THE YEAR 1837.
[Illustration: WILLIAM IV.
(From a Drawing by HB.)]
The year 1837, except for the death of the old King and the accession
of the young Queen, was a tolerably insignificant year. It was on June
20 that the King died. He was buried on the evening of July 9 at St.
George’s Chapel, Windsor; on the 10th the Queen dissolved Parliament;
on the 13th she went to Buckingham Palace; and on November 9 she
visited the City, where they gave her a magnificent banquet, served in
Guildhall at half past five, the Lord Mayor and City magnates humbly
taking their modest meal at a lower table. Both the hour appointed for
the banquet and the humility of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen point to a
remote period.
The year began with the influenza. Everybody had it. The offices of
the various departments of the Civil Service were deserted because all
the clerks had influenza. Business of all kinds was stopped because
merchants, clerks, bankers, and brokers all had influenza; at Woolwich
fifty men of the Royal Artillery and Engineers were taken into hospital
daily, with influenza. The epidemic seems to have broken out suddenly,
and suddenly to have departed. Another important event of the year was
the establishment of steam communication with India by way of the Red
Sea. The ‘Atalanta’ left Bombay on October 2, and arrived at Suez on
October 16. The mails were brought into Alexandria on the 20th, and
despatched, such was the celerity of the authorities, on November 7
by H.M.S. ‘Volcano.’ They reached Malta on the 11th, Gibraltar on the
16th, and England on December 4, taking sixty days in all, of which,
however, eighteen days were wasted in Alexandria, so that the possible
time of transit from Bombay to England was proved to be forty-two days.
This was the year of the Greenacre murder. The wretched man was under
promise to marry an elderly woman, thinking she had money. One night,
while they were drinking together, she confessed that she had none, and
had deceived him; whereupon, seized with wrath, he took up whatever
weapon lay to his hand, and smote her on the head so that she fell
backwards dead. Now mark: if this man had gone straight to the nearest
police-office, and confessed the crime of homicide, he would certainly
have escaped hanging. But he was so horribly frightened at what had
happened, that he tried to hide the thing by cutting up the body and
bestowing the fragments in various places, all of them the most likely
to be discovered. There was another woman in the case, proved to have
been in his confidence, and tried with him, when all the pieces had
been recovered, and the murder was brought home to him. He was found
guilty and hanged. And never was there a hanging more numerously or
more fashionably attended. The principal performer, however, is said
to have disappointed his audience by a pusillanimous shrinking from
the gallows when he was brought out. The woman was sent to Australia,
where, perhaps, she still survives.
[Illustration: THE QUEEN’S FIRST COUNCIL--KENSINGTON PALACE, JUNE 20,
1837.
(From the Picture by Sir David Wilkie, R.A., at Windsor Castle.)]
[Illustration: PEELER]
There was also, this year, an extremely scandalous action in the High
Court of Justice. It was a libel case brought by Lord de Ros, and arose
out of a gambling quarrel, in which his lordship was accused of
cheating at cards. It was said that, under pretence of a bad cough and
asthma, he kept diving under the table and fishing up kings and aces,
a thing which seems of elementary simplicity, and capable of clear
denial. His lordship, in fact, did deny it, stoutly and on oath. Yet
the witnesses as stoutly swore that he did do this thing, and the jury
found that he did. Whereupon his lordship retired to the Continent, and
shortly afterwards died, _s.p._, without offspring to lament his errors.
[Illustration: A SHOW OF TWELFTH CAKES.]
There was a terrible earthquake this year in the Holy Land. The town
of Safed was laid in ruins, and more than four thousand of the people
were killed. There was a project against the life of Louis-Philippe, by
one Champion, who was arrested. He was base enough to hang himself in
prison, so that no one ever knew if he had any accomplices.
The news arrived also of a dreadful massacre in New Zealand. There was
only one English settlement in the country; it was at a place called
Makuta, in the North Island, where a Mr. Jones, of Sydney, had a flax
establishment, consisting of 120 people, men, women, and children.
They were attacked by a party of 800 natives, and were all barbarously
murdered.
A fatal duel was fought on Hampstead Heath, near the Spaniards Tavern.
The combatants were a Colonel Haring, of the Polish army, and another
Polish officer, who was shot. The seconds carried him to the Middlesex
Hospital, where he died, and nothing more was said about it.
[Illustration: THE SPANIARDS TAVERN, HAMPSTEAD]
The dangers of emigration were illustrated by the voyage of the good
ship ‘Diamond,’ of Liverpool. She had on board a party of passengers
emigrating to New York. In the good old sailing days, the passengers
were expected to lay in their own provisions, the ship carrying water
for them. Now the ‘Diamond’ met with contrary winds, and was ninety
days out, three times as long as was expected. The ship had no more
than enough provisions for the crew, and when the passengers had
exhausted their store their sufferings were terrible.
[Illustration: GREENWICH PARK.]
