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.

CHAPTER IV—SCOTLAND-YARD

Scotland-yard is a small—a very small-tract of land, bounded on one
side by the river Thames, on the other by the gardens of Northumberland
House: abutting at one end on the bottom of Northumberland-street, at
the other on the back of Whitehall-place. When this territory was first
accidentally discovered by a country gentleman who lost his way in the
Strand, some years ago, the original settlers were found to be a
tailor, a publican, two eating-house keepers, and a fruit-pie maker;
and it was also found to contain a race of strong and bulky men, who
repaired to the wharfs in Scotland-yard regularly every morning, about
five or six o’clock, to fill heavy waggons with coal, with which they
proceeded to distant places up the country, and supplied the
inhabitants with fuel. When they had emptied their waggons, they again
returned for a fresh supply; and this trade was continued throughout
the year.

As the settlers derived their subsistence from ministering to the wants
of these primitive traders, the articles exposed for sale, and the
places where they were sold, bore strong outward marks of being
expressly adapted to their tastes and wishes. The tailor displayed in
his window a Lilliputian pair of leather gaiters, and a diminutive
round frock, while each doorpost was appropriately garnished with a
model of a coal-sack. The two eating-house keepers exhibited joints of
a magnitude, and puddings of a solidity, which coalheavers alone could
appreciate; and the fruit-pie maker displayed on his well-scrubbed
window-board large white compositions of flour and dripping, ornamented
with pink stains, giving rich promise of the fruit within, which made
their huge mouths water, as they lingered past.

But the choicest spot in all Scotland-yard was the old public-house in
the corner. Here, in a dark wainscoted-room of ancient appearance,
cheered by the glow of a mighty fire, and decorated with an enormous
clock, whereof the face was white, and the figures black, sat the lusty
coalheavers, quaffing large draughts of Barclay’s best, and puffing
forth volumes of smoke, which wreathed heavily above their heads, and
involved the room in a thick dark cloud. From this apartment might
their voices be heard on a winter’s night, penetrating to the very bank
of the river, as they shouted out some sturdy chorus, or roared forth
the burden of a popular song; dwelling upon the last few words with a
strength and length of emphasis which made the very roof tremble above
them.

Here, too, would they tell old legends of what the Thames was in
ancient times, when the Patent Shot Manufactory wasn’t built, and
Waterloo-bridge had never been thought of; and then they would shake
their heads with portentous looks, to the deep edification of the
rising generation of heavers, who crowded round them, and wondered
where all this would end; whereat the tailor would take his pipe
solemnly from his mouth, and say, how that he hoped it might end well,
but he very much doubted whether it would or not, and couldn’t rightly
tell what to make of it—a mysterious expression of opinion, delivered
with a semi-prophetic air, which never failed to elicit the fullest
concurrence of the assembled company; and so they would go on drinking
and wondering till ten o’clock came, and with it the tailor’s wife to
fetch him home, when the little party broke up, to meet again in the
same room, and say and do precisely the same things, on the following
evening at the same hour.

About this time the barges that came up the river began to bring vague
rumours to Scotland-yard of somebody in the city having been heard to
say, that the Lord Mayor had threatened in so many words to pull down
the old London-bridge, and build up a new one. At first these rumours
were disregarded as idle tales, wholly destitute of foundation, for
nobody in Scotland-yard doubted that if the Lord Mayor contemplated any
such dark design, he would just be clapped up in the Tower for a week
or two, and then killed off for high treason.

By degrees, however, the reports grew stronger, and more frequent, and
at last a barge, laden with numerous chaldrons of the best Wallsend,
brought up the positive intelligence that several of the arches of the
old bridge were stopped, and that preparations were actually in
progress for constructing the new one. What an excitement was visible
in the old tap-room on that memorable night! Each man looked into his
neighbour’s face, pale with alarm and astonishment, and read therein an
echo of the sentiments which filled his own breast. The oldest heaver
present proved to demonstration, that the moment the piers were
removed, all the water in the Thames would run clean off, and leave a
dry gully in its place. What was to become of the coal-barges—of the
trade of Scotland-yard—of the very existence of its population? The
tailor shook his head more sagely than usual, and grimly pointing to a
knife on the table, bid them wait and see what happened. He said
nothing—not he; but if the Lord Mayor didn’t fall a victim to popular
indignation, why he would be rather astonished; that was all.

They did wait; barge after barge arrived, and still no tidings of the
assassination of the Lord Mayor. The first stone was laid: it was done
by a Duke—the King’s brother. Years passed away, and the bridge was
opened by the King himself. In course of time, the piers were removed;
and when the people in Scotland-yard got up next morning in the
confident expectation of being able to step over to Pedlar’s Acre
without wetting the soles of their shoes, they found to their
unspeakable astonishment that the water was just where it used to be.

A result so different from that which they had anticipated from this
first improvement, produced its full effect upon the inhabitants of
Scotland-yard. One of the eating-house keepers began to court public
opinion, and to look for customers among a new class of people. He
covered his little dining-tables with white cloths, and got a painter’s
apprentice to inscribe something about hot joints from twelve to two,
in one of the little panes of his shop-window. Improvement began to
march with rapid strides to the very threshold of Scotland-yard. A new
market sprung up at Hungerford, and the Police Commissioners
established their office in Whitehall-place. The traffic in
Scotland-yard increased; fresh Members were added to the House of
Commons, the Metropolitan Representatives found it a near cut, and many
other foot passengers followed their example.

We marked the advance of civilisation, and beheld it with a sigh. The
eating-house keeper who manfully resisted the innovation of
table-cloths, was losing ground every day, as his opponent gained it,
and a deadly feud sprung up between them. The genteel one no longer
took his evening’s pint in Scotland-yard, but drank gin and water at a
‘parlour’ in Parliament-street. The fruit-pie maker still continued to
visit the old room, but he took to smoking cigars, and began to call
himself a pastrycook, and to read the papers. The old heavers still
assembled round the ancient fireplace, but their talk was mournful: and
the loud song and the joyous shout were heard no more.

And what is Scotland-yard now? How have its old customs changed; and
how has the ancient simplicity of its inhabitants faded away! The old
tottering public-house is converted into a spacious and lofty
‘wine-vaults;’ gold leaf has been used in the construction of the
letters which emblazon its exterior, and the poet’s art has been called
into requisition, to intimate that if you drink a certain description
of ale, you must hold fast by the rail. The tailor exhibits in his
window the pattern of a foreign-looking brown surtout, with silk
buttons, a fur collar, and fur cuffs. He wears a stripe down the
outside of each leg of his trousers: and we have detected his
assistants (for he has assistants now) in the act of sitting on the
shop-board in the same uniform.

At the other end of the little row of houses a boot-maker has
established himself in a brick box, with the additional innovation of a
first floor; and here he exposes for sale, boots—real Wellington
boots—an article which a few years ago, none of the original
inhabitants had ever seen or heard of. It was but the other day, that a
dress-maker opened another little box in the middle of the row; and,
when we thought that the spirit of change could produce no alteration
beyond that, a jeweller appeared, and not content with exposing gilt
rings and copper bracelets out of number, put up an announcement, which
still sticks in his window, that ‘ladies’ ears may be pierced within.’
The dress-maker employs a young lady who wears pockets in her apron;
and the tailor informs the public that gentlemen may have their own
materials made up.

Amidst all this change, and restlessness, and innovation, there remains
but one old man, who seems to mourn the downfall of this ancient place.
He holds no converse with human kind, but, seated on a wooden bench at
the angle of the wall which fronts the crossing from Whitehall-place,
watches in silence the gambols of his sleek and well-fed dogs. He is
the presiding genius of Scotland-yard. Years and years have rolled over
his head; but, in fine weather or in foul, hot or cold, wet or dry,
hail, rain, or snow, he is still in his accustomed spot. Misery and
want are depicted in his countenance; his form is bent by age, his head
is grey with length of trial, but there he sits from day to day,
brooding over the past; and thither he will continue to drag his feeble
limbs, until his eyes have closed upon Scotland-yard, and upon the
world together.

A few years hence, and the antiquary of another generation looking into
some mouldy record of the strife and passions that agitated the world
in these times, may glance his eye over the pages we have just filled:
and not all his knowledge of the history of the past, not all his
black-letter lore, or his skill in book-collecting, not all the dry
studies of a long life, or the dusty volumes that have cost him a
fortune, may help him to the whereabouts, either of Scotland-yard, or
of any one of the landmarks we have mentioned in describing it.

CHAPTER V—SEVEN DIALS

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.

CHAPTER VI—MEDITATIONS IN MONMOUTH-STREET

We have always entertained a particular attachment towards
Monmouth-street, as the only true and real emporium for second-hand
wearing apparel. Monmouth-street is venerable from its antiquity, and
respectable from its usefulness. Holywell-street we despise; the
red-headed and red-whiskered Jews who forcibly haul you into their
squalid houses, and thrust you into a suit of clothes, whether you will
or not, we detest.

The inhabitants of Monmouth-street are a distinct class; a peaceable
and retiring race, who immure themselves for the most part in deep
cellars, or small back parlours, and who seldom come forth into the
world, except in the dusk and coolness of the evening, when they may be
seen seated, in chairs on the pavement, smoking their pipes, or
watching the gambols of their engaging children as they revel in the
gutter, a happy troop of infantine scavengers. Their countenances bear
a thoughtful and a dirty cast, certain indications of their love of
traffic; and their habitations are distinguished by that disregard of
outward appearance and neglect of personal comfort, so common among
people who are constantly immersed in profound speculations, and deeply
engaged in sedentary pursuits.

We have hinted at the antiquity of our favourite spot. ‘A
Monmouth-street laced coat’ was a by-word a century ago; and still we
find Monmouth-street the same. Pilot great-coats with wooden buttons,
have usurped the place of the ponderous laced coats with full skirts;
embroidered waistcoats with large flaps, have yielded to
double-breasted checks with roll-collars; and three-cornered hats of
quaint appearance, have given place to the low crowns and broad brims
of the coachman school; but it is the times that have changed, not
Monmouth-street. Through every alteration and every change,
Monmouth-street has still remained the burial-place of the fashions;
and such, to judge from all present appearances, it will remain until
there are no more fashions to bury.

We love to walk among these extensive groves of the illustrious dead,
and to indulge in the speculations to which they give rise; now fitting
a deceased coat, then a dead pair of trousers, and anon the mortal
remains of a gaudy waistcoat, upon some being of our own conjuring up,
and endeavouring, from the shape and fashion of the garment itself, to
bring its former owner before our mind’s eye. We have gone on
speculating in this way, until whole rows of coats have started from
their pegs, and buttoned up, of their own accord, round the waists of
imaginary wearers; lines of trousers have jumped down to meet them;
waistcoats have almost burst with anxiety to put themselves on; and
half an acre of shoes have suddenly found feet to fit them, and gone
stumping down the street with a noise which has fairly awakened us from
our pleasant reverie, and driven us slowly away, with a bewildered
stare, an object of astonishment to the good people of Monmouth-street,
and of no slight suspicion to the policemen at the opposite street
corner.

