We have always been of opinion that if Tom King and the Frenchman had
not immortalised Seven Dials, Seven Dials would have immortalised
itself. Seven Dials! the region of song and poetry—first effusions, and
last dying speeches: hallowed by the names of Catnach and of
Pitts—names that will entwine themselves with costermongers, and
barrel-organs, when penny magazines shall have superseded penny yards
of song, and capital punishment be unknown!
Look at the construction of the place. The Gordian knot was all very
well in its way: so was the maze of Hampton Court: so is the maze at
the Beulah Spa: so were the ties of stiff white neckcloths, when the
difficulty of getting one on, was only to be equalled by the apparent
impossibility of ever getting it off again. But what involutions can
compare with those of Seven Dials? Where is there such another maze of
streets, courts, lanes, and alleys? Where such a pure mixture of
Englishmen and Irishmen, as in this complicated part of London? We
boldly aver that we doubt the veracity of the legend to which we have
adverted. We _can_ suppose a man rash enough to inquire at random—at a
house with lodgers too—for a Mr. Thompson, with all but the certainty
before his eyes, of finding at least two or three Thompsons in any
house of moderate dimensions; but a Frenchman—a Frenchman in Seven
Dials! Pooh! He was an Irishman. Tom King’s education had been
neglected in his infancy, and as he couldn’t understand half the man
said, he took it for granted he was talking French.
The stranger who finds himself in ‘The Dials’ for the first time, and
stands Belzoni-like, at the entrance of seven obscure passages,
uncertain which to take, will see enough around him to keep his
curiosity and attention awake for no inconsiderable time. From the
irregular square into which he has plunged, the streets and courts dart
in all directions, until they are lost in the unwholesome vapour which
hangs over the house-tops, and renders the dirty perspective uncertain
and confined; and lounging at every corner, as if they came there to
take a few gasps of such fresh air as has found its way so far, but is
too much exhausted already, to be enabled to force itself into the
narrow alleys around, are groups of people, whose appearance and
dwellings would fill any mind but a regular Londoner’s with
astonishment.
On one side, a little crowd has collected round a couple of ladies, who
having imbibed the contents of various ‘three-outs’ of gin and bitters
in the course of the morning, have at length differed on some point of
domestic arrangement, and are on the eve of settling the quarrel
satisfactorily, by an appeal to blows, greatly to the interest of other
ladies who live in the same house, and tenements adjoining, and who are
all partisans on one side or other.
‘Vy don’t you pitch into her, Sarah?’ exclaims one half-dressed matron,
by way of encouragement. ‘Vy don’t you? if _my_ ’usband had treated her
with a drain last night, unbeknown to me, I’d tear her precious eyes
out—a wixen!’
‘What’s the matter, ma’am?’ inquires another old woman, who has just
bustled up to the spot.
‘Matter!’ replies the first speaker, talking _at_ the obnoxious
combatant, ‘matter! Here’s poor dear Mrs. Sulliwin, as has five blessed
children of her own, can’t go out a charing for one arternoon, but what
hussies must be a comin’, and ’ticing avay her oun’ ’usband, as she’s
been married to twelve year come next Easter Monday, for I see the
certificate ven I vas a drinkin’ a cup o’ tea vith her, only the werry
last blessed Ven’sday as ever was sent. I ’appen’d to say
promiscuously, “Mrs. Sulliwin,” says I—’
‘What do you mean by hussies?’ interrupts a champion of the other
party, who has evinced a strong inclination throughout to get up a
branch fight on her own account (‘Hooroar,’ ejaculates a pot-boy in
parenthesis, ‘put the kye-bosk on her, Mary!’), ‘What do you mean by
hussies?’ reiterates the champion.
‘Niver mind,’ replies the opposition expressively, ‘niver mind; _you_
go home, and, ven you’re quite sober, mend your stockings.’
This somewhat personal allusion, not only to the lady’s habits of
intemperance, but also to the state of her wardrobe, rouses her utmost
ire, and she accordingly complies with the urgent request of the
bystanders to ‘pitch in,’ with considerable alacrity. The scuffle
became general, and terminates, in minor play-bill phraseology, with
‘arrival of the policemen, interior of the station-house, and
impressive _dénouement_.’
In addition to the numerous groups who are idling about the gin-shops
and squabbling in the centre of the road, every post in the open space
has its occupant, who leans against it for hours, with listless
perseverance. It is odd enough that one class of men in London appear
to have no enjoyment beyond leaning against posts. We never saw a
regular bricklayer’s labourer take any other recreation, fighting
excepted. Pass through St. Giles’s in the evening of a week-day, there
they are in their fustian dresses, spotted with brick-dust and
whitewash, leaning against posts. Walk through Seven Dials on Sunday
morning: there they are again, drab or light corduroy trousers, Blucher
boots, blue coats, and great yellow waistcoats, leaning against posts.
