CHERRY & VIOLET
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[Illustration]
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CHERRY & VIOLET:
A Tale of the Great Plague
Illvstrations by
John Jellicoe
&
Herbert Railton
Introdvction by The Rev^{d.} W·H·Hutton
LONDON
John C. NIMMO
·MDCCCXCVII·
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As I sat by myself, I talked to myself,
And thus to myself said I.
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[Illustration:
Cherry and Violet
]
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CHERRY & VIOLET
A TALE OF
THE GREAT PLAGUE
BY
THE AUTHOR OF “MARY POWELL” AND “THE
HOUSEHOLD OF SIR THOS. MORE”
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
THE REV. W. H. HUTTON, B.D.
FELLOW OF S. JOHN’S COLLEGE, OXFORD
AND TWENTY-SIX ILLUSTRATIONS BY
JOHN JELLICOE AND HERBERT RAILTON
LONDON
JOHN C. NIMMO
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
MDCCCXCVII
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Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
At the Ballantyne Press
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CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. —The Reminiscences of Mistress 1
Cherry.—The Fire, & Double
Tide.—Mal-conversation
II. —Cherry endeavours to remember if she 17
were pretty.—A Water-party
III. —Result of the Water-party 36
IV. —Chelsea Buns 56
V. —A Shadow on the House 77
VI. —Metanoia 95
VII. —Signs in the Air 114
VIII. —The Plague 136
IX. —Foreshadows 149
X. —A Friend in Need 169
XI. —Distinction between would & should 199
XII. —Camping out in Epping Forest 207
XIII. —Ghosts 226
XIV. —Riding a Pillion 243
XV. —The Squire’s Garden 259
XVI. —The Burning City 284
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
From Drawings by JOHN JELLICOE and HERBERT RAILTON.
FRONTISPIECE. Frontispiece
Drawn by HERBERT RAILTON
PAGE
TITLE-PAGE. iii
Designed by HERBERT RAILTON
MOTTO. iv
Designed by HERBERT RAILTON
OLD LONDON BRIDGE. 1
Drawn by HERBERT RAILTON
“MY FATHER’S SHOP WAS ON THE EAST SIDE” 6
Drawn by JOHN JELLICOE and HERBERT
RAILTON
“ONE AND THE SAME CRADLE.” 10
Drawn by JOHN JELLICOE
“IN THE ARBOUR AT THE TOP OF OUR HOUSE.” 20
Drawn by JOHN JELLICOE
“THE BACK-ROOM IN WHICH HE SLEPT WAS A 22
LEAN-TO STUCK AGAINST THE MAIN WALL.”
Drawn by HERBERT RAILTON
“THIS COMICALITY DREW CROWDS OF PEOPLE.” 31
Drawn by JOHN JELLICOE
“GOSSIPING WITH HUGH BRAIDFOOT.” 42
Drawn by JOHN JELLICOE
“THE GAY PARTY SET OUT.” 63
Drawn by JOHN JELLICOE
“LOOKED OUT ON THE BRIDGE.” 66
Drawn by HERBERT RAILTON
“I FOUND HER ON HER KNEES.” 82
Drawn by JOHN JELLICOE
“AND SO THE GOOD MAN WENT.” 105
Drawn by JOHN JELLICOE
“WE LET OUR WINDOWS.” 116
Drawn by JOHN JELLICOE
“AND NOW A SHOCKING SIGHT WAS TO BE SEEN 122
AT THE BRIDGE GATE.”
Drawn by HERBERT RAILTON
“HOUSES WERE SHUT UP.” 136
Drawn by JOHN JELLICOE and HERBERT
RAILTON
“KEEPING THE GATES WITH MUCH JEALOUSY.” 140
Drawn by JOHN JELLICOE
“I MADE FOR CHEAPSIDE.” 158
Drawn by JOHN JELLICOE and HERBERT
RAILTON
“A PARTY OF DISORDERLY YOUNG MEN.” 166
Drawn by JOHN JELLICOE
“THERE HE LAY.” 179
Drawn by JOHN JELLICOE
“WE HAD WORDS ABOUT IT.” 212
Drawn by JOHN JELLICOE
“I SAW SOME WOMEN PASSING THROUGH THE 222
TREES.”
