interesting. In considering them, remember, as stated above, that the
general purchasing power of money was then four times that of the
present time. A leg of mutton generally costs two-and-sixpence; a
shoulder, two shillings; a hand of pork, eighteenpence; "a cheese"--they
had one every week, but it is not stated how much it weighed--varies
from one-and-twopence to one-and-eightpence. Butter is eight or nine
pence a pound; they used about a pound a week. Sugar is sixpence a
pound. They bought their flour by sixpennyworths, and their coals in
small quantities for eighteenpence each week during the winter, so that
their fires must have been principally kept going with wood. Once a
month the washer-woman is called in, and sheets are washed; therefore,
the washing was all done at home. Raisins and currants at twopence a
pound, eggs, nutmegs, ginger, mace, rice, suet, etc., proclaim the
pudding. It was made in fifty different ways, but the ingredients were
always the same, and in this family they evidently had pudding every
day. Cakes, also, they had, and pies, both fruit pies and meat pies, and
open tarts. These were all sent to the bake-house to be baked at one
penny each, so that the kitchen contained no oven. Candles were
fivepence a pound, but the entries of candles are so irregular that one
suspects the accounts to be imperfect. Herrings were bought nearly every
week, and sometimes ling--"a pole of ling." Bacon was sevenpence a
pound. Rice was also sevenpence a pound. Oranges came in about December;
cherries in their season were twopence a pound; gooseberries, fourpence,
sold, I suppose, by the measure; pease, sixpence a peck; beans,
fourpence a quart; asparagus ("sparragrasse") was in April excessively
dear--we find them giving six shillings and twopence, a most extravagant
expenditure for a single dish; two weeks later it has gone down to
eighteenpence for two hundred. But how could so careful a housewife
spend six and twopence on a single dish? A "sallet"--that is, a
lettuce--is one penny. Once in six weeks or so we find mention of
"earbs"--that is, thyme, sage, rosemary, etc.--for twopence.
"Cowcumbers" are a penny apiece, and a favorite vegetable. Radishes,
carrots, turnips, French beans are also bought. In the spring
cream-cheese appears. Sweet brier is bought every year, one knows not
for what, and roses by the bushel, evidently for rose-water. This is the
only allusion to the still-room, which undoubtedly formed part of the
ménage. Nothing is said of preserved fruits, home-made wines, distilled
waters, or pickles, which then formed a great part of house-keeping.
They pickled everything: walnuts, gherkins, asparagus, peaches,
cauliflowers, plums, nectarines, onions, lemons, barberries, mushrooms,
nasturtium buds, lime-tree buds, oysters, samphire, elder roots. They
distilled rose-buds and rose-leaves, lavender, walnut-water, and
cherry-water. They always had plague-water handy, hysterical-water, and
other sovereign remedies. They "jarred" cherries, quinces, hops,
apricots, damsons, and peaches. They made syrups in many pleasing
varieties. They knew how to keep green pease, green gooseberries,
asparagus, and damsons till Christmas. They made wine out of all the
fruits in their season; the art still survives, though the club-man of
the town turns up his nose at the delicate cowslip, the robust ginger,
and the dainty raspberry--a dessert wine. They potted everything, from
pigeon to venison. Nothing is said of these things in the account-books.
But the large quantity of vinegar bought every week shows the activity
of the pickling department. Only once is there any appearance of
spirits. It is when a bottle of brandy is bought, at one shilling and
twopence. Perhaps that was used to fortify the raspberry and the currant
wines. Very little milk is bought. Sometimes for many months there is no
mention of milk. This may have been because their own dairy supplied
them. Perhaps, however, milk was only occasionally used in the house.
The food of very young children, infants after they were weaned, was not
then milk but pap, which I suppose to have been some compound of flour
and sugar. There is no mention in the accounts at all of tea, coffee, or
chocolate. Tea was already a fashionable drink, but at this time it was
sixty shillings a pound--a price which placed it quite beyond the reach
of the ordinary household. Coffee was much cheaper; at the coffee-houses
it was sold at a penny a cup, but it had not yet got into private
houses.
