CARRINGTON MEWS,
SHEPHERD MARKET,
_24th September._
Dear Agatha,--I was glad to hear, by the way, that you had been incited
to unearth Pepys from a neglected corner of your bookcase. The old
chap's vitality is infectious. One can scarcely turn a leaf anywhere but
one is interested, amused, or receives the benefit of a shock to one's
sense of the proprieties. This morning I opened him haphazard and read,
"So over the fields to Southwark. I spent half an hour in St. Mary
Overy's Church, where are fine monuments of great antiquity". I took it
as a leading, and this afternoon Mrs. Darling and I paid a visit to
Southwark Cathedral.
The building lies in a hollow, and as one goes down the steps to the
churchyard one leaves behind the rumble of traffic on its way to London
Bridge over the cobbles. Inside we found the length of the long narrow
nave dim and grey, but in the neighbourhood of the clerestory a golden
light diffused itself, falling in patches on the groined roof. At the
tomb of John Gower, the poet, who died in 1408, we paused. It occurred
to me that it might interest Mrs. D. to hear that it was not till his
old age, when his hair was grey, that wearying of his solitary state,
John Gower took a wife.
The old lady stared at the stone effigy with the long hair bound by a
chaplet of red roses, the short curled beard, the clasped hands, and
stiff-buttoned habit falling in straight prim lines to the feet. "They
do say," she remarked parenthetically, that "it's a pore 'eart wot never
rejoices; but perhaps 'e couldn't get anyone to 'ave 'im."
Conscious of a possible application to my own celibate state, I left
John Gower and drew Mrs. D.'s attention to the tomb of John Trehearn,
gentleman servant to Queen Elizabeth and James I. On a table is recorded
the king's testimony to the worth of his servant:--
Had kings power to lend their subjects breath,
Trehearn, thou shoulds't not be cast down by death.
John's wife stands by his side, her head reaching but to his shoulder.
John has an apprehensive expression, and his little wife's prim pursed
mouth argues badly for John's happiness and peace of mind. Mrs. Darling,
who, as you will have discovered by this time, is a good judge of
character, said that perhaps, after all, there were worse things than
bachelorhood. I was not in a position to argue the point, and we walked
on into the retro-choir, where lies a curious skeleton effigy, which
represents the ferryman, father of St. Mary Overie, the patron saint of
the church.
The ferryman, it seems, was a penurious old rascal who feigned death for
twenty-four hours, expecting his servants to fast till his funeral and
thus save him the cost of a day's food. The servants, however, who were
half starved, seized the opportunity to break open the larder and feast
instead of fast, and the old ferryman rose in his winding sheet, a
candle in each hand, bent on chastising the miscreants. One of them,
imagining it was the devil himself, picked up the butt end of an oar and
aimed with it a blow which brought the death his master had feigned. His
daughter, whose lover was killed in an accident following the homicide
of her father, entered a convent, and gave the money her father had
amassed to build a house of sisters on the ground where part of the
present church now stands.
There are two windows in the retro-choir of sinister significance. They
represent six clergy of the sixteenth century, and at the base of one of
the windows are the names of Laurence Saunders, Rector of All Hallows,
Bread Street; Robert Ferrier, Bishop of St. David's; Robert Taylor,
Rector of Hadley, Suffolk; and after each name is the awful and laconic
statement, "Burnt". On the other windows the names and dates are almost
indecipherable, but below the central figure stands out one word of
awful import, "Smithfield". The windows have no artistic merit, and
there is nothing arresting in the presentment of those six men who
endured the tortures of the damned for their faith, yet somehow they
seemed from their dark corner at the east end of the retro-choir to
dominate the place. One saw those windows directly one entered--far-off
bits of colour at the base of long tunnels framed by the sharply-pointed
Gothic arches, and the remembrance of them remained, mingling strangely
with thoughts of poets and playwrights. Edmund, brother of William
Shakespeare, John Fletcher, and Philip Massinger are buried in the
choir. Of the two last named one doesn't know which had the more tragic
end. Fletcher, the friend of William Shakespeare, who, according to an
old record, had during the great plague been invited by a knight of
Norfolk or Suffolk into the country, and who "stayed in London but to
make himself a suit of clothes, and when it was making, fell sick and
died. This," continues John Aubrey, the writer of the record, "I heard
from the tailor, who is now a very old man, and clerk of St. Marie
Overie."
