Sketches by Boz, Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day People
by Charles Dickens · English · Gutenberg #882 · 1,479,970 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Sketches by Boz, Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day People
Author: Charles Dickens
Release date: April 1, 1997 [eBook #882]
Most recently updated: April 20, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/882
Credits: David Price
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SKETCHES BY BOZ, ILLUSTRATIVE OF EVERY-DAY LIFE AND EVERY-DAY PEOPLE ***
Sketches by Boz
Illustrative of Every-Day Life
and Every-Day People
by Charles Dickens
_With Illustrations by George Cruickshank and Phiz_
LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, ld.
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1903
PREFACE
The whole of these Sketches were written and published, one by one,
when I was a very young man. They were collected and republished while
I was still a very young man; and sent into the world with all their
imperfections (a good many) on their heads.
They comprise my first attempts at authorship—with the exception of
certain tragedies achieved at the mature age of eight or ten, and
represented with great applause to overflowing nurseries. I am
conscious of their often being extremely crude and ill-considered, and
bearing obvious marks of haste and inexperience; particularly in that
section of the present volume which is comprised under the general head
of Tales.
But as this collection is not originated now, and was very leniently
and favourably received when it was first made, I have not felt it
right either to remodel or expunge, beyond a few words and phrases here
and there.
OUR PARISH
CHAPTER I—THE BEADLE. THE PARISH ENGINE. THE SCHOOLMASTER
How much is conveyed in those two short words—‘The Parish!’ And with
how many tales of distress and misery, of broken fortune and ruined
hopes, too often of unrelieved wretchedness and successful knavery, are
they associated! A poor man, with small earnings, and a large family,
just manages to live on from hand to mouth, and to procure food from
day to day; he has barely sufficient to satisfy the present cravings of
nature, and can take no heed of the future. His taxes are in arrear,
quarter-day passes by, another quarter-day arrives: he can procure no
more quarter for himself, and is summoned by—the parish. His goods are
distrained, his children are crying with cold and hunger, and the very
bed on which his sick wife is lying, is dragged from beneath her. What
can he do? To whom is he to apply for relief? To private charity? To
benevolent individuals? Certainly not—there is his parish. There are
the parish vestry, the parish infirmary, the parish surgeon, the parish
officers, the parish beadle. Excellent institutions, and gentle,
kind-hearted men. The woman dies—she is buried by the parish. The
children have no protector—they are taken care of by the parish. The
man first neglects, and afterwards cannot obtain, work—he is relieved
by the parish; and when distress and drunkenness have done their work
upon him, he is maintained, a harmless babbling idiot, in the parish
asylum.
The parish beadle is one of the most, perhaps _the_ most, important
member of the local administration. He is not so well off as the
churchwardens, certainly, nor is he so learned as the vestry-clerk, nor
does he order things quite so much his own way as either of them. But
his power is very great, notwithstanding; and the dignity of his office
is never impaired by the absence of efforts on his part to maintain it.
The beadle of our parish is a splendid fellow. It is quite delightful
to hear him, as he explains the state of the existing poor laws to the
deaf old women in the board-room passage on business nights; and to
hear what he said to the senior churchwarden, and what the senior
churchwarden said to him; and what ‘we’ (the beadle and the other
gentlemen) came to the determination of doing. A miserable-looking
woman is called into the boardroom, and represents a case of extreme
destitution, affecting herself—a widow, with six small children. ‘Where
do you live?’ inquires one of the overseers. ‘I rents a two-pair back,
gentlemen, at Mrs. Brown’s, Number 3, Little King William’s-alley,
which has lived there this fifteen year, and knows me to be very
hard-working and industrious, and when my poor husband was alive,
gentlemen, as died in the hospital’—‘Well, well,’ interrupts the
overseer, taking a note of the address, ‘I’ll send Simmons, the beadle,
to-morrow morning, to ascertain whether your story is correct; and if
so, I suppose you must have an order into the House—Simmons, go to this
woman’s the first thing to-morrow morning, will you?’ Simmons bows
assent, and ushers the woman out. Her previous admiration of ‘the
board’ (who all sit behind great books, and with their hats on) fades
into nothing before her respect for her lace-trimmed conductor; and her
account of what has passed inside, increases—if that be possible—the
marks of respect, shown by the assembled crowd, to that solemn
functionary. As to taking out a summons, it’s quite a hopeless case if
Simmons attends it, on behalf of the parish. He knows all the titles of
the Lord Mayor by heart; states the case without a single stammer: and
it is even reported that on one occasion he ventured to make a joke,
which the Lord Mayor’s head footman (who happened to be present)
afterwards told an intimate friend, confidentially, was almost equal to
one of Mr. Hobler’s.
See him again on Sunday in his state-coat and cocked-hat, with a
large-headed staff for show in his left hand, and a small cane for use
in his right. How pompously he marshals the children into their places!
and how demurely the little urchins look at him askance as he surveys
them when they are all seated, with a glare of the eye peculiar to
beadles! The churchwardens and overseers being duly installed in their
curtained pews, he seats himself on a mahogany bracket, erected
expressly for him at the top of the aisle, and divides his attention
between his prayer-book and the boys. Suddenly, just at the
commencement of the communion service, when the whole congregation is
hushed into a profound silence, broken only by the voice of the
officiating clergyman, a penny is heard to ring on the stone floor of
the aisle with astounding clearness. Observe the generalship of the
beadle. His involuntary look of horror is instantly changed into one of
perfect indifference, as if he were the only person present who had not
heard the noise. The artifice succeeds. After putting forth his right
leg now and then, as a feeler, the victim who dropped the money
ventures to make one or two distinct dives after it; and the beadle,
gliding softly round, salutes his little round head, when it again
appears above the seat, with divers double knocks, administered with
the cane before noticed, to the intense delight of three young men in
an adjacent pew, who cough violently at intervals until the conclusion
of the sermon.
Such are a few traits of the importance and gravity of a parish
beadle—a gravity which has never been disturbed in any case that has
come under our observation, except when the services of that
particularly useful machine, a parish fire-engine, are required: then
indeed all is bustle. Two little boys run to the beadle as fast as
their legs will carry them, and report from their own personal
observation that some neighbouring chimney is on fire; the engine is
hastily got out, and a plentiful supply of boys being obtained, and
harnessed to it with ropes, away they rattle over the pavement, the
beadle, running—we do not exaggerate—running at the side, until they
arrive at some house, smelling strongly of soot, at the door of which
the beadle knocks with considerable gravity for half-an-hour. No
attention being paid to these manual applications, and the turn-cock
having turned on the water, the engine turns off amidst the shouts of
the boys; it pulls up once more at the work-house, and the beadle
‘pulls up’ the unfortunate householder next day, for the amount of his
legal reward. We never saw a parish engine at a regular fire but once.
It came up in gallant style—three miles and a half an hour, at least;
there was a capital supply of water, and it was first on the spot. Bang
went the pumps—the people cheered—the beadle perspired profusely; but
it was unfortunately discovered, just as they were going to put the
fire out, that nobody understood the process by which the engine was
filled with water; and that eighteen boys, and a man, had exhausted
themselves in pumping for twenty minutes, without producing the
slightest effect!
The personages next in importance to the beadle, are the master of the
workhouse and the parish schoolmaster. The vestry-clerk, as everybody
knows, is a short, pudgy little man, in black, with a thick gold
watch-chain of considerable length, terminating in two large seals and
a key. He is an attorney, and generally in a bustle; at no time more
so, than when he is hurrying to some parochial meeting, with his gloves
crumpled up in one hand, and a large red book under the other arm. As
to the churchwardens and overseers, we exclude them altogether, because
all we know of them is, that they are usually respectable tradesmen,
who wear hats with brims inclined to flatness, and who occasionally
testify in gilt letters on a blue ground, in some conspicuous part of
the church, to the important fact of a gallery having being enlarged
and beautified, or an organ rebuilt.
The master of the workhouse is not, in our parish—nor is he usually in
any other—one of that class of men the better part of whose existence
has passed away, and who drag out the remainder in some inferior
situation, with just enough thought of the past, to feel degraded by,
and discontented with the present. We are unable to guess precisely to
our own satisfaction what station the man can have occupied before; we
should think he had been an inferior sort of attorney’s clerk, or else
the master of a national school—whatever he was, it is clear his
present position is a change for the better. His income is small
certainly, as the rusty black coat and threadbare velvet collar
demonstrate: but then he lives free of house-rent, has a limited
allowance of coals and candles, and an almost unlimited allowance of
authority in his petty kingdom. He is a tall, thin, bony man; always
wears shoes and black cotton stockings with his surtout; and eyes you,
as you pass his parlour-window, as if he wished you were a pauper, just
to give you a specimen of his power. He is an admirable specimen of a
small tyrant: morose, brutish, and ill-tempered; bullying to his
inferiors, cringing to his superiors, and jealous of the influence and
authority of the beadle.
Our schoolmaster is just the very reverse of this amiable official. He
has been one of those men one occasionally hears of, on whom misfortune
seems to have set her mark; nothing he ever did, or was concerned in,
appears to have prospered. A rich old relation who had brought him up,
and openly announced his intention of providing for him, left him
10,000_l._ in his will, and revoked the bequest in a codicil. Thus
unexpectedly reduced to the necessity of providing for himself, he
procured a situation in a public office. The young clerks below him,
died off as if there were a plague among them; but the old fellows over
his head, for the reversion of whose places he was anxiously waiting,
lived on and on, as if they were immortal. He speculated and lost. He
speculated again and won—but never got his money. His talents were
great; his disposition, easy, generous and liberal. His friends
profited by the one, and abused the other. Loss succeeded loss;
misfortune crowded on misfortune; each successive day brought him
nearer the verge of hopeless penury, and the quondam friends who had
been warmest in their professions, grew strangely cold and indifferent.
He had children whom he loved, and a wife on whom he doted. The former
turned their backs on him; the latter died broken-hearted. He went with
the stream—it had ever been his failing, and he had not courage
sufficient to bear up against so many shocks—he had never cared for
himself, and the only being who had cared for him, in his poverty and
distress, was spared to him no longer. It was at this period that he
applied for parochial relief. Some kind-hearted man who had known him
in happier times, chanced to be churchwarden that year, and through his
interest he was appointed to his present situation.
He is an old man now. Of the many who once crowded round him in all the
hollow friendship of boon-companionship, some have died, some have
fallen like himself, some have prospered—all have forgotten him. Time
and misfortune have mercifully been permitted to impair his memory, and
use has habituated him to his present condition. Meek, uncomplaining,
and zealous in the discharge of his duties, he has been allowed to hold
his situation long beyond the usual period; and he will no doubt
continue to hold it, until infirmity renders him incapable, or death
releases him. As the grey-headed old man feebly paces up and down the
sunny side of the little court-yard between school hours, it would be
difficult, indeed, for the most intimate of his former friends to
recognise their once gay and happy associate, in the person of the
Pauper Schoolmaster.
CHAPTER II—THE CURATE. THE OLD LADY. THE HALF-PAY CAPTAIN
We commenced our last chapter with the beadle of our parish, because we
are deeply sensible of the importance and dignity of his office. We
will begin the present, with the clergyman. Our curate is a young
gentleman of such prepossessing appearance, and fascinating manners,
that within one month after his first appearance in the parish, half
the young-lady inhabitants were melancholy with religion, and the other
half, desponding with love. Never were so many young ladies seen in our
parish church on Sunday before; and never had the little round angels’
faces on Mr. Tomkins’s monument in the side aisle, beheld such devotion
on earth as they all exhibited. He was about five-and-twenty when he
first came to astonish the parishioners. He parted his hair on the
centre of his forehead in the form of a Norman arch, wore a brilliant
of the first water on the fourth finger of his left hand (which he
always applied to his left cheek when he read prayers), and had a deep
sepulchral voice of unusual solemnity. Innumerable were the calls made
by prudent mammas on our new curate, and innumerable the invitations
with which he was assailed, and which, to do him justice, he readily
accepted. If his manner in the pulpit had created an impression in his
favour, the sensation was increased tenfold, by his appearance in
private circles. Pews in the immediate vicinity of the pulpit or
reading-desk rose in value; sittings in the centre aisle were at a
premium: an inch of room in the front row of the gallery could not be
procured for love or money; and some people even went so far as to
assert, that the three Miss Browns, who had an obscure family pew just
behind the churchwardens’, were detected, one Sunday, in the free seats
by the communion-table, actually lying in wait for the curate as he
passed to the vestry! He began to preach extempore sermons, and even
grave papas caught the infection. He got out of bed at half-past twelve
o’clock one winter’s night, to half-baptise a washerwoman’s child in a
slop-basin, and the gratitude of the parishioners knew no bounds—the
very churchwardens grew generous, and insisted on the parish defraying
the expense of the watch-box on wheels, which the new curate had
ordered for himself, to perform the funeral service in, in wet weather.
He sent three pints of gruel and a quarter of a pound of tea to a poor
woman who had been brought to bed of four small children, all at
once—the parish were charmed. He got up a subscription for her—the
woman’s fortune was made. He spoke for one hour and twenty-five
minutes, at an anti-slavery meeting at the Goat and Boots—the
enthusiasm was at its height. A proposal was set on foot for presenting
the curate with a piece of plate, as a mark of esteem for his valuable
services rendered to the parish. The list of subscriptions was filled
up in no time; the contest was, not who should escape the contribution,
but who should be the foremost to subscribe. A splendid silver inkstand
was made, and engraved with an appropriate inscription; the curate was
invited to a public breakfast, at the before-mentioned Goat and Boots;
the inkstand was presented in a neat speech by Mr. Gubbins, the
ex-churchwarden, and acknowledged by the curate in terms which drew
tears into the eyes of all present—the very waiters were melted.
One would have supposed that, by this time, the theme of universal
admiration was lifted to the very pinnacle of popularity. No such
thing. The curate began to cough; four fits of coughing one morning
between the Litany and the Epistle, and five in the afternoon service.
Here was a discovery—the curate was consumptive. How interestingly
melancholy! If the young ladies were energetic before, their sympathy
and solicitude now knew no bounds. Such a man as the curate—such a
dear—such a perfect love—to be consumptive! It was too much. Anonymous
presents of black-currant jam, and lozenges, elastic waistcoats, bosom
friends, and warm stockings, poured in upon the curate until he was as
completely fitted out with winter clothing, as if he were on the verge
of an expedition to the North Pole: verbal bulletins of the state of
his health were circulated throughout the parish half-a-dozen times a
day; and the curate was in the very zenith of his popularity.
About this period, a change came over the spirit of the parish. A very
quiet, respectable, dozing old gentleman, who had officiated in our
chapel-of-ease for twelve years previously, died one fine morning,
without having given any notice whatever of his intention. This
circumstance gave rise to counter-sensation the first; and the arrival
of his successor occasioned counter-sensation the second. He was a
pale, thin, cadaverous man, with large black eyes, and long straggling
black hair: his dress was slovenly in the extreme, his manner ungainly,
his doctrines startling; in short, he was in every respect the
antipodes of the curate. Crowds of our female parishioners flocked to
hear him; at first, because he was _so_ odd-looking, then because his
face was _so_ expressive, then because he preached _so_ well; and at
last, because they really thought that, after all, there was something
about him which it was quite impossible to describe. As to the curate,
he was all very well; but certainly, after all, there was no denying
that—that—in short, the curate wasn’t a novelty, and the other
clergyman was. The inconstancy of public opinion is proverbial: the
congregation migrated one by one. The curate coughed till he was black
in the face—it was in vain. He respired with difficulty—it was equally
ineffectual in awakening sympathy. Seats are once again to be had in
any part of our parish church, and the chapel-of-ease is going to be
enlarged, as it is crowded to suffocation every Sunday!
The best known and most respected among our parishioners, is an old
lady, who resided in our parish long before our name was registered in
the list of baptisms. Our parish is a suburban one, and the old lady
lives in a neat row of houses in the most airy and pleasant part of it.
The house is her own; and it, and everything about it, except the old
lady herself, who looks a little older than she did ten years ago, is
in just the same state as when the old gentleman was living. The little
front parlour, which is the old lady’s ordinary sitting-room, is a
perfect picture of quiet neatness; the carpet is covered with brown
Holland, the glass and picture-frames are carefully enveloped in yellow
muslin; the table-covers are never taken off, except when the leaves
are turpentined and bees’-waxed, an operation which is regularly
commenced every other morning at half-past nine o’clock—and the little
nicknacks are always arranged in precisely the same manner. The greater
part of these are presents from little girls whose parents live in the
same row; but some of them, such as the two old-fashioned watches
(which never keep the same time, one being always a quarter of an hour
too slow, and the other a quarter of an hour too fast), the little
picture of the Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold as they appeared
in the Royal Box at Drury Lane Theatre, and others of the same class,
have been in the old lady’s possession for many years. Here the old
lady sits with her spectacles on, busily engaged in needlework—near the
window in summer time; and if she sees you coming up the steps, and you
happen to be a favourite, she trots out to open the street-door for you
before you knock, and as you must be fatigued after that hot walk,
insists on your swallowing two glasses of sherry before you exert
yourself by talking. If you call in the evening you will find her
cheerful, but rather more serious than usual, with an open Bible on the
table, before her, of which ‘Sarah,’ who is just as neat and methodical
as her mistress, regularly reads two or three chapters in the parlour
aloud.
The old lady sees scarcely any company, except the little girls before
noticed, each of whom has always a regular fixed day for a periodical
tea-drinking with her, to which the child looks forward as the greatest
treat of its existence. She seldom visits at a greater distance than
the next door but one on either side; and when she drinks tea here,
Sarah runs out first and knocks a double-knock, to prevent the
possibility of her ‘Missis’s’ catching cold by having to wait at the
door. She is very scrupulous in returning these little invitations, and
when she asks Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so, to meet Mr. and Mrs.
Somebody-else, Sarah and she dust the urn, and the best china
tea-service, and the Pope Joan board; and the visitors are received in
the drawing-room in great state. She has but few relations, and they
are scattered about in different parts of the country, and she seldom
sees them. She has a son in India, whom she always describes to you as
a fine, handsome fellow—so like the profile of his poor dear father
over the sideboard, but the old lady adds, with a mournful shake of the
head, that he has always been one of her greatest trials; and that
indeed he once almost broke her heart; but it pleased God to enable her
to get the better of it, and she would prefer your never mentioning the
subject to her again. She has a great number of pensioners: and on
Saturday, after she comes back from market, there is a regular levee of
old men and women in the passage, waiting for their weekly gratuity.
Her name always heads the list of any benevolent subscriptions, and
hers are always the most liberal donations to the Winter Coal and Soup
Distribution Society. She subscribed twenty pounds towards the erection
of an organ in our parish church, and was so overcome the first Sunday
the children sang to it, that she was obliged to be carried out by the
pew-opener. Her entrance into church on Sunday is always the signal for
a little bustle in the side aisle, occasioned by a general rise among
the poor people, who bow and curtsey until the pew-opener has ushered
the old lady into her accustomed seat, dropped a respectful curtsey,
and shut the door: and the same ceremony is repeated on her leaving
church, when she walks home with the family next door but one, and
talks about the sermon all the way, invariably opening the conversation
by asking the youngest boy where the text was.
Thus, with the annual variation of a trip to some quiet place on the
sea-coast, passes the old lady’s life. It has rolled on in the same
unvarying and benevolent course for many years now, and must at no
distant period be brought to its final close. She looks forward to its
termination, with calmness and without apprehension. She has everything
to hope and nothing to fear.
A very different personage, but one who has rendered himself very
conspicuous in our parish, is one of the old lady’s next-door
neighbours. He is an old naval officer on half-pay, and his bluff and
unceremonious behaviour disturbs the old lady’s domestic economy, not a
little. In the first place, he _will_ smoke cigars in the front court,
and when he wants something to drink with them—which is by no means an
uncommon circumstance—he lifts up the old lady’s knocker with his
walking-stick, and demands to have a glass of table ale, handed over
the rails. In addition to this cool proceeding, he is a bit of a Jack
of all trades, or to use his own words, ‘a regular Robinson Crusoe;’
and nothing delights him better than to experimentalise on the old
lady’s property. One morning he got up early, and planted three or four
roots of full-grown marigolds in every bed of her front garden, to the
inconceivable astonishment of the old lady, who actually thought when
she got up and looked out of the window, that it was some strange
eruption which had come out in the night. Another time he took to
pieces the eight-day clock on the front landing, under pretence of
cleaning the works, which he put together again, by some undiscovered
process, in so wonderful a manner, that the large hand has done nothing
but trip up the little one ever since. Then he took to breeding
silk-worms, which he _would_ bring in two or three times a day, in
little paper boxes, to show the old lady, generally dropping a worm or
two at every visit. The consequence was, that one morning a very stout
silk-worm was discovered in the act of walking up-stairs—probably with
the view of inquiring after his friends, for, on further inspection, it
appeared that some of his companions had already found their way to
every room in the house. The old lady went to the seaside in despair,
and during her absence he completely effaced the name from her brass
door-plate, in his attempts to polish it with aqua-fortis.
