Garden; I have a cottage in Colebrooke Row, Islington--a cottage, for
it is detached--a white house, with six good rooms in it. The New
River (rather elderly by this time) runs (if a moderate walking-pace
can be so termed) close to the foot of the house; and behind is a
spacious garden, with vines (I assure you), pears, strawberries,
parsnips, leeks, carrots, cabbages, to delight the heart of old
Alcinous. You enter without passage into a cheerful dining-room, all
studded over and rough with old books; and above is a lightsome
drawing-room, three windows, full of choice prints. I feel like a
great lord, never having had a house before."
And again, in the November following, in a letter to Robert Southey, he
informs the bard, who had promised him a call, that he is "at Colebrooke
Cottage, left hand coming from Sadler's Wells." It was here that that
amiable bookworm, George Dyer, editor of the Delphin Classics, walked
quietly into the New River from Charles Lamb's door, but was soon
recovered, thanks to the kind care of Miss Lamb.
[Illustration: THE OLD QUEEN'S HEAD.]
The late Mr. George Daniel, of Canonbury Square, Islington, who formerly
possessed the "ELIZABETHAN GARLAND," which consists of Seventy Ballads,
printed between the years 1559 and 1597; a pleasing chatty writer and
great snapper-up of unconsidered literary trifles, was an old friend and
jolly companion of Charles Lamb's and frequently accompanied him in his
favourite walks on the banks of the New River, and to the ancient
hostelries in and round-about "Merrie Islington." At the Old Queen's
Head, they, in company with many retired citizens, and thirsty wayfarers,
met, on at least one occasion, with Theodore Hook, indulged in
reminiscences of bygone days, merrily puffed their long pipes of the true
"Churchwarden" or _yard of clay_ type, and quaffed nut-brown ale, out of
the festivious tankard presented by a choice spirit!--one Master
Cranch,--to a former host; and in the old oak parlour, too, where,
according to tradition, the gallant Sir Walter Raleigh received, "full
souse" in his face, the humming contents of a jolly Black Jack[10] from an
affrighted clown, who, seeing clouds of tobacco-smoke curling from the
knight's nose and mouth, thought he was all on fire! fire!! fire!!!.
[Illustration: CANONBURY TOWER.
"Here stands the tall relic, old Canonbury Tow'r,
Where Auburn's sweet bard won the muse to his bow'r,
The Vandal that pulls thy grey tenements down,
When falls the last stone, may that stone crack his crown!"
G. Daniel's "_The Islington Garland_."]
Lamb took special delight in watching the setting sun from the top of old
Canonbury Tower, until the cold night air warned him to retire. He was
intimate with Goodman Symes, the then tenant-keeper of the Tower, and
bailiff of the Manor, and a brother antiquary in a small way; who took
pleasure in entertaining him in the antique panelled chamber where
Goldsmith wrote his _Traveller_, and supped frugally on buttermilk; and in
pointing to a small portrait of Shakespeare, in a curiously carved gilt
frame, which Lamb would look at longingly. He was never weary of toiling
up and down the winding and narrow stairs of this suburban pile, and
peeping into its quaint corners and cupboards, as if he expected to
discover there some hitherto hidden clue to its mysterious origin.
"What village can boast like fair Islington town
Such time-honour'd worthies, such ancient renown?
Here jolly Queen Bess, after flirting with Leicester,
'Undumpish'd,' herself, with Dick Tarlton her Jester.
"Here gallant gay Essex, and burly Lord Burleigh
Sat late at their revels, and came to them early;
Here honest Sir John took his ease at his inn--
Bardolph's proboscis, and Jack's double chin.
From Islington, Charles Lamb moved to Enfield Chase Side, there he lived
from 1827 to 1833, shut out almost entirely from the world, and his
favourite London in particular.
[Illustration: CHARLES LAMB'S HOUSE, ENFIELD.]
Lamb, in a merry mood, writing to Novello, in 1827, says:--
"We expect you four (as many as the table will hold without squeezing)
at Mrs. Westwood's _Table d'Hote_ on Thursday. You will find the
_White House_ shut up, and us moved under the wing of the _Phoenix_,
which gives us friendly refuge. Beds for guests, marry we have none,
but cleanly accommodings [_sic._] at the _Crown and Horse-shoes_.
"Yours harmonically,
"C. L.
"Vincentio (what, ho!) Novello, a Squire.
66, Great Queen Street, Lincoln's-Inn Fields."