Massinger, the poet and playwright, died in 1639. The register of that
year records, "Buried, Philip Massinger, a stranger". Poor Philip
Massinger, who, after writing forty popular plays, was buried, a pauper,
at the expense of the parish. Apparently he had been preaching that
which he had been unable to practise when he wrote his play entitled "A
New Way to Pay Old Debts".
Edmund Shakespeare, described as "A Player," died before his brother
William, and perhaps Edmund was in William's thoughts when he wrote:--
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.
Whoever before, whoever again, will express with such heart-searching
simplicity the secret fear which besets us all, that "dread of something
after death, the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller
returns"?
I have strange and uncanny suspicions about Shakespeare. One knows so
little about the _man_ himself, and at times I have wondered if he were
some supernatural being sent, perhaps, from another and more enlightened
world, to be the mouthpiece of poor dumb humanity in this.
It is invariably reserved for Mrs. Darling to bring me up bump against
prosaic facts in the midst of such speculations. We were standing before
the monument erected to the memory of that incredible genius, and she
greeted the alabaster figure which reclines against a topographical
background as an old friend. She knew all about the ghost in "'Amblet"
and something about someone who committed a murder in "Macbeth". She
said, referring to the nude appearance of the poet's legs, that it was
hard on the men of those days who were knock-kneed, they must have felt
very cold with nothing more on their nether limbs than what she
described as a "pair 'er bathin' drawers". A supercilious young woman
standing near turned her lorgnette on the old lady, and fearing
recriminations on the part of Mrs. D., should she discover that she was
an object of derision, I drew her with me to examine some old bosses
which I had noticed, stacked like winter logs in a corner near.
A verger explained that they were removed from the roof of the old nave
when the church was restored. He said they were all of religious
significance. A gross countenance in the act of swallowing a
problematical morsel represented, for instance, the devil consuming
Judas, whilst a hideous face with a lolling, twisted tongue, signified
the liar. There were subjects of beauty, too, and as the man proceeded
with his glib interpretation of those child-like specimens of mediaeval
art, I pictured the wood carvers, high up in vaulted roofs, giving the
reins to their varied imaginations--beautiful, devout, ugly, or
grotesque; at times even bestial. What matter! No one of the worshippers
below would see the result of those patient hours of work--only the
sunbeams, finding entrance as they travelled from east to west, or the
light of the moon, stealing like a thief in the night into the darkness
and silence, touching here a rafter, there a bit of carving. And so the
artist could please himself and weave his own fancies, devout or
profane, beautiful or monstrous, up there all alone in the roof, and if
the demons and devils he created leered at the congregations beneath,
the angels smiled at them too, and meanwhile no one was the wiser or any
the worse.
And now here were the old bosses which had lived solitary and unknown in
the dizzy altitudes above the nave, brought down to earth to be stared
at and talked about. Did they appreciate the change? And would their
creators, could they have foreseen such an anti-climax, have made them
different?
I suggested to Mrs. Darling that we should go and have a look at "The
George Inn" while we were in the neighbourhood of the Borough High
Street. A policeman of whom I inquired said he had a sort of notion he
had heard of it. "Down one of those side streets that look as if there's
nothing in them," he volunteered. "About the third or fourth turning."
We found the place easily, owing to the forethought of the proprietor,
who had placed a notice at the entrance of the yard warning passers-by
not to be misled by the appearance of its leading to nothing. The George
Hotel (I was sorry he had adopted that pretentious title in place of the
old word "inn") was there, the notice stated, and with thoughts of stage
coaches, Sam Weller, and Mr. Pickwick I turned into the yard.
Yes, there it was, tucked away in its funny little corner, conscious, it
seemed, of being left behind and forgotten in the present-day rush of
life. There were the old wooden galleries, one above another, running
the length of its long, flat-windowed front, the sloping, red-tiled roof
with its garret windows, the coffee-room with its faded red curtains,
and the entrance by a low door down a step. A waggon, with some porters
in attendance, stood in front of the Great Northern Goods Depot at the
farther end of the yard, but no signs of life about "The George," save a
charwoman with a pail in the lower of the two galleries. This was
probably owing to the fact that it was closing time: surely an
opportunity for the ghosts to put in an appearance! Perhaps, though,
they preferred the bustle of customers and clink of glasses. For myself,
I must confess that the sight of a closed "pub" has an effect as
depressing as that which attends a walk in the City streets between
three and four o'clock on a Christmas afternoon.