We were occupied in this manner the other day, endeavouring to fit a
pair of lace-up half-boots on an ideal personage, for whom, to say the
truth, they were full a couple of sizes too small, when our eyes
happened to alight on a few suits of clothes ranged outside a
shop-window, which it immediately struck us, must at different periods
have all belonged to, and been worn by, the same individual, and had
now, by one of those strange conjunctions of circumstances which will
occur sometimes, come to be exposed together for sale in the same shop.
The idea seemed a fantastic one, and we looked at the clothes again
with a firm determination not to be easily led away. No, we were right;
the more we looked, the more we were convinced of the accuracy of our
previous impression. There was the man’s whole life written as legibly
on those clothes, as if we had his autobiography engrossed on parchment
before us.

The first was a patched and much-soiled skeleton suit; one of those
straight blue cloth cases in which small boys used to be confined,
before belts and tunics had come in, and old notions had gone out: an
ingenious contrivance for displaying the full symmetry of a boy’s
figure, by fastening him into a very tight jacket, with an ornamental
row of buttons over each shoulder, and then buttoning his trousers over
it, so as to give his legs the appearance of being hooked on, just
under the armpits. This was the boy’s dress. It had belonged to a town
boy, we could see; there was a shortness about the legs and arms of the
suit; and a bagging at the knees, peculiar to the rising youth of
London streets. A small day-school he had been at, evidently. If it had
been a regular boys’ school they wouldn’t have let him play on the
floor so much, and rub his knees so white. He had an indulgent mother
too, and plenty of halfpence, as the numerous smears of some sticky
substance about the pockets, and just below the chin, which even the
salesman’s skill could not succeed in disguising, sufficiently
betokened. They were decent people, but not overburdened with riches,
or he would not have so far outgrown the suit when he passed into those
corduroys with the round jacket; in which he went to a boys’ school,
however, and learnt to write—and in ink of pretty tolerable blackness,
too, if the place where he used to wipe his pen might be taken as
evidence.

A black suit and the jacket changed into a diminutive coat. His father
had died, and the mother had got the boy a message-lad’s place in some
office. A long-worn suit that one; rusty and threadbare before it was
laid aside, but clean and free from soil to the last. Poor woman! We
could imagine her assumed cheerfulness over the scanty meal, and the
refusal of her own small portion, that her hungry boy might have
enough. Her constant anxiety for his welfare, her pride in his growth
mingled sometimes with the thought, almost too acute to bear, that as
he grew to be a man his old affection might cool, old kindnesses fade
from his mind, and old promises be forgotten—the sharp pain that even
then a careless word or a cold look would give her—all crowded on our
thoughts as vividly as if the very scene were passing before us.

These things happen every hour, and we all know it; and yet we felt as
much sorrow when we saw, or fancied we saw—it makes no difference
which—the change that began to take place now, as if we had just
conceived the bare possibility of such a thing for the first time. The
next suit, smart but slovenly; meant to be gay, and yet not half so
decent as the threadbare apparel; redolent of the idle lounge, and the
blackguard companions, told us, we thought, that the widow’s comfort
had rapidly faded away. We could imagine that coat—imagine! we could
see it; we _had_ seen it a hundred times—sauntering in company with
three or four other coats of the same cut, about some place of
profligate resort at night.

We dressed, from the same shop-window in an instant, half a dozen boys
of from fifteen to twenty; and putting cigars into their mouths, and
their hands into their pockets, watched them as they sauntered down the
street, and lingered at the corner, with the obscene jest, and the
oft-repeated oath. We never lost sight of them, till they had cocked
their hats a little more on one side, and swaggered into the
public-house; and then we entered the desolate home, where the mother
sat late in the night, alone; we watched her, as she paced the room in
feverish anxiety, and every now and then opened the door, looked
wistfully into the dark and empty street, and again returned, to be
again and again disappointed. We beheld the look of patience with which
she bore the brutish threat, nay, even the drunken blow; and we heard
the agony of tears that gushed from her very heart, as she sank upon
her knees in her solitary and wretched apartment.

A long period had elapsed, and a greater change had taken place, by the
time of casting off the suit that hung above. It was that of a stout,
broad-shouldered, sturdy-chested man; and we knew at once, as anybody
would, who glanced at that broad-skirted green coat, with the large
metal buttons, that its wearer seldom walked forth without a dog at his
heels, and some idle ruffian, the very counterpart of himself, at his
side. The vices of the boy had grown with the man, and we fancied his
home then—if such a place deserve the name.

We saw the bare and miserable room, destitute of furniture, crowded
with his wife and children, pale, hungry, and emaciated; the man
cursing their lamentations, staggering to the tap-room, from whence he
had just returned, followed by his wife and a sickly infant, clamouring
for bread; and heard the street-wrangle and noisy recrimination that
his striking her occasioned. And then imagination led us to some
metropolitan workhouse, situated in the midst of crowded streets and
alleys, filled with noxious vapours, and ringing with boisterous cries,
where an old and feeble woman, imploring pardon for her son, lay dying
in a close dark room, with no child to clasp her hand, and no pure air
from heaven to fan her brow. A stranger closed the eyes that settled
into a cold unmeaning glare, and strange ears received the words that
murmured from the white and half-closed lips.

A coarse round frock, with a worn cotton neckerchief, and other
articles of clothing of the commonest description, completed the
history. A prison, and the sentence—banishment or the gallows. What
would the man have given then, to be once again the contented humble
drudge of his boyish years; to have been restored to life, but for a
week, a day, an hour, a minute, only for so long a time as would enable
him to say one word of passionate regret to, and hear one sound of
heartfelt forgiveness from, the cold and ghastly form that lay rotting
in the pauper’s grave! The children wild in the streets, the mother a
destitute widow; both deeply tainted with the deep disgrace of the
husband and father’s name, and impelled by sheer necessity, down the
precipice that had led him to a lingering death, possibly of many
years’ duration, thousands of miles away. We had no clue to the end of
the tale; but it was easy to guess its termination.

We took a step or two further on, and by way of restoring the naturally
cheerful tone of our thoughts, began fitting visionary feet and legs
into a cellar-board full of boots and shoes, with a speed and accuracy
that would have astonished the most expert artist in leather, living.
There was one pair of boots in particular—a jolly, good-tempered,
hearty-looking pair of tops, that excited our warmest regard; and we
had got a fine, red-faced, jovial fellow of a market-gardener into
them, before we had made their acquaintance half a minute. They were
just the very thing for him. There was his huge fat legs bulging over
the tops, and fitting them too tight to admit of his tucking in the
loops he had pulled them on by; and his knee-cords with an interval of
stocking; and his blue apron tucked up round his waist; and his red
neckerchief and blue coat, and a white hat stuck on one side of his
head; and there he stood with a broad grin on his great red face,
whistling away, as if any other idea but that of being happy and
comfortable had never entered his brain.

This was the very man after our own heart; we knew all about him; we
had seen him coming up to Covent-garden in his green chaise-cart, with
the fat, tubby little horse, half a thousand times; and even while we
cast an affectionate look upon his boots, at that instant, the form of
a coquettish servant-maid suddenly sprung into a pair of Denmark satin
shoes that stood beside them, and we at once recognised the very girl
who accepted his offer of a ride, just on this side the Hammersmith
suspension-bridge, the very last Tuesday morning we rode into town from
Richmond.

A very smart female, in a showy bonnet, stepped into a pair of grey
cloth boots, with black fringe and binding, that were studiously
pointing out their toes on the other side of the top-boots, and seemed
very anxious to engage his attention, but we didn’t observe that our
friend the market-gardener appeared at all captivated with these
blandishments; for beyond giving a knowing wink when they first began,
as if to imply that he quite understood their end and object, he took
no further notice of them. His indifference, however, was amply
recompensed by the excessive gallantry of a very old gentleman with a
silver-headed stick, who tottered into a pair of large list shoes, that
were standing in one corner of the board, and indulged in a variety of
gestures expressive of his admiration of the lady in the cloth boots,
to the immeasurable amusement of a young fellow we put into a pair of
long-quartered pumps, who we thought would have split the coat that
slid down to meet him, with laughing.

We had been looking on at this little pantomime with great satisfaction
for some time, when, to our unspeakable astonishment, we perceived that
the whole of the characters, including a numerous _corps de ballet_ of
boots and shoes in the background, into which we had been hastily
thrusting as many feet as we could press into the service, were
arranging themselves in order for dancing; and some music striking up
at the moment, to it they went without delay. It was perfectly
delightful to witness the agility of the market-gardener. Out went the
boots, first on one side, then on the other, then cutting, then
shuffling, then setting to the Denmark satins, then advancing, then
retreating, then going round, and then repeating the whole of the
evolutions again, without appearing to suffer in the least from the
violence of the exercise.

Nor were the Denmark satins a bit behindhand, for they jumped and
bounded about, in all directions; and though they were neither so
regular, nor so true to the time as the cloth boots, still, as they
seemed to do it from the heart, and to enjoy it more, we candidly
confess that we preferred their style of dancing to the other. But the
old gentleman in the list shoes was the most amusing object in the
whole party; for, besides his grotesque attempts to appear youthful,
and amorous, which were sufficiently entertaining in themselves, the
young fellow in the pumps managed so artfully that every time the old
gentleman advanced to salute the lady in the cloth boots, he trod with
his whole weight on the old fellow’s toes, which made him roar with
anguish, and rendered all the others like to die of laughing.

We were in the full enjoyment of these festivities when we heard a
shrill, and by no means musical voice, exclaim, ‘Hope you’ll know me
agin, imperence!’ and on looking intently forward to see from whence
the sound came, we found that it proceeded, not from the young lady in
the cloth boots, as we had at first been inclined to suppose, but from
a bulky lady of elderly appearance who was seated in a chair at the
head of the cellar-steps, apparently for the purpose of superintending
the sale of the articles arranged there.

A barrel-organ, which had been in full force close behind us, ceased
playing; the people we had been fitting into the shoes and boots took
to flight at the interruption; and as we were conscious that in the
depth of our meditations we might have been rudely staring at the old
lady for half an hour without knowing it, we took to flight too, and
were soon immersed in the deepest obscurity of the adjacent ‘Dials.’

CHAPTER VII—HACKNEY-COACH STANDS

We maintain that hackney-coaches, properly so called, belong solely to
the metropolis. We may be told, that there are hackney-coach stands in
Edinburgh; and not to go quite so far for a contradiction to our
position, we may be reminded that Liverpool, Manchester, ‘and other
large towns’ (as the Parliamentary phrase goes), have _their_
hackney-coach stands. We readily concede to these places the possession
of certain vehicles, which may look almost as dirty, and even go almost
as slowly, as London hackney-coaches; but that they have the slightest
claim to compete with the metropolis, either in point of stands,
drivers, or cattle, we indignantly deny.