But all this is nothing to his seditious conduct in public life. He
attends every vestry meeting that is held; always opposes the
constituted authorities of the parish, denounces the profligacy of the
churchwardens, contests legal points against the vestry-clerk, will
make the tax-gatherer call for his money till he won’t call any longer,
and then he sends it: finds fault with the sermon every Sunday, says
that the organist ought to be ashamed of himself, offers to back
himself for any amount to sing the psalms better than all the children
put together, male and female; and, in short, conducts himself in the
most turbulent and uproarious manner. The worst of it is, that having a
high regard for the old lady, he wants to make her a convert to his
views, and therefore walks into her little parlour with his newspaper
in his hand, and talks violent politics by the hour. He is a
charitable, open-hearted old fellow at bottom, after all; so, although
he puts the old lady a little out occasionally, they agree very well in
the main, and she laughs as much at each feat of his handiwork when it
is all over, as anybody else.
CHAPTER III—THE FOUR SISTERS
The row of houses in which the old lady and her troublesome neighbour
reside, comprises, beyond all doubt, a greater number of characters
within its circumscribed limits, than all the rest of the parish put
together. As we cannot, consistently with our present plan, however,
extend the number of our parochial sketches beyond six, it will be
better perhaps, to select the most peculiar, and to introduce them at
once without further preface.
The four Miss Willises, then, settled in our parish thirteen years ago.
It is a melancholy reflection that the old adage, ‘time and tide wait
for no man,’ applies with equal force to the fairer portion of the
creation; and willingly would we conceal the fact, that even thirteen
years ago the Miss Willises were far from juvenile. Our duty as
faithful parochial chroniclers, however, is paramount to every other
consideration, and we are bound to state, that thirteen years since,
the authorities in matrimonial cases, considered the youngest Miss
Willis in a very precarious state, while the eldest sister was
positively given over, as being far beyond all human hope. Well, the
Miss Willises took a lease of the house; it was fresh painted and
papered from top to bottom: the paint inside was all wainscoted, the
marble all cleaned, the old grates taken down, and register-stoves, you
could see to dress by, put up; four trees were planted in the back
garden, several small baskets of gravel sprinkled over the front one,
vans of elegant furniture arrived, spring blinds were fitted to the
windows, carpenters who had been employed in the various preparations,
alterations, and repairs, made confidential statements to the different
maid-servants in the row, relative to the magnificent scale on which
the Miss Willises were commencing; the maid-servants told their
‘Missises,’ the Missises told their friends, and vague rumours were
circulated throughout the parish, that No. 25, in Gordon-place, had
been taken by four maiden ladies of immense property.
At last, the Miss Willises moved in; and then the ‘calling’ began. The
house was the perfection of neatness—so were the four Miss Willises.
Everything was formal, stiff, and cold—so were the four Miss Willises.
Not a single chair of the whole set was ever seen out of its place—not
a single Miss Willis of the whole four was ever seen out of hers. There
they always sat, in the same places, doing precisely the same things at
the same hour. The eldest Miss Willis used to knit, the second to draw,
the two others to play duets on the piano. They seemed to have no
separate existence, but to have made up their minds just to winter
through life together. They were three long graces in drapery, with the
addition, like a school-dinner, of another long grace afterwards—the
three fates with another sister—the Siamese twins multiplied by two.
The eldest Miss Willis grew bilious—the four Miss Willises grew bilious
immediately. The eldest Miss Willis grew ill-tempered and religious—the
four Miss Willises were ill-tempered and religious directly. Whatever
the eldest did, the others did, and whatever anybody else did, they all
disapproved of; and thus they vegetated—living in Polar harmony among
themselves, and, as they sometimes went out, or saw company ‘in a
quiet-way’ at home, occasionally icing the neighbours. Three years
passed over in this way, when an unlooked for and extraordinary
phenomenon occurred. The Miss Willises showed symptoms of summer, the
frost gradually broke up; a complete thaw took place. Was it possible?
one of the four Miss Willises was going to be married!
Now, where on earth the husband came from, by what feelings the poor
man could have been actuated, or by what process of reasoning the four
Miss Willises succeeded in persuading themselves that it was possible
for a man to marry one of them, without marrying them all, are
questions too profound for us to resolve: certain it is, however, that
the visits of Mr. Robinson (a gentleman in a public office, with a good
salary and a little property of his own, besides) were received—that
the four Miss Willises were courted in due form by the said Mr
Robinson—that the neighbours were perfectly frantic in their anxiety to
discover which of the four Miss Willises was the fortunate fair, and
that the difficulty they experienced in solving the problem was not at
all lessened by the announcement of the eldest Miss Willis,—‘_We_ are
going to marry Mr. Robinson.’
It was very extraordinary. They were so completely identified, the one
with the other, that the curiosity of the whole row—even of the old
lady herself—was roused almost beyond endurance. The subject was
discussed at every little card-table and tea-drinking. The old
gentleman of silk-worm notoriety did not hesitate to express his
decided opinion that Mr. Robinson was of Eastern descent, and
contemplated marrying the whole family at once; and the row, generally,
shook their heads with considerable gravity, and declared the business
to be very mysterious. They hoped it might all end well;—it certainly
had a very singular appearance, but still it would be uncharitable to
express any opinion without good grounds to go upon, and certainly the
Miss Willises were _quite_ old enough to judge for themselves, and to
be sure people ought to know their own business best, and so forth.
At last, one fine morning, at a quarter before eight o’clock, a.m., two
glass-coaches drove up to the Miss Willises’ door, at which Mr.
Robinson had arrived in a cab ten minutes before, dressed in a
light-blue coat and double-milled kersey pantaloons, white neckerchief,
pumps, and dress-gloves, his manner denoting, as appeared from the
evidence of the housemaid at No. 23, who was sweeping the door-steps at
the time, a considerable degree of nervous excitement. It was also
hastily reported on the same testimony, that the cook who opened the
door, wore a large white bow of unusual dimensions, in a much smarter
head-dress than the regulation cap to which the Miss Willises
invariably restricted the somewhat excursive tastes of female servants
in general.
The intelligence spread rapidly from house to house. It was quite clear
that the eventful morning had at length arrived; the whole row
stationed themselves behind their first and second floor blinds, and
waited the result in breathless expectation.
At last the Miss Willises’ door opened; the door of the first
glass-coach did the same. Two gentlemen, and a pair of ladies to
correspond—friends of the family, no doubt; up went the steps, bang
went the door, off went the first class-coach, and up came the second.
The street door opened again; the excitement of the whole row
increased—Mr. Robinson and the eldest Miss Willis. ‘I thought so,’ said
the lady at No. 19; ‘I always said it was _Miss_ Willis!’—‘Well, I
never!’ ejaculated the young lady at No. 18 to the young lady at No.
17.—‘Did you ever, dear!’ responded the young lady at No. 17 to the
young lady at No. 18. ‘It’s too ridiculous!’ exclaimed a spinster of an
_un_certain age, at No. 16, joining in the conversation. But who shall
portray the astonishment of Gordon-place, when Mr. Robinson handed in
_all_ the Miss Willises, one after the other, and then squeezed himself
into an acute angle of the glass-coach, which forthwith proceeded at a
brisk pace, after the other glass-coach, which other glass-coach had
itself proceeded, at a brisk pace, in the direction of the parish
church! Who shall depict the perplexity of the clergyman, when _all_
the Miss Willises knelt down at the communion-table, and repeated the
responses incidental to the marriage service in an audible voice—or who
shall describe the confusion which prevailed, when—even after the
difficulties thus occasioned had been adjusted—_all_ the Miss Willises
went into hysterics at the conclusion of the ceremony, until the sacred
edifice resounded with their united wailings!
As the four sisters and Mr. Robinson continued to occupy the same house
after this memorable occasion, and as the married sister, whoever she
was, never appeared in public without the other three, we are not quite
clear that the neighbours ever would have discovered the real Mrs.
Robinson, but for a circumstance of the most gratifying description,
which _will_ happen occasionally in the best-regulated families. Three
quarter-days elapsed, and the row, on whom a new light appeared to have
been bursting for some time, began to speak with a sort of implied
confidence on the subject, and to wonder how Mrs. Robinson—the youngest
Miss Willis that was—got on; and servants might be seen running up the
steps, about nine or ten o’clock every morning, with ‘Missis’s
compliments, and wishes to know how Mrs. Robinson finds herself this
morning?’ And the answer always was, ‘Mrs. Robinson’s compliments, and
she’s in very good spirits, and doesn’t find herself any worse.’ The
piano was heard no longer, the knitting-needles were laid aside,
drawing was neglected, and mantua-making and millinery, on the smallest
scale imaginable, appeared to have become the favourite amusement of
the whole family. The parlour wasn’t quite as tidy as it used to be,
and if you called in the morning, you would see lying on a table, with
an old newspaper carelessly thrown over them, two or three particularly
small caps, rather larger than if they had been made for a
moderate-sized doll, with a small piece of lace, in the shape of a
horse-shoe, let in behind: or perhaps a white robe, not very large in
circumference, but very much out of proportion in point of length, with
a little tucker round the top, and a frill round the bottom; and once
when we called, we saw a long white roller, with a kind of blue margin
down each side, the probable use of which, we were at a loss to
conjecture. Then we fancied that Dr. Dawson, the surgeon, &c., who
displays a large lamp with a different colour in every pane of glass,
at the corner of the row, began to be knocked up at night oftener than
he used to be; and once we were very much alarmed by hearing a
hackney-coach stop at Mrs. Robinson’s door, at half-past two o’clock in
the morning, out of which there emerged a fat old woman, in a cloak and
night-cap, with a bundle in one hand, and a pair of pattens in the
other, who looked as if she had been suddenly knocked up out of bed for
some very special purpose.
When we got up in the morning we saw that the knocker was tied up in an
old white kid glove; and we, in our innocence (we were in a state of
bachelorship then), wondered what on earth it all meant, until we heard
the eldest Miss Willis, _in propriâ personâ_ say, with great dignity,
in answer to the next inquiry, ‘_My_ compliments, and Mrs. Robinson’s
doing as well as can be expected, and the little girl thrives
wonderfully.’ And then, in common with the rest of the row, our
curiosity was satisfied, and we began to wonder it had never occurred
to us what the matter was, before.
CHAPTER IV—THE ELECTION FOR BEADLE
A great event has recently occurred in our parish. A contest of
paramount interest has just terminated; a parochial convulsion has
taken place. It has been succeeded by a glorious triumph, which the
country—or at least the parish—it is all the same—will long remember.
We have had an election; an election for beadle. The supporters of the
old beadle system have been defeated in their stronghold, and the
advocates of the great new beadle principles have achieved a proud
victory.
Our parish, which, like all other parishes, is a little world of its
own, has long been divided into two parties, whose contentions,
slumbering for a while, have never failed to burst forth with unabated
vigour, on any occasion on which they could by possibility be renewed.
Watching-rates, lighting-rates, paving-rates, sewer’s-rates,
church-rates, poor’s-rates—all sorts of rates, have been in their turns
the subjects of a grand struggle; and as to questions of patronage, the
asperity and determination with which they have been contested is
scarcely credible.
The leader of the official party—the steady advocate of the
churchwardens, and the unflinching supporter of the overseers—is an old
gentleman who lives in our row. He owns some half a dozen houses in it,
and always walks on the opposite side of the way, so that he may be
able to take in a view of the whole of his property at once. He is a
tall, thin, bony man, with an interrogative nose, and little restless
perking eyes, which appear to have been given him for the sole purpose
of peeping into other people’s affairs with. He is deeply impressed
with the importance of our parish business, and prides himself, not a
little, on his style of addressing the parishioners in vestry
assembled. His views are rather confined than extensive; his principles
more narrow than liberal. He has been heard to declaim very loudly in
favour of the liberty of the press, and advocates the repeal of the
stamp duty on newspapers, because the daily journals who now have a
monopoly of the public, never give _verbatim_ reports of vestry
meetings. He would not appear egotistical for the world, but at the
same time he must say, that there are _speeches_—that celebrated speech
of his own, on the emoluments of the sexton, and the duties of the
office, for instance—which might be communicated to the public, greatly
to their improvement and advantage.
His great opponent in public life is Captain Purday, the old naval
officer on half-pay, to whom we have already introduced our readers.
The captain being a determined opponent of the constituted authorities,
whoever they may chance to be, and our other friend being their steady
supporter, with an equal disregard of their individual merits, it will
readily be supposed, that occasions for their coming into direct
collision are neither few nor far between. They divided the vestry
fourteen times on a motion for heating the church with warm water
instead of coals: and made speeches about liberty and expenditure, and
prodigality and hot water, which threw the whole parish into a state of
excitement. Then the captain, when he was on the visiting committee,
and his opponent overseer, brought forward certain distinct and
specific charges relative to the management of the workhouse, boldly
expressed his total want of confidence in the existing authorities, and
moved for ‘a copy of the recipe by which the paupers’ soup was
prepared, together with any documents relating thereto.’ This the
overseer steadily resisted; he fortified himself by precedent, appealed
to the established usage, and declined to produce the papers, on the
ground of the injury that would be done to the public service, if
documents of a strictly private nature, passing between the master of
the workhouse and the cook, were to be thus dragged to light on the
motion of any individual member of the vestry. The motion was lost by a
majority of two; and then the captain, who never allows himself to be
defeated, moved for a committee of inquiry into the whole subject. The
affair grew serious: the question was discussed at meeting after
meeting, and vestry after vestry; speeches were made, attacks
repudiated, personal defiances exchanged, explanations received, and
the greatest excitement prevailed, until at last, just as the question
was going to be finally decided, the vestry found that somehow or
other, they had become entangled in a point of form, from which it was
impossible to escape with propriety. So, the motion was dropped, and
everybody looked extremely important, and seemed quite satisfied with
the meritorious nature of the whole proceeding.
This was the state of affairs in our parish a week or two since, when
Simmons, the beadle, suddenly died. The lamented deceased had
over-exerted himself, a day or two previously, in conveying an aged
female, highly intoxicated, to the strong room of the work-house. The
excitement thus occasioned, added to a severe cold, which this
indefatigable officer had caught in his capacity of director of the
parish engine, by inadvertently playing over himself instead of a fire,
proved too much for a constitution already enfeebled by age; and the
intelligence was conveyed to the Board one evening that Simmons had
died, and left his respects.
The breath was scarcely out of the body of the deceased functionary,
when the field was filled with competitors for the vacant office, each
of whom rested his claims to public support, entirely on the number and
extent of his family, as if the office of beadle were originally
instituted as an encouragement for the propagation of the human
species. ‘Bung for Beadle. Five small children!’—‘Hopkins for Beadle.
Seven small children!!’—‘Timkins for Beadle. Nine small children!!!’
Such were the placards in large black letters on a white ground, which
were plentifully pasted on the walls, and posted in the windows of the
principal shops. Timkins’s success was considered certain: several
mothers of families half promised their votes, and the nine small
children would have run over the course, but for the production of
another placard, announcing the appearance of a still more meritorious
candidate. ‘Spruggins for Beadle. Ten small children (two of them
twins), and a wife!!!’ There was no resisting this; ten small children
would have been almost irresistible in themselves, without the twins,
but the touching parenthesis about that interesting production of
nature, and the still more touching allusion to Mrs. Spruggins, must
ensure success. Spruggins was the favourite at once, and the appearance
of his lady, as she went about to solicit votes (which encouraged
confident hopes of a still further addition to the house of Spruggins
at no remote period), increased the general prepossession in his
favour. The other candidates, Bung alone excepted, resigned in despair.
The day of election was fixed; and the canvass proceeded with briskness
and perseverance on both sides.
The members of the vestry could not be supposed to escape the
contagious excitement inseparable from the occasion. The majority of
the lady inhabitants of the parish declared at once for Spruggins; and
the _quondam_ overseer took the same side, on the ground that men with
large families always had been elected to the office, and that although
he must admit, that, in other respects, Spruggins was the least
qualified candidate of the two, still it was an old practice, and he
saw no reason why an old practice should be departed from. This was
enough for the captain. He immediately sided with Bung, canvassed for
him personally in all directions, wrote squibs on Spruggins, and got
his butcher to skewer them up on conspicuous joints in his shop-front;
frightened his neighbour, the old lady, into a palpitation of the
heart, by his awful denunciations of Spruggins’s party; and bounced in
and out, and up and down, and backwards and forwards, until all the
sober inhabitants of the parish thought it inevitable that he must die
of a brain fever, long before the election began.
The day of election arrived. It was no longer an individual struggle,
but a party contest between the ins and outs. The question was, whether
the withering influence of the overseers, the domination of the
churchwardens, and the blighting despotism of the vestry-clerk, should
be allowed to render the election of beadle a form—a nullity: whether
they should impose a vestry-elected beadle on the parish, to do their
bidding and forward their views, or whether the parishioners,
fearlessly asserting their undoubted rights, should elect an
independent beadle of their own.
The nomination was fixed to take place in the vestry, but so great was
the throng of anxious spectators, that it was found necessary to
adjourn to the church, where the ceremony commenced with due solemnity.
The appearance of the churchwardens and overseers, and the
ex-churchwardens and ex-overseers, with Spruggins in the rear, excited
general attention. Spruggins was a little thin man, in rusty black,
with a long pale face, and a countenance expressive of care and
fatigue, which might either be attributed to the extent of his family
or the anxiety of his feelings. His opponent appeared in a cast-off
coat of the captain’s—a blue coat with bright buttons; white trousers,
and that description of shoes familiarly known by the appellation of
‘high-lows.’ There was a serenity in the open countenance of Bung—a
kind of moral dignity in his confident air—an ‘I wish you may get it’
sort of expression in his eye—which infused animation into his
supporters, and evidently dispirited his opponents.
The ex-churchwarden rose to propose Thomas Spruggins for beadle. He had
known him long. He had had his eye upon him closely for years; he had
watched him with twofold vigilance for months. (A parishioner here
suggested that this might be termed ‘taking a double sight,’ but the
observation was drowned in loud cries of ‘Order!’) He would repeat that
he had had his eye upon him for years, and this he would say, that a
more well-conducted, a more well-behaved, a more sober, a more quiet
man, with a more well-regulated mind, he had never met with. A man with
a larger family he had never known (cheers). The parish required a man
who could be depended on (‘Hear!’ from the Spruggins side, answered by
ironical cheers from the Bung party). Such a man he now proposed (‘No,’
‘Yes’). He would not allude to individuals (the ex-churchwarden
continued, in the celebrated negative style adopted by great speakers).
He would not advert to a gentleman who had once held a high rank in the
service of his majesty; he would not say, that that gentleman was no
gentleman; he would not assert, that that man was no man; he would not
say, that he was a turbulent parishioner; he would not say, that he had
grossly misbehaved himself, not only on this, but on all former
occasions; he would not say, that he was one of those discontented and
treasonable spirits, who carried confusion and disorder wherever they
went; he would not say, that he harboured in his heart envy, and
hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness. No! He wished to have
everything comfortable and pleasant, and therefore, he would
say—nothing about him (cheers).
