London has been often compared to a wilderness--a wilderness of brick,
and so in one sense it is; because you may live in London all the days
of your life if you choose--and, indeed, if you don't choose, if you
happen to be very poor--without exciting observation, or provoking any
further questioning than is comprised in a demand for accurate
guidance from one place to another, a demand which might be made upon
you in an Arabian desert, if there you chanced to meet a stranger. But
London is something else besides a wilderness--indeed it is everything
else. It is a great world, containing a thousand little worlds in its
bosom; and pop yourself down in it in any quarter you will, you are
sure to find yourself in the centre of some peculiar microcosm
distinguished from all others by features more or less characteristic.
One such little world we have lived in for a round number of years;
and as we imagine it presents a picture by no means disagreeable to
look upon, we will introduce the reader, with his permission, into its
very limited circle, and chronicle its history for one day as
faithfully as it is possible for anything to do, short of the
Daguerreotype and the tax-gatherer. Our Terrace, then--for that is our
little world--is situated in one of the northern, southern, eastern,
or western suburbs--we have reasons for not being particular--at the
distance of two miles and three-quarters from the black dome of St
Paul's. It consists of thirty genteel-looking second-rate houses,
standing upon a veritable terrace, at least three feet above the level
of the carriage-way, and having small gardens enclosed in iron
palisades in front of them. The garden gates open upon a pavement of
nine feet in width; the carriage-road is thirty feet across; and on
the opposite side is another but lower terrace, surmounted with
handsome semi-detached villas, with ample flower-gardens both in front
and rear, those in the front being planted, but rather sparingly, with
limes, birches, and a few specimens of the white-ash, which in
summertime overshadow the pavement, and shelter a passing pedestrian
when caught in a shower. At one end of Our Terrace, there is a
respectable butcher's shop, a public-house, and a shop which is
perpetually changing owners, and making desperate attempts to
establish itself as something or other, without any particular
partiality for any particular line of business. It has been by turns a
print-shop, a stationer's, a circulating library, a toy-shop, a
Berlin-wool shop, a music and musical-instrument shop, a haberdasher's
shop, a snuff and cigar shop, and one other thing which has escaped
our memory--and all within the last seven years. Each retiring
speculator has left his stock-in-trade, along with the good-will, to
his successor; and at the present moment it is a combination of shops,
where everything you don't want is to be found in a state of
dilapidation, together with a very hungry-looking proprietor, who, for
want of customers upon whom to exercise his ingenuity, pulls away all
day long upon the accordion to the tune of _We're a' noddin'_. The
other end of Our Terrace has its butcher, its public-house, its
grocer, and a small furniture-shop, doing a small trade, under the
charge of a very small boy. Let thus much suffice for the physiology
of our subject. We proceed to record its history, as it may be read by
any one of the inhabitants who chooses to spend the waking hours of a
single day in perusing it from his parlour window.
It is a fine morning in the middle of June, and the clock of the
church at the end of the road is about striking seven, when the
parlour shutters and the street doors of the terrace begin to open one
by one. By a quarter past, the servant-girls, having lighted their
fires, and put the kettle on to boil for breakfast, are ostensibly
busy in sweeping the pathways of the small front-gardens, but are
actually enjoying a simultaneous gossip together over the garden
railings--a fleeting pleasure, which must be nipped in the bud,
because master goes to town at half-past eight, and his boots are not
yet cleaned, or his breakfast prepared. Now the bedroom-bell rings,
which means hot water; and this is no sooner up, than mistress is
down, and breakfast is laid in the parlour. At a quarter before eight,
the eggs are boiled, and the bacon toasted, and the first serious
business of the day is in course of transaction. Mr Jones of No. 9, Mr
Robinson of No. 10, and Mr Brown of No. 11, are bound to be at their
several posts in the city at nine o'clock; and having swallowed a
hasty breakfast, they may be seen, before half-past eight has chimed,
walking up and down the terrace chatting together, and wondering
whether 'that Smith,' as usual, means to keep the omnibus waiting this
morning, or whether he will come forth in time. Precisely as the half
hour strikes, the tin horn of the omnibus sounds its shrill blast, and
the vehicle is seen rattling round the corner, stopping one moment at
No. 28, to take up Mr Johnson. On it comes, with a fresh blast, to
where the commercial trio are waiting for it; out rushes Smith, wiping
his mouth, and the 'bus,' swallowing up the whole four, rumbles and
trumpets on to take up Thompson, Jackson, and Richardson, who, cigars
in mouth, are waiting at a distance of forty paces off to ascend the
roof. An hour later, a second omnibus comes by on the same benevolent
errand, for the accommodation of those gentlemen, more favoured by
fortune, who are not expected to be at the post of business until the
hour of ten. As Our Terrace does not stand in a direct omnibus route,
these are all the 'buses' that will pass in the course of the day. The
gentlemen whom they convey every morning to town are regular
customers, and the vehicles diverge from their regular course in order
to pick them up at their own doors.
