What inexhaustible food for speculation, do the streets of London
afford! We never were able to agree with Sterne in pitying the man who
could travel from Dan to Beersheba, and say that all was barren; we
have not the slightest commiseration for the man who can take up his
hat and stick, and walk from Covent-garden to St. Paul’s Churchyard,
and back into the bargain, without deriving some amusement—we had
almost said instruction—from his perambulation. And yet there are such
beings: we meet them every day. Large black stocks and light
waistcoats, jet canes and discontented countenances, are the
characteristics of the race; other people brush quickly by you,
steadily plodding on to business, or cheerfully running after pleasure.
These men linger listlessly past, looking as happy and animated as a
policeman on duty. Nothing seems to make an impression on their minds:
nothing short of being knocked down by a porter, or run over by a cab,
will disturb their equanimity. You will meet them on a fine day in any
of the leading thoroughfares: peep through the window of a west-end
cigar shop in the evening, if you can manage to get a glimpse between
the blue curtains which intercept the vulgar gaze, and you see them in
their only enjoyment of existence. There they are lounging about, on
round tubs and pipe boxes, in all the dignity of whiskers, and gilt
watch-guards; whispering soft nothings to the young lady in amber, with
the large ear-rings, who, as she sits behind the counter in a blaze of
adoration and gas-light, is the admiration of all the female servants
in the neighbourhood, and the envy of every milliner’s apprentice
within two miles round.
One of our principal amusements is to watch the gradual progress—the
rise or fall—of particular shops. We have formed an intimate
acquaintance with several, in different parts of town, and are
perfectly acquainted with their whole history. We could name off-hand,
twenty at least, which we are quite sure have paid no taxes for the
last six years. They are never inhabited for more than two months
consecutively, and, we verily believe, have witnessed every retail
trade in the directory.
There is one, whose history is a sample of the rest, in whose fate we
have taken especial interest, having had the pleasure of knowing it
ever since it has been a shop. It is on the Surrey side of the water—a
little distance beyond the Marsh-gate. It was originally a substantial,
good-looking private house enough; the landlord got into difficulties,
the house got into Chancery, the tenant went away, and the house went
to ruin. At this period our acquaintance with it commenced; the paint
was all worn off; the windows were broken, the area was green with
neglect and the overflowings of the water-butt; the butt itself was
without a lid, and the street-door was the very picture of misery. The
chief pastime of the children in the vicinity had been to assemble in a
body on the steps, and to take it in turn to knock loud double knocks
at the door, to the great satisfaction of the neighbours generally, and
especially of the nervous old lady next door but one. Numerous
complaints were made, and several small basins of water discharged over
the offenders, but without effect. In this state of things, the
marine-store dealer at the corner of the street, in the most obliging
manner took the knocker off, and sold it: and the unfortunate house
looked more wretched than ever.
We deserted our friend for a few weeks. What was our surprise, on our
return, to find no trace of its existence! In its place was a handsome
shop, fast approaching to a state of completion, and on the shutters
were large bills, informing the public that it would shortly be opened
with ‘an extensive stock of linen-drapery and haberdashery.’ It opened
in due course; there was the name of the proprietor ‘and Co.’ in gilt
letters, almost too dazzling to look at. Such ribbons and shawls! and
two such elegant young men behind the counter, each in a clean collar
and white neckcloth, like the lover in a farce. As to the proprietor,
he did nothing but walk up and down the shop, and hand seats to the
ladies, and hold important conversations with the handsomest of the
young men, who was shrewdly suspected by the neighbours to be the ‘Co.’
We saw all this with sorrow; we felt a fatal presentiment that the shop
was doomed—and so it was. Its decay was slow, but sure. Tickets
gradually appeared in the windows; then rolls of flannel, with labels
on them, were stuck outside the door; then a bill was pasted on the
street-door, intimating that the first floor was to let unfurnished;
then one of the young men disappeared altogether, and the other took to
a black neckerchief, and the proprietor took to drinking. The shop
became dirty, broken panes of glass remained unmended, and the stock
disappeared piecemeal. At last the company’s man came to cut off the
water, and then the linen-draper cut off himself, leaving the landlord
his compliments and the key.
