Byzantine, or early English, or Elizabethan, or sham Gothic style, you
have had St. Giles’s always before, behind, and about you. From a hundred
foul lanes and alleys have debouched, on to the spick-and-span-new
promenade, unheard-of human horrors. Gibbering forms of men and women
in filthy rags, with fiery heads of shock hair, the roots beginning an
inch from the eyebrows, with the eyes themselves bleared and gummy, with
gashes filled with yellow fangs for teeth, with rough holes punched in
the nasal cartilage for nostrils, with sprawling hands and splay feet,
tessellated with dirt—awful deformities, with horrifying malformations of
the limbs and running sores ostentatiously displayed; Ghoules and Afrits
in a travestie of human form, rattling uncouth forms of speech in their
vitrified throttles. These hang about your feet like reptiles, or crawl
round you like loathsome vermin, and in a demoniac whine beg charity from
you. One can bear the men; ferocious and repulsive as they are, a penny
and a threat will send them cowering and cursing to their noisome holes
again. One cannot bear the women without a shudder, and a feeling of
infinite sorrow and humiliation. They are so horrible to look upon, so
thoroughly unsexed, shameless. Heaven-abandoned and forlorn, with their
bare liver-coloured feet beating the devil’s tattoo on the pavement,
their lean shoulders shrugged up to their sallow cheeks, over which falls
hair either wildly dishevelled or filthily matted, and their gaunt hands
clutching at the tattered remnant of a shawl, which but sorrily veils
the lamentable fact that they have no gown—that a ragged petticoat and a
more ragged undergarment are all they have to cover themselves withal.
With sternness and determination one can bear these sights; but, heavens
and earth! the little children! who swarm, pullulate—who seem to be
evoked from the gutter, and called up from the kennel, who clamber about
your knees, who lie so thickly in your path that you are near stumbling
over one of them every moment, who, ten times raggeder, dirtier, and
more wretched-looking than their elders, with their baby faces rendered
wolfish by privation, and looking a hundred years old, rather than not
ten times that number of days, fight and scream, whimper and fondle,
crawl and leap like the phantoms a man sees during the access of
_delirium tremens_. I declare that there are babies among these miserable
ones—babies with the preternaturally wise faces of grown up men; babies
who, I doubt little, can lie, and steal, and beg, and who, in a year or
so, will be able to fight and swear, and be sent to jail for six months’
hard labour. Plenty of the children are big enough to be “whipped and
discharged.” Yes; that is the pleasant tee-totum: “six months’ hard
labour,” “whipped and discharged,” the merry prologue to Portland and
the hulks, the humorous apprenticeship to the penal settlements and the
gallows. And yet people will tell me that St. Giles’s is “done away
with”—“put down,” as the worshipful Sir Peter Laurie would say. Glance
down any one of the narrow lanes you like after passing Broker’s Row. See
the children coming out of the gin-shops and the pawnbrokers’. Ask the
policeman whether every court in the vicinity be not full of thieves,
and worse. Look at the lanes themselves, with the filthy rags flaunting
from poles in the windows in bitter mockery of being hung out to dry
after washing; with their belching doorways, the thresholds littered
with wallowing infants, and revealing beyond a Dantean perspective of
infected backyard and cloacan staircase. Peep, as well as you may for the
dirt-obscured window panes, and see the dens of wretchedness where the
people whose existence you ignore dwell—the sick and infirm, often the
dying, sometimes the dead, lying on the bare floor, or, at best, covered
with some tattered scraps of blanketing or matting; the shivering age
crouching over fireless grates, and drunken husbands bursting through the
rotten doors to seize their gaunt wives by the hair, and bruise their
already swollen faces, because they have pawned what few rags remain to
purchase gin. But then St. Giles’s doesn’t exist! It has been done away
with! It is put down! “Stunning Joe Banks” and Bamfylde Moore Carew have
been subdued by civilisation and the march of intellect! Of course.
Notwithstanding all which there is a terrific fire in the very midst
of St. Giles’s to-night; and that conflagration may do more in its
generation towards the abolition of the district, than all the astute
contractors and speculative builders. The fire is at an oilman’s shop,
who likewise manufactures and deals in pickles, and from the nature of
the combustible commodities in which he trades, you may anticipate a rare
blaze. Blaze! say an eruption of Mount Vesuvius rather; far high into the
air shoot columns of flame, and hanging thickly over all are billows upon
billows of crimson smoke, the whole encircled by myriads of fiery sparks
that fall upon the gaping crowd and make them dance and yell with terror
and excitement.