[Illustration: THE CROWN AND HORSE SHOES INN, ENFIELD CHASE SIDE.]
The above represents one of the humble and wayside "Pubs" of the
neighbourhood in which Charles Lamb is said to have tested the friendship
of "fine" friends, by proposing to them a drink of unsophisticated porter
from bright pewter pots. So did he treat Wordsworth, and that "Child of
Nature" actress, Miss Frances Maria Kelly, who without hesitation entered
the tavern, with:--
"The whitewash'd wall, the nicely sanded floor,
The varnish'd clock that click'd behind the door,
The chest contriv'd a double debt to pay,--
A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day."
About the Midsummer of 1833, Charles Lamb and his sister removed to
Bay-cottage, Church-street, Edmonton, kept by Mr. Walden, whose wife
acted as a professional nurse. There, in that poor melancholy looking
tenement, the delightful humourist found the home in which he breathed his
last on Saturday, the 27th December, 1834. He was buried in:--
"Oh, Mirth and Innocence! Oh, Milk and Water!
Ye happy mixtures of more happy days!."
Byron's, _Beppo_. St. 80.
[Illustration: HOUSE AT EDMONTON WHERE CHARLES LAMB DIED.]
[Illustration: EDMONTON CHURCH.]
Time and circumstances have effectually disposed of the water-carrier, his
occupation is gone, it is impossible London can ever again see a man bent
beneath the weight of a yoke and two enormous pails, vociferating "_Any
fresh and fair Spring Water here?_" But the cry of "Milk," or the rattle
of the milk-pail will never cease to be heard in our streets. There can be
no reservoirs of milk, no pipes through which it flows into the houses.
The more extensive the great capital becomes, the more active must be the
individual exertion to carry about this article of food. The old cry was
"_Any Milk here?_" and it was sometimes mingled with the sound of "_Fresh
Cheese and Cream_;" and it then passed into "_Milk, maids below_;" and it
was then shortened into "_Milk below_;" and was finally corrupted into
"_Mio_," which some wag interpreted into _mi-eau_--_demi-eau_--half water.
But it must still be cried, whatever be the cry. The supply of milk to the
metropolis is perhaps one of the most beautiful combinations of industry
we have. The days have long since passed when Finsbury had its pleasant
groves, and Clerkenwell was a village, and there were green pastures in
Holborn, when St. Pancras boasted only a little church standing in
meadows, and St. Martin's was literally in the fields. Slowly but surely
does the baked clay of Mr. Jerry, "the speculative builder" stride over
the clover and the buttercup; and yet every family in London may be
supplied with milk by eight o'clock every morning at their own doors.
Where do the cows abide? They are congregated in wondrous herds in the
suburbs; and though in spring-time they go out to pasture in the fields
which lie under the Hampstead and Highgate hills, or in the vales of
Dulwich and Sydenham, and there crop the tender blade,--
"When proud pied April, dress'd in all his trim,
Has put a spirit of youth in everything."
yet for the rest of the year the coarse grass is carted to their stalls,
or they devour what the breweries and distilleries cannot extract from the
grain harvest. Long before "the unfolding star wakes up the shepherd" are
the London cows milked; and the great wholesale vendors of the commodity,
who have it consigned to them daily from more distant parts to the various
railway stations in the metropolis, bear it in carts to every part of the
town, and distribute it to the hundreds of shopkeepers and itinerants, who
are anxiously waiting to receive it for re-distribution amongst their own
customers. It is evident that a perishable commodity which everyone
requires at a given hour, must be so distributed. The distribution has
lost its romance. Misson, in his "Travels" published at the beginning of
the last century, tells of May-games of the London milkmaids thus:--"On
the first of May, and the five or six days following, all the pretty young
country girls that serve the town with milk, dress themselves up very
neatly, and borrow abundance of Silver-Plate, whereof they make a pyramid,
which they adorn with ribbons and flowers, and carry upon their heads,
instead of their common milk pails. In this equipage, accompanied with
some of their fellow milkmaids, and a bagpipe or fiddle, they go from door
to door, dancing before the houses of their customers, in the midst of
boys and girls that follow them in troops, and everybody gives them
something." Alas! the May-games and pretty young country girls have both
departed, and a milk-woman has become a very unpoetical personage. There
are few indeed of milkwomen who remain. So it is with most of the
occupations that associate London with the country.