Turning to other things besides food. Schooling "for E. J." was twopence
a week. His shoes were one shilling and ninepence the pair. The cobbler
who made them was Goodman Archer; Goody Archer was his wife. A letter
cost twopence or fourpence; everything bought or ordered was brought by
the carrier, which greatly increased the expense; a lady's gloves cost
two shillings a pair; her silk stockings, ten shillings, and ordinary
stockings, six shillings a pair; her shoes, three shillings; her mask,
one shilling; her pattens for muddy weather were two shillings a pair;
her knitting-needles cost a penny apiece; her steel bodkin, twopence;
her needles, eightpence the half-hundred; her pins, ninepence a
thousand; her ribbons, threepence a yard. As for the little things
required for the house, they were far dearer than now, considering
especially the value of money. For instance, a mop cost a shilling; a
pitcher, fivepence; glasses, one shilling and eightpence each; an
earthenware pan, fourpence; a broom, sixpence; a mustard-pot, one
shilling and sixpence; a padlock, tenpence; a mouse-trap, tenpence;
eleven shillings were given for a pair of candlesticks, probably of
brass. Holland was two shillings a yard; a "newsbook" cost a penny. On
one occasion--only once--it is recorded that the family bought a book.
Only one, and then it was so expensive that they could never afford to
buy another. This is the entry: "Paid a gentleman for a book, £3 10_s._
0_d._" What book, one asks in wonder, could be worth seventy shillings
in the year 1678--that is, about £15 of present money--to a man who was
neither a scholar nor a collector?
The servants were up and took their breakfast at six in the winter and
at five in the summer. The family breakfasted at eight. They had, for
the most part, cold meat and beer with oat-cake. Pepys tells us of a
breakfast of cold turkey-pie and goose--imagine a poor, weak creature of
this generation making a breakfast of turkey-pie and goose, or of goose
alone, with small beer! At another time he had bread and butter,
sweetmeats, and strong drinks. And on another occasion he sat down to a
table spread with oysters, anchovies, and neats' tongues, with wine "of
all sort."
At two o'clock dinner was served. If it was boiled-beef day, the broth
was served in porringers, bread or oat-cake being crumbled into it with
herbs. When it was not boiled-beef day, they had fresh meat or poultry
(the latter only seldom), and, in season, what are called in the
accounts "pateridges"--it really matters little how a bird is spelled,
provided it is well cooked and ready to be eaten. The invariable rule of
the house was to have two joints a week, mutton, veal, pork, or poultry.
This provided four dinners, or perhaps five. The other two or three
dinners were consecrated to boiled beef. Calf's head and bacon was
(deservedly) a favorite dish; they did not disdain tripe; black puddings
were regarded with affection; a hog's cheek was reckoned a toothsome
kickshaw; anchovies, prawns, and lobsters are also mentioned with
commendation. On most days they had a pudding--the good old English
pudding, boiled or baked, with raisins and "currance" in it, flour,
eggs, butter, sugar, nutmeg, mace, ginger, suet, and sometimes milk--a
famous pudding of which no one was ever tired.
The menu of a dinner where there was company is preserved in Pepys.
Everything was served at once. They had marrow-bones, a leg of mutton,
three pullets, and a dozen larks in one dish, a tart, a neat's tongue,
anchovies, and a dish of prawns, and cheese. This was for thirteen
persons.
The dishes were served in pewter, as they are still for the students in
the hall of Lincoln's Inn. The supper, of which very little is said, was
like the breakfast, but not quite so solid. Cheese played a large part
in the supper, and in summer "a sallet"--cost, one penny--or a dish of
"redishes" helped out the cold meat. After supper a cool tankard of
ale--not small beer--stood within the master's reach while he took his
pipe of tobacco. In the winter there was a posset or a toasted crab in
the jug.