Drawn by JOHN JELLICOE
“THE OLD GARDEN WITH THE IRON GATE.” 231
Drawn by HERBERT RAILTON
“AN OLD RED-BRICK HOUSE.” 248
Drawn by JOHN JELLICOE and HERBERT
RAILTON
“A BOWLING-GREEN OF WONDERFUL FINE 260
TURF.”
Drawn by HERBERT RAILTON
IN THE SQUIRE’S GARDEN. 264
Drawn by JOHN JELLICOE and HERBERT
RAILTON
CHERRY’S WEDDING LEAVING THE CHURCH. 279
Drawn by JOHN JELLICOE
“ST. PAUL’S WAS NOW IN A BLAZE.” 294
Drawn by HERBERT RAILTON
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Introduction
SO reticent was Miss Manning in her lifetime, and so loyally have her
wishes been obeyed by her kindred since her death, that when Mr. Nimmo
last year re-published her beautiful memorial portrait, “The Household
of Sir Thomas More,” it was clear that whatever of her personal history
had ever been known had been already forgotten. She had indeed been
confused, in a Biographical Dictionary, with another writer: it even
needed the assurance of her surviving niece to convince inquirers that
she lived and died unmarried. Thus to live and die, “the world
forgetting, by the world forgot,” was what the gentle spirit chose. To
be known through her books, and loved, there can be little question, was
her ambition, and it was a wish which I cannot doubt is fulfilled. The
“author of ‘Mary Powell,’” as she styled herself on her title-pages, has
left several exquisite little studies, highly appreciated when they
first saw the light, and still worthy, as it seems to me, of that kind
of immortality of regard which is won by those writers whom none of us
would place in the first rank of Literature, but whom all who know them
remember with something of a personal affection. When I say that Miss
Manning reminds me of Miss Rossetti, I do not mean that the earlier
writer has the genius of the most perfect poet that ever, in the English
tongue, linked the highest aspirations of Religion with the most
exquisite expressions of Poetry; but rather that their minds were both
beautiful, their experiences pathetic, their hearts true. They would
walk together in Paradise, and understand each other: when our Lady of
Sorrows sings “Magnificat,” they would stand by, and their souls would
echo to her song. The matter of the work of each is very different, yet
in the manner there is something indescribably akin. Christina Rossetti
is one of the greatest writers of the century; but, unique though she
is, and unapproachable in her sphere, in the land below her the author
of “Mary Powell” has thought some of the same thoughts, and thought them
in the same way.
“O my soul, she beats her wings,
And pants to fly away
Up to immortal things
In the heavenly day:
Yet she flags and almost faints;
Can such be meant for me?—
Come and see, say the Saints.
Saith Jesus: Come and see.
Say the saints: His pleasures please us
Before God and the Lamb.
Come and taste My sweets, saith Jesus:
Be with Me where I am.”
The voice is that of Christina Rossetti, but it is the thought too of
her who wrote “Cherry and Violet.”
Miss Manning, as we read her life in her books, walks through the world
with an unbounded charity and a hope ever refreshed. “Preach peace to
all,” said S. Francis of Assisi, “for often those whom you think to be
the children of the devil are those whom you will know some day to be
the sons of God.” Miss Manning loved to think of, and to look upon,
whatsoever things are lovely and of good report, and so thinking and
looking she found flowers everywhere to spring up beneath her feet.
“Tread softly! all the earth is holy ground.
It may be, could we look with seeing eyes,
This spot we stand on is a Paradise
Where dead have come to life and lost been found,
Where faith has triumphed, martyrdom been crowned,
Where fools have foiled the wisdom of the wise;
From this same spot the dust of saints may rise,
And the King’s prisoners come to light unbound.”
