CARRINGTON MEWS,
SHEPHERD MARKET,
_20th January._
Dear Agatha,--Mrs. D. and I have been exploring Soho this afternoon. I
started out with the intention of localising certain houses in certain
streets associated with men of letters, but, alas! it was a question of
"change" (_without_ decay) "in all around I see". Old landmarks gone,
and brand new buildings, mostly offices, in their place. Still, there is
enough left to make a visit well worth while, and the weather was
perfect. Frowsy old Soho was almond-scented from the great bunches of
mimosa in the costers' barrows, whilst the streets smiled under the
light of a January afternoon into which Spring had wandered.
There are moods to fit different districts. A mood for the City, one for
Piccadilly, a Chelsea mood, one for the East End, and one for Soho. Soho
was the one spot in the world for me this afternoon, and Mrs. Darling,
who is not subject to moods, said it was "all the same to her where we
went so long as it wasn't a lunatic asylum or a prison".
Soho has an atmosphere distinct from any other spot in London.
Blindfold, you would be aware of the fact directly you crossed its
borders. Its restaurants smell of savoury dishes and its narrow streets
echo gaily to the jangle of piano organs. Its language is cosmopolitan,
and its postcards and paper-covered novels have to be taken with a
tolerant shrug of the shoulders for the odd taste of "those foreigners".
Its shops are dingy, but they _get there_ all the same. There is an art
in their very carelessness. They invite search and have an air of being
at the mercy of the customer.
Mrs. Darling was obviously hoodwinked by this stratagem, and remarked
that she supposed you could get "one er them necklaces" (referring to a
string of real amber beads in a jeweller's window) for about "'alf a
crown". I explained to her that the beads were probably worth L10, to
which she replied that perhaps the shopkeeper _didn't know it_! I got
her away from the window with difficulty, and I have no doubt she will
go to her grave thinking she might have bought that necklace for a song
but for my impatience.
The unusual mildness of the afternoon was indicated in the number of
figures seated on the benches in St. Anne's Churchyard. Drink has
stamped its sinister hall-mark on most of them. Dirt and disease, the
companions of drink, are there too. Despair, which one might reasonably
look for, is absent. Despair argues sensibility, and these human wrecks
seem to have got beyond that stage. They exist in a comatose state,
feeling perhaps a momentary amelioration of their misery in this hour of
Spring, and not looking beyond it.
They have a companion in adversity in the royal pauper, Theodore, King
of Corsica, who died in Soho, and who, as Edward Walford says in his
"Old and New London," was buried at the cost of a small tradesman who
had known him in the days of his prosperity.
We found the tablet without difficulty at the base of the church tower,
close to that of William Hazlitt. The epitaph is by Horace Walpole, and
runs:--
"The grave, great teacher, to a level brings
Heroes and beggars, galley slaves and kings,
But Theodore this moral learn'd ere dead;
Fate pour'd its lesson on his living head--
Bestow'd a kingdom and denied him bread."
Unfortunate Theodore, who, on leaving the prison without a sixpence in
his pocket, took refuge with a tailor in Soho, where three days later
he died. Who out of those passing through the churchyard pause to give a
thought to Theodore or to ponder Walpole's reflections on "The grave,
great teacher".
We found we should have to make a detour to get inside the church, which
lies at a level below the churchyard and is shut off by an iron railing.
So we retraced our steps along Shaftesbury Avenue and into Dean Street.
The church door was open and some one inside was practising on the
organ. The sound came faintly as we entered the porch, and rushed out to
meet us with a burst of melody as we pushed back the inner door. The
player was performing to an empty church, and I recognised the rhythm of
the tumbling notes as Bach's. How many times have I clambered the
gallery stairs of this same old church to listen to the music of John
Sebastian! Strangely enough, it was the recollection of those occasions
which had prompted my visit this afternoon. Good old John! who can sweep
away the cobwebs like a March wind with one of his fugues, set one
smiling at the tender grace of a pastorale, or thrill one with that
solemn and awful summons to Calvary in the dramatic opening of the
Passion Music.
The fugue gave place to a quaint old dance, and Spring, which was paying
a premature visit to the Soho streets outside, stole with the sunshine
through the windows into the church. With it came a dream, and as I
listened to the music, ladies in silk petticoats, with patches and
powder, and gentlemen in wigs and knee breeches paced gravely through a
minuet in the aisle. It was irreverent, but John Sebastian was to blame,
and somehow the dancers seemed no more out of place than did the
sunbeams which found entrance through the dusty windows.
Mrs. Darling had gone to read the "Roll of Honour" in a corner of the
church decorated by flags. She has sounded depths in life which are
outside my experience, and I do not like to obtrude my presence at such
moments. I could see her from where I sat wiping her eyes, yet I knew
that presently she would come back with a cheerful face and some
soul-destroying remark which would knock the bottom out of my dreams.