About half-past nine, or from that to a quarter to ten, comes the
postman with his first delivery of letters for the day. Our Terrace is
the most toilsome part of his beat, for having to serve both sides of
the way, his progress is very like that of a ship at sea sailing
against the wind. R'tat he goes on our side, then down he jumps into
the road--B'bang on the other side--tacks about again, and serves the
terrace--off again, and serves the villas, and so on till he has
fairly epistolised both sides of the way, and vanished round the
corner. The vision of his gold band and red collar is anxiously looked
for in the morning by many a fair face, which a watchful observer may
see furtively peering through the drawing-room window-curtains. After
he has departed, and the well-to-do merchants and employers who reside
in the villas opposite have had time to look over their
correspondence, come sundry neat turn-outs from the stables and
coach-houses in the rear of the villas: a light, high gig, drawn by a
frisky grey, into which leaps young Oversea the shipbroker--a
comfortable, cushioned four-wheel drawn by a pair of bay ponies, into
which old Discount climbs heavily, followed perhaps by his two
daughters, bound on a shopping-visit to the city--and a spicy-looking,
rattling trap, with a pawing horse, which has a decided objection to
standing still, for Mr Goadall, the wealthy cattle-drover. These, with
other vehicles of less note, all roll off the ground by a quarter
after ten o'clock or so; and the ladies and their servants, with some
few exceptions, are left in undisputed possession of home, while not a
footfall of man or beast is heard in the sunshiny quiet of the street.
The quiet, however, is broken before long by a peculiar and suggestive
cry. We do not hear it yet ourselves, but Stalker, our black cat and
familiar, has caught the well-known accents, and with a characteristic
crooning noise, and a stiff, perpendicular erection of tail, he sidles
towards the door, demanding, as plainly as possible, to be let out.
Yes, it is the cats-meat man. 'Ca' me-e-et--me-yet--me-e-yet!' fills
the morning air, and arouses exactly thirty responsive feline
voices--for there is a cat to every house--and points thirty aspiring
tails to the zenith. As many hungry tabbies, sables, and
tortoise-shells as can get out of doors, are trooping together with
arched backs upon the pavement, following the little pony-cart, the
cats' commissariat equipage, and each one, anxious for his daily
allowance, contributing most musically his quota to the general
concert. We do not know how it is, but the cats-meat man is the most
unerring and punctual of all those peripatetic functionaries who
undertake to cater for the consumption of the public. The baker, the
butcher, the grocer, the butterman, the fishmonger, and the coster,
occasionally forget your necessities, or omit to call for your
orders--the cats-meat man never. Other traders, too, dispense their
stock by a sliding-scale, and are sometimes out of stock altogether:
Pussy's provider, on the contrary, sticks to one price from year's end
to year's end, and never, in the memory of the oldest Grimalkin, was
known to disappoint a customer. A half-penny for a cat's breakfast has
been the regulation-price ever since the horses of the metropolis
began to submit to the boiling process for the benefit of the feline
race.