So when she turns to the sixteenth century, with its sordid materialism
and its coarse handling of things most sacred, not merely does she
recognise, as an Englishwoman, the grandeur of its struggles, but she
sees its best embodiment in the tragedy of an almost perfect life. As
she seeks refuge in that time of stress with the Household of Sir Thomas
More, so in the next century she turns aside from the pettiness of Pepys
or the realism of Defoe to the life of a simple girl born and nurtured
on the great bridge that spans the Thames.
“Quali colombe dal disio chiamante
Con l’ali aperte e ferme al dolce nido
Volan per l’aer dal voler portate.”
With “The Household of Sir Thomas More” we walked in the dangerous days
when the Lion found his strength. With “Cherry and Violet” we are in the
still more alarming atmosphere of the Commonwealth and the Restoration.
Year by year, as old houses open their chests, and scholars hunt among
their yellow papers, we learn more of the reign of terror which marked
the closing years of the Protectorate. We see one Verney living a “lude
life” with “my lord Claypoll” and other “my lords” the kindred of the
Protector; while another, the honest Sir Ralph, stoutest of
Parliamentarians, is clapped in prison, no man knows why; and at the
same time John Howe, pious Puritan preacher (whom Mistress Cherry
herself knew of), is confessing how impossible it is to win the family
which reigns at Whitehall to think of the welfare of their souls. Yet
all the while there hangs over the land the outer gloom of an enforced
conformity, which Miss Manning so happily describes. When we find
ourselves in the heyday of the Restoration, or when we watch the
splendours and the scandals of the Court of Charles II., we learn from
the scandalous Pepys—now so much more than ever since Mr. H. B. Wheatley
has given us all that it was possible to print of the wonderful Diary as
Pepys really wrote it—how utterly rotten was the social life of the age,
even among those, too often, who might seem to sit sedately above its
more flagrant iniquities.
And then there comes in Defoe with his marvellous photographic realism
of fiction, and tells us of the horrors of the Plague with a fidelity
which those who had lived among them could, we fancy, hardly have
approached.
From sources such as these—from Pepys and Defoe, as well as from the
more sober pages of the stately Evelyn, it is that Miss Manning takes
much of the _mise-en-scène_ of her “Tale of the Great Plague”; and we
find, as historic evidence accumulates around us, how true her imaginary
picture is.
It was a happy thought which made the story begin on old London
Bridge—happier still, readers will now think when they see Mr. Herbert
Railton’s beautiful drawings. Something we learn of the stress of the
time as we recall, with Mistress Cherry, the strange pageants which the
bridge-dwellers watched from their windows. They saw the double tide,
portent of unknown woes. They saw how the mighty Strafford went serenely
to his death, and the old Archbishop passed up and down under guard on
the long days of his weary trial. They saw the King come to his own
again—and some of them may have looked out of windows that wet Sunday
night in 1662 when Mr. Pepys had left his singing of “some holy things”
and went back by water, shooting the rapids under “the bridge (which did
trouble me) home, and so to bed.” The life on the bridge must have been
something which an Englishman’s experience of to-day can hardly help to
picture. Something of it we may fancy as we enter an old shop on the
Ponte Vecchio at Florence, or look out upon it and the Arno from the
long corridor that connects the Uffizi with the Pitti. But on that
narrow space is no such crowded life as on old London Bridge—no such
dangers for foot-passengers, drivers, and horsemen. To picture this in
seventeenth-century England we must cross near mid-day from Stamboul
towards Pera by the far-famed Galata Bridge. Scarce anywhere but in
Florence and in Constantinople can we now recall what sights old London
Bridge must have witnessed. Mr. Railton sees them, though, very clearly,
and we are more than content to see with his eyes. Something idealised
they are, perhaps. Old London Bridge was hardly so beautiful, surely, as
he pictures it; and his drawings, perhaps, are more like what the houses
ought to have been than ever they were. “More Nurembergy than
Nuremberg,” says Mr. Ruskin of some of Prout’s famous work. We may say
it of Mr. Railton’s old London; and high praise it is. And as Mr.