The police have very speedily made a sanitary _cordon_ round about the
blazing premises, and let none pass save those who have special business
near the place. The firemen are “welcome guests” within the magic
_cordon_, as also the fussy, self-important sergeants and inspectors
of police, who often do more harm than good with their orders and
counter-orders. There are some other gentlemen, too, who slip in and out
unquestioned and unchallenged. They don’t pump at the fire-engines, and
they don’t volunteer to man the fire-escape. But they seem to have an
undisputed though unrecognised right to be here, there, and everywhere,
and are received on a footing of humorous equality by the police, the
fire-escape men, the firemen, and the very firemen’s dogs. They are
not official-looking persons by any means. They wear no uniforms, they
carry no signs of authority, such as truncheons, armlets, or the like.
They are rather given, on the contrary, to a plain and unpretending,
not to say “seedy,” style of attire. Napless hats, surtouts tightly
buttoned up to the throat and white at the seams, pantaloons of undecided
length, unblackened bluchers, and umbrellas, seem to be the favourite
wear among these gentlemen. They are, not to mince the matter, what
are termed “occasional reporters” to the daily newspapers, and, in
less courteous parlance, are denominated “penny-a-liners.” It is the
vocation of these gentlemen (worthy souls for the most part—working very
hard for very little money) to prowl continually about London town,
in search of fires, fallings in and down of houses, runnings away of
vicious horses, breakings down of cabs, carriages, and omnibuses; and,
in fact, accidents and casualties of every description. But especially
fires. Fatal accidents are not unnaturally preferred by the occasional
reporters, because they lead to coroners’ inquests, which have of
course also to be reported; and, in the case of a fire, a slight loss
of life is not objected to. It entails “additional particulars,” and
perhaps an inquiry before the coroner, with an examination of witnesses
relative to the cause of the fire; nay, who knows but it may end in a
trial for arson? There was—and may be now—a gentleman attached to the
combustible department of the press, who was so well known and practised
a hand at reporting conflagrations, that he was christened, and to
some extent popularly known as, the “Fire King.” It was facetiously
suggested that he was unconsumable, made of asbestos, not to be affected
by heat, like Signor Buono Cuore at Cremorne Gardens. According to
the legend current in London newspaper circles, the “Fire King” had
his abode next door to a fire-engine station in the Waterloo Road,
and further to guard against the possibility of missing one of these
interesting, and, to him, remunerative events, he caused to be inscribed
on the door-jamb, in lieu of the ordinary injunction to “ring the top
bell,” this solitary announcement on a neat brass plate, “Fire Bell.”
So, when a fire was signalled within the beat of that portion of the
brigade stationed in the Waterloo Road—or, indeed, anywhere else if of
sufficient magnitude, for the brigade are not by any means particular
as to distances, and would as lief go down the river to Gravesend or up
it to Henley if occasion required—a stalwart brigadier, his helmet and
hatchet all donned, would pull lustily at the fire-bell, accompanying the
tintinnabulation by stentorian shouts of “Wake up, Charley!” Charley,
the “Fire King,” perhaps at that moment serenely dreaming of new Great
Fires of London, Temples of Diana at Ephesus, and Minsters at York,
ignited by Erostatratuses and Jonathan Martins yet unborn, would sing
out of the window a sonorous “All right!” hastily dress, descend, jump
on the ready-harnessed engine, and be conveyed jubilantly, as fast as
ever the horses could carry him, to the scene of the fire. But two stains
existed on the “Fire King’s” otherwise fair escutcheon. It was darkly
rumoured that on one occasion—it was a very fat fire at a patent candle
manufactory—he had offered to bribe the turncock, so tampering with the
supply of water; and that on another, it being a remarkably cold winter’s
night, he expressed a hope that the main might be frozen. And yet a more
tender-hearted man—“additional particulars,” and the claim of a wife and
large family being put out of the question—than the Fire King, does not
exist.
Meanwhile the oil and pickle man’s house blazes tremendously. The
houses on either side must go too; so think the firemen. Fears are
entertained for the safety of the houses over the way, already scorched
and blistering, and the adjoining tenements within a circle of a hundred
yards are sure to be more or less injured by water, for the street is
wretchedly narrow, and the houses lean-to frightfully. One extremity of
the thoroughfare has been shored up for years by beams, now rotting. The
oil and pickle man is heavily insured, so is the contractor for army
clothing over the way, so is the wholesale boot and shoe manufacturer
next door. It would be a mercy if the whole decayed stack of buildings
were swept away by the devouring, yet purifying element. Yes, a mercy,
surely a mercy. But the miserable inhabitants of the crumbling tenements
that cling like barnacles to the skirts of the great shops and factories,
are they insured? See them swarming from their hovels half naked,
frenzied with terror and amazement, bearing their trembling children in
their arms, or lugging their lamentable shreds and scraps of household
goods and chattels into the open. Are _they_ insured? The fire will
send them to the workhouse, or, maybe, to the workhouse dead-wall—for
they have no legal settlement there, or they are not casual paupers, or
they haven’t seen the relieving-officer, or they are too early, or too
late—there to crouch and die. To be sure, they ought never to have been
born. _They_ are not necessary for the prosperity of the wholesale trade
in boots and shoes, oil, pickles, and army clothing. Why cumber they the
earth?