The captain replied in a similar parliamentary style. He would not say,
he was astonished at the speech they had just heard; he would not say,
he was disgusted (cheers). He would not retort the epithets which had
been hurled against him (renewed cheering); he would not allude to men
once in office, but now happily out of it, who had mismanaged the
workhouse, ground the paupers, diluted the beer, slack-baked the bread,
boned the meat, heightened the work, and lowered the soup (tremendous
cheers). He would not ask what such men deserved (a voice, ‘Nothing
a-day, and find themselves!’). He would not say, that one burst of
general indignation should drive them from the parish they polluted
with their presence (‘Give it him!’). He would not allude to the
unfortunate man who had been proposed—he would not say, as the vestry’s
tool, but as Beadle. He would not advert to that individual’s family;
he would not say, that nine children, twins, and a wife, were very bad
examples for pauper imitation (loud cheers). He would not advert in
detail to the qualifications of Bung. The man stood before him, and he
would not say in his presence, what he might be disposed to say of him,
if he were absent. (Here Mr. Bung telegraphed to a friend near him,
under cover of his hat, by contracting his left eye, and applying his
right thumb to the tip of his nose). It had been objected to Bung that
he had only five children (‘Hear, hear!’ from the opposition). Well; he
had yet to learn that the legislature had affixed any precise amount of
infantine qualification to the office of beadle; but taking it for
granted that an extensive family were a great requisite, he entreated
them to look to facts, and compare _data_, about which there could be
no mistake. Bung was 35 years of age. Spruggins—of whom he wished to
speak with all possible respect—was 50. Was it not more than
possible—was it not very probable—that by the time Bung attained the
latter age, he might see around him a family, even exceeding in number
and extent, that to which Spruggins at present laid claim (deafening
cheers and waving of handkerchiefs)? The captain concluded, amidst loud
applause, by calling upon the parishioners to sound the tocsin, rush to
the poll, free themselves from dictation, or be slaves for ever.
On the following day the polling began, and we never have had such a
bustle in our parish since we got up our famous anti-slavery petition,
which was such an important one, that the House of Commons ordered it
to be printed, on the motion of the member for the district. The
captain engaged two hackney-coaches and a cab for Bung’s people—the cab
for the drunken voters, and the two coaches for the old ladies, the
greater portion of whom, owing to the captain’s impetuosity, were
driven up to the poll and home again, before they recovered from their
flurry sufficiently to know, with any degree of clearness, what they
had been doing. The opposite party wholly neglected these precautions,
and the consequence was, that a great many ladies who were walking
leisurely up to the church—for it was a very hot day—to vote for
Spruggins, were artfully decoyed into the coaches, and voted for Bung.
The captain’s arguments, too, had produced considerable effect: the
attempted influence of the vestry produced a greater. A threat of
exclusive dealing was clearly established against the vestry-clerk—a
case of heartless and profligate atrocity. It appeared that the
delinquent had been in the habit of purchasing six penn’orth of
muffins, weekly, from an old woman who rents a small house in the
parish, and resides among the original settlers; on her last weekly
visit, a message was conveyed to her through the medium of the cook,
couched in mysterious terms, but indicating with sufficient clearness,
that the vestry-clerk’s appetite for muffins, in future, depended
entirely on her vote on the beadleship. This was sufficient: the stream
had been turning previously, and the impulse thus administered directed
its final course. The Bung party ordered one shilling’s-worth of
muffins weekly for the remainder of the old woman’s natural life; the
parishioners were loud in their exclamations; and the fate of Spruggins
was sealed.
It was in vain that the twins were exhibited in dresses of the same
pattern, and night-caps, to match, at the church door: the boy in Mrs.
Spruggins’s right arm, and the girl in her left—even Mrs. Spruggins
herself failed to be an object of sympathy any longer. The majority
attained by Bung on the gross poll was four hundred and twenty-eight,
and the cause of the parishioners triumphed.
CHAPTER V—THE BROKER’S MAN
The excitement of the late election has subsided, and our parish being
once again restored to a state of comparative tranquillity, we are
enabled to devote our attention to those parishioners who take little
share in our party contests or in the turmoil and bustle of public
life. And we feel sincere pleasure in acknowledging here, that in
collecting materials for this task we have been greatly assisted by Mr.
Bung himself, who has imposed on us a debt of obligation which we fear
we can never repay. The life of this gentleman has been one of a very
chequered description: he has undergone transitions—not from grave to
gay, for he never was grave—not from lively to severe, for severity
forms no part of his disposition; his fluctuations have been between
poverty in the extreme, and poverty modified, or, to use his own
emphatic language, ‘between nothing to eat and just half enough.’ He is
not, as he forcibly remarks, ‘one of those fortunate men who, if they
were to dive under one side of a barge stark-naked, would come up on
the other with a new suit of clothes on, and a ticket for soup in the
waistcoat-pocket:’ neither is he one of those, whose spirit has been
broken beyond redemption by misfortune and want. He is just one of the
careless, good-for-nothing, happy fellows, who float, cork-like, on the
surface, for the world to play at hockey with: knocked here, and there,
and everywhere: now to the right, then to the left, again up in the
air, and anon to the bottom, but always reappearing and bounding with
the stream buoyantly and merrily along. Some few months before he was
prevailed upon to stand a contested election for the office of beadle,
necessity attached him to the service of a broker; and on the
opportunities he here acquired of ascertaining the condition of most of
the poorer inhabitants of the parish, his patron, the captain, first
grounded his claims to public support. Chance threw the man in our way
a short time since. We were, in the first instance, attracted by his
prepossessing impudence at the election; we were not surprised, on
further acquaintance, to find him a shrewd, knowing fellow, with no
inconsiderable power of observation; and, after conversing with him a
little, were somewhat struck (as we dare say our readers have
frequently been in other cases) with the power some men seem to have,
not only of sympathising with, but to all appearance of understanding
feelings to which they themselves are entire strangers. We had been
expressing to the new functionary our surprise that he should ever have
served in the capacity to which we have just adverted, when we
gradually led him into one or two professional anecdotes. As we are
induced to think, on reflection, that they will tell better in nearly
his own words, than with any attempted embellishments of ours, we will
at once entitle them.
MR BUNG’S NARRATIVE
‘It’s very true, as you say, sir,’ Mr. Bung commenced, ‘that a broker’s
man’s is not a life to be envied; and in course you know as well as I
do, though you don’t say it, that people hate and scout ’em because
they’re the ministers of wretchedness, like, to poor people. But what
could I do, sir? The thing was no worse because I did it, instead of
somebody else; and if putting me in possession of a house would put me
in possession of three and sixpence a day, and levying a distress on
another man’s goods would relieve my distress and that of my family, it
can’t be expected but what I’d take the job and go through with it. I
never liked it, God knows; I always looked out for something else, and
the moment I got other work to do, I left it. If there is anything
wrong in being the agent in such matters—not the principal, mind
you—I’m sure the business, to a beginner like I was, at all events,
carries its own punishment along with it. I wished again and again that
the people would only blow me up, or pitch into me—that I wouldn’t have
minded, it’s all in my way; but it’s the being shut up by yourself in
one room for five days, without so much as an old newspaper to look at,
or anything to see out o’ the winder but the roofs and chimneys at the
back of the house, or anything to listen to, but the ticking, perhaps,
of an old Dutch clock, the sobbing of the missis, now and then, the low
talking of friends in the next room, who speak in whispers, lest “the
man” should overhear them, or perhaps the occasional opening of the
door, as a child peeps in to look at you, and then runs half-frightened
away—it’s all this, that makes you feel sneaking somehow, and ashamed
of yourself; and then, if it’s wintertime, they just give you fire
enough to make you think you’d like more, and bring in your grub as if
they wished it ’ud choke you—as I dare say they do, for the matter of
that, most heartily. If they’re very civil, they make you up a bed in
the room at night, and if they don’t, your master sends one in for you;
but there you are, without being washed or shaved all the time, shunned
by everybody, and spoken to by no one, unless some one comes in at
dinner-time, and asks you whether you want any more, in a tone as much
to say, “I hope you don’t,” or, in the evening, to inquire whether you
wouldn’t rather have a candle, after you’ve been sitting in the dark
half the night. When I was left in this way, I used to sit, think,
think, thinking, till I felt as lonesome as a kitten in a wash-house
copper with the lid on; but I believe the old brokers’ men who are
regularly trained to it, never think at all. I have heard some on ’em
say, indeed, that they don’t know how!
‘I put in a good many distresses in my time (continued Mr. Bung), and
in course I wasn’t long in finding, that some people are not as much to
be pitied as others are, and that people with good incomes who get into
difficulties, which they keep patching up day after day and week after
week, get so used to these sort of things in time, that at last they
come scarcely to feel them at all. I remember the very first place I
was put in possession of, was a gentleman’s house in this parish here,
that everybody would suppose couldn’t help having money if he tried. I
went with old Fixem, my old master, ’bout half arter eight in the
morning; rang the area-bell; servant in livery opened the door:
“Governor at home?”—“Yes, he is,” says the man; “but he’s breakfasting
just now.” “Never mind,” says Fixem, “just you tell him there’s a
gentleman here, as wants to speak to him partickler.” So the servant he
opens his eyes, and stares about him all ways—looking for the
gentleman, as it struck me, for I don’t think anybody but a man as was
stone-blind would mistake Fixem for one; and as for me, I was as seedy
as a cheap cowcumber. Hows’ever, he turns round, and goes to the
breakfast-parlour, which was a little snug sort of room at the end of
the passage, and Fixem (as we always did in that profession), without
waiting to be announced, walks in arter him, and before the servant
could get out, “Please, sir, here’s a man as wants to speak to you,”
looks in at the door as familiar and pleasant as may be. “Who the devil
are you, and how dare you walk into a gentleman’s house without leave?”
says the master, as fierce as a bull in fits. “My name,” says Fixem,
winking to the master to send the servant away, and putting the warrant
into his hands folded up like a note, “My name’s Smith,” says he, “and
I called from Johnson’s about that business of Thompson’s.”—“Oh,” says
the other, quite down on him directly, “How _is_ Thompson?” says he;
“Pray sit down, Mr. Smith: John, leave the room.” Out went the servant;
and the gentleman and Fixem looked at one another till they couldn’t
look any longer, and then they varied the amusements by looking at me,
who had been standing on the mat all this time. “Hundred and fifty
pounds, I see,” said the gentleman at last. “Hundred and fifty pound,”
said Fixem, “besides cost of levy, sheriff’s poundage, and all other
incidental expenses.”—“Um,” says the gentleman, “I shan’t be able to
settle this before to-morrow afternoon.”—“Very sorry; but I shall be
obliged to leave my man here till then,” replies Fixem, pretending to
look very miserable over it. “That’s very unfort’nate,” says the
gentleman, “for I have got a large party here to-night, and I’m ruined
if those fellows of mine get an inkling of the matter—just step here,
Mr. Smith,” says he, after a short pause. So Fixem walks with him up to
the window, and after a good deal of whispering, and a little chinking
of suverins, and looking at me, he comes back and says, “Bung, you’re a
handy fellow, and very honest I know. This gentleman wants an assistant
to clean the plate and wait at table to-day, and if you’re not
particularly engaged,” says old Fixem, grinning like mad, and shoving a
couple of suverins into my hand, “he’ll be very glad to avail himself
of your services.” Well, I laughed: and the gentleman laughed, and we
all laughed; and I went home and cleaned myself, leaving Fixem there,
and when I went back, Fixem went away, and I polished up the plate, and
waited at table, and gammoned the servants, and nobody had the least
idea I was in possession, though it very nearly came out after all; for
one of the last gentlemen who remained, came down-stairs into the hall
where I was sitting pretty late at night, and putting half-a-crown into
my hand, says, “Here, my man,” says he, “run and get me a coach, will
you?” I thought it was a do, to get me out of the house, and was just
going to say so, sulkily enough, when the gentleman (who was up to
everything) came running down-stairs, as if he was in great anxiety.
“Bung,” says he, pretending to be in a consuming passion. “Sir,” says
I. “Why the devil an’t you looking after that plate?”—“I was just going
to send him for a coach for me,” says the other gentleman. “And I was
just a-going to say,” says I—“Anybody else, my dear fellow,” interrupts
the master of the house, pushing me down the passage to get out of the
way—“anybody else; but I have put this man in possession of all the
plate and valuables, and I cannot allow him on any consideration
whatever, to leave the house. Bung, you scoundrel, go and count those
forks in the breakfast-parlour instantly.” You may be sure I went
laughing pretty hearty when I found it was all right. The money was
paid next day, with the addition of something else for myself, and that
was the best job that I (and I suspect old Fixem too) ever got in that
line.
‘But this is the bright side of the picture, sir, after all,’ resumed
Mr. Bung, laying aside the knowing look and flash air, with which he
had repeated the previous anecdote—‘and I’m sorry to say, it’s the side
one sees very, very seldom, in comparison with the dark one. The
civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who
have none; and there’s a consolation even in being able to patch up one
difficulty, to make way for another, to which very poor people are
strangers. I was once put into a house down George’s-yard—that little
dirty court at the back of the gas-works; and I never shall forget the
misery of them people, dear me! It was a distress for half a year’s
rent—two pound ten, I think. There was only two rooms in the house, and
as there was no passage, the lodgers up-stairs always went through the
room of the people of the house, as they passed in and out; and every
time they did so—which, on the average, was about four times every
quarter of an hour—they blowed up quite frightful: for their things had
been seized too, and included in the inventory. There was a little
piece of enclosed dust in front of the house, with a cinder-path
leading up to the door, and an open rain-water butt on one side. A
dirty striped curtain, on a very slack string, hung in the window, and
a little triangular bit of broken looking-glass rested on the sill
inside. I suppose it was meant for the people’s use, but their
appearance was so wretched, and so miserable, that I’m certain they
never could have plucked up courage to look themselves in the face a
second time, if they survived the fright of doing so once. There was
two or three chairs, that might have been worth, in their best days,
from eightpence to a shilling a-piece; a small deal table, an old
corner cupboard with nothing in it, and one of those bedsteads which
turn up half way, and leave the bottom legs sticking out for you to
knock your head against, or hang your hat upon; no bed, no bedding.
There was an old sack, by way of rug, before the fireplace, and four or
five children were grovelling about, among the sand on the floor. The
execution was only put in, to get ’em out of the house, for there was
nothing to take to pay the expenses; and here I stopped for three days,
though that was a mere form too: for, in course, I knew, and we all
knew, they could never pay the money. In one of the chairs, by the side
of the place where the fire ought to have been, was an old ’ooman—the
ugliest and dirtiest I ever see—who sat rocking herself backwards and
forwards, backwards and forwards, without once stopping, except for an
instant now and then, to clasp together the withered hands which, with
these exceptions, she kept constantly rubbing upon her knees, just
raising and depressing her fingers convulsively, in time to the rocking
of the chair. On the other side sat the mother with an infant in her
arms, which cried till it cried itself to sleep, and when it ’woke,
cried till it cried itself off again. The old ’ooman’s voice I never
heard: she seemed completely stupefied; and as to the mother’s, it
would have been better if she had been so too, for misery had changed
her to a devil. If you had heard how she cursed the little naked
children as was rolling on the floor, and seen how savagely she struck
the infant when it cried with hunger, you’d have shuddered as much as I
did. There they remained all the time: the children ate a morsel of
bread once or twice, and I gave ’em best part of the dinners my missis
brought me, but the woman ate nothing; they never even laid on the
bedstead, nor was the room swept or cleaned all the time. The
neighbours were all too poor themselves to take any notice of ’em, but
from what I could make out from the abuse of the woman up-stairs, it
seemed the husband had been transported a few weeks before. When the
time was up, the landlord and old Fixem too, got rather frightened
about the family, and so they made a stir about it, and had ’em taken
to the workhouse. They sent the sick couch for the old ’ooman, and
Simmons took the children away at night. The old ’ooman went into the
infirmary, and very soon died. The children are all in the house to
this day, and very comfortable they are in comparison. As to the
mother, there was no taming her at all. She had been a quiet,
hard-working woman, I believe, but her misery had actually drove her
wild; so after she had been sent to the house of correction
half-a-dozen times, for throwing inkstands at the overseers,
blaspheming the churchwardens, and smashing everybody as come near her,
she burst a blood-vessel one mornin’, and died too; and a happy release
it was, both for herself and the old paupers, male and female, which
she used to tip over in all directions, as if they were so many
skittles, and she the ball.
‘Now this was bad enough,’ resumed Mr. Bung, taking a half-step towards
the door, as if to intimate that he had nearly concluded. ‘This was bad
enough, but there was a sort of quiet misery—if you understand what I
mean by that, sir—about a lady at one house I was put into, as touched
me a good deal more. It doesn’t matter where it was exactly: indeed,
I’d rather not say, but it was the same sort o’ job. I went with Fixem
in the usual way—there was a year’s rent in arrear; a very small
servant-girl opened the door, and three or four fine-looking little
children was in the front parlour we were shown into, which was very
clean, but very scantily furnished, much like the children themselves.
“Bung,” says Fixem to me, in a low voice, when we were left alone for a
minute, “I know something about this here family, and my opinion is,
it’s no go.” “Do you think they can’t settle?” says I, quite anxiously;
for I liked the looks of them children. Fixem shook his head, and was
just about to reply, when the door opened, and in come a lady, as white
as ever I see any one in my days, except about the eyes, which were red
with crying. She walked in, as firm as I could have done; shut the door
carefully after her, and sat herself down with a face as composed as if
it was made of stone. “What is the matter, gentlemen?” says she, in a
surprisin’ steady voice. “_Is_ this an execution?” “It is, mum,” says
Fixem. The lady looked at him as steady as ever: she didn’t seem to
have understood him. “It is, mum,” says Fixem again; “this is my
warrant of distress, mum,” says he, handing it over as polite as if it
was a newspaper which had been bespoke arter the next gentleman.
‘The lady’s lip trembled as she took the printed paper. She cast her
eye over it, and old Fixem began to explain the form, but saw she
wasn’t reading it, plain enough, poor thing. “Oh, my God!” says she,
suddenly a-bursting out crying, letting the warrant fall, and hiding
her face in her hands. “Oh, my God! what will become of us!” The noise
she made, brought in a young lady of about nineteen or twenty, who, I
suppose, had been a-listening at the door, and who had got a little boy
in her arms: she sat him down in the lady’s lap, without speaking, and
she hugged the poor little fellow to her bosom, and cried over him,
till even old Fixem put on his blue spectacles to hide the two tears,
that was a-trickling down, one on each side of his dirty face. “Now,
dear ma,” says the young lady, “you know how much you have borne. For
all our sakes—for pa’s sake,” says she, “don’t give way to this!”—“No,
no, I won’t!” says the lady, gathering herself up, hastily, and drying
her eyes; “I am very foolish, but I’m better now—much better.” And then
she roused herself up, went with us into every room while we took the
inventory, opened all the drawers of her own accord, sorted the
children’s little clothes to make the work easier; and, except doing
everything in a strange sort of hurry, seemed as calm and composed as
if nothing had happened. When we came down-stairs again, she hesitated
a minute or two, and at last says, “Gentlemen,” says she, “I am afraid
I have done wrong, and perhaps it may bring you into trouble. I
secreted just now,” she says, “the only trinket I have left in the
world—here it is.” So she lays down on the table a little miniature
mounted in gold. “It’s a miniature,” she says, “of my poor dear father!
I little thought once, that I should ever thank God for depriving me of
the original, but I do, and have done for years back, most fervently.
Take it away, sir,” she says, “it’s a face that never turned from me in
sickness and distress, and I can hardly bear to turn from it now, when,
God knows, I suffer both in no ordinary degree.” I couldn’t say
nothing, but I raised my head from the inventory which I was filling
up, and looked at Fixem; the old fellow nodded to me significantly, so
I ran my pen through the “_Mini_” I had just written, and left the
miniature on the table.
‘Well, sir, to make short of a long story, I was left in possession,
and in possession I remained; and though I was an ignorant man, and the
master of the house a clever one, I saw what he never did, but what he
would give worlds now (if he had ’em) to have seen in time. I saw, sir,
that his wife was wasting away, beneath cares of which she never
complained, and griefs she never told. I saw that she was dying before
his eyes; I knew that one exertion from him might have saved her, but
he never made it. I don’t blame him: I don’t think he _could_ rouse
himself. She had so long anticipated all his wishes, and acted for him,
that he was a lost man when left to himself. I used to think when I
caught sight of her, in the clothes she used to wear, which looked
shabby even upon her, and would have been scarcely decent on any one
else, that if I was a gentleman it would wring my very heart to see the
woman that was a smart and merry girl when I courted her, so altered
through her love for me. Bitter cold and damp weather it was, yet,
though her dress was thin, and her shoes none of the best, during the
whole three days, from morning to night, she was out of doors running
about to try and raise the money. The money _was_ raised and the
execution was paid out. The whole family crowded into the room where I
was, when the money arrived. The father was quite happy as the
inconvenience was removed—I dare say he didn’t know how; the children
looked merry and cheerful again; the eldest girl was bustling about,
making preparations for the first comfortable meal they had had since
the distress was put in; and the mother looked pleased to see them all
so. But if ever I saw death in a woman’s face, I saw it in hers that
night.