By the time the cats have retired to growl over their allowance in
private, the daily succession of nomadic industrials begin to lift up
their voices, and to defile slowly along Our Terrace, stopping now and
then to execute a job or effect a sale when an opportunity presents
itself. Our limits will not allow us to notice them all, but we must
devote a few paragraphs to those without whom our picture would be
incomplete.
First comes an ingenious lass of two or three-and-twenty, with a
flaming red shawl, pink ribbons in her bonnet, and the hue of health
on a rather saucy face. She carries a large basket on her left arm,
and in her right hand she displays to general admiration a gorgeous
group of flowers, fashioned twice the size of life, from tissue-paper
of various colours. She lifts up her voice occasionally as she marches
slowly along, singing, in a clear accent: 'Flowers--ornamental papers
for the stove--flowers! paper-flowers!' She is the accredited herald
of summer--a phenomenon, this year, of very late appearance. We should
have seen her six weeks ago, if the summer had not declined to appear
at the usual season. She is the gaudy, party-coloured ephemera of
street commerce, and will disappear from view in a fortnight's time,
to be seen no more until the opening summer of '53. Her wares, which
are manufactured with much taste, and with an eye to the harmony of
colours, are in much request among the genteel housewives of the
suburbs. They are exceedingly cheap, considering the skill which must
be applied in their construction. They are all the work of her own
hands, and have occupied her time and swallowed up her capital for
some months past. She enjoys almost a monopoly in her art, and is not
to be beaten down in the price of her goods. She knows their value,
and is more independent than an artist dares to be in the presence of
a patron. Her productions are a pleasant summer substitute for the
cheerful fire of winter; and it is perhaps well for her that, before
the close of autumn, the faded hues of the flowers, and the harbour
they afford to dust, will convert them into waste paper, in spite of
all the care that may be taken to preserve them.
Paper Poll, as the servants call her, is hardly out of sight, and not
out of hearing, when a young fellow and his wife come clattering along
the pavement, appealing to all who may require their good offices in
the matter of chair-mending. The man is built up in a sort of
cage-work of chairs stuck about his head and shoulders, and his dirty
phiz is only half visible through a kind of grill of legs and
cross-bars. These are partly commissions which, having executed at
home, he is carrying to their several owners. But as everybody does
not choose to trust him away with property, he is ready to execute
orders on the spot; and to this end his wife accompanies him on his
rounds. She is loaded with a small bag of tools suspended at her
waist, and a plentiful stock of split-cane under one arm. He will
weave a new cane-seat to an old chair for 9d., and he will set down
his load and do it before your eyes in your own garden, if you prefer
that to intrusting him with it; that is, he will make the bargain, and
his wife will weave the seat under his supervision, unless there
happen to be two to be repaired, when husband and wife will work
together. We have noticed that it is a very silent operation, that of
weaving chair-bottoms; and that though the couple may be seated for an
hour and more together rapidly plying the flexible canes, they never
exchange a word with each other till the task is accomplished.
Sometimes the wife is left at a customer's door working alone, while
the husband wanders further on in search of other employment,
returning by the time she has finished her task. But there are no
chairs to mend this morning on Our Terrace, and our bamboo friends may
jog on their way.
Now resounds from a distance the cry of 'All a-growin' an'
a-blowin'--all a-blowin', a-blowin' here!' and in a few minutes the
travelling florist makes his appearance, driving before him a
broad-surfaced handcart, loaded in profusion with exquisite flowers of
all hues, in full bloom, and, to all appearance, thriving famously. It
may happen, however, as it has happened to us, that the blossoms now
so vigorous and blooming, may all drop off on the second or third day;
and the naked plant, after making a sprawling and almost successful
attempt to reach the ceiling for a week or so, shall become suddenly
sapless and withered, the emblem of a broken-down and emaciated
sot--and, what is more, ruined from the self-same cause, an overdose
of stimulating fluid. It may happen, on the other hand, that the plant
shall have suffered no trick of the gardener's trade, and shall bloom
fairly to the end of its natural term. The commerce in blossoming
flowers is one of the most uncertain and dangerous speculations in
which the small street-traders of London can engage. When carried on
under favourable circumstances, it is one of the most profitable, the
demand for flowers being constant and increasing; but the whole
stock-in-trade of a small perambulating capitalist may be ruined by a
shower of rain, which will spoil their appearance for the market, and
prevent his selling them before they are overblown. Further, as few of
these dealers have any means of housing this kind of stock safely
during the night, they are often compelled to part with them, after an
unfavourable day, at less than prime cost, to prevent a total loss.