And still the fire leaps up into the cold morning air. The house will be
gutted out and out, the police now say authoritatively. Happily there is
no danger to be apprehended now for human life within the blazing pile.
The oil and pickle chandler does not dwell in his warehouse. He has a
snug villa at Highgate, and is very probably now contemplating the motley
sky from his parlour-window, and wondering wherever the fire can be. The
only living person who had to be rescued was an old housekeeper, who
persisted in saying that she had lived in the house “seven and thirty
year,” and wouldn’t leave it while one stone remained on another; which
was not so very difficult a task, seeing that the premises were built
throughout of brick. She had to be hustled at last, and after much to
do, into the fire-escape; but for hours afterwards she led the firemen a
terrible life respecting the fate of a certain tom-cat, of extraordinary
sagacity, called Ginger, which she averred to have left sitting on
the lid of the water-butt, but which very soon afterwards appeared in
the flesh, so scorched that it smelt like burnt feathers, and clawing
convulsively at the collar of a police-constable of the F. division. It
is, perhaps, scarcely worth while to state that in the course of the
fire a poor woman is carried from one of the adjoining hovels dead. She
was close upon her confinement, and the child and she are gone to a more
peaceable and merciful city, where lives, at least, are assured for ever.
Towards two o’clock, the columns of flame begin to grow slenderer, less
continuous, more fitful. The clanking of the fire-engines does not
decrease, however, in the least, though the firemen joyfully declare
that the fire is “got under.” The surrounding publicans—who, though they
closed at midnight, have all taken down their shutters with marvellous
alacrity—are doing a roaring trade in beer, which is distributed to the
volunteers at the pumps in sufficiently liberal quantities, a check being
kept upon the amount consumed by means of tickets. Where the tickets
come from I have no means of judging, but this wonderful fire-brigade
seem prepared for everything.
So, feeling very hot and dry, and dazed about the eyes with constant
contemplation of the flames, I leave St. Giles’s and the oil and pickle
vender’s warehouse, which, when daylight comes, will be but a heap of
charred, steaming ruins, and wander westward, musing over the fires I
have seen and the fires I have read of. I think of the great fire of
London in Charles’s time—the fire that began at Pudding Lane and ended
at Pye Corner, and in commemoration of which they built that strange
monument, with the gilt shaving-brush at the top—
“... London’s column, pointing to the skies,
Like a tall bully, lifts its head and lies.”
I think of the great fire at the Tower of London in 1841, of which I was
an eye-witness, and which consumed the hideous armouries built by William
III. and their priceless contents. I think upon the great scuffle and
scramble to rescue the crown and regalia from the threatened Jewel House,
such a scuffle and scramble as had not taken place since Colonel Blood’s
impudent attempt to steal those precious things. Then my mind reverts to
the monster conflagration by which the winter palace at St. Petersburg
was destroyed in 1839; of the strange discovery then made, that dozens of
families lived on the roof of the palace—lived, and roosted, and died,
and kept fowls and goats there, of whose existence the court and the
imperial household had not the remotest idea; of the sentinel who died at
his post, notwithstanding the imperial command to leave it, because he
had not been relieved by his corporal; and of the Czar himself watching
with compressed lips the destruction of his magnificent palace, and
vainly entreating his officers not to risk their lives in endeavouring
to save the furniture. One zealous aide-de-camp could not be dissuaded
from the attempt to reach a magnificent pier-glass, framed in gold and
malachite, from a wall, whereupon his Imperial Majesty, seeing that
injunction, entreaty, menace were all in vain, hurled, with the full
force of his gigantic arm, his opera-glass at the sheet of crystal, which
was shivered to atoms by the blow. Not an uncharacteristic trait of
Nicholas Romanoff.
TWO O’CLOCK A.M.—A LATE DEBATE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, AND THE TURNSTILE
OF WATERLOO BRIDGE.
I never could understand politics (which difficulty of comprehension of a
repulsive topic I share, I am delighted to know, with the whole charming
female sex, for a woman who is a politician is to me no woman at all).
