IN THE STREET.
Let us, friend Eighty-seven, take a walk down the Strand on this fine
April afternoon of Thirty-seven. First, however, you must alter your
dress a little. Put on this swallow-tail coat, with the high velvet
collar--it is more becoming than the sporting coat in green bulging
out over the hips; change your light tie and masher collar for this
beautiful satin stock and this double breastpin; put on a velvet
waistcoat and an under-waistcoat of cloth; thin Cossack trousers with
straps will complete your costume; turn your shirt cuffs back outside
the coat sleeve, carry your gloves in your hand, and take your cane.
You are now, dear Eighty-seven, transformed into the dandy of fifty
years ago, and will not excite any attention as we walk along the
street.
[Illustration: LONDON STREET CHARACTERS, 1827
(From a Drawing by John Leech)]
We will start from Charing Cross and will walk towards the City. You
cannot remember, Eighty-seven, the King’s Mews that stood here on the
site of Trafalgar Square. When it is completed, with the National
Gallery on the north side, the monument and statue of Nelson, the
fountains and statues that they talk about, there will be a very fine
square. And we have certainly got rid of a group of mean and squalid
streets to make room for the square. It is lucky that they have left
Northumberland House, the last of the great palaces that once lined the
Strand.
[Illustration: THE KING’S MEWS IN 1750
(From a Print by I. Maurer)]
The Strand looks very much as it will in your time, though the shop
fronts are not by any means so fine. There is no Charing Cross Station
or Northumberland Avenue; most of the shops have bow windows and there
is no plate-glass, but instead, small panes such as you will only see
here and there in your time. The people, however, have a surprisingly
different appearance. The ladies, because the east wind is cold, still
keep to their fur tippets, their thick shawls, and have their necks
wrapped round with boas, the ends of which hang down to their skirts, a
fashion revived by yourself; their bonnets are remarkable structures,
like an ornamental coal-scuttle of the Thirty-seven, not the
Eighty-seven, period, and some of them are of surprising dimensions,
and decorated with an amazing profusion of ribbons and artificial
flowers. Their sleeves are shaped like a leg of mutton; their shawls
are like a dining-room carpet of the time--not like your dining-room
carpet, Eighty-seven, but a carpet of flaunting colour, crimson and
scarlet which would give you a headache. But the curls of the younger
ladies are not without their charms, and their eyes are as bright as
those of their grandchildren, are they not?
Let us stand still awhile and watch the throng where the tide of life,
as Johnson said, is the fullest.
[Illustration: BARRACK AND OLD HOUSES ON THE SITE OF TRAFALGAR SQUARE
(From a Drawing made by F. W. Fairholt in 1826)]
Here comes, with a roll intended for a military swagger, the cheap
dandy. I know not what he is by trade; he is too old for a medical
student, not shabby enough for an attorney’s clerk, and not respectable
enough for a City clerk. Is it possible that he is a young gentleman
of very small fortune which he is running through? He wears a tall hat
broader at the top than at the bottom, he carries white thread gloves,
sports a cane, has his trousers tightly strapped, wears a tremendously
high stock, with a sham diamond pin, a coat with a velvet collar, and a
double-breasted waistcoat. His right hand is stuck--it is an aggressive
attitude--in his coat-tail pocket. The little old gentleman who follows
him, in black shorts and white silk stockings, will be gone before your
time; so will yonder still more ancient gentleman in powdered hair and
pigtail who walks slowly along. Pigtails in your time will be clean
forgotten as well as black silk shorts.
[Illustration: THE LAST CABRIOLET DRIVER
(From the Drawing by George Cruikshank in ‘Sketches by Boz’)]
Do you see that thin, spare gentleman in the cloak, riding slowly along
the street followed by a mounted servant? The people all take off their
hats respectfully to him, and country folk gaze upon him curiously.
That is the Duke. There is only one Duke to the ordinary Briton. It is
the Duke with the hook nose--the Iron Duke--the Duke of Wellington.
The new-fashioned cabriolet, with a seat at the side for the driver and
a high hood for the fare, is light and swift, but it is not beautiful
nor is it popular. The wheels are too high and the machine is too
narrow. It is always upsetting, and bringing its passengers to grief.
Here is one of the new police, with blue swallow-tail coat tightly
buttoned, and white trousers. They are reported to be mightily
unpopular with the light-fingered gentry, with whose pursuits they are
always interfering in a manner unknown to the ancient Charley.