Take a regular, ponderous, rickety, London hackney-coach of the old
school, and let any man have the boldness to assert, if he can, that he
ever beheld any object on the face of the earth which at all resembles
it, unless, indeed, it were another hackney-coach of the same date. We
have recently observed on certain stands, and we say it with deep
regret, rather dapper green chariots, and coaches of polished yellow,
with four wheels of the same colour as the coach, whereas it is
perfectly notorious to every one who has studied the subject, that
every wheel ought to be of a different colour, and a different size.
These are innovations, and, like other miscalled improvements, awful
signs of the restlessness of the public mind, and the little respect
paid to our time-honoured institutions. Why should hackney-coaches be
clean? Our ancestors found them dirty, and left them so. Why should we,
with a feverish wish to ‘keep moving,’ desire to roll along at the rate
of six miles an hour, while they were content to rumble over the stones
at four? These are solemn considerations. Hackney-coaches are part and
parcel of the law of the land; they were settled by the Legislature;
plated and numbered by the wisdom of Parliament.

Then why have they been swamped by cabs and omnibuses? Or why should
people be allowed to ride quickly for eightpence a mile, after
Parliament had come to the solemn decision that they should pay a
shilling a mile for riding slowly? We pause for a reply;—and, having no
chance of getting one, begin a fresh paragraph.

Our acquaintance with hackney-coach stands is of long standing. We are
a walking book of fares, feeling ourselves, half bound, as it were, to
be always in the right on contested points. We know all the regular
watermen within three miles of Covent-garden by sight, and should be
almost tempted to believe that all the hackney-coach horses in that
district knew us by sight too, if one-half of them were not blind. We
take great interest in hackney-coaches, but we seldom drive, having a
knack of turning ourselves over when we attempt to do so. We are as
great friends to horses, hackney-coach and otherwise, as the renowned
Mr. Martin, of costermonger notoriety, and yet we never ride. We keep
no horse, but a clothes-horse; enjoy no saddle so much as a saddle of
mutton; and, following our own inclinations, have never followed the
hounds. Leaving these fleeter means of getting over the ground, or of
depositing oneself upon it, to those who like them, by hackney-coach
stands we take our stand.

There is a hackney-coach stand under the very window at which we are
writing; there is only one coach on it now, but it is a fair specimen
of the class of vehicles to which we have alluded—a great, lumbering,
square concern of a dingy yellow colour (like a bilious brunette), with
very small glasses, but very large frames; the panels are ornamented
with a faded coat of arms, in shape something like a dissected bat, the
axletree is red, and the majority of the wheels are green. The box is
partially covered by an old great-coat, with a multiplicity of capes,
and some extraordinary-looking clothes; and the straw, with which the
canvas cushion is stuffed, is sticking up in several places, as if in
rivalry of the hay, which is peeping through the chinks in the boot.
The horses, with drooping heads, and each with a mane and tail as
scanty and straggling as those of a worn-out rocking-horse, are
standing patiently on some damp straw, occasionally wincing, and
rattling the harness; and now and then, one of them lifts his mouth to
the ear of his companion, as if he were saying, in a whisper, that he
should like to assassinate the coachman. The coachman himself is in the
watering-house; and the waterman, with his hands forced into his
pockets as far as they can possibly go, is dancing the ‘double
shuffle,’ in front of the pump, to keep his feet warm.

The servant-girl, with the pink ribbons, at No. 5, opposite, suddenly
opens the street-door, and four small children forthwith rush out, and
scream ‘Coach!’ with all their might and main. The waterman darts from
the pump, seizes the horses by their respective bridles, and drags
them, and the coach too, round to the house, shouting all the time for
the coachman at the very top, or rather very bottom of his voice, for
it is a deep bass growl. A response is heard from the tap-room; the
coachman, in his wooden-soled shoes, makes the street echo again as he
runs across it; and then there is such a struggling, and backing, and
grating of the kennel, to get the coach-door opposite the house-door,
that the children are in perfect ecstasies of delight. What a
commotion! The old lady, who has been stopping there for the last
month, is going back to the country. Out comes box after box, and one
side of the vehicle is filled with luggage in no time; the children get
into everybody’s way, and the youngest, who has upset himself in his
attempts to carry an umbrella, is borne off wounded and kicking. The
youngsters disappear, and a short pause ensues, during which the old
lady is, no doubt, kissing them all round in the back parlour. She
appears at last, followed by her married daughter, all the children,
and both the servants, who, with the joint assistance of the coachman
and waterman, manage to get her safely into the coach. A cloak is
handed in, and a little basket, which we could almost swear contains a
small black bottle, and a paper of sandwiches. Up go the steps, bang
goes the door, ‘Golden-cross, Charing-cross, Tom,’ says the waterman;
‘Good-bye, grandma,’ cry the children, off jingles the coach at the
rate of three miles an hour, and the mamma and children retire into the
house, with the exception of one little villain, who runs up the street
at the top of his speed, pursued by the servant; not ill-pleased to
have such an opportunity of displaying her attractions. She brings him
back, and, after casting two or three gracious glances across the way,
which are either intended for us or the potboy (we are not quite
certain which), shuts the door, and the hackney-coach stand is again at
a standstill.

We have been frequently amused with the intense delight with which ‘a
servant of all work,’ who is sent for a coach, deposits herself inside;
and the unspeakable gratification which boys, who have been despatched
on a similar errand, appear to derive from mounting the box. But we
never recollect to have been more amused with a hackney-coach party,
than one we saw early the other morning in Tottenham-court-road. It was
a wedding-party, and emerged from one of the inferior streets near
Fitzroy-square. There were the bride, with a thin white dress, and a
great red face; and the bridesmaid, a little, dumpy, good-humoured
young woman, dressed, of course, in the same appropriate costume; and
the bridegroom and his chosen friend, in blue coats, yellow
waist-coats, white trousers, and Berlin gloves to match. They stopped
at the corner of the street, and called a coach with an air of
indescribable dignity. The moment they were in, the bridesmaid threw a
red shawl, which she had, no doubt, brought on purpose, negligently
over the number on the door, evidently to delude pedestrians into the
belief that the hackney-coach was a private carriage; and away they
went, perfectly satisfied that the imposition was successful, and quite
unconscious that there was a great staring number stuck up behind, on a
plate as large as a schoolboy’s slate. A shilling a mile!—the ride was
worth five, at least, to them.

What an interesting book a hackney-coach might produce, if it could
carry as much in its head as it does in its body! The autobiography of
a broken-down hackney-coach, would surely be as amusing as the
autobiography of a broken-down hackneyed dramatist; and it might tell
as much of its travels _with_ the pole, as others have of their
expeditions _to_ it. How many stories might be related of the different
people it had conveyed on matters of business or profit—pleasure or
pain! And how many melancholy tales of the same people at different
periods! The country-girl—the showy, over-dressed woman—the drunken
prostitute! The raw apprentice—the dissipated spendthrift—the thief!

Talk of cabs! Cabs are all very well in cases of expedition, when it’s
a matter of neck or nothing, life or death, your temporary home or your
long one. But, besides a cab’s lacking that gravity of deportment which
so peculiarly distinguishes a hackney-coach, let it never be forgotten
that a cab is a thing of yesterday, and that he never was anything
better. A hackney-cab has always been a hackney-cab, from his first
entry into life; whereas a hackney-coach is a remnant of past
gentility, a victim to fashion, a hanger-on of an old English family,
wearing their arms, and, in days of yore, escorted by men wearing their
livery, stripped of his finery, and thrown upon the world, like a
once-smart footman when he is no longer sufficiently juvenile for his
office, progressing lower and lower in the scale of four-wheeled
degradation, until at last it comes to—_a stand_!

CHAPTER VIII—DOCTORS’ COMMONS

Walking without any definite object through St. Paul’s Churchyard, a
little while ago, we happened to turn down a street entitled
‘Paul’s-chain,’ and keeping straight forward for a few hundred yards,
found ourself, as a natural consequence, in Doctors’ Commons. Now
Doctors’ Commons being familiar by name to everybody, as the place
where they grant marriage-licenses to love-sick couples, and divorces
to unfaithful ones; register the wills of people who have any property
to leave, and punish hasty gentlemen who call ladies by unpleasant
names, we no sooner discovered that we were really within its
precincts, than we felt a laudable desire to become better acquainted
therewith; and as the first object of our curiosity was the Court,
whose decrees can even unloose the bonds of matrimony, we procured a
direction to it; and bent our steps thither without delay.

Crossing a quiet and shady court-yard, paved with stone, and frowned
upon by old red brick houses, on the doors of which were painted the
names of sundry learned civilians, we paused before a small,
green-baized, brass-headed-nailed door, which yielding to our gentle
push, at once admitted us into an old quaint-looking apartment, with
sunken windows, and black carved wainscoting, at the upper end of
which, seated on a raised platform, of semicircular shape, were about a
dozen solemn-looking gentlemen, in crimson gowns and wigs.

At a more elevated desk in the centre, sat a very fat and red-faced
gentleman, in tortoise-shell spectacles, whose dignified appearance
announced the judge; and round a long green-baized table below,
something like a billiard-table without the cushions and pockets, were
a number of very self-important-looking personages, in stiff
neckcloths, and black gowns with white fur collars, whom we at once set
down as proctors. At the lower end of the billiard-table was an
individual in an arm-chair, and a wig, whom we afterwards discovered to
be the registrar; and seated behind a little desk, near the door, were
a respectable-looking man in black, of about twenty-stone weight or
thereabouts, and a fat-faced, smirking, civil-looking body, in a black
gown, black kid gloves, knee shorts, and silks, with a shirt-frill in
his bosom, curls on his head, and a silver staff in his hand, whom we
had no difficulty in recognising as the officer of the Court. The
latter, indeed, speedily set our mind at rest upon this point, for,
advancing to our elbow, and opening a conversation forthwith, he had
communicated to us, in less than five minutes, that he was the
apparitor, and the other the court-keeper; that this was the Arches
Court, and therefore the counsel wore red gowns, and the proctors fur
collars; and that when the other Courts sat there, they didn’t wear red
gowns or fur collars either; with many other scraps of intelligence
equally interesting. Besides these two officers, there was a little
thin old man, with long grizzly hair, crouched in a remote corner,
whose duty, our communicative friend informed us, was to ring a large
hand-bell when the Court opened in the morning, and who, for aught his
appearance betokened to the contrary, might have been similarly
employed for the last two centuries at least.

The red-faced gentleman in the tortoise-shell spectacles had got all
the talk to himself just then, and very well he was doing it, too, only
he spoke very fast, but that was habit; and rather thick, but that was
good living. So we had plenty of time to look about us. There was one
individual who amused us mightily. This was one of the bewigged
gentlemen in the red robes, who was straddling before the fire in the
centre of the Court, in the attitude of the brazen Colossus, to the
complete exclusion of everybody else. He had gathered up his robe
behind, in much the same manner as a slovenly woman would her
petticoats on a very dirty day, in order that he might feel the full
warmth of the fire. His wig was put on all awry, with the tail
straggling about his neck; his scanty grey trousers and short black
gaiters, made in the worst possible style, imported an additional
inelegant appearance to his uncouth person; and his limp,
badly-starched shirt-collar almost obscured his eyes. We shall never be
able to claim any credit as a physiognomist again, for, after a careful
scrutiny of this gentleman’s countenance, we had come to the conclusion
that it bespoke nothing but conceit and silliness, when our friend with
the silver staff whispered in our ear that he was no other than a
doctor of civil law, and heaven knows what besides. So of course we
were mistaken, and he must be a very talented man. He conceals it so
well though—perhaps with the merciful view of not astonishing ordinary
people too much—that you would suppose him to be one of the stupidest
dogs alive.