Railton brings back to us the scenes, so Mr. Jellicoe gives us the
persons of old time in their habits as they lived.
Among such surroundings we picture Cherry doing her simple duties,
tending her mother, thinking somewhat primly of her vivacious neighbour
Violet, fancying she has lost her heart for ever to poor Mark, and then
waking to a heroine’s work in the horrors of the Plague, and finding
through that her own bright reward.
“The Plague growing on us,” says Pepys, and of remedies “some saying one
thing, and some another.” So it begins in May, and by the first week of
June, “much against my will, I did in Drury Lane see two or three houses
marked with a red cross upon the doors, and ‘Lord have mercy upon us’
writ there; which was a sad sight to me, being the first of the kind
that to my remembrance I ever saw.” Ten days later, and as he goes in a
hackney coach from the Lord Treasurer’s, his coachman is struck of a
sudden “very sick and almost blind”—and journey by coach becomes “a very
dangerous passage nowadays.” So it comes till there are seven hundred
dying in a week, and “it was a sad noise to hear our bell to toll and
ring so often either for death or burials.”
And soon, “But, Lord! how sad a sight it is to see the streets empty of
people and very few upon the ’Change. Jealous of every door that one
sees shut up, lest it should be the Plague; and about us two shops in
three, if not more, generally shut up.”
Reports are terrible of the thousands who every week are carried to
their graves in the long pits; and with an even closer terror speaks the
record of the veracious diarist. “I went forth and walked towards
Moorfields (August 30th) to see (God forgive me my presumption!) whether
I could see any dead corpse going to the grave; but, as God would have
it, did not. But, Lord! how everybody looks, and discourse on the
streets is of death, and nothing else, and few people going up and down,
that the town is like a place distressed and forsaken.” “What a sad time
it is,” he writes on 20th September, “to see no boats upon the river;
and grass grows up and down White Hall Court, and nobody but poor
wretches in the streets.”
To these records the genius of Defoe adds an immortal picture. “As this
puts me upon mentioning my walking the Streets and Fields”—he has been
speaking of the numbers that fled to the outskirts of the town, “into
the Fields and Woods, and into secret uncouth Places, almost anywhere to
creep into a Bush, or Hedge, and die,” and how it “was a general Method
to walk away” if any one was seen coming—“I cannot omit taking notice
what a desolate place the City was at that time. The great street I
lived in, which is known to be one of the broadest of all the streets of
London, I mean of the Suburbs as well as the Liberties; all the side
where the Butchers lived, especially without the Bars, was more like a
green Field than a paved Street, and the People generally went in the
middle with the Horses and Carts. It is true that the farthest End,
towards White-Chappel Church, was not all pav’d, but even the part that
was pav’d was full of Grass also; but this need not seem strange, since
the great Streets within the City, such as Leaden-Hall Street,
Bishopgate-Street, Cornhill, and even the Exchange itself, had Grass
growing in them, in several Places; neither Cart nor Coach were seen in
the Streets from Morning to Evening, except some Country Carts to bring
Roots and Beans, or Pease, Hay and Straw, to the Market, and those but
very few, compared to what was usual: as for Coaches, they were scarce
used, but to carry sick People to the Pest-House, and to other
Hospitals; and some few to carry Physicians to such Places as they
thought fit to venture to visit; for really coaches were dangerous
things, and People did not Care to venture into them because they did
not know who might have been carried in them last; and sick infected
People were, as I have said, ordinarily carried in them to the
Pest-Houses, and some times People expired in them as they went along.
“It is true, when the Infection came to such a Height as I have now
mentioned, there were very few Physicians which car’d to stir abroad to
sick Houses, and very many of the most eminent of the Faculty were dead
as well as the Surgeons also; for now it was indeed a dismal time, and
for about a month together, not taking any Notice of the Bills of
Mortality, I believe there did not die less than 1500 or 1700 a-Day, one
Day with another.