Here comes a gentleman, darkly and mysteriously clad in a fur-lined
cloak, fastened at his neck by a brass buckle, and falling to his
feet, such a cloak as in your time will only be used to enwrap the
villains in a burlesque. But here no one takes any notice of it.
There goes a man who may have been an officer, an actor, a literary
man, a gambler--anything; whatever he was, he is now broken-down--his
face is pale, his gait is shuffling, his elbows are gone, his boots
are giving at the toes, and--see--the stout red-faced man with the
striped waistcoat and the bundle of seals hanging at his fob has tapped
him on the shoulder. That is a sheriff’s officer, and he will now
be conducted, after certain formalities, to the King’s Bench or the
Fleet, and in this happy retreat he will probably pass the remainder
of his days. Here comes a middle-aged gentleman who looks almost like
a coachman in his coat with many capes and his purple cheeks. That is
the famous coaching baronet, than whom no better whip has ever been
seen upon the road. Here come a pair of young bloods who scorn cloaks
and greatcoats. How bravely do they tread in their tight trousers,
bright-coloured waistcoats, and high satin stocks! with what a jaunty
air do they tilt their low-crowned hats over their long and waving
locks--you can smell the bear’s grease across the road! with what a
flourish do they bear their canes! Here comes swaggering along the
pavement a military gentleman in a coat much befrogged. He has the
appearance of one who knows Chalk Farm, which is situated among meadows
where the morning air has been known to prove suddenly fatal to many
gallant gentlemen. How he swings his shoulders and squares his elbows!
and how the peaceful passengers make room for him to pass! He is, no
doubt, an old Peninsular; there are still many like unto him; he is the
ruffling Captain known to Queen Elizabeth’s time; in the last century
he took the wall and shoved everybody into the gutter. Presently he
will turn into the Cigar Divan--he learned to smoke cigars in Spain--in
the rooms of what was once the Repository of Art; we breathe more
freely when he is gone.
Here comes a great hulking sailor; his face beams with honesty, he
rolls in his gait, he hitches up his wide trousers, he wears his shiny
hat at the back of his head; his hair hangs in ringlets; he chews a
quid; under his arm is a parcel tied in red bandanna. He looks as if
he were in some perplexity. Sighting one who appears to be a gentleman
recently from the country, he bears down upon him.
‘Noble captain,’ he whispers hoarsely, ‘if you like, here’s a chance
that doesn’t come every day. For why? I’ve got to go to sea again, and
though they’re smuggled--I smuggled them myself, your honour--and worth
their weight in gold, you shall have the box for thirty shillin’. Say
the word, my captain, and come round the corner with me.’
[Illustration: A GREENWICH PENSIONER
(From a Drawing by George Cruikshank in ‘London Characters’)]
Honest tar! Shall we meet him to-morrow with another parcel tied in the
same bandanna, his face screwed up with the same perplexity and anxiety
to get rid of his valuable burden? You yourself, Eighty-seven, will
have your confidence trick, your ring-dropper, your thimble-and-pea,
your fat partridge-seller, even though the bold smuggler be no more.
[Illustration: AN OMNIBUS UPSET
(From Cruikshank’s ‘Comic Almanack’)]
In the matter of street music we of Thirty-seven are perhaps in advance
of you of Eighty-seven. We have not, it is true, the pianoforte-organ,
but we have already the other two varieties--the Rumbling Droner and
the Light Tinkler. We have not yet the street nigger, or the banjo,
or the band of itinerant blacks, or Christy’s Minstrels. The negro
minstrel does not exist in any form. But the ingenious Mr. Rice is at
this very moment studying the plantation songs of South Carolina,
and we can already witness his humorous personation of ‘Jump, Jim
Crow,’ and his pathetic ballad of ‘Lucy Neal.’ (He made his first
appearance at the Adelphi as Jim Crow in 1836.) We have, like you, the
Christian family in reduced circumstances, creeping slowly, hand in
hand, along the streets, singing a hymn the while for the consolation
it affords. They have not yet invented Moody and Sankey, and therefore
they cannot sing ‘Hold the Fort’ or ‘Dare to be a Daniel,’ but there
are hymns in every collection which suit the Gridler. We have also the
ballad-singer, who warbles at the door of the gin-palace. His favourite
song just now is ‘All round my Hat.’ We have the lady (or gentleman)
who takes her (or his) place upon the kerb with a guitar, adorned
with red ribbon, and sings a sentimental song, such as ‘Speed on, my
Mules, for Leila waits for me,’ or ‘Gaily the Troubadour;’ there is the
street seller of ballads at a penny each, a taste of which he gives
the delighted listener; there are the horns of stage-coach and of
omnibus, blown with zeal; there is the bell of the crier, exercised as
religiously as that of the railway-porter; the Pandean pipes and the
drum walk, not only with Punch, but also with the dancing bear. The
performing dogs, the street acrobats, and the fantoccini; the noble
Highlander not only stands outside the tobacconist’s, taking a pinch of
snuff, but he also parades the street, blowing a most patriotic tune
upon his bagpipe; the butcher serenades his young mistress with the
cleaver and the bones; the Italian boy delights all the ears of those
who hear with his hurdy-gurdy.
