BOOK III

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Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

The CHILDREN'S BOOK of LONDON

BY

G. E. MITTON

WITH EIGHT FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR

A. & C. BLACK, LTD., 4, 5 & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.1

[Illustration: THE TOWER BRIDGE.]

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

_First Published 1903_

TO

RENA, CU, AND ELFIE

CONTENTS

BOOK I

LONDON AS IT IS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. LONDON CHILDREN 3

II. LONDON 16

III. THE KING'S PALACES 29

IV. TRAINS AND HORSES 42

V. CHILDREN AT SCHOOL 52

VI. LONDON MARKETS 64

VII. CHILDREN'S HOSPITALS 77

VIII. STREETS AND SHOPS 89

IX. DOGS AND CATS 105

X. ODDS AND ENDS 115

BOOK II

HISTORICAL STORIES

XI. KING EDWARD V 131

XII. TOURNAMENTS AND PAGEANTS 154

XIII. SIR THOMAS MORE 165

XIV. LADY JANE GREY 182

XV. GUNPOWDER PLOT 196

XVI. CHARLES I 204

XVII. THE GREAT PLAGUE AND FIRE 222

BOOK III

THE SIGHTS OF LONDON

XVIII. THE TOWER OF LONDON 241

XIX. THE TOWER OF LONDON--_continued_ 257

XX. THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS 270

XXI. THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS--_continued_ 289

XXII. THE BRITISH MUSEUM 303

XXIII. THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM 311

XXIV. WESTMINSTER ABBEY, ST. PAUL'S, AND THE CENOTAPH 332

XXV. THE MINT, THE BANK, AND THE POST OFFICE 353

XXVI. THE LORD MAYOR'S SHOW AND OTHER THINGS 370

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE TOWER BRIDGE _Frontispiece_

FACING PAGE

QUEEN VICTORIA MEMORIAL AND BUCKINGHAM PALACE 30

TRAFALGAR SQUARE 132

THE TRAITORS' GATE, TOWER OF LONDON 180

THE CENOTAPH, WHITEHALL 216

ST. MARY-LE-STRAND AND BUSH HOUSE 244

THE CORONATION CHAIR, WESTMINSTER ABBEY 340

ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL 348

BOOK I

LONDON AS IT IS

THE CHILDREN'S BOOK OF LONDON

CHAPTER I

LONDON CHILDREN

To begin with, the streets of London are not paved with gold; but I need

not have said that, for nowadays the very youngest child knows it. It

was Dick Whittington who first imagined anything so foolish; but then he

was only a country lad, and in his days there were not the same

opportunities for finding out the truth about things as there are now.

There were very few books for one thing, and those there were cost a

great deal of money, and would hardly be likely to come in Dick's way;

so that if there was by chance a book which described London as it was

then, it is not at all probable that he would have seen it. There were

no photographs, either, to show him what London was really like, so, of

course, he had to make up ideas about it himself, just as you who live

in the country and have heard people talking about London do now. Are

the stories you invent at all like the stories Dick Whittington made up

for himself? You can't answer because you're not writing this book, so I

must answer for you. Perhaps you think London is a place where there are

no lessons to do, and where there is always a great deal of fun going

on; where you can go to see sights all day long; the huge waxwork

figures at Madame Tussaud's, as big as real people; and lions and tigers

and elephants and bears at the Zoo; and you think that the boys and

girls who live in London spend all their time in seeing wonderful

things.

If this is what you think, some of it is true enough. There are a great

many wonderful things to be seen in London, and if you want to hear

about them at once you must skip all this chapter and a great many

others besides, and go on to page 241, where you will find them

described. But if you want to know what London itself is really like you

must wait a little longer. The best people to tell you would be the

children who live in London; they will read this book, and, of course,

they could answer all your questions, but they would not all answer in

the same way.

Some would say: 'Oh yes, of course we all know the Zoo, but that's for

small children; _we_ are quite tired of a dull place like that, where

everyone goes; we like balls, with good floors for dancing, and

programmes, and everything done as it is at grown-up balls; and we like

theatres, where we can sit in the front row and look through

opera-glasses and eat ices. Madame Tussaud's? Yes, it's there still; we

went to it when we were quite little babies, but it's not at all

fashionable.'

And another child might say: 'I don't mind driving with mother in the

Row when I'm really beautifully dressed.'

But I'll tell you a secret about the little boys and girls who talk like

this: they are not really children at all, they never have been and

never will be; they are grown-up men and women in child shapes, and by

the time their bodies have grown big they won't enjoy anything at all.

Master Augustus will be a dull young man, who hates everybody, and does

not know how to get through the long, dreary day; and Miss Ruby will be

a mere heartless woman, who only cares to please herself, and does not

mind how unhappy she makes everyone else. And all this will be because

their foolish father and mother let them have everything they wanted,

and allowed them to go everywhere they liked, and that is not at all

good even for grown-up people, and it is very, very much worse for

children.

There are, however, many other sorts of children in London, and it is

rather interesting to hear what they think of the town in which they

live. For instance, there are the children of people who are not at all

poor, who have nice houses and plenty of money, but who are yet sensible

enough to know that their children must have something else besides

pleasure. If we asked one of their children what he thought of London,

he might say: 'I've seen the Zoo, of course, and Madame Tussaud's, and

I've been to Maskelyne's Mysteries and the Hippodrome, and they're all

jolly, especially the Zoo; but those things generally happen in the

holidays: we don't have such fun every day.' A boy or a girl of this

sort has really a much duller time than one who lives in the country.

London is so big, so huge, that he sees only a wee bit of it.

London is the capital town of England, as everyone knows. In Dick

Whittington's time it was not very big, but it has grown and grown,

until it is seventeen miles in one direction and twelve in another. You

know what a mile is, perhaps; well, try to imagine seventeen miles one

after another, end to end, on and on, all streets of houses, with here

and there a park, very carefully kept, not in the least like a country

park. And all these streets and streets of houses are not very

interesting, and in many of them the houses are all alike, built of

dull-coloured stone or red brick, or else they are covered with plaster.

There is a great part of London where people only go to work, and from

which they come away again at nights. In the mornings hundreds and

hundreds of men pour into this part as fast as the trains can bring

them, and go to their offices, which are in great buildings, many

different offices being in one building; and the streets are filled with

men hurrying this way and that, always in a hurry. There is no one

standing about or idling. Omnibuses and carts and cabs are all mixed up

together in the roadway, until you would think it was impossible for

them ever to be disentangled again. And now and then some bold man on a

bicycle dares to ride right into the middle of it all, between the

wheels and under the horses' noses, and how he ever gets through without

being crushed up as flat as a paper-knife is a wonder!

At nights, when the men have done their day's work, they are in as much

of a hurry to get out of this part of London, which is called the City,

as they were to get into it in the morning. They go by cabs and

omnibuses and trains back to their homes and their children, and the

City is left still and silent, with just a quiet cat flitting across the

street, and making a frightened jump when the big policeman turns his

lantern on to her.

The children of rich people seldom see this part of London. Perhaps

their father goes there every day, and they hear him talk of the City,

but it is like another town to them, so vague and far away it seems.

These children probably have lessons with their governess at home, and

when twelve o'clock comes they go for a walk. When they open the

front-door they see a long street, stretching both ways, filled with

dark, dull-looking houses just the same as their own. The street

pavement is made of wood, which is quieter than stones, and when the

cabs run past they make very little sound. If the children are lucky

they live in a square, and there is a garden in the middle, with iron

railings round it, and everyone who lives in the square has a key to

open the gate; but it must not be left open, or other people would get

in and use the garden too. It has green grass in it and flower-beds,

and it is all very prim and proper, and not at all interesting; and,

worst of all, the dear dogs, Scamp and Jim, cannot go there, even when

they are led by a string. The gardener would turn them out, for he

imagines they would kick about in his flower-beds and rake out the

seeds. This is not the sort of garden that a country child would care

for. But Jack and Ethel are not country children; they are quite used to

their garden, and like it very much.

We can see them start on their morning walk with Miss Primity, their

governess. Both the children wear gloves--they never go out without

them--and in the street they walk quietly; but when they have passed

down the street and got into Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens, they can

run about as much as they like. In the Gardens there is a big round

pond, where Jack can sail his boat; and on Saturdays the water is

covered with white sails, and even men come down and join in the sport,

making their toy boats race against one another. The boats are often

quite large, and the scene is very gay and pretty. There are a great

many ducks, which clamour to be fed; and there are other children there

too. These may be friends of Jack's and Ethel's, and they can play

together, and Ethel can show her new doll, and Jack can boast of all the

things he means to do when he grows up. The Gardens are very nice, but

it is rather dull always having the same walk in the same place every

day, and sometimes the children get a little tired of it, and are glad

when a half-holiday comes and an aunt or uncle carries them off to see

some of the wonderful things of which London is full.

There is another part of London of which we have not yet spoken. We have

heard of the City and of the West End--the City, where business men

work, and the West End, where rich people live; but there is also the

East End, lying beyond the City, and the people who live here are nearly

all poor. If you asked any of the children of the East End if they had

seen Madame Tussaud's or the Zoo, they would grin, and say, 'Garn!' and

if you told them about these things they might say, 'Ye're kiddin',

ye're,' which is their way of saying they don't believe you, and think

you are telling stories. In the streets where these children live

everything is dirty and nasty. A number of families live together in one

house, perhaps even in one room, for I have heard of rooms where each

family had a corner. The women never do anything more than they can

help. They never mend their old dresses, or wash themselves or their

children, or try to cook nicely; they do nothing. They spend the day

sitting on their dirty doorsteps, with the youngest baby on their knees,

and their hair is all uncombed, and their dresses are filthy and torn,

and they shout out to other women across the street, and make remarks on

anyone who happens to pass. The poor little baby gets dreadful things to

eat--things that you would think would kill an ordinary child--bits of

herring or apple, and anything else its mother eats, and sometimes even

sips of beer or gin. If it cries, it is joggled about or slapped, and as

soon as ever it is able to sit up, it is put down on the pavement among

a number of other dirty, untidy children and left to take care of

itself. When a little girl is seven she is thought quite old enough to

look after all the younger ones, and on Saturdays she goes off with

other little girls, pushing a rickety old perambulator or a wooden cart,

with perhaps two babies in it and several smaller children hanging on to

her skirt; and she goes down the foul street and on until she comes to a

tiny little bit of ground, where there are seats and some bushes and

hard paths, and this is a playground. But what do you think it really

has been? A graveyard, and there are still graves and big stones,

showing that people have been buried there long years ago. But the

children who play in it do not mind this at all; they sit on the graves,

and think that they are very lucky to get this place away from the

street. Then the poor little babies are left in their go-carts or

perambulators, very often in the sun, with their heads hanging down over

the edge, while Liza talks to Bella; and they both put their hair in

curl-papers, and show each other any small things they have picked up in

the street. They have no need of dolls, for both Bella and Liza have

living dolls, which are often very troublesome; but they are quite used

to it, and if the live doll cries they just stop talking and rush up to

it and push it up and down, or take it out and shake it about for a few

minutes, and then put it back again and go on with their talk.

Sometimes, not often, they have a feast, and perhaps Bella brings out a

dirty bottle which she has picked up, and fills it with water at the

fountain; and Liza takes from her pocket an apple and some sticky

toffee, and perhaps one of the little ones has a bun. And then the apple

is rubbed until it shines with a dirty bit of rag called a

pocket-handkerchief, and they all sit down together in a row and share

the things; and even the baby has a hard lump of apple stuffed into its

mouth, for Liza and Bella do not mean to be unkind to their babies, for

they have mother-hearts in them.

Well, of course, there are many other sorts of children in London

besides these: there are the children of working men, who are neatly

dressed and go out on Sundays with their father and mother; there are

chauffeurs' children who live near the garage, or in the mews, where

rich people keep their motor-cars or carriages. It is not easy in London

to find rooms for cars or carriages close to the house, so a number of

stables were built together, making a long yard like a street, and the

people who lived near kept their carriages there, but there are fewer

carriages now, and often the rooms in the mews are empty or used by

outside people, while the cars are kept at some big garage a little

distance off. There are many others who are not so lucky as chauffeurs'

or coachmen's children; think of the little children who belong to the

organ-grinders, and who are taken about in a basket tied on to the

grinding organ, with the hideous noise in their ears all day. I wonder

that they can ever hear at all when they grow up. Many, very many, of

the children have no playground at all but the street, the pavement,

where people are passing all the time. They sit on the doorsteps and

breathe in the dust, and all their playthings, if they have any--and

even their food--are often thick with dust. I have seen a child rubbing

a bit of bread-and-jam up and down on the dirty stone before it eats it.

But the rich children and the poor children do not often meet, for if

the rich children go through the streets in the poorer parts they are in

motor-cars or cabs, and in their part of the park there are not many

poor children, while in the parks where the poor children go you do not

find many rich ones. And though there are parts of London where poor and

rich are very near together, yet their lives never mix as the lives of

country children do. Very often in the country a child knows the names

of all the other children in its village, and who they are and all about

them; but in London it is not so. And many rich children grumble all the

time if they do not have everything they want, and never think of their

poor little brothers and sisters, who would snatch eagerly at many of

the things they throw away.

Have you heard the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, who piped so

wonderfully that he could make anything follow him when he liked, and

how he piped so that all the rats ran after him, and he led them to the

river and they were drowned? When he asked the mayor and chief men in

the town to be paid for what he had done, they laughed, and said: 'No,

now the rats are dead, you can't make them alive again; we have got what

we wanted, and we won't pay you.' So the piper was very angry, and piped

another tune, and all the children in the town followed him; and he led

them on and on toward a great mountain, where a cave opened suddenly,

and they all went in, and were never seen again. I think if that Pied

Piper came to London he would find very many more different sorts of

children than ever he found in Hamelin, where--

'Out came the children running:

All the little boys and girls,

With rosy checks and flaxen curls,

And sparkling eyes, and teeth like pearls,

Tripping and skipping ran merrily after

The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.'

There would be London children whose eyes did not sparkle, and who had

almost forgotten to laugh, as well as those like the children of

Hamelin, who were so bright and so gay.

CHAPTER II

LONDON

Now, we have seen something of the children who live in London, and it

is time to try to think a little of what London itself is like. As I

have said, the boys and girls who live there do not know very much about

it; they only know their own little corner of it, because London is so

big that it is almost impossible even for a grown-up person to know it

quite well in every part. I have told you it is about seventeen miles

long and twelve broad, but you cannot understand really how long that

is; you can only get some little idea. This great town stretches on for

mile after mile, houses and houses and streets and streets, with here

and there a park, but even the park is surrounded by houses. Children

who live in small towns can always get out into the country and see

green trees and grass and hedges, but many of the children who live in

London have never seen the country, and have no idea what it is like.

We heard in the last chapter just a little about this great town, how

it is divided into three parts, that is to say, the West End, where the

rich people live, and the City, where men go to work, and the East End,

where the poor people live. Of course, it isn't quite so simple as that,

because all the rich people don't live in the West End or all the poor

people in the East. Some of the poor ones live in the West End, too, but

roughly we may put it so, just to get some idea of the place.

Through this great London there rolls a great river, and there is

scarcely any need to say what the name of that river is, for every child

knows about the Thames. The great river cuts London into two parts, and

on the south side of it there are many poor streets with poor people

living in them, and close to the river is a palace, where the Archbishop

of Canterbury lives. He is head of all the clergymen and all the bishops

of the English Church. The palace has stood there for many hundreds of

years, and it is curious to think that this important man, who has so

much power, and who has the right to walk before all the dukes and earls

when he goes to Parliament, lives there among the poor people on the

south side of the river.

The City, where men have their offices and go to work, is really quite

a small part of London, but it is very important. Here there is the Bank

of England, where bank-notes are made, and where there is gold in great

bars lying in the cellars. The Bank has streets all round its four

sides, as if it were an island, and the streets were rivers, and inside,

in the middle of the building, there is a yard, with trees in it and a

garden. It does seem so funny to find a garden here amongst all the

houses. If you went into the Bank to see it, you would meet a man

wearing a funny cocked hat like those that men used to wear in old

times; and if you showed him that you had leave to go all over the

building, he would tell you where to go and be very civil. We shall hear

more about the Bank later on.

Close to the Bank is the Mansion House, where the Lord Mayor lives. The

Lord Mayor is a very grand person indeed. He is the head of the City,

and a new Lord Mayor is chosen every year. There are other big buildings

around near the Bank, and just here seven streets meet, and there is an

open space. Now, if you were suddenly dropped down into that open space

at, say, the middle of the day, you would most certainly be run over

unless you stood close beside the very biggest policeman you could see,

for every thing on wheels is coming in every direction--big

motor-omnibuses, generally painted the most vivid scarlet, crammed with

people inside and on the top; taxi-cabs with patient drivers, who would

not jump if a gunpowder explosion went off under their noses; they have

to keep good-tempered all day long, in spite of the tangle of traffic;

immense lorries loaded with beer barrels; and little tiny carts with

greengrocer's stuff, perhaps dragged by a dear little donkey, who looks

as if he could run right under the bodies of the big dray-horses. And

all these things are coming so fast and so close to one another, that it

seems a miracle anyone can get through. Not long ago an underground

passage with steps leading down to it was built, so that people can go

under instead of over the street, which is, I think, a very good thing.

In the City there are a great many churches, nearly all built by one

man, Sir Christopher Wren, a very clever man. But you will say, 'Why do

people want churches in the City? Didn't you say that everyone went away

to their own houses at night and on Sundays? Isn't the City, then, quite

empty?'

Yes, that is true; on Sundays the City is empty, except for people who

come down to walk round and look at it. But the churches are still

there, and there are still services in them on Sundays, because long

years ago good men left money to pay the clergymen, and no one has any

right to use it for any other purpose; so the clergymen preach, and very

few people are there to hear. It seems odd, doesn't it? But there are

many things odd in this great, dear, smoky London of ours. There used to

be many more churches in the City than there are now; at one time there

were seventy churches or more all in this small space! There aren't so

many now, but still there are a good many left.

If you went on beyond the City, further away from the West End, you

would come to that miserable part where the poor people live, and in

some parts here there are a great many foreigners, who come to England

to get work, and who earn very little money, and are rough and rude, and

all live together in one place. In some streets you would hardly hear

English spoken at all. On Saturday nights here the streets are quite a

sight, because the people have barrows or stalls by the sides of the

road instead of shops, and when evening comes they light them up with

flaming torches. And then they spread out all sorts of things for sale,

and yell and shout for people to come and buy; and crowds of people do

come, and the pavement is covered with people pushing and jostling to

get things cheaply. On one stall you will see piles of fruit--cheap

green grapes hanging in bunches, red apples, yellow oranges, and perhaps

tomatoes; and on another stall nothing but raw meat, and here the women

buy a little bit for their Sunday dinners; and on another stall there is

nothing but yards and yards of white embroidery. It seems such a queer

thing to sell there; but it is there: I have seen it, and the wonder is

it does not get so black that no one could use it. Then another stall

may have fish, and here all sorts of shell-fish will be lying in little

saucers with a pinch of pepper and a spoonful of vinegar over them, and

people take them up and eat them there and then. And all down the street

the lights flare, until you would think they must set fire to

everything, and the people at the stalls cry, 'Buy, buy, buy!' And

perhaps in the midst of all this noise and confusion you might see a

little baby, rolled up in a shawl, lying on the ground or in a box close

to a stall.

If you went down to the river from the East End you would find many very

wonderful things, but here hardly any London people from the West End

go; it is so far that very few of the people who live in London have

ever been there at all. The great river rolls on to the sea, and twice

in every day and night the sea sends a strong tide flooding up to

London, and the barges, bringing coal and straw and wood and many other

things, use the tide to come up the river, for otherwise they must have

a small steamboat to drag them. And by the side of the river there are

great houses built right on the edge of the water, where all day long

men work, either taking things out of steamers or putting other things

into other steamers to go away to foreign countries. The river is

covered with steamers and barges and boats, just as the streets are

crowded with omnibuses and cabs and carts. Always men are working and

bringing things to the great City and sending things out. If it were not

so the City could not live at all, because the people must be fed and

clothed, and they can't make everything they want or grow what they want

to eat in London itself.

Down in this part of London there are huge docks, but I am quite sure

you do not know what docks are. They are basins of water, like immense

ponds or lakes, shut in on all sides except for one entrance from the

river, and here ships can come in and lie snugly and safely without

being pushed about by the tides, and they can be painted and mended and

made fit to go to sea again. One of these docks on a fine afternoon in

summer is a very beautiful sight; all the tall masts and funnels of the

ships are mixed up together like a forest of trees, and the blue sky

peeps through them and the blue water ripples round them. When you saw

this sight you would understand a little what a wonderful city London

is, and how she sends her ships out to all parts of the world.

One of the great sights on the river is the Tower Bridge. This is not

the newest bridge, but it was built later than most of the others. It

has two great towers rising one on each side, to the sky, and the bridge

lies across low down between these towers. But when a big ship comes and

wants to get up the river under the bridge, what is to be done? The

bridge is not high enough! Well, what does happen is this, and I hope

that every one of you will see it one day, for it is one of the grandest

things in all London: a man rings a bell, and the cabs and carriages and

carts and people who are on the bridge rush quickly across to the other

side, and when the bridge is quite empty then the man in the tower

touches some machinery, and slowly the great bridge, which is like a

road, remember, rises up into the air in two pieces, just as you might

lift your hands while the elbows rested on your knees without moving,

and the beautiful ship passes underneath, and the bridge goes back again

quite gently into its place. This bridge has been called the Gate of

London, and it is a very good name, for it looks like a giant gate over

the river. Close to it is the Tower, of which you must often have read

in your history books--the grim Tower where so many people who were not

wicked at all were imprisoned, and where some of them were beheaded

because, in the time when they lived, there were no laws such as there

are now safeguarding people's lives. The Tower will have a chapter to

itself later on.

This is all I am going to tell you at present about the City and the

East End, because it is quite impossible to tell everything. In the West

End, too, there are many interesting things, and the most interesting of

them must have chapters to themselves; for instance, the palaces

belonging to the King, and the hospitals which are entirely for

children. But there are other things which belong to the whole of

London, and must be mentioned here. There is, for instance, the

Embankment--rather a long word, but not a difficult one. It means the

wall which was built for miles along beside the river to make a road and

to prevent the river flooding right up to the houses. In old days, when

people had their houses on the water's edge, when there came a high tide

or a strong wind, the water washed up over them, and did a great deal of

damage; so it was decided to build a strong wall beside the river, which

the water, even in the highest tide, could not leap over. It was a

wonderful piece of work. It is difficult to think of the number of

cartloads of solid earth and stone that had to be put down into the

water to make a firm foundation, and when that was done the wall had to

be built on the top. But though the river had been banked up it could

still make itself disagreeable. In 1928, driven by strong winds and high

tides, after much rain, it flowed up over the Embankment in some places

and broke through in others. It flooded many houses, and some people

were drowned. The river also helps to cause fog; it seems as though it

had gone to the smoke demon to find out what they could do to be

spiteful, and they had agreed they could not do anything each by

himself, but that together they could be very nasty. So every now and

then the damp air which rises from the river, and the heavy smoke which

comes out of the hundreds of chimneys, join together and make a thick

black veil, and hang over London and come down into the streets so that

people can't see where they are going, and when they breathe their noses

and mouths are filled with nasty, dirty smuts. You who are London

children know Mr. Fog-fiend very well. When you wake on a morning in

November and find the room still dark, and are told it is time to get up

when it looks like the middle of the night, then you know the fog has

come; and he visits rich and poor alike. There is no keeping him in the

East End.

With all her money and her cleverness London has never found out

anything good enough to tempt Mr. Fog-fiend to go right away. No, he

comes often, and stays, perhaps, for weeks together, and the eyes of

children smart and their throats feel thick, and they find it so dull to

do lessons by artificial light; and when the time comes for the daily

walk they cannot go out, because they might get run over, not being able

to see. And everything is very quiet, for the omnibuses and taxi-cabs

have to go at a walking pace for fear they might run into something.

And it is no wonder sometimes that children get cross and tired when

they cannot see the sun, which may be shining brightly in the country

all day long. Mr. Fog-fiend has many dresses; sometimes he puts on a

white one instead of a black one, and that is not so bad, because it is

quite light, but just as if soft white shawls were hung in front of your

eyes so that you couldn't see. But it is even more dangerous to try to

cross the road in a white fog than in a black one. It is like living

inside a big white cloud. Then there is a yellow dress, which is the

ugliest of all. It is like yellow smoke, and it gets into people's

throats and makes them cough, and it steals into all the rooms so that

even the lamp across the room looks quite dim; and the air is full of

it, and you taste it in all your food. But it is lucky that there are

not always fogs in London, or no one could live; they only come in the

last months of the year or the very early ones, and in the summer London

children do not see fogs any more than country children do, though

perhaps the sun does not shine always quite so brightly in London as it

does in the country.

Close to the river are the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey,

both very wonderful. I have not told you about Westminster yet, because

I was afraid of confusing you with too many things at once, but you

ought to know now. You can tell for yourselves which side of London it

is on from the name--that is, if you are not very stupid. Yes,

Westminster is on the west side of the City, but what is rather odd is

that once Westminster and London were two separate places with long

green fields and hedges lying between them, but the houses grew and grew

until they met. Westminster is very proud, and though now she is mixed

up with London, she says, 'I will be a city, too.' And so she is a city

within London, but there is no difference that you could tell between

the two; the houses run on just the same, and no one could find out,

merely by looking, where Westminster begins.

Well, this is enough for one chapter, and in the next we will see some

more things about this wonderful town of London, which can swallow a

whole city like Westminster and allow her still to be a city, and yet

not feel any indigestion!

CHAPTER III

THE KING'S PALACES

In the last chapter I said something about the King's palace. One of the

first things that foreigners ask when they come to London is, 'Where

does the King live?' and when they see his London house they are quite

disappointed, because Buckingham Palace is not at all beautiful. It

stands at one end of a park called St. James's Park, and it is a huge

house, with straight rows of plain windows. In front there is a bare

yard, with high railings round it, and beside the gate there are

sentries on guard. The palace is large, but very ugly, and anyone seeing

only the outside might wonder why the King of England, who is so rich,

lived in such a dull house while he was in London. But Buckingham Palace

is very magnificent inside, and if you saw it on a day when the ladies

go to Court to be presented to the King and Queen, you would no longer

think it dull. In the time of Queen Victoria, the ladies who wished to

be presented, which means to be introduced to the Queen, had to go

there in the daytime, and as they were obliged to wear evening dress and

to have waving white feathers in their hair, and sometimes had to wait

hours and hours before their turn came to kiss the Queen's hand, it

cannot have been much pleasure to them, and they must have felt often

very cross, especially when it was cold. But since the reign of King

Edward VII., the Drawing-rooms, as they are called, when ladies are

presented to their Sovereign, are in the evening, and Queen Mary has had

garden parties where young girls are 'presented' too, in afternoon

dress. It is not very interesting reading about descriptions of

furniture, so I will only say that the great staircase in the palace is

of white marble, and in the throne-room there is crimson satin and much

gilt, and the walls of the rooms are hung with magnificent pictures, and

everything is just like the palace that one reads about in fairy tales,

to which the Prince took home the Princess when he had won her.