One is sorry to part with this interesting family, but, unfortunately,
further information is lacking; I could give the inventory of the
master's linen and that of his wife, but these details want general
interest. So they disappear, the master, the mistress, Mr. Arthur, and
the baby. Let us hope that they all enjoyed a long life and prospered
exceedingly. After pondering so long over their account-books, one seems
to know them so well. They have become personal friends. They sit on
the green cloth chairs in the room with the green carpet and the green
curtains and the fine tapestry. The chairs are high and straight in the
back. Madam has her knitting in her lap. The master and Mr. Arthur sit
on opposite sides of the fire, their heads adorned with beautiful
flowing perriwigs of brown hair, their own color, which they have curled
every week at an expense of twopence. They are sipping hot spiced ale
and talking of last Sunday morning's sermon. They are grave and
responsible people, rather fat in the cheeks because they take so little
exercise and so much beer. In the window stands a row of books. Among
them was Jeremy Taylor's _Holy Living and Dying_, Herrick's
_Hesperides_, Baxter's _Saints' Rest_, Braithwaite's _Arcadian
Princess_, Milton's _Paradise Lost_, the first edition in ten books; a
Book of Husbandry, a Prophetical Almanack--that of Montelion--and I
suppose, if we only knew it, the book for which they paid the
"gentleman" £3 10_s._--was it a Bible, illustrated? It is only seventeen
years since the commonwealth; there are Puritans still; their talk
chiefly turns on godly matters; the clamor and the scandal of the Court
hardly so much as reaches their ears. The clouds roll over; they are
gone. Oh, world of change and fleeting shadows! Whither do they go, the
flying shadows, the ghosts, the groups and pictures of the men and women
that flit before our eyes when we raise the wizard's wand and conjure up
the spirits of the past?
IX
GEORGE THE SECOND
From the accession of the First to the death of the Fourth George very
little change took place in the outward appearance or the customs of
London and its people. Not that these kings could have had anything to
do with the manners or the changes of the City. The first two Georges
were Germans who understood not their chief town, and had neither love
nor fear for the citizens, such as possessed the Plantagenets, the
Tudors, and the Stuarts. There was little change, because the forces
that produce change were working slowly. Ideas, for instance, are always
changing, but the English people are slow to catch the new ideas. They
were born in this country, but they were developed in France, and they
produced the French Revolution. For this they were suppressed in
England, only to grow and spread more rapidly underground, and to
produce changes of a more stable kind than the effervescence of the
First Republic.
There was little communication between town and town or between town and
country. The rustic never left his native village unless he enlisted.
Then he never returned. The mechanic lived out his life over his work
on the spot where he was born and where he was brought up. The London
shopkeeper never went farther afield than Hampstead, and generally found
sufficient change of air at Bagnigge Wells or in Moorfields. If wealth
and trade increased, which they did by leaps and bounds, it was still on
the old lines: the City jealous of its rights, the masters keeping the
wealth for themselves, and the men remaining in silence and submission.
One important change may, however, be noted. The City had by this time
ceased altogether to attract the younger sons of the country gentry; the
old connection, therefore, between London and the counties was severed.
The chief reason was that the continual wars of the century found
employment and a career for all the younger sons in the services, and
that the value of land went up enormously. Trade was no longer recruited
from the better sort, class distinctions were deepened and more sharply
defined even among the middle class: a barrister looked down upon a
merchant, and would not shake hands with an attorney, while a simple
clergyman would not associate with a man in business. Sydney Smith, for
instance, refused to stay a night at a country-house because its owner
was a banker and a tradesman. The real extent of the contempt with which
trade was regarded, and the width of the breach between the court and
the City, was illustrated when the corporation entertained the Queen on
her accession at Guildhall, when the Lord Mayor and the corporation, the
_givers of the feast_, were actually set down at a lower table separate
from the Queen their guest! Think of that other great dinner chronicled
above, where the mayor entertained four kings and played cards with them
after dinner!
In the picture of London just before the present age we will confine
ourselves as much as possible to the life of the bourgeois. For the
court, for the life of the aristocracy, the statesmen, the poets, the
scholars, the artists--they are sufficiently written about elsewhere.
Here we will keep as much as we can to the great mass of the London
citizens who know nothing of court and noble, but are sober,
hard-working, honest folk, their chief care being to pay their way,
avoid bankruptcy, and amass a certain sum of money before they die;
their chief subject of admiration being the man who leaves behind him a
great fortune made in trade; their chief pleasures being those of the
table.