The idea of a man dressing himself in his best clothes, to lean against
a post all day!
The peculiar character of these streets, and the close resemblance each
one bears to its neighbour, by no means tends to decrease the
bewilderment in which the unexperienced wayfarer through ‘the Dials’
finds himself involved. He traverses streets of dirty, straggling
houses, with now and then an unexpected court composed of buildings as
ill-proportioned and deformed as the half-naked children that wallow in
the kennels. Here and there, a little dark chandler’s shop, with a
cracked bell hung up behind the door to announce the entrance of a
customer, or betray the presence of some young gentleman in whom a
passion for shop tills has developed itself at an early age: others, as
if for support, against some handsome lofty building, which usurps the
place of a low dingy public-house; long rows of broken and patched
windows expose plants that may have flourished when ‘the Dials’ were
built, in vessels as dirty as ‘the Dials’ themselves; and shops for the
purchase of rags, bones, old iron, and kitchen-stuff, vie in
cleanliness with the bird-fanciers and rabbit-dealers, which one might
fancy so many arks, but for the irresistible conviction that no bird in
its proper senses, who was permitted to leave one of them, would ever
come back again. Brokers’ shops, which would seem to have been
established by humane individuals, as refuges for destitute bugs,
interspersed with announcements of day-schools, penny theatres,
petition-writers, mangles, and music for balls or routs, complete the
‘still life’ of the subject; and dirty men, filthy women, squalid
children, fluttering shuttlecocks, noisy battledores, reeking pipes,
bad fruit, more than doubtful oysters, attenuated cats, depressed dogs,
and anatomical fowls, are its cheerful accompaniments.
If the external appearance of the houses, or a glance at their
inhabitants, present but few attractions, a closer acquaintance with
either is little calculated to alter one’s first impression. Every room
has its separate tenant, and every tenant is, by the same mysterious
dispensation which causes a country curate to ‘increase and multiply’
most marvellously, generally the head of a numerous family.
The man in the shop, perhaps, is in the baked ‘jemmy’ line, or the
fire-wood and hearth-stone line, or any other line which requires a
floating capital of eighteen-pence or thereabouts: and he and his
family live in the shop, and the small back parlour behind it. Then
there is an Irish labourer and _his_ family in the back kitchen, and a
jobbing man—carpet-beater and so forth—with _his_ family in the front
one. In the front one-pair, there’s another man with another wife and
family, and in the back one-pair, there’s ‘a young ’oman as takes in
tambour-work, and dresses quite genteel,’ who talks a good deal about
‘my friend,’ and can’t ‘a-bear anything low.’ The second floor front,
and the rest of the lodgers, are just a second edition of the people
below, except a shabby-genteel man in the back attic, who has his
half-pint of coffee every morning from the coffee-shop next door but
one, which boasts a little front den called a coffee-room, with a
fireplace, over which is an inscription, politely requesting that, ‘to
prevent mistakes,’ customers will ‘please to pay on delivery.’ The
shabby-genteel man is an object of some mystery, but as he leads a life
of seclusion, and never was known to buy anything beyond an occasional
pen, except half-pints of coffee, penny loaves, and ha’porths of ink,
his fellow-lodgers very naturally suppose him to be an author; and
rumours are current in the Dials, that he writes poems for Mr. Warren.
Now anybody who passed through the Dials on a hot summer’s evening, and
saw the different women of the house gossiping on the steps, would be
apt to think that all was harmony among them, and that a more primitive
set of people than the native Diallers could not be imagined. Alas! the
man in the shop ill-treats his family; the carpet-beater extends his
professional pursuits to his wife; the one-pair front has an undying
feud with the two-pair front, in consequence of the two-pair front
persisting in dancing over his (the one-pair front’s) head, when he and
his family have retired for the night; the two-pair back will interfere
with the front kitchen’s children; the Irishman comes home drunk every
other night, and attacks everybody; and the one-pair back screams at
everything. Animosities spring up between floor and floor; the very
cellar asserts his equality. Mrs. A. ‘smacks’ Mrs. B.’s child for
‘making faces.’ Mrs. B. forthwith throws cold water over Mrs. A.’s
child for ‘calling names.’ The husbands are embroiled—the quarrel
becomes general—an assault is the consequence, and a police-officer the
result.