The gentleman in the spectacles having concluded his judgment, and a
few minutes having been allowed to elapse, to afford time for the buzz
of the Court to subside, the registrar called on the next cause, which
was ‘the office of the Judge promoted by Bumple against Sludberry.’ A
general movement was visible in the Court, at this announcement, and
the obliging functionary with silver staff whispered us that ‘there
would be some fun now, for this was a brawling case.’

We were not rendered much the wiser by this piece of information, till
we found by the opening speech of the counsel for the promoter, that,
under a half-obsolete statute of one of the Edwards, the court was
empowered to visit with the penalty of excommunication, any person who
should be proved guilty of the crime of ‘brawling,’ or ‘smiting,’ in
any church, or vestry adjoining thereto; and it appeared, by some
eight-and-twenty affidavits, which were duly referred to, that on a
certain night, at a certain vestry-meeting, in a certain parish
particularly set forth, Thomas Sludberry, the party appeared against in
that suit, had made use of, and applied to Michael Bumple, the
promoter, the words ‘You be blowed;’ and that, on the said Michael
Bumple and others remonstrating with the said Thomas Sludberry, on the
impropriety of his conduct, the said Thomas Sludberry repeated the
aforesaid expression, ‘You be blowed;’ and furthermore desired and
requested to know, whether the said Michael Bumple ‘wanted anything for
himself;’ adding, ‘that if the said Michael Bumple did want anything
for himself, he, the said Thomas Sludberry, was the man to give it
him;’ at the same time making use of other heinous and sinful
expressions, all of which, Bumple submitted, came within the intent and
meaning of the Act; and therefore he, for the soul’s health and
chastening of Sludberry, prayed for sentence of excommunication against
him accordingly.

Upon these facts a long argument was entered into, on both sides, to
the great edification of a number of persons interested in the
parochial squabbles, who crowded the court; and when some very long and
grave speeches had been made _pro_ and _con_, the red-faced gentleman
in the tortoise-shell spectacles took a review of the case, which
occupied half an hour more, and then pronounced upon Sludberry the
awful sentence of excommunication for a fortnight, and payment of the
costs of the suit. Upon this, Sludberry, who was a little, red-faced,
sly-looking, ginger-beer seller, addressed the court, and said, if
they’d be good enough to take off the costs, and excommunicate him for
the term of his natural life instead, it would be much more convenient
to him, for he never went to church at all. To this appeal the
gentleman in the spectacles made no other reply than a look of virtuous
indignation; and Sludberry and his friends retired. As the man with the
silver staff informed us that the court was on the point of rising, we
retired too—pondering, as we walked away, upon the beautiful spirit of
these ancient ecclesiastical laws, the kind and neighbourly feelings
they are calculated to awaken, and the strong attachment to religious
institutions which they cannot fail to engender.

We were so lost in these meditations, that we had turned into the
street, and run up against a door-post, before we recollected where we
were walking. On looking upwards to see what house we had stumbled
upon, the words ‘Prerogative-Office,’ written in large characters, met
our eye; and as we were in a sight-seeing humour and the place was a
public one, we walked in.

The room into which we walked, was a long, busy-looking place,
partitioned off, on either side, into a variety of little boxes, in
which a few clerks were engaged in copying or examining deeds. Down the
centre of the room were several desks nearly breast high, at each of
which, three or four people were standing, poring over large volumes.
As we knew that they were searching for wills, they attracted our
attention at once.

It was curious to contrast the lazy indifference of the attorneys’
clerks who were making a search for some legal purpose, with the air of
earnestness and interest which distinguished the strangers to the
place, who were looking up the will of some deceased relative; the
former pausing every now and then with an impatient yawn, or raising
their heads to look at the people who passed up and down the room; the
latter stooping over the book, and running down column after column of
names in the deepest abstraction.

There was one little dirty-faced man in a blue apron, who after a whole
morning’s search, extending some fifty years back, had just found the
will to which he wished to refer, which one of the officials was
reading to him in a low hurried voice from a thick vellum book with
large clasps. It was perfectly evident that the more the clerk read,
the less the man with the blue apron understood about the matter. When
the volume was first brought down, he took off his hat, smoothed down
his hair, smiled with great self-satisfaction, and looked up in the
reader’s face with the air of a man who had made up his mind to
recollect every word he heard. The first two or three lines were
intelligible enough; but then the technicalities began, and the little
man began to look rather dubious. Then came a whole string of
complicated trusts, and he was regularly at sea. As the reader
proceeded, it was quite apparent that it was a hopeless case, and the
little man, with his mouth open and his eyes fixed upon his face,
looked on with an expression of bewilderment and perplexity
irresistibly ludicrous.

A little further on, a hard-featured old man with a deeply-wrinkled
face, was intently perusing a lengthy will with the aid of a pair of
horn spectacles: occasionally pausing from his task, and slily noting
down some brief memorandum of the bequests contained in it. Every
wrinkle about his toothless mouth, and sharp keen eyes, told of avarice
and cunning. His clothes were nearly threadbare, but it was easy to see
that he wore them from choice and not from necessity; all his looks and
gestures down to the very small pinches of snuff which he every now and
then took from a little tin canister, told of wealth, and penury, and
avarice.

As he leisurely closed the register, put up his spectacles, and folded
his scraps of paper in a large leathern pocket-book, we thought what a
nice hard bargain he was driving with some poverty-stricken legatee,
who, tired of waiting year after year, until some life-interest should
fall in, was selling his chance, just as it began to grow most
valuable, for a twelfth part of its worth. It was a good speculation—a
very safe one. The old man stowed his pocket-book carefully in the
breast of his great-coat, and hobbled away with a leer of triumph. That
will had made him ten years younger at the lowest computation.

Having commenced our observations, we should certainly have extended
them to another dozen of people at least, had not a sudden shutting up
and putting away of the worm-eaten old books, warned us that the time
for closing the office had arrived; and thus deprived us of a pleasure,
and spared our readers an infliction.

We naturally fell into a train of reflection as we walked homewards,
upon the curious old records of likings and dislikings; of jealousies
and revenges; of affection defying the power of death, and hatred
pursued beyond the grave, which these depositories contain; silent but
striking tokens, some of them, of excellence of heart, and nobleness of
soul; melancholy examples, others, of the worst passions of human
nature. How many men as they lay speechless and helpless on the bed of
death, would have given worlds but for the strength and power to blot
out the silent evidence of animosity and bitterness, which now stands
registered against them in Doctors’ Commons!

CHAPTER IX—LONDON RECREATIONS

The wish of persons in the humbler classes of life, to ape the manners
and customs of those whom fortune has placed above them, is often the
subject of remark, and not unfrequently of complaint. The inclination
may, and no doubt does, exist to a great extent, among the small
gentility—the would-be aristocrats—of the middle classes. Tradesmen and
clerks, with fashionable novel-reading families, and
circulating-library-subscribing daughters, get up small assemblies in
humble imitation of Almack’s, and promenade the dingy ‘large room’ of
some second-rate hotel with as much complacency as the enviable few who
are privileged to exhibit their magnificence in that exclusive haunt of
fashion and foolery. Aspiring young ladies, who read flaming accounts
of some ‘fancy fair in high life,’ suddenly grow desperately
charitable; visions of admiration and matrimony float before their
eyes; some wonderfully meritorious institution, which, by the strangest
accident in the world, has never been heard of before, is discovered to
be in a languishing condition: Thomson’s great room, or Johnson’s
nursery-ground, is forthwith engaged, and the aforesaid young ladies,
from mere charity, exhibit themselves for three days, from twelve to
four, for the small charge of one shilling per head! With the exception
of these classes of society, however, and a few weak and insignificant
persons, we do not think the attempt at imitation to which we have
alluded, prevails in any great degree. The different character of the
recreations of different classes, has often afforded us amusement; and
we have chosen it for the subject of our present sketch, in the hope
that it may possess some amusement for our readers.

If the regular City man, who leaves Lloyd’s at five o’clock, and drives
home to Hackney, Clapton, Stamford-hill, or elsewhere, can be said to
have any daily recreation beyond his dinner, it is his garden. He never
does anything to it with his own hands; but he takes great pride in it
notwithstanding; and if you are desirous of paying your addresses to
the youngest daughter, be sure to be in raptures with every flower and
shrub it contains. If your poverty of expression compel you to make any
distinction between the two, we would certainly recommend your
bestowing more admiration on his garden than his wine. He always takes
a walk round it, before he starts for town in the morning, and is
particularly anxious that the fish-pond should be kept specially neat.
If you call on him on Sunday in summer-time, about an hour before
dinner, you will find him sitting in an arm-chair, on the lawn behind
the house, with a straw hat on, reading a Sunday paper. A short
distance from him you will most likely observe a handsome paroquet in a
large brass-wire cage; ten to one but the two eldest girls are
loitering in one of the side walks accompanied by a couple of young
gentlemen, who are holding parasols over them—of course only to keep
the sun off—while the younger children, with the under nursery-maid,
are strolling listlessly about, in the shade. Beyond these occasions,
his delight in his garden appears to arise more from the consciousness
of possession than actual enjoyment of it. When he drives you down to
dinner on a week-day, he is rather fatigued with the occupations of the
morning, and tolerably cross into the bargain; but when the cloth is
removed, and he has drank three or four glasses of his favourite port,
he orders the French windows of his dining-room (which of course look
into the garden) to be opened, and throwing a silk handkerchief over
his head, and leaning back in his arm-chair, descants at considerable
length upon its beauty, and the cost of maintaining it. This is to
impress you—who are a young friend of the family—with a due sense of
the excellence of the garden, and the wealth of its owner; and when he
has exhausted the subject, he goes to sleep.

There is another and a very different class of men, whose recreation is
their garden. An individual of this class, resides some short distance
from town—say in the Hampstead-road, or the Kilburn-road, or any other
road where the houses are small and neat, and have little slips of back
garden. He and his wife—who is as clean and compact a little body as
himself—have occupied the same house ever since he retired from
business twenty years ago. They have no family. They once had a son,
who died at about five years old. The child’s portrait hangs over the
mantelpiece in the best sitting-room, and a little cart he used to draw
about, is carefully preserved as a relic.

In fine weather the old gentleman is almost constantly in the garden;
and when it is too wet to go into it, he will look out of the window at
it, by the hour together. He has always something to do there, and you
will see him digging, and sweeping, and cutting, and planting, with
manifest delight. In spring-time, there is no end to the sowing of
seeds, and sticking little bits of wood over them, with labels, which
look like epitaphs to their memory; and in the evening, when the sun
has gone down, the perseverance with which he lugs a great watering-pot
about is perfectly astonishing. The only other recreation he has, is
the newspaper, which he peruses every day, from beginning to end,
generally reading the most interesting pieces of intelligence to his
wife, during breakfast. The old lady is very fond of flowers, as the
hyacinth-glasses in the parlour-window, and geranium-pots in the little
front court, testify. She takes great pride in the garden too: and when
one of the four fruit-trees produces rather a larger gooseberry than
usual, it is carefully preserved under a wine-glass on the sideboard,
for the edification of visitors, who are duly informed that Mr.
So-and-so planted the tree which produced it, with his own hands. On a
summer’s evening, when the large watering-pot has been filled and
emptied some fourteen times, and the old couple have quite exhausted
themselves by trotting about, you will see them sitting happily
together in the little summerhouse, enjoying the calm and peace of the
twilight, and watching the shadows as they fall upon the garden, and
gradually growing thicker and more sombre, obscure the tints of their
gayest flowers—no bad emblem of the years that have silently rolled
over their heads, deadening in their course the brightest hues of early
hopes and feelings which have long since faded away. These are their
only recreations, and they require no more. They have within
themselves, the materials of comfort and content; and the only anxiety
of each, is to die before the other.