‘I was right, sir,’ continued Mr. Bung, hurriedly passing his
coat-sleeve over his face; ‘the family grew more prosperous, and good
fortune arrived. But it was too late. Those children are motherless
now, and their father would give up all he has since gained—house,
home, goods, money: all that he has, or ever can have, to restore the
wife he has lost.’
CHAPTER VI—THE LADIES’ SOCIETIES
Our Parish is very prolific in ladies’ charitable institutions. In
winter, when wet feet are common, and colds not scarce, we have the
ladies’ soup distribution society, the ladies’ coal distribution
society, and the ladies’ blanket distribution society; in summer, when
stone fruits flourish and stomach aches prevail, we have the ladies’
dispensary, and the ladies’ sick visitation committee; and all the year
round we have the ladies’ child’s examination society, the ladies’
bible and prayer-book circulation society, and the ladies’
childbed-linen monthly loan society. The two latter are decidedly the
most important; whether they are productive of more benefit than the
rest, it is not for us to say, but we can take upon ourselves to
affirm, with the utmost solemnity, that they create a greater stir and
more bustle, than all the others put together.
We should be disposed to affirm, on the first blush of the matter, that
the bible and prayer-book society is not so popular as the
childbed-linen society; the bible and prayer-book society has, however,
considerably increased in importance within the last year or two,
having derived some adventitious aid from the factious opposition of
the child’s examination society; which factious opposition originated
in manner following:—When the young curate was popular, and all the
unmarried ladies in the parish took a serious turn, the charity
children all at once became objects of peculiar and especial interest.
The three Miss Browns (enthusiastic admirers of the curate) taught, and
exercised, and examined, and re-examined the unfortunate children,
until the boys grew pale, and the girls consumptive with study and
fatigue. The three Miss Browns stood it out very well, because they
relieved each other; but the children, having no relief at all,
exhibited decided symptoms of weariness and care. The unthinking part
of the parishioners laughed at all this, but the more reflective
portion of the inhabitants abstained from expressing any opinion on the
subject until that of the curate had been clearly ascertained.
The opportunity was not long wanting. The curate preached a charity
sermon on behalf of the charity school, and in the charity sermon
aforesaid, expatiated in glowing terms on the praiseworthy and
indefatigable exertions of certain estimable individuals. Sobs were
heard to issue from the three Miss Browns’ pew; the pew-opener of the
division was seen to hurry down the centre aisle to the vestry door,
and to return immediately, bearing a glass of water in her hand. A low
moaning ensued; two more pew-openers rushed to the spot, and the three
Miss Browns, each supported by a pew-opener, were led out of the
church, and led in again after the lapse of five minutes with white
pocket-handkerchiefs to their eyes, as if they had been attending a
funeral in the churchyard adjoining. If any doubt had for a moment
existed, as to whom the allusion was intended to apply, it was at once
removed. The wish to enlighten the charity children became universal,
and the three Miss Browns were unanimously besought to divide the
school into classes, and to assign each class to the superintendence of
two young ladies.
A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a little patronage is more
so; the three Miss Browns appointed all the old maids, and carefully
excluded the young ones. Maiden aunts triumphed, mammas were reduced to
the lowest depths of despair, and there is no telling in what act of
violence the general indignation against the three Miss Browns might
have vented itself, had not a perfectly providential occurrence changed
the tide of public feeling. Mrs. Johnson Parker, the mother of seven
extremely fine girls—all unmarried—hastily reported to several other
mammas of several other unmarried families, that five old men, six old
women, and children innumerable, in the free seats near her pew, were
in the habit of coming to church every Sunday, without either bible or
prayer-book. Was this to be borne in a civilised country? Could such
things be tolerated in a Christian land? Never! A ladies’ bible and
prayer-book distribution society was instantly formed: president, Mrs.
Johnson Parker; treasurers, auditors, and secretary, the Misses Johnson
Parker: subscriptions were entered into, books were bought, all the
free-seat people provided therewith, and when the first lesson was
given out, on the first Sunday succeeding these events, there was such
a dropping of books, and rustling of leaves, that it was morally
impossible to hear one word of the service for five minutes afterwards.
The three Miss Browns, and their party, saw the approaching danger, and
endeavoured to avert it by ridicule and sarcasm. Neither the old men
nor the old women could read their books, now they had got them, said
the three Miss Browns. Never mind; they could learn, replied Mrs.
Johnson Parker. The children couldn’t read either, suggested the three
Miss Browns. No matter; they could be taught, retorted Mrs. Johnson
Parker. A balance of parties took place. The Miss Browns publicly
examined—popular feeling inclined to the child’s examination society.
The Miss Johnson Parkers publicly distributed—a reaction took place in
favour of the prayer-book distribution. A feather would have turned the
scale, and a feather did turn it. A missionary returned from the West
Indies; he was to be presented to the Dissenters’ Missionary Society on
his marriage with a wealthy widow. Overtures were made to the
Dissenters by the Johnson Parkers. Their object was the same, and why
not have a joint meeting of the two societies? The proposition was
accepted. The meeting was duly heralded by public announcement, and the
room was crowded to suffocation. The Missionary appeared on the
platform; he was hailed with enthusiasm. He repeated a dialogue he had
heard between two negroes, behind a hedge, on the subject of
distribution societies; the approbation was tumultuous. He gave an
imitation of the two negroes in broken English; the roof was rent with
applause. From that period we date (with one trifling exception) a
daily increase in the popularity of the distribution society, and an
increase of popularity, which the feeble and impotent opposition of the
examination party, has only tended to augment.
Now, the great points about the childbed-linen monthly loan society
are, that it is less dependent on the fluctuations of public opinion
than either the distribution or the child’s examination; and that, come
what may, there is never any lack of objects on which to exercise its
benevolence. Our parish is a very populous one, and, if anything,
contributes, we should be disposed to say, rather more than its due
share to the aggregate amount of births in the metropolis and its
environs. The consequence is, that the monthly loan society flourishes,
and invests its members with a most enviable amount of bustling
patronage. The society (whose only notion of dividing time, would
appear to be its allotment into months) holds monthly tea-drinkings, at
which the monthly report is received, a secretary elected for the month
ensuing, and such of the monthly boxes as may not happen to be out on
loan for the month, carefully examined.
We were never present at one of these meetings, from all of which it is
scarcely necessary to say, gentlemen are carefully excluded; but Mr.
Bung has been called before the board once or twice, and we have his
authority for stating, that its proceedings are conducted with great
order and regularity: not more than four members being allowed to speak
at one time on any pretence whatever. The regular committee is composed
exclusively of married ladies, but a vast number of young unmarried
ladies of from eighteen to twenty-five years of age, respectively, are
admitted as honorary members, partly because they are very useful in
replenishing the boxes, and visiting the confined; partly because it is
highly desirable that they should be initiated, at an early period,
into the more serious and matronly duties of after-life; and partly,
because prudent mammas have not unfrequently been known to turn this
circumstance to wonderfully good account in matrimonial speculations.
In addition to the loan of the monthly boxes (which are always painted
blue, with the name of the society in large white letters on the lid),
the society dispense occasional grants of beef-tea, and a composition
of warm beer, spice, eggs, and sugar, commonly known by the name of
‘candle,’ to its patients. And here again the services of the honorary
members are called into requisition, and most cheerfully conceded.
Deputations of twos or threes are sent out to visit the patients, and
on these occasions there is such a tasting of candle and beef-tea, such
a stirring about of little messes in tiny saucepans on the hob, such a
dressing and undressing of infants, such a tying, and folding, and
pinning; such a nursing and warming of little legs and feet before the
fire, such a delightful confusion of talking and cooking, bustle,
importance, and officiousness, as never can be enjoyed in its full
extent but on similar occasions.
In rivalry of these two institutions, and as a last expiring effort to
acquire parochial popularity, the child’s examination people
determined, the other day, on having a grand public examination of the
pupils; and the large school-room of the national seminary was, by and
with the consent of the parish authorities, devoted to the purpose.
Invitation circulars were forwarded to all the principal parishioners,
including, of course, the heads of the other two societies, for whose
especial behoof and edification the display was intended; and a large
audience was confidently anticipated on the occasion. The floor was
carefully scrubbed the day before, under the immediate superintendence
of the three Miss Browns; forms were placed across the room for the
accommodation of the visitors, specimens in writing were carefully
selected, and as carefully patched and touched up, until they
astonished the children who had written them, rather more than the
company who read them; sums in compound addition were rehearsed and
re-rehearsed until all the children had the totals by heart; and the
preparations altogether were on the most laborious and most
comprehensive scale. The morning arrived: the children were
yellow-soaped and flannelled, and towelled, till their faces shone
again; every pupil’s hair was carefully combed into his or her eyes, as
the case might be; the girls were adorned with snow-white tippets, and
caps bound round the head by a single purple ribbon: the necks of the
elder boys were fixed into collars of startling dimensions.
The doors were thrown open, and the Misses Brown and Co. were
discovered in plain white muslin dresses, and caps of the same—the
child’s examination uniform. The room filled: the greetings of the
company were loud and cordial. The distributionists trembled, for their
popularity was at stake. The eldest boy fell forward, and delivered a
propitiatory address from behind his collar. It was from the pen of Mr.
Henry Brown; the applause was universal, and the Johnson Parkers were
aghast. The examination proceeded with success, and terminated in
triumph. The child’s examination society gained a momentary victory,
and the Johnson Parkers retreated in despair.
A secret council of the distributionists was held that night, with Mrs.
Johnson Parker in the chair, to consider of the best means of
recovering the ground they had lost in the favour of the parish. What
could be done? Another meeting! Alas! who was to attend it? The
Missionary would not do twice; and the slaves were emancipated. A bold
step must be taken. The parish must be astonished in some way or other;
but no one was able to suggest what the step should be. At length, a
very old lady was heard to mumble, in indistinct tones, ‘Exeter Hall.’
A sudden light broke in upon the meeting. It was unanimously resolved,
that a deputation of old ladies should wait upon a celebrated orator,
imploring his assistance, and the favour of a speech; and the
deputation should also wait on two or three other imbecile old women,
not resident in the parish, and entreat their attendance. The
application was successful, the meeting was held; the orator (an
Irishman) came. He talked of green isles—other shores—vast
Atlantic—bosom of the deep—Christian charity—blood and
extermination—mercy in hearts—arms in hands—altars and homes—household
gods. He wiped his eyes, he blew his nose, and he quoted Latin. The
effect was tremendous—the Latin was a decided hit. Nobody knew exactly
what it was about, but everybody knew it must be affecting, because
even the orator was overcome. The popularity of the distribution
society among the ladies of our parish is unprecedented; and the
child’s examination is going fast to decay.
CHAPTER VII—OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOUR
We are very fond of speculating as we walk through a street, on the
character and pursuits of the people who inhabit it; and nothing so
materially assists us in these speculations as the appearance of the
house doors. The various expressions of the human countenance afford a
beautiful and interesting study; but there is something in the
physiognomy of street-door knockers, almost as characteristic, and
nearly as infallible. Whenever we visit a man for the first time, we
contemplate the features of his knocker with the greatest curiosity,
for we well know, that between the man and his knocker, there will
inevitably be a greater or less degree of resemblance and sympathy.
For instance, there is one description of knocker that used to be
common enough, but which is fast passing away—a large round one, with
the jolly face of a convivial lion smiling blandly at you, as you twist
the sides of your hair into a curl or pull up your shirt-collar while
you are waiting for the door to be opened; we never saw that knocker on
the door of a churlish man—so far as our experience is concerned, it
invariably bespoke hospitality and another bottle.
No man ever saw this knocker on the door of a small attorney or
bill-broker; they always patronise the other lion; a heavy
ferocious-looking fellow, with a countenance expressive of savage
stupidity—a sort of grand master among the knockers, and a great
favourite with the selfish and brutal.
Then there is a little pert Egyptian knocker, with a long thin face, a
pinched-up nose, and a very sharp chin; he is most in vogue with your
government-office people, in light drabs and starched cravats; little
spare, priggish men, who are perfectly satisfied with their own
opinions, and consider themselves of paramount importance.
We were greatly troubled a few years ago, by the innovation of a new
kind of knocker, without any face at all, composed of a wreath
depending from a hand or small truncheon. A little trouble and
attention, however, enabled us to overcome this difficulty, and to
reconcile the new system to our favourite theory. You will invariably
find this knocker on the doors of cold and formal people, who always
ask you why you _don’t_ come, and never say _do_.
Everybody knows the brass knocker is common to suburban villas, and
extensive boarding-schools; and having noticed this genus we have
recapitulated all the most prominent and strongly-defined species.
Some phrenologists affirm, that the agitation of a man’s brain by
different passions, produces corresponding developments in the form of
his skull. Do not let us be understood as pushing our theory to the
full length of asserting, that any alteration in a man’s disposition
would produce a visible effect on the feature of his knocker. Our
position merely is, that in such a case, the magnetism which must exist
between a man and his knocker, would induce the man to remove, and seek
some knocker more congenial to his altered feelings. If you ever find a
man changing his habitation without any reasonable pretext, depend upon
it, that, although he may not be aware of the fact himself, it is
because he and his knocker are at variance. This is a new theory, but
we venture to launch it, nevertheless, as being quite as ingenious and
infallible as many thousands of the learned speculations which are
daily broached for public good and private fortune-making.
Entertaining these feelings on the subject of knockers, it will be
readily imagined with what consternation we viewed the entire removal
of the knocker from the door of the next house to the one we lived in,
some time ago, and the substitution of a bell. This was a calamity we
had never anticipated. The bare idea of anybody being able to exist
without a knocker, appeared so wild and visionary, that it had never
for one instant entered our imagination.
We sauntered moodily from the spot, and bent our steps towards
Eaton-square, then just building. What was our astonishment and
indignation to find that bells were fast becoming the rule, and
knockers the exception! Our theory trembled beneath the shock. We
hastened home; and fancying we foresaw in the swift progress of events,
its entire abolition, resolved from that day forward to vent our
speculations on our next-door neighbours in person. The house adjoining
ours on the left hand was uninhabited, and we had, therefore, plenty of
leisure to observe our next-door neighbours on the other side.
The house without the knocker was in the occupation of a city clerk,
and there was a neatly-written bill in the parlour window intimating
that lodgings for a single gentleman were to be let within.
It was a neat, dull little house, on the shady side of the way, with
new, narrow floorcloth in the passage, and new, narrow stair-carpets up
to the first floor. The paper was new, and the paint was new, and the
furniture was new; and all three, paper, paint, and furniture, bespoke
the limited means of the tenant. There was a little red and black
carpet in the drawing-room, with a border of flooring all the way
round; a few stained chairs and a pembroke table. A pink shell was
displayed on each of the little sideboards, which, with the addition of
a tea-tray and caddy, a few more shells on the mantelpiece, and three
peacock’s feathers tastefully arranged above them, completed the
decorative furniture of the apartment.
This was the room destined for the reception of the single gentleman
during the day, and a little back room on the same floor was assigned
as his sleeping apartment by night.
The bill had not been long in the window, when a stout, good-humoured
looking gentleman, of about five-and-thirty, appeared as a candidate
for the tenancy. Terms were soon arranged, for the bill was taken down
immediately after his first visit. In a day or two the single gentleman
came in, and shortly afterwards his real character came out.
First of all, he displayed a most extraordinary partiality for sitting
up till three or four o’clock in the morning, drinking
whiskey-and-water, and smoking cigars; then he invited friends home,
who used to come at ten o’clock, and begin to get happy about the small
hours, when they evinced their perfect contentment by singing songs
with half-a-dozen verses of two lines each, and a chorus of ten, which
chorus used to be shouted forth by the whole strength of the company,
in the most enthusiastic and vociferous manner, to the great annoyance
of the neighbours, and the special discomfort of another single
gentleman overhead.
Now, this was bad enough, occurring as it did three times a week on the
average, but this was not all; for when the company _did_ go away,
instead of walking quietly down the street, as anybody else’s company
would have done, they amused themselves by making alarming and
frightful noises, and counterfeiting the shrieks of females in
distress; and one night, a red-faced gentleman in a white hat knocked
in the most urgent manner at the door of the powdered-headed old
gentleman at No. 3, and when the powdered-headed old gentleman, who
thought one of his married daughters must have been taken ill
prematurely, had groped down-stairs, and after a great deal of
unbolting and key-turning, opened the street door, the red-faced man in
the white hat said he hoped he’d excuse his giving him so much trouble,
but he’d feel obliged if he’d favour him with a glass of cold spring
water, and the loan of a shilling for a cab to take him home, on which
the old gentleman slammed the door and went up-stairs, and threw the
contents of his water jug out of window—very straight, only it went
over the wrong man; and the whole street was involved in confusion.
A joke’s a joke; and even practical jests are very capital in their
way, if you can only get the other party to see the fun of them; but
the population of our street were so dull of apprehension, as to be
quite lost to a sense of the drollery of this proceeding: and the
consequence was, that our next-door neighbour was obliged to tell the
single gentleman, that unless he gave up entertaining his friends at
home, he really must be compelled to part with him.
The single gentleman received the remonstrance with great good-humour,
and promised from that time forward, to spend his evenings at a
coffee-house—a determination which afforded general and unmixed
satisfaction.
The next night passed off very well, everybody being delighted with the
change; but on the next, the noises were renewed with greater spirit
than ever. The single gentleman’s friends being unable to see him in
his own house every alternate night, had come to the determination of
seeing him home every night; and what with the discordant greetings of
the friends at parting, and the noise created by the single gentleman
in his passage up-stairs, and his subsequent struggles to get his boots
off, the evil was not to be borne. So, our next-door neighbour gave the
single gentleman, who was a very good lodger in other respects, notice
to quit; and the single gentleman went away, and entertained his
friends in other lodgings.
The next applicant for the vacant first floor, was of a very different
character from the troublesome single gentleman who had just quitted
it. He was a tall, thin, young gentleman, with a profusion of brown
hair, reddish whiskers, and very slightly developed moustaches. He wore
a braided surtout, with frogs behind, light grey trousers, and
wash-leather gloves, and had altogether rather a military appearance.
So unlike the roystering single gentleman. Such insinuating manners,
and such a delightful address! So seriously disposed, too! When he
first came to look at the lodgings, he inquired most particularly
whether he was sure to be able to get a seat in the parish church; and
when he had agreed to take them, he requested to have a list of the
different local charities, as he intended to subscribe his mite to the
most deserving among them.
Our next-door neighbour was now perfectly happy. He had got a lodger at
last, of just his own way of thinking—a serious, well-disposed man, who
abhorred gaiety, and loved retirement. He took down the bill with a
light heart, and pictured in imagination a long series of quiet
Sundays, on which he and his lodger would exchange mutual civilities
and Sunday papers.
The serious man arrived, and his luggage was to arrive from the country
next morning. He borrowed a clean shirt, and a prayer-book, from our
next-door neighbour, and retired to rest at an early hour, requesting
that he might be called punctually at ten o’clock next morning—not
before, as he was much fatigued.
He _was_ called, and did not answer: he was called again, but there was
no reply. Our next-door neighbour became alarmed, and burst the door
open. The serious man had left the house mysteriously; carrying with
him the shirt, the prayer-book, a teaspoon, and the bedclothes.
Whether this occurrence, coupled with the irregularities of his former
lodger, gave our next-door neighbour an aversion to single gentlemen,
we know not; we only know that the next bill which made its appearance
in the parlour window intimated generally, that there were furnished
apartments to let on the first floor. The bill was soon removed. The
new lodgers at first attracted our curiosity, and afterwards excited
our interest.
They were a young lad of eighteen or nineteen, and his mother, a lady
of about fifty, or it might be less. The mother wore a widow’s weeds,
and the boy was also clothed in deep mourning. They were poor—very
poor; for their only means of support arose from the pittance the boy
earned, by copying writings, and translating for booksellers.
They had removed from some country place and settled in London; partly
because it afforded better chances of employment for the boy, and
partly, perhaps, with the natural desire to leave a place where they
had been in better circumstances, and where their poverty was known.
They were proud under their reverses, and above revealing their wants
and privations to strangers. How bitter those privations were, and how
hard the boy worked to remove them, no one ever knew but themselves.
Night after night, two, three, four hours after midnight, could we hear
the occasional raking up of the scanty fire, or the hollow and
half-stifled cough, which indicated his being still at work; and day
after day, could we see more plainly that nature had set that unearthly
light in his plaintive face, which is the beacon of her worst disease.