Still, there are never wanting men of a speculative turn of mind, and
the cry of 'All a-blowin' an' a-growin'' resounds through the streets
as long as the season supplies flowers to grow and to blow.
The flower-merchant wheels off, having left a good sprinkling of
geraniums in our neighbours' windows; and his cousin-german, 'the
graveller,' comes crawling after him, with his cart and stout horse in
the middle of the road, while he walks on one side of the pavement,
and his assistant on the other. This fellow is rather a singular
character, and one that is to be met with probably nowhere upon the
face of the earth but in the suburbs of London. He is, _par
excellence_, the exponent of a feeling which pervades the popular mind
in the metropolis on the subject of the duty which respectable people
owe to respectability. It is impossible for a housekeeper in a
neighbourhood having any claims to gentility, to escape the
recognition of this feeling in the lower class of industrials. If you
have a broken window in the front of your house, the travelling
glazier thinks, to use his own expression, that _you have a right_ to
have it repaired, and therefore that he, having discovered the
fracture, has a right to the job of mending it. If your bell-handle is
out of order or broken off, the travelling bellman thinks he has a
right to repair it, and bores you, in fact, until you commission him
to do so--and so on. In the same manner, and on the same principle, so
soon as the fine weather sets in, and the front-gardens begin to look
gay, the graveller loads his cart with gravel, and shouldering his
spade, crawls leisurely through the suburbs with his companion,
peering into every garden; and wherever he sees that the walks are
grown dingy or moss-grown, he knocks boldly at the door, and demands
to be set to work in mending your ways. The best thing you can do is
to make the bargain and employ him at once; if not, he will be round
again to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, and bore you into
consenting at last. You live in a respectable house, and you _have a
right_ to keep your garden in a respectable condition--and the
graveller is determined that you shall do so: has he not brought
gravel to the door on purpose? it will cost you but a shilling or two.
Thus he lays down the law in his own mind; and sooner or later, as
sure as fate, he lays down the gravel in your garden.
While the graveller is patting down the pathway round Robinson's
flower-bed, we hear the well-known cry of a countryman whom we have
known any time these ten years, and who, with his wife by his side,
has perambulated the suburbs for the best part of his life. He has
taken upon himself the patronage of the laundry department, and he
shoulders a fagot of clothes-poles, ten feet long, with forked
extremities, all freshly cut from the forest. Coils of new rope for
drying are hanging upon his arm, and his wife carries a basket well
stocked with clothes-pins of a superior description, manufactured by
themselves. The cry of 'Clo'-pole-line-pins' is one long familiar to
the neighbourhood; and as this honest couple have earned a good
reputation by a long course of civility and probity, they enjoy the
advantage of a pretty extensive connection. Their perambulations are
confined to the suburbs, and it is a question if they ever enter
London proper from one year's end to another. It is of no use to carry
clothes-poles and drying-lines where there are no conveniences for
washing and drying.
