, that of course went before you had walked one hundred yards: you saw the fellow’s arm that dragged it out of your pocket, and that was all; it was a jerk amid the deep fog, a rush, in which your nose came against a dead wall, and by the time you had rubbed the grazed tip a little, you thought that you might as well hunt for a needle in a bottle of hay, as attempt to follow the thief in that dusky, woolly, and deceptive light.
With great difficulty, and after many inquiries, you find a tavern; for you know no more than the man in the moon what part of London you are in. You enter a dim, cheerless room without a fire, in which the gas burns faintly, as if unable to pierce the fleecy fog which surrounds it. You wonder whether the peg on which you hang your hat would bear your weight; and, as you lay hold of the bell-rope, cannot help trying the strength of it: the height of the ceiling also catches your eye, and you marvel that more people do not hang themselves on such a day. The very poker in the fireless grate has a cold, clammy, and murderous look; and when the waiter enters, you fancy that he has just been cut down. You light a cigar, and begin to think a little better of matters, and to reckon how many glasses of hot brandy-and-water would throw you into a state of oblivion—that is, leave you dead drunk until the dawning of another day. These thoughts vanish with a second glass, and you again venture forth, resolved this time to get into an omnibus, should one be found bold enough to venture out on such a day. After waiting for some time, and hailing by mistake half a dozen coal-wagons and carriers’ carts, you perceive an omnibus creeping by at a snail’s pace, enter, and squeeze yourself into a seat behind the door. You cannot see to the top of it for the fog, so have no fear of your tailor recognising you, should he happen to be inside—one comfort out of so many evils. While you are sitting, and congratulating yourself that you have escaped so well, up comes a cab-horse with his head through the open door, and his hot nostrils on your face. A few rough compliments are exchanged between the cab-driver and the conductor, during which something is said about the glanders, which haunts you for days after; the more so through your nose being red and raw by grazing it against the wall when the thief ran away with your watch. To what quarter the omnibus is going gives you no concern, for you are glad to get any where to be out of the way on such a day. Great, however, is your indignation, after having been carried some three-score yards, to find that you are at the Cross Keys, in Fleet-street, having got in at the corner of Bride-court, and that the omnibus goes no farther. You pay your threepence with a protest, and are thankful that you cannot see the passengers, who are laughing at you. You have, however, the satisfaction of seeing a heavy old gentleman plant one foot into a basket of oranges on the edge of the pavement, and that puts you into a little better humour, especially when, at the next step, he plunges his head into the window of a book-shop, and knocks down the middle of three rows of richly-bound volumes, besides smashing no end of panes of glass.
On such a day the man who milks his cow in the street is compelled to lay hold of her tail, for fear of losing sight of her; while the butcher-boy who carries out meat is often minus a joint or two when he reaches the door at which his orders ought to have been delivered. Should such a day be Smithfield market, all the cellar-flaps in the little by-streets are left open, in the hopes of catching a few stray sheep, and having a stock of mutton for nothing; should a prize bullock tumble in, they make no bones of him, but salt down what is left, and bless the fog for supplying them with so much excellent beef.
A stranger to London, when the fog sets in at night, and he looks upon it for the first time, fancies his apartments filled with smoke, and begins by throwing open his doors and windows; thus making bad worse, by destroying all the warm air in the rooms. Even one well accustomed to the ins and outs of our far-stretching city is strangely deceived in distance, and the size objects assume, as they loom in dim and gigantic dimensions through the heavy fog. The gas-lamps appear as if placed three-story high, unless you stand close beneath them, for what light they emit is nearly all thrown upward; while a cab comes heaving up (to appearance) as large as the huge caravan which Wombwell formerly used for the conveyance of his stupendous elephant. Once take a wrong turning, and you may consider yourself very fortunate if you ever discover the right road again within three hours; for the houses wear a different appearance, and the streets appear to be all at “sixes and sevens.”
Although a real Londoner looks upon a dense December fog as a common occurrence, and lights up his premises with as little ceremony as he would do at the close of the day, yet, to one unused to such a scene, there is something startling in the appearance of a vast city wrapt in a kind of darkness which seems neither to belong to the day nor the night, at the mid-noon hour, while the gas is burning in the windows of long miles of streets. The greatest marvel, after all, is that so few accidents happen in this dim, unnatural light, in the midst of which business seems to go on as usual, and would do, we believe, were the whole of London buried in midnight darkness at noonday, which would only be looked upon as a further deepening of the overhanging gloom. The number of lighted torches which are carried and waved at the corners and crossings of the streets add greatly to the wild and picturesque effect of the scene, as they flash redly upon the countenances of the passengers, and, in the distance, have the effect of a city enveloped in a dense mass of smoke, through which the smouldering flames endeavour in vain to penetrate.
