CARRINGTON MEWS,
_1st November._
Dear Agatha,--Yes, I am sure you would find the study of Pepys a
profitable one. Why not read him to the Mothers' Meeting instead of "The
Parent's Friend" or "How to Keep your Husband out of the 'Pub'"? The old
chap can be as smug and moral as Sandford and Merton, and his
instructiveness is always involuntary.
But to the continuation of the story of my wanderings.
Smithfield, apart from its terrible associations with the Christian
martyrs, is not a pleasant place to visit. On every side one is
confronted by corpses sewn up in muslin shrouds, whilst ghoulish men in
greasy overalls, their hands smeared with blood, superintend the packing
of dead flesh into huge vans. A vegetarian could not find a happier spot
in which to point the moral of his message. Mrs. Darling said it made
her feel as if she could never look a bullock or a sheep in the face
again, and the mutton chop I had had for lunch haunted my digestion.
It was a relief to leave these horrors for Charterhouse Square, a sad
enclosure behind iron railings where the yellow leaves lay thick on the
grass and the benches stood empty under the avenue of limes.
The sparrows and starlings were as vociferous as they only can be on a
November afternoon when dusk is approaching. Their notes made a volume
of soft whistling sound which flowed like a tide in the still, cold air.
It followed us through the gateway and into the courtyard, becoming
muffled as we went, then giving place to the perfect peace and quiet of
the old buildings and their surroundings.
Charterhouse has experienced three phases--first, the Carthusian
monastery, then the residence of members of the nobility, lastly, the
alms-house for old gentlemen; and it is in this latter capacity that its
appeal has always lain for myself, or rather, perhaps, I should say it
is the alms-house grafted on that background of ancient history which
stirs the imagination.
[Illustration: THE CHARTERHOUSE.]
In 1611, at the close of the occupation of the Duke of Norfolk and Lord
Thomas Howard, it was bought and endowed as a hospital and school by Mr.
Thomas Sutton. The school was removed in 1872, and the number of
pensioners ("bachelors or widowers over sixty, gentlemen by descent
and in poverty") has been reduced from eighty to fifty.
Mrs. Darling, who has a kindly feeling for "old chaps" (witness her good
offices to the writer), was very particular in her enquiries as to what
was done for the comfort of these particular old gentlemen, and, judged
by the answers of the guide, they have a quite enviable time. I
shouldn't mind being one myself.
A comfortable bed-sitting-room, with a fire to go to bed by (each
pensioner is allowed two tons and a quarter of coal a year), good food,
and forty pounds a year pocket money: what more could one want in those
later years when desires become fewer with the growing restfulness of
old age! Mrs. Darling was of the opinion that the banning of her sex was
to be traced to the monkish associations of the place, and considered it
a thing to be deprecated. Men, left to themselves, she declared, got
"very narrer-minded and dull". They needed a woman to sharpen their wits
"jest the same as a cat needs somethink to sharpen 'is claws on".
We went through a paved passage where are the memorial tablets to some
of the old school boys since become famous--Thackeray, Wesley, Sir Henry
Havelock, Addison, and Steele--and the guide opening a door at the end,
we caught a glimpse of stained glass windows and the dark heavy
interior of the Jacobean chapel. In the silence we could hear the
tick-tock of the chapel clock, that same old clock which seems the
familiar spirit of such places.
I suppose, Agatha, the Charterhouse chapel spells to you, as it does to
me, Colonel Newcome, and in the raw dusk of the November afternoon I
seemed, in the words of Thackeray, to hear "the old reverend blackgowns
coughing feebly in the twilight----"
There were candles in those days; now, the guide touches a button and
the place is illumined by electric lights--not too many, however--just
enough to throw shadows across the aisles and burnish the carvings on
the pensioners' seats. As we stared at the founder's tomb, and heard of
the customs appertaining to the 12th of December, fiction became merged
in fact, and Colonel Newcome grew from out the shadows of the past, a
figure as convincing as any of those buried beneath the old flagstones.
"His dear old head was bent down over his prayer-book; there was no
mistaking him. He wore the black gown of the pensioners of the Hospital
of Grey Friars. His Order of the Bath was on his breast. He stood there
amongst the poor brethren, uttering the responses to the psalm. The
steps of this good man had been ordered thither by Heaven's decree: to
this alms-house! Here it was ordained that a life all love, and
kindness, and honour should end!"