An embassy from the King of Madagascar arrived this year, and was duly
presented at Court. I know not what business they transacted, but the
fact has a certain interest for me because it was my privilege, about
four-and-twenty years ago, to converse with one of the nobles who had
formed part of that embassy, and who, after a quarter of a century,
was going again on another mission to the Court of St. James. He was,
when I saw him, an elderly man, dark of skin, but, being a Hova, most
intelligent and well-informed; also, being a Hova, anxious to say
the thing which would please his hearers. He recalled many incidents
connected with the long journey round the Cape in a sailing vessel, the
crowds and noise of London, the venerable appearance of King William,
and his general kindness to the ambassadors. When he had told us all
he could recollect, he asked us if we should like to hear him sing the
song which had beguiled many weary hours of his voyage. We begged him
to sing it, expecting to hear something national and fresh, something
redolent of the Madagascar soil, a song sung in the streets of its
capital, Antananarivo, perhaps with a breakdown or a walk round. Alas!
he neither danced a breakdown, nor did he walk round, nor did he sing
us a national song at all. He only piped, in a thin sweet tenor, and
very correctly, that familiar hymn ‘Rock of Ages,’ to the familiar
tune. I have never been able to believe that this nobleman, His
Excellency the Right Honourable the Lord Rainiferingalarovo, Knight of
the Fifteen Honour, entitled to wear a _lamba_ as highly striped as
they are made, commonly reported to be a pagan, with several wives,
really comforted his soul, while at sea, with this hymn. But he was
with Christians, and this was a missionary’s hymn which he had often
heard, and it would doubtless please us to hear it sung. Thereupon he
sang it, and a dead silence fell upon us. Behold however, the reason
why the record of this simple event, the arrival of the embassy from
Madagascar, strikes a chord in the mind of one at least who reads it.
There is little else to chronicle in the year. The University of Durham
was founded: a truly brilliant success have they made of this learned
foundation! And Sir Robert Peel was Rector of Glasgow University. For
the rest, boilers burst, coaches were upset, and many books of
immense genius were produced, which now repose in the Museum.
[Illustration: SIR ROBERT PEEL]
Yet a year which marked the close of one period and the commencement
of another. The steamship ‘Atalanta’ carrying the bags to Suez--what
does this mean? The massacre in New Zealand of the only white men on
the island--what does this portend? The fatal duel at Hampstead; the
noble lord convicted of cheating at cards; the emigrant ship ninety
days out with no food for the passengers--what are these things but
illustrations of a time that has now passed away, the passage from
the eighteenth to the nineteenth century? For there are no longer any
duels; noble lords no longer gamble, unless they are very young and
foolish; ships no longer take passengers without food for them; we have
lessened the distance to India by three-fourths, measured by time; and
the Maoris will rise no more, for their land is filled with the white
men.
In that year, also, there were certain ceremonies observed which have
now partly fallen into disuse.
[Illustration: THE CHIMNEY-SWEEPS’ ANNUAL HOLIDAY.]
For instance, on Twelfth Day it was the custom for confectioners to
make in their windows a brave show of Twelfth-cakes; it was also
the custom of the public to flatten their noses against the windows
and to gaze upon the treasures displayed to view. It was, further,
the custom--one of the good old annual customs, like beating the
bounds--for the boys to pin together those who were thus engaged by
their coat-tails, shawls, skirts, sleeves, the ends of comforters,
wrappers, and boas, and other outlying portions of raiment. When
they discovered the trick--of course they only made pretence at
being unconscious--by the rending, tearing, and destruction of their
garments, they never failed to fall into ecstasies of (pretended)
wrath, to the joy of the children, who next year repeated the trick
with the same success. I think there are no longer any Twelfth-cakes,
and I am sure that the boys have forgotten that trick.
[Illustration: A PARISH BEADLE
(From a Drawing by George Cruikshank in ‘London Characters’)]
On Twelfth Day the Bishop of London made an offering in the Chapel
Royal of St. James’s in commemoration of the Wise Men from the East. Is
that offering made still? and, if so, what does his lordship offer? and
with what prayers, or hopes, or expectations, is that offering made?
[Illustration: BEATING THE BOUNDS.]
At the commencement of Hilary Term the judges took breakfast with the
Lord Chancellor, and afterwards drove in state to Westminster.
On January 30, King Charles’s Day, the Lords went in procession to
Westminster Abbey and the Commons to St. Margaret’s, both Houses to
hear the Service of Commemoration. Where is that service now?
On Easter Sunday the Royal Family attended Divine Service at St.
James’s, and received the Sacrament.
On Easter Monday the Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, and Aldermen went in state
to Christ Church, formerly the Church of the Grey Friars, and heard
service. In the evening there was a great banquet, with a ball. A
fatiguing day for my Lord Mayor.
Easter Monday was also the day of the Epping Hunt. Greenwich Fair
was held on that and the two following days. And in Easter week the
theatres played pieces for children.
[Illustration: EVENING IN SMITHFIELD
(From a Drawing made in 1858, at the gateway leading into Cloth Fair,
the place of proclamation of Bartholomew Fair)]
On the first Sunday in Easter the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs went in state
to St. Paul’s, and had a banquet afterwards.
On May Day the chimney-sweeps had their annual holiday.
On Ascension Day they made a procession of parish functionaries and
parochial schools, and beat the bounds, and, to mark them well in the
memory of all, they beat the charity children who attended the beadle,
and they beat all the boys they caught on the way, and they banged
against the boundaries all the strangers who passed within their
reach. When it came to banging the strangers, they had a high old time.
On the Queen’s Birthday there was a splendid procession of stage
coaches from Piccadilly to the Post Office.
[Illustration: BARTHOLOMEW FAIR.]
Lastly, on September 3, Bartholomew Fair was opened by the Lord
Mayor, and then followed what our modern papers are wont to call a
carnival, but what the papers of 1837 called, without any regard to
picturesque writing, a scene of unbridled profligacy, licentiousness,
and drunkenness, with fighting, both of fists and cudgels,
pumping on pickpockets, robbery and cheating, noise and shouting,
the braying of trumpets and the banging of drums. If you want to
know what this ancient fair was like, go visit the Agricultural Hall
at Christmas. They have the foolish din and noise of it, and if the
people were drunk, and there were no police, and everybody was ready
and most anxious to fight, and the pickpockets, thieves, bullies, and
blackguards were doing what they pleased, you would have Bartholomew
Fair complete.