“One of the worst Days we had in the whole Time, as I thought, was in
the Beginning of September, when indeed good People began to think that
God was resolved to make a full End of the People in this miserable
City. This was at that Time when the Plague was fully come into the
Eastern Parishes: the Parish of Algate, if I may give my Opinion, buried
above a thousand a Week for two Weeks, though the Bills did not say so
many; but it surrounded me at so dismal a rate, that there was not a
House in twenty uninfected; in the Minories, in Houndsditch, and in
those Parts of Algate about the Butcher-Row, and the Alleys over against
me, I say in those places Death reigned in every Corner. White-Chappel
Parish was in the same Condition, and tho’ much less than the Parish I
liv’d in; yet buried near 600 a Week by the Bills; and in my Opinion
near twice as many; whole Families, and indeed whole Streets of Families
were swept away together; insomuch that it was frequent for Neighbours
to call to the Bellman, to go to such and such Houses, and fetch out the
People, for that they were all dead.”
There is little, if anything, in the description which is exaggerated.
How much in tone as well as detail Miss Manning learnt from this great
master of fiction is clear. But it was altogether foreign to her nature
to paint long in such gloomy colours, and she turned, with a true art,
from the horrors of the Plague to the peace of country life “in good
King Charles’s golden days.”
So she brings her heroine down into Berkshire. A very short journey we
take it to have been, or the old horse must have been more swift of foot
than we should gather from Mistress Cherry’s description, for Buckland
in Berks lies not far from Faringdon, and over seventy miles from London
town. One of those quiet little villages it is that nestle among the low
hills that overlook the peaceful valley of the upper Thames. A fine old
church may have had Master Blower for its vicar. It has four bells and a
register that date from his day. There are memorials of two families,
the Yates and the Southbys, who have passed away with the good old
times. The house is not such as Mistress Cherry stayed in, but speaks
all of the eighteenth century, of George the Second and Mr. Wood of
Bath.
It is tempting to wonder whether this part of the country was one Miss
Manning ever saw—whether she watched the deer speeding by her—whether
she felt the fascination of
“This little stream whose hamlets scarce have names,
This far-off, lonely mother of the Thames.”
One may like to fancy her rejoicing in it, as Dante Gabriel Rossetti
rejoiced, who lived in a quaint old house such as she had pictured
Master Blower welcoming Cherry into, only a few miles away from
Buckland, at Kelmscott. But the place refuses to be identified, and we
must be content to conclude that Mistress Cherry’s geography was at
fault.
Having chosen a striking setting for her characters, Miss Manning knew
well how to give them life. She had a quiet humour, and a kindly
knowledge of human nature, which made her draw true portraits. Different
readers will have their favourites, but I think few will fail to be
drawn to honest Nathaniel Blower, priest and scholar, who, after days of
poverty such as we may read many a true history of in Walker’s
“Sufferings of the Clergy,” and a sore struggle with the Plague, lived
to be Rector of Whitechapel, and better still, after the crowning
misfortune of the Fire, to end his days quietly among the country folk
at Bucklands with his good wife by his side. Master Blower is indeed
drawn with Miss Manning’s happiest touches: we do not readily forget the
figure he presents in bed, or how he “in his Deliration went through the
whole Book of Job in his head.”
Whether most lads would not fall in love with Violet we cannot tell, but
certainly quiet Cherry is a good woman, worthy of the hand of Mary
Wilkins. We may sometimes feel that she is a damsel of the nineteenth
century at masquerade in the dress of two centuries before; but we like
her none the less if we fancy she is good Miss Manning in disguise.
And so we leave her and Master Blower happy in their home at Bucklands.
Good man, we doubt not he tilled his garden and tended his parish well,
like the Berkshire priest and poet of to-day, and, it may be, with the
same thought.
“In all my borders I my true love seek
By flowery signs to set:
Praising the rose-carnation for her cheek,
Her hair the violet;
Flowers that with sweet returns each season bloom,
As each its impulse wakes,
Making air fragrant with a purple gloom,
Or whorl of crimson flakes.