I never could be consistent in public matters. If my remembrance serve
me correctly, I think I began life as a flaming Conservative. I am now
as flaming a Radical; but I admit that I am most deplorably deficient
in consistency. I find myself, while straining every nerve to defend
the cause, to advocate the rights, to denounce the oppressors of that
English people of whom I am one, frequently halting on ground where
Eglintoun Beaverup, the Conservative _par excellence_, and I can shake
hands; I find myself acknowledging that “blood is thicker than water,”
and that gentle birth will hold its own in the midst of sarcasms against
the tenth transmitters of foolish faces. I find myself actuated now (as
ever in that I have been consistent) by the same dislike and contempt
for the cruel, capricious, ruffian, unteachable Mob—the base _decamisado
canaille_, who are not the working classes, or the lower classes, or any
other class, but the Father of confusion and anarchy’s—the scurvy mob who
pelt a Castlereagh to-day and tear a John de Witt in pieces to-morrow;
who slaughtered Rienzi, and yelped for joy when Madame Roland went to the
guillotine; who cried for “justice” upon Charles Stuart, and danced round
the Tyburn tree from which dangled the rotting corpse of Cromwell; who
would trample on Henry Brougham or John Russell at the present writing,
and rend their vitals, if _their_ mobbish majesty were crossed in one of
its wild-baboon whims.
With this candid confession of my political shortcomings (I mean to
stand some day for the borough of Weathercock), and having thus, I hope,
disarmed criticism, I shall now venture into the (to me) perilous region
of politics. It is Two o’Clock in the morning; we will even be present in
the spirit at a late debate in the “House.”
Which august assembly has already been designated by some irreverent wag
as a “large house which keeps bad hours.” In truth, one needs to be
very intimately acquainted, not only with the framework, but with the
minuter organisation of English society and institutions—(how sick I am,
and you must be, of those eternally-recurring words “institutions” and
“society!”)—to understand the causes of the immoderately late hours kept
sometimes by the Lords, but with much greater frequency by the Commons’
House of Parliament. At the first blush, there seems no earthly reason
why the legislative business of the nation should not be got over during
the day, or, at the outside, before the night were spent. The French
Deputies, Conventionalists, or Representatives in the National Assembly,
in their stormiest and most prolonged debates, seldom heard the chimes at
midnight; and, ardent parliamentarians as are the Americans, it is only
towards the immediate close of the session that Congress keeps for two
or three days and nights a sort of Saturnalia of untimely sittings. If
report speaks true, the members of the United States Legislature are only
enabled to bear these unwonted vigils by incessant recurrence to powerful
stimulants. “Quislings,” “Fiscal Agents,” “Stone Fences,” “Bullocks’
Milk,” and the innumerable tribe of “Cocktails,” are at a premium during
these abnormally protracted debates; the benches of the House and the
desks of the members stand in imminent danger of being whittled away
during the excitement of discussion; the amount of tobacco masticated
is sufficient to ruin the digestive powers of the nation; the spittoons
overflow, and the fretfulness and irritation not unnaturally engendered
by nervous excitement, occasionally finds relief in cowhiding in the
committee-rooms, gouging in the lobbies, and “stand up and drag out”
fights on the august floor itself, occupied by the conscript fathers of
the republic. Thus I have been informed; but it may be that report tells
a fib, after all.
When we arrive, however, at a just understanding and appreciation of the
mechanism of this wondrous British constitutional watch, jewelled in ever
so many holes as it is, with its levers, and escapements, and unnumbered
compensation balances, the lateness of our legislative hours will not be
by far so much of a mystery to us. We are altogether a sitting-up late
people. The continental theatres are all closed by eleven. We dismiss
our audiences sometimes at midnight, oftener at half-past, or a quarter
to one in the morning. Our fashionable balls commence when those of
other nations are terminating. We may not dine so late, but then we sup
heavily, hours afterwards. Night life in London does not condescend to
commence till the “small hours;” yet, in dissipated Paris, you may
count the _cafés_ and supper-rooms on your fingers whose portals are
open at one o’clock in the morning. The “Journal des Debats” goes to
press at four in the afternoon; eight hours later, there is yet often
a leader to be written for the forthcoming number of the “Times.” The
only capital that can equal London in the faculty of “keeping it up” to
any number of hours, is St. Petersburg. There the antipathy which the
Russians entertain for going to bed is solely surpassed by their aversion
to getting up. They turn night into day; but the sturdy, strong-willed,
perverse English work or dissipate nearly “twice round the clock.” They
make the little children go to bed; yet the ambition even of those
younglings is to “sit up late” like the grown people.