CARRINGTON MEWS,
_7th October._
Dear Agatha,--I'm glad you were interested in the account of my outing
with Mrs. Darling. Your reference to Verdant Green was apposite but not
quite kind. I bear no malice, however: witness the continuation of the
history of my wanderings.
I have been reading "Pepys' Diary" for what Mrs. Darling would call the
"umpteenth" time. Strangely enough, I had never visited his tomb, and it
occurred to me that Mrs. Darling and I might make a day of it, starting
with Bankside and working round to Hart Street, Seething Lane, by way of
Upper Thames Street. We got off our 'bus at Southwark Street because I
wanted to see some ancient alms-houses I had been told were tucked away
in a side turning near. Alms-houses have an atmosphere of their own
which I always find congenial to my age and aspirations--a roof to cover
one, food and light, and time to idle: what more could one want! Mrs.
Darling didn't agree with me. She is not the kind of woman to grow old
gracefully. She runs across roads, and would no more dream of sitting
over the fire doing nothing for half an hour than she would contemplate
wearing caps--I refer to old ladies' caps, not the cloth variety which
is the approved head-dress for ladies of her class when doing the
morning's shopping.
We found Hopton's Alms-house in Holland Street almost by chance. It is
so easy to pass along the end of the street without discovering anything
unusual. One sees nothing but an iron railing and a hint of green, and
had I not been on the look out, I should have gone my way unconscious of
Hopton and the little oasis he had created for his old men and women in
this corner of the busy city.
We found that the iron railing shut off a little world of "God's
Houses," as they call them in Belgium, from the squalid road and the
tall ugly buildings opposite. On a tablet was inscribed the laconic
statement, "Chas. Hopton, Esq.: Sole founder of this charity. Anno
1752," and when the winter's gales roar down the chimneys at nights, or
the rain beats against the casements, I hope the pensioners sometimes
give Charles a grateful thought.
The houses are built in blocks round three sides of a green which is
traversed by paved paths and set with trees, one tree in each section.
The grass was very green, and pigeons were assembled on the tiled roofs.
There were wooden benches placed at intervals, and a sleek cat sat on
one of them, whilst some caged birds sang unconcernedly over its head.
I spoke to an old man who stood at the door of one of the houses, and he
took us to the back of his dwelling to show us his little garden, in
which a few chrysanthemums were making a brave struggle against the city
smoke. Each house, he pointed out, had its allotment, but the
overshadowing warehouses and factories made gardening a rather thankless
task.
Continuing our way we turned into a side street of mean houses, at the
end of which the vicinity of the river was disclosed by the rattle and
clank of huge cranes as they made their lazy circular movements against
the sky.
We were in Shakespeare's world, and Bear Garden's Alley must have been
named after the Bear Garden, which was almost next door to the Globe
Theatre, where Shakespeare acted. Rose Alley, too, was reminiscent of
the Rose Theatre, where Ben Jonson's plays were performed. But what has
this dingy wharf to do with the rural scene amidst which those old
theatres were placed? Surely there never could have been fields and
country lanes in this neighbourhood of slums, factories, and
warehouses! Fields and lanes which would be sweet with the scents of
summer evenings, and which Shakespeare must have walked, thinking
perhaps of "a bank where wild thyme grows, quite over-canopied with
luscious woodbine".
It was low tide, and the river flowing oilily between its banks was of
the same hue as the mud. A fog haze lurked in the background all round,
and on the opposite side a red-painted barge stood out as if having
caught the warmth of a hidden sun. A few moments ago there had been no
St. Paul's, but now there grew the vague outline of a vast circumference
suspended in the air high above the warehouses opposite. Minute by
minute, as the veil-thinned details were born, the sun found the gold
cross, and the dome washed with purple rose as at the touch of an
enchanter's wand into the sun-rayed vista.
"_That's_ a place I never bin to," observed Mrs. Darling with an air of
conscious virtue. I did not suggest that she should make good the
omission. To tell the truth, the outside of St. Paul's makes me happier
than the inside. To see its purple dome float in majesty above the sea
of house-tops, as unsubstantial as an opium-eater's dream, or to meet
its august presence face to face half-way up Ludgate Hill, when the
pigeons are wheeling round it like bits of tinder blown from an unseen
fire, is to find that "thing of beauty" which is a "joy for ever". But
to go inside is to lose one's identity in a homeless immensity and a
wilderness of echoes.
I was reluctant to leave the river-side. It is an ideal spot for
"loafing". The men employed on wharves and barges are a class apart from
the ordinary workman, it always seems to me. They may not be conscious
of it, but the meditative spirit of the lazy tide, the slow-moving
barges, and those silent activities of the river's life have instilled
in them a poetical and contemplative outlook on existence which no other
calling can inspire.