[Illustration: EXETER CHANGE]
Here comes the Paddington omnibus, the first omnibus of all, started
seven years ago by Mr. Shillibeer, the father of all those which have
driven the short stages off the road, and now ply in every street. You
will not fail to observe that the knifeboard has not yet been invented.
There are twelve passengers inside and none out. The conductor is
already remarkable for his truthfulness, his honesty, and his readiness
to take up any lady and to deposit her within ten yards of wherever she
wishes to be. The fare is sixpence, and you must wait for ten years
before you get a twopenny ’bus.
[Illustration: THE PARISH ENGINE
(From a Drawing by George Cruikshank in ‘Sketches by Boz’)]
Now let us resume our walk. The Strand is very little altered, you
think. Already Exeter Change is gone; Exeter Hall is already built; the
shops are less splendid, and plate glass is as yet unknown; in Holywell
Street I can show you one or two of the old signs still on the house
walls; Butcher Row, behind St. Clement Danes, is pulled down and the
street widened; on the north side there is standing a nest of rookeries
and mean streets, where you will have your Law Courts; here is Temple
Bar, which you will miss; close to Temple Bar is the little fish shop
which once belonged to Mr. Crockford, the proprietor of the famous
club; the street messengers standing about in their white aprons will
be gone in your time; for that matter, so will the aprons; at present
every other man in the street wears an apron. It is a badge of his rank
and station; the apron marks the mechanic or the serving-man; some
wear white aprons and some wear leather aprons; I am afraid you will
miss the apron.
[Illustration: IN FLEET STREET--PROCLAIMING THE QUEEN.]
Fleet Street is much more picturesque than the Strand, is it not?
Even in your day, Eighty-seven, when so many old houses will have
perished, Fleet Street will still be the most picturesque street in all
London. The true time to visit it is at four o’clock on a summer
morning, when the sun has just risen on the sleeping city. Look at the
gables of it, the projecting stories of it, the old timber work of it,
the glory and the beauty of it. As you see Fleet Street, so Dr. Johnson
saw it.
[Illustration: CROCKFORD’S FISH SHOP
(From a Drawing by F. W. Fairholt)]
There is a good deal more crowd and animation in Fleet Street than in
the Strand. That is because we are nearer the City, of course; the
traffic is greater; the noise is much greater. As for this ring before
us, let us avoid it. A coachman fighting a ticket-porter is a daily
spectacle in this thoroughfare; those who crowd round often get bloody
noses for their pains, and still more often come away without their
purses. Look! The pickpockets are at their work almost openly. They
have caught one. Well, my friend, our long silk purses--yours will be
square leather things--are very easily stolen. I do not think it will
repay you for the loss of yours to see a poor devil of a pickpocket
pumped upon.
You are looking again at the plain windows with the small square panes.
The shops make no display as yet, you see. First, it would not be safe
to put valuable articles in windows protected by nothing but a little
thin pane of glass--which reminds me that in the matter of street
safety you will be a good deal ahead of us; next, an honest English
tradesman loves to keep his best out of sight. The streets are horribly
noisy. That is quite true. You have heard of the roar of the mighty
city. Your London, Eighty-seven, will not know how to roar. But you can
now understand what its roaring used to be. An intolerable stir and
uproar, is it not? But then your ears are not, like ours, used to it.
First, the road is not macadamised, or asphalted, or paved with wood.