This is no ideal sketch. There _used_ to be many old people of this
description; their numbers may have diminished, and may decrease still
more. Whether the course female education has taken of late
days—whether the pursuit of giddy frivolities, and empty nothings, has
tended to unfit women for that quiet domestic life, in which they show
far more beautifully than in the most crowded assembly, is a question
we should feel little gratification in discussing: we hope not.

Let us turn now, to another portion of the London population, whose
recreations present about as strong a contrast as can well be
conceived—we mean the Sunday pleasurers; and let us beg our readers to
imagine themselves stationed by our side in some well-known rural
‘Tea-gardens.’

The heat is intense this afternoon, and the people, of whom there are
additional parties arriving every moment, look as warm as the tables
which have been recently painted, and have the appearance of being
red-hot. What a dust and noise! Men and women—boys and
girls—sweethearts and married people—babies in arms, and children in
chaises—pipes and shrimps—cigars and periwinkles—tea and tobacco.
Gentlemen, in alarming waistcoats, and steel watch-guards, promenading
about, three abreast, with surprising dignity (or as the gentleman in
the next box facetiously observes, ‘cutting it uncommon fat!’)—ladies,
with great, long, white pocket-handkerchiefs like small table-cloths,
in their hands, chasing one another on the grass in the most playful
and interesting manner, with the view of attracting the attention of
the aforesaid gentlemen—husbands in perspective ordering bottles of
ginger-beer for the objects of their affections, with a lavish
disregard of expense; and the said objects washing down huge quantities
of ‘shrimps’ and ‘winkles,’ with an equal disregard of their own bodily
health and subsequent comfort—boys, with great silk hats just balanced
on the top of their heads, smoking cigars, and trying to look as if
they liked them—gentlemen in pink shirts and blue waistcoats,
occasionally upsetting either themselves, or somebody else, with their
own canes.

Some of the finery of these people provokes a smile, but they are all
clean, and happy, and disposed to be good-natured and sociable. Those
two motherly-looking women in the smart pelisses, who are chatting so
confidentially, inserting a ‘ma’am’ at every fourth word, scraped an
acquaintance about a quarter of an hour ago: it originated in
admiration of the little boy who belongs to one of them—that diminutive
specimen of mortality in the three-cornered pink satin hat with black
feathers. The two men in the blue coats and drab trousers, who are
walking up and down, smoking their pipes, are their husbands. The party
in the opposite box are a pretty fair specimen of the generality of the
visitors. These are the father and mother, and old grandmother: a young
man and woman, and an individual addressed by the euphonious title of
‘Uncle Bill,’ who is evidently the wit of the party. They have some
half-dozen children with them, but it is scarcely necessary to notice
the fact, for that is a matter of course here. Every woman in ‘the
gardens,’ who has been married for any length of time, must have had
twins on two or three occasions; it is impossible to account for the
extent of juvenile population in any other way.

Observe the inexpressible delight of the old grandmother, at Uncle
Bill’s splendid joke of ‘tea for four: bread-and-butter for forty;’ and
the loud explosion of mirth which follows his wafering a paper
‘pigtail’ on the waiter’s collar. The young man is evidently ‘keeping
company’ with Uncle Bill’s niece: and Uncle Bill’s hints—such as ‘Don’t
forget me at the dinner, you know,’ ‘I shall look out for the cake,
Sally,’ ‘I’ll be godfather to your first—wager it’s a boy,’ and so
forth, are equally embarrassing to the young people, and delightful to
the elder ones. As to the old grandmother, she is in perfect ecstasies,
and does nothing but laugh herself into fits of coughing, until they
have finished the ‘gin-and-water warm with,’ of which Uncle Bill
ordered ‘glasses round’ after tea, ‘just to keep the night air out, and
to do it up comfortable and riglar arter sitch an as-tonishing hot
day!’

It is getting dark, and the people begin to move. The field leading to
town is quite full of them; the little hand-chaises are dragged wearily
along, the children are tired, and amuse themselves and the company
generally by crying, or resort to the much more pleasant expedient of
going to sleep—the mothers begin to wish they were at home
again—sweethearts grow more sentimental than ever, as the time for
parting arrives—the gardens look mournful enough, by the light of the
two lanterns which hang against the trees for the convenience of
smokers—and the waiters who have been running about incessantly for the
last six hours, think they feel a little tired, as they count their
glasses and their gains.

CHAPTER X—THE RIVER

‘Are you fond of the water?’ is a question very frequently asked, in
hot summer weather, by amphibious-looking young men. ‘Very,’ is the
general reply. ‘An’t you?’—‘Hardly ever off it,’ is the response,
accompanied by sundry adjectives, expressive of the speaker’s heartfelt
admiration of that element. Now, with all respect for the opinion of
society in general, and cutter clubs in particular, we humbly suggest
that some of the most painful reminiscences in the mind of every
individual who has occasionally disported himself on the Thames, must
be connected with his aquatic recreations. Who ever heard of a
successful water-party?—or to put the question in a still more
intelligible form, who ever saw one? We have been on water excursions
out of number, but we solemnly declare that we cannot call to mind one
single occasion of the kind, which was not marked by more miseries than
any one would suppose could be reasonably crowded into the space of
some eight or nine hours. Something has always gone wrong. Either the
cork of the salad-dressing has come out, or the most anxiously expected
member of the party has not come out, or the most disagreeable man in
company would come out, or a child or two have fallen into the water,
or the gentleman who undertook to steer has endangered everybody’s life
all the way, or the gentlemen who volunteered to row have been ‘out of
practice,’ and performed very alarming evolutions, putting their oars
down into the water and not being able to get them up again, or taking
terrific pulls without putting them in at all; in either case, pitching
over on the backs of their heads with startling violence, and
exhibiting the soles of their pumps to the ‘sitters’ in the boat, in a
very humiliating manner.

We grant that the banks of the Thames are very beautiful at Richmond
and Twickenham, and other distant havens, often sought though seldom
reached; but from the ‘Red-us’ back to Blackfriars-bridge, the scene is
wonderfully changed. The Penitentiary is a noble building, no doubt,
and the sportive youths who ‘go in’ at that particular part of the
river, on a summer’s evening, may be all very well in perspective; but
when you are obliged to keep in shore coming home, and the young ladies
will colour up, and look perseveringly the other way, while the married
dittos cough slightly, and stare very hard at the water, you feel
awkward—especially if you happen to have been attempting the most
distant approach to sentimentality, for an hour or two previously.

Although experience and suffering have produced in our minds the result
we have just stated, we are by no means blind to a proper sense of the
fun which a looker-on may extract from the amateurs of boating. What
can be more amusing than Searle’s yard on a fine Sunday morning? It’s a
Richmond tide, and some dozen boats are preparing for the reception of
the parties who have engaged them. Two or three fellows in great rough
trousers and Guernsey shirts, are getting them ready by easy stages;
now coming down the yard with a pair of sculls and a cushion—then
having a chat with the ‘Jack,’ who, like all his tribe, seems to be
wholly incapable of doing anything but lounging about—then going back
again, and returning with a rudder-line and a stretcher—then solacing
themselves with another chat—and then wondering, with their hands in
their capacious pockets, ‘where them gentlemen’s got to as ordered the
six.’ One of these, the head man, with the legs of his trousers
carefully tucked up at the bottom, to admit the water, we presume—for
it is an element in which he is infinitely more at home than on land—is
quite a character, and shares with the defunct oyster-swallower the
celebrated name of ‘Dando.’ Watch him, as taking a few minutes’ respite
from his toils, he negligently seats himself on the edge of a boat, and
fans his broad bushy chest with a cap scarcely half so furry. Look at
his magnificent, though reddish whiskers, and mark the somewhat native
humour with which he ‘chaffs’ the boys and ’prentices, or cunningly
gammons the gen’lm’n into the gift of a glass of gin, of which we
verily believe he swallows in one day as much as any six ordinary men,
without ever being one atom the worse for it.

But the party arrives, and Dando, relieved from his state of
uncertainty, starts up into activity. They approach in full aquatic
costume, with round blue jackets, striped shirts, and caps of all sizes
and patterns, from the velvet skull-cap of French manufacture, to the
easy head-dress familiar to the students of the old spelling-books, as
having, on the authority of the portrait, formed part of the costume of
the Reverend Mr. Dilworth.

This is the most amusing time to observe a regular Sunday water-party.
There has evidently been up to this period no inconsiderable degree of
boasting on everybody’s part relative to his knowledge of navigation;
the sight of the water rapidly cools their courage, and the air of
self-denial with which each of them insists on somebody else’s taking
an oar, is perfectly delightful. At length, after a great deal of
changing and fidgeting, consequent upon the election of a stroke-oar:
the inability of one gentleman to pull on this side, of another to pull
on that, and of a third to pull at all, the boat’s crew are seated.
‘Shove her off!’ cries the cockswain, who looks as easy and comfortable
as if he were steering in the Bay of Biscay. The order is obeyed; the
boat is immediately turned completely round, and proceeds towards
Westminster-bridge, amidst such a splashing and struggling as never was
seen before, except when the Royal George went down. ‘Back wa’ater,
sir,’ shouts Dando, ‘Back wa’ater, you sir, aft;’ upon which everybody
thinking he must be the individual referred to, they all back water,
and back comes the boat, stern first, to the spot whence it started.
‘Back water, you sir, aft; pull round, you sir, for’ad, can’t you?’
shouts Dando, in a frenzy of excitement. ‘Pull round, Tom, can’t you?’
re-echoes one of the party. ‘Tom an’t for’ad,’ replies another. ‘Yes,
he is,’ cries a third; and the unfortunate young man, at the imminent
risk of breaking a blood-vessel, pulls and pulls, until the head of the
boat fairly lies in the direction of Vauxhall-bridge. ‘That’s right—now
pull all on you!’ shouts Dando again, adding, in an under-tone, to
somebody by him, ‘Blowed if hever I see sich a set of muffs!’ and away
jogs the boat in a zigzag direction, every one of the six oars dipping
into the water at a different time; and the yard is once more clear,
until the arrival of the next party.

A well-contested rowing-match on the Thames, is a very lively and
interesting scene. The water is studded with boats of all sorts, kinds,
and descriptions; places in the coal-barges at the different wharfs are
let to crowds of spectators, beer and tobacco flow freely about; men,
women, and children wait for the start in breathless expectation;
cutters of six and eight oars glide gently up and down, waiting to
accompany their _protégés_ during the race; bands of music add to the
animation, if not to the harmony of the scene; groups of watermen are
assembled at the different stairs, discussing the merits of the
respective candidates; and the prize wherry, which is rowed slowly
about by a pair of sculls, is an object of general interest.