During a heavy fog many accidents occur on the river, through barges running foul of each other, or vessels coming athwart the bridges; for there is no seeing the opening arch from the rock-like buttress, as the whole river looks like one huge bed of dense stagnant smoke, through which no human eye can penetrate. If you lean over the balustrades of the bridge, you cannot see the vessel which may at that moment be passing beneath, so heavy is the cloudy curtain which covers the water. At such times the steam-boats cease running, and rest quietly at their moorings, for the man at the wheel would be unable to see half the length of his vessel. Sometimes a steamer coming up the river takes a fancy to a shorter cut, by trying to clear Blackwall Reach, and come overland through the marshes below Greenwich, or by running her head into the Isle of Dogs, where she lies aground until the next tide.
Many lives have been lost through foot-passengers mistaking the steps at the foot of some of the bridges for the opening of the bridge itself, and, ere they were aware of it, rolling head-foremost into the river. Strong iron-railings have been erected during the last few years, and have put an end to such dreadful accidents: at the foot of Blackfriars-bridge, many, we have heard, thus lost their lives.
At this time the pavement is greasy, and, though you keep lifting up your legs, you are hardly positive whether or not you are making any progress. You seem to go as much backward as forward; and some old Cockneys do aver that the surest way of reaching Temple-bar from Charing-cross would be to start off with your face turned towards King Charles’s statue, to walk away manfully without once turning your head, and that, by the end of three hours, you would be pretty sure of reaching the point aimed at, should you not be run over.
THE first object that still strikes the eye when we have passed over into the Borough is the beautiful old church founded by a Saxon maiden called Mary of the Ferry, which in time was corrupted into Mary Overy, and is now called St. Saviour’s. No young poet need wish for a finer subject to try his hand on than this beautiful half holy old legend of the Ferryman’s Daughter, who, day after day, winter and summer, was seen with her quaint old-fashioned Saxon boat, ready to row passengers from the Borough to the City, and back again to the landing-place, where the Ferry-house had stood centuries before a bridge united the two shores. Pleasant to her ear must have been the lapping of the waves as they washed her little freehold, and fell with a dreamy murmuring upon the ear, while she sat revolving in her mind how she should begin to build a house for the reception of a few poor and pious sisters, in which they might live in content and comfort, and holy quiet; and when she was no more, there pray for the soul of Mary of the Ferry. And thus was the present St. Saviour’s first founded. In this ancient cathedral-like church, Gower, the contemporary of Chaucer, lies buried; his beautiful monument still exists. Our own immortal Shakspeare was no doubt a mourner here two hundred years ago, on the last day of December, 1607, when in the forenoon he attended the funeral of his brother Edmund. Perhaps the funeral took place earlier in the day, on account of the merry-making which our forefathers held at the close of the old year, and kept up until the new year had grown far into the day; and that this was the cause why Edmund Shakspeare was buried in the church “with a forenoone knell of the great bell.” Edmund was himself a player, and we can readily conjure up the images of those who witnessed his interment.
Were we to dwell upon the solemn memories which float around this hoary pile, they would alone fill this chapter; for Fletcher is buried here, so is Massinger; but not, as was supposed, “in a gloomy corner amid a mass of misshapen and melancholy graves,” for he is buried “within the church.”
But the spot to which the lover of poetry still directs his steps is to the Tabard—Chaucer’s old inn, still standing on the very spot, if not the identical building itself, from which the father of English poetry set out, when he accompanied his merry pilgrims to Canterbury. The portion of this old hostelry still remaining dates much further back than the period of Charles II., a proof that it escaped the terrible fire which raged in Southwark in the year 1676. The very style of the building needs not a second glance to proclaim its antiquity; it is beyond doubt the very inn which the old chronicler Stowe mentions by the name of the “Tabard,” and which he himself had no doubt seen in 1598, and called the “most ancient of the many fair inns in Southwark for receipt of travellers.” The old sign of the Tabard formerly hung swinging and creaking across the road, and there were then no houses in front to shut it in, as now; it lay openly and temptingly, as when Chaucer’s host, the merry “Harry Baily,” stepped out in the front in the sunny mornings of Spring and Summer, to see what the old Kent and Newington roads were producing him, and what sort of customers were riding up.
Even now there is something venerable in the old weather-beaten and iron-bound posts which prop up its comparatively modern gateway; they tell of the grazing and grinding of thousands of old wheels, while the stones are worn away with the tramping of many a worn-out steed.
Merry doings were there in that old inn-yard, on an April morning, five hundred years ago, for Harry Baily, the host was