I apologised to Mrs. Darling for not being able to offer her a drink at
"The George," and we retraced our steps towards London Bridge. Some day,
Agatha, I will take you to London Bridge about 4.30 on a November
afternoon, when there is just the right kind of sunset to fit the
picture. It was the right kind this afternoon--one of those skies
suffused with rose-coloured clouds which come on like the reinforcements
of a vast army under the smoke of artillery, sullenly beautiful with a
mood which found its response in the river glazed with a reflection of
colour over its black oily depths. Of all the sights of London this, to
myself, is the most inspiring, and judging by the row of loiterers one
invariably finds leaning over the parapet, there are others who fall
under its spell. London Bridge says to the big ships which the Tower
Bridge has opened its arms to receive, "Thus far and no farther," and
there they lie in the Pool, whilst the cranes, like giant fishing-rods,
angle for their booty. Villainous-looking little tugs, with sinister
green lights, belch black smoke which mingles with the white steam and
yellow smoke from the funnels of the large boats. Amidst coils of rope,
bales of goods, and a smutty mirk, the wharf workers and sailors move
like ants to the accompaniment of clanking chains and the hooting of
sirens. On the sides of the ships are painted strange-looking foreign
names, Dutch, Norwegian, and Greek, and Mrs. Darling awoke with surprise
to the knowledge that tea from India was deposited almost on her
doorstep.
Whilst we stood there a big boat moved out into mid-stream, making a
stately course through the smoke-veiled sunset towards where the Tower
Bridge was opening its portals with a welcome to the high seas beyond.
As the vessel neared the bridge, it was as if the artist who was
painting the picture had touched it here and there with the point of a
luminous pencil. The pencil travelled along the blackened wharves,
dotting them with pin-pricks of light, and the men on the barges and
boats below began to hang out their lanthorns. It was an epic, this
passing of the ship through the gates of Old Father Thames. The lights
shone out to give it good speed, and the smouldering fires of sunset
followed in its wake. The majesty of the scene filled one with a sense
of elation, and I said to myself, "It is not for nothing that London is
called 'the Heart of the Empire'".
Mrs. Darling asked me if it was true that houses were built on old
London Bridge, and I quoted the description of the place by a
contemporary writer: "The _street_," he says, "was dark, narrow, and
dangerous, the houses overhanging the road so as to almost shut out the
daylight," adding the information that "arches of timber crossed the
street to keep the shaky old tenements from falling on each other."
"London Bridge," declared an old proverb, "was made for wise men to go
over and fools to go under," but when one reads such statements as "in
1401 another house on the bridge fell down, drowning five of its
inhabitants," it occurs to one that there was almost as much danger
overhead as below, where fifty watermen were computed to be drowned
every year.
What a picture those old records paint! There can be no pictures like it
in the London of to-day. Add the ghastly touch of a row of rotting heads
spiked on the battlements, and you are set wondering anew at the weird
psychology of the dark ages.
I told Mrs. D. the story of Sir Thomas More's head, which his daughter
bribed a man to remove from the spike on the bridge and drop into a boat
below where she sat, and the old lady said, "It must 'ave bin a good
shot". The person responsible for Mrs. D.'s anatomy left out the bump of
reverence; sentiment is also foreign to her composition, whilst her
scepticism of anything she cannot actually see and touch is a deeply
ingrained quality. Sir Thomas More, Henry VIII, Charles II, the
Christian martyrs, are, in her estimation, to be taken with a grain of
salt. She makes no distinction between them and "'Amblet" or the
creations of Bunyan's brain. Tradition is a dead letter to her, and
although she takes a marked interest in the Plague and the Great Fire, I
have a suspicion if she were asked to "have a bit" on the actuality of
those happenings, she would lay odds for, with a sensation of risk.
Another story of a head, instinct with the fee-faw-fum spirit of the
times, is that about good old John Fisher, who would not recognise the
spiritual claims of Henry VIII. Fisher's head was parboiled before being
spiked, and, according to Walter Thornbury, in his "Old and New London,"
"the face for a fortnight remained so ruddy and lifelike and such crowds
collected to see the so-called miracle, that the king, in a rage, at
last ordered the head to be thrown down into the river".
But, dear lady, I am burning the midnight oil and must to bed. Do I
dream, or does the old watchman pass my window crying:--
Maids in your smocks,
Look to your locks,
Your fire and your light,
And give you good night?
Anyhow, it is a relief to turn from those ghastly trophies on the
battlements of the Bridge to this kindly warning with its concluding
benediction.
I echo the latter, and am ever yours,
GEORGE.