Two o’clock strikes, and everybody looks anxiously in the direction of
the bridge through which the candidates for the prize will
come—half-past two, and the general attention which has been preserved
so long begins to flag, when suddenly a gun is heard, and a noise of
distant hurra’ing along each bank of the river—every head is bent
forward—the noise draws nearer and nearer—the boats which have been
waiting at the bridge start briskly up the river, and a well-manned
galley shoots through the arch, the sitters cheering on the boats
behind them, which are not yet visible.

‘Here they are,’ is the general cry—and through darts the first boat,
the men in her, stripped to the skin, and exerting every muscle to
preserve the advantage they have gained—four other boats follow close
astern; there are not two boats’ length between them—the shouting is
tremendous, and the interest intense. ‘Go on, Pink’—‘Give it her,
Red’—‘Sulliwin for ever’—‘Bravo! George’—‘Now, Tom, now—now—now—why
don’t your partner stretch out?’—‘Two pots to a pint on Yellow,’ &c.,
&c. Every little public-house fires its gun, and hoists its flag; and
the men who win the heat, come in, amidst a splashing and shouting, and
banging and confusion, which no one can imagine who has not witnessed
it, and of which any description would convey a very faint idea.

One of the most amusing places we know is the steam-wharf of the London
Bridge, or St. Katharine’s Dock Company, on a Saturday morning in
summer, when the Gravesend and Margate steamers are usually crowded to
excess; and as we have just taken a glance at the river above bridge,
we hope our readers will not object to accompany us on board a
Gravesend packet.

Coaches are every moment setting down at the entrance to the wharf, and
the stare of bewildered astonishment with which the ‘fares’ resign
themselves and their luggage into the hands of the porters, who seize
all the packages at once as a matter of course, and run away with them,
heaven knows where, is laughable in the extreme. A Margate boat lies
alongside the wharf, the Gravesend boat (which starts first) lies
alongside that again; and as a temporary communication is formed
between the two, by means of a plank and hand-rail, the natural
confusion of the scene is by no means diminished.

‘Gravesend?’ inquires a stout father of a stout family, who follow him,
under the guidance of their mother, and a servant, at the no small risk
of two or three of them being left behind in the confusion.
‘Gravesend?’

‘Pass on, if you please, sir,’ replies the attendant—‘other boat, sir.’

Hereupon the stout father, being rather mystified, and the stout mother
rather distracted by maternal anxiety, the whole party deposit
themselves in the Margate boat, and after having congratulated himself
on having secured very comfortable seats, the stout father sallies to
the chimney to look for his luggage, which he has a faint recollection
of having given some man, something, to take somewhere. No luggage,
however, bearing the most remote resemblance to his own, in shape or
form, is to be discovered; on which the stout father calls very loudly
for an officer, to whom he states the case, in the presence of another
father of another family—a little thin man—who entirely concurs with
him (the stout father) in thinking that it’s high time something was
done with these steam companies, and that as the Corporation Bill
failed to do it, something else must; for really people’s property is
not to be sacrificed in this way; and that if the luggage isn’t
restored without delay, he will take care it shall be put in the
papers, for the public is not to be the victim of these great
monopolies. To this, the officer, in his turn, replies, that that
company, ever since it has been St. Kat’rine’s Dock Company, has
protected life and property; that if it had been the London Bridge
Wharf Company, indeed, he shouldn’t have wondered, seeing that the
morality of that company (they being the opposition) can’t be answered
for, by no one; but as it is, he’s convinced there must be some
mistake, and he wouldn’t mind making a solemn oath afore a magistrate
that the gentleman’ll find his luggage afore he gets to Margate.

Here the stout father, thinking he is making a capital point, replies,
that as it happens, he is not going to Margate at all, and that
‘Passenger to Gravesend’ was on the luggage, in letters of full two
inches long; on which the officer rapidly explains the mistake, and the
stout mother, and the stout children, and the servant, are hurried with
all possible despatch on board the Gravesend boat, which they reached
just in time to discover that their luggage is there, and that their
comfortable seats are not. Then the bell, which is the signal for the
Gravesend boat starting, begins to ring most furiously: and people keep
time to the bell, by running in and out of our boat at a double-quick
pace. The bell stops; the boat starts: people who have been taking
leave of their friends on board, are carried away against their will;
and people who have been taking leave of their friends on shore, find
that they have performed a very needless ceremony, in consequence of
their not being carried away at all. The regular passengers, who have
season tickets, go below to breakfast; people who have purchased
morning papers, compose themselves to read them; and people who have
not been down the river before, think that both the shipping and the
water, look a great deal better at a distance.

When we get down about as far as Blackwall, and begin to move at a
quicker rate, the spirits of the passengers appear to rise in
proportion. Old women who have brought large wicker hand-baskets with
them, set seriously to work at the demolition of heavy sandwiches, and
pass round a wine-glass, which is frequently replenished from a flat
bottle like a stomach-warmer, with considerable glee: handing it first
to the gentleman in the foraging-cap, who plays the harp—partly as an
expression of satisfaction with his previous exertions, and partly to
induce him to play ‘Dumbledumbdeary,’ for ‘Alick’ to dance to; which
being done, Alick, who is a damp earthy child in red worsted socks,
takes certain small jumps upon the deck, to the unspeakable
satisfaction of his family circle. Girls who have brought the first
volume of some new novel in their reticule, become extremely plaintive,
and expatiate to Mr. Brown, or young Mr. O’Brien, who has been looking
over them, on the blueness of the sky, and brightness of the water; on
which Mr. Brown or Mr. O’Brien, as the case may be, remarks in a low
voice that he has been quite insensible of late to the beauties of
nature, that his whole thoughts and wishes have centred in one object
alone—whereupon the young lady looks up, and failing in her attempt to
appear unconscious, looks down again; and turns over the next leaf with
great difficulty, in order to afford opportunity for a lengthened
pressure of the hand.

Telescopes, sandwiches, and glasses of brandy-and-water cold without,
begin to be in great requisition; and bashful men who have been looking
down the hatchway at the engine, find, to their great relief, a subject
on which they can converse with one another—and a copious one
too—Steam.

‘Wonderful thing steam, sir.’ ‘Ah! (a deep-drawn sigh) it is indeed,
sir.’ ‘Great power, sir.’ ‘Immense—immense!’ ‘Great deal done by steam,
sir.’ ‘Ah! (another sigh at the immensity of the subject, and a knowing
shake of the head) you may say that, sir.’ ‘Still in its infancy, they
say, sir.’ Novel remarks of this kind, are generally the commencement
of a conversation which is prolonged until the conclusion of the trip,
and, perhaps, lays the foundation of a speaking acquaintance between
half-a-dozen gentlemen, who, having their families at Gravesend, take
season tickets for the boat, and dine on board regularly every
afternoon.

CHAPTER XI—ASTLEY’S

We never see any very large, staring, black Roman capitals, in a book,
or shop-window, or placarded on a wall, without their immediately
recalling to our mind an indistinct and confused recollection of the
time when we were first initiated in the mysteries of the alphabet. We
almost fancy we see the pin’s point following the letter, to impress
its form more strongly on our bewildered imagination; and wince
involuntarily, as we remember the hard knuckles with which the reverend
old lady who instilled into our mind the first principles of education
for ninepence per week, or ten and sixpence per quarter, was wont to
poke our juvenile head occasionally, by way of adjusting the confusion
of ideas in which we were generally involved. The same kind of feeling
pursues us in many other instances, but there is no place which recalls
so strongly our recollections of childhood as Astley’s. It was not a
‘Royal Amphitheatre’ in those days, nor had Ducrow arisen to shed the
light of classic taste and portable gas over the sawdust of the circus;
but the whole character of the place was the same, the pieces were the
same, the clown’s jokes were the same, the riding-masters were equally
grand, the comic performers equally witty, the tragedians equally
hoarse, and the ‘highly-trained chargers’ equally spirited. Astley’s
has altered for the better—we have changed for the worse. Our
histrionic taste is gone, and with shame we confess, that we are far
more delighted and amused with the audience, than with the pageantry we
once so highly appreciated.

We like to watch a regular Astley’s party in the Easter or Midsummer
holidays—pa and ma, and nine or ten children, varying from five foot
six to two foot eleven: from fourteen years of age to four. We had just
taken our seat in one of the boxes, in the centre of the house, the
other night, when the next was occupied by just such a party as we
should have attempted to describe, had we depicted our _beau idéal_ of
a group of Astley’s visitors.

First of all, there came three little boys and a little girl, who, in
pursuance of pa’s directions, issued in a very audible voice from the
box-door, occupied the front row; then two more little girls were
ushered in by a young lady, evidently the governess. Then came three
more little boys, dressed like the first, in blue jackets and trousers,
with lay-down shirt-collars: then a child in a braided frock and high
state of astonishment, with very large round eyes, opened to their
utmost width, was lifted over the seats—a process which occasioned a
considerable display of little pink legs—then came ma and pa, and then
the eldest son, a boy of fourteen years old, who was evidently trying
to look as if he did not belong to the family.

The first five minutes were occupied in taking the shawls off the
little girls, and adjusting the bows which ornamented their hair; then
it was providentially discovered that one of the little boys was seated
behind a pillar and could not see, so the governess was stuck behind
the pillar, and the boy lifted into her place. Then pa drilled the
boys, and directed the stowing away of their pocket-handkerchiefs, and
ma having first nodded and winked to the governess to pull the girls’
frocks a little more off their shoulders, stood up to review the little
troop—an inspection which appeared to terminate much to her own
satisfaction, for she looked with a complacent air at pa, who was
standing up at the further end of the seat. Pa returned the glance, and
blew his nose very emphatically; and the poor governess peeped out from
behind the pillar, and timidly tried to catch ma’s eye, with a look
expressive of her high admiration of the whole family. Then two of the
little boys who had been discussing the point whether Astley’s was more
than twice as large as Drury Lane, agreed to refer it to ‘George’ for
his decision; at which ‘George,’ who was no other than the young
gentleman before noticed, waxed indignant, and remonstrated in no very
gentle terms on the gross impropriety of having his name repeated in so
loud a voice at a public place, on which all the children laughed very
heartily, and one of the little boys wound up by expressing his
opinion, that ‘George began to think himself quite a man now,’
whereupon both pa and ma laughed too; and George (who carried a dress
cane and was cultivating whiskers) muttered that ‘William always was
encouraged in his impertinence;’ and assumed a look of profound
contempt, which lasted the whole evening.

The play began, and the interest of the little boys knew no bounds. Pa
was clearly interested too, although he very unsuccessfully endeavoured
to look as if he wasn’t. As for ma, she was perfectly overcome by the
drollery of the principal comedian, and laughed till every one of the
immense bows on her ample cap trembled, at which the governess peeped
out from behind the pillar again, and whenever she could catch ma’s
eye, put her handkerchief to her mouth, and appeared, as in duty bound,
to be in convulsions of laughter also. Then when the man in the
splendid armour vowed to rescue the lady or perish in the attempt, the
little boys applauded vehemently, especially one little fellow who was
apparently on a visit to the family, and had been carrying on a child’s
flirtation, the whole evening, with a small coquette of twelve years
old, who looked like a model of her mamma on a reduced scale; and who,
in common with the other little girls (who generally speaking have even
more coquettishness about them than much older ones), looked very
properly shocked, when the knight’s squire kissed the princess’s
confidential chambermaid.