Actuated, we hope, by a higher feeling than mere curiosity, we
contrived to establish, first an acquaintance, and then a close
intimacy, with the poor strangers. Our worst fears were realised; the
boy was sinking fast. Through a part of the winter, and the whole of
the following spring and summer, his labours were unceasingly
prolonged: and the mother attempted to procure needle-work,
embroidery—anything for bread.
A few shillings now and then, were all she could earn. The boy worked
steadily on; dying by minutes, but never once giving utterance to
complaint or murmur.
One beautiful autumn evening we went to pay our customary visit to the
invalid. His little remaining strength had been decreasing rapidly for
two or three days preceding, and he was lying on the sofa at the open
window, gazing at the setting sun. His mother had been reading the
Bible to him, for she closed the book as we entered, and advanced to
meet us.
‘I was telling William,’ she said, ‘that we must manage to take him
into the country somewhere, so that he may get quite well. He is not
ill, you know, but he is not very strong, and has exerted himself too
much lately.’ Poor thing! The tears that streamed through her fingers,
as she turned aside, as if to adjust her close widow’s cap, too plainly
showed how fruitless was the attempt to deceive herself.
We sat down by the head of the sofa, but said nothing, for we saw the
breath of life was passing gently but rapidly from the young form
before us. At every respiration, his heart beat more slowly.
The boy placed one hand in ours, grasped his mother’s arm with the
other, drew her hastily towards him, and fervently kissed her cheek.
There was a pause. He sunk back upon his pillow, and looked long and
earnestly in his mother’s face.
‘William, William!’ murmured the mother, after a long interval, ‘don’t
look at me so—speak to me, dear!’
The boy smiled languidly, but an instant afterwards his features
resolved into the same cold, solemn gaze.
‘William, dear William! rouse yourself; don’t look at me so, love—pray
don’t! Oh, my God! what shall I do!’ cried the widow, clasping her
hands in agony—‘my dear boy! he is dying!’ The boy raised himself by a
violent effort, and folded his hands together—‘Mother! dear, dear
mother, bury me in the open fields—anywhere but in these dreadful
streets. I should like to be where you can see my grave, but not in
these close crowded streets; they have killed me; kiss me again,
mother; put your arm round my neck—’
He fell back, and a strange expression stole upon his features; not of
pain or suffering, but an indescribable fixing of every line and
muscle.
The boy was dead.
SCENES
CHAPTER I—THE STREETS—MORNING
The appearance presented by the streets of London an hour before
sunrise, on a summer’s morning, is most striking even to the few whose
unfortunate pursuits of pleasure, or scarcely less unfortunate pursuits
of business, cause them to be well acquainted with the scene. There is
an air of cold, solitary desolation about the noiseless streets which
we are accustomed to see thronged at other times by a busy, eager
crowd, and over the quiet, closely-shut buildings, which throughout the
day are swarming with life and bustle, that is very impressive.
The last drunken man, who shall find his way home before sunlight, has
just staggered heavily along, roaring out the burden of the drinking
song of the previous night: the last houseless vagrant whom penury and
police have left in the streets, has coiled up his chilly limbs in some
paved comer, to dream of food and warmth. The drunken, the dissipated,
and the wretched have disappeared; the more sober and orderly part of
the population have not yet awakened to the labours of the day, and the
stillness of death is over the streets; its very hue seems to be
imparted to them, cold and lifeless as they look in the grey, sombre
light of daybreak. The coach-stands in the larger thoroughfares are
deserted: the night-houses are closed; and the chosen promenades of
profligate misery are empty.
An occasional policeman may alone be seen at the street corners,
listlessly gazing on the deserted prospect before him; and now and then
a rakish-looking cat runs stealthily across the road and descends his
own area with as much caution and slyness—bounding first on the
water-butt, then on the dust-hole, and then alighting on the
flag-stones—as if he were conscious that his character depended on his
gallantry of the preceding night escaping public observation. A
partially opened bedroom-window here and there, bespeaks the heat of
the weather, and the uneasy slumbers of its occupant; and the dim
scanty flicker of the rushlight, through the window-blind, denotes the
chamber of watching or sickness. With these few exceptions, the streets
present no signs of life, nor the houses of habitation.
An hour wears away; the spires of the churches and roofs of the
principal buildings are faintly tinged with the light of the rising
sun; and the streets, by almost imperceptible degrees, begin to resume
their bustle and animation. Market-carts roll slowly along: the sleepy
waggoner impatiently urging on his tired horses, or vainly endeavouring
to awaken the boy, who, luxuriously stretched on the top of the
fruit-baskets, forgets, in happy oblivion, his long-cherished curiosity
to behold the wonders of London.
Rough, sleepy-looking animals of strange appearance, something between
ostlers and hackney-coachmen, begin to take down the shutters of early
public-houses; and little deal tables, with the ordinary preparations
for a street breakfast, make their appearance at the customary
stations. Numbers of men and women (principally the latter), carrying
upon their heads heavy baskets of fruit, toil down the park side of
Piccadilly, on their way to Covent-garden, and, following each other in
rapid succession, form a long straggling line from thence to the turn
of the road at Knightsbridge.
Here and there, a bricklayer’s labourer, with the day’s dinner tied up
in a handkerchief, walks briskly to his work, and occasionally a little
knot of three or four schoolboys on a stolen bathing expedition rattle
merrily over the pavement, their boisterous mirth contrasting forcibly
with the demeanour of the little sweep, who, having knocked and rung
till his arm aches, and being interdicted by a merciful legislature
from endangering his lungs by calling out, sits patiently down on the
door-step, until the housemaid may happen to awake.
Covent-garden market, and the avenues leading to it, are thronged with
carts of all sorts, sizes, and descriptions, from the heavy lumbering
waggon, with its four stout horses, to the jingling costermonger’s
cart, with its consumptive donkey. The pavement is already strewed with
decayed cabbage-leaves, broken hay-bands, and all the indescribable
litter of a vegetable market; men are shouting, carts backing, horses
neighing, boys fighting, basket-women talking, piemen expatiating on
the excellence of their pastry, and donkeys braying. These and a
hundred other sounds form a compound discordant enough to a Londoner’s
ears, and remarkably disagreeable to those of country gentlemen who are
sleeping at the Hummums for the first time.
Another hour passes away, and the day begins in good earnest. The
servant of all work, who, under the plea of sleeping very soundly, has
utterly disregarded ‘Missis’s’ ringing for half an hour previously, is
warned by Master (whom Missis has sent up in his drapery to the
landing-place for that purpose), that it’s half-past six, whereupon she
awakes all of a sudden, with well-feigned astonishment, and goes
down-stairs very sulkily, wishing, while she strikes a light, that the
principle of spontaneous combustion would extend itself to coals and
kitchen range. When the fire is lighted, she opens the street-door to
take in the milk, when, by the most singular coincidence in the world,
she discovers that the servant next door has just taken in her milk
too, and that Mr. Todd’s young man over the way, is, by an equally
extraordinary chance, taking down his master’s shutters. The inevitable
consequence is, that she just steps, milk-jug in hand, as far as next
door, just to say ‘good morning’ to Betsy Clark, and that Mr. Todd’s
young man just steps over the way to say ‘good morning’ to both of ’em;
and as the aforesaid Mr. Todd’s young man is almost as good-looking and
fascinating as the baker himself, the conversation quickly becomes very
interesting, and probably would become more so, if Betsy Clark’s
Missis, who always will be a-followin’ her about, didn’t give an angry
tap at her bedroom window, on which Mr. Todd’s young man tries to
whistle coolly, as he goes back to his shop much faster than he came
from it; and the two girls run back to their respective places, and
shut their street-doors with surprising softness, each of them poking
their heads out of the front parlour window, a minute afterwards,
however, ostensibly with the view of looking at the mail which just
then passes by, but really for the purpose of catching another glimpse
of Mr. Todd’s young man, who being fond of mails, but more of females,
takes a short look at the mails, and a long look at the girls, much to
the satisfaction of all parties concerned.
The mail itself goes on to the coach-office in due course, and the
passengers who are going out by the early coach, stare with
astonishment at the passengers who are coming in by the early coach,
who look blue and dismal, and are evidently under the influence of that
odd feeling produced by travelling, which makes the events of yesterday
morning seem as if they had happened at least six months ago, and
induces people to wonder with considerable gravity whether the friends
and relations they took leave of a fortnight before, have altered much
since they have left them. The coach-office is all alive, and the
coaches which are just going out, are surrounded by the usual crowd of
Jews and nondescripts, who seem to consider, Heaven knows why, that it
is quite impossible any man can mount a coach without requiring at
least sixpenny-worth of oranges, a penknife, a pocket-book, a last
year’s annual, a pencil-case, a piece of sponge, and a small series of
caricatures.
Half an hour more, and the sun darts his bright rays cheerfully down
the still half-empty streets, and shines with sufficient force to rouse
the dismal laziness of the apprentice, who pauses every other minute
from his task of sweeping out the shop and watering the pavement in
front of it, to tell another apprentice similarly employed, how hot it
will be to-day, or to stand with his right hand shading his eyes, and
his left resting on the broom, gazing at the ‘Wonder,’ or the
‘Tally-ho,’ or the ‘Nimrod,’ or some other fast coach, till it is out
of sight, when he re-enters the shop, envying the passengers on the
outside of the fast coach, and thinking of the old red brick house
‘down in the country,’ where he went to school: the miseries of the
milk and water, and thick bread and scrapings, fading into nothing
before the pleasant recollection of the green field the boys used to
play in, and the green pond he was caned for presuming to fall into,
and other schoolboy associations.
Cabs, with trunks and band-boxes between the drivers’ legs and outside
the apron, rattle briskly up and down the streets on their way to the
coach-offices or steam-packet wharfs; and the cab-drivers and
hackney-coachmen who are on the stand polish up the ornamental part of
their dingy vehicles—the former wondering how people can prefer ‘them
wild beast cariwans of homnibuses, to a riglar cab with a fast
trotter,’ and the latter admiring how people can trust their necks into
one of ‘them crazy cabs, when they can have a ’spectable ’ackney cotche
with a pair of ’orses as von’t run away with no vun;’ a consolation
unquestionably founded on fact, seeing that a hackney-coach horse never
was known to run at all, ‘except,’ as the smart cabman in front of the
rank observes, ‘except one, and _he_ run back’ards.’
The shops are now completely opened, and apprentices and shopmen are
busily engaged in cleaning and decking the windows for the day. The
bakers’ shops in town are filled with servants and children waiting for
the drawing of the first batch of rolls—an operation which was
performed a full hour ago in the suburbs: for the early clerk
population of Somers and Camden towns, Islington, and Pentonville, are
fast pouring into the city, or directing their steps towards
Chancery-lane and the Inns of Court. Middle-aged men, whose salaries
have by no means increased in the same proportion as their families,
plod steadily along, apparently with no object in view but the
counting-house; knowing by sight almost everybody they meet or
overtake, for they have seen them every morning (Sunday excepted)
during the last twenty years, but speaking to no one. If they do happen
to overtake a personal acquaintance, they just exchange a hurried
salutation, and keep walking on either by his side, or in front of him,
as his rate of walking may chance to be. As to stopping to shake hands,
or to take the friend’s arm, they seem to think that as it is not
included in their salary, they have no right to do it. Small office
lads in large hats, who are made men before they are boys, hurry along
in pairs, with their first coat carefully brushed, and the white
trousers of last Sunday plentifully besmeared with dust and ink. It
evidently requires a considerable mental struggle to avoid investing
part of the day’s dinner-money in the purchase of the stale tarts so
temptingly exposed in dusty tins at the pastry-cooks’ doors; but a
consciousness of their own importance and the receipt of seven
shillings a-week, with the prospect of an early rise to eight, comes to
their aid, and they accordingly put their hats a little more on one
side, and look under the bonnets of all the milliners’ and stay-makers’
apprentices they meet—poor girls!—the hardest worked, the worst paid,
and too often, the worst used class of the community.
Eleven o’clock, and a new set of people fill the streets. The goods in
the shop-windows are invitingly arranged; the shopmen in their white
neckerchiefs and spruce coats, look as it they couldn’t clean a window
if their lives depended on it; the carts have disappeared from
Covent-garden; the waggoners have returned, and the costermongers
repaired to their ordinary ‘beats’ in the suburbs; clerks are at their
offices, and gigs, cabs, omnibuses, and saddle-horses, are conveying
their masters to the same destination. The streets are thronged with a
vast concourse of people, gay and shabby, rich and poor, idle and
industrious; and we come to the heat, bustle, and activity of Noon.
CHAPTER II—THE STREETS—NIGHT
But the streets of London, to be beheld in the very height of their
glory, should be seen on a dark, dull, murky winter’s night, when there
is just enough damp gently stealing down to make the pavement greasy,
without cleansing it of any of its impurities; and when the heavy lazy
mist, which hangs over every object, makes the gas-lamps look brighter,
and the brilliantly-lighted shops more splendid, from the contrast they
present to the darkness around. All the people who are at home on such
a night as this, seem disposed to make themselves as snug and
comfortable as possible; and the passengers in the streets have
excellent reason to envy the fortunate individuals who are seated by
their own firesides.
In the larger and better kind of streets, dining parlour curtains are
closely drawn, kitchen fires blaze brightly up, and savoury steams of
hot dinners salute the nostrils of the hungry wayfarer, as he plods
wearily by the area railings. In the suburbs, the muffin boy rings his
way down the little street, much more slowly than he is wont to do; for
Mrs. Macklin, of No. 4, has no sooner opened her little street-door,
and screamed out ‘Muffins!’ with all her might, than Mrs. Walker, at
No. 5, puts her head out of the parlour-window, and screams ‘Muffins!’
too; and Mrs. Walker has scarcely got the words out of her lips, than
Mrs. Peplow, over the way, lets loose Master Peplow, who darts down the
street, with a velocity which nothing but buttered muffins in
perspective could possibly inspire, and drags the boy back by main
force, whereupon Mrs. Macklin and Mrs. Walker, just to save the boy
trouble, and to say a few neighbourly words to Mrs. Peplow at the same
time, run over the way and buy their muffins at Mrs. Peplow’s door,
when it appears from the voluntary statement of Mrs. Walker, that her
‘kittle’s jist a-biling, and the cups and sarsers ready laid,’ and
that, as it was such a wretched night out o’ doors, she’d made up her
mind to have a nice, hot, comfortable cup o’ tea—a determination at
which, by the most singular coincidence, the other two ladies had
simultaneously arrived.
After a little conversation about the wretchedness of the weather and
the merits of tea, with a digression relative to the viciousness of
boys as a rule, and the amiability of Master Peplow as an exception,
Mrs. Walker sees her husband coming down the street; and as he must
want his tea, poor man, after his dirty walk from the Docks, she
instantly runs across, muffins in hand, and Mrs. Macklin does the same,
and after a few words to Mrs. Walker, they all pop into their little
houses, and slam their little street-doors, which are not opened again
for the remainder of the evening, except to the nine o’clock ‘beer,’
who comes round with a lantern in front of his tray, and says, as he
lends Mrs. Walker ‘Yesterday’s ‘Tiser,’ that he’s blessed if he can
hardly hold the pot, much less feel the paper, for it’s one of the
bitterest nights he ever felt, ’cept the night when the man was frozen
to death in the Brick-field.
After a little prophetic conversation with the policeman at the
street-corner, touching a probable change in the weather, and the
setting-in of a hard frost, the nine o’clock beer returns to his
master’s house, and employs himself for the remainder of the evening,
in assiduously stirring the tap-room fire, and deferentially taking
part in the conversation of the worthies assembled round it.
The streets in the vicinity of the Marsh-gate and Victoria Theatre
present an appearance of dirt and discomfort on such a night, which the
groups who lounge about them in no degree tend to diminish. Even the
little block-tin temple sacred to baked potatoes, surmounted by a
splendid design in variegated lamps, looks less gay than usual, and as
to the kidney-pie stand, its glory has quite departed. The candle in
the transparent lamp, manufactured of oil-paper, embellished with
‘characters,’ has been blown out fifty times, so the kidney-pie
merchant, tired with running backwards and forwards to the next
wine-vaults, to get a light, has given up the idea of illumination in
despair, and the only signs of his ‘whereabout,’ are the bright sparks,
of which a long irregular train is whirled down the street every time
he opens his portable oven to hand a hot kidney-pie to a customer.
Flat-fish, oyster, and fruit vendors linger hopelessly in the kennel,
in vain endeavouring to attract customers; and the ragged boys who
usually disport themselves about the streets, stand crouched in little
knots in some projecting doorway, or under the canvas blind of a
cheesemonger’s, where great flaring gas-lights, unshaded by any glass,
display huge piles of blight red and pale yellow cheeses, mingled with
little fivepenny dabs of dingy bacon, various tubs of weekly Dorset,
and cloudy rolls of ‘best fresh.’
Here they amuse themselves with theatrical converse, arising out of
their last half-price visit to the Victoria gallery, admire the
terrific combat, which is nightly encored, and expatiate on the
inimitable manner in which Bill Thompson can ‘come the double monkey,’
or go through the mysterious involutions of a sailor’s hornpipe.
It is nearly eleven o’clock, and the cold thin rain which has been
drizzling so long, is beginning to pour down in good earnest; the
baked-potato man has departed—the kidney-pie man has just walked away
with his warehouse on his arm—the cheesemonger has drawn in his blind,
and the boys have dispersed. The constant clicking of pattens on the
slippy and uneven pavement, and the rustling of umbrellas, as the wind
blows against the shop-windows, bear testimony to the inclemency of the
night; and the policeman, with his oilskin cape buttoned closely round
him, seems as he holds his hat on his head, and turns round to avoid
the gust of wind and rain which drives against him at the
street-corner, to be very far from congratulating himself on the
prospect before him.
The little chandler’s shop with the cracked bell behind the door, whose
melancholy tinkling has been regulated by the demand for quarterns of
sugar and half-ounces of coffee, is shutting up. The crowds which have
been passing to and fro during the whole day, are rapidly dwindling
away; and the noise of shouting and quarrelling which issues from the
public-houses, is almost the only sound that breaks the melancholy
stillness of the night.
There was another, but it has ceased. That wretched woman with the
infant in her arms, round whose meagre form the remnant of her own
scanty shawl is carefully wrapped, has been attempting to sing some
popular ballad, in the hope of wringing a few pence from the
compassionate passer-by. A brutal laugh at her weak voice is all she
has gained. The tears fall thick and fast down her own pale face; the
child is cold and hungry, and its low half-stifled wailing adds to the
misery of its wretched mother, as she moans aloud, and sinks
despairingly down, on a cold damp door-step.
Singing! How few of those who pass such a miserable creature as this,
think of the anguish of heart, the sinking of soul and spirit, which
the very effort of singing produces. Bitter mockery! Disease, neglect,
and starvation, faintly articulating the words of the joyous ditty,
that has enlivened your hours of feasting and merriment, God knows how
often! It is no subject of jeering. The weak tremulous voice tells a
fearful tale of want and famishing; and the feeble singer of this
roaring song may turn away, only to die of cold and hunger.
One o’clock! Parties returning from the different theatres foot it
through the muddy streets; cabs, hackney-coaches, carriages, and
theatre omnibuses, roll swiftly by; watermen with dim dirty lanterns in
their hands, and large brass plates upon their breasts, who have been
shouting and rushing about for the last two hours, retire to their
watering-houses, to solace themselves with the creature comforts of
pipes and purl; the half-price pit and box frequenters of the theatres
throng to the different houses of refreshment; and chops, kidneys,
rabbits, oysters, stout, cigars, and ‘goes’ innumerable, are served up
amidst a noise and confusion of smoking, running, knife-clattering, and
waiter-chattering, perfectly indescribable.
The more musical portion of the play-going community betake themselves
to some harmonic meeting. As a matter of curiosity let us follow them
thither for a few moments.
In a lofty room of spacious dimensions, are seated some eighty or a
hundred guests knocking little pewter measures on the tables, and
hammering away, with the handles of their knives, as if they were so
many trunk-makers. They are applauding a glee, which has just been
executed by the three ‘professional gentlemen’ at the top of the centre
table, one of whom is in the chair—the little pompous man with the bald
head just emerging from the collar of his green coat. The others are
seated on either side of him—the stout man with the small voice, and
the thin-faced dark man in black. The little man in the chair is a most
amusing personage,—such condescending grandeur, and _such_ a voice!