The guide stood back for us to leave, switched off the lights, and
closed the door on the vision of those "reverend blackgowns coughing
feebly in the twilight". But carrying the remembrance of them with us,
we followed him to Norfolk House. The bare boards of the great oak
staircase have a well-scrubbed appearance, and everywhere was silence, a
dead magnificence, and chill austerity. One can imagine the brothers'
rooms, homelike in the cheerful blaze of their fires, but Norfolk House,
with its great staircase, its library and tapestry room, its tiny
picture gallery and terrace, possesses the tragic aloofness of things
which, having survived their uses, remain to be stared at as relics. The
guide switched on the lights as he went, and there sprang to view the
library with its book-lined walk--old books of Jesuit travel and
divinity which are never opened from one year's end to another. In their
dim bindings they make a scholarly background for the Chippendale
furniture, and the portrait of the man who had bequeathed them to the
institution presides wistfully over the neglected feast of letters. From
thence into the governor's room, with its painted Florentine
mantelpiece, its faded tapestries, leaden-paned diamond windows, and the
arms of the Norfolk family emblazoning the ceiling.
All came to view with the switching on of the lights, then faded into
the dusk again at the touch of a button. Our footsteps echoed hollow
down the great dim staircase, and we entered the dining-hall, the most
ancient of the buildings of pre-Reformation date. Here was the warmth of
human contact again: the embers of a fire glowed on the wide hearth
under the carved stone chimney piece, and Mrs. Darling said she could
smell stewed rabbit and apple tart. She seemed quite pleased with this
unofficial testimony to the kind of fare provided for the brothers, and
when the guide told her that ale was allowed to all, and whisky to some,
her opinion of the administration of the charity went up by leaps and
bounds.
Mrs. Darling has no sympathy with the Pussyfoot movement. The late Mr.
Darling, it seems, was, like Peggotty's husband, "a little near" when he
was sober, and but for his habit of now and again taking too much his
wife would never have got a new hat or frock. "Why this very ole plush
jacket he bought me the day after 'e'd got drunk and give me a black
eye!" she stated triumphantly, "an' it wasn't on'y wot 'e _give_ me
neither. It wos wot I used ter pinch when I turned out 'is pockets! I
got as much as ten bob at a time, an' he daren't say 'e'd lost anythink,
because _I'd_ 'ave said 'e'd kep' bad company and bin robbed!"
Mrs. Darling has an ironic sense of humour you will observe.
I think, of all the pictures provided by the Charterhouse, the one which
gave me the greatest enjoyment was that which met our eyes when the
guide opened the door of the "brothers'" library. He had first taken the
precaution to see that the room was unoccupied, so I imagine it is not
exactly on the list of those parts of the buildings free to the public.
The place is a long, low-ceiled apartment (originally the monks'
refectory), pillared and wainscotted, with square lozenge-paned windows
through which the light of the fading afternoon entered reluctantly. It
must, at any time, be a dark room, the outstanding bookcases dividing it
into aisles, at the end of which were the dusty old windows.
But in the twilight, with a ruby fire glowing on the hearth, a large
crimson Turkey rug before it, and a semi-circle of empty wooden chairs
ranged round, it struck a note of comfort and homeliness very welcome
after our wanderings through rooms given over to ghosts. Not that those
same ghosts did not lurk here too. The empty wooden chairs with their
stiff, outstretched arms, had a suggestion of waiting for a company
other than the black-robed pensioners who, apparently, were fonder of
their own bed-sitting-rooms than this ancient apartment with its monkish
associations.
But the guide was waiting for us: there is no time allowed for dreaming
in these places. One must do that afterwards at home, and I sometimes
think, Agatha, that more even than my enjoyment in the actual visits to
these old scenes, is the pleasure of talking to you about them in these
letters.
A solitary gas lamp was flickering here and there in the cloisters when
we came outside, and we found the sparrows and starlings still
continuing their concert with indefatigable energy. As they flew round
and round the trees it was difficult to distinguish between birds and
falling leaves. The dusk was peopled with both.
The proximity to St. Bartholomew's suggested a visit, and we walked a
few yards down Aldersgate Street and from thence into Cloth Fair. Of the
original Cloth Fair there is very little left now. On every side you see
empty spaces where, not many years ago, had been tortuous streets and
courts of ancient houses that must have witnessed the reign of many a
king and queen--houses that stood there long before the Christian
martyrs were burnt at Smithfield, and first plague, then fire, ravaged
the city. Could they have told their terrible secrets those ancient
dwellings might have recounted stories as terrorising as the most
blood-curdling of nightmares.