When the scenes in the circle commenced, the children were more
delighted than ever; and the wish to see what was going forward,
completely conquering pa’s dignity, he stood up in the box, and
applauded as loudly as any of them. Between each feat of horsemanship,
the governess leant across to ma, and retailed the clever remarks of
the children on that which had preceded: and ma, in the openness of her
heart, offered the governess an acidulated drop, and the governess,
gratified to be taken notice of, retired behind her pillar again with a
brighter countenance: and the whole party seemed quite happy, except
the exquisite in the back of the box, who, being too grand to take any
interest in the children, and too insignificant to be taken notice of
by anybody else, occupied himself, from time to time, in rubbing the
place where the whiskers ought to be, and was completely alone in his
glory.

We defy any one who has been to Astley’s two or three times, and is
consequently capable of appreciating the perseverance with which
precisely the same jokes are repeated night after night, and season
after season, not to be amused with one part of the performances at
least—we mean the scenes in the circle. For ourself, we know that when
the hoop, composed of jets of gas, is let down, the curtain drawn up
for the convenience of the half-price on their ejectment from the ring,
the orange-peel cleared away, and the sawdust shaken, with mathematical
precision, into a complete circle, we feel as much enlivened as the
youngest child present; and actually join in the laugh which follows
the clown’s shrill shout of ‘Here we are!’ just for old acquaintance’
sake. Nor can we quite divest ourself of our old feeling of reverence
for the riding-master, who follows the clown with a long whip in his
hand, and bows to the audience with graceful dignity. He is none of
your second-rate riding-masters in nankeen dressing-gowns, with brown
frogs, but the regular gentleman-attendant on the principal riders, who
always wears a military uniform with a table-cloth inside the breast of
the coat, in which costume he forcibly reminds one of a fowl trussed
for roasting. He is—but why should we attempt to describe that of which
no description can convey an adequate idea? Everybody knows the man,
and everybody remembers his polished boots, his graceful demeanour,
stiff, as some misjudging persons have in their jealousy considered it,
and the splendid head of black hair, parted high on the forehead, to
impart to the countenance an appearance of deep thought and poetic
melancholy. His soft and pleasing voice, too, is in perfect unison with
his noble bearing, as he humours the clown by indulging in a little
badinage; and the striking recollection of his own dignity, with which
he exclaims, ‘Now, sir, if you please, inquire for Miss Woolford, sir,’
can never be forgotten. The graceful air, too, with which he introduces
Miss Woolford into the arena, and, after assisting her to the saddle,
follows her fairy courser round the circle, can never fail to create a
deep impression in the bosom of every female servant present.

When Miss Woolford, and the horse, and the orchestra, all stop together
to take breath, he urbanely takes part in some such dialogue as the
following (commenced by the clown): ‘I say, sir!’—‘Well, sir?’ (it’s
always conducted in the politest manner.)—‘Did you ever happen to hear
I was in the army, sir?’—‘No, sir.’—‘Oh, yes, sir—I can go through my
exercise, sir.’—‘Indeed, sir!’—‘Shall I do it now, sir?’—‘If you
please, sir; come, sir—make haste’ (a cut with the long whip, and ‘Ha’
done now—I don’t like it,’ from the clown). Here the clown throws
himself on the ground, and goes through a variety of gymnastic
convulsions, doubling himself up, and untying himself again, and making
himself look very like a man in the most hopeless extreme of human
agony, to the vociferous delight of the gallery, until he is
interrupted by a second cut from the long whip, and a request to see
‘what Miss Woolford’s stopping for?’ On which, to the inexpressible
mirth of the gallery, he exclaims, ‘Now, Miss Woolford, what can I come
for to go, for to fetch, for to bring, for to carry, for to do, for
you, ma’am?’ On the lady’s announcing with a sweet smile that she wants
the two flags, they are, with sundry grimaces, procured and handed up;
the clown facetiously observing after the performance of the latter
ceremony—‘He, he, oh! I say, sir, Miss Woolford knows me; she smiled at
me.’ Another cut from the whip, a burst from the orchestra, a start
from the horse, and round goes Miss Woolford again on her graceful
performance, to the delight of every member of the audience, young or
old. The next pause affords an opportunity for similar witticisms, the
only additional fun being that of the clown making ludicrous grimaces
at the riding-master every time his back is turned; and finally
quitting the circle by jumping over his head, having previously
directed his attention another way.

Did any of our readers ever notice the class of people, who hang about
the stage-doors of our minor theatres in the daytime? You will rarely
pass one of these entrances without seeing a group of three or four men
conversing on the pavement, with an indescribable public-house-parlour
swagger, and a kind of conscious air, peculiar to people of this
description. They always seem to think they are exhibiting; the lamps
are ever before them. That young fellow in the faded brown coat, and
very full light green trousers, pulls down the wristbands of his check
shirt, as ostentatiously as if it were of the finest linen, and cocks
the white hat of the summer-before-last as knowingly over his right
eye, as if it were a purchase of yesterday. Look at the dirty white
Berlin gloves, and the cheap silk handkerchief stuck in the bosom of
his threadbare coat. Is it possible to see him for an instant, and not
come to the conclusion that he is the walking gentleman who wears a
blue surtout, clean collar, and white trousers, for half an hour, and
then shrinks into his worn-out scanty clothes: who has to boast night
after night of his splendid fortune, with the painful consciousness of
a pound a-week and his boots to find; to talk of his father’s mansion
in the country, with a dreary recollection of his own two-pair back, in
the New Cut; and to be envied and flattered as the favoured lover of a
rich heiress, remembering all the while that the ex-dancer at home is
in the family way, and out of an engagement?

Next to him, perhaps, you will see a thin pale man, with a very long
face, in a suit of shining black, thoughtfully knocking that part of
his boot which once had a heel, with an ash stick. He is the man who
does the heavy business, such as prosy fathers, virtuous servants,
curates, landlords, and so forth.

By the way, talking of fathers, we should very much like to see some
piece in which all the dramatis personae were orphans. Fathers are
invariably great nuisances on the stage, and always have to give the
hero or heroine a long explanation of what was done before the curtain
rose, usually commencing with ‘It is now nineteen years, my dear child,
since your blessed mother (here the old villain’s voice falters)
confided you to my charge. You were then an infant,’ &c., &c. Or else
they have to discover, all of a sudden, that somebody whom they have
been in constant communication with, during three long acts, without
the slightest suspicion, is their own child: in which case they
exclaim, ‘Ah! what do I see? This bracelet! That smile! These
documents! Those eyes! Can I believe my senses?—It must be!—Yes—it is,
it is my child!’—‘My father!’ exclaims the child; and they fall into
each other’s arms, and look over each other’s shoulders, and the
audience give three rounds of applause.

To return from this digression, we were about to say, that these are
the sort of people whom you see talking, and attitudinising, outside
the stage-doors of our minor theatres. At Astley’s they are always more
numerous than at any other place. There is generally a groom or two,
sitting on the window-sill, and two or three dirty shabby-genteel men
in checked neckerchiefs, and sallow linen, lounging about, and
carrying, perhaps, under one arm, a pair of stage shoes badly wrapped
up in a piece of old newspaper. Some years ago we used to stand
looking, open-mouthed, at these men, with a feeling of mysterious
curiosity, the very recollection of which provokes a smile at the
moment we are writing. We could not believe that the beings of light
and elegance, in milk-white tunics, salmon-coloured legs, and blue
scarfs, who flitted on sleek cream-coloured horses before our eyes at
night, with all the aid of lights, music, and artificial flowers, could
be the pale, dissipated-looking creatures we beheld by day.

We can hardly believe it now. Of the lower class of actors we have seen
something, and it requires no great exercise of imagination to identify
the walking gentleman with the ‘dirty swell,’ the comic singer with the
public-house chairman, or the leading tragedian with drunkenness and
distress; but these other men are mysterious beings, never seen out of
the ring, never beheld but in the costume of gods and sylphs. With the
exception of Ducrow, who can scarcely be classed among them, who ever
knew a rider at Astley’s, or saw him but on horseback? Can our friend
in the military uniform ever appear in threadbare attire, or descend to
the comparatively un-wadded costume of every-day life? Impossible! We
cannot—we will not—believe it.

CHAPTER XII—GREENWICH FAIR

If the Parks be ‘the lungs of London,’ we wonder what Greenwich Fair
is—a periodical breaking out, we suppose, a sort of spring-rash: a
three days’ fever, which cools the blood for six months afterwards, and
at the expiration of which London is restored to its old habits of
plodding industry, as suddenly and completely as if nothing had ever
happened to disturb them.

In our earlier days, we were a constant frequenter of Greenwich Fair,
for years. We have proceeded to, and returned from it, in almost every
description of vehicle. We cannot conscientiously deny the charge of
having once made the passage in a spring-van, accompanied by thirteen
gentlemen, fourteen ladies, an unlimited number of children, and a
barrel of beer; and we have a vague recollection of having, in later
days, found ourself the eighth outside, on the top of a hackney-coach,
at something past four o’clock in the morning, with a rather confused
idea of our own name, or place of residence. We have grown older since
then, and quiet, and steady: liking nothing better than to spend our
Easter, and all our other holidays, in some quiet nook, with people of
whom we shall never tire; but we think we still remember something of
Greenwich Fair, and of those who resort to it. At all events we will
try.

The road to Greenwich during the whole of Easter Monday, is in a state
of perpetual bustle and noise. Cabs, hackney-coaches, ‘shay’ carts,
coal-waggons, stages, omnibuses, sociables, gigs, donkey-chaises—all
crammed with people (for the question never is, what the horse can
draw, but what the vehicle will hold), roll along at their utmost
speed; the dust flies in clouds, ginger-beer corks go off in volleys,
the balcony of every public-house is crowded with people, smoking and
drinking, half the private houses are turned into tea-shops, fiddles
are in great request, every little fruit-shop displays its stall of
gilt gingerbread and penny toys; turnpike men are in despair; horses
won’t go on, and wheels will come off; ladies in ‘carawans’ scream with
fright at every fresh concussion, and their admirers find it necessary
to sit remarkably close to them, by way of encouragement;
servants-of-all-work, who are not allowed to have followers, and have
got a holiday for the day, make the most of their time with the
faithful admirer who waits for a stolen interview at the corner of the
street every night, when they go to fetch the beer—apprentices grow
sentimental, and straw-bonnet makers kind. Everybody is anxious to get
on, and actuated by the common wish to be at the fair, or in the park,
as soon as possible.