[Illustration: QUEEN VICTORIA MEMORIAL AND BUCKINGHAM PALACE.]

Before Buckingham Palace was built, the house which stood here belonged

to a man called the Earl of Arlington, and in his time no one in England

knew anything about tea. Beer was generally drunk at every meal--beer

for breakfast, beer for dinner, beer for supper! But this Earl bought

a pound of tea in Holland for sixty shillings, which was a great deal to

give, for a pound of tea now costs about two shillings. And he brought

it home to his house and made the tea there, so that it seems very

likely that the first cup of tea ever drunk in England was made where

Buckingham Palace now stands, and I expect there are very few people who

know that.

At the side of Buckingham Palace there is a big garden with high

side-walls. In this garden are held the royal garden parties attended by

thousands in gorgeous raiment, including many Eastern potentates, as

well as ambassadors, generals, admirals, and others in uniform.

Marlborough House, which was used by Queen Alexandra, King George's

mother, during her lifetime, afterwards became the home of the Prince of

Wales. Both his father and grandfather, King George and King Edward,

lived here when they were Prince of Wales.

St. James's Palace is just opposite. It is much more picturesque but not

so convenient. With its rambling courtyards and turrets it really looks

old. You shall hear about its history presently.

The Duke of York, the second son of the King, is married. It was a joy

to the nation when he chose for himself Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon,

daughter of the Earl of Strathmore. Their baby daughter, Princess

Elizabeth, has already won all hearts.

All the children in our Royal Family have been very carefully and

properly brought up. The Queen is an excellent mother and has set an

example to all mothers. Not only have they received a special education,

including the fluent use of many foreign tongues, but they have been

taught manners and self-control and unselfishness. It is not so easy to

be a good prince as some of you might think. The Prince of Wales must

often be bored by all the hand-shaking and set speeches he has to

endure, but he must always look pleased, and remember that though he is

sick of these things yet the people he is speaking to consider it the

occasion of their lives.

The Prince's ready smile and pleasant nature have endeared him to

thousands beyond the seas. And in his tours to India and the Dominions

he has done more to bind together the British Empire than any statesman

who ever lived. He and his next brother, the Duke of York, are much

attached to one another. The Duke, who is still affectionately spoken

of as Prince Albert, is of a serious turn of mind, and has already taken

up philanthropic work for the hospitals and other institutions. Then

comes Princess Mary, the only girl in this large family, and a great

favourite, not only with her brothers, but with the whole nation. In

1922 she married Viscount Lascelles, and has two sturdy boys, Hubert and

Gerald. That she and her next brother should marry thus into the noble

families of Britain has drawn the ties between the nation and Royal

Family closer than before.

Prince Henry, the third son, is in the army, and has proved himself a

sportsman, excelling especially in polo and tent-pegging. He has chosen

the army as his profession. Prince George is a sailor by profession,

inheriting the love of the sea from the King.

There is a story told of the Prince of Wales as a very small boy, which

shows that, as well as being full of fun, he can also be very

thoughtful. The nurse who was looking after him said he must go to sleep

and not talk any more, so he answered: 'Well, I'll just say one thing

more, and then I'll go to sleep. You know, nurse, that if I live I shall

one day be King of England.' Yes, the nurse knew that very well. 'Then,'

said the Prince, 'when I'm King I shall do three things: first, I'll

make a law that no one is to cut off the puppy dogs' tails; then I'll

make a law that no one is to put bearing-reins on horses.' As he was

silent, the nurse asked what was the last thing. 'Oh, that,' he said:

'I'm going to do away with all sin.'

St. James's Palace is a very old place, and really looks like a palace.

It has high towers and a great clock, and is made of dark-red brick. It

was first built by King Henry VIII., and very many of the kings and

queens of England have lived there. If you guessed all day you would

never guess what stood here before the palace, so I will tell you. There

was a hospital for poor women who had leprosy. King Henry VIII. had

bought a good deal of the park, and he thought he would like to have the

hospital too, so he just took it. It was what he was in the habit of

doing when he wanted anything. But our kings and queens never do that

now. King Henry turned out the fourteen poor women who lived there, but

some people say he gave them money to make up for taking their home from

them, and we hope he did. Then he built St. James's Palace. When

Cromwell had beheaded King Charles I., there were some exciting times at

St. James's Palace. King Charles's children, the Duke of York and the

Duke of Gloucester and the Princess Elizabeth, were kept in prison

here, and at last the Duke of York borrowed some clothes from a woman,

and got out of the palace and into the park. Then he managed to get to

the river, and took a boat, and so went down the river and escaped

abroad, and was safe from his enemies. Afterwards, when England found

out what a mistake she had made, and how wicked she had been to kill her

King, she called back her King's son Charles to be Charles II. The Duke

of York was his younger brother, so when Charles II. died without

leaving any children, the Duke of York, who had escaped from the palace

dressed like a woman, became king as James II. The night before he was

crowned he slept at St. James's Palace, and he must have thought of the

difference between his position then and when he had had to run away in

terror at night, a poor frightened boy.

St. James's Park, where Buckingham Palace, Marlborough House, and St.

James's Palace stand, is very pretty. There is a great piece of water in

it, and on this live many ducks and some other kinds of rare birds.

During the war the water was partly drained off, though one end was left

for the birds, on the other part were put up wooden offices for the

clerks in government employ. Not far off you can see the permanent

Government offices, where the men who have been appointed to do all the

business of the country work. In the middle is the Horse Guards, where

two magnificent soldiers on black horses are on guard. They have shining

armour and helmets and waving white plumes, and look very splendid; but

it must be rather dull for them sitting there on their horses for so

many hours without moving until they are relieved by their comrades, who

take it in their turn.

In one of these great buildings, called the Treasury, all the work about

the money which England has to spend on her soldiers and sailors is

done; and in another, called the Admiralty, all the rules for the life

of the sailors are arranged, and there are many others.

A very long time ago, before anyone who is living now can remember,

there was a garden in the corner of St. James's Park called Spring

Gardens, and people used to go there to dance and enjoy themselves; here

there were cows, and fashionable ladies used to get up early in the

morning and go to drink the milk which had just been taken from the

cows. At this place there was a spring of water, which used to start up

from the ground if anyone walked over a particular piece of ground, and

so pressed the grass with his foot. Sometimes a person did not know

this, and would come walking quite gravely along and tread on that

place, and a great stream of water would jump out of the ground all over

him, and the other people would shout and laugh with amusement to see

him so unexpectedly drenched. We would not like that much now--we should

think it rather rude and unkind to laugh at such a thing; but people had

rougher manners then. Now there are houses built nearly all over Spring

Gardens. King Charles I., who had spent the night before he was murdered

at St. James's Palace, walked this way when he went to be beheaded.

There is a walk in St. James's Park called the Mall, and this name comes

from Pall Mall, which was the name of an old game Charles II. used to

play here. It must have been rather a funny game, and no one plays it

now. The players had long mallets, which were not quite like croquet

mallets, but more like golf clubs, and they had a wooden ball about the

size of a croquet ball, and they tried to hit the ball through a hoop

high up in the air hanging from a pole. It must have been difficult and

rather dangerous to have a ball as big as a croquet ball hopping about

and jumping up in the air, but we do not read of any accidents

happening.

Another palace in London, which is some way from the others and in

another park, is Kensington Palace, and this is not now used by the King

at all, but he allows some ladies and gentlemen to live there. This

palace will always be of very great interest to all of us, because it

was here that good Queen Victoria was born, and here she lived when she

was a little girl. Do you remember my telling you about Kensington

Gardens and the Round Pond, where Ethel and Jack went for their walk?

Well, the palace is there, and I wonder how many children who run and

play in the gardens every day ever think of the childhood of little

Princess Victoria. You know, when she was quite a little girl, it was

not known that she would be Queen of England, because there were other

persons between her and the throne; but they died one by one, so that at

last every one knew that Princess Victoria would one day be Queen of

England. But no one ever guessed what a long and glorious reign she

would have--longer than any other English Sovereign who has reigned; and

not only longer, but better. Her uncle, King William, who reigned

before her, was an old man, while she was still quite young, and he died

very suddenly in the night; so the Archbishop of Canterbury and one of

the most important Ministers of State rode off at once to Kensington

Palace to tell Victoria that she was now Queen. They arrived about five

in the morning, and, of course, everyone in the palace was asleep. So

they knocked and rang and thumped, and at last they made the porter

hear. But when they told him to tell the attendants they must see

Princess Victoria, her maid was sent for, and she told them she had not

the heart to wake the Princess, for she was in such a sweet sleep. So

then they said: 'We have come to the QUEEN on business, and even her

sleep must give way to that.' So the maid went away again and woke

Princess Victoria. Fancy being awakened out of your sleep to be told

that you were Queen of England! Victoria was told she must not keep the

lords waiting, and so she threw a shawl round her nightdress and slipped

her feet into slippers, and went through into another large room with

all her long hair hanging down; and when they saw her those two great

lords fell on their knees and kissed her hand. She was only eighteen

then, and she had before her such a wonderful life. It is said that she

had known for a little time before this that if anything happened to her

uncle she would be Queen. So she was not quite unprepared, and when she

had been warned of this, her first exclamation was; 'Oh, I will be

good!' Which showed she was good, for I think most people would have

been rather proud about it, and would not have thought just at that

moment of being good.

Kensington Gardens is one end of a great park, and the other end is

called Hyde Park, where the fashionable people drive in the afternoons.

There are now many who prefer to drive in motor-cars, but there are a

few who still use open carriages, with the fine horses tossing their

heads proudly as they trot. It is a great pity to see that so many

people will put the rein, called a bearing-rein, upon their horses. This

forces the poor animal's head up high, and holds it there, until his

neck aches; and he tries to get rid of it, and foams and chews his bit,

and then the ladies and men who are driving think he looks splendid, and

never mind that he is suffering pain. But to anyone who really loves a

horse there is nothing beautiful in this, and the horse looks far more

beautiful when he is free and holds his head high, or tosses it just

because he likes to do so.

The flowers in Hyde Park are often lovely, and in summer when they are

out, and form a background for the shining cars in which people wait for

the Queen to pass, there is no grander sight to be seen anywhere. On

Sundays, when it is fine, a great many fashionable people go to walk up

and down in the Park after they have been to church, and then there are

many smart dresses to be seen.

There is a great piece of water here called the Serpentine, because it

curves round like a serpent, and anyone can hire a boat and go for a

row, and sometimes the whole of the water is covered with boats. At

other times in the winter, when the ice is safe, there are hundreds and

hundreds of skaters to be seen. And in the mornings very early a good

many men and boys go here to bathe, so that the poor old Serpentine gets

well used; but perhaps he likes it, and it keeps him from feeling

lonely.

During the Great War the open spaces of the Park were freely used for

the drill and training of soldiers, and many people used to go to watch

the fresh-faced young lads springing out of the trenches they had dug

and prodding with their bayonets at stuffed swinging sacks representing

the enemy. There is always something going on and something to see in

Hyde Park.

CHAPTER IV

TRAINS AND HORSES

London is so large that it takes a long time to get from one end to the

other, and the men who go down to the City for their work and come back

every day want means of getting about cheaply and quickly. So there are

omnibuses and trains and cabs in numbers. But the trains in London do

not run above ground--there would be no room for them in the crowded

streets; so there are railways in the earth, deep down beneath all the

houses, and on them there are trains that run round in a circle. Those

of you who have frequently been by the Underground Railway think nothing

of it; to you it seems quite natural, for you are used to it. But it

really is a most astonishing piece of work, as you would realize if you

saw it for the first time. Just imagine how long it must have taken to

cut out and carry away all the masses of earth that had to be removed to

make a tunnel of such a length--a tunnel which should run right round

underneath London. The most wonderful thing is that the houses under

which it ran did not fall down and break through into it. But that has

never happened, for the men who built the tunnel made it very strong,

and lined it with bricks. And all day long, while people are walking

about in the streets and horses are trotting in the daylight, down below

the trains in the underground are running, running in the dark. It

cannot be a very pleasant life to be an engine-driver on this railway:

it must be almost like the life of a pitman who works down in the depths

of the earth; yet the men themselves seem quite happy. The worst part of

the railway used to be that as there are not many places where the smoke

and steam can get out into the air, they hung in the tunnels and made

the air very thick and bad, and there was, consequently, nearly always a

sort of fog down there, and it was unpleasant to breathe the thick air;

but all this has been remedied now, for the trains are run by

electricity instead of steam. There are other underground railways in

London also run by electricity, and they go through different districts,

so by means of one or the other people can get near to almost any street

where they want to go to visit their friends or to shop. In these, the

fares are on the same system as on other railways: you pay for your

ticket according to the distance you wish to go; but in the first one

you paid twopence for all distances alike--twopence if you wanted to go

right from the West End to the City, and twopence all the same if you

were going to get out at the next station. Therefore some people

nicknamed this railway 'The Twopenny Tube.'

Now, besides these underground trains, which are not seen, there are

many huge motor-omnibuses to convey people about the streets above

ground. These omnibuses are painted in very bright colours--generally

red--and the newest of all are made very conveniently so that the

passengers inside can mostly sit facing the way they are going, as they

do outside. You can go inside or out, and in summer it is a very good

way of seeing London to go on the top of an omnibus and watch all that

goes on in the streets below; in the old days the horse omnibuses were

often stuffy inside, with no windows to open at all, and it is a wonder

anyone could be found to go in them. When the motor-omnibuses are full

they carry a great many people. Those of the latest pattern carry

fifty-four passengers inside and out. There is now a regulation to make

omnibuses stop only at certain fixed places which are shown by

sign-boards with the numbers of the 'buses on them. This saves the

constant stopping and starting again, which is trying for the driver,

and wastes much time. People are often very inconsiderate about this;

they never think of getting off if the omnibus stops just a little way

before the place they are going to. I have seen a woman--I'm afraid

women are the worst in this respect--wave her umbrella to the conductor

of an omnibus that was going at a good pace, so the omnibus stopped, and

the woman took quite a long time to go across the street to it; and when

she reached it she asked if it were going to the place she wanted, and

it was not, so all the stopping and waiting had been for nothing. The

motor 'buses go very much faster than the old horse 'buses, and as they

carry, also, many more people, altogether, as we have seen, they do more

work in the way of conveyance altogether.

You can go a long way in an omnibus for a few pence, but taxi-cabs are

much more expensive; they are also very comfortable--no stopping and

waiting for other people then. You are carried swiftly and smoothly to

your destination, unless you are held up by the traffic; and you always

know just how much you will have to pay, as the little clock face

beside the driver marks up the extra payment as the cab covers the

ground.

The motor cabs in London are more comfortable than the hansoms were. But

the old hansom was very good for seeing in the streets, as the driver

was behind and not in front of you. The four-wheel horse cabs seem very

slow to us now, but they carried more luggage than the taxi-cabs can.

Some of us think that the old omnibuses and cabs were more interesting

than the modern ones.

I will tell you a story an omnibus horse told me. His name is Billy, and

he lives in the outskirts of London.

'Oh yes,' he says, 'it's a deal better than being a cab-horse, this is.

They think themselves very grand, and turn up their noses at us. Why,

yes, I've known a cab-horse that turned his nose up so high he could

never get it down again into his nose-bag when he wanted to eat his

dinner, and they had to have a special sort of nose-bag made for him.

Fact! And all along of an old bus-horse a-speaking to him friendly-like

as they stood side by side one day. Silly things! they're running all

day long, and never know how far they'll have to go, while I just have

my one journey a day, and then I go back to my stable. You ought to see

that stable. I live up two stories high, and I walk upstairs to bed

every night. What are you laughing at? It's true. There are three

stories at our place, and for staircases to reach the top ones there are

long sloping boards, like those you've seen put for chickens to get into

a hen-house, with little boards across to make steps, only, of course,

ours are a bit bigger than the chickens'. Why, yes, don't laugh; I could

not walk up a chicken-ladder, could I? In our stable we stand in long

rows, a row on each side, with our heels together in the middle, and

heads to the walls, and between the two rows of heels there's just

enough room for a man to pass. Kick? Why, no; only the bad uns do that,

and when they've done it once Tom (that's our stableman) he puts a rope

across their heels to keep 'em in, and to show people they must take

care. There's plenty to eat, and we don't have a bad time at all.

There's eleven of us belong to one omnibus; that's two each time for

five journeys, and one over. Well, in the mornings I go out with old

Sally perhaps, and we trot up to the City and back; it's a matter of

about eight miles each way. We don't have to go fast, but it's stop,

stop, stop whenever a silly old woman wants to get on and get off, and

it's a pull starting again, I can tell you. We know when the conductor

rings the bell that means to start, and off we go without the driver

telling us, and when the conductor rings again that's to stop; it's easy

learnt. At the other end, the City end, we have perhaps a quarter of an

hour or twenty minutes, and then we come back. The whole thing doesn't

take much over three hours, and we're done for that day; but our driver

he has to go on again with another pair, and then another, and so five

times there and back. It takes a long time that; but then, of course,

he's only got to sit up on the bus, and he doesn't pull it, and every

second day he is off for two journeys. Once in ten days we get a day

off, a holiday, while the odd horse, number eleven, he takes the bus in

the place of one of us. We have a doctor, too, to ourselves, and when

we're ill we get medicine just as you do. Did you say that you had heard

a bus-horse didn't live very long--that the work killed him? Well,

maybe; it depends on the horse. There's a mare there fifteen years old,

and quite good yet; but seven years does for most of us. What's that

you're giving me? Sugar, did you say? I don't know about that--I'd

rather not; but if you had an apple now, or a bit of bread, I'll eat it

and welcome.'

You see, he was a common horse, this--not a gentleman, but a

good-tempered, nice fellow, that wouldn't give his driver much trouble.

But they're not all like that. Listen now to a cab-horse.

'Did you say you'd been talking to a bus-horse? Nasty low creatures, not

fit to talk to! Now I can tell you all you want to know. Yes, I'm only a

cab-horse now, it's true, but once I was in a gentleman's carriage--one

of a pair, with a coachman and footman on the box, and my lady herself

used to pat my nose and give me sugar. They were grand times then--that

is, they seem grand when I think of them now--very little to do, and we

were scrubbed and polished until our coats were like satin. In the

afternoon we danced round the Park. Yes, I say danced, because there was

a horrid thing called a bearing-rein that hurt us so much that we had to

dance and throw out our legs, and people said it was splendid. It made

me feel so angry that I didn't know what to do. But then I had a bad

temper from the beginning, and it's my temper that has done for me. One

day I wheeled round and leaped over the traces, and kicked the coachman

hard. We were standing in the mews, and I dashed out and ran away, and

the other horse fell down, and the carriage was smashed. Well, then I

was sold, and---- But I'm not going to tell you about that. Yes, I know

it's my own fault, and I know I shouldn't have been a cab-horse if I'd

behaved; but I was wicked, and I used to bite, and now I've been whipped

and beaten until I daren't do anything. Yes, even now I kick, and I hate

my life and I hate my driver. He gives me sugar sometimes, too; but

that's just because he doesn't want me to run away and dash him off his

box, but I shall some day. I shall smash him up against a lamp-post just

because I hate everyone. Oh, it's not a fine life, I can tell you. It's

all very well when I stand here waiting; but perhaps just when I've got

my nose into my bag and begun to eat I hear a sharp whistle twice, and

that means someone wants a hansom, and my master whisks away my bag,

jumps on to his box, and gives me a cut that makes me furious, and we go

galloping round the streets to see where the whistle comes from. And

when we find the right house, where someone is waiting, perhaps a man

jumps in, and says: "To the station as fast as you can, and half a crown

if you do it in a quarter of an hour." Well, of course, it's my master

who gets the money, but it's I that have to earn it. So we tear off full

speed, and other things get in the way, and I have to pull up suddenly,

and the horrid curb-bit cuts my mouth till I could rear with the pain.

Then off again, and at last, all hot and angry, we dash up to the

station, and the man inside leaps out and throws up the money and runs

off. Then my master strokes me down, and says: "Jenny, old girl, I'm

sorry to fluster you so, but we must make a bit for the bairns at home,

eh, old girl?" And he pats me, and I'd bite his hand if I could. As if I

cared about his bairns! And so it goes on all day long, and at night I'm

in a nasty stuffy stable with other horses coming and going, until it

makes me wild. I'll be glad when it's all over, I can tell you; but I

have heard it said that there are worse things than even my life.'

That horse, you see, was not good-tempered, and so even the kind cabman

could not make her happy.

There are still many horses in London drawing carts of all kinds and

vans, and even private carriages, but every year they become fewer.

CHAPTER V

CHILDREN AT SCHOOL

Of course all London children must go to school or be taught at home,

just as all country children are. And there is nothing very interesting

in the ordinary schools in London, for they are like those anywhere

else. But there are some special schools which belong to London, even if

they are not still actually there; one of these is the Duke of York's

School for soldier-boys, which used to be at Chelsea, but has been moved

into the country near Dover. Five hundred little boys, the sons of

soldiers, who are nearly all going to be soldiers themselves, are here

trained. They are dressed in a scarlet uniform in summer, just like

soldiers, and in winter wear dark-blue uniform, and the school is like a

barracks where real soldiers live. The boys come here as young as nine

years old, and stay until they are fourteen or fifteen, and then if they

like it they go into the real army, and are drummer-boys. To see them on

Sunday is a pleasant sight. They have a chapel and a chaplain of their

own; on Sunday mornings the boys meet together and march up and down

like an army. They march beautifully, keeping step all the time, and

wheeling round just as the men do, for they are carefully drilled. Then

the band plays, for they have a capital band, and they all go to church.

During the service the boys are very good and still as mice, because

they are well trained. But it is not long. It is a bright, short

service, with a sermon, quite short and simple, so that the boys can

understand it. There are many hymns, and when it is over they go back

for dinner. Dinner is very important, but before I tell you about that I

will tell you what they get to eat for all their meals. They have cocoa

in the mornings for breakfast and bread-and-jam or bread-and-butter, and

they have the same again at tea-time. On extra days they get cake too.

For dinner on Sundays in winter they have pork, with potatoes and

apple-sauce. I don't know if you like apple-sauce, but the soldier boys

do, and they think it is waste to eat it with pork; so they leave it

until they have finished their meat, and then spread it on their bread

and eat it separately. Afterwards there are plum-puddings, an ordinary

big plum-pudding for every table, and at each table there are eight

boys. Each boy who sits at the head of a table marches out and marches

in again carrying a plum-pudding, which he sets down on his own table;

then he takes a knife and cuts it neatly across and across, making four

pieces; then he cuts it across and across again, and makes eight pieces,

and he gives each boy a piece, and there is no more plum-pudding. It is

a pretty big bit that, an eighth of a plum-pudding, but it all goes

somewhere; and the boy who cuts it has to be very careful to see that he

does it quite fairly, so that no one gets more than anyone else. I think

the plum-pudding and the pork must be a good mixture, for you hardly

ever see elsewhere such bright-looking faces as there are here.

There is a big playground, with plenty of room for games and sports, and

there are long bedrooms, called dormitories, with rows of neat little

beds. It is a good thing to think that these boys are growing up happy

and good, and passing on into the army to be among England's brave

soldiers. When it was decided to move this school into the country many

people were very sorry, but all agreed it was better for the boys.

There is another school very like this one for sailor-boys, only that

is not in London either, but a long way down the river, so there is not

much use in describing it here. There are homes for soldiers' daughters

and for sailors' daughters, too; there is nothing very different about

them from an ordinary school.

Another school which belongs to London, though it too has now gone into

the country, is the Foundling Hospital. It seems funny to call a school

a hospital, but in old times the word 'hospital' did not mean, as it

does now, a place for sick people, but any place where people were cared

for and made comfortable. This is rather a sad school in some ways, for

it is a home for the poor little children whose parents have deserted

them or who have no parents; and the faces of the children are quite

different from those of the boys in the Duke of York's School. The

Foundling Hospital is a very large place indeed, and there are in it

both boys and girls, who stay until they are old enough to earn their

own living. The Hospital was begun many years ago by a kind captain of a

ship, who had seen places like it when he went to foreign countries. He

did not quite know how to begin, but he was sure there were many poor

little neglected children in London who must need a home, so he gave

money to some men and asked them to see about it for him; and these men

put a notice in some papers, saying that any baby under two months old

that was brought would be taken in and no questions asked. You would be

astonished at the number of babies that were brought; it seemed quite

impossible that so many mothers could want to give away their little

children. And it was really like giving them away, for when the babies

were taken into the hospital the mothers never came to see them; and if

they did come to the school many years after and saw all the children

running about, they could not tell which was their little boy or girl.

Sometimes the nurses used to keep a locket or some little thing brought

with a child, so that if ever it was wanted they could say which child

belonged to which mother, but they never told anyone which was which.

And many children had no locket or any other kind of token, and when

they grew up they did not know who they were or who their mother and

father had been. Many were just left at the door, and others were put

into a big basket hung outside the door, and left there until someone

inside the hospital heard them crying and came and took them in. And it

was no wonder they cried, because sometimes the men or women who

brought them stole all the clothes and left the poor little naked baby

in the basket. Of course, these babies had no names, not even a surname,

and the people at the Hospital used to make up names for them, and very

funny some of them were; Richard No-More-Known was one little boy who

died at five years old. Dorothy Butteriedore was another, because the

little girl had been left beside a small door called a buttery-door,

through which people used to pass food from the kitchen. We are told of

Jane Friday-Street that she went to service aged six. Poor little Jane

Friday-Street! She must have been too much of a baby to do any work; one

would have thought she needed a nurse herself. The girl called Grace

That-God-Sent-Us ought to have been a very good girl, and there was

another Jane That-God-Sent-Us, too; and there was a boy called James

Cinerius, because he was found on a cinder-heap.

After a good many years it was found that there were far too many

children left at the Hospital, and they could not all be kept; and so

the men who looked after the place made a rule that the mother must

bring her child and tell all she could about it, and if she was very

poor, and the father would not give her money or take care of her and

the child, then the child was taken in and kept.

For a long time past babies who came to the hospital have been sent to

the country, and now the older ones live in the country too. Then, when

they are fourteen, the boys have to learn some trade to earn their

living, or become soldiers, and the girls begin to work as little

servants. The boys wear coats and trousers of a kind of chocolate colour

with brass buttons and red waistcoats, and the girls' dresses are the

same colour, and have trimmings of red. On Sundays the girls wear a high

snowy-white cap and a large white collar, and they used to sit in the

gallery of the chapel, the girls on one side of the organ and the boys

on the other. It was one of the sights of London; many people used to go

to the chapel on Sundays to see it.

After chapel the children march to their dining-rooms and walk in, and

stand round the table and sing their grace before dinner. On Sundays

they get mutton and potatoes and bread, and on some other days meat and

potatoes, and on some days fish and pudding. For breakfast they have

bread, with butter or dripping, and boiled milk, or cocoa, or porridge;

for tea they get bread-and-butter and milk, and for supper bread, with

cheese, butter, or jam.