And ye who blanch your glow, violets more rare,
Carnation, foam of light;
Be pledges of a beauty still more fair
When hair and cheek are white.”
All’s well that ends well. After prim Puritanism and roystering
Restoration revels, after Plague and Fire, comes the quiet ending in the
country’s peace.
W. H. HUTTON.
THE GREAT HOUSE, BURFORD,
_June 26, 1896_.
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CHERRY AND VIOLET
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[Illustration]
CHERRY AND VIOLET
CHAPTER I
_The Reminiscences of Mistress Cherry.—The Fire, & Double
Tide.—Mal-conversation._
I WONDER whether many People, on reviewing their past Lives, feel as I do on
looking back on mine; that, had they had the ordering the outward
Circumstances connected with them beforehand, such as Time, Place,
Health, Sickness, Friends, Acquaintances, and such-like Conditions, they
could not have arranged them half so well as they have been disposed for
them. When I fall into a Muse on the Past, the Moments fly so swiftly
that I am lost in Amazement when I find how the Time has slipped by
while thus pleasantly employed. And yet many of the Arrangements which
were made for me by a greater Wisdom than mine, were such as at the Time
were far from agreeable to me; nay, were sometimes so repugnant to Flesh
and Blood as to nourish rebellious Thoughts, and call forth Showers of
Tears. And still the Process went on; as I now see, all for my Good.
My Father married my Mother in the Spring of the Year 1632: being then
in the Prime of Life, a personable, charming-looking Man, though small
of Stature, and with a Nose somewhat awry. In his Conditions he was ever
most lovely; of a sweet Temper, shrewd Observance, stout Heart, and
lively Wit. Many, no Doubt, had read more, by reason of their
Opportunities; but what few Books he knew, he turned to Profit, and
perhaps no Man concocted his Reading into Judgment better than he; by
which he became so judicious and oracular, as that though he could not
indeed prophesy, he could presage; and some of his Presages came true
and others not, but might have done so, had Events taken but in a very
slight Degree a different Course. He knew how to sound his Customers,
and suck the Marrow of their Knowledge, while keeping his own Counsel:
but this was his Prudence, not Pusillanimity, for I have heard it
remarked by one who knew him well, that the _Trojan_ Horse was not more
full of Valour than he, for so small a Man. Being a Hair-dresser, this
was not so evident in him as if he had been a Soldier; but yet every
Man’s Life affords Occasions, as my Father’s certainly did, of showing
what is in him and what is not.
In Dress, his Taste was excessive neat, and yet gaudy; so that on
_Sundays_, when he appeared in what he called his Marigold-and-Poppy,
with his Hair, which Men then wore very long, combed down in large
smooth Curls, his laced Collar nicely ironed, his Beaver well brushed,
and his Shoes shining like Coals ... it would have been difficult to
find a Grain of Fault with him, save that, as my Cousin _Mark_ was wont
to say, the Colours of his Suit did too much swear at one another. For
my own Part, I always had an Impression that he was an excessive
well-looking Man, not out of any Prejudice, but downright Prepossession;
and yet my dear Mother, who I am sure loved him truly, always said to me
when I alluded to the Subject, “My Dear, the Qualities of his Person
were always far exceeded by those of his Mind.”
Of my Cousin _Mark_, who was my Father’s Apprentice, there could not be
two Opinions. He was winsome, lightsome, debonair; of most comely Person
and Aspect: we were all very proud of him, and he of himself. If he had
a Fault, it was thinking too much of himself and too little of others;
but this is so common that I do not know I am justified in
particularizing it. Also he was somewhat of a Coward, not in respect of
personal, animal Courage, of which I suppose he had as much as the
aforesaid _Trojan_ Horse, whatever that might be; but morally cowardly,
as to what would be thought of him by others, and dreading the Evil of
the present Moment, and so forth; which Men don’t think so bad a kind of
Cowardice as the other, but I do.