First, for the extent of the City.
London in 1750 was spreading, but not yet rapidly. East and west it
spread, not north and south. Eastward the City had thrown out a long arm
by the river-side. St. Katherine's Precinct was crowded; streets, two or
three deep, stretched along the river-bank as far as Limehouse, but no
farther. These were inhabited by the people who made their living on the
river. Immediately north of these streets stretched a great expanse of
market-gardens and fields. Whitechapel was already a crowded suburb,
filled with working-men. This was one of the quarters where the London
mob was born and bred, and free from interference of clergy or rich
folk. Clerkenwell, with the parts about Smithfield, was another district
dear to thieves, pickpockets, and rowdies. Within its boundaries the
City was well and carefully ordered. Unfortunately, this order did not
extend beyond the walls. Outside there were no companies, no small
parishes, no rich merchants, no charities, schools, or endowments, and
practically it was without churches.
[Illustration: HOUSES IN ST. KATHERINE'S, PULLED DOWN IN 1827]
On the north side, Moorfields still remained an open space; beyond lay
Hoxton Fields, White Conduit Fields, Lamb's Conduit Fields, and
Marylebone Fields. The suburb of Bloomsbury was beginning. A crowded
suburb had sprung up north of the Strand. Westminster was a great city
by itself. Southwark, now a borough with half a million people, as great
as Liverpool, occupied then a little strip of marshy land not half a
mile broad at its widest. East and west, to Lambeth on the one side and
to Redriff on the other, was a narrow strip of river-side, dotted with
houses and hamlets.
The walls of the City were never formally pulled down. They disappeared
bit by bit. Houses were built close to them and upon them: they were
covered up. Excavations constantly bring to light some of the
foundations. When a church-yard was placed against the wall, as at St.
Giles's, Cripplegate, and at St. Alphege, London Wall, some portions
were allowed to remain. The course of the wall is perfectly well known,
and has often been mapped. It is strange, however, that the corporation
should have been so careless as to make no attempt at all to preserve
some portions of this most interesting monument.
The gates still stood, and were closed at sunset, until the year 1760.
Then they were all pulled down, and the materials sold. Temple Bar,
which was never a City gate, properly speaking, remained until the other
day. The gates were, I suppose, an obstruction to traffic, yet one
regrets their disappearance. They were not old, but they had a character
of their own, and they preserved the memory of ancient sites. I wish
they could have been preserved to this day. A statue of Queen Elizabeth,
which formerly stood on the west front of Lud Gate, is, I believe, the
only part of a City gate not destroyed. It is now placed on the south
wall of St. Dunstan's, Fleet Street, where thousands pass by every day,
regardless of this monument of London before the fire!
I have found, in a pamphlet written (1754) to advocate certain
improvements in the City, glimpses of things too petty for the dignity
of history, yet not without interest to one who wishes to reconstruct
the life of the time. For instance, the streets were not cleaned,
except in certain thoroughfares; at the back of the Royal Exchange, for
instance, was a scandalous accumulation of filth suffered to remain, and
the posterns of the City gates were equally neglected and abused. The
rubbish shot into the streets was not cleared away; think of the streets
all discharging the duty of the dust-bin! Cellar doors and windows were
left open carelessly; stone steps projected from the houses far across
the foot-path. Where pavement had been laid down it was suffered to
become broken and ruinous, and so left. Houses that had fallen down or
been burned down were left unbuilt, an ugly hole in the line of the
street. Sheds for shops were placed against the walls of churches, as at
St. Antholin's, Budge Row, and at St. Ethelburga's, where they still
remain, transformed into houses. Sheds for shops have been built out in
the street before the houses in certain places. Houses rebuilt are
pushed forward into the street. Live bullocks driven through the streets
are a constant danger; mad dogs are another danger--why is there no tax
on dogs? Beggars and vagrants swarm in every street. The common people
practise habitually a profaneness of speech which is shocking. These are
some of the things complained of by my pamphleteer. He next advocates
certain improvements. He would establish a public Mercantile Library--we
now have it at the Guildhall. He complains that the City gates have been
encroached upon and defaced--six years later they were taken down. He
shows us that while within the City itself there were oil-lamps set up
at regular intervals in all the streets, there were none outside the
Freedom. At that time beyond St. Martin's le Grand, and in the district
of St. Bartholomew's, the streets were left in darkness absolute. This
was shortly afterwards remedied. He wants stronger and stouter men for
the City watch, and would have some stationed in different parts of the
City in the daytime. That, too, was done, after many years. We must
consider that the old theory was that the citizens should in the daytime
keep order for themselves. He asks why no wheel carriages are permitted
on the north side of St. Paul's. He might ask the same question still,
and the answer would be that it is a very great happiness to be able to
keep one, if only one, street in London free from carts and omnibuses.