‘Bass!’ as the young gentleman near us with the blue stock forcibly
remarks to his companion, ‘bass! I b’lieve you; he can go down lower
than any man: so low sometimes that you can’t hear him.’ And so he
does. To hear him growling away, gradually lower and lower down, till
he can’t get back again, is the most delightful thing in the world, and
it is quite impossible to witness unmoved the impressive solemnity with
which he pours forth his soul in ‘My ’art’s in the ’ighlands,’ or ‘The
brave old Hoak.’ The stout man is also addicted to sentimentality, and
warbles ‘Fly, fly from the world, my Bessy, with me,’ or some such
song, with lady-like sweetness, and in the most seductive tones
imaginable.
‘Pray give your orders, gen’l’m’n—pray give your orders,’—says the
pale-faced man with the red head; and demands for ‘goes’ of gin and
‘goes’ of brandy, and pints of stout, and cigars of peculiar mildness,
are vociferously made from all parts of the room. The ‘professional
gentlemen’ are in the very height of their glory, and bestow
condescending nods, or even a word or two of recognition, on the
better-known frequenters of the room, in the most bland and patronising
manner possible.
The little round-faced man, with the small brown surtout, white
stockings and shoes, is in the comic line; the mixed air of
self-denial, and mental consciousness of his own powers, with which he
acknowledges the call of the chair, is particularly gratifying.
‘Gen’l’men,’ says the little pompous man, accompanying the word with a
knock of the president’s hammer on the table—‘Gen’l’men, allow me to
claim your attention—our friend, Mr. Smuggins, will oblige.’—‘Bravo!’
shout the company; and Smuggins, after a considerable quantity of
coughing by way of symphony, and a most facetious sniff or two, which
afford general delight, sings a comic song, with a
fal-de-ral—tol-de-ral chorus at the end of every verse, much longer
than the verse itself. It is received with unbounded applause, and
after some aspiring genius has volunteered a recitation, and failed
dismally therein, the little pompous man gives another knock, and says
‘Gen’l’men, we will attempt a glee, if you please.’ This announcement
calls forth tumultuous applause, and the more energetic spirits express
the unqualified approbation it affords them, by knocking one or two
stout glasses off their legs—a humorous device; but one which
frequently occasions some slight altercation when the form of paying
the damage is proposed to be gone through by the waiter.
Scenes like these are continued until three or four o’clock in the
morning; and even when they close, fresh ones open to the inquisitive
novice. But as a description of all of them, however slight, would
require a volume, the contents of which, however instructive, would be
by no means pleasing, we make our bow, and drop the curtain.
CHAPTER III—SHOPS AND THEIR TENANTS
What inexhaustible food for speculation, do the streets of London
afford! We never were able to agree with Sterne in pitying the man who
could travel from Dan to Beersheba, and say that all was barren; we
have not the slightest commiseration for the man who can take up his
hat and stick, and walk from Covent-garden to St. Paul’s Churchyard,
and back into the bargain, without deriving some amusement—we had
almost said instruction—from his perambulation. And yet there are such
beings: we meet them every day. Large black stocks and light
waistcoats, jet canes and discontented countenances, are the
characteristics of the race; other people brush quickly by you,
steadily plodding on to business, or cheerfully running after pleasure.
These men linger listlessly past, looking as happy and animated as a
policeman on duty. Nothing seems to make an impression on their minds:
nothing short of being knocked down by a porter, or run over by a cab,
will disturb their equanimity. You will meet them on a fine day in any
of the leading thoroughfares: peep through the window of a west-end
cigar shop in the evening, if you can manage to get a glimpse between
the blue curtains which intercept the vulgar gaze, and you see them in
their only enjoyment of existence. There they are lounging about, on
round tubs and pipe boxes, in all the dignity of whiskers, and gilt
watch-guards; whispering soft nothings to the young lady in amber, with
the large ear-rings, who, as she sits behind the counter in a blaze of
adoration and gas-light, is the admiration of all the female servants
in the neighbourhood, and the envy of every milliner’s apprentice
within two miles round.
One of our principal amusements is to watch the gradual progress—the
rise or fall—of particular shops. We have formed an intimate
acquaintance with several, in different parts of town, and are
perfectly acquainted with their whole history. We could name off-hand,
twenty at least, which we are quite sure have paid no taxes for the
last six years. They are never inhabited for more than two months
consecutively, and, we verily believe, have witnessed every retail
trade in the directory.
There is one, whose history is a sample of the rest, in whose fate we
have taken especial interest, having had the pleasure of knowing it
ever since it has been a shop. It is on the Surrey side of the water—a
little distance beyond the Marsh-gate. It was originally a substantial,
good-looking private house enough; the landlord got into difficulties,
the house got into Chancery, the tenant went away, and the house went
to ruin. At this period our acquaintance with it commenced; the paint
was all worn off; the windows were broken, the area was green with
neglect and the overflowings of the water-butt; the butt itself was
without a lid, and the street-door was the very picture of misery. The
chief pastime of the children in the vicinity had been to assemble in a
body on the steps, and to take it in turn to knock loud double knocks
at the door, to the great satisfaction of the neighbours generally, and
especially of the nervous old lady next door but one. Numerous
complaints were made, and several small basins of water discharged over
the offenders, but without effect. In this state of things, the
marine-store dealer at the corner of the street, in the most obliging
manner took the knocker off, and sold it: and the unfortunate house
looked more wretched than ever.
We deserted our friend for a few weeks. What was our surprise, on our
return, to find no trace of its existence! In its place was a handsome
shop, fast approaching to a state of completion, and on the shutters
were large bills, informing the public that it would shortly be opened
with ‘an extensive stock of linen-drapery and haberdashery.’ It opened
in due course; there was the name of the proprietor ‘and Co.’ in gilt
letters, almost too dazzling to look at. Such ribbons and shawls! and
two such elegant young men behind the counter, each in a clean collar
and white neckcloth, like the lover in a farce. As to the proprietor,
he did nothing but walk up and down the shop, and hand seats to the
ladies, and hold important conversations with the handsomest of the
young men, who was shrewdly suspected by the neighbours to be the ‘Co.’
We saw all this with sorrow; we felt a fatal presentiment that the shop
was doomed—and so it was. Its decay was slow, but sure. Tickets
gradually appeared in the windows; then rolls of flannel, with labels
on them, were stuck outside the door; then a bill was pasted on the
street-door, intimating that the first floor was to let unfurnished;
then one of the young men disappeared altogether, and the other took to
a black neckerchief, and the proprietor took to drinking. The shop
became dirty, broken panes of glass remained unmended, and the stock
disappeared piecemeal. At last the company’s man came to cut off the
water, and then the linen-draper cut off himself, leaving the landlord
his compliments and the key.
The next occupant was a fancy stationer. The shop was more modestly
painted than before, still it was neat; but somehow we always thought,
as we passed, that it looked like a poor and struggling concern. We
wished the man well, but we trembled for his success. He was a widower
evidently, and had employment elsewhere, for he passed us every morning
on his road to the city. The business was carried on by his eldest
daughter. Poor girl! she needed no assistance. We occasionally caught a
glimpse of two or three children, in mourning like herself, as they sat
in the little parlour behind the shop; and we never passed at night
without seeing the eldest girl at work, either for them, or in making
some elegant little trifle for sale. We often thought, as her pale face
looked more sad and pensive in the dim candle-light, that if those
thoughtless females who interfere with the miserable market of poor
creatures such as these, knew but one-half of the misery they suffer,
and the bitter privations they endure, in their honourable attempts to
earn a scanty subsistence, they would, perhaps, resign even
opportunities for the gratification of vanity, and an immodest love of
self-display, rather than drive them to a last dreadful resource, which
it would shock the delicate feelings of these _charitable_ ladies to
hear named.
But we are forgetting the shop. Well, we continued to watch it, and
every day showed too clearly the increasing poverty of its inmates. The
children were clean, it is true, but their clothes were threadbare and
shabby; no tenant had been procured for the upper part of the house,
from the letting of which, a portion of the means of paying the rent
was to have been derived, and a slow, wasting consumption prevented the
eldest girl from continuing her exertions. Quarter-day arrived. The
landlord had suffered from the extravagance of his last tenant, and he
had no compassion for the struggles of his successor; he put in an
execution. As we passed one morning, the broker’s men were removing the
little furniture there was in the house, and a newly-posted bill
informed us it was again ‘To Let.’ What became of the last tenant we
never could learn; we believe the girl is past all suffering, and
beyond all sorrow. God help her! We hope she is.
We were somewhat curious to ascertain what would be the next stage—for
that the place had no chance of succeeding now, was perfectly clear.
The bill was soon taken down, and some alterations were being made in
the interior of the shop. We were in a fever of expectation; we
exhausted conjecture—we imagined all possible trades, none of which
were perfectly reconcilable with our idea of the gradual decay of the
tenement. It opened, and we wondered why we had not guessed at the real
state of the case before. The shop—not a large one at the best of
times—had been converted into two: one was a bonnet-shape maker’s, the
other was opened by a tobacconist, who also dealt in walking-sticks and
Sunday newspapers; the two were separated by a thin partition, covered
with tawdry striped paper.
The tobacconist remained in possession longer than any tenant within
our recollection. He was a red-faced, impudent, good-for-nothing dog,
evidently accustomed to take things as they came, and to make the best
of a bad job. He sold as many cigars as he could, and smoked the rest.
He occupied the shop as long as he could make peace with the landlord,
and when he could no longer live in quiet, he very coolly locked the
door, and bolted himself. From this period, the two little dens have
undergone innumerable changes. The tobacconist was succeeded by a
theatrical hair-dresser, who ornamented the window with a great variety
of ‘characters,’ and terrific combats. The bonnet-shape maker gave
place to a greengrocer, and the histrionic barber was succeeded, in his
turn, by a tailor. So numerous have been the changes, that we have of
late done little more than mark the peculiar but certain indications of
a house being poorly inhabited. It has been progressing by almost
imperceptible degrees. The occupiers of the shops have gradually given
up room after room, until they have only reserved the little parlour
for themselves. First there appeared a brass plate on the private door,
with ‘Ladies’ School’ legibly engraved thereon; shortly afterwards we
observed a second brass plate, then a bell, and then another bell.
When we paused in front of our old friend, and observed these signs of
poverty, which are not to be mistaken, we thought as we turned away,
that the house had attained its lowest pitch of degradation. We were
wrong. When we last passed it, a ‘dairy’ was established in the area,
and a party of melancholy-looking fowls were amusing themselves by
running in at the front door, and out at the back one.
CHAPTER IV—SCOTLAND-YARD
Scotland-yard is a small—a very small-tract of land, bounded on one
side by the river Thames, on the other by the gardens of Northumberland
House: abutting at one end on the bottom of Northumberland-street, at
the other on the back of Whitehall-place. When this territory was first
accidentally discovered by a country gentleman who lost his way in the
Strand, some years ago, the original settlers were found to be a
tailor, a publican, two eating-house keepers, and a fruit-pie maker;
and it was also found to contain a race of strong and bulky men, who
repaired to the wharfs in Scotland-yard regularly every morning, about
five or six o’clock, to fill heavy waggons with coal, with which they
proceeded to distant places up the country, and supplied the
inhabitants with fuel. When they had emptied their waggons, they again
returned for a fresh supply; and this trade was continued throughout
the year.
As the settlers derived their subsistence from ministering to the wants
of these primitive traders, the articles exposed for sale, and the
places where they were sold, bore strong outward marks of being
expressly adapted to their tastes and wishes. The tailor displayed in
his window a Lilliputian pair of leather gaiters, and a diminutive
round frock, while each doorpost was appropriately garnished with a
model of a coal-sack. The two eating-house keepers exhibited joints of
a magnitude, and puddings of a solidity, which coalheavers alone could
appreciate; and the fruit-pie maker displayed on his well-scrubbed
window-board large white compositions of flour and dripping, ornamented
with pink stains, giving rich promise of the fruit within, which made
their huge mouths water, as they lingered past.
But the choicest spot in all Scotland-yard was the old public-house in
the corner. Here, in a dark wainscoted-room of ancient appearance,
cheered by the glow of a mighty fire, and decorated with an enormous
clock, whereof the face was white, and the figures black, sat the lusty
coalheavers, quaffing large draughts of Barclay’s best, and puffing
forth volumes of smoke, which wreathed heavily above their heads, and
involved the room in a thick dark cloud. From this apartment might
their voices be heard on a winter’s night, penetrating to the very bank
of the river, as they shouted out some sturdy chorus, or roared forth
the burden of a popular song; dwelling upon the last few words with a
strength and length of emphasis which made the very roof tremble above
them.
Here, too, would they tell old legends of what the Thames was in
ancient times, when the Patent Shot Manufactory wasn’t built, and
Waterloo-bridge had never been thought of; and then they would shake
their heads with portentous looks, to the deep edification of the
rising generation of heavers, who crowded round them, and wondered
where all this would end; whereat the tailor would take his pipe
solemnly from his mouth, and say, how that he hoped it might end well,
but he very much doubted whether it would or not, and couldn’t rightly
tell what to make of it—a mysterious expression of opinion, delivered
with a semi-prophetic air, which never failed to elicit the fullest
concurrence of the assembled company; and so they would go on drinking
and wondering till ten o’clock came, and with it the tailor’s wife to
fetch him home, when the little party broke up, to meet again in the
same room, and say and do precisely the same things, on the following
evening at the same hour.
About this time the barges that came up the river began to bring vague
rumours to Scotland-yard of somebody in the city having been heard to
say, that the Lord Mayor had threatened in so many words to pull down
the old London-bridge, and build up a new one. At first these rumours
were disregarded as idle tales, wholly destitute of foundation, for
nobody in Scotland-yard doubted that if the Lord Mayor contemplated any
such dark design, he would just be clapped up in the Tower for a week
or two, and then killed off for high treason.
By degrees, however, the reports grew stronger, and more frequent, and
at last a barge, laden with numerous chaldrons of the best Wallsend,
brought up the positive intelligence that several of the arches of the
old bridge were stopped, and that preparations were actually in
progress for constructing the new one. What an excitement was visible
in the old tap-room on that memorable night! Each man looked into his
neighbour’s face, pale with alarm and astonishment, and read therein an
echo of the sentiments which filled his own breast. The oldest heaver
present proved to demonstration, that the moment the piers were
removed, all the water in the Thames would run clean off, and leave a
dry gully in its place. What was to become of the coal-barges—of the
trade of Scotland-yard—of the very existence of its population? The
tailor shook his head more sagely than usual, and grimly pointing to a
knife on the table, bid them wait and see what happened. He said
nothing—not he; but if the Lord Mayor didn’t fall a victim to popular
indignation, why he would be rather astonished; that was all.
They did wait; barge after barge arrived, and still no tidings of the
assassination of the Lord Mayor. The first stone was laid: it was done
by a Duke—the King’s brother. Years passed away, and the bridge was
opened by the King himself. In course of time, the piers were removed;
and when the people in Scotland-yard got up next morning in the
confident expectation of being able to step over to Pedlar’s Acre
without wetting the soles of their shoes, they found to their
unspeakable astonishment that the water was just where it used to be.
A result so different from that which they had anticipated from this
first improvement, produced its full effect upon the inhabitants of
Scotland-yard. One of the eating-house keepers began to court public
opinion, and to look for customers among a new class of people. He
covered his little dining-tables with white cloths, and got a painter’s
apprentice to inscribe something about hot joints from twelve to two,
in one of the little panes of his shop-window. Improvement began to
march with rapid strides to the very threshold of Scotland-yard. A new
market sprung up at Hungerford, and the Police Commissioners
established their office in Whitehall-place. The traffic in
Scotland-yard increased; fresh Members were added to the House of
Commons, the Metropolitan Representatives found it a near cut, and many
other foot passengers followed their example.
We marked the advance of civilisation, and beheld it with a sigh. The
eating-house keeper who manfully resisted the innovation of
table-cloths, was losing ground every day, as his opponent gained it,
and a deadly feud sprung up between them. The genteel one no longer
took his evening’s pint in Scotland-yard, but drank gin and water at a
‘parlour’ in Parliament-street. The fruit-pie maker still continued to
visit the old room, but he took to smoking cigars, and began to call
himself a pastrycook, and to read the papers. The old heavers still
assembled round the ancient fireplace, but their talk was mournful: and
the loud song and the joyous shout were heard no more.
And what is Scotland-yard now? How have its old customs changed; and
how has the ancient simplicity of its inhabitants faded away! The old
tottering public-house is converted into a spacious and lofty
‘wine-vaults;’ gold leaf has been used in the construction of the
letters which emblazon its exterior, and the poet’s art has been called
into requisition, to intimate that if you drink a certain description
of ale, you must hold fast by the rail. The tailor exhibits in his
window the pattern of a foreign-looking brown surtout, with silk
buttons, a fur collar, and fur cuffs. He wears a stripe down the
outside of each leg of his trousers: and we have detected his
assistants (for he has assistants now) in the act of sitting on the
shop-board in the same uniform.
At the other end of the little row of houses a boot-maker has
established himself in a brick box, with the additional innovation of a
first floor; and here he exposes for sale, boots—real Wellington
boots—an article which a few years ago, none of the original
inhabitants had ever seen or heard of. It was but the other day, that a
dress-maker opened another little box in the middle of the row; and,
when we thought that the spirit of change could produce no alteration
beyond that, a jeweller appeared, and not content with exposing gilt
rings and copper bracelets out of number, put up an announcement, which
still sticks in his window, that ‘ladies’ ears may be pierced within.’
The dress-maker employs a young lady who wears pockets in her apron;
and the tailor informs the public that gentlemen may have their own
materials made up.
Amidst all this change, and restlessness, and innovation, there remains
but one old man, who seems to mourn the downfall of this ancient place.
He holds no converse with human kind, but, seated on a wooden bench at
the angle of the wall which fronts the crossing from Whitehall-place,
watches in silence the gambols of his sleek and well-fed dogs. He is
the presiding genius of Scotland-yard. Years and years have rolled over
his head; but, in fine weather or in foul, hot or cold, wet or dry,
hail, rain, or snow, he is still in his accustomed spot. Misery and
want are depicted in his countenance; his form is bent by age, his head
is grey with length of trial, but there he sits from day to day,
brooding over the past; and thither he will continue to drag his feeble
limbs, until his eyes have closed upon Scotland-yard, and upon the
world together.
A few years hence, and the antiquary of another generation looking into
some mouldy record of the strife and passions that agitated the world
in these times, may glance his eye over the pages we have just filled:
and not all his knowledge of the history of the past, not all his
black-letter lore, or his skill in book-collecting, not all the dry
studies of a long life, or the dusty volumes that have cost him a
fortune, may help him to the whereabouts, either of Scotland-yard, or
of any one of the landmarks we have mentioned in describing it.
CHAPTER V—SEVEN DIALS
We have always been of opinion that if Tom King and the Frenchman had
not immortalised Seven Dials, Seven Dials would have immortalised
itself. Seven Dials! the region of song and poetry—first effusions, and
last dying speeches: hallowed by the names of Catnach and of
Pitts—names that will entwine themselves with costermongers, and
barrel-organs, when penny magazines shall have superseded penny yards
of song, and capital punishment be unknown!
Look at the construction of the place. The Gordian knot was all very
well in its way: so was the maze of Hampton Court: so is the maze at
the Beulah Spa: so were the ties of stiff white neckcloths, when the
difficulty of getting one on, was only to be equalled by the apparent
impossibility of ever getting it off again. But what involutions can
compare with those of Seven Dials? Where is there such another maze of
streets, courts, lanes, and alleys? Where such a pure mixture of
Englishmen and Irishmen, as in this complicated part of London? We
boldly aver that we doubt the veracity of the legend to which we have
adverted. We _can_ suppose a man rash enough to inquire at random—at a
house with lodgers too—for a Mr. Thompson, with all but the certainty
before his eyes, of finding at least two or three Thompsons in any
house of moderate dimensions; but a Frenchman—a Frenchman in Seven
Dials! Pooh! He was an Irishman. Tom King’s education had been
neglected in his infancy, and as he couldn’t understand half the man
said, he took it for granted he was talking French.
The stranger who finds himself in ‘The Dials’ for the first time, and
stands Belzoni-like, at the entrance of seven obscure passages,
uncertain which to take, will see enough around him to keep his
curiosity and attention awake for no inconsiderable time. From the
irregular square into which he has plunged, the streets and courts dart
in all directions, until they are lost in the unwholesome vapour which
hangs over the house-tops, and renders the dirty perspective uncertain
and confined; and lounging at every corner, as if they came there to
take a few gasps of such fresh air as has found its way so far, but is
too much exhausted already, to be enabled to force itself into the
narrow alleys around, are groups of people, whose appearance and
dwellings would fill any mind but a regular Londoner’s with
astonishment.