Next, the traffic of wagons, carts, and wheelbarrows, and hand-carts,
is vastly greater than you had ever previously imagined; then there is
a great deal more of porter work done in the street, and the men are
perpetually jostling, quarrelling, and fighting; the coaches, those of
the short stages with two horses, and the long stages with four, are
always blowing their horns and cracking their whips. Look at yonder
great wagon. It has come all the way from Scotland. It is piled thirty
feet high with packages of all kinds: baskets hang behind, filled with
all kinds of things. In front there sit a couple of Scotch lasses who
have braved a three weeks’ journey from Edinburgh in order to save the
expense of the coach. Brave girls! But such a wagon with such a load
does not go along the street in silence. It is not in silence either
that the women who carry baskets full of fish on their heads go along
the street, nor is the man silent who goes with a pack-donkey loaded on
either side with small coal; and the wooden sledge on which is the cask
of beer, dragged along by a single horse, makes by itself as much noise
as all your carriages together, Eighty-seven.
And there is nothing, you observe, for the protection and convenience
of passengers who wish to cross the road. Nothing at all. No policeman
stands in the middle of the road to regulate the traffic; the drivers
pay no heed to the foot passengers; at the corner of Chancery Lane,
where the press is the thickest, the boys and the clerks slip in
and out among the horses and the wheels without hurt: but how will
those ladies be able to get across? They never would but for the
crossing-sweeper--the most remunerative part of the work, in fact, is
to convoy the ladies across the road; if he magnifies the danger of
this service, and expects silver for saving the lives of his trembling
clients, who shall blame him?
There are still left some of the old posts which divided the
footway from the roadway, though the whole is now paved and--what,
Eighty-seven? You have stepped into a dandy-trap and splashed your
feet. Well, perhaps, in your day they will have learned to pave more
evenly, but just at present our paving is a little rough, and the
stones sometimes small, so that here and there, after rain, these
things will happen.
[Illustration: THOMAS CHATTERTON]
Here we are at Blackfriars. This is the Gate of Bridewell, where they
used to flog women, and still flog the ’prentices. Yonder is the
Fleet Prison, of which we have just read an account in the ‘Pickwick
Papers.’ They have cleared away the old Fleet Market, which used to
stand in the middle of the street, and they have planted it behind the
houses opposite the Prison. Come and look at it. Let us tread softly
over the stones of Farringdon Market, for somewhere beneath our feet
lie the bones of poor young Chatterton. No monument has been erected
here to his memory, nor is the spot known where he lies, but it is
somewhere in this place, which is a tragic and mournful spot, being
crammed beneath its pavement with the bones of the poor, the outcast,
the broken down, the wrecks and failures of life, and littered above
the pavement with the wreckage and refuse of the market. This place was
formerly the burial-ground of the Shoe Lane Workhouse.
We can walk down to the Bridge and look at the river. No Embankment
yet, Eighty-seven. No penny steamers, either. Yet the watermen grumble
at the omnibuses which have cut into their trade.
Here comes the lamplighter, with his short ladder and his lantern.
Gas, of course, has been introduced for ever so long. They have
blindly followed the old plan of lighting, and have stuck up a gas
lamp wherever there used to be an oil lantern. The theatres and places
of amusement are brilliant with gas, and it is gas which makes the
splendour of the gin-palace. The shops took to it slowly, but they are
now beginning to understand how to brighten their appearance after
dark. Go into any little thoroughfare, however, and you will see the
shops lit with two or three candles still.
In the small houses and the country towns the candles linger still.
And such candles! For the most part they are tallow: they need
constant snuffing: they drop their detestable grease everywhere--on
the tablecloth, on your clothes, on the butter and on the bread. You,
Eighty-seven, will be saying hard things of gas, but you do not know
from what darkness, and misery of darkness, it saved your ancestors.
As for the churches, they are not yet generally provided with gas.
There is some strange prejudice against it in the minds of the clergy.
Yet it is not Papistical, or even freethinking. In most of them, where
they have evening service, the pews are provided with two candles
apiece, stuck in tin candlesticks, with four candles for the pulpit
and four for the reading-desk. The effect is not unpleasing, but the
candles continually require snuffing, and the operation is constantly
attended with accidents, so that the church is always filled with the
fragrance of smouldering tallow wicks. The repugnance to gas is so
great, indeed, in some quarters, that one clergyman, the Rector of
Holy Trinity, Marylebone, is going to commit all his vestrymen to the
Ecclesiastical Courts because they have attempted to light the church
with gas.