It is a very good thing to think they are all being well taught and

looked after and helped to turn into honest men and women, but it is

very sad to think there are so many boys and girls whose parents don't

want them, and will willingly give them away; and we can't help feeling

that it can never be quite a happy place, for every child must feel that

it is only one in a crowd of others, and that no one loves it

especially.

In old times it was the fashion for good men and women to found schools

for children where all the children had to wear a particular sort of

dress, and some of these were called Blue-coat Schools, and some

Green-coat, and some Gray-coat; but they are very different now, and the

children don't wear the dress they used to. There is one very big

school, which went from London into the country, called the Blue-coat

School; this is just like any other school where big boys go, except

that the boys never wear hats, and have bright yellow stockings and a

long sort of skirt on to their coats, which must be very awkward for

them when they want to play cricket or football. What do you think they

do with it then? They just tuck the long skirt into their belts, and

run about like that, and very funny it looks. They will find this dress

even more awkward in the country than it was in London. The beautiful

school buildings that were begun by King Edward VI., who was a clever

and learned boy himself, and always tried to help other boys to learn,

are now pulled down. This is a great pity, and it will be a greater pity

still if the curious old dress is done away with and the boys dress just

like all other boys. It must be very odd never to wear a hat, whether it

rains or whether the sun shines; but I suppose the boys get used to

that, and would feel uncomfortable in a hat. This school is called

Christ's Hospital as well as the Blue-coat School, so, you see, here is

another instance of the word 'hospital' being used to mean a school or

home.

In old days the Blue-coat boys used to have a very hard time; their food

was bad, and they did not get enough of it, and they ate it off wooden

platters. There is a story told that the boys had a custom of never

eating the fat of a particular sort of meat; they called it 'gags,' and

though they might be very hungry they would never touch this fat. But

one day they saw a boy go and gather up all the 'gags' that his

companions had left, and take them away in his handkerchief. Very

disgusting, wasn't it? The other boys thought so too, and they watched

him to see if he went and ate them himself. But he did not; he slipped

away when the others were not looking and went out into the town. So

then they thought he went to sell them, and they were very angry, and

would not speak to that boy or play with him, and left him alone; but

still he used to get the 'gags' and carry them away. One day some other

boys followed him, and what do you think they found? That he used to

take the 'gags' to his own father and mother, who were very poor and

almost beggars, and had nothing to eat. So the master praised him for

being a good son, and not minding what the others said when he knew he

could do something to help his poor parents.

In those days when a Blue-coat boy tried to run away he was shut up in a

little dark cell like a prison cell, and had only bread and water given

to him, and saw no one and spoke to no one, and twice a week he was

taken out and flogged. It was no wonder the boys wanted to run away, for

the place was very wretched, and in the great dining-hall there were

swarms of rats that came out at night to pick up the crumbs, and the

boys used to go and catch them for fun, not in traps, but in their

hands. I don't think girls would ever have liked that game, and there

must have been some nasty bites and scratches sometimes.

A very small boy was crying one day when he came back to the school

after the holidays, and a master said to him: 'Boy, the school is your

father; boy, the school is your mother; boy, the school is your brother,

the school is your sister, your first cousin, your second cousin, and

all the rest of your relations.' I don't suppose it made that boy feel

any better. It is very different now, and the boys are very happy, and a

great many clever men have been taught at that school, but in those

early days it cannot have been very comfortable. But this is enough

about the Blue-coat School.

In one school the boys play on the roof, because they have no

playground. This is in the City, near the great big cathedral of St.

Paul's, and there is no room for playgrounds there; the land is too

valuable, and is wanted for houses and streets. The school is for the

choir-boys of the cathedral, who sing more beautifully than any other

boys in the world. And if you were walking past the school you might

suddenly hear a lovely voice rising higher and higher and higher, like

a skylark or a nightingale, and this would be one of the boys practising

his notes. The school is large and the roof is flat, and all over the

top and at the sides are high railings filled in with wire, so that the

balls at cricket or football can't jump over the edge and come down on

the heads of the people walking in the street below. That would be a

surprise, wouldn't it? to have a great football drop out of the sky on

to your head. It is a funny idea, playing up there among the chimneys

and the roofs, and I don't think it can be very clean; I expect the boys

have always to wash their hands before they put on their pure white

surplices and go into the great solemn cathedral to sing. There is going

to be a chapter in this book telling something about the cathedral of

St. Paul's, so you will remember this about the choir-boys when you come

to it.

CHAPTER VI

LONDON MARKETS

There are seven millions of people in London. That does not give any

idea of the real number, but if you were to begin now and count hard for

three days and nights, you would not have counted a million then, even

if you never stopped to eat or to sleep. Just think of it, that great

crowd of people all wanting to be fed, and many of them wanting three

good meals every day! If all the carts in the world were to be marching

into London the whole time, you would think they could hardly bring food

enough for this multitude of people. Yet somehow it is done, and it does

not seem to be very difficult either. I think I hear someone saying,

'But there are the shops; people can go and buy there.' Yes, they can,

of course, but where do the shopmen get their stuff from? Where does all

the meat come from, and the fruit and the flowers and vegetables, and

all the things that must be kept fresh? Where does the shopman buy

them? The shopman gets them from the markets, and the markets get them

from the country. There are many great markets, and to-day we will visit

three of them--that where we can see the meat, and that where the

flowers and vegetables are, and that where the fish are. The flower

market is much the nicest, of course, so we will keep it for the last.

The fish market is down close by the river, just where you would expect

it to be. If you want to see it you must not mind getting up very early,

long before any cabs or omnibuses are about--in fact, it will be very

difficult to get there at all unless you can bicycle or can walk a long

way without being tired.

Early one Saturday morning, then, when the light is still dim, and we

have the streets all to ourselves, we start. It is so quiet. Not even

the milkman is about yet, and the blinds of the houses are all down. The

whole of the inhabitants of London seem asleep except you and me. We go

right down into the City by London Bridge, and then in a very narrow

dark street we suddenly find a number of people and hear a great noise.

All over the street there are barrows and carts, and people are shouting

and pushing, and everyone is trying to get in and out of the market at

once. The market, which is called Billingsgate, is a great big place

like a barn, and when once we have pushed in among all the rough men and

women there, we see a wonderful sight. You would think you were at the

seaside from the smell, for there are great lumps of seaweed lying about

among the fish on the slabs, and they bring the breath of the sea with

them. Here is a crawling pile of black lobsters; they are alive, and

they turn bright-red when they have been boiled. Poor lobsters! they

can't think where they have got to, and they are stretching out their

long whiskers and looking about with their great goggle eyes, and the

man who wants to sell them is shouting, 'Come, buy! come, buy! fine

fresh lobsters alive, alive, oh!' All the fishmongers in London must be

here, you would think, there are so many; and they buy the fish in great

quantities, not as we do in the shops by the weight, but by the

number--so much for each fish, whether it is big or little. And then

they sell them for more money than they gave for them to the people who

want them for breakfast and dinner, and so they make their living.

Salmon, the king of all the fish, is always sold by weight, though, even

in this market. Look at the salmon--huge silver fish lying on the

stalls, with their scales gleaming in the early light. When they are cut

open their flesh is pink, and all the other fish have white flesh. King

Salmon was taking a little exercise one day, dashing about in the salt

sea or sailing up the river, perhaps, when he ran his great stupid head

into a net, and the more he struggled the worse it was, and strong as he

was--as strong as a fairly big dog--he could not break that net, and so

he was hauled out and brought to shore, where he died. Or perhaps he saw

something very attractive in the water, and made a rush at it, only to

find a cruel hook firmly fixed in his mouth. He might dash away or lie

quiet, but wherever he was he knew the hook was still there; and when he

was tired with all his struggles, the fisherman at the other end of the

line began to haul it in gradually, and poor old salmon was drawn nearer

and nearer to the land, and at last picked out of the water with a

landing-net. And now he lies at Billingsgate, waiting for someone to buy

him and take him to a shop to sell him again to be eaten. All round

there are many cries--indeed, a noise such as you never heard before.

What you hear is something like this: 'Haddock and cod, come buy! Fine

fresh fish, fresh cod, buy, buy! Here you are; couldn't buy any finer.

All this lot for ten shillings! Look here! look here! Whiting and

turbot! crabs crawling all alive, alive, oh! Shrimps do you want? Fine

shrimps, the very best! Here you are, buy! buy!' and so on, everyone

shouting out to make the fishmongers buy their fish. Perhaps a crab

crawls too near the edge of his stall, and falls over with a crash, and

the man who owns him picks him up and throws him back, and off jumps

Master Crab again as quick as you please, and does just the same thing

again. You would think he would not want to tumble down: it must hurt

him, even through such a thick shell; but he thinks if he goes on long

enough perhaps he'll find again those lovely rocks all soaked with the

great sea tide, which somehow he seems to have lost. So he goes on

scuttling about and tumbling down until someone picks him up and throws

him into a bag with the rest, and he is carried off to the shop, where,

poor crab! he will never have a chance of finding his dear rocks again

or hearing the water rushing in over the seaweed.

He was perhaps lying under a great mass of seaweed in a deep pool, when

a pole came walking along and poked into his side. He did not want it at

all--in fact, he got quite angry with it, and shook himself free; but

that pole only waggled about, and stuck into him again, and at last he

seized it with his claws, and the more it shook, the tighter he held on,

and he did not know that that was just what the man who was bending over

the pool wanted. So the pole was pulled out with Master Crab sticking to

it, and the man caught hold of him so neatly that he had not time to use

his claws, and popped him into a bag, and he has never found the seaside

since, and now he never will again. But perhaps he would not mind so

much if he knew that Mrs. Crab did not miss him at all, for she went out

to seek him when he did not come home, and she smelt a piece of dead

fish, just the very thing she liked most of all. So she crawled up the

side of the funny basket that was lying in the water, and found that the

bit of dead fish was inside it. But that did not matter, for there was a

hole at the top; so in popped Mrs. Crab, and there she had to stay, for

she could not get out again. She tried and tried, but the hole was made

with bits of stick pointed inwards, so that she could not get up to it

from the inside. Many lobsters have been caught that way, and now Mrs.

Crab was too; and when the men came in the evening to look at their

baskets, they were quite pleased, for they found not only Mrs. Crab,

but four of her friends whom she had invited inside because she felt

lonely. So Mrs. Crab went to the market too, but it was not to the same

market as her husband, and she did not meet him again. All those shrimps

lying near were caught by boys with nets. The boys ran into the water

with bare feet, and thrust their nets along the sandy bottom, and each

time they came out they picked out the shrimps from the net and threw

them into a pail, and only the very strongest managed to hop back on to

the sand again; nearly all of them went to market.

But while we have been looking at these things the market has been

getting emptier; and now there are only a few young lads left, who have

little barrows and carts, and are called costers, and they are walking

round the stalls and picking out what they will buy after the

fishmongers have got all the best of the fish. It is time to go away,

and soon Billingsgate will be nearly desolate. It is not a nice place,

and if there were not some policemen near I should not like to have

brought you here.

We cannot go to Covent Garden Market where the flowers are this morning,

for it is nearly seven o'clock, and too late, as we ought to be there

very early; but we can go to the meat market, which is not at all a

pretty sight, and a long way off. But it is very wonderful. Here there

is selling going on quite late, until about ten o'clock, perhaps, and

even to the middle of the day the place is still busy. It is a huge

place with a great glass roof, and there are rows of stalls with narrow

passages like streets between them, and everywhere are great masses of

raw meat. It is a city of meat; you walk down lanes of meat--meat

everywhere. All the butchers in London come here to choose what they

will buy, and from midnight onward all is bustle and business. Some of

the meat comes to the market in vans, but the greater part comes by

train. Right under the market there is a place scooped out in the earth

like a cellar, and the railway lines run in under there, and then from

the vans standing on the lines it is easy to lift the meat up into the

market. Outside there is a great square, and in the early morning this

square is filled with carts of every kind waiting to carry away the meat

which the butchers buy. But all the meat does not come from England. A

great deal of it comes from over the sea, from Australia and New

Zealand, for England herself would never have enough to feed all her

people. Close to the market at Smithfield there is another, where

nothing but poultry is sold. Rows and rows of dead chickens go every day

to fill all the shops--good chickens and bad chickens, the chickens that

obeyed their mothers and the chickens that didn't; they come here just

the same to supply the wants of the people of London.

The flower market is very pretty, and it is a treat to go there. If you

were grown up and had been to a ball in London, you might see, when you

were coming back in the early morning, a cart piled high with cabbages,

and a sleepy-looking man sitting on the shafts, while a dim lantern hung

beside him. This is one of the carts bringing in the vegetables that

London wants for her dinner next day. London itself is like a great

ogre--eating, always eating. You remember the story of the giant who

used to be quiet so long as the people brought him enough to eat? And

how all the people in the country used to work day and night to bring in

cartloads of things, for fear if they allowed him to go hungry he would

eat them instead? The giant could swallow up those cartloads as if they

were spoonfuls. And so it is with London. Men work day and night

bringing, always bringing, cartloads of meat and fruit and vegetables,

and London swallows them all up; and next day there are more carts and

more food from the country, and so it goes on always.

In the middle of the night, when most people are fast asleep, the man

who wants to sell his flowers or vegetables at Covent Garden Market must

be up and out. In the dim light he harnesses his horse and lights his

lamp. Perhaps his faithful dog watches him, and runs about quite pleased

to be going for a walk, even if it is in the middle of the night. Then

the man starts off on his long, slow journey into London. Mile after

mile over muddy or dusty roads, through villages where everyone is

asleep, where not even a dog barks, on and on to London. It may be very

cold, and the horse only goes slowly, so it cannot be very comfortable;

but this is the man's work, and he must do it. Perhaps the cartman has a

little boy, and takes him too, and you see the little boy, when the cart

is coming back empty in the morning, lying sound asleep on the straw

dead tired, while his father drives home.

All the carts gather up to the market, and then they are unloaded. One

brings vegetables, and another fruit, and another flowers, and by two

o'clock everything is in its place and ready to be sold. Then the buyers

come--shop people again, greengrocers and fruiterers--and they look

round and try to get the best they can at the lowest prices.

There is a great hall covered in with glass, and in this the flowers are

arranged. It is lovely--like a huge flower-show. Of course, the flowers

are different at different times of the year, but in the early summer

you can see banks and banks of roses, all colours--red and yellow and

white--and masses of sweet-scented carnations and lilies and heliotrope;

and the smell is very sweet, so different from the market at

Billingsgate. All the people here, except you and me, are busy people

come to buy in order to sell again, and some of them don't look very

rich. Do you see that girl there in the corner with a red shawl and a

hat with huge untidy feathers all out of curl? She is a flower-girl, and

she is going to spend two or three shillings on buying a basket of

flowers. These she will do up into little bunches, and if she is lucky

enough to sell them again she will make a few shillings before the

evening. When she has chosen her flowers she goes away and sits down on

a cold stone step, and begins pulling them about and blowing into the

roses to make them open, and if you feel as I do you will not care to

buy them then; you would much rather she left them just as they were

and did not finger them. But she thinks people will be more likely to

buy them if they are carefully arranged. When she has done she starts

off to walk a long way to a stand where she goes every day, perhaps a

place where two or three streets join and there is an open space. There

is one in the West End, where there is an island of pavement between

lines of traffic north and south, east and west; the flower-girls sit

here all day. They don't seem to mind the rain or wet at all; they are

quite used to it. They don't pay anything for being here; but they are

very angry if another comes and takes their place, and the girl or woman

to whom it belongs will perhaps fight the newcomer, and then the

policeman has to come and separate them.

Some of these places where the flower-women sit are made quite beautiful

by the baskets of flowers. In the spring, when the daffodils are out, it

looks as if a patch of sunshine had fallen from the sky into the dark

street. But all these flowers don't come from England. A great many are

grown abroad, and sent to Covent Garden Market from over the sea.

At the market, when the cartman has finished arranging his vegetables,

he goes to a coffee-stall. There are many there, and perhaps he gets a

great cup of strong coffee and an immense hunch of bread or cake for

breakfast, or perhaps he goes to the public-house at the corner; but at

any rate, before he goes back, he has something to eat, and then he

piles up his baskets, now empty, in which he brought the things and

starts off home. One of the most surprising things at Covent Garden is

the quantities of oranges that come there--boxes and boxes of oranges.

These have been brought to England up the river in ships, and the men,

with great cushions on their heads, carry them to the markets. The

cushion is to make it soft and prevent the hard wood of the box hurting

their heads, and they carry a huge boxful in this way more easily than

you or I would carry a book.

Long years ago, when London consisted of only a few houses and

Westminster of another few houses, this market, which is now in the

middle of streets, was really a garden, and it belonged to a convent for

nuns, and it is strange that it should be like a garden still with all

its fruit and flowers, though now it is part of a great town.

CHAPTER VII

CHILDREN'S HOSPITALS

We have seen children rich and children poor, children at work and

children at play, but we have not yet seen any of the poor little

children who cannot run about as others do, who have to be still, and

who very often suffer pain. A lady began a school for poor children who

were ill. She had been visiting poor people, and she had found out that

sometimes a mother had to leave her sick child the whole day long alone

in one dark room. And very often these children were not ill for a

little time only, as any of you might be, but ill always from babyhood,

without any hope of getting well. To take one case, little Beatrice

Annie Jones had a mother who was a widow, and used to go out to scrub

people's floors and clean the houses; that is what is called being a

charwoman. She had sometimes to go quite a long way to her work, and

could not come back in the middle of the day for dinner; so in the

morning before she went she used to give Beatrice Annie a bit of bread

and an egg, if she had enough money to buy one, and a few sticks, and a

little pan with water in it. Then she used to tidy up the room and go

away, leaving the child alone. The door must be locked, for a thief

might come in and steal the few bits of things there were. The window

was dirty and very high up; Beatrice Annie could only see out of it by

climbing on a rickety chair, and she could not stand there long, for it

hurt her legs and back, for they were not like other little girls' legs

and back, but weak and painful, so that she used to drag herself about

the floor on all fours, like a baby, rather than walk, even though she

was seven years old. The room she and her mother lived in was up many,

many stairs, and it was very seldom she could get out at all; for though

she was very light and small, her mother was too tired to carry her down

after her day's work. Beatrice Annie was suffering from a disease very

common with poor children, called rickets. It means that the bones are

not strong--they are like chalk, and will break very easily; even a fall

off a chair might do it--and it is sometimes caused by the children not

having had enough milk when they were babies.

When her mother left her alone, Beatrice Annie used to look round the

room and sigh. It was a very dreary room. When you are ill, everyone

brings you nice things--flowers and jellies and pictures--to pass the

time. This little girl had only one picture, a bright-coloured almanack,

with a likeness of the King dressed in the scarlet uniform of a soldier,

and she had looked at this so often she was tired of it. She was so

lonely that she would have been glad if even a little mouse had come to

play with her; but the mice did not come to that room; there were not

enough crumbs to please Mr. Mouse. Beatrice Annie could not read; she

had never been to school, for she was not strong enough. So she sat for

a long time on the wooden floor and wondered what she should do. She had

one dirty wooden doll, dressed in rags, and for a little time she washed

its face, wiping it with a bit of rag dipped in the corner of the little

pan she was going to boil her egg in; but she soon got tired of that.

Then she tried to climb on the chair to look out of the window, but when

she managed it, after trying several times, she could not stay long, it

made her legs ache so; and the street was very far down, she could not

see anything interesting. So the weary day went on. Long before one

o'clock she had boiled her egg, and she ate it with great enjoyment;

but that did not take very long, and then there were hours and hours to

wait before at last the old stairs creaked and her mother put the key in

the lock and came in with a tired face. She was a good woman this,

though so poor and wretched, and she could not help her little girl's

being left alone, and she always tried to bring home something for her

to cheer her up.

'Look, Beatrice Annie!' she cried, as she opened the door. 'What hever

do ye think I've brought for yer?' And she held up a bunch of red

radishes for a treat.

Well, when this lady found out that there were many children like

Beatrice Annie, she said that there might be a school just for such poor

sick children, and that they could do as much or as little work as they

liked. Several rich people joined in sharing the expense of starting the

school, and one doctor gave a carriage that had two seats in it on which

children could lie right down, and others where they could sit. Then a

good kind nurse was found, and every morning the nurse went round and

carried out or helped all the little sick children who were well enough

to come, and took them driving in their own carriage to school. She had

to begin very early, and go backwards and forwards several times, for

the carriage did not hold a great many children at a time, and there

were so many who wanted to come. She took them to a school in Tavistock

Place, not very far from the British Museum, in a part of London called

Bloomsbury, and by ten o'clock all the children were there.

Then they began work, a little reading and writing, and a few sums; but

they were always carefully watched, and if any child seemed tired she

was made to stop and lie down on a sofa. At twelve o'clock dinner-time

came. At first a few of the children used to bring their own dinners,

and as the mothers were very poor, sometimes the dinners were very

nasty, and not at all good for a delicate child. Perhaps one little boy,

with a white face and a big head, would unroll a filthy bit of

newspaper, and show some cold herring, which smelt horrid. Or another

would bring out a lump of greasy pudding, as heavy as lead. So it was

arranged that if the mother could give a few pence, varying from three

halfpence to threepence, according to her means, the children should

have dinner at the school, and for these sums it is marvellous what a

dinner they get. Beef and mutton, with vegetables, light puddings of

milk and fruit, and sometimes rich people send game, and then these

poor little gutter children have dinners like princes and princesses.

Though it is in the middle of London, there is a beautiful garden

behind, which belongs to the Duke of Bedford, and he allows them to play

there, for the house to which it belonged is now pulled down. Some of

the children go hopping about on their crutches, and even play games

upon the smooth turf under the great shady trees. After being out for an

hour, they come in and do such interesting work. All sorts of things

they make with their hands. The boys do iron work, and the girls lace;

or the boys do painting and basket-making, and the girls embroidery. So

that when they grow up and leave the school they may be able to earn a

living for themselves.

At about three o'clock the carriage comes again, and they begin to go

home. Now, cannot you fancy what a new world this is to the children?

Before they went to school they knew nothing about the world they lived

in, or about history, or about plants and animals. They had nothing to

think of to make them forget their pain. They could just sleep or lie

still all day, like little animals. Now they are bright and happy. If by

any chance they cannot go to school, or the carriage does not come,

they cry bitterly. There are other schools begun now like this one, so

perhaps in time all the children who are invalids can go to school.

Of course, there are some cases where a child is too ill to attend any

school, and then it must go to a hospital. There is one of these

hospitals in Chelsea, and it looks out over the great gray river Thames.

It is a large red-brick house, and boys and girls who can never get well

can be taken in here and made comfortable, and saved as much pain as

possible. It is a beautiful house, and it is very sad, but happy, too,

to see the children, and how bright they look. They wear little red

flannel jackets when they sit up in bed, and have a tray put across the

bed, and upon it for them to play with are the toys that kind people

have sent. The rooms are divided into two parts, for boys and girls, and

the children are received between the ages of three and ten, so there

are no tiny babies here. The large windows are down to the ground, so

the children can see what is going on outside, and I will tell you what

they see: first, the Embankment; I have told you about that. It is like

a broad road, and taxi-cabs and bicycles and many other things are

always passing and repassing. Then the river, up which the salt sea

tide rolls every day, and when the weather is very cold and stormy the

gray and white sea-gulls fly inland up the river, and wheel and scream;

and when people throw bread for them they dart down upon it and catch it

before it can touch the water, so quick are they.

On the river there are, in summer, pleasure-steamers crowded with

people; these stop at a pier quite near the children's hospital, and

sometimes they are so full that not another person can get on. Then

there are great barges going slowly along, dragged by a little

steam-tug; perhaps there are three or four barges one after another, so

low in the water that it almost washes over their decks. They carry

great piles of hay or coal further up the river, and they look like

great lazy porpoises being towed along by the fussy little steamer. If

they are coming in with the tide, so that the current helps them, they

do not need the steam-tug; but men stand up at one end and help the

barge along, and guide it by a huge oar called a sweep. Some of these

men and their wives live always on these barges, and earn their living

by taking things up the river. There is only a tiny dirty little cabin,

the size of the smallest room you ever saw, and so Mrs. Bargeman can't

bring fine frocks with her; but that doesn't matter, for it isn't likely

that she has any. The faces of the men and women get quite brown with

being out always in the open air. It is a queer life that, always going

up and down, to and fro, upon the gray water, watching the red sun sink

at night and seeing him rise again; watching the sunlight ripple in the

water by day, and seeing the lights from the shore shine out sparkling

like jewels at night.

The barges are quite low and have no funnels, so they can pass under the

bridges; but the steamers have to bow down their funnels when they come

to a bridge, and then they raise them up again, as if they were very

polite gentlemen saying, 'How do you do?' to the bridge.

Well, the children in the hospital can see these things, and for those

whose beds don't face the windows there are looking-glasses so arranged

that all that goes on is reflected in them, so that it is like a

wonderful picture-book, changing all day long. Though they look so

happy, poor children! some of them suffer dreadful pain, and it is sad

to think this hospital is for incurable children--that is, children who

can never be well in this world.

In one room there is a large picture; I am sure you have seen one like

it. It is Jesus Christ standing at a door, knocking, and the door is

fast shut, and briars and brambles have grown all over it; but still

Christ stands knocking, hoping it may open. In His hand there is a

lantern, and the picture is called 'The Light of the World.' Now, the

real picture, the one that the artist painted, from which all the others

like it have been printed, was painted just where this children's

hospital is; for the artist, whose name is Holman Hunt, had a house

there before the hospital was built. So he gave a very large copy of his

picture to the children, and wrote under it that it was from the artist

who made that picture, in that place, to Christ's little ones.

There are other hospitals for children, which are for all sorts of

illnesses and not only for incurable ones. There is one in Chelsea, not

far from here, and another, a very large one, in Great Ormond Street,

not very far from the school for sick children.

In the Great Ormond Street one they take in the very tiniest babies, and

so the nurses have plenty to do looking after these mites. Sometimes a

child is very naughty when it first comes in, and will do nothing but

scream and cry, and the nurses have to be very patient; but it always

happens that when it has been there for a time it loves them all so much

that it cries when it gets well and has to go home. It is a funny sight

to see a nurse or a sister having tea with perhaps three or four

children who are well enough to be up. They climb all over her like

little kittens, and love her so much she cannot get rid of them. In this

hospital each ward is named after some member of the Royal Family:

Helena Ward, Alice Ward, and so on, after the Princesses Helena and

Alice, daughters of Queen Victoria.

There is a home for cripple girls in London, and another for cripple

boys in a part of the West End called Kensington. Here the boys are

taken in and taught, not only lessons, but all kinds of things that boys

can do without having to walk. Some are tailors, and some make harness

for carriage-horses, and some carve wood, and learn carpentering or

shoemaking. And so they can earn their own living when they grow up to

be men. They all seem very happy, and when you meet them on a walk it is

a touching sight; but yet not really sad, because their faces are bright

and happy. Fancy meeting twenty or thirty boys going along together,

every one of them lame or deformed in some way! Some go on crutches, and

some hobble, and others limp; but they do not seem to mind, because,

perhaps, they have never known what it is to be active like other boys,

and there are plenty of pleasant things they can still do.