On one side, a little crowd has collected round a couple of ladies, who
having imbibed the contents of various ‘three-outs’ of gin and bitters
in the course of the morning, have at length differed on some point of
domestic arrangement, and are on the eve of settling the quarrel
satisfactorily, by an appeal to blows, greatly to the interest of other
ladies who live in the same house, and tenements adjoining, and who are
all partisans on one side or other.
‘Vy don’t you pitch into her, Sarah?’ exclaims one half-dressed matron,
by way of encouragement. ‘Vy don’t you? if _my_ ’usband had treated her
with a drain last night, unbeknown to me, I’d tear her precious eyes
out—a wixen!’
‘What’s the matter, ma’am?’ inquires another old woman, who has just
bustled up to the spot.
‘Matter!’ replies the first speaker, talking _at_ the obnoxious
combatant, ‘matter! Here’s poor dear Mrs. Sulliwin, as has five blessed
children of her own, can’t go out a charing for one arternoon, but what
hussies must be a comin’, and ’ticing avay her oun’ ’usband, as she’s
been married to twelve year come next Easter Monday, for I see the
certificate ven I vas a drinkin’ a cup o’ tea vith her, only the werry
last blessed Ven’sday as ever was sent. I ’appen’d to say
promiscuously, “Mrs. Sulliwin,” says I—’
‘What do you mean by hussies?’ interrupts a champion of the other
party, who has evinced a strong inclination throughout to get up a
branch fight on her own account (‘Hooroar,’ ejaculates a pot-boy in
parenthesis, ‘put the kye-bosk on her, Mary!’), ‘What do you mean by
hussies?’ reiterates the champion.
‘Niver mind,’ replies the opposition expressively, ‘niver mind; _you_
go home, and, ven you’re quite sober, mend your stockings.’
This somewhat personal allusion, not only to the lady’s habits of
intemperance, but also to the state of her wardrobe, rouses her utmost
ire, and she accordingly complies with the urgent request of the
bystanders to ‘pitch in,’ with considerable alacrity. The scuffle
became general, and terminates, in minor play-bill phraseology, with
‘arrival of the policemen, interior of the station-house, and
impressive _dénouement_.’
In addition to the numerous groups who are idling about the gin-shops
and squabbling in the centre of the road, every post in the open space
has its occupant, who leans against it for hours, with listless
perseverance. It is odd enough that one class of men in London appear
to have no enjoyment beyond leaning against posts. We never saw a
regular bricklayer’s labourer take any other recreation, fighting
excepted. Pass through St. Giles’s in the evening of a week-day, there
they are in their fustian dresses, spotted with brick-dust and
whitewash, leaning against posts. Walk through Seven Dials on Sunday
morning: there they are again, drab or light corduroy trousers, Blucher
boots, blue coats, and great yellow waistcoats, leaning against posts.
The idea of a man dressing himself in his best clothes, to lean against
a post all day!
The peculiar character of these streets, and the close resemblance each
one bears to its neighbour, by no means tends to decrease the
bewilderment in which the unexperienced wayfarer through ‘the Dials’
finds himself involved. He traverses streets of dirty, straggling
houses, with now and then an unexpected court composed of buildings as
ill-proportioned and deformed as the half-naked children that wallow in
the kennels. Here and there, a little dark chandler’s shop, with a
cracked bell hung up behind the door to announce the entrance of a
customer, or betray the presence of some young gentleman in whom a
passion for shop tills has developed itself at an early age: others, as
if for support, against some handsome lofty building, which usurps the
place of a low dingy public-house; long rows of broken and patched
windows expose plants that may have flourished when ‘the Dials’ were
built, in vessels as dirty as ‘the Dials’ themselves; and shops for the
purchase of rags, bones, old iron, and kitchen-stuff, vie in
cleanliness with the bird-fanciers and rabbit-dealers, which one might
fancy so many arks, but for the irresistible conviction that no bird in
its proper senses, who was permitted to leave one of them, would ever
come back again. Brokers’ shops, which would seem to have been
established by humane individuals, as refuges for destitute bugs,
interspersed with announcements of day-schools, penny theatres,
petition-writers, mangles, and music for balls or routs, complete the
‘still life’ of the subject; and dirty men, filthy women, squalid
children, fluttering shuttlecocks, noisy battledores, reeking pipes,
bad fruit, more than doubtful oysters, attenuated cats, depressed dogs,
and anatomical fowls, are its cheerful accompaniments.
If the external appearance of the houses, or a glance at their
inhabitants, present but few attractions, a closer acquaintance with
either is little calculated to alter one’s first impression. Every room
has its separate tenant, and every tenant is, by the same mysterious
dispensation which causes a country curate to ‘increase and multiply’
most marvellously, generally the head of a numerous family.
The man in the shop, perhaps, is in the baked ‘jemmy’ line, or the
fire-wood and hearth-stone line, or any other line which requires a
floating capital of eighteen-pence or thereabouts: and he and his
family live in the shop, and the small back parlour behind it. Then
there is an Irish labourer and _his_ family in the back kitchen, and a
jobbing man—carpet-beater and so forth—with _his_ family in the front
one. In the front one-pair, there’s another man with another wife and
family, and in the back one-pair, there’s ‘a young ’oman as takes in
tambour-work, and dresses quite genteel,’ who talks a good deal about
‘my friend,’ and can’t ‘a-bear anything low.’ The second floor front,
and the rest of the lodgers, are just a second edition of the people
below, except a shabby-genteel man in the back attic, who has his
half-pint of coffee every morning from the coffee-shop next door but
one, which boasts a little front den called a coffee-room, with a
fireplace, over which is an inscription, politely requesting that, ‘to
prevent mistakes,’ customers will ‘please to pay on delivery.’ The
shabby-genteel man is an object of some mystery, but as he leads a life
of seclusion, and never was known to buy anything beyond an occasional
pen, except half-pints of coffee, penny loaves, and ha’porths of ink,
his fellow-lodgers very naturally suppose him to be an author; and
rumours are current in the Dials, that he writes poems for Mr. Warren.
Now anybody who passed through the Dials on a hot summer’s evening, and
saw the different women of the house gossiping on the steps, would be
apt to think that all was harmony among them, and that a more primitive
set of people than the native Diallers could not be imagined. Alas! the
man in the shop ill-treats his family; the carpet-beater extends his
professional pursuits to his wife; the one-pair front has an undying
feud with the two-pair front, in consequence of the two-pair front
persisting in dancing over his (the one-pair front’s) head, when he and
his family have retired for the night; the two-pair back will interfere
with the front kitchen’s children; the Irishman comes home drunk every
other night, and attacks everybody; and the one-pair back screams at
everything. Animosities spring up between floor and floor; the very
cellar asserts his equality. Mrs. A. ‘smacks’ Mrs. B.’s child for
‘making faces.’ Mrs. B. forthwith throws cold water over Mrs. A.’s
child for ‘calling names.’ The husbands are embroiled—the quarrel
becomes general—an assault is the consequence, and a police-officer the
result.
CHAPTER VI—MEDITATIONS IN MONMOUTH-STREET
We have always entertained a particular attachment towards
Monmouth-street, as the only true and real emporium for second-hand
wearing apparel. Monmouth-street is venerable from its antiquity, and
respectable from its usefulness. Holywell-street we despise; the
red-headed and red-whiskered Jews who forcibly haul you into their
squalid houses, and thrust you into a suit of clothes, whether you will
or not, we detest.
The inhabitants of Monmouth-street are a distinct class; a peaceable
and retiring race, who immure themselves for the most part in deep
cellars, or small back parlours, and who seldom come forth into the
world, except in the dusk and coolness of the evening, when they may be
seen seated, in chairs on the pavement, smoking their pipes, or
watching the gambols of their engaging children as they revel in the
gutter, a happy troop of infantine scavengers. Their countenances bear
a thoughtful and a dirty cast, certain indications of their love of
traffic; and their habitations are distinguished by that disregard of
outward appearance and neglect of personal comfort, so common among
people who are constantly immersed in profound speculations, and deeply
engaged in sedentary pursuits.
We have hinted at the antiquity of our favourite spot. ‘A
Monmouth-street laced coat’ was a by-word a century ago; and still we
find Monmouth-street the same. Pilot great-coats with wooden buttons,
have usurped the place of the ponderous laced coats with full skirts;
embroidered waistcoats with large flaps, have yielded to
double-breasted checks with roll-collars; and three-cornered hats of
quaint appearance, have given place to the low crowns and broad brims
of the coachman school; but it is the times that have changed, not
Monmouth-street. Through every alteration and every change,
Monmouth-street has still remained the burial-place of the fashions;
and such, to judge from all present appearances, it will remain until
there are no more fashions to bury.
We love to walk among these extensive groves of the illustrious dead,
and to indulge in the speculations to which they give rise; now fitting
a deceased coat, then a dead pair of trousers, and anon the mortal
remains of a gaudy waistcoat, upon some being of our own conjuring up,
and endeavouring, from the shape and fashion of the garment itself, to
bring its former owner before our mind’s eye. We have gone on
speculating in this way, until whole rows of coats have started from
their pegs, and buttoned up, of their own accord, round the waists of
imaginary wearers; lines of trousers have jumped down to meet them;
waistcoats have almost burst with anxiety to put themselves on; and
half an acre of shoes have suddenly found feet to fit them, and gone
stumping down the street with a noise which has fairly awakened us from
our pleasant reverie, and driven us slowly away, with a bewildered
stare, an object of astonishment to the good people of Monmouth-street,
and of no slight suspicion to the policemen at the opposite street
corner.
We were occupied in this manner the other day, endeavouring to fit a
pair of lace-up half-boots on an ideal personage, for whom, to say the
truth, they were full a couple of sizes too small, when our eyes
happened to alight on a few suits of clothes ranged outside a
shop-window, which it immediately struck us, must at different periods
have all belonged to, and been worn by, the same individual, and had
now, by one of those strange conjunctions of circumstances which will
occur sometimes, come to be exposed together for sale in the same shop.
The idea seemed a fantastic one, and we looked at the clothes again
with a firm determination not to be easily led away. No, we were right;
the more we looked, the more we were convinced of the accuracy of our
previous impression. There was the man’s whole life written as legibly
on those clothes, as if we had his autobiography engrossed on parchment
before us.
The first was a patched and much-soiled skeleton suit; one of those
straight blue cloth cases in which small boys used to be confined,
before belts and tunics had come in, and old notions had gone out: an
ingenious contrivance for displaying the full symmetry of a boy’s
figure, by fastening him into a very tight jacket, with an ornamental
row of buttons over each shoulder, and then buttoning his trousers over
it, so as to give his legs the appearance of being hooked on, just
under the armpits. This was the boy’s dress. It had belonged to a town
boy, we could see; there was a shortness about the legs and arms of the
suit; and a bagging at the knees, peculiar to the rising youth of
London streets. A small day-school he had been at, evidently. If it had
been a regular boys’ school they wouldn’t have let him play on the
floor so much, and rub his knees so white. He had an indulgent mother
too, and plenty of halfpence, as the numerous smears of some sticky
substance about the pockets, and just below the chin, which even the
salesman’s skill could not succeed in disguising, sufficiently
betokened. They were decent people, but not overburdened with riches,
or he would not have so far outgrown the suit when he passed into those
corduroys with the round jacket; in which he went to a boys’ school,
however, and learnt to write—and in ink of pretty tolerable blackness,
too, if the place where he used to wipe his pen might be taken as
evidence.
A black suit and the jacket changed into a diminutive coat. His father
had died, and the mother had got the boy a message-lad’s place in some
office. A long-worn suit that one; rusty and threadbare before it was
laid aside, but clean and free from soil to the last. Poor woman! We
could imagine her assumed cheerfulness over the scanty meal, and the
refusal of her own small portion, that her hungry boy might have
enough. Her constant anxiety for his welfare, her pride in his growth
mingled sometimes with the thought, almost too acute to bear, that as
he grew to be a man his old affection might cool, old kindnesses fade
from his mind, and old promises be forgotten—the sharp pain that even
then a careless word or a cold look would give her—all crowded on our
thoughts as vividly as if the very scene were passing before us.
These things happen every hour, and we all know it; and yet we felt as
much sorrow when we saw, or fancied we saw—it makes no difference
which—the change that began to take place now, as if we had just
conceived the bare possibility of such a thing for the first time. The
next suit, smart but slovenly; meant to be gay, and yet not half so
decent as the threadbare apparel; redolent of the idle lounge, and the
blackguard companions, told us, we thought, that the widow’s comfort
had rapidly faded away. We could imagine that coat—imagine! we could
see it; we _had_ seen it a hundred times—sauntering in company with
three or four other coats of the same cut, about some place of
profligate resort at night.
We dressed, from the same shop-window in an instant, half a dozen boys
of from fifteen to twenty; and putting cigars into their mouths, and
their hands into their pockets, watched them as they sauntered down the
street, and lingered at the corner, with the obscene jest, and the
oft-repeated oath. We never lost sight of them, till they had cocked
their hats a little more on one side, and swaggered into the
public-house; and then we entered the desolate home, where the mother
sat late in the night, alone; we watched her, as she paced the room in
feverish anxiety, and every now and then opened the door, looked
wistfully into the dark and empty street, and again returned, to be
again and again disappointed. We beheld the look of patience with which
she bore the brutish threat, nay, even the drunken blow; and we heard
the agony of tears that gushed from her very heart, as she sank upon
her knees in her solitary and wretched apartment.
A long period had elapsed, and a greater change had taken place, by the
time of casting off the suit that hung above. It was that of a stout,
broad-shouldered, sturdy-chested man; and we knew at once, as anybody
would, who glanced at that broad-skirted green coat, with the large
metal buttons, that its wearer seldom walked forth without a dog at his
heels, and some idle ruffian, the very counterpart of himself, at his
side. The vices of the boy had grown with the man, and we fancied his
home then—if such a place deserve the name.
We saw the bare and miserable room, destitute of furniture, crowded
with his wife and children, pale, hungry, and emaciated; the man
cursing their lamentations, staggering to the tap-room, from whence he
had just returned, followed by his wife and a sickly infant, clamouring
for bread; and heard the street-wrangle and noisy recrimination that
his striking her occasioned. And then imagination led us to some
metropolitan workhouse, situated in the midst of crowded streets and
alleys, filled with noxious vapours, and ringing with boisterous cries,
where an old and feeble woman, imploring pardon for her son, lay dying
in a close dark room, with no child to clasp her hand, and no pure air
from heaven to fan her brow. A stranger closed the eyes that settled
into a cold unmeaning glare, and strange ears received the words that
murmured from the white and half-closed lips.
A coarse round frock, with a worn cotton neckerchief, and other
articles of clothing of the commonest description, completed the
history. A prison, and the sentence—banishment or the gallows. What
would the man have given then, to be once again the contented humble
drudge of his boyish years; to have been restored to life, but for a
week, a day, an hour, a minute, only for so long a time as would enable
him to say one word of passionate regret to, and hear one sound of
heartfelt forgiveness from, the cold and ghastly form that lay rotting
in the pauper’s grave! The children wild in the streets, the mother a
destitute widow; both deeply tainted with the deep disgrace of the
husband and father’s name, and impelled by sheer necessity, down the
precipice that had led him to a lingering death, possibly of many
years’ duration, thousands of miles away. We had no clue to the end of
the tale; but it was easy to guess its termination.
We took a step or two further on, and by way of restoring the naturally
cheerful tone of our thoughts, began fitting visionary feet and legs
into a cellar-board full of boots and shoes, with a speed and accuracy
that would have astonished the most expert artist in leather, living.
There was one pair of boots in particular—a jolly, good-tempered,
hearty-looking pair of tops, that excited our warmest regard; and we
had got a fine, red-faced, jovial fellow of a market-gardener into
them, before we had made their acquaintance half a minute. They were
just the very thing for him. There was his huge fat legs bulging over
the tops, and fitting them too tight to admit of his tucking in the
loops he had pulled them on by; and his knee-cords with an interval of
stocking; and his blue apron tucked up round his waist; and his red
neckerchief and blue coat, and a white hat stuck on one side of his
head; and there he stood with a broad grin on his great red face,
whistling away, as if any other idea but that of being happy and
comfortable had never entered his brain.
This was the very man after our own heart; we knew all about him; we
had seen him coming up to Covent-garden in his green chaise-cart, with
the fat, tubby little horse, half a thousand times; and even while we
cast an affectionate look upon his boots, at that instant, the form of
a coquettish servant-maid suddenly sprung into a pair of Denmark satin
shoes that stood beside them, and we at once recognised the very girl
who accepted his offer of a ride, just on this side the Hammersmith
suspension-bridge, the very last Tuesday morning we rode into town from
Richmond.
A very smart female, in a showy bonnet, stepped into a pair of grey
cloth boots, with black fringe and binding, that were studiously
pointing out their toes on the other side of the top-boots, and seemed
very anxious to engage his attention, but we didn’t observe that our
friend the market-gardener appeared at all captivated with these
blandishments; for beyond giving a knowing wink when they first began,
as if to imply that he quite understood their end and object, he took
no further notice of them. His indifference, however, was amply
recompensed by the excessive gallantry of a very old gentleman with a
silver-headed stick, who tottered into a pair of large list shoes, that
were standing in one corner of the board, and indulged in a variety of
gestures expressive of his admiration of the lady in the cloth boots,
to the immeasurable amusement of a young fellow we put into a pair of
long-quartered pumps, who we thought would have split the coat that
slid down to meet him, with laughing.
We had been looking on at this little pantomime with great satisfaction
for some time, when, to our unspeakable astonishment, we perceived that
the whole of the characters, including a numerous _corps de ballet_ of
boots and shoes in the background, into which we had been hastily
thrusting as many feet as we could press into the service, were
arranging themselves in order for dancing; and some music striking up
at the moment, to it they went without delay. It was perfectly
delightful to witness the agility of the market-gardener. Out went the
boots, first on one side, then on the other, then cutting, then
shuffling, then setting to the Denmark satins, then advancing, then
retreating, then going round, and then repeating the whole of the
evolutions again, without appearing to suffer in the least from the
violence of the exercise.
Nor were the Denmark satins a bit behindhand, for they jumped and
bounded about, in all directions; and though they were neither so
regular, nor so true to the time as the cloth boots, still, as they
seemed to do it from the heart, and to enjoy it more, we candidly
confess that we preferred their style of dancing to the other. But the
old gentleman in the list shoes was the most amusing object in the
whole party; for, besides his grotesque attempts to appear youthful,
and amorous, which were sufficiently entertaining in themselves, the
young fellow in the pumps managed so artfully that every time the old
gentleman advanced to salute the lady in the cloth boots, he trod with
his whole weight on the old fellow’s toes, which made him roar with
anguish, and rendered all the others like to die of laughing.
We were in the full enjoyment of these festivities when we heard a
shrill, and by no means musical voice, exclaim, ‘Hope you’ll know me
agin, imperence!’ and on looking intently forward to see from whence
the sound came, we found that it proceeded, not from the young lady in
the cloth boots, as we had at first been inclined to suppose, but from
a bulky lady of elderly appearance who was seated in a chair at the
head of the cellar-steps, apparently for the purpose of superintending
the sale of the articles arranged there.
A barrel-organ, which had been in full force close behind us, ceased
playing; the people we had been fitting into the shoes and boots took
to flight at the interruption; and as we were conscious that in the
depth of our meditations we might have been rudely staring at the old
lady for half an hour without knowing it, we took to flight too, and
were soon immersed in the deepest obscurity of the adjacent ‘Dials.’
CHAPTER VII—HACKNEY-COACH STANDS
We maintain that hackney-coaches, properly so called, belong solely to
the metropolis. We may be told, that there are hackney-coach stands in
Edinburgh; and not to go quite so far for a contradiction to our
position, we may be reminded that Liverpool, Manchester, ‘and other
large towns’ (as the Parliamentary phrase goes), have _their_
hackney-coach stands. We readily concede to these places the possession
of certain vehicles, which may look almost as dirty, and even go almost
as slowly, as London hackney-coaches; but that they have the slightest
claim to compete with the metropolis, either in point of stands,
drivers, or cattle, we indignantly deny.
Take a regular, ponderous, rickety, London hackney-coach of the old
school, and let any man have the boldness to assert, if he can, that he
ever beheld any object on the face of the earth which at all resembles
it, unless, indeed, it were another hackney-coach of the same date. We
have recently observed on certain stands, and we say it with deep
regret, rather dapper green chariots, and coaches of polished yellow,
with four wheels of the same colour as the coach, whereas it is
perfectly notorious to every one who has studied the subject, that
every wheel ought to be of a different colour, and a different size.