We crossed the river by the temporary bridge, and turning to the right
made our way along Upper Thames Street. As we went I meditated on
"What's in a name?" the question being suggested by the quaint
nomenclature of the courts and alleys of the city. From the stores of my
memory I could produce Hanging Sword Alley, Dark House Lane, Passing
Alley, Pudding Lane, Hen and Chicken's Court, World's End Passage, Fig
Tree Court, Green-Arbour Court, Boss Alley, Maypole Alley, Crucifix
Lane, Sugar Loaf Court. And last week I came across a book dated 1732 in
which was an alphabetical table of all the streets, courts, lanes,
alleys, yards, rows, within the bills of mortality. Some day I'm going
to take that old book with me and go on a voyage of discovery. Are Dirty
Lane and Deadman's Place still to be found in the parish of Southwark?
Is Coffin Alley still in St. Sepulchre's? I'm afraid not, and I'm quite
sure that Damnation Alley no longer graces St. Martin's in the Fields.
By way of Fish Street Hill, Eastcheap, Great Tower Street, and Mark Lane
we approached St. Olave's in Hart Street. As, however, I wanted to look
through the railings at the old churchyard, we turned the corner into
Seething Lane, where, on top of the iron gate, is a sinister memento of
the Plague. They were weird times, those old days, with their childish
spirit of fee-faw-fum, and the skulls and crossbones on top of the gate
bring a breath from the dark ages into some moment of to-day. Probably
not one person in a hundred notices the skulls or pauses to look through
the iron railings and reflect that Pepys himself must have walked down
that very pathway between the gravestones on that occasion of which he
wrote. "This is the first time I have been in the church since I left
London for the Plague," he says, "and it frighted me indeed to go
through the church, more than I thought it could have done, to see so
many graves lie so high upon the churchyard. I was much troubled at it,
and do not think to go through it again a good while." Later he records
the reassurance he had experienced in seeing those same graves mantled
in snow.
I believe it was the custom when making the entry to add the letter P
after the names of those who had perished by the Black Death, but I have
never had the privilege of seeing the registers. Mary Ramsey, who is
supposed to have brought the Plague into London, is buried in the
churchyard.
The church is square, with a columned nave, and the old glass in the
large east window sheds a mellow light on some painted figures on a tomb
near. The building does not wear its history on its sleeve, but Samuel
Pepys (the only man who ever told the unromantic truth about himself)
could, if he would, paint pictures of some of the scenes those old walls
have witnessed. His body lies beneath the altar, and high above it, on
the north-east wall, is the monument to his wife. She has a girl-like,
engaging face, the head bent slightly forward as if in the act of
listening for some message from her lord and master who lies so silent
below.
It is certain that when Pepys was so frank with himself about his
weaknesses, he never imagined he was going to have an audience which
would last through the centuries. I wondered as I looked at the
sculptured face with its expression a little wistful, and a little
supercilious, which of us would care to purchase notoriety at such a
price?
Mrs. Darling inquired curiously about the nature of those
self-revelations, and as we consumed our chops and baked potatoes, and
drank our ale at a little restaurant near, I told her of a certain Cock
Tavern opposite the Temple, where Pepys in his diary mentions bringing
Mrs. Knipp (an actress of whom his wife was jealous), and where they
"drank, eat a lobster and sang and mighty merry till almost midnight".
And how these meetings went on until Mrs. Pepys came to the bedside of
her husband one night and threatened to pinch him with red-hot tongs....
Whereupon Mrs. Darling found a resemblance between the Essayist and
"that other old gentleman in the waxworks". "Saucy kippers," she called
them both, bracketing King Charles with the roving Samuel.
In justice to poor Samuel, however, I told the old lady how he had said,
"My wife seemed very pretty to-day, it being for the first time I had
given her leave to wear a black patch". How on another occasion he
records, "Talking with my wife, in whom I never had greater content,
blessed be God!" How he had given her five pounds to buy a petticoat,
and how he states that he is "as happy a man as any in the world....
And all do impute almost wholly to my late temperance, since my making
of my vows against wine and play."
Mrs. Darling, who had finished her second glass of ale and felt
cheerful, pulled on her woollen gloves and set her ten-and-elevenpenny
hat at a more jaunty angle. Men, she declared, were "rovin' by nature,"
and if a woman wanted to be happy there were "some things she got to
shut her eyes to". Half the women who grumbled about their husbands had
in _her_ opinion got nobody but themselves to thank for it. The theme is
a favourite one of the old lady's, and she continued her discourse as we
made our way to Houndsditch--a "melancholy" spot, according to
Shakespeare, taking its name from the old city ditch full of dead dogs.