CHAPTER VIII

STREETS AND SHOPS

When I asked a little girl who was visiting London for the first time if

it was like what she had expected, she said, 'No,' and when I asked how

it differed from the idea she had had, she said: 'I expected to see long

rows and rows of houses, going on for miles and miles, but I never

thought there would be so many things in the streets--cabs and omnibuses

and people; it's all so much fuller and gayer than I thought.'

I think this is what would strike anyone who was seeing London for the

first time, especially if they came in what is called 'the season.' The

season lasts for three months--May, June, and July--and during that time

the people who live in the country, but are rich enough to have houses

in London, come up to town; and the people who have houses in London,

but who go away a great deal during the rest of the year, make a point

of being in London during the season; and many other people, who are

gay and rich, come up to town just for those three months to meet all

their friends and see what is going on. So the streets in the West End

are very full indeed. In the beginning of May, when the fine weather

comes, people in costly motor-cars appear in the Park in greater

numbers, until at the height of the season there are rows and rows of

them. If you were to go to the Park any fine afternoon about that time

of the year and were to stand near one of the great gates at Hyde Park

Corner, you would see all the traffic drawn up in double lines, with the

well-dressed women inside the carriages waiting for something. They are

interested in seeing H.M. the Queen, who is very fond of driving in the

Park. Perhaps also there may be with her the popular Duchess of York,

from her house in Piccadilly, and possibly baby Princess Elizabeth. When

the royalties come there is quite a stir of excitement. The great iron

gates opening on to Constitution Hill are thrown open--they are only

opened for royalty; everyone else has to go through the side gates--and

then there is a flash of scarlet liveries, and the crowd of people

standing in the open space before Hyde Park call out, 'The Queen, the

Queen!' And the much-loved Queen drives smiling through them, bowing

this way and that, with that gracious manner that has made everyone love

her; and the men raise their hats and the ladies wave their

handkerchiefs as the carriage dashes across the open space, kept clear

by the police, and goes into the Park, where all the waiting carriages

are. The Queen has another lady with her, or perhaps her only daughter

who has now a home of her own, and they drive round and round the Park

several times, enjoying the fresh ah.

The streets of London are in some places very narrow--too narrow to

allow tram-cars to run through them as they do in some other large

towns, and at the height of the season the blocks in the traffic in some

of the West-End streets are quite alarming. Imagine a tightly-packed

mass of vehicles, restive horses in splendid carriages, huge

motor-omnibuses, smart automobiles, taxi-cabs, and tradesmen's vans, all

squeezed together. Perhaps the policeman has held up his hand at a

crossing to let some carriages get across from a side street, and

everything has had to stop, public and private alike. Stand up on the

top of an omnibus and look this way and that: what can you see? Rows and

rows of great omnibuses crowded with people, both outside on the roof

and inside, all waiting just because one man has held up his hand.

Nothing astonishes foreigners more than this; indeed, some people say it

is the one thing Frenchmen like most to see in London--the power of the

policeman. He has perfect control of all the traffic, and if he says a

thing must stop, it must obey him even if it be the carriage of a duke.

In Paris they tried to imitate this, and they gave their policemen

little white wands to hold up to stop the traffic when it was necessary;

but the drivers of the cabs took no notice, and the poor French

policeman would run about yelling at them and waving his little white

wand and shouting to them to stop, and when they took no notice he grew

more and more angry until he was almost frantic--so different from our

calm, grave policeman with his majestic arm. Sometimes, when the roadway

is thick with carts and cabs and carriages, there is a roar in the

distance, a shout of many voices that makes your heart stand still. It

comes again, louder and louder, nearer and nearer, and all the vehicles

pull to one side and make a lane down the middle of the road. Right up

this lane dashes a shining fire-engine, with the smoke and sparks flying

out behind, the men in the glistening helmets clinging on to the sides,

and the driver guiding it so skilfully as it spins over the ground far

quicker than it takes to tell. In a minute they have dashed out of

sight; then the traffic closes up again. But there is another shout,

another roar, and another engine follows the first; the firemen clinging

to it are shouting all together a noise that sounds like 'Ah-h-h!

ah-h-h!' to warn other things to get out of their way. Soon a third

comes, and then follows a great red ladder on wheels, pushed by men on

foot--that is a fire-escape. The fire can't be far away, so we run after

the excited crowd, and soon come to a street blocked with people, where

flames and smoke are shooting out of the windows. It is a house where

many girls are employed in a dressmaking business, and some of them have

been got safely out; but there are others at those high windows,

screaming for help and stretching out their arms. The brave firemen

begin to send great spouts of water on to the raging flames; they put up

the fire-escape, and one man mounts it, going right into the smoke. He

brings down two of the girls from one story, and disappears for a moment

into the room; then he comes back, for the flames are beating fiercely

on him. In the wild confusion no one seems to know if all the girls are

out or not; but presently one cries out that two are still in the

back-rooms, now blazing fiercely. Up go the firemen again and plunge

into the windows right into the flames. A long time elapses. We hold our

breath; it seems as if the brave men must have perished. Then there is a

cheer as a fireman appears with something in his arms. It is a girl

unconscious; gently he lowers her down the ladder, and goes again to

help his comrade. They reappear and come down in safety. Are all out

now? No; for all at once, at the end of the building furthest from the

fire-escape, a woman appears shrieking wildly. She cannot wait, though

the men shout to her to do so; there are flames behind her clutching at

her, her hair is on fire and her clothes. She stands on the window-sill,

and it is seen she is going to leap into the street below; a blanket is

held, and a hush falls on the crowd as she plunges down. Hurrah! the

blanket has caught her; she will be no worse. All are out now, but still

the flames are fearful, and the houses on either side are threatened.

The firemen play water on to them to keep them from catching alight, and

an incessant stream of water spouts upwards from the great hose. The

roof goes in with a crash, but it is seen that the water is doing

something--the flames are quieter. Yet, with all the care and patience,

it is not for several hours the fire can be pronounced to have been put

out. If we came to see the house next day, it would stand up bare and

smoke-blackened, just four walls, with the roof burnt out, the

staircases gone, and inside only a mass of rubbish. Someone will have to

pay heavily, but, at any rate, at this particular fire no lives have

been lost.

The Fire Brigade is a wonderful power, and the brave men who belong to

it perform heroic things in daily life without making any fuss. There

are brigade stations all over London, and if a fire breaks out, it takes

only a few minutes for the brigade to be summoned. Not so very long ago

all the engines were drawn by specially trained horses who stood ready

in their stalls, with the harness swinging above them. At the first

sound of the alarm bell the harness was lowered, the straps buckled, and

in a few moments the fire-engines were on the road. But now all the

London fire-engines are run by motor power. In the streets there are

little red posts with a glass at the top. By breaking it a bell is rung

in the nearest fire station, and the men are warned. Mischievous boys or

men sometimes broke these glasses 'just for fun,' and then ran away, and

when the fire-engine dashed round the corner the men found no fire.

This has been stopped by the infliction of a very heavy fine. If anyone

is caught doing it now without cause he is made to pay richly for his

mischief, and quite rightly too. Yet it does happen sometimes that men

and engine are summoned on a false alarm, and when they arrive they find

only a smouldering chimney, or perhaps even only a smoky one, and the

people who have called them up have been needlessly alarmed. At

Hampstead, in the north of London, where the ground is very high, there

is a great tower rising many feet into the air, from which one can see

almost all over London, and here there is a man always on duty to watch

if fires break out. Of course, it would be a pretty big fire if he could

see it from there, but then he could communicate with the nearest

station and tell them to go to it. It must be a curious duty to stay all

night at that great height overlooking the vast city of London.

Sometimes a fire breaks out in some of the great warehouses down by the

river, and then there is a magnificent sight. One such warehouse was

full of paraffin oil, and you know paraffin burns more readily than

anything else. As the barrels were caught by the flames the oil streamed

out on to the water, and, floating on the top, seemed like a sea of

flame. It must have been wonderful to see. The heat was so great that

no one could go near, but on the opposite bank thousands of people

assembled and watched the flames. There were flames above and flames

below, fire shooting to the sky, and fire flowing down on the river's

tide. The water reflected the fire above, and the fire that floated on

its surface. It must have seemed like a burning world. That was a very

difficult task for the brigade.

Sometimes the brave men themselves are injured or killed in the

execution of their work, and at all times when engaged with a fire they

run some risk.

But we have got a long way from the street where we saw the engine

dashing down through the traffic, and we must come back again. All the

bustle and the fuss that we have been talking of is on the roadway. What

about the pavements? The pavement is often just as crowded, and though

policemen don't hold up their hands to prevent people walking there, yet

it is often quite a long time before you can get through, especially

outside a gay shop window, where all the women want to stand and stare.

In one place, where there are several big shops which stretch down one

side of the street, with very pretty windows full of beautiful things,

many nursemaids come to wheel babies in perambulators. This is not for

the sake of the children, who are too young to care about shop windows,

but it is for the sake of the nursemaids, who meet together and go

slowly along two together, talking of all the fine things they want to

buy, and staring with mouths and eyes round as saucers at the things

they see. Now two nursemaids with two perambulators on a narrow pavement

do not leave much room for anyone else, and people get tripped up and

have their toes crushed by the wheels, or have to step off into the

roadway to make way for Selina Ellen and Martha Theresa, who are far too

much interested in their conversation to make way for anyone. Once a

funny thing happened. An old gentleman was strolling along very slowly,

and Selina Ellen, never looking where she was going, pushed her

perambulator into him from behind. It took the old gentleman right off

his legs, whereupon he sat down backwards on to the perambulator, baby

and all! Poor baby! no wonder it screamed; it was a mercy it was not

squashed up altogether!

Yet there is some excuse for Selina Ellen and her kind, for the shops

are very beautiful. Those of you who have only seen shops in small

country towns can hardly imagine what they are like. The great

plate-glass windows stretch down the side of a street, and if you go

inside the shop you walk through room after room of beautiful things,

all arranged to show to the best advantage. The toy department would be

enough to make any little girl or boy happy even to look at it. There

are toys large and toys small; engines that can be wound up to run by

themselves; horses large enough to ride upon; balls of all colours and

sizes; and dolls--oh, the dolls! Dolls black-eyed and brown-eyed and

blue-eyed, dolls fair-haired and brown-haired, dolls dressed and

undressed. It is perhaps just imagination, but it always seems to me if

we could be there when the shop is shut up for the night and left quiet

we should hear and see some strange things.

One night, not very long before Christmas, in one of the largest shops,

the young men and women who had sold things to customers all day long

were putting away the ribbons and laces and folding up the great

curtains and the dress-stuffs to leave everything tidy for the night

before they went away to their homes. They had been there since nine

o'clock that morning, and were very tired, for people, even ladies, are

sometimes very tiresome when they come to buy; but the young men and

women have to be very polite always, and never lose their temper, or

they would be sent away. When the shop was just being shut up a lady

hurried in, and said:

'I want a doll, please, at once.'

'This way, madam,' said the tall man in the frock-coat very politely,

and he took her downstairs. 'Dolls, please,' he said to a tired,

sweet-looking girl who stood there.

'What sort of a doll did you wish, madam?' asked the girl.

'Oh, it must be a baby doll in baby clothes with real lace. My little

girl would not have one that wasn't dressed in real lace.'

'I'm afraid we haven't any with real lace, madam, but we have one or two

baby dolls,' said the girl, and she took down one or two from the

shelves.

'Oh no, those are hideous!' said the lady. 'The doll must have brown

eyes and red-gold hair.'

'I don't think we have any like that, madam. Here is one with blue eyes

and----'

'I didn't ask you for blue eyes,' said the lady rudely. 'If you can't

show me what I want I must go elsewhere.'

'One minute, madam; I believe there is just one doll such as you

describe, if it hasn't been sold.'

She looked about, and after a little while saw the doll she wanted on a

shelf. She reached up for it and tried to pull it down, but another

doll, rather larger, was leaning over it, so that she could not take one

without the other. She thought the two seemed very close, but she

disentangled them, and laid the baby doll on the counter. As she did so

the big doll fell forward on the shelf, with its arms hanging over as if

they were stretched out imploringly; but the girl never noticed it.

'I think this will be what you are wanting, madam,' she said.

The lady looked at it in a dissatisfied way.

'It hasn't got real lace on its clothes, but as its hair and eyes seem

right, I must take it, and tell my maid to sew some lace on to-night to

be ready for Gladys in the morning,' she said.

The girl tied it up in a parcel for her, and she left the shop. Very

shortly after this everyone went home, and all was still in the dolls'

department; and then suddenly there was a gentle little sniff, just as

if a very wee kitten were crying, and a little movement from the shelf

where the baby-doll had lain. Then a tiny little squeaky voice said:

'Well, you needn't make such a fuss about it; you knew the baby would

have to go some day.'

'I--I--can't help it,' sobbed a gentle little voice; 'I did love that

baby so.'

'You behaved very badly,' said a gruff voice; and the two dolls jumped,

for they knew it was the Gollywog speaking, and they were all afraid of

him. 'You did what no doll should ever do--you nearly showed you were

alive before human people.'

'I know it was very wrong of me,' said the gentle little doll meekly.

'But I did so want to keep that baby; I tried to lie on the top of her

so that she shouldn't be seen.'

'And you fell down and stretched out your arms. Let me tell you, madam,

that you have merited severe punishment; you have broken the laws of

dolldom, wherein we all swear never to speak or show a sign that we can

understand the human world. You have broken the most solemn law in a

daring way without provocation----'

'Oh,' said the second doll with the squeaky voice, 'please, Mr.

Gollywog, don't be so severe; I think she had provocation: she cared

very much for the baby.'

'What are you talking about?' growled the Gollywog. 'We don't want your

opinion. We're going to have a trial now, and no women-dolls can sit on

juries, so you won't have anything to say. Provocation, indeed! If she

had pins stuck into her all over, or been roasted in front of a fire

until she melted, as some dolls have done, you might have talked of

provocation. She might have squeaked then, though many dolls have

bravely endured these things in silence and died; but because a

baby-doll she had taken a fancy to went away, to show off like that! She

deserves death.'

Whereupon he stumped down off his shelf, and hunted about for a man-doll

to make a jury to try the poor gentle doll. It was rather difficult to

find, for there were so few men-dolls; but at last he rummaged out of a

corner a sailor-boy doll, who was terribly afraid of him, and of him he

demanded:

'What do you think that doll is guilty of?'

'Please, sir,' said the sailor-boy, trembling all over, 'what do _you_

think?'

'I think she is guilty of a crime that deserves punishment by death.'

'Punishment by death!' echoed the sailor-boy.

Thereupon the Gollywog made a spring upwards to the shelf, and the poor

little gentle doll gave a shriek and lost her balance, and fell head

first on to the floor, where she was smashed to pieces.

When the shopgirls came again in the morning, the one who had served

the lady found her lying there with her pretty wax face all broken.

'Oh dear,' she said, 'how careless of me! She fell off the shelf, to be

sure; I remember seeing her fall down when I took away the other doll. I

ought to have put her back.'

But the Gollywog, who had returned safely to his own corner, chuckled to

himself silently.

CHAPTER IX

DOGS AND CATS

Have you ever heard of the Dogs' Home? It is for all the poor lost dogs

that the policemen find in the streets of London. Once upon a time there

was a very naughty little dog called Scamp; he had long pepper-and-salt

hair, and very short legs, and he did not think it was fun to go with

the children of the house he lived in for their walk in the Park: he

wanted something more exciting, so he waited until they were not

looking, and then scampered off after another big dog he saw in the

distance. The big dog was very friendly, and began to play and run

about, and Scamp went after him as fast as his little short legs would

go; and by-and-by he grew tired, and lay down, panting, on the pavement,

and the big dog went away home. Then Scamp saw a cat coming very slowly

across the street to the little strip of grass that was surrounded by a

railing on the other side, and if there was one thing he hated it was

cats--nasty, cowardly, furry things! So he banged up suddenly, and the

cat went off like a shot, and Scamp after her; but when he had chased

her for quite a long time, she ran up a tree, and he could only stand

and bark. A greengrocer's boy pretended to bark too, and teased him; so

he grew cross, and thought he would go home. But he discovered all at

once that he did not know where home was, or even in which direction;

and he ran a little in one direction and a little in another, and then

set off running at full speed, with his long tail down between his legs.

A woman called to him and tried to stop him, but he only dodged her and

ran faster, until he came to a wide street full of shops, and here

people walking about, and carriages and cabs driving past, and he got

quite bewildered; and then, just when he was in despair, a policeman

caught hold of him and looked for his collar. Now, the silly little dog

had not got his collar on. Ethel had taken it off that morning to rub up

his name and address, and make them look nice and bright, and when she

wanted to put it on again, he had raced round the room and played, and

would not let her catch him until the governess had called out that it

was lesson-time; so Ethel had gone down, leaving the collar lying on the

table, and after lesson-time had forgotten all about it. So the big

policeman did not know to whom the dog belonged or where to take him.

Scamp was too well-mannered a little dog to bite, but he tried to get

down when the policeman took him up and struggled hard. The policeman

only laughed, and patted his head. 'No, no, my fine fellow,' he said

good-naturedly; 'there'll be someone looking for you, or I'm much

mistaken, and I must do my best to let them find you.' So he took him to

a police-station near, and very soon Scamp was sent down with a

shivering little fox-terrier to the Dogs' Home at Battersea.

He did not understand that it was his only chance of getting home; for

Ethel and Jack's father would know about the home, and send there to see

if he were there first of all. And he thought that the people at the

Dogs' Home were going to keep him all his life, and he did not like the

idea at all. For many dogs it would have been a comfortable place. There

were nice little kennels and good beds of hay, and plenty of drinking

water and clean good biscuit to eat, and little yards to run about in;

but Scamp was not happy. He was accustomed to live in the house and

sleep on the chairs, and be petted and made a fuss with, and nobody took

any notice of him here. He was very hungry, though, so he tried to eat

a little of the dog-biscuit; but in the middle he suddenly thought of

Ethel and Jack and how he loved them, and that he should never find them

again, and he stopped eating because a great lump seemed to stick in his

throat, and he went and sat down in a corner of the yard, just a heap of

gray hair and unhappiness. Presently a man came and patted him and spoke

kindly to him, but he took no notice. He thought how often he had been

cross when Ethel had hurt him in combing his hair, though she had only

been trying to make him look nice, and how sulky he had been many times

when she wanted to play with him; and he thought if only he could get

back he would be so good. All the bad things he had done in his life

came into his mind as he sat in the yard. He remembered that, when he

was only a puppy, about a year ago, he had worried one of Ethel's dolls,

and she had cried, and he had licked her face and tried to tell her he

was sorry, and she had flung her arms round him, and said: 'Never mind,

dear good old Scamp! I love you more than all the dolls, and I know you

didn't mean it.' How good she was always! He loved her better than Jack,

though she did tease him. She had often dressed him up in her dolls'

clothes and made him lie upside down in her arms in a very uncomfortable

position, while she pretended he was a baby.

He had killed a canary once, and once--it was very sad, and he did not

quite know how it had happened--he had got on to the sideboard and eaten

the cold beef while everyone was out at church on Sunday morning. The

beef had been left there uncovered, and he was very hungry, and it smelt

so good. He had climbed on to a chair and sniffed at it, and got a

little nearer and nearer, and all the time he knew quite well he was

doing wrong. And at last he jumped up and began to eat great juicy

mouthfuls of it. Oh, how good it was! And he pulled it this way and

that, and the cloth on the sideboard had got all crumpled up, and

suddenly down went a dish of beetroot with a smash, and all the rich red

juice streamed over the cloth and on to the carpet. He was frightened

then, and turned to run away; but his broad, flat paws had got into the

beetroot juice, and he left great marks all across the cloth. He heard

the latchkey in the front-door just at that moment, and he ran upstairs

and hid under Ethel's bed. Then the family came in, and he heard their

cry of dismay, and Ethel called for him; but he only hid deeper under

the bed. And then she came into the room, and said quite quietly, as if

she knew he was there, though she never looked under the bed: 'Oh,

Scamp! how could you?' And his broad tail went thump, thump against the

floor. So he was dragged out and whipped, and he felt very much ashamed

of himself.

Oh dear! if he could only get back to them all he would never do such

naughty things again!

In the morning two or three other dogs were put into his yard, and

though he wouldn't speak to them at all, and was too miserable to play,

he heard what they said. One of them had been here before, and he

explained that all the well-bred dogs, the good ones, were kept for a

certain time to allow their people to come and find them, and if at the

end of that time no one came for them they were sold; but the mongrels

and little dogs that were of no value--well, it was very curious what

happened to them. They went to sleep in a nice warm place like a drawer,

but they never woke up again. They did not suffer at all, and it was all

arranged very kindly. 'And of course,' said the dog who was speaking,

'it is quite right there should be some distinction between me and a

mongrel!' She was very proud of herself, being a King Charles's

spaniel, with soft brown and white hair and hanging ears and large

goggle eyes. She came up to talk to Scamp after awhile; but he would not

say anything to her, for his heart was sore within him. Yet what he had

heard gave him some hope. All that day he sat with his face pressed

close to the wires of the yard, watching, watching for his own people.

Why did they not come? They must have known he would be there. Once two

ladies came past--gentle, kind ladies of the sort to which he was

accustomed--and he sat up and begged. 'Oh, look at that dear doggie!'

cried one. 'We couldn't choose a nicer one; let us have him.' But when

they inquired about him they found that Scamp was not for sale just yet.

Then toward evening, when it was growing dusk, he suddenly heard a voice

that made his heart leap, and he jumped up and whined with excitement,

and Ethel cried: 'Oh, father, there he is! Don't you hear him?' And he

was let out, and she went down on her knees to kiss and hug him, and he

jumped about her so wildly that he nearly knocked her hat off. Surely

there was never a happier little dog went home that night than Scamp!

There are homes for cats in London, too; but often poor cats have a

much worse time than dogs. You remember that a great many of the

fashionable people only stay in London for the season, and then they

shut up their houses and go away into the country for several months.

Well, sometimes they are so thoughtless as to leave their poor cats

without any food or shelter--they forget about them. But a cat can't

live on nothing any more than a dog can. Perhaps poor puss has been out

for a walk, and comes back to find the house all shut and silent, and

she waits patiently a long time; but no one comes, and the boys in the

street throw stones at her. So she runs across to the square, and waits

there; but still the door is never opened. If she is lucky and clever at

hunting she may catch a little sparrow or find something in the roadway

to eat; but as the days go on she gets thinner and thinner, and weaker

and weaker, and at last, perhaps, dies of starvation unless some kind

person takes the trouble to send her to a cats' home. The cats' homes

are much the same as the dogs. If possible the cats are sold, and if not

they are quietly and painlessly killed--a much better fate than starving

in the streets. Sometimes the rich people do remember their cats, but

can't take them away; and so before they go they send them to a cats'

home, and pay for them to be kept there until they come back. Puss is

then well fed and happy; for a cat makes herself happy anywhere where

she is comfortable much more readily than a dog does, and then when the

family return for the winter she goes back to her own snug kitchen.

Some dogs who have lived in London all their lives as Scamp did, are

used to it, and are happy enough, but it is not a good place for dogs.

It is very difficult for them to run about enough, and they can't go out

by themselves for fear of getting lost or stolen, so often a dog has a

very unhappy time. There are dogs who are so much accustomed to London

that they will follow an omnibus if their master is on it, and keep

running by the side and looking up and barking. And they do not seem to

get at all confused by the many, many omnibuses passing and repassing,

but follow the right one all the time. But this is very exceptional.

Generally a London life is an unhappy one for any but a very small

house-dog.

In one part of Hyde Park there is a dogs' burial-ground, where people

can bury their pets. You can see it from the road as you pass, or you

can go in and look at it. It is very full. There are numbers of small

stones like little gravestones put to mark the places where many a loved

dog lies. Most of the stones are alike--small rounded ones with the

dogs' names on them, and some are flat on the ground. There are flowers

growing there, and the place is very bright and well cared for. We read

here the names of many dogs--Punch, Dinah, Crow, Ruby Heart, Bogey, and

Girlie. Strange names for dogs. The stones do not tell us what sort of

dogs they were, though that would have been interesting. We can't find

one in memory of Scamp, and I'm quite sure if he had died Ethel would

have had him buried here, so near the gardens where he often ran and

played. So Scamp must be living still. But other sorrowing mistresses

have lost their little companions, and the inscriptions show a world of

tenderness. We read, 'Alas, poor Zoe! as deeply mourned as ever dog was

mourned,' and 'Darling Vic,' 'Snow, a dear friend,' 'Loving little

Charlie,' 'Our faithful little friend Wobbles,' 'Jack, most loving and

most fondly loved,' and many another. It must have been a happy world

for such loved dogs as these.

CHAPTER X

ODDS AND ENDS

This is to be a chapter about all sorts of odd things that cannot be

fitted in anywhere else. For instance, have any of you heard about the

Messenger Boys? If not, I think that will interest you. Someone once

formed a scheme of having a number of boys trained to go messages, or

take parcels, or do anything that was required in London. And he set up

offices all over London, where anyone could get one of these boys and

send him on a message by paying his expenses and a small sum also,

according to the distance he had to go. At every one of the offices

there are a certain number of boys always going and coming. They take

the messages in order as they come, and they may get a nice one or a

nasty one. If you went into one of these offices and saw the boys

sitting on a bench waiting, you would soon see how it works. Some of the

boys are playing draughts, some are reading, but all are ready at any

minute to go where they are told. There is a young man in charge of the

office, and someone comes in with a message. So he turns to No. 1, a

bright, chubby-faced little lad, and says, 'Go to this address and call

for a parcel for this lady, whose name is written down, and take the

parcel to her house. Be as quick as you can, and you can take a

taxi-cab.' Off goes the boy, delighted to get such a nice job, and he

feels very important to call up a cab for himself. He knows exactly

where to go and how much to pay the cabman, for he has learnt all that

before. The next boy is a big, awkward-looking lad, very tall for his

age, and the young man laughs a little as he gives him a message: 'You

are to call at No. 50 in this street,' he says, 'and the lady will hand

over to you two children aged three and four. You are to take them to

the Zoo and let them have a good time, and bring them back before six

o'clock.'

The big boy makes a face. He does not fancy this idea at all; it is like

being a nursemaid, and he thinks how silly he will look with two wee

children. And all the other boys are grinning; but he cannot refuse. He

is like a soldier, and must do just what he is told. So off he goes and

asks for the children. But when he finds he can take them up in a cab,

and that they are dear, bright, happy little things, full of mischief,

he begins to enjoy himself, and they spend a lovely afternoon together;

and when he brings them back safely, and the mother gives him half a

crown for himself in addition to his fee, he feels he has had a good

day.

Some time elapses when he has left the office before smart little No. 3

gets anything to do, and then he is told to go to King's Cross Station

to meet two schoolboys and see their luggage is safe, and take them

across to Charing Cross. When he gets there he finds both the boys are

bigger than himself, but they are country boys going to school for the

first time, and are very frightened and bewildered, and little No. 3

cheers them up, so that they part quite good friends.