The next occupant was a fancy stationer. The shop was more modestly
painted than before, still it was neat; but somehow we always thought,
as we passed, that it looked like a poor and struggling concern. We
wished the man well, but we trembled for his success. He was a widower
evidently, and had employment elsewhere, for he passed us every morning
on his road to the city. The business was carried on by his eldest
daughter. Poor girl! she needed no assistance. We occasionally caught a
glimpse of two or three children, in mourning like herself, as they sat
in the little parlour behind the shop; and we never passed at night
without seeing the eldest girl at work, either for them, or in making
some elegant little trifle for sale. We often thought, as her pale face
looked more sad and pensive in the dim candle-light, that if those
thoughtless females who interfere with the miserable market of poor
creatures such as these, knew but one-half of the misery they suffer,
and the bitter privations they endure, in their honourable attempts to
earn a scanty subsistence, they would, perhaps, resign even
opportunities for the gratification of vanity, and an immodest love of
self-display, rather than drive them to a last dreadful resource, which
it would shock the delicate feelings of these _charitable_ ladies to
hear named.
But we are forgetting the shop. Well, we continued to watch it, and
every day showed too clearly the increasing poverty of its inmates. The
children were clean, it is true, but their clothes were threadbare and
shabby; no tenant had been procured for the upper part of the house,
from the letting of which, a portion of the means of paying the rent
was to have been derived, and a slow, wasting consumption prevented the
eldest girl from continuing her exertions. Quarter-day arrived. The
landlord had suffered from the extravagance of his last tenant, and he
had no compassion for the struggles of his successor; he put in an
execution. As we passed one morning, the broker’s men were removing the
little furniture there was in the house, and a newly-posted bill
informed us it was again ‘To Let.’ What became of the last tenant we
never could learn; we believe the girl is past all suffering, and
beyond all sorrow. God help her! We hope she is.
We were somewhat curious to ascertain what would be the next stage—for
that the place had no chance of succeeding now, was perfectly clear.
The bill was soon taken down, and some alterations were being made in
the interior of the shop. We were in a fever of expectation; we
exhausted conjecture—we imagined all possible trades, none of which
were perfectly reconcilable with our idea of the gradual decay of the
tenement. It opened, and we wondered why we had not guessed at the real
state of the case before. The shop—not a large one at the best of
times—had been converted into two: one was a bonnet-shape maker’s, the
other was opened by a tobacconist, who also dealt in walking-sticks and
Sunday newspapers; the two were separated by a thin partition, covered
with tawdry striped paper.
The tobacconist remained in possession longer than any tenant within
our recollection. He was a red-faced, impudent, good-for-nothing dog,
evidently accustomed to take things as they came, and to make the best
of a bad job. He sold as many cigars as he could, and smoked the rest.
He occupied the shop as long as he could make peace with the landlord,
and when he could no longer live in quiet, he very coolly locked the
door, and bolted himself. From this period, the two little dens have
undergone innumerable changes. The tobacconist was succeeded by a
theatrical hair-dresser, who ornamented the window with a great variety
of ‘characters,’ and terrific combats. The bonnet-shape maker gave
place to a greengrocer, and the histrionic barber was succeeded, in his
turn, by a tailor. So numerous have been the changes, that we have of
late done little more than mark the peculiar but certain indications of
a house being poorly inhabited. It has been progressing by almost
imperceptible degrees. The occupiers of the shops have gradually given
up room after room, until they have only reserved the little parlour
for themselves. First there appeared a brass plate on the private door,
with ‘Ladies’ School’ legibly engraved thereon; shortly afterwards we
observed a second brass plate, then a bell, and then another bell.
When we paused in front of our old friend, and observed these signs of
poverty, which are not to be mistaken, we thought as we turned away,
that the house had attained its lowest pitch of degradation. We were
wrong. When we last passed it, a ‘dairy’ was established in the area,
and a party of melancholy-looking fowls were amusing themselves by
running in at the front door, and out at the back one.