A region of small wholesale shops in the drapery line which made no
pretentions at setting out the wares to advantage, everything being
conducted on strict business principles which left no room for trifling.
One came across such announcements as "Grand Order of Israel Friendly
Society," and names of such Biblical association as Abraham Lazarus,
Isaac Levi, and Simon Solomon. You might by favour purchase a solitary
blouse or a dozen of buttons, but it was not with such casual purchasers
the little shops wished to trade.
We happened on a gateway over which was inscribed, "Phil's Buildings,
Clothes and General Market". A man who had been sitting unnoticed in a
pay-box thrust his head out of the little window. "Want anyone in there,
sir?" he asked.
"No, I want to see the place."
"Penny, please."
I produced two, and we found ourselves in a yard on each side of which
were empty houses, apparently used as warehouses for second-hand
clothes. Beyond was a little market-place where men were ranging their
goods on long forms under a zinc roof. All round lay huge bundles of
wearing apparel--one bundle would contain men's underwear, another
trousers, another coats, not to mention piles of old boots, hats, and
indiscriminate rubbish.
Through the unglazed windows of the empty houses could be seen a
salesman fitting a customer with an overcoat, and a ticket hanging from
the window-sill gave the information that paper and string cost 2d.
Mrs. Darling said there might be bargains to be had if the buyer was "in
the know," the prices placed upon the garments having no relation to
what the seller expected to get (unless "a mug" came along). Bargaining
was the very spirit of the place, and a good Jew would feel defrauded
of his sport if a customer made no attempt to beat him down.
There was a market every day at two o'clock, the Jew in the pay-box told
us, and on being questioned he was quite ready to talk about the slums
near. A neighbourhood where you wanted a protector after dark--a person
like himself, for instance, who knew every man and woman in the place,
and who, _for a consideration_, would take the gentleman round and show
him such things as he had never dreamed of. There was the house which
had been raided by the police and three of them shot--he could show the
bullet marks in the wall. Then there was Mitre Court, where "Jack the
Ripper" had followed on the very heels of the policeman on his beat and
murdered a poor creature within ear-shot and almost eye-shot of the man
in blue, and never a sound of the horrible outrage to break the silence
of the night.
There are other sinister associations connected with the spot, and as I
listened I remembered the houses near which were built on one of the
plague pits. When the workmen were digging foundations they came upon
hundreds of bodies, being able to distinguish the women by their long
hair. There was an outcry about the fear of contagion, and the bodies
were removed and buried all together in a deep hole dug for the
purpose at the upper end of Rose Alley. I should not like to live in a
house built on a plague pit.
[Illustration: GREAT ST. HELEN'S.]
"Great St. Helen's" in Bishopgate Street was a pleasant change from the
horrors to which we had just been listening. The churchyard was carpeted
with dead leaves and the church inside was vague with a coloured dusk.
The glowing windows shut out the light, but through one of plain glass
the sun entered, making a rainbow bridge high up across the nave towards
the Figure of the Good Shepherd on the opposite window.
As we walked round, trying in the semi-darkness to read the inscriptions
on the tombs of Sir John Crosby, grocer and woolstapler, who built
Crosby Hall; Thomas Gresham, founder of the Royal Exchange; and Julius
Caesar, Privy Counsellor to James I, the sunbeams which had penetrated
here and there through cracks and crevices were crossing swords in the
gloom of the old building, finding out a crimson cushion, a sculptured
face or hands folded in prayer, and lighting, as it were, candles in odd
corners.
Not a vestige remains of the old priory of St. Helen's, and the nuns'
gratings on the north side, which communicated with the old crypt, have
now nothing but darkness to reveal to the curious who peer through them.
On the same side of the church is a walled-up door, and a little
circular stone staircase which invites ascent, then confronts the
explorer with impenetrable gloom and "no thoroughfare". The old building
has lost a limb, and "Finis" is, it seems, writ suddenly in the middle
of an exciting chapter.
Mrs. Darling suffers from an infirmity which she describes as "bad
feet," so instead of going on to the Charterhouse, as we had intended,
we had tea, then home by 'bus.
Mrs. Darling, over her third cup, became expansive, and addressed me as
"Old sport". I must certainly give a little time to the study of Cockney
slang. I have arrived at the conclusion that it very effectively fills
gaps left by the vocabulary of the more cultured and colourless classes.
"Old sport." Not half a bad term. There are moods in which I could apply
it to yourself, and occasions on which I really think you might accept
it as a compliment.
Yours with the best of intentions,
GEORGE.