But his Temper was most sweet: his Manners most engaging. Oh! how much
he came to be thought of, at length, all along the Bridge! I have no
other Fault to find in him besides those already reckoned; unless it
were a general Want of Principle, which was less apparent than it would
have been, had it not been covered rather than supplied by good Feeling.
But ’tis ill reckoning the Faults of one’s Friends.
Of my Mother, how shall I say enough? She was tall, slender, and comely
to look upon, with sweet and quick grey Eyes. She was naturally of a
high Spirit, which had been brought under a Curb by Divine Grace. She
was kind and obliging to all, stirring and thrifty, yet not niggardly;
soft-hearted to the Poor, of wonderful Propriety without the least
Priggishness, loved by her Friends, and especially in her own Family.
Now I have counted up the whole House except our Lodger, Master
_Blower_, and _Dolly_, the Cook.
[Illustration:
My Father’s shop was on the east side of London Bridge
]
My Father’s Shop was on the east Side of _London Bridge_. Over his Door
hung his Sign of “_The Lock of Hair_;” and over the Shop-front was
painted in yellow Letters the following Inscription,—
“PETER CURLING _sells all Sorts of Hair, Curled or Uncurled,
Roses, Braids, Cauls, Ribbons, Weaving, Sewing-silk, Cards, and
Blocks. Together with Combs, Crisping-pins, Perfumery, and all
other Goods made use of by Tonsors and Hairdressers, at the
Lowest Prices_.”
On the opposite Side of the Way, was a Vintner’s, by the Name of _Abel_,
who had humorously set up _a Bell_ for his Sign, and painted beneath it,
“Quoth the Wag, I am _Abel_.”
Next Door to us on one Side, lived a Bookseller and Stationer named
_Benskin_, whose Sign was the Bible and Star; and next Door to us on the
other Side was a Glover named _Hugh Braidfoot_, a jolly, good-tempered
Bachelor, black-haired, fresh-coloured, and six Feet high, whose Sign
was the Roebuck.
A few Weeks after my Birth, which was in _February, 1633_, in the Midst
of a notable hard Frost, there broke out a most dreadful Fire at the
north End of the Bridge, which consumed all the Houses on both Sides,
from _St. Magnus’_ Church to the first open Space on the Bridge. There
was, I have heard tell, much bodily Hurt as well as Destruction of
Property; many Persons in precipitating themselves from upper Stories,
getting their Limbs broken. “Water! Water!” was the Cry, and all in
vain, for though the _Thames_ lay right under the Houses, ’twas one
great Cake of Ice, and the only Resource was to break the Conduit Pipes
that ran through the Streets leading to the Bridge, and sweep the Water
down with Brooms, to supply the three Engines that every one had thought
would be such Helps in Time of Need, but which proved very sorry Helps
indeed. In the Midst of the Tumult and Danger, some Neighbours of ours
that were burned out of House and Home, took Refuge with us; to wit, the
Wife and infant Daughter of Master _Samuel Armytage_, Haberdasher of
small Wares; the Infant being, like myself, a Nursling of only a few
Weeks old. These homeless Strangers did my Mother hospitably and
Christianly entertain, bestirring herself more in her Care for them than
in her tender Case it was fit she should have done, and putting us two
Infants into one and the same Cradle. With our little Arms locked about
one another, in an Atmosphere of Christian Love, ’twas no Wonder that
little _Violet_ and I conceived a Tenderness for each other, e’en while
Sucklings, that grew with our Growth, and strengthened with our
Strength. As for the elder Parties, Hospitality on the one Side and
Thankfulness on the other caused a more than common Friendliness to
spring up between them from that Time forth. And when the Fugitives were
re-established in their re-built Houses, they long had an impressive and
solemnifying Remembrance of their narrow Escape from an awful and
terrible Death.