But these are a few of the odd things the boys have to do, and most of

their time is spent in taking notes about. You can see them anywhere in

London in their neat dark-blue uniforms with silver decorations. Once a

gentleman walked into one of the Messenger Boy offices, and said

quietly, as if he were saying nothing extraordinary, 'I want a boy to

take a note for me to America.'

The man in charge showed no surprise, but only asked when the boy was

to start. The gentleman said he might go the next day, which would give

him time to get his clothes together.

The boy who was next on the list was called Jaggers, and he was a

bright, intelligent little lad. He ran home eagerly to ask if his

parents would let him go, and having got permission, he went off

cheerfully the next day across the Atlantic Ocean to New York. He

arrived safely and delivered his message, and then went on to Chicago

and Philadelphia, as he had been instructed. He returned in eighteen

days, having travelled 8,000 miles, and he found he was quite a hero,

and the man who had sent him gave him a medal with a clasp or bar of

silver for each place he had gone to. I think many a boy might have been

frightened when told to go off to the other side of the world so

suddenly.

After Jaggers another boy did an even pluckier thing. His name was

Halsey, and he was sent to California, which is on the other side of

America, much further than New York, and he had to go right across the

continent and find the way all by himself, and he was given no time to

get ready as Jaggers was, but started almost immediately. That boy

afterwards fought for England in South Africa in the Imperial Yeomanry,

and is now in a responsible position in the Messenger Service. Another

boy was sent to the Sultan of Turkey to take a dog as a present. I think

that must have been the most difficult to do of the three things, for

the dog might have died on the way, and when the boy got to Turkey he

would have the disadvantage of being in a country where a foreign

language was spoken. These are exceptional cases, of course, but the

boys are still sometimes sent to the Continent with messages. But enough

about the Messenger Boys.

There is a sight to be seen in London nearly every evening, and

particularly on Saturday evenings, that always seems to me to be most

touching, and that is the rows of little children waiting outside the

shops for food that is sold cheaply. In great shops which sell food that

soon perishes--for instance, fish, or fruit, or bread-stuffs--there is

often a certain quantity left over at night that will not be quite fresh

in the morning, and so it is sold cheaply, and it is this that the

children of the poor come to buy. Some shops almost give it away. On

Saturday night, outside a pastry-cook's, there was a row of patient boys

and girls, each with a basket or bag, and some had been standing there

for a long time, because it is a case of 'first come, first served,' and

no pushing is allowed. As another little child arrived it took up its

stand at the end of the row, and waited until the time came for closing

the shop. Then each child paid so much--say sixpence--and got a large

quantity of bread, and so much cake, and if there was not enough to go

round the last ones had to go away without any.

At the fish shops there are different ways of doing this at different

shops. At one big shop all the fish that is over after the day's sale is

done is put into a large basket--there may be a piece of cod, and

several small fish, and some whiting or mackerel--and then each child

pays twopence, and the man in the shop deals out the fish as it comes,

giving so much to each, without asking what the children want. The poor

little bairns watch eagerly until their own turn comes. See that big bit

of cod? That would make a Sunday dinner for all of Ellen's people, and

Ellen watches it anxiously. There is a very small girl in front of

herself, and Ellen nearly cries when she sees the man put it into her

bag; but she cheers up again when a whole fish, of what kind she is not

quite sure, but still it looks very good, is passed on to her. There is

no waiting afterwards. How the little feet run home, and how the shrill

little voices cry, 'Mother, mother! look what I've got!' But it may be

also that a disappointed little girl goes away, crying softly, for she

came too late, so she had to stand quite at the end of the row, and when

her turn came there was nothing left. 'No more to-night,' the shopman

said cheerily, and seeing the pale, wistful little face, he added, 'Come

in better time another week, little girl.'

The little girl stole away quietly, but when she got to a dark corner

she sat down and cried bitterly; it was not so much for the sake of the

fish as because she knew she would get a beating from her drunken mother

when she went home without it. Yet she could not help it; she had had so

much to do that day--work, work, work from morning to night, partly at

school, partly at home--and she had run to the fish shop as soon as ever

she could, only to find herself too late. Children, there are sad times

in the lives of little girls such as these which none of you will ever

know.

But, as we have said once or twice, the lives of street children are by

no means all darkness; the merry games, the society of other children,

and the stir and life of London make up for a great deal. In some of

the streets you can see the boys running about on roller skates--bits of

wood on tiny wheels, strapped on to their boots. The smooth London

pavements are very good for this sport, and the boys skate about,

getting wonderfully clever at it, and enjoying themselves immensely.

Then they have their tops, which they spin on the pavements or in the

roadway among the feet of the people walking, without minding in the

least. There are tops all over the streets at some times of the year

spinning gaily. The girls have their skipping-ropes, which are apt to be

a nuisance to the people who want to walk on the pavements; but

sometimes there is a side alley where no one goes, and here the children

can skip undisturbed.

One game that seems a great favourite with the children is called

'Hop-scotch,' or 'London Town.' They draw a number of divisions on the

pavement with white chalk, and then hop from one to the other kicking a

bit of stone along the pavement with their toe; they must send it into

the next square at every hop, and they must not put the other foot to

the ground until they send it safely into the last division of all,

which is Home or London. The little girls get quite clever at this,

hopping lightly and daintily. Sometimes they draw a circle instead of a

square, which makes it more difficult to do, but the game is the same.

When the barrel-organ comes round, as it very often does, the children

dance; they don't mind that it has travelled in wind and weather for

perhaps ten years, and that it has lost all tune it may have had, and

only grinds out a horrible noise: they like the noise, and dance up and

down holding their little skirts, or twirling one another round in great

enjoyment. The streets do not allow of wild, romping games, and it would

be dangerous to dash about and try to catch one another, so most of

these are games that can be played on the pavement in safety.

The children who live near parks are luckier than those who have only

the streets for playgrounds, and these parks are filled with children,

especially on Saturday afternoons. There is one called Battersea Park,

near the river, where you may sit on a little knoll at one end, and, in

summer, as far as you can see there are boys playing cricket. They are

so mixed up that it is difficult to tell which ball belongs to which,

and often a good hit sends one ball flying into the middle of the next

game. Some of them have real wickets, and at one end there is a

carefully kept ground where men play; but some of the little boys have

no wickets, and only a bit of wood for a bat. So they get a stick from

somewhere and make it stand up in the ground, and then hang one of their

shabby little coats round it to make a wicket; but they shout loudly

with joy, and enjoy themselves at their game just as much as the bigger

boys with real wickets.

A thing you very often see in London, and, indeed, in other towns, too,

is a man sitting on the bare stone pavement drawing pictures on the

stones with coloured chalks. Sometimes he does them very well, and makes

scenes of battles and views of pretty places or ships at sea, but at

other times they are hideous and badly drawn. He does this in order that

people may give him pennies as they pass. He is not allowed to beg, and

if he tried to the policeman would come and take him up; but he doesn't

like hard work, so he sits beside his pictures and holds his cap out

piteously, and very often people give him pennies in passing, so he

makes a living without too much trouble. But unless he is old or

crippled, he ought to be doing better work than this. There are always a

great many odd men who have no work to do in London; there are some who

earn a living by going about in the early morning, when people put their

dustbins out, and picking out anything that they think they can sell--a

disgusting trade; others used to watch until they saw a cab with luggage

on it, and then they ran after it sometimes for miles and miles, and

when it stopped they would offer to carry the boxes upstairs. These men

certainly earned their money, for they had to run fast and far, and to

carry a box up the flights and flights of stairs in a London house is

not an easy task; but, unfortunately, they were generally men who were

out of work through their own fault, who had been drunken or idle or

rude, and they were not at all pleasant to deal with, and sometimes they

made themselves very disagreeable if they didn't get what they

considered enough money, and refused to go out of the house until a

policeman was fetched. So it is as well perhaps that now this means of

extorting money is impossible, for no man could run fast enough to keep

up with a taxi-cab.

The barrel-organ man we have already mentioned. He is frequently an

Italian, and has a dark-haired woman with him, and she wears a red

handkerchief over her hair to make her look more foreign; and they go

from house to house grinding out their awful tunes, and they get very

well paid, for the people in the poorer shops and in the foreign parts

of London like the noise, and give them pennies. Sometimes the man has a

monkey, which always attracts the children. Other men walk about with

barrows selling ice-cream; this is sold at a half-penny a time, and the

children lick it out of little glasses and have no spoons: one wonders

how often the glasses are washed. But that does not trouble the little

street children at all; they follow the ice-cream man in throngs like

flies in summer whenever it is hot. Poor little bairns! they have no

milk to drink or nice cool rooms to go to, only the hot, dusty street,

and they must often be thirsty. Well, all these things you can see in

the streets daily, and a great many more. I have not spoken of the

'sandwich' man; that is a funny name, and it means the man is sandwiched

between two great boards, which he carries on his front and back. On

these are written in large letters the name of a new play, or a

restaurant, or anything else to which someone wants to attract

attention. These men are paid a very little each day; they are hired a

large number together, and walk along by the side of the pavement with

their great boards one after another, so the people passing in the

street read the boards, and perhaps go to see the play or to dine at

the restaurant. The men are bound to keep on walking always together all

day, and they very often are ashamed of their work; for they may have

been something better than this, for to be a sandwich man is about the

lowest work a man can do, but, at any rate, it is earning money

honestly, without begging or stealing.

BOOK II

HISTORICAL STORIES

CHAPTER XI

KING EDWARD V

I think I heard someone ask for stories, and there are many stories

connected with London, though they are generally rather sad ones. There

was once a boy who became Edward V., King of England, who had a sad life

and a short one, and though he was a prince and a king I am sure he

would much rather have been neither. His father was Edward IV., and he

had not become King of England by inheritance, but because he had won

the crown by fighting.

Before him Henry VI. was king, and Edward claimed the throne by right of

his birth. So they fought, and there was a civil war. You know what that

is--a war between people of the same country who take different sides,

and it is the worst of all wars. As Edward IV. was Duke of York, his

side called themselves Yorkists, and wore a white rose as a badge; and

Henry VI.'s side called themselves Lancastrians, and wore a red rose.

Edward was very strong and very handsome, and a great many people

admired him and fought for him because they thought he would make a fine

king. And Henry was weak and feeble; but then he was king already, and

his father had been king before him; so a great many people took his

side for that reason. While they were still fighting Edward married

secretly a beautiful woman, a widow, called Elizabeth Woodville, and

soon after this he was so successful that he found he could settle in

London and have himself crowned king, while Henry and his wife and son

had to fly to Scotland. Then Edward told his great nobles that he was

married, and for a time all went on well. Edward and Elizabeth were very

happy. They lived in great state, and soon a little daughter was given

to them, and they called her Elizabeth. All the time poor Henry and his

brave Queen Margaret and his son Edward were hiding away in lonely

places. Little did they think then that the time would soon come when it

would be proud Edward IV. who had to fly and hide in his turn!

[Illustration: TRAFALGAR SQUARE.]

After awhile Edward IV. managed to capture Henry, and he put him in

prison in the Tower of London, and then, no doubt, he felt he was

very safe. But Edward had a follower called the Earl of Warwick, a

very powerful man. And he was angry, because he had wanted the King to

marry a sister of the King of France; but the King had not done as he

wished, for he had married Elizabeth Woodville. So the Earl of Warwick

waited for a good opportunity, and then raised up a disturbance in

Yorkshire.

King Edward was frightened when he heard of this, and travelled north to

quell the disturbance. And Warwick, who was in the north himself, seized

him and made him prisoner. It was very bold of him to make the King

prisoner in his own country. Now there were two kings in England both

prisoners--Edward in Yorkshire and Henry in London. However, King Edward

was not the sort of man to remain in prison long, and he soon escaped,

and Warwick had to fly to France. Here he found Queen Margaret, wife of

Henry VI., and with her he persuaded the French King to get together a

great army to go to England and fight against Edward. This was a

surprise for Edward, who had never expected it, and he could not get

together enough men to fight against Queen Margaret's army; so he had to

fly, and he went over the sea to Holland. But he did not take his Queen

with him; he left her in England with her children, for by this time

she had two other daughters besides Elizabeth, called Cicely and Anne.

Poor Queen Elizabeth was in great distress; she did not know where to go

or whom she could trust. But she was advised to go to the Sanctuary at

Westminster. You have heard of Westminster already, and you remember it

is a part of London, and at that time one of the King's palaces was

there. There was also a curious place like a strong, dark little castle.

It was a safety-place, and if anyone had killed a man or done any

wickedness and fled there he was safe; his enemies could not take him

out. That was why it was called the Sanctuary, and it was like the

cities of refuge in the Bible. It stood quite near to the place where

the Abbey stands now, and many hunted people rushed there for safety.

The Sanctuary was very dark, and had hardly any windows, and inside

there was a chapel. There was a flat roof, so that anyone who had gone

there for safety could climb up to the roof and peep over to see if his

enemies were waiting until he came out. It was not the sort of place for

a queen, and I should think Elizabeth must have felt very sad and lonely

there. Perhaps she had only straw to lie upon instead of a soft bed, and

bad food to eat instead of delicacies, and the darkness must have been

terrifying. Every moment she expected to hear the footfalls of a man

running with a message to say her husband had been caught or even

killed, because, of course, there were no papers or telegraphs; all the

news was sent by word of mouth or by messengers. Little Elizabeth was

only about six or seven years old, and her sisters were still younger,

and they could not have understood why they had to be in that nasty dark

place; but perhaps the Queen explained to them something of the reason.

It is very odd that little Elizabeth was afterwards Queen of England

herself. She married the man who was on the Lancastrian side and claimed

to be king when Edward her father and her two brothers were dead, and

Henry VI. and his son were dead also, and so the York and Lancaster

lines were joined in one.

Now while the Queen and her little daughters were there God sent them

some happiness, for a little baby-boy came to them, and he was Edward V.

afterwards. He was too little to know anything about his mother's

anxiety, and was, I dare say, quite as happy as most babies, and he must

have brought some brightness with him for his mother and sisters.

After this Edward IV. took heart again. Perhaps he felt that now he had

a son to succeed him he must win back the throne, and he returned to

England and fought again, and this time Queen Margaret and her men were

quite defeated, and her son was killed. He was an Edward, too, and he

was then about eighteen. Now Edward IV. was triumphant, and returned to

London, and the very day he came back his enemy Henry VI. died, so there

was no one to fight any more just then.

Cannot you imagine what a happy time that would be when Elizabeth showed

her husband the new little baby-boy? They christened him Edward after

his father, and as he grew up he was always treated like a prince, and

everyone knew that one day he would be king after his father. He had a

brother also, called Richard, two years younger, and some other sisters

younger still, called Katherine and Bridget. Bridget sounds to us now a

very queer name for a princess, but it was quite fashionable then. The

little boys were very beautiful; they learned to ride and play at games

and to shoot, and do all the other things that young nobles in those

days were taught. The royal brothers wore fine suits of velvet and

satin, with little daggers at their waists, and their hair grew long on

their shoulders. We should think long hair silly for boys now, but it

was the fashion then. Even men wore their hair quite long. These boys

and their younger sisters, Katherine and Bridget, had always been

treated like princes and princesses; they could not remember the time

when their father was an outcast and their mother had had to seek

shelter in sanctuary. Even the older children would have but a dim

recollection of those days of anxiety and gloom, and would think it

quite natural that they should be surrounded by pretty things, and that

everyone should serve them.

According to a curious custom prevailing at that time, kings sometimes

arranged marriages for their children when they were only a few years

old, and sometimes even when they were babies. All King Edward's

children were engaged to be married before they could speak! It

happened, however, that most of these engagements were afterwards

broken, but little Richard, who was created Duke of York, was actually

married when he was five years old to a little girl called Anne,

daughter of the Duke of Norfolk.

Edward and Richard were devoted to each other, and very happy together.

Perhaps this was partly because they were so unlike in disposition, for

people who are not like each other often agree the best. Edward was a

quiet, rather clever boy, and Richard was full of fun and very

mischievous. They had a great many uncles and aunts, for their mother

had five sisters all married to dukes and earls, and she had brothers as

well. Her eldest brother was Earl Rivers, and he was very good to his

nephews, and they loved him, and were always glad to see him. The boys

had also some step-brothers, their mother's sons by her first marriage,

and they liked these older brothers very much. So they had many people

who took an interest in them, and I dare say they were a little bit

spoilt.

Their father, King Edward, had two brothers younger than himself. One

was George, Duke of Clarence, and the other Richard, Duke of Gloucester.

The Duke of Clarence was a weak, discontented man, who grumbled

continually. The Duke of Gloucester was a hunchback, and he was as

deformed in mind as in body; for he was of a malicious disposition,

always ready to make mischief, and was so fond of his own way that he

would kill anyone who dared to oppose him. He was jealous of Clarence,

and so he told tales of him to King Edward; and King Edward believed

him, and had Clarence seized and taken to the Tower. Then Gloucester was

glad, and went about saying all the things he could think of against

Clarence so that he should never again be let out of prison.

At that time the Tower was both a prison and a palace, and the King

sometimes stayed there himself; but he lived generally at the palace of

Westminster, which stood where the Houses of Parliament stand now. The

great hall of this palace is still there, forming a part of the Houses

of Parliament, but the rest of the building is very different from what

it was in King Edward's time. Then there was a high wall all round the

palace, and within it were streets of quaint old houses, with gables and

angles, and in them lived the people who had to work for the King and

his Court--that is to say, all the carpenters, and blacksmiths, and

other work-people. And when the King and the princes went riding through

the streets on great occasions, these people used to hang out beautiful

pieces of cloth of many colours--red and blue and gold--so that the

curious narrow streets looked like fairyland. The great wall was a

protection to all the people who lived inside, and made the palace and

houses like a little town by themselves.

One day when young Edward and Richard rode in after they had been

playing with the nobles at some sports, they heard that their uncle

Clarence was dead. They dared not ask how it was that he, a man in the

prime of life, had died so suddenly, for their father looked very stern,

and their uncle Richard seemed pretending to be sorry. But the truth was

that Clarence had been killed by King Edward's orders, because Richard

had made up stories about him, and pretended that he had discovered a

plot of Clarence's to dethrone the King and make himself King instead,

and, unfortunately, King Edward had believed this wicked lie. No one

ever knew exactly how Clarence had been killed, but it was whispered

that, as he was a king's son, he had been allowed to choose his own

death, and he had chosen to be drowned in a great barrel of wine. This

was the beginning of Richard's wickedness, and later he grew worse and

worse, for he intended to be king himself some day, and so he

deliberately murdered everyone who stood in his way. He had begun with

Clarence, who was his elder brother, and who would have been king before

him if anything had happened to the King and his sons, but he did not

stop there.

Prince Edward was only eight years old when this happened, and Richard

was six.

Five years more went by, and during that time, though all seemed to be

well, there were really plots and schemes everywhere in the palace. The

Duke of Gloucester was always creeping about after the handsome King and

flattering him, and trying to win his confidence. The King still loved

his wife, Queen Elizabeth, and he gave her relations, the Woodvilles,

important posts about the Court and showed them favour. And this did not

please Gloucester at all, for he hated the Queen, and was jealous of her

relations; and so he made up stories against them and told them to the

King, as he had done in the case of poor Clarence, but this time the

King was not quite so ready to believe him.

But when little Edward was thirteen the King died suddenly, and then the

Duke of Gloucester and the Queen's relations both tried to get young

Edward into their own hands, for they thought that a boy so young would

be easily controlled and made to do as they wished. Edward, who was now

King Edward V., loved his mother and all her family, and wished to be

under the care of his aunts and uncles on her side of the family; so

when she told him to go into the country with his uncle, Earl Rivers,

and one of his half-brothers, Lord Grey, he went gladly. The Queen had

planned this to keep him out of the power of the Duke of Gloucester,

whom she feared. But the Duke was too clever a man to be put aside so

easily. He had made his brother, the dead King, say before he died that

he was to be young Edward's guardian, and on the strength of that he now

claimed the young King. Finding, however, that he had already gone to

the country, he sent a message to him saying he must come back, and he

himself started out for the country to meet him half-way.

You can imagine that Earl Rivers and Lord Grey were anxious when they

received that message. But what could they do? If they refused to bring

back the little King, the Duke would doubtless raise an army and come

against them and compel them to give him up. So they thought the best

way would be to pretend to do as Richard wished, but in reality to keep

themselves very near to the young King and to guard him from harm. They

set out for London, therefore, bringing Edward with them, and the Duke

of Gloucester soon met them. He had with him a powerful noble called

Lord Hastings, who, though he hated the Queen's relations and was

jealous of them, was still an upright, brave man, who would not have

hurt a hair of young Edward's head.

When the Duke of Gloucester and Lord Hastings met the other party, they

were very polite, and so friendly that Earl Rivers and Lord Grey thought

that they must have been mistaken, and that the Duke meant nothing but

good; so they foolishly gave up all precautions, and left themselves in

the power of the Duke. Then he seized them, and sent them off as

prisoners to a strong tower in Yorkshire.

Poor Edward V. was terrified when he heard this, and found that he was

alone with his uncle Gloucester, and he fell on his knees and cried--you

must remember he was only thirteen--and begged his uncle to release the

prisoners. Gloucester tried to comfort him, and assured him that he was

only doing what was best for the safety of everyone. He told Edward that

these men were bad men, and were plotting against him, and he said that

it was for his safety he had seized them; and then he said that he was

taking him back to London to his mother and brother and sisters, and

that when he got there he should be crowned King. Then Edward was a

little comforted.

Lord Hastings, however, began to be anxious: he did not like the way in

which Richard was getting all the power into his own hands; so though he

was no friend of the Queen mother's, he sent her a message to say that

he feared the Duke of Gloucester, and she would be wise to go to a place

of safety. I expect Gloucester found out about this message, for he

always hated Hastings afterwards, and never rested until he had punished

him, as you shall hear.

When the Queen received the message she left the palace at Westminster

and hurried to the Sanctuary, where she had been once before, and she

took all her children with her.

A bishop went to see her there, and he wrote a book about it, so we can

tell now just how he found her. She was sitting upon rushes, which in

those days were used instead of carpets, and all around her were bags

and bundles and furniture, which had been hastily brought across from

the palace. The Queen could be more comfortable this time than she had

been in the first dark and lonely days, for she had been able to bring

some of her own belongings to the gloomy Sanctuary. All the children

were there except Edward. The eldest girl, Elizabeth, was now seventeen,

and must have been a great comfort to her mother; yet, in spite of all

this, it was a hard time for all of them, and more so when Richard fell

ill. Perhaps it was because he couldn't run about as usual; but they all

took great care of him, and presently he began to get better. I must

tell you that on the very place where the Sanctuary used to stand is now

a large hospital called the Westminster Hospital; and so where little

Prince Richard was nursed by his frightened mother more than 400 years

ago, other people, and among them children, are now nursed back to

health and strength.

To go back to Edward and his uncle. The Duke was still pretending to be

a good, kind uncle, and he treated Edward as a king. When they entered

London the Lord Mayor and Aldermen came out to meet them. It was a

splendid sight. The Lord Mayor was dressed in scarlet, and 500 of the

citizens of London were in violet, and Edward himself, a very handsome

boy, sat his horse like a king, while his long fair curls fell down over

his blue velvet cloak. And the Duke of Gloucester took off his hat and

bowed, and said to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, 'Behold your Prince and

Sovereign Lord!'

Then, as they rode on into the town, he told Edward that he should be

crowned in a month. I wonder if Edward believed him? They went first to

the Bishop of London's house, and then on to the Tower; but Edward did

not feel afraid, because, as I said, the Tower was a palace as well as a

prison, and as the palace at Westminster was very old and uncomfortable,

it was natural to go to the Tower instead.

Now, the wicked Richard of Gloucester had got one of the little boys

into his power; but that was no use unless he could get the other one,

for if he killed Edward the people would say Richard, Duke of York, must

be king. And he dared not kill either of them while Lord Hastings was

alive. So he thought of a plan, and this is what he did. He called a

meeting of the great nobles to the Tower to talk about business of

State. Lord Hastings came, of course, among the others. At first Richard

seemed to be in very good spirits, and laughed and jested; but as the

morning went on he grew crosser and crosser, and at last he scowled so

much that all the nobles were afraid of him. Then suddenly he stretched

out his bare arm, and showed them that it was shrivelled and old. It

had been like that since he was a baby, but now he pretended that it had

only happened suddenly, and that it was done by poor Queen Elizabeth,

who was then in sanctuary with her children; and he said she was a witch

and had bewitched him, and turning quickly to Lord Hastings, he said:

'What should be done to those who did this thing? Ought they not to be

killed?'

Lord Hastings knew quite well that the Queen had not done it; but he did

not dare to say so, so he answered: 'Ay, my lord, _if_ they have done

this thing they deserve death.'

Then Richard roared out in a fury: 'Dost thou answer me with "ifs"? By

my head! I will not dine until thy head is off!'

And he made a sign to some soldiers he had placed there before, and they

rushed forward and carried out poor Lord Hastings on to the little strip

of green outside, and there, before anyone could interfere, chopped off

his head on a log of wood that lay there. No one dare do anything, for

they were all afraid of the Duke of Gloucester; and Hastings suffered

simply because he had been loyal to his little King. Richard had no

heart to feel sorry for his victims; he just mowed down the people who

stood between him and his wishes as if they had been daisies.

Now at last he could get his own way, for the two most powerful men who

would have opposed him were out of the way: the King's uncle, Rivers,

was imprisoned at Pontefract in Yorkshire, and Hastings was dead. So

Richard's next idea was to get the little Duke of York and take him to

the Tower to his brother, and then he would have everything in his own

hands.

Even Richard of Gloucester could not go and drag his little nephew

straight out of sanctuary, for the Archbishop would not have allowed it,

and all the people would have been horrified at the sacrilege and risen

against him; so he sent some men to try to persuade the Queen to give

the boy up.

The Archbishop and some nobles went on this errand, and they found Queen

Elizabeth sitting in the midst of her children in the dark Sanctuary,

and when they told her their reason for coming she said never would she

let Richard go. She knew his uncle only wanted him to kill him, and she

said of the Duke of Gloucester, 'He hath so tender a zeal unto him that

he feareth nothing but that he should escape him,' which showed she

guessed his wicked plans. Besides, she added, the boy had been ill, and

he was only a little boy eleven years old, and he was better with his

mother than with men in that gloomy Tower. But they told her Edward was

lonely and wanted his brother to play with; so she answered that there

were many other boys, the sons of nobles, he could play with instead of

his little brother, who still was not well enough to play.

It seems dreadful that these men, who must have known the reason why

Gloucester wanted his little nephew, should have gone on trying to

persuade the poor mother to give him up; but they did, and they said

that sanctuary was not meant for children at all, only for people who

had done wrong, and this boy had done nothing wrong, so he could not

claim the right of sanctuary. Then poor Queen Elizabeth saw that they

would take him whatever she said, and she could do no more. So she gave

him to the Archbishop, and said he must be responsible for him, and if

anything happened to the boy his blood would be on the Archbishop's

head. Yet the Archbishop took him.