These are innovations, and, like other miscalled improvements, awful
signs of the restlessness of the public mind, and the little respect
paid to our time-honoured institutions. Why should hackney-coaches be
clean? Our ancestors found them dirty, and left them so. Why should we,
with a feverish wish to ‘keep moving,’ desire to roll along at the rate
of six miles an hour, while they were content to rumble over the stones
at four? These are solemn considerations. Hackney-coaches are part and
parcel of the law of the land; they were settled by the Legislature;
plated and numbered by the wisdom of Parliament.
Then why have they been swamped by cabs and omnibuses? Or why should
people be allowed to ride quickly for eightpence a mile, after
Parliament had come to the solemn decision that they should pay a
shilling a mile for riding slowly? We pause for a reply;—and, having no
chance of getting one, begin a fresh paragraph.
Our acquaintance with hackney-coach stands is of long standing. We are
a walking book of fares, feeling ourselves, half bound, as it were, to
be always in the right on contested points. We know all the regular
watermen within three miles of Covent-garden by sight, and should be
almost tempted to believe that all the hackney-coach horses in that
district knew us by sight too, if one-half of them were not blind. We
take great interest in hackney-coaches, but we seldom drive, having a
knack of turning ourselves over when we attempt to do so. We are as
great friends to horses, hackney-coach and otherwise, as the renowned
Mr. Martin, of costermonger notoriety, and yet we never ride. We keep
no horse, but a clothes-horse; enjoy no saddle so much as a saddle of
mutton; and, following our own inclinations, have never followed the
hounds. Leaving these fleeter means of getting over the ground, or of
depositing oneself upon it, to those who like them, by hackney-coach
stands we take our stand.
There is a hackney-coach stand under the very window at which we are
writing; there is only one coach on it now, but it is a fair specimen
of the class of vehicles to which we have alluded—a great, lumbering,
square concern of a dingy yellow colour (like a bilious brunette), with
very small glasses, but very large frames; the panels are ornamented
with a faded coat of arms, in shape something like a dissected bat, the
axletree is red, and the majority of the wheels are green. The box is
partially covered by an old great-coat, with a multiplicity of capes,
and some extraordinary-looking clothes; and the straw, with which the
canvas cushion is stuffed, is sticking up in several places, as if in
rivalry of the hay, which is peeping through the chinks in the boot.
The horses, with drooping heads, and each with a mane and tail as
scanty and straggling as those of a worn-out rocking-horse, are
standing patiently on some damp straw, occasionally wincing, and
rattling the harness; and now and then, one of them lifts his mouth to
the ear of his companion, as if he were saying, in a whisper, that he
should like to assassinate the coachman. The coachman himself is in the
watering-house; and the waterman, with his hands forced into his
pockets as far as they can possibly go, is dancing the ‘double
shuffle,’ in front of the pump, to keep his feet warm.
The servant-girl, with the pink ribbons, at No. 5, opposite, suddenly
opens the street-door, and four small children forthwith rush out, and
scream ‘Coach!’ with all their might and main. The waterman darts from
the pump, seizes the horses by their respective bridles, and drags
them, and the coach too, round to the house, shouting all the time for
the coachman at the very top, or rather very bottom of his voice, for
it is a deep bass growl. A response is heard from the tap-room; the
coachman, in his wooden-soled shoes, makes the street echo again as he
runs across it; and then there is such a struggling, and backing, and
grating of the kennel, to get the coach-door opposite the house-door,
that the children are in perfect ecstasies of delight. What a
commotion! The old lady, who has been stopping there for the last
month, is going back to the country. Out comes box after box, and one
side of the vehicle is filled with luggage in no time; the children get
into everybody’s way, and the youngest, who has upset himself in his
attempts to carry an umbrella, is borne off wounded and kicking. The
youngsters disappear, and a short pause ensues, during which the old
lady is, no doubt, kissing them all round in the back parlour. She
appears at last, followed by her married daughter, all the children,
and both the servants, who, with the joint assistance of the coachman
and waterman, manage to get her safely into the coach. A cloak is
handed in, and a little basket, which we could almost swear contains a
small black bottle, and a paper of sandwiches. Up go the steps, bang
goes the door, ‘Golden-cross, Charing-cross, Tom,’ says the waterman;
‘Good-bye, grandma,’ cry the children, off jingles the coach at the
rate of three miles an hour, and the mamma and children retire into the
house, with the exception of one little villain, who runs up the street
at the top of his speed, pursued by the servant; not ill-pleased to
have such an opportunity of displaying her attractions. She brings him
back, and, after casting two or three gracious glances across the way,
which are either intended for us or the potboy (we are not quite
certain which), shuts the door, and the hackney-coach stand is again at
a standstill.
We have been frequently amused with the intense delight with which ‘a
servant of all work,’ who is sent for a coach, deposits herself inside;
and the unspeakable gratification which boys, who have been despatched
on a similar errand, appear to derive from mounting the box. But we
never recollect to have been more amused with a hackney-coach party,
than one we saw early the other morning in Tottenham-court-road. It was
a wedding-party, and emerged from one of the inferior streets near
Fitzroy-square. There were the bride, with a thin white dress, and a
great red face; and the bridesmaid, a little, dumpy, good-humoured
young woman, dressed, of course, in the same appropriate costume; and
the bridegroom and his chosen friend, in blue coats, yellow
waist-coats, white trousers, and Berlin gloves to match. They stopped
at the corner of the street, and called a coach with an air of
indescribable dignity. The moment they were in, the bridesmaid threw a
red shawl, which she had, no doubt, brought on purpose, negligently
over the number on the door, evidently to delude pedestrians into the
belief that the hackney-coach was a private carriage; and away they
went, perfectly satisfied that the imposition was successful, and quite
unconscious that there was a great staring number stuck up behind, on a
plate as large as a schoolboy’s slate. A shilling a mile!—the ride was
worth five, at least, to them.
What an interesting book a hackney-coach might produce, if it could
carry as much in its head as it does in its body! The autobiography of
a broken-down hackney-coach, would surely be as amusing as the
autobiography of a broken-down hackneyed dramatist; and it might tell
as much of its travels _with_ the pole, as others have of their
expeditions _to_ it. How many stories might be related of the different
people it had conveyed on matters of business or profit—pleasure or
pain! And how many melancholy tales of the same people at different
periods! The country-girl—the showy, over-dressed woman—the drunken
prostitute! The raw apprentice—the dissipated spendthrift—the thief!
Talk of cabs! Cabs are all very well in cases of expedition, when it’s
a matter of neck or nothing, life or death, your temporary home or your
long one. But, besides a cab’s lacking that gravity of deportment which
so peculiarly distinguishes a hackney-coach, let it never be forgotten
that a cab is a thing of yesterday, and that he never was anything
better. A hackney-cab has always been a hackney-cab, from his first
entry into life; whereas a hackney-coach is a remnant of past
gentility, a victim to fashion, a hanger-on of an old English family,
wearing their arms, and, in days of yore, escorted by men wearing their
livery, stripped of his finery, and thrown upon the world, like a
once-smart footman when he is no longer sufficiently juvenile for his
office, progressing lower and lower in the scale of four-wheeled
degradation, until at last it comes to—_a stand_!
CHAPTER VIII—DOCTORS’ COMMONS
Walking without any definite object through St. Paul’s Churchyard, a
little while ago, we happened to turn down a street entitled
‘Paul’s-chain,’ and keeping straight forward for a few hundred yards,
found ourself, as a natural consequence, in Doctors’ Commons. Now
Doctors’ Commons being familiar by name to everybody, as the place
where they grant marriage-licenses to love-sick couples, and divorces
to unfaithful ones; register the wills of people who have any property
to leave, and punish hasty gentlemen who call ladies by unpleasant
names, we no sooner discovered that we were really within its
precincts, than we felt a laudable desire to become better acquainted
therewith; and as the first object of our curiosity was the Court,
whose decrees can even unloose the bonds of matrimony, we procured a
direction to it; and bent our steps thither without delay.
Crossing a quiet and shady court-yard, paved with stone, and frowned
upon by old red brick houses, on the doors of which were painted the
names of sundry learned civilians, we paused before a small,
green-baized, brass-headed-nailed door, which yielding to our gentle
push, at once admitted us into an old quaint-looking apartment, with
sunken windows, and black carved wainscoting, at the upper end of
which, seated on a raised platform, of semicircular shape, were about a
dozen solemn-looking gentlemen, in crimson gowns and wigs.
At a more elevated desk in the centre, sat a very fat and red-faced
gentleman, in tortoise-shell spectacles, whose dignified appearance
announced the judge; and round a long green-baized table below,
something like a billiard-table without the cushions and pockets, were
a number of very self-important-looking personages, in stiff
neckcloths, and black gowns with white fur collars, whom we at once set
down as proctors. At the lower end of the billiard-table was an
individual in an arm-chair, and a wig, whom we afterwards discovered to
be the registrar; and seated behind a little desk, near the door, were
a respectable-looking man in black, of about twenty-stone weight or
thereabouts, and a fat-faced, smirking, civil-looking body, in a black
gown, black kid gloves, knee shorts, and silks, with a shirt-frill in
his bosom, curls on his head, and a silver staff in his hand, whom we
had no difficulty in recognising as the officer of the Court. The
latter, indeed, speedily set our mind at rest upon this point, for,
advancing to our elbow, and opening a conversation forthwith, he had
communicated to us, in less than five minutes, that he was the
apparitor, and the other the court-keeper; that this was the Arches
Court, and therefore the counsel wore red gowns, and the proctors fur
collars; and that when the other Courts sat there, they didn’t wear red
gowns or fur collars either; with many other scraps of intelligence
equally interesting. Besides these two officers, there was a little
thin old man, with long grizzly hair, crouched in a remote corner,
whose duty, our communicative friend informed us, was to ring a large
hand-bell when the Court opened in the morning, and who, for aught his
appearance betokened to the contrary, might have been similarly
employed for the last two centuries at least.
The red-faced gentleman in the tortoise-shell spectacles had got all
the talk to himself just then, and very well he was doing it, too, only
he spoke very fast, but that was habit; and rather thick, but that was
good living. So we had plenty of time to look about us. There was one
individual who amused us mightily. This was one of the bewigged
gentlemen in the red robes, who was straddling before the fire in the
centre of the Court, in the attitude of the brazen Colossus, to the
complete exclusion of everybody else. He had gathered up his robe
behind, in much the same manner as a slovenly woman would her
petticoats on a very dirty day, in order that he might feel the full
warmth of the fire. His wig was put on all awry, with the tail
straggling about his neck; his scanty grey trousers and short black
gaiters, made in the worst possible style, imported an additional
inelegant appearance to his uncouth person; and his limp,
badly-starched shirt-collar almost obscured his eyes. We shall never be
able to claim any credit as a physiognomist again, for, after a careful
scrutiny of this gentleman’s countenance, we had come to the conclusion
that it bespoke nothing but conceit and silliness, when our friend with
the silver staff whispered in our ear that he was no other than a
doctor of civil law, and heaven knows what besides. So of course we
were mistaken, and he must be a very talented man. He conceals it so
well though—perhaps with the merciful view of not astonishing ordinary
people too much—that you would suppose him to be one of the stupidest
dogs alive.
The gentleman in the spectacles having concluded his judgment, and a
few minutes having been allowed to elapse, to afford time for the buzz
of the Court to subside, the registrar called on the next cause, which
was ‘the office of the Judge promoted by Bumple against Sludberry.’ A
general movement was visible in the Court, at this announcement, and
the obliging functionary with silver staff whispered us that ‘there
would be some fun now, for this was a brawling case.’
We were not rendered much the wiser by this piece of information, till
we found by the opening speech of the counsel for the promoter, that,
under a half-obsolete statute of one of the Edwards, the court was
empowered to visit with the penalty of excommunication, any person who
should be proved guilty of the crime of ‘brawling,’ or ‘smiting,’ in
any church, or vestry adjoining thereto; and it appeared, by some
eight-and-twenty affidavits, which were duly referred to, that on a
certain night, at a certain vestry-meeting, in a certain parish
particularly set forth, Thomas Sludberry, the party appeared against in
that suit, had made use of, and applied to Michael Bumple, the
promoter, the words ‘You be blowed;’ and that, on the said Michael
Bumple and others remonstrating with the said Thomas Sludberry, on the
impropriety of his conduct, the said Thomas Sludberry repeated the
aforesaid expression, ‘You be blowed;’ and furthermore desired and
requested to know, whether the said Michael Bumple ‘wanted anything for
himself;’ adding, ‘that if the said Michael Bumple did want anything
for himself, he, the said Thomas Sludberry, was the man to give it
him;’ at the same time making use of other heinous and sinful
expressions, all of which, Bumple submitted, came within the intent and
meaning of the Act; and therefore he, for the soul’s health and
chastening of Sludberry, prayed for sentence of excommunication against
him accordingly.
Upon these facts a long argument was entered into, on both sides, to
the great edification of a number of persons interested in the
parochial squabbles, who crowded the court; and when some very long and
grave speeches had been made _pro_ and _con_, the red-faced gentleman
in the tortoise-shell spectacles took a review of the case, which
occupied half an hour more, and then pronounced upon Sludberry the
awful sentence of excommunication for a fortnight, and payment of the
costs of the suit. Upon this, Sludberry, who was a little, red-faced,
sly-looking, ginger-beer seller, addressed the court, and said, if
they’d be good enough to take off the costs, and excommunicate him for
the term of his natural life instead, it would be much more convenient
to him, for he never went to church at all. To this appeal the
gentleman in the spectacles made no other reply than a look of virtuous
indignation; and Sludberry and his friends retired. As the man with the
silver staff informed us that the court was on the point of rising, we
retired too—pondering, as we walked away, upon the beautiful spirit of
these ancient ecclesiastical laws, the kind and neighbourly feelings
they are calculated to awaken, and the strong attachment to religious
institutions which they cannot fail to engender.
We were so lost in these meditations, that we had turned into the
street, and run up against a door-post, before we recollected where we
were walking. On looking upwards to see what house we had stumbled
upon, the words ‘Prerogative-Office,’ written in large characters, met
our eye; and as we were in a sight-seeing humour and the place was a
public one, we walked in.
The room into which we walked, was a long, busy-looking place,
partitioned off, on either side, into a variety of little boxes, in
which a few clerks were engaged in copying or examining deeds. Down the
centre of the room were several desks nearly breast high, at each of
which, three or four people were standing, poring over large volumes.
As we knew that they were searching for wills, they attracted our
attention at once.
It was curious to contrast the lazy indifference of the attorneys’
clerks who were making a search for some legal purpose, with the air of
earnestness and interest which distinguished the strangers to the
place, who were looking up the will of some deceased relative; the
former pausing every now and then with an impatient yawn, or raising
their heads to look at the people who passed up and down the room; the
latter stooping over the book, and running down column after column of
names in the deepest abstraction.
There was one little dirty-faced man in a blue apron, who after a whole
morning’s search, extending some fifty years back, had just found the
will to which he wished to refer, which one of the officials was
reading to him in a low hurried voice from a thick vellum book with
large clasps. It was perfectly evident that the more the clerk read,
the less the man with the blue apron understood about the matter. When
the volume was first brought down, he took off his hat, smoothed down
his hair, smiled with great self-satisfaction, and looked up in the
reader’s face with the air of a man who had made up his mind to
recollect every word he heard. The first two or three lines were
intelligible enough; but then the technicalities began, and the little
man began to look rather dubious. Then came a whole string of
complicated trusts, and he was regularly at sea. As the reader
proceeded, it was quite apparent that it was a hopeless case, and the
little man, with his mouth open and his eyes fixed upon his face,
looked on with an expression of bewilderment and perplexity
irresistibly ludicrous.
A little further on, a hard-featured old man with a deeply-wrinkled
face, was intently perusing a lengthy will with the aid of a pair of
horn spectacles: occasionally pausing from his task, and slily noting
down some brief memorandum of the bequests contained in it. Every
wrinkle about his toothless mouth, and sharp keen eyes, told of avarice
and cunning. His clothes were nearly threadbare, but it was easy to see
that he wore them from choice and not from necessity; all his looks and
gestures down to the very small pinches of snuff which he every now and
then took from a little tin canister, told of wealth, and penury, and
avarice.
As he leisurely closed the register, put up his spectacles, and folded
his scraps of paper in a large leathern pocket-book, we thought what a
nice hard bargain he was driving with some poverty-stricken legatee,
who, tired of waiting year after year, until some life-interest should
fall in, was selling his chance, just as it began to grow most
valuable, for a twelfth part of its worth. It was a good speculation—a
very safe one. The old man stowed his pocket-book carefully in the
breast of his great-coat, and hobbled away with a leer of triumph. That
will had made him ten years younger at the lowest computation.
Having commenced our observations, we should certainly have extended
them to another dozen of people at least, had not a sudden shutting up
and putting away of the worm-eaten old books, warned us that the time
for closing the office had arrived; and thus deprived us of a pleasure,
and spared our readers an infliction.
We naturally fell into a train of reflection as we walked homewards,
upon the curious old records of likings and dislikings; of jealousies
and revenges; of affection defying the power of death, and hatred
pursued beyond the grave, which these depositories contain; silent but
striking tokens, some of them, of excellence of heart, and nobleness of
soul; melancholy examples, others, of the worst passions of human
nature. How many men as they lay speechless and helpless on the bed of
death, would have given worlds but for the strength and power to blot
out the silent evidence of animosity and bitterness, which now stands
registered against them in Doctors’ Commons!
CHAPTER IX—LONDON RECREATIONS
The wish of persons in the humbler classes of life, to ape the manners
and customs of those whom fortune has placed above them, is often the
subject of remark, and not unfrequently of complaint. The inclination
may, and no doubt does, exist to a great extent, among the small
gentility—the would-be aristocrats—of the middle classes. Tradesmen and
clerks, with fashionable novel-reading families, and
circulating-library-subscribing daughters, get up small assemblies in
humble imitation of Almack’s, and promenade the dingy ‘large room’ of
some second-rate hotel with as much complacency as the enviable few who
are privileged to exhibit their magnificence in that exclusive haunt of
fashion and foolery. Aspiring young ladies, who read flaming accounts
of some ‘fancy fair in high life,’ suddenly grow desperately
charitable; visions of admiration and matrimony float before their
eyes; some wonderfully meritorious institution, which, by the strangest
accident in the world, has never been heard of before, is discovered to
be in a languishing condition: Thomson’s great room, or Johnson’s
nursery-ground, is forthwith engaged, and the aforesaid young ladies,
from mere charity, exhibit themselves for three days, from twelve to
four, for the small charge of one shilling per head! With the exception
of these classes of society, however, and a few weak and insignificant
persons, we do not think the attempt at imitation to which we have
alluded, prevails in any great degree. The different character of the
recreations of different classes, has often afforded us amusement; and
we have chosen it for the subject of our present sketch, in the hope
that it may possess some amusement for our readers.
If the regular City man, who leaves Lloyd’s at five o’clock, and drives
home to Hackney, Clapton, Stamford-hill, or elsewhere, can be said to
have any daily recreation beyond his dinner, it is his garden. He never
does anything to it with his own hands; but he takes great pride in it
notwithstanding; and if you are desirous of paying your addresses to
the youngest daughter, be sure to be in raptures with every flower and
shrub it contains. If your poverty of expression compel you to make any
distinction between the two, we would certainly recommend your
bestowing more admiration on his garden than his wine. He always takes
a walk round it, before he starts for town in the morning, and is
particularly anxious that the fish-pond should be kept specially neat.
If you call on him on Sunday in summer-time, about an hour before
dinner, you will find him sitting in an arm-chair, on the lawn behind
the house, with a straw hat on, reading a Sunday paper. A short
distance from him you will most likely observe a handsome paroquet in a
large brass-wire cage; ten to one but the two eldest girls are
loitering in one of the side walks accompanied by a couple of young
gentlemen, who are holding parasols over them—of course only to keep
the sun off—while the younger children, with the under nursery-maid,
are strolling listlessly about, in the shade. Beyond these occasions,
his delight in his garden appears to arise more from the consciousness
of possession than actual enjoyment of it. When he drives you down to
dinner on a week-day, he is rather fatigued with the occupations of the
morning, and tolerably cross into the bargain; but when the cloth is
removed, and he has drank three or four glasses of his favourite
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