Next comes a travelling umbrella-mender, fagoted on the back like the
man in the moon of the nursery rhyme-book. He is followed at a short
distance by a travelling tinker, swinging his live-coals in a sort of
tin censer, and giving utterance to a hoarse and horrible cry,
intelligible only to the cook who has a leaky sauce-pan. Then comes
the chamois-leather woman, bundled about with damaged skins, in
request for the polishing of plate and plated wares. She is one of
that persevering class who will hardly take 'No' for an answer. It
takes her a full hour to get through the terrace, for she enters every
garden, and knocks at every door from No. 1 to No. 30. In the
winter-time, she pursues an analogous trade, dealing in what may
strictly be termed the raw material, inasmuch as she then buys and
cries hare-skins and rabbit-skins. She has, unfortunately, a
notoriously bad character, and is accused of being addicted to the
practice of taking tenpence and a hare-skin in exchange for a
counterfeit shilling.
By this time it is twelve o'clock and past, and Charley Coster, who
serves the terrace with vegetables, drives up his stout cob to the
door, and is at the very moment we write bargaining with Betty for new
potatoes at threepence-half-penny a pound. Betty declares it is a
scandalous price for potatoes. 'Yes, dear,' says Charley; 'an' another
scanlous thing is, that I can't sell 'em for no less.' Charley is the
most affectionate of costers, and is a general favourite with the
abigails of the terrace. His turn-out is the very model of a
travelling green-grocer's shop, well stocked with all the fruits and
vegetables of the season; and he himself is a model of a coster, clean
shaved, clean shod, and trimly dressed, with a flower in his
button-hole, an everlasting smile upon his face, and the nattiest of
neck-ties. The cunning rogue pretends to be smitten with Betty, and
most likely does the same with all the other Bettys of the
neighbourhood, to all of whom he chatters incessantly of everything
and everybody--save and except of the wife and three children waiting
for him at home. He will leave a good portion of his stock behind him
when he quits the terrace.
After Charley has disappeared, there is a pause for an hour or two in
the flow of professionals past Our Terrace. The few pedestrians that
pass along are chiefly gentlefolks, who have come abroad this fine
morning for an airing--to take a constitutional, and to pick up an
appetite for dinner. You may chance to hear the cry of 'Oranges and
nuts,' or of 'Cod--live cod,' and you may be entertained by a band of
musicians in a gaily-coloured van patrolling for the purpose of
advertising the merits of something or other which is to be had for
nothing at all, or the next thing to it, if you can prevail upon
yourself to go and fetch it. Perhaps Punch and Judy will pitch their
little citadel in front of your dwelling; or, more likely still, a
band of mock Ethiopians, with fiddle, castanets, and banjo, may tempt
your liberality with a performance of _Uncle Ned_ or _Old Dan Tucker_;
or a corps of German musicians may trumpet you into a fit of martial
ardour; or a wandering professor of the German flute soothe you into a
state of romance.
As the afternoon wears on, the tranquillity grows more profound. The
villas opposite stand asleep in the sunshine; the sound of a single
footstep is heard on the pavement; and anon you hear the feeble,
cracked voice of old Willie, the water-cress man, distinctly
articulating the cry of 'Water-cresses; fine brown water-cresses;
royal Albert water-cresses; the best in London--everybody say so.' The
water-cresses are welcomed on the terrace as an ornament and something
more to the tea-table; and while tea is getting ready for the
inhabitants of the terrace, the dwellers in the opposite villas are
seen returning to dinner. The lame match-man now hobbles along upon
his crutches, with his little basket of lucifers suspended at his
side. He is thoroughly deaf and three parts dumb, uttering nothing
beyond an incomprehensible kind of croak by way of a demand for
custom. He is a privileged being, whom nobody thinks of interfering
with. He has the _entrée_ of all the gardens on both sides of the way,
and is the acknowledged depositary of scraps and remnants of all kinds
which have made their last appearance upon the dinner or supper table.