[Illustration: A BIT OF OLD SMITHFIELD]
Of the particular row of houses which had always appealed to me by
reason of their contiguity to the churchyard, part of one only remains.
Many a time have I stood and stared at the dingy backs of those
unwholesome dwellings, wondering what it must feel like to live in a
room with a discoloured tombstone peeping in at the window. Familiarity,
one imagines, would breed contempt, but there would be times during
sleepless nights, or in some hour of depression, when the horrid
nearness of that sooty churchyard, with its mouldering bodies under the
rank grass and refuse, would foster the evil imaginations of madness.
However, the houses, and many of their like, have gone now, and Cloth
Fair and Little Britain, with the exception of little bits here and
there such as in East Passage, make space for business premises and
warehouses. In the midst of it all stands St. Bartholomew the Great, a
thing of mutilated limbs--witness the scars on portions of its walls
where its members have been dissevered, and where in their place
mundane buildings have crowded up to within a few yards of it. Yet there
it stands, in dignified aloofness from the intrusive neighbours who
nudge its elbows with irreverent and familiar touch. They may rub
shoulders with it at every point, but between them and it is no more
intimacy than there is between Rahere, its founder, and the sight-seer
who, gazing at his tomb, learns the story of his conversion from jester
to monk. The strange story of a vision of St. Bartholomew, in which the
Saint, with a practical regard to detail, ordered Rahere to build a
church in Smithfield, a behest the noble fulfilment of which is made
evident in the old walls that have weathered so many centuries, and the
Hospital next door.
St. Bartholomew's is one of those buildings which has, like some people,
to be known to be loved. At first one is almost repelled by its austere
and dignified beauty. It is unapproachable with the unapproachableness
of the great. It is dim, too, with the pathetic dimness of a lonely old
age, and one's sense of reverence is violated when one learns that the
Lady Chapel was at one time tenanted by a fringe manufacturer, and the
north transept used as a blacksmith's forge.
But the age of vandalism is past, and within the old walls law and
order are restored. The ring of the blacksmith's hammer has given place
to the solemn notes of the organ, the blaze of the forge fire to the
soft light of altar candles. The fret and hurry of life no more cross
the threshold, and you can meditate undisturbed.
Mrs. Darling was obviously bored. Historical details and dates leave her
cold. She does not belong to the class of sight-seers who, hungry for
information, follow sheep-like in the wake of the guide. She wanders off
on her own and has a curious faculty for seizing on some unimportant
detail which makes a personal appeal to her. Charterhouse will always
mean for her the figure of one of the old pensioners we saw in the
cloisters. A funny old chap in a large slouch felt hat, a dirty trench
coat, and with his trousers sagging about his ankles--that and the smell
of stewed rabbit and apple tart, together with rumours of nips of whisky
and glasses of ale, will stand out in her memory from an undigested mass
of "dry" facts and a background of empty echoing rooms and old grey
walls, which latter, as she expressed it, "give her the pip". The
history of The Priory of St. Bartholomew made her tired, and I suggested
an adjournment.
As we passed St. Bartholomew's Hospital I pointed out to her the brass
plate in the wall on which was inscribed the names of some who, within
a few feet of the spot, had suffered for their faith at the stake in
1556-1557. Smithfield will always be a place of shuddering associations,
and even the prosaic market front and the cold-storage premises, with
their rows of lighted windows starring the blue dusk, seemed in some
strange fashion implicated in its awful memories. As late as March,
1849, when excavations were being made for a new sewer, there were
discovered, three feet below the surface, immediately opposite the
entrance to the church, charred human bones and the remains of some oak
posts partially consumed by fire. From whence did the courage of those
heroic citizens of old come? Life has no greater mystery than the
undaunted spirit with which they faced the hellish tortures of fire and
the rack.
At the top of Giltspur Street I paused with a sudden recollection of
having heard that there still existed the quaint statue of the Fat Boy
who used to stand at Pie Corner, where the Great Fire ceased. The
incident appealed to Mrs. Darling's curious faculty for selection. She
said she would like to see that fat boy, and we promptly went in search
of him.
There were no signs of Pie Corner, the spot where it should have been
being occupied by the shop of a foot specialist. It was Mrs. Darling who
discovered the Fat Boy standing in a little brick alcove, over the
door, which had apparently been made for his reception.