[Illustration]
Now, though I cannot, of course, remember Anything of the Fire, I have a
perfect Recollection of the next notable Occurrence among us, of _the
Double Tide_, which happened in my eighth Year; and how the River, after
lying as still as a Stone for more than an Hour, suddenly came foaming
up from _Greenwich_, roaring, boiling, and splashing to that Degree that
it was Horror to look upon. And my Father, after contemplating the
Prodigy along with all the rest, exclaimed, “Well, Friends! you may say
what you will; but I, though not a superstitious Man, think Something
will come of it.” And did not Something come of it ... or, at any Rate,
after it? and were not we, that had previously been sleeping on the
still Waters of a settled Government, horribly overwhelmed with a Tide
of Rebellion, Anarchy, and Republicanism?
The Year before the Double Tide, there had been much Talk in my Father’s
Shop, about the Earl of _Strafford_ being given over to the Black Rod,
which I, being of such tender Years, could not well make out, but it
seemed to carry an ill Sound with it. After that, he was taken to his
Trial; and passed from his Prison in the _Tower_ to _Westminster_, under
our Bridge. We looked forth of our Windows, and discerned him plainly in
one of the Barges, guarded by Soldiers with Partizans; and there was
much Yelling and Hooting as he went through the Arch, which I for my
Part was sorry for, he was so handsome and personable a Gentleman. The
People, however, were much incensed against him; and, about three Months
after the Double Tide, there was what I may call a Double Tide of
’Prentices and tumultuous Citizens, to the Number of about six Thousand,
(my Cousin, _Mark Blenkinsop_, being among them,) who assembled
themselves in an intimidating Manner at _Westminster_, many of them
armed with Swords and Staves, and demanded Lord _Strafford’s_ Death of
the Peers as they went to the House.
I remember my Father, for as small a Man as he was, collaring _Mark_
when he came back, and dealing him one or two Blows, which made me begin
to cry, and run in between them. And _Mark_, though a great, tall Lad of
his Years, began to whimper too, which reminds me again of the _Trojan_
Horse, and the Valour that may dwell in a little Body, and the
Pusillanimity that may be in a large one. And, “sure, Uncle,” says
_Mark_, “the Earl deserves to die, for his” ... Mal-conversation, or
Malministration, I forget which. And my Father replied, “Never trouble
your Head with that. Leave the Powers that be to settle their own
Affairs. Fine Times, indeed, when Barbers’ ’Prentices must be meddling
in State-politics! To his own Master, the _Earl_ standeth or falleth.”
Had all Men been of my Father’s equable and temperate Mind, we should
not have fallen into the Disorders we presently did; wherein, no Doubt,
there was much Wrong on both Sides. One Night we were roused from Sleep
by Cries in the Street that “the _King_ and his Papists were coming to
fire the City and cut our Throats in our Beds;” but my Father, after
putting his Head forth to learn the Nature of the Tumult, drew it in
again and closed the Window, allaying our somewhat ungoverned Fears with
that Composure which it behoves every Master of a Family to assume when
he can, in Seasons of Danger or the Apprehension of it.
Soon there was open War between _King_ and _Parliament_, which went on
increasing till the whole Country was filled with Bloodshed and
Confusion, and only ended in a total Change of Government. We were now
in a State of Fortification; for the _Lords_ and _Commons_ had directed
that the whole City should be put in a State of Defence, and that the
_Lord Mayor_ and Citizens should trench, stop, and fortify all Highways
leading thereunto. Wherefore, all Entrances into _London_ except five,
were stoned and bricked up altogether; and those five were made as
strong as could be, with Breast-works and Turn-pikes, Musket-proof. And
all Sheds and Out-buildings outside _London Wall_, that were near enough
to be advantageous to an Enemy, were taken down; and this gave a great
deal of Work to do that behoved to be done quickly; wherefore even Women
and Children helped the Men in carrying Earth, Stones, &c., for, by this
Time, there was in the City a pretty general Disaffection towards the
_King_; and those that wished him well and could not get to him, found
it best to hold their Peace.
[Illustration]
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