[Illustration: KATE SMITH, _The Merry Milkmaid_.]
[Illustration:
"'Where are you going my pretty maid?'
'I'm going a milking, sir,' she said."]
Thirty years ago there appeared in the "Quarterly Review" a remarkable
article on the Commissariat of London, from the pen of Dr. Andrew Wynter.
In it we were told for how many miles the beasts brought annually to the
metropolis would stretch, if ranged ten abreast in a seemingly
interminable column. In order to convey some notion of the stupendous
quantities of ale, beer, and porter consumed, Dr. Wynter fixed upon Hyde
Park as his exhibition ground, and piled together all the barrels
containing the malt liquor drunk by what, in 1854, was a population of two
million and a half souls. He came to the conclusion that these barrels
would form a thousand columns not far short of a mile in perpendicular
height. And among other statistics, Dr. Wynter calculated that there were
at that time about twenty thousand cows in the metropolitan and suburban
dairies, some of which establishments contained five hundred cows apiece.
He also noticed that, the London and suburban dairies could not alone
supply the population of the metropolis, seeing that twenty thousand cows,
giving on an average twelve quarts each per diem, would not yield more
than two hundred and forty thousand quarts. If we suppose this quantity
increased by the iron-tailed cow to three hundred thousand quarts, the
allowance to each of the two millions and a half of human beings then
living within the Bills of Mortality would be about a quarter of a pint
per head. The "Quarterly" Reviewer, therefore, assumed that, to meet the
existing demands of the tea-table, the nursery, and the kitchen, half as
much again as three hundred thousand quarts was consumed annually in
London. For this excess he looked to the country to supplement the efforts
of the metropolis and of its suburbs as suppliers of milk, and noticed
that the precious white liquid was brought daily to London from farms
lying as far away as eighty miles from the metropolitan railway stations
to which it was consigned.
[Illustration]
Nothing can be more instructive and entertaining than to turn back in 1884
to facts, figures, calculations, estimates, and inferences which fitted
the London of 1854. Instead of two millions and a half, the population
resident at this moment within the metropolitan and city police districts
amounts at least to four millions and three-quarters. The area already
covered by the mighty town, which adds another big town to its entirety
each successive year, is about four hundred and fifty thousand square
acres, and there are more than seven hundred thousand houses to be
provided for, of which it may be presumed that few can do without at least
a pint of milk per diem. Assuming, however, that each member of this
enormous population consumed no more than a quarter of a pint of
milk--that is to say, a small tumblerful--per diem, we come to the
astounding conclusion that nearly six hundred thousand quarts are wanted
every day, nearly four million two hundred thousand quarts every week, and
nearly two hundred and seventeen million quarts every year, to meet the
demands of London. Few of us are able to fathom the meaning of two hundred
million quarts of liquid until we are told what an immense reservoir, ten
feet deep, it would take to hold such an amount. More intelligible are the
calculations which tell us that, assuming a cow to yield ten--not
twelve--quarts of milk daily, it would require nearly sixty thousand milch
cows to maintain this supply from year's end to year's end. If these
patient and valuable milkers are estimated as being worth no more than
twenty-pounds apiece, they would represent in their aggregate a capital of
little less than one million four hundred thousand pounds. Pure milk of a
reliable character, costs five-pence per quart, and therefore, on the
above basis, there is spent on milk, in the metropolis and its
circumjacent districts, twelve thousand four hundred pounds per day,
nearly eighty-seven thousand pounds per week, and considerably more than
four and a half million pounds per annum. There are States which have
made a considerable noise in the world, whose total revenue does not reach
what London spends annually in milk alone. As for the distribution of this
inconceivable amount of liquid, which is delivered every morning and
afternoon in small quantities all over the enormous area of
bricks-and-mortar to which we have referred, it would utterly baffle the
most marvellous organiser and administrator that ever existed upon earth,
to extemporise human machinery for carrying on so minute and yet so
gigantic a trade. Nevertheless, how smoothly and imperceptibly, not only
in this one small detail, but throughout the whole of its vast and endless
complications and ramifications, does the commissariat of London work! We
are told, for instance, that to distribute every sixteen gallons of milk
one person is necessary, and that, without counting managers, clerks,
shopmen and shopwomen, nearly five thousand human beings, assisted by more
than fifteen hundred horses and mules, are needed to furnish London with
milk every twenty-four hours. More than a quarter of a million pounds go
yearly in wages to milkmen and milkwomen with whom we are all so familiar,
and who will doubtless, acquire additional importance in the eyes of those
who reflect that these humble servitors are but, in Pope's words, "parts
of that stupendous whole" without whose useful, patient, and unintermitted
labours the faultless machinery of the grandest camp of men that ever yet
existed would instantly stand still.