There is no pose with Mrs. Darling.
It was as I expected. She wanted to know if the man was tuning the
organ? Oh, Mrs. D.! What is the tie which binds me to your prosaic,
plush-jacketed person? Why do I court your unappreciative companionship,
and sacrifice _you_ to my mania for imparting information?
Perhaps the answer was supplied by the old lady herself when we issued
from the church. "I 'spose you'd 'ave stopped in that old church all the
afternoon if I 'adn't tipped you the wink to git out, sir," she said.
"No one could accuse you er bein' a rollin' stone. If it wasn't for _me_
you'd be _choked up_ with moss."
When I leave Shaftesbury Avenue for Berwick Market I always think of
Hogarth, which, by the way, reminds me that I saw a bronze bust of him
at the Portrait Gallery. A keen, small-featured, refined face, with a
penetrating, bad-tempered expression about the eyes--not the face one
would picture of the creator of "The Rake's Progress" or "Marriage a la
Mode". But when is the occasion on which one does not have to readjust
one's mental attitude towards the artist (known only through his works)
on first making acquaintance with his face and features?
[Illustration: BERWICK MARKET.]
Berwick Market, with a Spring sky above the costers' barrows of fruit
and flowers making splashes of colour amidst the motley crowd peopling
its narrow confines, might have stepped straight out of an Italian
canvas on this delectable afternoon. Busy sellers and loitering buyers
seemed to be making a pleasant pastime of it all. The stall-keepers,
with an artless intimacy and a reckless confidence in the weather, had
hung out on lines silk stockings, articles of lingerie, yards of ribbon
and laces. Everything here is open to the world, even the little shops
on either side of the gutter are windowless. What happens in Berwick
Market on wet days, I don't know. I always choose the time of my visits,
carefully avoiding it when there's a blizzard or a downpour. I want to
keep the memory of its cheeriness intact, undimmed. When I pine for a
continental trip, which my purse will not allow, I go to Berwick Market
and stare at the long French loaves in the bakers' shops, at the weird,
dirty-looking sausages enclosed in a network of string, the ropes of
garlic, the spaghetti and salad dressings in the Italian provision
dealers, listening meanwhile to the chatter of foreign tongues all
round. Berwick Market lives out of doors and it doesn't wear hats. It
takes the stranger into its confidence and is never dull. It thrusts fur
coats, frocks, and blouses under your nose as you walk. It will supply
you with butcher's meat, cabbages and potatoes, flowers and fruit,
ironware, books, music, toys, jewellery, leather goods and trinkets, all
within the space of a few hundred yards, and if you buy any of these
things you will go away under the pleasant but false impression that you
have taken advantage of an ingenuous huckster who didn't know the value
of his goods.
Mrs. D. bought a flat-iron, two saucepan lids, and a hat shape. In view
of these articles having to accompany us on the remainder of our
journey, they seemed to me an unwise purchase, especially as it was
problematical whether the lids would fit the saucepans for which they
were intended. She was, however, so convinced that never again would the
opportunity occur for securing ironware at so low a price, or a hat of
such a becoming shape, that I shouldered my share of the burden (the
flat-iron and saucepan lids) and refrained from putting a damper on her
satisfaction.
At the top of Greek Street is the house where De Quincey lived, and it
is always of De Quincey and poor Ann that I think when meditating in
Soho Square. The story of that poor child of the streets, who, out of
her penury, befriended her companion in misfortune and afterwards
disappeared so mysteriously, is one of undying interest and pathos. "For
weeks," says De Quincey, "I had walked with this poor friendless girl up
and down Oxford Street, or rested with her on steps under the shelter of
porticoes...." What a picture of the misery of these two children the
words call up! Speaking of that night in Soho Square when he fainted in
her arms, and she rose and fetched the glass of hot spiced wine which he
was convinced saved his life, he continues, "We sat down on the steps of
a house, which, to this hour, I never pass without a pang of grief and
an inner act of homage to the spirit of that unhappy girl, in memory of
the noble action which she there performed".
I told Mrs. D. the story, and we speculated as to the particular
doorstep on which the outcasts sat. Mrs. D., who treats all facts more
than fifty years old as fiction, said it was "very touchin'," and that
she hoped the young man found Ann in the end and married her. I did not
insist on the truth of the story or the sadness of the end. There are
times when I envy Mrs. D.'s limitations, and this was one of them. I
would give a good deal to know that De Quincey found Ann again. I
picture him after his short absence from London, going at six o'clock to
the bottom of Great Titchfield Street (the appointed place of
rendezvous) in the sure expectation of meeting her. The minutes would
pass and he would watch for the familiar form, at first with confidence,
then with a disappointment which grew minute by minute, and was
accompanied by foreboding conjectures as to the cause of her absence.