Here is a City funeral in one of the burial-grounds close to the
crowded street; the clergyman reads the Service, and the mourners in
their long black cloaks stand round the open grave, and the coffin
is lowered into it, and outside there is no cessation at all to the
bustle and the noise; the wagoner cracks his whip, the drover swears at
his cattle, the busy men run to and fro as if the last rites were not
being performed for one who has heard the call of the Messenger, and,
perforce, obeyed it. And look--the mould in which the grave is dug is
nothing but bits of bones and splinters of coffins. The churchyard is
no longer a field of clay: it is a field of dead citizens. You, friend
Eighty-seven, will manage these things better.
Here goes one of the long stages. Saw you ever a finer coach, more
splendidly appointed, with better cattle? Ten miles an hour that
coachman reckons upon as soon as he is clear of London. They say that
in a year or two, when all the railways are opened, the stage coaches
will be ruined, the horses all sold, and the English breed of horses
ruined. We shall travel twenty miles an hour without stopping to change
horses; the accidents will be frightful, but those who meet with none
will get from London to Edinburgh in less than twenty-four hours. Next
year they promise to open the London and Birmingham Railway.
[Illustration: 3rd REGIMENT OF BUFFS]
Here comes a soldier. You find his dress absurd? To be sure, his tight
black stock makes his red cheeks seem swollen; his queer tall hat,
with the neat red ball at the top, might be more artistic; the red
shoulder roll, not the least like an epaulette, would hardly ward off
a sword-cut; the coat with its swallow tail is no protection to the
body or the legs; the whitened belt must cost an infinite amount of
trouble to keep it fit for inspection, and a working-man’s breeches and
stockings would be more serviceable than those long trousers. There are
always brave fellows, however, ready to enlist; the soldier’s life is
attractive, though the discipline is hard and the floggings are truly
awful.
[Illustration: DOUGLAS JERROLD
(From the Bust by the late E. H. Bailey, R.A.)]
My friend, it is half-past five, and you are tired. Let us get back to
Temple Bar and dine at the Mitre, where we can take our cut off the
joint for eighteen-pence. About this time most men are thinking of
dinner. Buy an evening paper of the boy.
[Illustration: Leigh Hunt.
-LEIGH HUNT-]
So: this is cosy. A newly sanded floor, a bright fire, and a goodly
company. James! a clean tablecloth, a couple of candles, and the
snuffers, and the last joint up. What have you got in the paper?
Madagascar Embassy, Massacre in New Zealand--where the devil is
New Zealand?--Suicide of Champion, who made the infernal machine,
Great Distress in the Highlands, Murder of a Process-server in
Ireland, Crossing of the Channel in a Balloon--I hope that some day
an army may not cross it--Letter from Syria, concerning the recent
Great Earthquake, Conduct of the British Legion in Spain, Seven Men
imprisoned for unlawfully ringing the Bells, Death of the Oldest Woman
in the World, aged 162 years, said to have been the Nurse of George
Washington--a good deal of news all for one evening paper. Hush! we
are in luck. Here is Douglas Jerrold. Now we shall hear something
good. Here is Leigh Hunt, and here is Forster, and here--ah! this is
unexpected--here comes none other than ‘Boz’ himself. Of course you
know his name? It is Charles Dickens. Saw one ever a brighter eye or
a more self-reliant bearing? Such self-reliance belongs to those who
are about to succeed. They say his fortune is already made, though but
yesterday he was a reporter in the House, taking down the speeches
in shorthand. Who is that tall young man with the ugly nose? Only
a journalist. They say he wrote that funny paper called ‘The Fatal
Boots’ in _Tilt’s Annual_. His name is Thackeray, I believe, but I know
nothing more about him.
[Illustration: JOHN FORSTER
(From a Photograph by Elliott and Fry)]
Here comes dinner, with a tankard of foaming stout. Is there any other
drink quite so good as stout? After you have taken your dinner, friend
Eighty-seven, I shall prescribe for you what you will never get, poor
wretch--a bottle of the best port in the cellars of the Mitre.
[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS]
My friend, there is one thing in which we of the Thirties do greatly
excel you of the Eighties. We can eat like ploughboys, and we can drink
like draymen. As for your nonsense about Apollinaris Water, we do not
know what it means; and as for your not being able to take a simple
glass of port, we do not in the least understand it. Not take a pint of
port? Man alive! we can take two bottles, and never turn a hair.