Then it must not be forgotten that the milk trade exacts constant and
unintermitted work from its employes--work from which neither Sundays nor
holidays bring any relief--and demanding very early rising in the morning,
to say nothing of the greatest personal cleanliness, and of an immense
array of cans, varying from those capable of holding many gallons down to
those which contain no more than half-a-pint--the milk-pail and its daily
history might well attract notice from writers not inferior in grasp and
imagination to Defoe or Dickens. In 1854 Dr. Wynter calculated that, as
regards distribution, the commissariat of London was carried on by an army
of one hundred thousand persons. In thirty years the population has all
but doubled, and the machinery of distribution has been so improved that
its working at present approaches very nearly to perfection. This
perfection is due solely to freedom of trade and to universal competition,
which so nicely adjust all the varying conditions of life, that, in
serving themselves, they accomplish more than all the Governments on earth
could effect by the most ingenious system of centralisation that human wit
could devise.
[Illustration:
_Attic Poet_:--"There is a pleasure in poetic pains
which only Poets know."]
In our neighbourhood, which, as the lodging-house-keepers advertise in
_The Kingsland and Shacklewell Slopbasin_, and _The Dalston Dusthole_, is
situate close to "Bus, Tram, and Rail," we have a milkman who is given to
Poetry! and he circulates his "verses" pretty freely in the areas and
letter-boxes about once a month.--
[Illustration: GLORIOUS NEWS! GLORIOUS NEWS!]
HOW F. WILSON MEETS HIS CUSTOMERS' VIEWS.
My readers may credit the words of my muse.
When telling how Wilson meets Customers' Views;
Wilson studies a straightforward system of trade,
Whereby to elicit encouraging aid.
The pure farm-house Milk he daily brings out,
Is such as we have no reason to doubt;
Encouraged in business his course he pursues,
And fails not in meeting his Customers' Views.
You'll not have occasion to doubt what I say,
When testing his Pure Milk day after day;
For cheapness and quality you'll find him in trade,
As you did when he first asked the public for aid.
His farm-house Milk and Eggs, which thoroughly please,
Are positive proofs of assertions like these;
'Tis certain that better can ne'er be supplied,
He trusts that in this you'll all coincide.
The highest of interest his Milk doth possess,
Thus boldly we state, for we cannot state less;
F. Wilson supplies what all purchasers choose,
And thus he is meeting his Customers' Views.
TERMS CASH.
Customers can have their Milk left in cans any time after 5 a.m.
Note the address * * *
All complaints to be addressed to Mr. F. Wilson.
[Illustration: TIDDY DIDDY DOLL-LOLL, LOLL, LOLL.]
This celebrated vendor of gingerbread, from his eccentricity of character,
and extensive dealing in his particular way, was always hailed as the King
of itinerant tradesmen. He was a constant attendant in the crowd at all
metropolitan fairs, mob meetings, Lord Mayor's shows, public executions,
and all other holiday and festive gatherings! In his person he was tall,
well made, and his features handsome. He affected to dress like a person
of rank; white and gold lace suit of clothes, lace ruffled shirt, laced
hat and feather, white stockings, with the addition of a white apron.
Among his harangues to gain customers, take the following piece as a fair
sample of the whole:--
"Mary, Mary, where are you _now_, Mary? I live, when at home, at the
second house in Little diddy-ball-street, two steps under ground, with a
wiscum, riscum, and a why-not. Walk in, ladies and gentlemen; my shop is
on the second-floor backwards, with a brass knocker on the door, and steel
steps before it. Here is your nice gingerbread, it will melt in your mouth
like a red-hot brickbat, and rumble in your inside like Punch and his
wheelbarrow." He always finished his address by singing this fag end of
some popular ballad:--
"Ti-tid-ty, ti-tid-ty. Ti-tid-ty--tiddy-loll.
Ti-tid-ty, ti-tid-ty. Ti-tid-ty--tiddy-doll."