So Richard kissed his mother and sisters and ran out, and the first

person he met was his wicked uncle, the Duke of Gloucester. And

Gloucester caught him up in his arms and kissed him, and pretended to

be very fond of him, and took him at once to Edward. The brothers had

not seen one another for some time, and Richard cried out with surprise

when he found how tall Edward had grown--much taller than himself, and

in the joy of meeting at first they were very happy together.

The little boys were kept prisoners in the Tower, and suddenly they

heard that all the preparations which had been made for Edward's

coronation were going to do for the Duke of Gloucester's, and that he

was going to make himself king even while his nephews were alive! Cannot

you imagine how angry a high-spirited boy like Edward must have felt?

But he could do nothing; he was in prison, and no one helped him. Then

came the dreadful news that his two dear friends, his uncle Rivers and

Lord Grey, had been beheaded in Yorkshire. And, worse than all, some

page came talking, and said before Edward that he believed his uncle was

going to have him to walk in his train at the coronation--walk behind

his uncle like a page!

Perhaps Edward cried out, and said furious things at this; for if ever

the Duke of Gloucester had meant to do it he gave up the idea. Perhaps,

also, his idea had been at first just to keep his nephews prisoners

without harming them; but now he saw that every year they grew older

they would be more dangerous to his plans, and so he resolved on a

terrible deed.

He sent for Robert Brackenbury, the keeper of the Tower, and told him

plainly that if he would murder the little princes he should be well

paid. Brackenbury was a brave man, and he refused boldly, saying he

could not do such a wicked thing for all the money in the world. Then

Richard said angrily: 'Will no man do what I want?' And a page who was

sleeping on a couch near the door to guard it heard, and answered that

he knew a man who would do anything the Duke wanted. Richard told him to

fetch this man, who was Sir James Tyrrell, and between them they made up

their dreadful plot. Tyrrell was to ask Brackenbury to give him the keys

of the Tower for one night, and in that night he would see the deed was

done. Now Brackenbury could not refuse. He might guess what was going to

happen; but if he refused to give the keys his head would be cut off,

and the little princes would be killed just the same. So he agreed, and

went away sorrowfully.

Then in the dark of the night Sir James Tyrrell took with him two

men--rough, odious men, called Dighton and Probyn, who would have killed

anyone for money. One was a gaoler at the Tower, and the other was

Tyrrell's own groom, and the three crept up the dark winding stair to

the room the boys were sleeping in. Even those rough men were horrified

at what they had come to do when they saw those two beautiful boys with

their curling golden hair falling on their shoulders and their faces

close together, sleeping so sweetly. But they remembered the money they

were to have if they succeeded and the anger of wicked Richard if they

failed, and they took up great pillows and held them down over the boys'

faces until they were smothered. Perhaps the boys did not suffer at all,

but just dreamed away into death.

When it was done the men showed the two bodies to Tyrrell, who was

waiting, and then, hurrying down the heavy stone staircase, they pulled

out some of the great stones at the foot, and buried them there and

covered them up with stones. So that no one knew certainly what had

become of the princes at the time. But two hundred years after, in doing

some repairs, workmen came upon the bones of two boys, just about the

sizes of the two little princes, at the foot of the stairs, and so the

secret came out. And now, if you visit the Tower, you can see the very

spot where they were buried.

Well, that is the end of the story of Edward V., and perhaps he was no

more unhappy dying as an innocent child than if he had lived to be a man

and ruled England for many years. But wicked Richard did not enjoy the

throne he had gained by so many murders; for he only reigned two years,

and then he was conquered by another Henry, a relation of Henry VI., who

married Elizabeth, the boys' sister, and they two were the next king and

queen.

CHAPTER XII

TOURNAMENTS AND PAGEANTS

In the last chapter I spoke about the young nobles who played with the

little princes, and of their sports. In this chapter I will try to

explain how very different the lives of boys were then from what they

are now.

It was the fashion then for the sons of nobles to be taken from their

homes when they were about twelve and sent to some other nobleman's

house, to be brought up there and educated. These boys were called

pages, and there were a great many of them about the Court. At the

palace of Westminster especially there would be many, for it was

considered a great thing for a boy to be noticed at Court. Every noble

who came to see the King would bring with him some of these pages. The

life must have been on the whole very pleasant for the boys, but there

were many things in it that were disagreeable. For instance, it was one

of the duties of the pages to wait at table and to carve the dishes on

the sideboard, and they were taught to be very particular, and always to

wash their hands before carving. We are told of one boy that his

gentility was so great that he would not wipe his hands like the others,

but waved them about in the air until they were dry! I think this must

have made them red and rough, which would not be very genteel.

The pages were gaily dressed, with short doublets of velvet and fur, and

little daggers, and caps with a feather in them, and often they were

much petted by the ladies, and were much spoilt in consequence.

The boys joined in all the sports of the time, and there were many more

sports then, when England was a wild country without many towns in it,

than there are now. The chase of the wild boar or the wolf was a

favourite sport, and stag-hunting was very popular. It was part of the

duty of pages to know how to skin and cut up the stag. Can you fancy a

refined boy of twelve enjoying that? The pages had to ride with their

masters and lead an extra horse if it were wanted, and they were

supposed always to be bright and courteous. This training served instead

of going to a public school, as boys do at present. As for games, they

had as many as the boys of the present time. One was the quintain. This

was an upright post with two arms at the top, that swung round very

easily. Tied to the end of one was a bag of sand and to the other a

shield. The boy had to run up and hit the shield, and if he did not get

out of the way very fast the bag of sand swung round and hit him on the

back. Probably they played this in the courts of the palace, where are

now the Houses of Parliament, and where one of the yards is still called

New Palace Yard. Other old games of which we know only the names were

'Hoop and Hide,' 'Harry Racket,' 'Hoodwink Play,' 'Loggats,' and

'Stooleballe,' which was like our cricket. These were all very much

liked in the days about the time that Edward's sister Elizabeth married

Henry VII. and became Queen.

When a boy grew older he ceased to be a page, and became an esquire.

Nowadays everyone puts esq., meaning esquire, on letters in an address,

but at that time a man had really to be an esquire before he could be

called so. He served some knight and rode with him to the wars, or

attended him at home. While he had still been a page he had waited on

the ladies and played to them on the harp, or read to them while they

embroidered; but when he became esquire he very seldom saw the ladies,

and was taught to consider them almost as far above him as angels. For

the next few years he had a great deal to do. He had to dress and

undress his master as if he had been a servant. He had to look after his

master's horse, and when there was any fighting he had to carry a shield

and ride beside his master, ready to die for him if necessary.

Among the games he played indoors were chess and draughts, both of which

people still play. One knight had perhaps many squires, and they were

all supposed to love him very much, and to be perfectly obedient to him.

The young squires had games among themselves, and the squires of two

different knights had little contests, each trying to beat the others.

The squires were able to run and jump straight on to a horse even when

they were covered all over with heavy armour. They danced and turned

somersaults, and performed many other exercises to make them strong and

agile. Even princes had to be squires before they could be knights, and,

if you remember, when Edward the Black Prince was fighting the French at

Crecy, he was not then a knight, but was made a knight because he had

been so brave on that occasion. He took King John of France prisoner,

and brought him to London to a great castle called the Savoy; and when

he had brought him there he did not treat him as a prisoner at all, but

himself took the part of a humble squire, and waited on the French King

while he had supper. Very few princes would have done that; they would

rather have gloried in showing their superiority to their captive. The

palace of the Savoy was in London, further down the river than

Westminster. It is all gone now except the chapel, where people still go

to church on Sundays.

Down beside this part of the river now runs a street with houses and

shops on each side, and it is called the Strand. I wonder if you have

ever heard of the strand at the seaside? It is an old word, meaning the

beach beside water, and the Strand in London reminds us of the time when

there was no embankment, but the houses were right on the edge of the

water. Great palaces most of them were, where all the haughty nobles

with their following of squires lived. They have all gone now, these

great palaces, but one gate remains, a very handsome stone gate with

steps, and this was the gate of a great palace belonging to the Duke of

Buckingham, and here boats could come up so that the Duke could step

into one from his stairs at the water gate; but when the embankment was

made the river was hemmed in, and could not come so far up, and now the

gate stands back a long way from the river in the middle of a green

garden. The people used the river a great deal then, going by water as

we go by land, and the water was covered with gaily-coloured barges and

boats.

After being a squire, the next thing was to be a knight. It was not

every man who could be a knight. A man must have done some brave deed,

or shown himself very faithful, or be the son of a powerful noble, or

something of that kind; but when it was decided that a young man might

be made a knight, he had to watch his armour alone all night in a

church, and pray to be made worthy, and then in the morning he vowed

always to help the weak and avenge them, and never to draw back or be

afraid, and never to use his sword except for the right. Then the King

received him, and he knelt down, and the King gave him a light blow on

the shoulder with the flat side of the sword, and this made him a knight

and gave him the right to use the title 'Sir' before his name.

The knights used to have games that you and I would think were more like

real fighting than play. They put on armour and mounted their horses,

and then met to try to knock one another off. These fights were called

tournaments, and all the ladies came to watch them as nowadays they go

to watch men play at polo or cricket. The chief place in London for

tournaments was a place we have been to already, called Smithfield. That

is where the meat market is now, and it is still a wide, open square. A

great many things happened at Smithfield, and we shall hear of it again

before this book is finished.

On the day of a grand tournament everything was made ready very early.

There were high wooden seats arranged all round, covered with scarlet or

purple cloth, and there were special seats like thrones for the King and

Queen; and people came flocking up as if to a fair, dressed in crimson

and gold and blue and green, with clothes made of velvet and silk, much

brighter than anything we have now, and the men were quite as gay as the

ladies. Before the time for the tournament, the knights who were going

to take part in it would ride up on their prancing horses; some came

from the Tower of London, and there is a street not far from St. Paul's

Cathedral still called Knightrider Street, because the knights used to

come riding up there to the tournaments at Smithfield.

Cannot you imagine how a young knight's heart would beat when he first

took part in a tournament? Perhaps he was just one-and-twenty, and still

only a boy in heart, and when he rode into that great open space

everyone cheered him, and he saw the ladies rising, sitting on tiers of

seats that rose higher and higher, making a beautiful mass of colour,

like a bed of flowers; and there was one there who he knew would see

him, a girl only seventeen, very sweet and fair and shy, who was among

the Queen's maids-of-honour, and the young knight could not see her just

then for the crowds of other people there. But he knew that she would be

watching, and that he was to fight for her. For the glove he wore fixed

on to his helmet was hers: she had given it to him the day before; no

one else knew it was hers. But if he fell off his horse and rolled in

the mud, that glove would be rolled in the mud too, and then he would be

so much ashamed he would never dare to look her in the face again.

So he plucked up his courage, and looked round as if he were not at all

nervous, and he saw the man he had to fight come riding toward him, a

big strong man on a great black horse. The two knights held up their

long lances to salute the King and Queen and ladies, and bowed to each

other. A trumpet sounded, and the two horses rushed toward one another,

the lances came against the strong armour with a crash, and the young

knight felt a wrench, for his horse was thrown back on its haunches; but

it recovered itself and dashed on, passing the other knight, until he

wheeled it round and came to meet his opponent again. This time, just as

they were going to meet, the horse of the older knight swerved, and his

lance, striking crossways, broke in two, and the young knight could

easily then have knocked him off his horse. But it was considered

disgraceful to strike an unarmed man, so he lowered his lance and rode

past without touching him, and all the people cheered. There was one

more meeting to be faced, only one, and if he could manage to

distinguish himself then, that fair girl would be proud of him, and

perhaps smile sweetly when he met her again, and allow him to kiss her

hand. The thought so fired the young knight that when his opponent had

obtained a new lance and was awaiting him, he came on with such a pace

and such a rush that he carried the other man clean out of his saddle,

and laid him full length on the ground, where he lay helpless in his

heavy armour until his squires ran across the field and raised him up.

Then all the people shouted wildly, and the young knight rode modestly

off the field feeling very happy.

If you saw Smithfield now you would not think such things could ever

have happened there, for it is so bare and dull, and it was then so

magnificent.

Besides the tournaments, the people of London had many other shows. When

Queen Elizabeth was crowned there was a wonderful procession. We all

heard a great deal about the coronation of King George V. Well, it is

rather interesting to think that about three and a half centuries

before, Queen Elizabeth, when crowned, had a grand ceremony, and

afterwards made a tour round the city, as the King of England always

does to this day after the ceremony has taken place. We have accounts of

Elizabeth's procession that tells us exactly what it was like. The Queen

went very slowly and stopped very often, and whenever she stopped a

child came forward and recited dull verses to her. It must have taken a

long time and been rather tiresome. But there were all sorts of

beautiful things to look at in the meantime. In one place there was a

high wooden scaffolding built up, and on it figures of Henry VII. and

his Queen Elizabeth, who was the grandmother of the real Queen

Elizabeth. You remember how Henry VII. married her because she was the

sister of Edward V., and so the York and Lancaster sides were joined in

one? Well, to show this there sprouted out of the hands of these two wax

figures great boughs of roses, red and white mixed together, as a sign

that the red and white roses of York and Lancaster were joined. At one

place a child came forth and handed Elizabeth a copy of the Bible in

English, the first copy that the English people had ever had in their

own language; for, you know, the Bible was not written first in English,

but in Hebrew and Greek, and up to this time no one had translated it

into English. And everywhere children came out of odd places and said

curious verses. I have heard one story, though I do not know if it is

true, that a little child had been covered all over with gold paint, and

was to be let down in a swing to greet the Queen as she passed

underneath; and when the time came, and the little gilt child was

lowered, it was found to be quite dead, stifled by the gold paint.

That was a sad thing, and I did not want this chapter to be sad, because

history is too full of sad things, and tournaments and games ought to be

gay.

CHAPTER XIII

SIR THOMAS MORE

Sir Thomas More belongs entirely to London, because he was born there,

he lived there, and he died there, so that his story cannot be missed

out. But it is a story that is in some ways rather difficult to

understand. When Sir Thomas was a little boy he was not Sir Thomas at

all, but probably just Tom. He was born in a street called Milk Street,

a name not difficult to remember. It is close by St. Paul's Cathedral,

and now is a little narrow street full of warehouses, where merchants

keep their goods. When Tom was fifteen he was sent, according to the

custom of the times, to be a page. And the household to which he went

was a very great one indeed, nothing less than that of the Archbishop of

Canterbury, whose palace was not far from Westminster, on the other side

of the river. At this time Henry VII. was king, and England was resting

in peace after the long Wars of the Roses. Thomas waited at table like

other pages, and learnt many things, such as riding and tilting, as well

as Latin and Greek; but though he was a very bright, sweet-tempered boy,

he was always more inclined to learning than to sport, and when he grew

a little older it was thought a pity he should not learn more, so he was

sent to Oxford University. When he had finished his time at Oxford he

came back to London, and became a barrister, and very soon after he

began to think about marrying.

He knew at that time three girls, sisters, and he liked the second one

very much; but then it was considered rather a disgrace if a younger

sister were married before an elder one. And someone told him that the

eldest sister liked him very much, so what did he do but propose to the

eldest and marry her. She seems to have been a nice girl, and for six

years they lived very happily together; and then she died, leaving him

with four children--three little daughters, Margaret, Elizabeth, and

Cicely, and one son, John.

More felt that he could not leave his little ones motherless when they

were so young, and so he determined to marry again, and this time he was

not so fortunate, for he chose a rather plain, cross woman, many years

older than himself, who was a widow. He thought perhaps she would be a

careful manager, but the choice was unfortunate for him.

King Henry VII. was now dead, and his son, the Henry VIII. who married

six wives one after the other, was on the throne. He was very fond of

More, and often had him at the Court at Westminster, and gave him all

sorts of honours and dignities, and finally made him a knight, so that

he was Sir Thomas, and his cross wife could call herself Lady Alice

More, a title that pleased her very much.

More had never liked the life of a city, and now that he was richer,

owing to the King's kindness, he removed to a place that was then a

village three miles from London called Chelsea. It seems odd to think of

Chelsea ever being a village by itself, for it is now all a part of

London. The houses have crept on and on, and covered up all the space

between until Chelsea is right in London.

It is still a very pretty place beside the river, with shady trees and

beautiful houses, and in More's time it must have been charming. He had

a large house with a garden stretching right down to the side of the

water, and from this he could step into his barge and go down to

Westminster to see the King.

His little girls grew up here, and spent a happy childhood. They all,

especially the eldest, adored their father. More himself was a very

loving father, but he never spoilt his children, and always took care

that they learnt their lessons. He used to say: 'Children, virtue and

learning are the meat, and play but the sauce.' When any of them

grumbled at little hardships, he used to say: 'We must not look to go to

heaven on feather beds.' He was very fond of all of the children, but he

loved the best his eldest daughter Margaret, Meg as he called her, and

every day as Meg grew older she and her father were more and more to

each other. Meg was clever, too; when still only a girl she could write

letters in Latin and read many very difficult books.

The home life was rather different from that which we know now. There

were some pages in the household, boys of good family, who came to learn

from More as he had learnt from the Archbishop. One of these, William

Roper, was a very nice fellow, and he afterwards married Margaret. Then

there was the Fool. It seems to us now such an odd idea to have a man

paid to make jokes, but in those days it was the fashion. Some man who

had a gift for saying funny things used to live in the household of a

great nobleman and be as amusing as he could, and for this he received

payment. More's fool was often rather impertinent, and at one time when

there was a big dinner, and one of the guests happened to have a

particularly large nose, the fool said out loud: 'What a terrible nose

that gentleman has got!' So all the family pretended not to hear, and

were rather uncomfortable, and when the fool saw that, he said: 'How I

lied when I said that gentleman's nose was monstrous; now I come to look

at it I really think it's rather a small nose!' Well, of course, no one

could help laughing after that, and they all went off into peals of

merriment, even the poor gentleman himself.

In the early mornings when the air was fresh and sweet, and in summer

the garden full of roses, More would wander round with his dear Meg, and

perhaps the other children would come, too, to look at all the pets.

They kept a number of strange animals; there were rabbits, a monkey, a

fox, a ferret, a weasel, and many others, and the children themselves

kept the cages clean, and were taught to be kind to them. Lady More did

not care for these things, she liked better to dress herself very

smartly and lace herself very tight; and when her husband laughed at

her, she said, 'Tilly, vally, Sir Thomas! tilly, vally!' just as we

should say, 'Tut, tut!'

She once found a stray dog, however, to which she took a great fancy,

and she petted it and fed it; but after a few days a beggar-girl walking

in the street, who met her with the dog, suddenly cried out that it was

hers, and the dog knew her, and rushed and danced round her and licked

her hands. Lady More was very angry, and said it was her dog, and

ordered her footman to pick it up and carry it back home. The

beggar-girl followed them all the way, crying; but when she arrived at

the house the door was shut, and she was left outside. When Sir Thomas

came home that evening in his barge, as he stepped out on the land he

saw a poor little dirty girl with her face all stained with tears. He

was always kind, so he stopped and asked her what was the matter, and

she told him all her story about having lost her dog. Now, Sir Thomas

was at that time the head of all the judges in England, having been made

Lord Chancellor, and he was a very just man, so he would never let his

wife take what did not belong to her. He went, therefore, into his own

great hall and sent for Lady More; then he asked her to stand at the

top end of the hall, and placed the little dirty girl down at the lower

end. Then he ordered a footman to bring in the dog and hold it in the

middle between the two, and he said that the dog should decide for

itself; it must know its own mistress. And when he gave the word the man

must let it go, and both the women who claimed to be its mistress must

call it, and whichever it chose to go to should keep it.

So he gave the word, and Lady More cried out all the soft things she

could think of; but the little girl just said the one word, the dog's

name, and the dog bounded toward her in a moment, for it loved her, and

did not care for Lady More. So Sir Thomas said that settled it; the dog

clearly belonged to the little girl and not to his wife. Lady More then

offered the girl much money if she would sell the dog, and as she was

very poor she did sell it at last, and left it behind with its new

mistress.

There were always a great many people coming and going in More's house,

and the table was always laden with good things, and much money was

spent; but Sir Thomas himself did not care about eating and drinking,

and liked best to have only vegetables and fruit and brown bread, and

perhaps a little salt beef, which was much eaten in England then.

Every day he said good-bye to his little girls, and told them to be good

at their lessons, and then he went off in his barge up the river to the

Court.

The two elder girls, Meg and Elizabeth, learned very difficult things;

but Cicely and little John were not so clever. John seems to have been

rather a stupid boy. It is said that the first Mrs. More wanted a boy

very much, and when he came and grew a little, and they found he would

never be very clever, More said: 'Thou hast wanted a boy, and now thou

wilt have one that will be a boy all his life.'

In the evenings, when the barge came sweeping up the river, no doubt the

girls watched for it, and ran to greet their father, and then they would

all go in together to the house. Perhaps he had brought with him some

clever and learned men who were his friends from London, or a young

Dutch painter called Holbein, who was hardly at all known then, but is

now counted among the greatest painters in the world.

Sometimes, later in the evening, there would be seen a very grand barge

indeed, with scarlet and cloth of gold, sweeping up to the

landing-place; and then someone would call out 'The King!' and presently

King Henry VIII. himself would step out and come up to see his

Chancellor, and would walk up and down the garden with his arm round

More's neck. He was very fond of More, and asked his advice about all

sorts of things. More wanted to show him young Holbein's paintings, so

he had his hall hung with many of them, and one day, when the King came

in unexpectedly, he took him in there to show them to him. Henry was so

delighted with them that he ordered Holbein to paint a picture of

himself and others of many of his courtiers, and Holbein was well paid,

and made a large fortune.

One day, when the King had been very gracious, and had left Chelsea to

go back to Westminster, young Roper said to More how lucky he was to be

such a favourite with the King; but More knew what a tyrant Henry was,

and how dangerous it was to have anything to do with him, and he

answered at once he had no cause to be proud, for if his head would win

the King a castle in France it would go. He was quite right; for his

head went afterwards for a much less thing than that.

When More was still in the height of his power his daughter Margaret

married William Roper. But More could not bear to part with Meg, and the

house was large, so he said the young married couple should go on living

with him and his wife just the same as before.

More built a chapel on to Chelsea old church--a chapel which is there

now, and you may see it--and in it there is a large monument to his

memory. Of his great house and garden all is gone except a bit of

red-brick wall, which is said to have been the wall of the garden.

Now, just about this time Henry had grown tired of his wife, Catherine

of Arragon, and wanted to marry Anne Boleyn, so he thought he would

divorce Catherine. But even a king can't get rid of his wives whenever

he likes; so he asked all his lords and nobles to say that he was quite

right, and that Catherine ought to be divorced, and that he ought never

to have married her, because long years before she had been married to

his brother, who had died. A great many of the nobles would have said

anything Henry wanted, but More was braver than that; he said plainly

that it would not be right for Henry to do this thing. So the King was

very angry, and More found it impossible to continue to be Lord

Chancellor; so he gave up his office, even though it meant that he would

have to change all his way of living and be a poor man again. Lady More

used to go to service in Chelsea church, and More sat in another part of

the same church, and on Sundays she used to wait to hear that her

husband was outside before she got up to go, and in order to let her

know this a footman used to come and open the pew-door for her, and say:

'Madam, the Chancellor has gone.'

There is a story told that on the Sunday after More had given up being

Chancellor he had not spoken to his wife about it, for he knew she would

be very angry, and he always loved a joke; so he himself walked up the

aisle and held open the pew-door, and said: 'Madam, the Chancellor has

gone.' At first Lady More could not understand him, but when she did,

and knew that he was no longer Chancellor, she was very angry indeed.

Now, More said they must send away some of their servants and live very

plainly, and Margaret and her husband went into a little house near; and

so badly off were the Mores that they could not afford fires, and when

the weather grew colder, More and his wife and children used to gather

together in one room and burn a great bundle of fern just to make a big

blaze and send them warm to bed. But through it all More was quite

happy. He had never wanted to be a great man: he preferred to live

simply with those he loved; but he was not long to be allowed to do even

that.

Henry devised a plan by which he could put More in prison. He drew up a

long paper saying that the King was the head of the Church, and that

whatever he did was right, and that if he chose to divorce his wife he

could do it, because the power was in his own hands; and then he

summoned all the bishops and More to sign this.

Sir Thomas More knew quite well what this meant, that it was only a plan

to get hold of him, for he could not sign what he did not think. It was

on a spring morning that he left his house to go down to Lambeth Palace,

where the paper was lying ready to be signed, and he knew quite well

that it was very likely he should never come back; and he was quite

right: he never did come back. He said good-bye to his children and

stepped into his barge. When he got to Lambeth he found that all the men

there assembled had signed except one called Bishop Fisher. Now, Fisher

and More were Roman Catholics; that is to say, that they still believed

in the power of the Pope--and they could not sign the paper without

signing what they thought a lie. They had been taught this, and so they

believed it, and they acted bravely according to their own consciences.

More was given five days to think it over, but he did not go back to

Chelsea, and at the end of five days he was taken to the Tower with old

Bishop Fisher.

When he landed at the Traitor's Gate, of which you shall hear more

presently, the porter asked him for his outside clothes, according to a

very bad custom of the time, which allowed the porters to rob the

prisoners thus. More gave him his cap, but the man was not content with

that, and he had to give his outside coat as well.

It was just the beginning of the summer when the two men went to the

Tower, and they were put in separate cells. At first they were not

treated badly, and were allowed pens and paper to write letters; but

afterwards these were taken from them, and More had to write his letters

with a coal. However, he had one great consolation--his daughter was

sometimes allowed to come to see him. Perhaps the King thought that she

would persuade him to give in and sign the paper so that he might go

back home.

When the summer had passed and the weather grew colder, More and Fisher

both suffered from the cold, but especially poor old Bishop Fisher,

whose clothes were in rags. And it was not until a whole year after they

had been sent to the Tower that they were brought up to be tried. More

was taken on foot through the streets to Westminster, a very long

way--more than three miles. He was dressed in common clothes and

surrounded by a guard. Then he was tried at Westminster, and accused of

treason in not acknowledging the King's authority, but the real reason

was that he would not say the King was right in marrying Anne Boleyn.

He was condemned to death. There was a custom in those days that when a

man was condemned to death the executioner walked out of the

judgment-hall before the prisoner with the sharp edge of the axe turned

backwards towards him.

More had been tried in Westminster Hall, of which you have heard

already, and inside there it was very dark; but when he came out into

the bright sunshine he was quite dazzled for the moment and could not

see. But there was someone else who saw--someone who had been waiting in

the crowd in terrible anxiety, and when he saw that axe turned with the

sharp edge toward More he knew it meant death; and he gave a great

shriek, and thrust himself through the guards and flung himself at

More's feet. This was his son-in-law, William Roper, Margaret's husband.

More was allowed to go back to the Tower by boat, and a sorrowful voyage

it must have been, not for himself, but for thinking of all those dear

ones he must leave.

When he arrived at the Tower he saw standing on the quay two

figures--his son John, then a man of twenty-five, and a tall, slight

woman in deepest black, his dear Meg. Even the soldiers made way for her

as she flung her arms round her father's neck and cried out of her

breaking heart, 'My father! oh, my father!'--a cry which so touched some

of those rough guards that they turned aside to hide the tears in their

own eyes. More tried to comfort her, and presently gently drew himself

away. He felt it was almost too much for him; but as she turned away she

could not bear to let him go, and once more threw her arms round him

with that pitiful cry, and only gave way when at last she sank fainting

on the ground.