When the last hope of her appearance had fled he would seek consolation
in the thought that she who had never failed him in the past must have
had some good reason for not keeping her tryst to-night. She would come
to-morrow. But to-morrow night and all other to-morrows came without
bringing Ann. "I sought her daily," he says, "and waited for her every
night so long as I staid in London, at the corner of Titchfield
Street.... But to this hour I have never heard a syllable about
her...." "Some feelings," he records in another passage, "though not
deeper or more passionate, are more tender than others, and often when I
walk in Oxford Street by dreamy lamplight and hear those airs played on
a barrel organ, which years ago solaced me and my dear companion, as I
must always call her, I shed tears and muse with myself at the
mysterious dispensation which so suddenly and so critically separated us
for ever."
We went and looked at the house in Greek Street, on the front of which
is a tablet stating that De Quincey lived there. One has a feeling of
gratitude towards the Society of Arts which in such fashion strives to
keep green the memory of those men and women who trod the streets of the
great city, dreaming their dreams, and leaving for those who came after
them great deeds to inspire, romance to allure, thoughts of beauty to
refresh the mind, and visions of colour to delight the eyes.
Frith Street was noisy with the play of children just released from
school, and there was a hint of the slackening of the day's activities.
We left Frith Street for Old Compton Street, and from thence into New
Compton Street, which has a dreary "end of the world" sort of
atmosphere. Cheery Soho loses heart at this point, where it is about to
take leave of you, and Church Passage, which terminates in a little
flight of stone steps, and an iron gateway leading into the churchyard
of St. Giles's in the Fields, has a Dickens'-like suggestion of "Joe"
and "Bleak House".
When I told Mrs. D. that St. Giles was the patron saint of lepers, and
that the present church stood not very far from the site of a hospital
for lepers built by the wife of Henry I in 1118, she said she could well
believe it. She was also not surprised to hear that the plague broke out
in St. Giles's, and that the gallows named "Tyburn Tree" was set up near
the aforesaid leper hospital.
I asked her if she had ever read the "Newgate Calendar". She replied
with regret that she hadn't, admitting that if there _was_ a book she
would enjoy it was this particular one. In her estimation there was
nothing like a good murder trial for taking you out of yourself.
The "Newgate Calendar" had occurred to me in connection with "Tyburn
Tree" by reason of references in that gruesome volume to the "last
drink," a glass of ale which used to be presented to the criminals on
their way to the gallows when they passed the gate of the leper
hospital. Yes, there really _is_ some foundation for the eerie
atmosphere of the churchyard of St. Giles. I always remember coming upon
that gate at the end of Church Passage one autumn evening when twilight
was merging into dusk. I had no idea where it led, and I mounted the
steps and found myself in the old churchyard with something of the
sensation which characterises the initial stage of a nightmare. The
backs of squalid houses overlooked the place, and still figures, sunk in
abysmal meditation, sat about on the benches. In the window of a
studio-like building were some plaster casts of heads, and the white
glimmering faces stared into the glimmering shades of evening which were
stealing across the dingy burying-ground. I left the place without
identifying it, and did not see it again for years. Then one day I
stumbled on it unexpectedly, and discovered that my ghostly churchyard
was St. Giles's in the Fields.
Even on this afternoon of sweet promise St. Giles's straggling graveyard
was not a cheerful spot. I have, by the by, never seen so many cats
congregated in any corner of London as I saw in St. Giles's Churchyard.
A villainous-looking old tom, with torn ears, the hero of many a fray,
was seated on a large tomb abutting on to the path, and the first line
of the epitaph chiselled on the stone arrested my attention. "Hold,
passenger!" it began peremptorily, and I barred Mrs. D.'s path whilst I
read:--
"Hold, passenger, here's shrouded in his hearse,
Unparallel'd Pendrill through the universe."
"Pendrill," said I to myself--"who's he?" and, ashamed of my ignorance
of a person so eulogised, I inquired of Mrs. D. if she knew anyone of
that name. She said there was a man named Pennybill who used to sell
Ostend rabbits in Shepherd's Market, but he hadn't been dead long enough
for his tomb to have got so dirty. As she spoke, enlightenment came.
Ostend, Holland, the battle of Worcester, Charles II, and yes, on the
other side of the tomb was the inscription to Richard Pendrill, the
preserver of the life of Charles II.
What an odd, unexpected link with the past that forgotten old tomb made,
standing solitary amidst the sooty shrubs in the cat-haunted churchyard!