Hence arose his nickname "_Tiddy-Doll_." In Hogarth's print of the "IDLE
'PRENTICE EXECUTED AT TYBURN," Tiddy-Doll is seen holding up a gingerbread
cake with his left hand, his right hand within his coat, to imply that he
is speaking the truth from his heart, while describing the superiority of
his wares over those of any other vendor in the fair! while he still
anxiously inquires:--
"Mary, Mary, where are you _now_, Mary?"
His proper name was Ford, and so well known was he that, on his once being
missed for a week from his usual stand in the Haymarket, on the occasion
of a visit which he paid to a country fair, a "Catch penny" account of his
alleged murder was printed, and sold in the streets by thousands.
Allusions to Tiddy-Doll, and sayings derived from him, have reached to our
own time, thus, we still say to an over-dressed person--"You are as tawdry
as Diddy-doll," "You are quite Tiddy-doll, you look as fine as
Tiddy-doll," he or she is said to be "All Tiddy-doll," &c.
The class of men formerly well known to the citizens of London as
News-criers, or Hornmen, must now be spoken of in the past sense, as the
further use of the horn was prohibited long ago by the magistracy, subject
to a penalty of ten shillings for the first offence, and twenty shillings
on the conviction of repeating so heinous a crime.
[Illustration]
"GREAT NEWS, BLOODY BATTLE, GREAT VICTORY!
EXTRAORDINARY GAZETTE!
SECOND EDITION!"
were the usual loud bellowing of fellows with stentorian lungs,
accompanied by a loud blast of a long tin-horn, which announced to the
delighted populace of London the martial achievements of a Marlborough,
Howe, Hood, Nelson, or Wellington. A copy of the "Gazette" or newspaper
they "cried" was usually affixed under the hatband, in front, and their
demand was generally one shilling.
At least one of these news criers has been immortalized. In a volume of
"Miscellaneous Poems," edited by Elijah Fenton, and printed by Bernard
Lintot, without date, but anterior to 1720, there are the lines that
follow, to one old Bennet, who seems to have made a great noise in the
world of London during the early part of last century:--
"ON THE DEATH OF OLD BENNET, THE NEWS CRYER
"One evening, when the sun was just gone down,
And I was walking thro' the noisy town,
A sudden silence through each street was spread,
As if the soul of London had been fled.
Much I enquired the cause, but could not hear,
Till fame, so frightened, that she did not dare
To raise her voice, thus whisper'd in my ear:--
Bennet, the prince of hawkers, is no more,
Bennet, my _Herald_ on the British shore,
Bennet, by whom, I own myself outdone,
Tho' I a hundred mouths, he had but one,
He, when the list'ning town he would amuse,
Made _Echo_ tremble with his '_Bloody news!_'
No more shall _Echo_, now his voice return,
_Echo_ for ever must in silence mourn,--
Lament, ye heroes, who frequent the wars,
The great proclaimer of your dreadful scars.
Thus wept the conqueror who the world o'ercame,
Homer was waiting to enlarge his fame,
Homer, the first of hawkers that is known,
_Great News_ from Troy, cried up and down the town,
None like him has there been for ages past,
Till our stentorian Bennet came at last,
Homer and Bennet were in this agreed,
Homer was blind, and Bennet could not read!"
In our own days there has been legislation for the benefit of tender ears;
and there are now penalties, with police constables to enforce them,
against "All persons blowing any horn or using any other noisy
instrument, for the purpose of calling persons together, or of announcing
any show or entertainment, or for the purpose of hawking, selling,
distributing, or collecting any article, or of obtaining money or alms."
These are the words of the Police Act of 1839; and they are stringent
enough to have nearly banished from our streets all those uncommon noises
which did something to relieve the monotony of the one endless roar of the
tread of feet and the rush of wheels.
Mr. Henry Mayhew, in his admirable work of "London Labour and London
Poor," writing in 1851, under the head "Of the Sellers of Second
Editions," says:--
"I believe that there is not now in existence--unless it be in a
workhouse and unknown to his fellows, or engaged in some other
avocation, and lost sight of by them--any one who sold 'Second
Editions' of the _Courier_ evening paper at the time of the Duke of
York's Walcheren expedition, at the period of the battle of the Nile,
during the continuance of the Peninsular war, or even at the battle of
Waterloo. There were a few old men--some of whom had been soldiers or
sailors, and others who have simulated it--surviving within these five
or six years and some later, who 'worked Waterloo,' but they were
swept off, I was told, by the cholera."
[Illustration]
[Illustration: CLEAN YOUR HONOUR'S SHOES.