More then went on and left her so, and when she came to herself she knew

it was all over, and that she had no more hope. Six days later, at nine

o'clock in the morning, More was led out to suffer beheading, as Bishop

Fisher had already suffered. When he had first gone to the Tower he had

been a man of middle age with a brown beard and brown hair; now after a

year of confinement and anxiety his hair was quite gray. When he was

told to make ready for his execution, he put on a silk robe, which when

the gaoler saw he asked him to change for a common woollen one. More

asked why, and was told that the clothes he was killed in became the

property of the executioner, and the clothes he left behind in the Tower

were taken by his gaolers, and that this gaoler thought the silk robe

too good for the executioner. So More quietly changed to a commoner

dress, for it mattered little to him. When he reached the scaffold, he

found he was too feeble to climb up the steps without help, and he asked

one of the men to give him an arm, adding: 'I pray you see me safe up;

as for my coming down, I may shift for myself.' The executioner asked

his forgiveness, which was granted; and then More knelt before the

block, and carefully put his beard aside, saying: '_That_ at least has

committed no treason.' Then with one stroke his head was cut off. His

body was buried near the chapel in the Tower; but, according to the

custom of that time, his head was stuck up on London Bridge.

[Illustration: THE TRAITOR'S GATE, TOWER OF LONDON.]

Fancy the horror of his loving daughter Meg when she heard this! What

could she do? She could not suffer it to stay there, so she bribed two

men and took a boat, and, going down the river, stole her own father's

head, and, wrapping it in a cloth, returned with her gruesome burden to

Chelsea, where she is said to have buried it in the church. Can you

picture anything more awful than the task of this brave woman?

Another of More's daughters was married, too, and she and Meg were both

happy mothers with families of their own; but we may be quite sure that

so long as they lived they never forgot their dear father.

CHAPTER XIV

LADY JANE GREY

There once lived a girl who was called Queen of England for twenty days,

but who was never crowned; who lived a good and innocent life, yet was

beheaded when she was only sixteen. This was Lady Jane Grey. She was a

cousin of young King Edward VI., who succeeded his father Henry VIII.

when he was a little boy of nine. At that time England had lately

established the Protestant religion, the Church of England as we have it

now, and all Roman Catholics had been forced to become Protestants or to

leave the churches to those who were. Edward was a delicate little boy,

and he had only reigned five years when he caught measles. He never

seemed to recover from them; he had a cold afterwards, which settled on

his chest, and it soon began to be whispered that the boy-king must die.

At this there was much talking among the great nobles who were

Protestants, for they knew that the next heir to the throne was

Edward's elder sister Mary, a woman of thirty-eight, a strong Roman

Catholic; and they feared that if Queen Mary sat on the throne all the

Roman Catholics would be restored to their places, and the Protestants

would be persecuted and perhaps murdered, all of which afterwards really

did happen. Mary had a younger sister Elizabeth, who was only twenty,

and she was a Protestant; and if the nobles could have put her on the

throne instead of Mary, all would have been well with England. But that

they could not do, for to set aside an older sister for a younger one

would have been impossible. So they looked around for someone else, and

fixed on little Lady Jane Grey.

Lady Jane was one of the three daughters of a nobleman called the Duke

of Suffolk; she was the eldest, and through her mother she was a cousin

of King Edward's, and of his sisters Mary and Elizabeth, too. If Edward

had had no sisters, Lady Jane would have been Queen after him. The

nobles had wanted her to marry Edward, who was just her own age; but the

boy had been too ill to think of marrying, and now he was going to die,

and it was too late to make any arrangement of that sort. His guardian,

the Duke of Northumberland, was a powerful and ambitious man, and he

planned a scheme by which he would be still more powerful. He persuaded

Edward that Lady Jane must reign after him, for if she did not England

would suffer; and Edward, who loved the Protestant religion, consented.

He made a will saying that Lady Jane was to be Queen instead of his

sisters Mary and Elizabeth. Of course, he had no right to do this, for a

king cannot say who is to reign after him; the throne must go to the

next heir. But Northumberland thought if he and all the nobles declared

Lady Jane Queen, they could force the people of England to acknowledge

her. Then the clever Northumberland went further; he got Edward to

consent to the marriage of Lady Jane to Northumberland's only son, young

Lord Guildford Dudley. Dudley was then a boy of seventeen, and Lady Jane

only fifteen, but that was quite old enough for marriage in those days.

Lady Jane had lived very quietly up to this time; she was a gentle

little girl who loved her books, and never thought of thrones and kings

and queens. When she was quite young she could speak French and Italian,

wrote Latin, and understood Greek, Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic. This was

the more wonderful because in those days ladies were not supposed to

know very much; if they could do beautiful tapestry work and ride and

sing a little, it was considered quite enough. There is a story told of

Lady Jane that one day when a very clever man named Roger Ascham came to

stay with her father, he found her sitting in a window-seat reading a

book. Outside stretched the beautiful park, with its green grass and

great shady trees, and the voices of the visitors and the other little

girls who were amusing themselves came in at the window; but Lady Jane

sat curled up, as many little girls do nowadays, reading diligently, and

never taking any notice of the bright world outside. And the book she

was reading was the work of an ancient Greek philosopher called Plato,

who wrote very interesting books, but ones that are hard even for

grown-up people to understand. It must have made a pretty picture, that

little pale girl bending over her book; and if anyone had said that in

one short year she would be married, have been called Queen of England,

and have been beheaded, it would not have been believed.

Roger Ascham stopped and asked her why she read instead of playing, and

she told him she loved books, and they gave her much more pleasure than

the things in which people usually tried to find pleasure. Then he

wanted to know how she had managed to learn so much, and she answered:

'Sir, God hath blessed me with sharp and severe parents and a gentle

schoolmaster; for when I am in the presence of either father or mother,

whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, be merry

or sad, be sewing, dancing, or doing anything else, I must do it, as it

were, in such weight, measure, and number, even as perfectly as the

world was made, or else I am so sharply taunted and cruelly

threatened--yea, presently sometimes with pinches, nips, and bobs, and

so cruelly disordered, that I think myself in hell until the time come

that I go to Mr. Aylmer, who teacheth me so gently, so pleasantly, with

such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the time as nothing

that I am with him; and thus my book hath been so much my pleasure, and

bringeth daily to me more pleasure and more, that in respect of it all

other pleasures in very deed be but trifles and very troubles to me.'

That is not quite the way a little girl would speak now, I think.

When Jane had been younger she had seen a good deal of her cousin

Elizabeth, who was about five years older, and they had been in the

same house together; and, of course, if she had ever thought about it at

all, she knew that first Mary, and after her Elizabeth, had the right to

be Queen when Edward died. Before Edward died, however, Jane was told

suddenly that she must marry young Guildford Dudley. He was a handsome

boy and very gentle, and Jane seems to have loved him very dearly; so

she made no objection, and the marriage took place in a great hurry. And

at the same time her younger sister Katharine was also married to Lord

Herbert, the son of the Earl of Pembroke, so the quiet life in the

beautiful home in Leicestershire came to an end.

Lady Jane knew, of course, that her cousin Edward was ill, and it must

have grieved her very much; for she was fond of him, and being just the

same age, they had learnt the same lessons together. But when Edward

died she was not told of it until she received a message from her

father-in-law, the Duke of Northumberland, to go to his great house,

called Sion House, on the Thames, not far from London. She went, never

thinking what was going to happen or why she was wanted; and when she

was there Northumberland himself and her own father, the Duke of

Suffolk, and some other lords came into the room, and, kneeling before

her, told her that her young cousin Edward was dead, and that she must

succeed him as Queen of England. Poor Lady Jane was so shocked and

startled that she fainted away. When she came round again they told her

she must be obedient and do as they told her. She pleaded with them, and

said Mary must be Queen, and that for herself she was so young--only

sixteen; and she did not care to be Queen, but only wanted to live a

quiet life with her husband, Lord Dudley. But they argued with her, and

told her she was a coward; that it was for the good of England, and that

if she refused she would be wicked; and at last she consented. Then all

her life was changed.

As I have said before, people used the river then a great deal more than

they do now, and all persons of importance had state barges with rowers

to row them up and down the water. Some of these barges were very

magnificent, with scarlet cloth and gold fringe, and looked like

gorgeous birds floating on the water. A beautiful barge was waiting for

Lady Jane in front of Sion House, and she stepped into it, and was rowed

down the river through London to the Tower.

Now up to this time this story has not had much to do with London, but

after this all the rest of it happened in London. When Lady Jane entered

the Tower the man who was then Lord Treasurer of England came to her,

and, kneeling down, offered her the crown of England. And afterwards

Northumberland and his party lost no time, but sent men all round London

to cry out that Lady Jane Grey was now Queen of England.

Meantime, Mary had been in the country. She had only just heard of her

brother's death, when she heard, too, of what Northumberland had done.

Now, she did not resemble her poor little cousin; she was not only very

much older, but of a very stern disposition--not at all likely to sit

down quietly and let another take her crown. So she made people go over

all the countryside where she was and say that she was Queen, and that

men might come and fight for her. Now many people felt that even if Mary

were hard and cruel, still, it was fair that she should be Queen; so

many nobles and gentlemen came to her, and she presently had a large

army. When the story of the two Queens was heard, nearly everyone in

England felt that Mary was right, and Northumberland began to think he

had a harder fight before him than he had expected.

Even the people in London began to riot and say that Mary was Queen,

and when one of the nobles on her side went to St. Paul's Cathedral, and

there, standing beside a cross called St. Paul's Cross, where

proclamations were made, cried out Mary was Queen, all the people

shouted for joy. Bonfires were lit in the streets, and everywhere was

feasting and rejoicing, and no one seemed to care about Lady Jane in the

Tower.

So Northumberland saw how foolish he had been, and he hastened to send

Jane back to Sion House; but he stayed in London himself, and cried out

like the rest that Mary was Queen. For only three weeks Jane had been

Queen, and all that time she had stayed in the gloomy Tower wishing she

were back in her country home.

Then Mary rode in state into London, and went straight to the Tower. Her

first care was to have Edward's funeral celebrated--for he had not yet

been buried--and then she began to think about her enemies.

Northumberland, of course, was her prisoner, together with some other

nobles, and Northumberland and two others were condemned to death. So a

very short time after he had brought his son's wife to the Tower as a

queen the Duke of Northumberland had his head cut off at the same

Tower. Lady Jane and her husband were brought to the Tower as prisoners

also, but were allowed to walk in the gardens, and were well treated;

for at this time Mary seemed to think that they were not to blame,

having been a mere boy and girl made to do wrong by their fathers, which

was true. Perhaps they would have stayed in captivity for many years but

for the foolish friends, who, by trying to help them, made their fate

much worse. For after Mary had been Queen a short time she was hated.

Her stern manners and her hard face made people fear her, and shortly

after she was crowned people began to rise in different parts of England

and say that Lady Jane ought to be Queen instead. And for some time Mary

had to send troops to fight against the rebels, as those who rose in

favour of Jane were called. At last one day an alarm was given that a

man named Sir Thomas Wyatt had collected a large army, and was actually

advancing on London. Mary was at that time staying at Whitehall Palace,

and news came that Wyatt and all his men were going to attack the palace

and carry her off. They really did come, too, and the army spread all

over St. James's Park and all round the old palace--everywhere were

soldiers. At that time there was a great gateway, called the Holbein

Gate, that stood across Whitehall, and in this Queen Mary stayed and

watched the fighting. With all her faults she was very brave, and when

she saw her own guards driven in and dispersed, she showed no sign of

fear. Then a gentleman rushed up to her, and, falling on his knees,

said, 'All is lost,' and begged her to get into a barge on the river and

fly to the Tower, where she would be safer; but Mary refused to go, and

said all was not lost, and by her bravery and her words she so

inspirited the men that they fought again, and succeeded in beating off

Wyatt's men. So Wyatt went on toward the city, and all the way he had to

fight, and at last he was taken prisoner on Ludgate Hill, which is not

far from St. Paul's Cathedral.

Then Mary knew that she was safe again; but she must have passed a

sleepless night and thought a great deal, for she at last made up her

mind she would order Lady Jane Grey and her husband to be beheaded, for

so long as they lived other men would rise, as Wyatt had done, and try

to make Jane Queen.

It was a dreadful thing to do, but we must remember that in those days

executions were not thought so much of as they would be now. In these

days anyone would be horrified to hear that a man's or woman's head was

to be cut off, and even the very worst murderers are only hanged; but in

Mary's day a great many people were beheaded every year. So in the

morning, when Mary rode down to the city to thank her nobles and knights

for fighting so bravely and defending her, she knew that before the day

was ended she would have signed the death-warrant of Lady Jane. When she

came to Temple Bar she stopped. Now, Temple Bar was a great gateway that

stood in the Strand, just where the City of London begins, and on it

there were ugly iron spikes; and sometimes the heads of those who had

been executed were stuck on these spikes, and stayed there until they

rotted away. All the people passing along the street could look up and

see the heads, and sometimes, when the wind was high, a ghastly head

came tumbling down into the street. We cannot think of such things

without horror; but in those days people were accustomed to them, and

did not mind them very much. When Mary came to Temple Bar she asked for

ink and paper, and wrote there the order for young Lady Jane and her

husband to be beheaded.

Lady Jane was in the Tower when the news was brought to her. She had now

been a prisoner six months, and perhaps sometimes she had thought she

might die as her father-in-law had died; so when the priest Queen Mary

sent came to tell her the news, she received it quite calmly and without

a shudder. But when he tried to make her turn Roman Catholic, she told

him she should never do that. The priest hurried back to Queen Mary, and

said if the execution could be put off three days he might make Lady

Jane a Roman Catholic, so Queen Mary consented to delay a little. But

when Jane was told that she was to live a little longer, she was sorry,

for it was worse to wait than to be killed at once. During those three

days she must sometimes have shuddered to think that not only must she

die, but her young husband, so full of life and strength, must die too;

yet she never gave way before people or seemed afraid. She was asked if

she would see Guildford to say good-bye; but she said it was better not,

for the parting might be too heartrending, and make them both break

down. He was to die first, and when the morning came, very early the

guards led him past Lady Jane's window on his way to death. Then indeed

she must have felt that the bitterness of death was past. She had

written a long letter to Queen Mary explaining how everything had

happened, and that it was never her wish to be a queen; and she had

written another to her father, knowing that he must be very sad, feeling

it was all his fault that she had been led into this sad position; and

another to her younger sister Katharine to say good-bye. And now all was

done, and soon her husband would be dead, and what had she left to live

for?

The execution of Guildford did not take long. Presently a low rumble of

cart-wheels over the stones told Lady Jane that they were bringing back

his dead body, and then she knew her turn must come.

One can imagine the horror with which she heard the door open and saw

Sir John Brydges, the man who was to lead her out, standing and waiting.

But she was very brave; she neither fainted nor screamed, but rose up,

and, taking his hand, walked with him to the scaffold. When she arrived

at the place of execution she made a little speech, saying that she

ought never to have allowed anyone to persuade her to be queen; but that

she was young--she had not known what was right. And then, without any

show of fear, she laid her head on the block, and it was cut off at one

blow.

So died the poor girl at only sixteen--a girl who loved her books, and

would have lived a quiet life if it had not been for the ambitious plans

of her own father and her father-in-law.

CHAPTER XV

GUNPOWDER PLOT

There is no need to tell anyone who lives in the country what happens on

the fifth of November, for they are sure to know well. The beautiful

fireworks, with their streams of coloured fire; the crackling of the

squibs; the gorgeous catherine-wheels and the coloured Roman candles;

the great rockets that shoot up into the air with a swish, leaving

behind them a long tail of golden fire, and then burst into showers of

stars--all these may be seen on the fifth of November; and if you are

really lucky children, there will follow the great bonfire, with barrels

of tar poured over it to make the flames roar upward. They lick the bare

sticks put ready for them, and climb over the logs until they reach the

figure of Guy Fawkes himself, a stuffed figure like a scarecrow, which

stands at the highest point. The flames crackle gaily; the heat is in

contrast with the fresh air of the November evening; all the people

standing by look strange and unlike themselves with that weird glow on

their faces. Then Guy's hands curl up, an arm wavers, and he topples

headlong into the glowing flames, to be burnt up altogether. Guy is only

made of straw, so we need not be sorry for him; but it is a curious

custom, and we have to go to history to find out what it means. That

there was a real man, a Guy Fawkes, who lived in James I.'s reign, you

know perhaps. This Guy was at first a Protestant, and as a little boy

used to go to church with his mother; but as he grew older he became a

Roman Catholic. Now, at that time in England there were many very hard

and unjust laws against the Roman Catholics, not allowing them to hold

offices in the State, and preventing them from doing many things that

Protestants might do. People are wiser now, and realize that a man may

be a good man and a good servant of the country whatever his religion so

long as he is in earnest, but in those days it was not so. Well, a

certain number of lords and gentlemen who were Roman Catholics tried to

get these laws altered; but they could not, and so they were very angry

and bitter against the King and his Ministers, and joined together to

make a plot to be revenged on them. Guy Fawkes was one of the men in

this plot, and it may have been he who suggested the dreadful idea that

was at last decided upon. However that may be, at first nothing was

done, but the conspirators used to meet together in secret to talk

things over. They dare not meet openly, for if so many Catholic

gentlemen had been discovered together, the King and his Ministers would

have suspected something wrong. In one great house in the country

belonging to a young man called Sir Everard Digby, they met in a secret

room, with a floor that moved, so that if ever the King's officers came

suddenly to surprise them there, they could all escape by means of the

floor, which slipped up and let them out, whence they could go from the

house by means of a secret passage. Digby was quite young, little more

than a boy, and he had just married a young and beautiful girl, when he

became entangled in the detestable Gunpowder Plot.

The plot, when it finally took form, was that the conspirators should

hire a house near to the Houses of Parliament and dig an underground

tunnel, which should reach right beneath the part of the House where the

King would be when the Houses of Parliament were opened the next time;

that they should then put gunpowder there, and blow up the whole

building, killing the King and many of the great Ministers. While

everyone was thrown into terror and confusion by this, the other

conspirators were to seize one of the young princes, the King's sons,

and carry him off; then, when everything was thus in the hands of the

Catholics, they expected to be able to make their own terms, and get the

laws against Catholics repealed by the nation.

All this sounded very grand, but it was very difficult to do. It is

wonderful that the conspirators managed to do so much as they did. They

actually took a room near the Houses of Parliament, and began to dig

their underground passage. But they found this a much more difficult job

than they had anticipated, for every bit of the soil they dug out had to

be carried away in baskets secretly by night; for people would naturally

have noticed it if they had seen it, and begun to ask what was being

done. But just when they had discovered how hard the work was going to

be, they heard that a cellar right under the Houses of Parliament was to

be let. Here was a chance! They took it at once, and gave up digging out

their tunnel. Guy Fawkes was appointed to see that the scheme was

carried out, and his was the dangerous part. He had to buy barrels of

gunpowder singly and at different times, and see that they were carried

into his cellar without anyone seeing them. Then he bought a great deal

of wood in faggots and stacked it over the barrels of gunpowder, so that

if anyone did come into that cellar, he would never suspect it was

anything but an ordinary cellar for storing wood. The meeting of

Parliament was to take place in October, and by August all was ready;

then the meeting of Parliament was delayed, and the conspirators heard

it was not to be until the fifth of November. The time now drew very

near. Then it occurred to some of the conspirators that perhaps some of

their own friends who were members of Parliament would be blown up with

the rest, and they grew uneasy. Each one wanted to warn his own friend

not to go to Parliament that day, but no one knew how to do it for fear

of betraying the plot. At last, however, one of the conspirators, who

was a brother-in-law of Lord Mounteagle's, sent Lord Mounteagle a

letter, saying that he had better not go to Parliament on the day of

opening, for the Parliament was to receive 'a terrible blow, and yet

shall not see who hurts them.' Lord Mounteagle was naturally distressed

to receive such a letter, without any sign who had sent it, and he took

it to the King. James was a clever man in some ways, and he saw at once

that a terrible blow, yet not seen, must mean something to do with

gunpowder; so he had the cellars under the Houses of Parliament

searched, and discovered the barrels of gunpowder. Now Guy Fawkes knew

nothing of this, but came the night before the fifth to be in time to do

his dreadful deed. He was a brave man, though a wicked one, caring

little what evil he was doing. He had arranged a train of gunpowder

running along the floor to what is called a slow match--that is to say,

a long match that burns for perhaps five or ten minutes, so that the

person who lights it has time to get away before the explosion

occurs--and then he waited until the time when all the members of

Parliament and the King should be there before setting a light to it.

Cannot you picture Guy Fawkes alone in that gloomy cellar that night? He

did not know that the plot was discovered; he thought that everything

had been kept very secret, and that to-morrow he would set a light to

that match and hurry away, and before he had got very far he would hear

a sound that would seem to tear the very sky, and with a crash the

Houses of Parliament would reel and fall, burying in their ruins

hundreds of men and the King of England. These were not the same Houses

of Parliament that stand now, but were burnt down many years after.

In the dark shadows Guy waited; perhaps a mouse ran across the floor,

and made him start. And then there was a sound of footsteps at the door,

a whispering and a creaking of boots, and before he had time to do

anything he found himself surrounded by soldiers, and knew that all was

over; that the least he could hope for was death, which he had richly

deserved, for he had intended to murder hundreds of men who had never

wronged him.

All the implements for his terrible scheme were found upon him--the slow

match and the lights, and when the faggots were thrown aside there were

the barrels of gunpowder. If the people could have got at Guy Fawkes, he

would have been torn in pieces; but he was kept from them by the

soldiers, and hurried off to the Tower. So all the people could do was

to make a false Guy Fawkes stuffed with straw and burn him on a bonfire,

and that is the origin of our fifth of November.

Guy Fawkes was not put to death at once, as you will hear in the account

of the Tower; he was tortured on the rack to make him give up the names

of those who had been in the conspiracy with him. Again and again he

refused, but at last the awful suffering weakened him so that he hardly

knew what he was doing; and when the torturers told him some of his

comrades had been taken, which was not true, he believed them, and

moaned out the names of two or three of his fellow-conspirators. Among

them was poor young Sir Everard Digby, who, when he heard that all was

lost, mounted his horse and tried to get away to the sea to go across to

the Continent; but he was taken, and with many of the others, including

Guy Fawkes himself, was hanged.

This, then, was the famous Gunpowder Plot which we celebrate on the

fifth of November.

CHAPTER XVI

CHARLES I

The story of Charles I. is one of the most dreadful in English history.

It seems impossible to believe that so many of the English people could

stand calmly round and watch their King executed like a common criminal

without raising a finger to save him.

We have met Charles once before in this book, if you remember, when he

walked across Spring Gardens on his way to be murdered. He was born in

Scotland, and he had an elder brother, Prince Henry, so that it was

thought at first that Charles would not be King. But Prince Henry died

when Charles was only twelve, and so Charles became Prince of Wales and

heir to the throne.

By this time the Kings of England lived, when in London, not in

Westminster Palace, but in another palace called Whitehall. When Henry

VIII. was King, the old palace of Westminster, of which you have heard

so much in the story of Edward V., had fallen into ruins, so Henry

looked about for another. Quite close to Westminster Palace there was a

great house called York House, which belonged to the Archbishops of

York, and which they used when they came to London. Henry arranged that

he should have this for a new palace, so he moved there. It was not just

one great building as we picture palaces in these days, but a number of

smaller ones--courts and long ranges of houses--and in it lived all the

people connected with the Court, as they had done at Westminster Palace.

It was a little town in itself. There were no trains then, and when the

King went from one of his palaces to another everything had to be taken

in carts. We are told that three hundred carts went from Whitehall to

Greenwich Palace at one time laden with linen cloths for the tables,

wine, and gold and silver plate, and dresses and kitchen things, pots

and pans, and other things. In that time people had tapestry hanging on

the walls instead of our paper and paint. They had rough trestle-tables,

which were only boards, and were put up and taken down again when they

were not wanted. The floors were strewn with green leaves and scented

plants, which had to be put there freshly every day. It was all so

different from our own time that we can hardly imagine it.

James I. was the father of Charles, and he gave many splendid

entertainments at this palace, in which, no doubt, Prince Charles took

part. There were dinners and dances, and other things not so harmless;

for instance, it was supposed to be great sport to see two poor cocks

fight until they tore each other almost to pieces, and people used to

bet on one cock or the other. There were also fights between bears and

greyhounds; and a wretched bull was tied to a stake and a number of

savage dogs let loose on him, and the more the bull threw his head this

way and that, and stuck his great horns into the dogs, and the more the

dogs seized him at the back, where he could not defend himself, and tore

his flesh with their teeth, the more the people laughed and applauded.

Even ladies watched these sports. Prince Charles was never a strong boy,

and always rather quiet and thoughtful, and he cannot have liked such

cruelty; but then it was the fashion--everyone did it, so he thought it

must be all right. King James was very fond of hunting, and while he

lived the Court was always gay. But the palace was getting more and more

old and inconvenient, and at last James thought he would build a new

one. So he sent for his architect, a wonderful man called Inigo Jones,

and ordered him to draw plans for a new palace that should be far more

splendid than the old one. Inigo Jones did so. We still have copies of

his plans, and we can see what a wonderful palace he meant to have

built. It was to face the river on one side and to have rows of windows

and high round towers, and all along the roof there were to be figures

as large or larger than life standing on the parapet. It would have cost

thousands and thousands of pounds. But this beautiful palace was never

completed. The King died and Inigo Jones died, and the only bit of this

great new palace that was ever built is still standing, and you can see

it any day in London if you go down Whitehall. It is larger than an

ordinary-sized house, and has pillars running up the front and two rows

of windows, and is called the Banqueting Hall.

Well, when James died his son Charles became King. Charles was then

twenty-five years old, and was still delicate and thin, and not very

tall. His hair was long, parted in the middle, and falling on each side

of his face to his collar. His little neat beard was cut to a point, and

his eyes were very sad. He liked better to live quietly than to be a

king.

Almost directly after his father's death he married a French Princess.

She was young and gay, and if she had known she was going to marry the

only King of England who was ever beheaded, I think she would have

stayed in France. She was only just sixteen when she came to London, and

all the strange faces and the strange language must have frightened her

very much. Charles had never seen her before, and when they met he

looked at her as if she was not quite so small as he had expected; and

she laughed and showed him the heels of her shoes, which were quite

flat, and said: 'Sir, I stand upon mine own feet. I have no helps of

art. Thus high I am, and am neither higher nor lower.'

Henrietta Maria was dark, with black eyes and dark-brown hair, and was

very quick and bright, and Charles loved her always to the end of his

life.