The escape of Charles from Worcester to Shoreham, where he found a coal
boat that carried him over to Normandy, might well be a page out of some
romance for all one realises it, as a rule. There are times when I share
Mrs. D.'s scepticism about the past, and Charles, Cromwell, Queen
Elizabeth, Henry VIII and the Gunpowder Plot, wars, plagues, and fires
are just so many incidents in a story book. Then I stumble on an ancient
tombstone with such an inscription as this, almost obliterated by the
winds and rains, the frosts and heats of centuries, or I open Pepys and
read how, on 27th February, 1659, the old chap was "Up in the morning,
and had some red herrings to our breakfast, while my boot-heel was
a-mending, by the same token that the boy left the hole as it was
before," and I say to myself with the shock of coming up bump against
something solid where one had anticipated vacancy, "Then it _was_ all
true!"
The church was closed, but we found the "Resurrection Gateway," where it
rears itself in dignified isolation above the iron railings on the
western side of the church. There is, over it, a curious carving in oak
of the "Last Judgment," depicting that day when long-dead citizens,
endowed with renewed strength, will throw off their earthen trammels,
and shouldering their tombstones with the ease of a Samson, rise to
disclose those secret thoughts and deeds which the kindly grave had
hidden for centuries.
Mrs. Darling remarked that, for her part, she had no fear of death or
judgment. "If I wos to go to bed this night and never git up no more,"
she stated, "there ain't a livin' soul can say I owe them a brass
farthin'. I never done one er my fellow creatures a hinjury, and there's
the things all ready to lay me out in the bottom drawer near the
washstand."
She flourished the paper bag containing the hat shape with an air of
conscious virtue, but I could not emulate her action with the flat iron,
which weighed seven pounds! To tell the truth, I was looking out for a
friendly tombstone behind which that article, together with the saucepan
lids, could be conveniently lost, but some children playing in the
churchyard were watching me as if they suspected my designs, and I had
to abandon the idea.
We took a 'bus down Shaftesbury Avenue to Piccadilly Circus, and had tea
in Jermyn Street at a little confectioner's for which we have an
affection. The cakes are home made and the tea and bread and butter are
good. There is an inner sanctuary with coloured prints of old London on
the walls where one can talk cosily, and is admitted to an amusing
intimacy with the workings of the establishment. Now and again a man in
a white jacket comes and delves into a corner cupboard, and we have
glimpses of pots of jam and groceries. Young men and women drop in from
neighbouring businesses for tea, and everybody knows everybody else. The
waitress has admitted Mrs. D. and me to the family circle, and with a
"Same as usual, sir?" goes to fetch our pot of tea and two plates of
bread and butter. This afternoon she did not even trouble to make the
formal inquiry, but appeared before us with the tea-tray almost as
quickly as we had seated ourselves.
Piccadilly was like fairyland as we walked down it on our way back to
Shepherd Market, and I wished you were with me. The red lights in the
rear of the vehicles, and the silver ones in front, were dancing like
fireflies in one of the most wonderful gloamings I have ever witnessed.
The perfect day, drawing its garments of smoke and rose over the mauve
sky, was making its tender, reluctant farewell, whilst above the sadness
of its passing hung the evening star, companioned by the most slender of
new moons. We turned our money, and felt that Fortune was about to smile
on us.
In the quiet of Half Moon Street, whom should I encounter but Katherine,
in her car? The first intimation I had of her neighbourhood was a
white-gloved hand waving a greeting from the window of the car, then a
face appeared eloquent of a satirical enjoyment of the picture presented
by Mrs. D. and myself with our respective parcels. The incident was over
in a flash and Mrs. D. none the wiser. I am reminded to mention it by
reason of an odd but peculiarly vivid impression I received of Katherine
having suddenly become an old woman. It may have been some trick of
light as the car shot by in the dusk, or a moment of prophetic insight
on my part. But whatever it was, it made me feel I wanted to take up the
cudgels for her and keep the enemy at bay. Blood, after all, is thicker
than water, and Katherine has no weapons with which to fight _that_
spectre.
Shepherd Market is almost deserted at this hour in the late afternoon.
The old coaching yard is full of black shadows, and there are no
customers in the shops. Lights are dim, and the echoes of footsteps in
neighbouring courts and passages can be heard a long way off. In
Carrington Mews some warmth of the fading sunset still lingered, and I
left it with reluctance to mount the dark staircase to my room. There
are days when one feels all is well--not only with _this_ world, but
with the next, which is presumably more important. Youth, on such days,
returns to whisper flatteries in the ears of Old Age. Is it wisdom or
foolishness on the part of Old Age to listen? I leave you with that
question on the thirty-fifth anniversary of our friendship. Do you
remember?
GEORGE.