He was not a model of symmetry or beauty, but Mrs. Darling promptly
annexed him as she had annexed the old pensioner of the sagging trousers
and slouched hat, and somewhere in the lumber-room of the old lady's
memory the Fat Boy took his place with Charles II, the aforesaid old
pensioner, and Samuel Pepys, to whom she invariably refers as "that
saucy ole man with the curls".
The fact that the Great Fire broke out at the king's baker's in Pudding
Lane and ended at Pie Corner struck her as something more than a
coincidence. It was all very well for people to talk about "chance,"
_she_ didn't believe in chance. The very fact of the coincidence of
names suggested, to _her_ mind, a well-thought-out plan. She would have
sympathised with the Rev. Samuel Vincent, who, writing at the time,
said, "This doth smell of a Popish design, hatcht in the same place
where the Gunpowder Plot was contrived".
By the way, I never think of the Great Fire without remembering the
description of an eyewitness of the burning of Guild Hall: "And amongst
other things that night, the sight of Guildhall was a fearful spectacle,
which stood, the whole body of it together, in view for several hours
together, after the fire had taken it, without flames (I suppose because
the timber was such solid oak), like a bright shining coal, as if it had
been a palace of gold, or a great building of burnished brass". You
won't beat that for a bit of word painting.
We walked on through the Old Bailey and into Fleet Street, where Shoe
Lane reminded me of the fact that the man who was responsible for the
phrase, "Before you could say Jack Robinson," was a tobacconist named
Herdom, who lived at 98 Shoe Lane some hundred years ago.
The following verse is ascribed to him:--
Says the lady, says she, "I've changed my state."
"Why, you don't mean," says Jack, "that you've got a mate?
You know you promised me". Says she, "I couldn't wait,
For no tidings could I gain of you, Jack Robinson,
And somebody one day came to me and said
That somebody else had somewhere read,
In some newspaper, that you were somewhere dead".
"I've not been dead at all," says Jack Robinson,
the pathetic naivete of which statement marks the simple sailorman.
Richard Lovelace, the Cavalier poet, who lives in the lines--
I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Lov'd I not honour more,
together with--
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage,
died in Gunpowder Alley, Shoe Lane, and I wondered whether the Alley
still existed under that name.
It did not take many minutes to find out. Yes, there it was, just at the
top on the left-hand side, but no trace of poor Lovelace--nothing but
new offices, one or two dingy little shops, and the patient thump,
thump, of printing presses.
We went by way of New Street through Nevill's Court, where, behind an
old wall and sooty front gardens, stand a row of ancient red brick
houses. I like to go through Nevill's Court on one of those mild days in
February when Spring lurks behind the grey stillness and there are buds
on the lilac bush which looks over the top of that same old wall. The
little greengrocer's at the end, too, always strikes a welcome note of
colour with its flaming oranges and rosy-cheeked apples.
Nevill's Court leads to Fetter Lane, which Mrs. D. at once associated
with Newgate. In order to mitigate her disappointment on hearing that
"Fetter" was a corruption of Fewterers (otherwise the beggars and
disorderly persons who used to frequent the place), I told her the
story of Elizabeth Brownrigge, the celebrated murderess who was
executed at Tyburn, September 14th, 1767, for beating her apprentice to
death. The house where the infamous deed was done was in Fetter Lane,
looking into Fleur-de-lys Court, and the cellar in which the child was
confined, together with the iron grating through which her cries were
heard, used, according to a London historian, to be shown. After the
execution, the corpse was put into a hackney coach and taken to
Surgeons' Hall for dissection, and somewhere in a London collection the
skeleton is still preserved. A hoarding covered with advertisements
stood on the spot, marking the demolition of some old premises. Mrs.
Darling, however, must needs explore Fleur-de-lys Court, and we
discovered an old shut-up house with a cellar grating, which Mrs.
Darling was quite satisfied was the scene of the sinister crime. So
pleasantly excited was she that she forgot her bad feet and walked on
with a swing down Fetter Lane, past "The Record" Office and the entrance
to the Moravian Chapel, that drab little building where Baxter preached
in 1672 and Wesley and Whitfield thundered of the wrath to come, giving
sinners bad nights, and cheating the devil of his due.
I did not remind Mrs. Darling of these things. She was, I knew, looking
forward to tea and toasted scones, over which she would demand a fuller
account of the murder committed by Elizabeth Brownrigge, and speculate
on how the Charterhouse pensioners spent their pocket-money, and what
would happen if they fell in love.
I pass on the solution of the second of these conundrums to you, and
remain,
Your old friend,
GEORGE.