After a time Henrietta was given Somerset House, a magnificent house in

the Strand, for herself, and all her French attendants lived there with

her. Perhaps Charles felt that the old palace at Whitehall was hardly

fit for this bright little French woman, and perhaps it annoyed him to

hear all the French people chattering about his own Court. Somerset

House had been built by an uncle of Edward VI., the Duke of Somerset,

who was such a greedy man that he had pulled down numbers of churches

in order to take the stone of which they were built to make his own vast

mansion. The Duke never lived there, for before it was finished he was

imprisoned in the Tower, and then beheaded. When Henrietta was there the

furniture was very magnificent and rich. We are told that one of the bed

coverlets, of embroidered satin, was worth L1,000!

This Somerset House was pulled down when George III. was King, and

another great house called by the same name was built instead. This one

is still standing, and in it there are offices belonging to the

Government. In one part are all the wills that people have left when

they died, and if anyone wants to see a particular will he can go there

and see it if he pays a shilling.

One day when Queen Henrietta Maria lived in old Somerset House, Charles

came and told her he was going to send all her French attendants back to

France except her lady's-maid and one other, for the French people were

saying things against the King and making mischief. Henrietta was much

grieved, but she had to obey the King, so she sent them back to France.

Long years after the death of her husband, when her son was King, after

many terrible wars, Henrietta once again came back to London and lived

at her old home. Not far from Somerset House, close by Charing Cross

Station, was another great house in the Strand called York House. I

spoke of this before when I told you about the fine old water-gate still

standing. That water-gate belonged to a handsome man called the Duke of

Buckingham. Buckingham had been a great favourite with the old King,

James I., and he had travelled abroad with Charles when he was Prince of

Wales. Charles loved him very dearly, though he knew he was an

ambitious, selfish man, fond of pleasure. Charles and Henrietta had been

married three years, and during that time people had grumbled against

Buckingham because he was the King's favourite; but though he was

disliked, no one ever guessed what would happen. Buckingham had gone

down to Portsmouth to arrange some matters about shipping, and there he

was stabbed to the heart by a man named Felton. When Felton was brought

to London to answer for his crime, the people followed him with shouts

and acclamations, so pleased were they that he had killed the hated

Buckingham. But King Charles himself was very sad at the loss of his

friend. He was beginning to find out that being a king was not all

pleasure.

For one thing, he wanted money, and the Parliament would not give it to

him. Then he asked rich people to lend him some, and many refused. Of

course, he had a good deal of money; but he had very great expenses, and

he wanted more. So he quarrelled with the Parliament, and that was the

beginning of a long, sad contest. However, it did not get very serious

all at once; but the quarrels between the King and the Parliament

gradually grew worse and worse for many years.

Charles and Henrietta had been married about five years when a little

son came to them, and they called him Charles after his father. He was

not long without a playfellow; for a year after there was a daughter

called Mary, and then another son called James. There is still in

existence a letter which his mother, the Queen, wrote to Prince Charles

when he was a very little boy and was naughty, and would not take his

medicine. Here it is:

'CHARLES,

'I am sure that I must begin my first letter by chiding you,

because I hear that you will not take physic. I hope it was only

for this day, and to-morrow you will do it; for if you will not I

must come to you and make you take it, for it is for your health. I

have given order to my Lord Newcastle to send me word whether you

will or not, therefore I hope you will not give me the pains to go.

'Your affectionate,

'MOTHER.

'To my dear son the Prince.'

I do not know where Henrietta was when she wrote that letter; perhaps

she was staying away at one of the palaces in the country. In London

King Charles still lived in Whitehall Palace, though he had another, of

which you have heard, called St. James's Palace, in St. James's Park,

quite near. In either of these he was not far from the Houses of

Parliament, and it was to the members of Parliament he applied for

money. When they would not give him any more he dissolved Parliament,

and sent all the members away; but when he found he could not get money

any other way, he called them together again.

After these wretched quarrels it must have been a pleasure to him to go

back to the royal nursery, and forget about being a king for a time in

playing with his children. When little Charles was five years old there

came another little daughter, Elizabeth, and she, as she grew up, was

the favourite of her sad, gentle father.

Mary was a good girl, affectionate and warm-hearted; but she was not

clever like Elizabeth. I think Charles must have been a nice boy; but

his brother James was such a horrid man when he came to be King years

afterwards that he cannot ever have been nice at all, even as a boy.

When Mary was ten a great event happened: she was married to a boy

prince, the Prince of Orange, who lived in Holland. She still lived with

her father and mother; but she knew when she grew up she would be

Princess of Orange--would have to go to live in Holland with her

husband. Her son, who married his cousin Mary, daughter of James II.,

became King of England, as William III., many years after.

It was not very long after this that the quarrels between King and

Parliament grew so bad that Charles was afraid, and had to fly for his

life. Little Charles, Prince of Wales, was twelve, and Elizabeth, the

younger girl, was seven, and there was a younger boy, Henry, Duke of

Gloucester, only four years old. Henry was far the nicest of the boys,

and it was a pity he could not be King; but you shall hear more of him

afterwards.

Henrietta, the Queen, fled to France and afterwards to Holland, where

she sold her jewels to raise money to pay soldiers to fight for the King

her husband. The two eldest boys were sent over to France too. Princess

Mary went to her husband's family in Holland, and little Elizabeth and

Henry were taken prisoners by the Parliament.

The story of the battles between Charles and the Parliament can be read

in history, and does not belong particularly to London. The end was very

sad. The King was taken prisoner by the Parliamentarians, who were now

led by a man called Oliver Cromwell.

Queen Henrietta had gone back to France, leaving a little baby named

after herself in England. When this baby was two years old the Countess

of Dorset, who had charge of her, wanted to take her over to her mother

in France, and she was afraid that the little Princess would be

recognised and seized by Cromwell's men, so she dressed her in a coarse

stuff frock instead of the pretty laces and ribbons she had been

accustomed to wear. But when they started on the journey the little

child carefully explained, in her lisping, baby way, to everyone who

spoke to her that she was generally dressed very differently, and the

poor Countess was much afraid that people would find out she was a

little princess. In spite of this they got safely over to France. When

Henrietta grew up she was a gay, frivolous girl, very fond of clothes,

as one might judge she would be from this story; and she married a

Frenchman.

To return to Charles and his two younger children, Elizabeth and Henry,

who were now left in London. The King was taken to Westminster, and then

for many days there was what the Parliamentarians called a 'trial.' They

accused their King of breaking laws, of trying to hinder the liberty of

the people, and of many other things. Through it all Charles was patient

and gentle, and even at the end, when they condemned him to death, he

showed no fear or horror. Some day you can go to Westminster and walk

into that great hall where this mock trial took place, and imagine the

scene. It is all bare now, a great empty place with a stone floor and

stone walls and no seats, and it is not used for anything; but when the

King was there it was filled with eager, bustling crowds all gone mad

for a time, and willing to kill their King. Then Charles was told to

prepare for death, but told also that he might see his children once

again to bid them good-bye.

These two children had been taken from one place to another by their

enemies, and not treated at all like a prince and princess. Elizabeth

was now fourteen and Henry ten. They had been called plain Master and

Miss instead of Prince and Princess, and had lived very plainly in the

houses of persons who were supposed to take care of them.

When they saw their father and heard what he had to tell them, they were

very unhappy. Charles said to his little boy: 'Sweetheart, now they will

cut off thy father's head. Mark, child, what I say--they will cut off my

head, and perhaps make thee King; but mark what I say, you must not be a

king so long as your brothers Charles and James do live, for they will

cut off your brothers' heads (if they can catch them), and cut off thy

head, too, at the last; and therefore I charge you, do not be made a

king by them.' At which the child, sighing, said: 'I will be torn in

pieces first.'

Charles thought that the Parliamentarians might make Henry King because

he was a little boy, and they could force him to do as they liked; but

they did not do that.

[Illustration: THE CENOTAPH, WHITEHALL.]

Then Charles went on to say that the two children must always be

Protestants, and never become Roman Catholics. Their mother Henrietta

was a Roman Catholic, and he was afraid she might try to make them

change their religion. And he was quite right; for afterwards, when

Henry went across to France, the Queen did everything in her power to

make him change. She was very cruel to him, took away his dinner, and

would not let him play or ride, and at last was going to send him to a

Roman Catholic school. But Henry's brother Charles, who was still

wandering about on the Continent, and had not then regained the throne,

wrote to her saying that his brother must come to him, and he would take

care of him. So brave little Henry was rescued. He lived to be nineteen,

and to see his brother an English King, and then he died of small-pox.

King Charles, after telling both the children they must never be Roman

Catholics, turned to Elizabeth, and told her what books she must read so

as to understand about the Protestant religion, and very difficult books

they were for a little girl of fourteen; and he told her many other

things, and that she must give his love to the other children. Then he

said: 'Sweetheart, you will forget this?' And she answered: 'No, I

shall never forget it while I live.'

It must have been awful for those poor children to tear themselves away,

knowing that their father, the King of all England and Scotland and

Ireland, was to be killed. However, at last it was over, and Elizabeth

and her brother were taken down to be kept in Carisbrooke Castle in the

Isle of Wight. Here the little girl pined away, and died when she was

only fifteen. She was found kneeling before her open Bible with her head

lying on the text 'Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy

laden,' and she had passed into her rest.

When King Charles had said good-bye to them, he tried to fix his

thoughts on the other world, and to forget all his wicked enemies. He

slept that night at St. James's Palace, where our present Prince and

Princess of Wales lived with their children until a short time ago. In

the morning Charles walked across the Park and Spring Gardens, where, as

he passed, he pointed out a tree that had been planted by his own elder

brother Henry, who had died young. Then he went across to the Banqueting

Hall.

Hundreds and hundreds of people were waiting in Whitehall. They cannot

all have been wicked, but they must all have been cowards, for not one

dared to shout out and say, 'They must not, shall not, do this fearful

wrong.' If anyone had, perhaps others would have joined in and helped to

save their King. But no, all were silent. Perhaps they felt to the last

minute that it could not be true, that something would happen to prevent

it.

King Charles walked right through the Banqueting Hall under a beautiful

ceiling which he himself had paid a great painter to paint. You can walk

there yourself now under the same ceiling, for the place is a museum,

and anyone can go to see it.

Then he went through one of the windows upstairs--no one is quite sure

which, but it is supposed to be the second one from one end--and when he

stepped out on to the scaffold there was the dreadful executioner, with

his black mask on and his sharp axe. It was the custom for the

executioner to wear a mask, and I think he must have been glad of it

that day. The scaffold was all draped in black, and on it was a block,

at which the King must kneel, and on which he must rest his head. He

said gently the block was very low, and he had expected it to be higher;

but they told him it must be so, and he said no more.

Then he took off a beautiful star he wore, the decoration of an order,

which he handed to a captain in the army, a friend of his own, in whose

family it still remains, and some other things, which he gave to Bishop

Juxon, who stood by, and as he did so he said: 'Remember.' No one has

ever quite known what he meant by that, for the Bishop never told. It is

supposed either he meant that Bishop Juxon was to remember to give these

things to his son Prince Charles, or that he was to tell Prince Charles

to remember to forgive his father's murderers.

Then King Charles said to the executioner that he would put his head on

the block, and when he stretched out his hands he might strike. In a few

minutes he finished praying, and stretched out his hands. Down fell the

sharp axe, and a deep groan rose up from all the multitude as King

Charles was beheaded. Now every day hundreds of people walk up and down

on the pavement before the Banqueting Hall, but hardly one thinks of

that awful day when a King's blood was shed on this very place.

The old palace of Whitehall has quite gone. Over the place where it was

are houses and gardens; some of the houses are large and some are quite

old. Only the Banqueting Hall remains, that part of the magnificent

palace that Inigo Jones meant to build for James I.

At the top of Whitehall at Charing Cross there is a statue of King

Charles on a horse, as if he were riding down toward the place where he

died. On the very spot where it stands, before it was put up, the worst

of the men who murdered Charles were themselves executed only a short

distance from the place of the King's execution. For after Cromwell's

death England realized her wickedness, and Charles's son came back to

reign. But never, never can be forgotten the dreadful deed that happened

in Whitehall more than two hundred and fifty years ago.

CHAPTER XVII

THE GREAT PLAGUE AND FIRE

Of all the awful calamities that have befallen London, there is none

more awful than the Great Plague, which happened when Charles II., son

of King Charles I., was on the throne. He had been restored to his

kingdom for less than five years when it happened. Two people died quite

suddenly in Westminster, and men looked grave and said it was the

plague. But at first they did not think much of it, for the plague had

often visited England before. But this time it was to be far, far worse

than anything anyone had ever known. It is said that the infection was

brought over from the Continent in some bales of goods that merchants

were bringing to sell in London, but this was never known for certain.

All at once two more people died unaccountably, and then it seemed as if

the plague leaped out from every corner, and people began dying all over

London. There had been a hard frost, and it was when the frost thawed

that the plague seemed to gain fresh strength. Everybody began to ask

questions. What were they to do? Couldn't they go away at once? What

were others doing to stop the spread of the infection? The awful

suddenness of it terrified everyone. Persons who had been talking gaily

and feeling quite well complained of feeling a swelling on the throat or

a little sickness, and in an hour they were dead. Sometimes it began by

a swelling that came under the arm (this was a sure sign), and sometimes

by swellings on the neck. As the plague grew worse men dropped down in

the streets seized with it, and before their friends could be found they

were dead. All sorts of odd things were offered in order to keep away

the infection. One, that a great many foolish people believed in, was a

dried toad strung on a string round the neck--as if that could have made

anyone safe!

Very soon all the rich people left London and fled away into the

country, though, of course, the country people did not want them, for

fear that they had brought the infection. But there were hundreds and

hundreds of people who stayed in London and even tried to carry on their

business. At first they struggled bravely and pretended nothing was the

matter, but very soon this was impossible.

You could not imagine what London looked like then. No one drove in the

streets, no one walked there if he could help it; grass grew up between

the cobble-stones, and nearly all the houses had shutters up, showing

that their inhabitants had gone away. A nurse would come quickly along

holding a little red staff in her hand to show she had been nursing a

plague patient, and that other people had better avoid her. Then slowly

down the street would come a cart, with a man walking beside the horse,

and he would call out: 'Bring out your dead! bring out your dead!' just

as if he were shouting to sell coals. And in the cart were the bodies of

the people who had died of the plague. It was extraordinary that any man

could be found to drive that cart, and he had to have very high wages;

and even then he must have been a low sort of man, without any

imagination, a man who did not mind much what his work was so long as he

had some money to spend in drink. One of these men was sitting on his

cart one day when it was noticed that he seemed to be ill, and the next

moment he fell off dead, having caught the plague.

When people were dying by hundreds and hundreds there was no time to

bury them properly: and yet they had to be buried, or the dead bodies

would make it impossible for anyone to live at all. So great pits were

dug many yards wide, and into these the bodies of men, women, and

children were put in rows and rows, one row on the top of another, and

the whole covered in with stuff called quicklime. Whenever anyone began

with the plague, it was the duty of the head of the household to see

that a red cross was marked on his door as a warning to others to keep

away, and it must have been very sad to see these long red crosses on so

many doors, with the grass-grown street in front of the houses, and the

slow plague-cart going down the street.

Another rule was that if anyone had a case of the plague within his

house, he and all his household must be shut up indoors for forty days

for fear of carrying the infection; but many people hated this so much

that they used to hide the cases of the plague when they happened, and

pretend that everyone was alive and well in their houses. When the

police-officers found this out they used to visit the houses, and if

they found anyone sick in one of them they would carry him or her off to

a hospital called a pest-house, where all the sick could be together. If

it is true what we read of these houses, it must have been almost worse

to go there than to die. The smells and sights were so awful, and the

shrieks of the poor wretches who had been seized with the plague were so

terrifying, that there was not much chance of anyone who went there

recovering.

The people who were forced to stay in London, either because they had no

money to go away or nowhere else to go to, used to meet in St. Paul's

Cathedral and ask one another the news. This was not the same cathedral

that is standing now, but one that was afterwards burnt in the Great

Fire. The long aisle was called Paul's walk, and here in better times

there were stalls for the sale of ribbons and laces and many other

things, and people laughed and talked and strolled up and down, just as

if it were a street and not a church at all. Now, in the plague time

most of the stalls were shut, and the people no longer came to buy, but

to ask in hushed voices how many had died last week, and if there were

any sign that this awful disease was going to stop. It is almost

impossible to believe, but it is true, that thieves were very busy then.

They used actually to go into the houses deserted by their owners, or

left because someone had died there of the plague, and steal things,

without minding the risk of infection.

The country people soon stopped bringing in fresh milk and vegetables,

butter and eggs from the country, because they dared not come into the

town; and so it was difficult to get these things at all, and those who

were in London were worse off than ever, and in danger of starving.

We can imagine children crying for bread, and their mother going out at

last to try to find something for them to eat, and never coming back.

Then the eldest boy would begin to be afraid that she had caught the

plague and had died in the streets, and he would leave his little

sisters and brothers and creep along the streets until he met the awful

death-cart; and then he would ask, and perhaps the man would tell him

where to go to find out about his mother, and someone might be able to

describe a woman who had fallen down in the street seized by the plague,

and had at once been carried off and buried. The boy would guess that

that must have been his mother; and yet he could never be quite certain,

for she had been buried in a plague-pit with dozens of others, and he

would never see her. Perhaps he would beg a little oatmeal, and run back

hastily to his brothers and sisters, and when he got there find them all

frightened and crying, for the eldest girl was very sick. He might turn

down her dress, and see on her neck the awful plague-spot, and know that

she, too, would die. And very likely by the next day the whole of that

family would be dead. Many people must have died of starvation, for all

work was stopped, but for the money given by charitable persons. The

King himself gave L1,000 a week.

There is a story of a man who had a good deal of money, and he shut

himself and his household up in his house, and allowed no member of his

family to go out. The doors and windows were closed, so that it was all

dark, and food was only got by tying a basket to a string and letting it

down at a certain time each day, when a person who had been paid to do

so filled it with food. In the morning the whole family had breakfast

together in a lower room, and afterwards the children were sent up to

play in the garret. In this way the greatest danger of infection was

escaped.

Of course, so soon as foreign nations heard of the plague they sent no

more ships to England, and instead of being covered with vessels from

all lands, the Thames was deserted and silent. Worse than that, numbers

of people threw the dead bodies of their friends who had died into the

water, and these floated down with the tide, or, catching in some pier

or beside some boat, hung there until the air was filled with the

dreadful smell of the rotting bodies. Cats and dogs were drowned, too,

for fear that they should carry the infection, and their dead bodies

made the river loathsome. Everywhere there were awful sights and sounds

and smells; not even by the water could anyone escape. When the hot

weather came in summer the plague grew worse; in one week four thousand

persons died of it. Four thousand! It is difficult to imagine. But this

was not the worst: the deaths went on until London was a city of the

dead, and the living were very few. Fathers had lost children, husbands

wives, children parents; there was no household that had not suffered

from the plague. A preacher who used to go about the streets dressed

only in a rough garment of fur like John the Baptist had prophesied that

the grass should grow in the streets, and that the living should not be

able to bury the dead. It was long since the first part of this had been

true, and now the second became true, too. The people who were left were

not enough to bury those who died, and even in the streets the bodies

lay unburied. St. Paul's itself was used as a pest-house--that is to

say, as a hospital for the plague-stricken. We can imagine that the

people who were left alive felt as if they were living in some

nightmare dream from which they could not awake. They must have lost all

hope of ever seeing London restored to itself, and the streets clean and

bright once more. It was not until the summer was past and the cold

weather began that the deaths were fewer, and when the number was only

one thousand a week everyone began to get hopeful again. People who had

fled into the country began to come back, a few shopkeepers opened their

shops, the country people came timidly to bring vegetables for sale, and

so gradually things got a little better.

The houses were cleaned and whitewashed, the streets were cleansed, and

large fires were lit to burn up any rubbish that might still hold

infection. St. Paul's Cathedral was cleaned out, and the beds that the

patients had used were burned, and all seemed better.

Then happened another terrifying thing, even more alarming than the

plague to the unfortunate people who lived in London at that time. One

night, when everyone had gone to bed, the church bells in the city began

tolling, and soon feet were heard hurrying on the streets; cries of

alarm woke even the laziest, and everyone hurried out to see what was

the matter. Against the darkened evening sky they saw a lurid colour

like a crimson flag, and this changed and waved as columns of smoke

passed in front of it; there was no doubt that a big fire had been

lighted somewhere.

At first some may have thought this was only one of the bonfires that

the police had lighted to burn up the rubbish, but they soon found it

was much worse than that. Whole streets were on fire and burning, and,

worse than all, a strong wind was blowing the flames right over London.

The houses then were nearly all of wood, and, being old, were very dry.

They burned splendidly; no man could have made a better bonfire. The

flames seemed alive; they leaped from one to the other, they licked up

the woodwork on the gable fronts, they danced into the windows and in at

the doors--no one could stop them or save the houses once they had been

touched. The great red demon Fire licked up house after house as if he

swallowed them with his great red mouth, and the more he ate the more he

wanted; his appetite grew larger instead of less. There were only old

fire-engines, not like those we have to-day, and water was very scarce,

and at first the people stood terrified, staring stupidly, and then

began to run away. It was not for some time that the authorities

thought of pulling down some houses so as to make a gap over which the

great red flames could not leap. But it is not easy work to pull down

houses, and before it could be done the flames leaped on again and again

and drove them back. At first the poor people whose houses had caught

fire threw their furniture and goods into the streets to save them. But

they very soon saw this was no use; the flames got them just the same,

for there was no time to carry the goods away, and what the flames did

not get thieves in the crowd seized and ran away with.

Now the wind seemed fairly to get hold of the fire, and drove it on with

a roar like a steam-engine; the shrieks of people in the streets were

drowned by the crash of the burning timbers as the roofs fell in. The

heat was so great that some persons, pressed too near to the fire by the

crowd, covered their scorched faces with their hands and screamed aloud.

Everywhere was confusion and running to and fro, and yet no one could do

anything to stop those terrible flames. When a big brewery was attacked

by the fire, men rushed in and pulled out the casks into the street, and

then, forgetting the perils of the plague and of the fire, drank until

they reeled about the streets, and some even fell into the flames and

were burnt.

The place where the fire began was not far from London Bridge, and the

red light reflected in the water lit the city up with an awful glare.

Some of the people in the houses which were then standing on the bridge

got into boats, and, without heeding the awful heat and the showers of

smuts, rowed away up the river to a safer place.

The churches began to go soon, and when one was fairly caught its high

spire was seen to quiver for a moment as if it were in pain, and then

topple right over with a crash. The dangers were increased by the

falling of such great masses of stone. The whole of that night the

flames roared on, and devoured everything in their course. Even those

whose houses were at the west end began to tremble. King Charles II.

himself had now come back to London, and when he was told of the great

danger that threatened his city, he was the first to go to help and to

suggest that houses must be pulled down to stop the flames. This was

very difficult, because the houses to be pulled down had to be a long

way in front of the fire, or there would not have been time to get them

down before the fire reached them. And when the people to whom they

belonged were told that they must come out because their houses were to

be destroyed, they very naturally objected, and said they were quite

sure the fire would never get so far as that; and, anyway, why should

their houses be pulled down and not others?

The fire had begun first in a poor quarter, but it soon came on to the

houses of wealthy merchants, and then a strange sight was seen: these

men, hastily gathering up their gold and silver, their rich bales of

stuff and merchandise, hurried westward, and the streets were filled

with carts and men laden with goods jostling, pushing, and hurrying in

both directions. At the end of that day the fire still burned as if it

would never stop; surely never before had there been such a bonfire. Not

a single person in London could go to bed. How did he know that he might

not be awakened by the flames leaping in at his windows? No, everyone

was in the streets, either watching or talking or shouting, and very few

did any good or knew what to do; they mostly got in the way of others

who were trying to stop the flames.

When that second awful night was past, the day dawned; but there was

little light, for a great cloud of black smoke hung over everything,

blotting out the sun. On the river were boats and barges and vessels of

all sorts laden with goods; in the streets the same weary, excited

crowd.

Out in the fields there were tents put up for the people whose houses

had been destroyed, and numbers of people camped there, crying and

bemoaning their losses; many of them had lost all they possessed in the

world, and had no clothes and sometimes no food.

At last it was seen that the flames must reach St. Paul's Cathedral, and

even those who were most careless held their breath at the thought of

the destruction of so splendid a building. At that time St. Paul's was

being repaired, and the scaffolding round the walls served as fuel for

the flames, which leaped upon it and got such hold of it that the very

stones became red hot. The roof and the tower of the cathedral were a

blaze of fire; soon the lead with which the roof was covered began to

melt, and ran down in golden rain from every gutter into the street

below. You have perhaps seen in fireworks showers of golden rain, but

that was harmless; this was real boiling lead, and if it had struck

anyone would have scorched him up. Streaming as it did from that great

height, it came down with force, and set everything that it fell on in

a blaze. The flames got inside the cathedral, and roared upwards through

the staircases as through so many funnels, and then it was seen that the

fall of the roof was inevitable. It came at last with a tremendous

crash, and showers of sparks shot upwards, lighting up the country for

miles around.

For the whole of the next day the flames continued, and on into the day

after that; and then the wind fell, and the fire burnt with less fury.

By this time, too, people had pulled down houses, and made great gaps

which could not be bridged over by the flames, and so the Great Fire

ceased.

A most curious thing was that the fire had begun in the house of a baker

in Pudding Lane, and the part where it was finally stopped was at Pye

Corner, near Smithfield. It was very odd that both these names should

have had to do with eating. No one knows how it began, but the general

idea is that a servant-girl who was drying some sheets let them fall

into the fire, and then, seeing them flame up, was afraid, and thrust

them into the chimney; so the chimney caught fire, and the house, which

was very dry and built of wood, flamed up, and the fire spread. But

other people say it was done on purpose by a man throwing a light into

the house window.

Close to the spot where it began was put up later a tall monument, a

great column, which is hollow inside, with a staircase to the top, and

anyone may go up by paying threepence; and on the summit there is a

little platform, which is caged in to prevent people from falling or

flinging themselves over. From here there is a fine view of London; you

can see the river, and the ships going up and down, and the bridges, and

the tall steeples of all the churches built by Sir Christopher Wren for

the new London that rose out of the ashes of the old.

At the place where the fire is said to have stopped there is the figure

of a funny little fat boy put up, and that you can see at Smithfield if

you care to go there.

The greater part of London was completely wiped out; the streets were

all gone--none knew even where their own houses had stood; there were

heaps of ashes everywhere, so hot that the boots of those who walked

over them were scorched. For long afterwards, when the workmen were

opening a pile to take away the rubbish and begin to build a new house,

flames which had been smouldering below burst out again. The great task

of rebuilding the city demanded all the energy and sense of which the

people were capable. There were many quarrels, of course, between people

who claimed more land than they ought to have had, and between others

who were both quite sure their houses had stood on one spot. It was a

long time before a new London was built. But though the fire cost the

Londoners many millions of pounds, and though it ruined many persons and

caused fearful loss, it was really a blessing, for it burnt away things

that might have carried the plague infection; and it burnt the old

unwholesome dirty wooden houses, and in their place were built better

houses and wider streets, and health and comfort were greater.

BOOK III

THE SIGHTS OF LONDON