[Illustration: LUD GATE]
He then proceeds to propose the erection of equestrian statues in
various parts of the City. This has now been accomplished, but yet we
are not wholly satisfied. He would put up piazzas, porticos, and
triumphal arches here and there; he would remove the bars and chains of
Holborn, Smithfield, Aldersgate, Bishopsgate, and Whitechapel, and would
put up stone piers with the City arms upon them. We have almost
forgotten those bars and chains. He proposes a new stone bridge across
the river at the mouth of Fleet Ditch. Blackfriars Bridge has been
erected there. It is a most instructive pamphlet, written, it is
evident, by a man much in advance of his age.
The best description of London about this time is certainly Gay's
"Trivia." Witness the following lines on Thames Street:
"O who that rugged street would traverse o'er,
That stretches, O Fleet Ditch, from thy black shore
To the Tow'r's moated walls? Here steams ascend
That, in mixed fumes, the wrinkled nose offend.
Where chandler's cauldrons boil; where fishy prey
Hide the wet stall, long absent from the sea;
And where the cleaver chops the heifer's spoil,
And where huge hogsheads sweat with trainy oil;
Thy breathing nostril hold: but how shall I
Pass, where in piles Carnavian cheeses lie;
Cheese, that the table's closing rites denies,
And bids me with th' unwilling chaplain, rise?"
If you were to ask any person specially interested in the Church of
England--not necessarily a clergyman of that Church--which was the
deadest and lowest and feeblest period in the history of the Anglican
Church, he would, without the least hesitation, reply that the reign of
George the Second covered that period. This is universally accepted. I
think, however, that one may show, without much trouble, that this
belief is not based upon inquiry into the facts of the time. The Church
of George the Second did not, it is true, greatly resemble that of this
generation: it had its own customs, and it had its own life. It is
certain that the churches were what is commonly called "ugly"--that is
to say, they were built by Wren, or were imitations of his style, and
had nothing to do with Early English, or Decorated, or even
Perpendicular. Also, it is certain that the congregations sat in pews,
each family by itself; that there were some few pews of greater dignity
than others, where sat my Lord Mayor, or the aldermen, or the sheriffs,
or the masters of City companies. It is also certain that all the
churches had galleries; that the services were performed from a
"three-decker;" that the sermon was preached in a black gown, and that
the clergyman called himself a minister, and not a priest. All these
things are abominations to some of us in the latter half of the
nineteenth century. There were also pluralists; the poor were left very
much to themselves, and the parish was not "worked" according to modern
ideas. There were no mothers' meetings, no day in the country, no
lectures and tea-meetings; no activity; no "working," in fact, at all.
But was it quite a dead time? Let us see.
There were at that time a hundred and nine parish churches in London and
Westminster. At forty-four of these there was daily service--surely this
is a recognized indication of some religious activity--at one of these
there were three daily services; at all of them--the whole hundred and
nine--there were services every Wednesday and Friday, and on all holy
days and saints' days. There were endowments for occasional sermons in
nearly every church. So much of the Puritan spirit remained that the
sermon was still considered the most important part of Church service;
in other words, sound doctrine being then held to be essential to
salvation, instruction in doctrine was considered of far greater
importance than prayer or praise; a fact which quite sufficiently
accounts for the slovenly character of Church services down to thirty
or forty years ago. The singing, observe, might be deplorable, but the
sermon--the essential--was sound.