About five o'clock, the tinkling note of the muffin-bell strikes
agreeably upon the ear, suggestive of fragrant souchong and
bottom-crusts hot, crackling, and unctuous. Now ensues a delicate
savour in the atmosphere of the terrace kitchens, and it is just at
its height when Smith, Brown, Jones, and Robinson are seen walking
briskly up the terrace. They all go in at Smith's, where the
muffin-man went in about half an hour before, and left half his stock
behind him. By six o'clock, the lords and ladies of Our Terrace are
congregated round their tea-urns; and by seven, you may see from one
of the back-windows a tolerable number of the lords, arrayed in
dressing-gowns and slippers, and some of them with corpulent
meerschaums dangling from their mouths, strolling leisurely in the
gardens in the rear of their dwellings, and amusing themselves with
their children, whose prattling voices and innocent laughter mingle
with the twittering of those suburban songsters, the sparrows, and
with the rustling of the foliage, stirred by the evening breeze. These
pleasant sounds die away by degrees. Little boys and girls go to bed;
the gloom of twilight settles down upon the gardens; candles are
lighted in the drawing-rooms, and from a dozen houses at once
pianofortes commence their harmony. At No. 12, the drawing-room
windows are open, though the blinds are down; and the slow-pacing
policeman pauses in his round, and leans against the iron railings,
being suddenly brought up by the richly-harmonious strains of a glee
for three voices: Brown, Jones, and Robinson are doing the _Chough and
Crow_; and Smith, who prides himself on his semi-grand, which he tunes
with his own hands once a week, is doing the accompaniment in his best
style. The merry chorus swells delightfully upon the ear, and is heard
half way down the terrace: the few foot-passengers who are passing
stop under the window to listen, till one of them is imprudent enough
to cry 'Encore,' when down go the windows, and the harmonious sounds
are shut in from vulgar ears.
It is by this time nearly half-past nine o'clock, and now comes the
regular nightly 'tramp, tramp' of the police, marching in Indian file,
and heavily clad in their night-gear. They come to replace the
guardians of the day by those of the night. One of the number falls
out of the line on the terrace, where he commences his nocturnal
wanderings, and guarantees the peace and safety of the inhabitants for
the succeeding eight hours: the rest tramp onwards to their distant
stations. The echoes of their iron heels have hardly died away, when
there is a sudden and almost simultaneous eruption from every
garden-gate on the terrace of clean-faced, neat-aproned, red-elbowed
servant-girls, each and all armed with a jug or a brace of jugs, with
a sprinkling of black bottles among them, and all bound to one or
other of the public-houses which guard the terrace at either end. It
is the hour of supper; and the supper-beer, and the after-supper
nightcaps, for those who indulge in them, have to be procured from the
publican. This is an occasion upon which Betty scorns to hurry; but
she takes time by the forelock, starting for the beer as soon as the
cloth is laid, and before master has finished his pipe, or his game of
chess, or Miss Clementina her song, in order that she may have leisure
for a little gossip with No. 7 on the one hand, or No. 9 on the
other. She goes out without beat of drum, and lets herself in with the
street-door key without noise, bringing home, besides the desiderated
beverage, the news of the day, and the projects of next-door for the
morrow, with, it may be, a plan for the enjoyment of her next monthly
holiday.
Supper is the last great business of the day upon Our Terrace, which,
by eleven at night, is lapped in profound repose. The moon rides high
in mid-sky, and the black shadows of the trees lie motionless on the
white pavement. Not a footfall is heard abroad; the only sound that is
audible as you put your head out of the window, to look up at the
glimmering stars and radiant moon, is the distant and monotonous
murmur of the great metropolis, varied now and then by the shrill
scream of a far-off railway-whistle, or the 'cough, cough, cough' of
the engine of some late train. We are sober folks on the terrace, and
are generally all snug abed before twelve o'clock. The last sound that
readies our ears ere we doze off into forgetfulness, is the slow,
lumbering, earthquaky advance of a huge outward-bound wagon. We hear
it at the distance of half a mile, and note distinctly the crushing
and pulverising of every small stone which the broad wheels roll over
as they sluggishly proceed on their way. It rocks us in our beds as it
passes the house; and for twenty minutes afterwards, if we are awake
so long, we are aware that it is groaning heavily onwards, and shaking
the solid earth in its progress--till it sinks away in silence, or we
into the land of dreams.