Pedestrians linger in groups at the roadside, unable to resist the
allurements of the stout proprietress of the ‘Jack-in-the-box, three
shies a penny,’ or the more splendid offers of the man with three
thimbles and a pea on a little round board, who astonishes the
bewildered crowd with some such address as, ‘Here’s the sort o’ game to
make you laugh seven years arter you’re dead, and turn ev’ry air on
your ed gray vith delight! Three thimbles and vun little pea—with a
vun, two, three, and a two, three, vun: catch him who can, look on,
keep your eyes open, and niver say die! niver mind the change, and the
expense: all fair and above board: them as don’t play can’t vin, and
luck attend the ryal sportsman! Bet any gen’lm’n any sum of money, from
harf-a-crown up to a suverin, as he doesn’t name the thimble as kivers
the pea!’ Here some greenhorn whispers his friend that he distinctly
saw the pea roll under the middle thimble—an impression which is
immediately confirmed by a gentleman in top-boots, who is standing by,
and who, in a low tone, regrets his own inability to bet, in
consequence of having unfortunately left his purse at home, but
strongly urges the stranger not to neglect such a golden opportunity.
The ‘plant’ is successful, the bet is made, the stranger of course
loses: and the gentleman with the thimbles consoles him, as he pockets
the money, with an assurance that it’s ‘all the fortin of war! this
time I vin, next time you vin: niver mind the loss of two bob and a
bender! Do it up in a small parcel, and break out in a fresh place.
Here’s the sort o’ game,’ &c.—and the eloquent harangue, with such
variations as the speaker’s exuberant fancy suggests, is again repeated
to the gaping crowd, reinforced by the accession of several new-comers.

The chief place of resort in the daytime, after the public-houses, is
the park, in which the principal amusement is to drag young ladies up
the steep hill which leads to the Observatory, and then drag them down
again, at the very top of their speed, greatly to the derangement of
their curls and bonnet-caps, and much to the edification of lookers-on
from below. ‘Kiss in the Ring,’ and ‘Threading my Grandmother’s
Needle,’ too, are sports which receive their full share of patronage.
Love-sick swains, under the influence of gin-and-water, and the tender
passion, become violently affectionate: and the fair objects of their
regard enhance the value of stolen kisses, by a vast deal of
struggling, and holding down of heads, and cries of ‘Oh! Ha’ done,
then, George—Oh, do tickle him for me, Mary—Well, I never!’ and similar
Lucretian ejaculations. Little old men and women, with a small basket
under one arm, and a wine-glass, without a foot, in the other hand,
tender ‘a drop o’ the right sort’ to the different groups; and young
ladies, who are persuaded to indulge in a drop of the aforesaid right
sort, display a pleasing degree of reluctance to taste it, and cough
afterwards with great propriety.

The old pensioners, who, for the moderate charge of a penny, exhibit
the mast-house, the Thames and shipping, the place where the men used
to hang in chains, and other interesting sights, through a telescope,
are asked questions about objects within the range of the glass, which
it would puzzle a Solomon to answer; and requested to find out
particular houses in particular streets, which it would have been a
task of some difficulty for Mr. Horner (not the young gentleman who ate
mince-pies with his thumb, but the man of Colosseum notoriety) to
discover. Here and there, where some three or four couple are sitting
on the grass together, you will see a sun-burnt woman in a red cloak
‘telling fortunes’ and prophesying husbands, which it requires no
extraordinary observation to describe, for the originals are before
her. Thereupon, the lady concerned laughs and blushes, and ultimately
buries her face in an imitation cambric handkerchief, and the gentleman
described looks extremely foolish, and squeezes her hand, and fees the
gipsy liberally; and the gipsy goes away, perfectly satisfied herself,
and leaving those behind her perfectly satisfied also: and the
prophecy, like many other prophecies of greater importance, fulfils
itself in time.

But it grows dark: the crowd has gradually dispersed, and only a few
stragglers are left behind. The light in the direction of the church
shows that the fair is illuminated; and the distant noise proves it to
be filling fast. The spot, which half an hour ago was ringing with the
shouts of boisterous mirth, is as calm and quiet as if nothing could
ever disturb its serenity: the fine old trees, the majestic building at
their feet, with the noble river beyond, glistening in the moonlight,
appear in all their beauty, and under their most favourable aspect; the
voices of the boys, singing their evening hymn, are borne gently on the
air; and the humblest mechanic who has been lingering on the grass so
pleasant to the feet that beat the same dull round from week to week in
the paved streets of London, feels proud to think as he surveys the
scene before him, that he belongs to the country which has selected
such a spot as a retreat for its oldest and best defenders in the
decline of their lives.

Five minutes’ walking brings you to the fair; a scene calculated to
awaken very different feelings. The entrance is occupied on either side
by the vendors of gingerbread and toys: the stalls are gaily lighted
up, the most attractive goods profusely disposed, and unbonneted young
ladies, in their zeal for the interest of their employers, seize you by
the coat, and use all the blandishments of ‘Do, dear’—‘There’s a
love’—‘Don’t be cross, now,’ &c., to induce you to purchase half a
pound of the real spice nuts, of which the majority of the regular
fair-goers carry a pound or two as a present supply, tied up in a
cotton pocket-handkerchief. Occasionally you pass a deal table, on
which are exposed pen’orths of pickled salmon (fennel included), in
little white saucers: oysters, with shells as large as cheese-plates,
and divers specimens of a species of snail (_wilks_, we think they are
called), floating in a somewhat bilious-looking green liquid. Cigars,
too, are in great demand; gentlemen must smoke, of course, and here
they are, two a penny, in a regular authentic cigar-box, with a lighted
tallow candle in the centre.

Imagine yourself in an extremely dense crowd, which swings you to and
fro, and in and out, and every way but the right one; add to this the
screams of women, the shouts of boys, the clanging of gongs, the firing
of pistols, the ringing of bells, the bellowings of speaking-trumpets,
the squeaking of penny dittos, the noise of a dozen bands, with three
drums in each, all playing different tunes at the same time, the
hallooing of showmen, and an occasional roar from the wild-beast shows;
and you are in the very centre and heart of the fair.

This immense booth, with the large stage in front, so brightly
illuminated with variegated lamps, and pots of burning fat, is
‘Richardson’s,’ where you have a melodrama (with three murders and a
ghost), a pantomime, a comic song, an overture, and some incidental
music, all done in five-and-twenty minutes.

The company are now promenading outside in all the dignity of wigs,
spangles, red-ochre, and whitening. See with what a ferocious air the
gentleman who personates the Mexican chief, paces up and down, and with
what an eye of calm dignity the principal tragedian gazes on the crowd
below, or converses confidentially with the harlequin! The four clowns,
who are engaged in a mock broadsword combat, may be all very well for
the low-minded holiday-makers; but these are the people for the
reflective portion of the community. They look so noble in those Roman
dresses, with their yellow legs and arms, long black curly heads, bushy
eyebrows, and scowl expressive of assassination, and vengeance, and
everything else that is grand and solemn. Then, the ladies—were there
ever such innocent and awful-looking beings; as they walk up and down
the platform in twos and threes, with their arms round each other’s
waists, or leaning for support on one of those majestic men! Their
spangled muslin dresses and blue satin shoes and sandals (a _leetle_
the worse for wear) are the admiration of all beholders; and the
playful manner in which they check the advances of the clown, is
perfectly enchanting.

‘Just a-going to begin! Pray come for’erd, come for’erd,’ exclaims the
man in the countryman’s dress, for the seventieth time: and people
force their way up the steps in crowds. The band suddenly strikes up,
the harlequin and columbine set the example, reels are formed in less
than no time, the Roman heroes place their arms a-kimbo, and dance with
considerable agility; and the leading tragic actress, and the gentleman
who enacts the ‘swell’ in the pantomime, foot it to perfection. ‘All in
to begin,’ shouts the manager, when no more people can be induced to
‘come for’erd,’ and away rush the leading members of the company to do
the dreadful in the first piece.

A change of performance takes place every day during the fair, but the
story of the tragedy is always pretty much the same. There is a
rightful heir, who loves a young lady, and is beloved by her; and a
wrongful heir, who loves her too, and isn’t beloved by her; and the
wrongful heir gets hold of the rightful heir, and throws him into a
dungeon, just to kill him off when convenient, for which purpose he
hires a couple of assassins—a good one and a bad one—who, the moment
they are left alone, get up a little murder on their own account, the
good one killing the bad one, and the bad one wounding the good one.
Then the rightful heir is discovered in prison, carefully holding a
long chain in his hands, and seated despondingly in a large arm-chair;
and the young lady comes in to two bars of soft music, and embraces the
rightful heir; and then the wrongful heir comes in to two bars of quick
music (technically called ‘a hurry’), and goes on in the most shocking
manner, throwing the young lady about as if she was nobody, and calling
the rightful heir ‘Ar-recreant—ar-wretch!’ in a very loud voice, which
answers the double purpose of displaying his passion, and preventing
the sound being deadened by the sawdust. The interest becomes intense;
the wrongful heir draws his sword, and rushes on the rightful heir; a
blue smoke is seen, a gong is heard, and a tall white figure (who has
been all this time, behind the arm-chair, covered over with a
table-cloth), slowly rises to the tune of ‘Oft in the stilly night.’
This is no other than the ghost of the rightful heir’s father, who was
killed by the wrongful heir’s father, at sight of which the wrongful
heir becomes apoplectic, and is literally ‘struck all of a heap,’ the
stage not being large enough to admit of his falling down at full
length. Then the good assassin staggers in, and says he was hired in
conjunction with the bad assassin, by the wrongful heir, to kill the
rightful heir; and he’s killed a good many people in his time, but he’s
very sorry for it, and won’t do so any more—a promise which he
immediately redeems, by dying off hand without any nonsense about it.
Then the rightful heir throws down his chain; and then two men, a
sailor, and a young woman (the tenantry of the rightful heir) come in,
and the ghost makes dumb motions to them, which they, by supernatural
interference, understand—for no one else can; and the ghost (who can’t
do anything without blue fire) blesses the rightful heir and the young
lady, by half suffocating them with smoke: and then a muffin-bell
rings, and the curtain drops.

The exhibitions next in popularity to these itinerant theatres are the
travelling menageries, or, to speak more intelligibly, the ‘Wild-beast
shows,’ where a military band in beef-eater’s costume, with
leopard-skin caps, play incessantly; and where large highly-coloured
representations of tigers tearing men’s heads open, and a lion being
burnt with red-hot irons to induce him to drop his victim, are hung up
outside, by way of attracting visitors.

The principal officer at these places is generally a very tall, hoarse
man, in a scarlet coat, with a cane in his hand, with which he
occasionally raps the pictures we have just noticed, by way of
illustrating his description—something in this way. ‘Here, here, here;
the lion, the lion (tap), exactly as he is represented on the canvas
outside (three taps): no waiting, remember; no deception. The
fe-ro-cious lion (tap, tap) who bit off the gentleman’s head last
Cambervel vos a twelvemonth, and has killed on the awerage three
keepers a-year ever since he arrived at matoority. No extra charge on
this account recollect; the price of admission is only sixpence.’ This
address never fails to produce a considerable sensation, and sixpences
flow into the treasury with wonderful rapidity.

The dwarfs are also objects of great curiosity, and as a dwarf, a
giantess, a living skeleton, a wild Indian, ‘a young lady of singular
beauty, with perfectly white hair and pink eyes,’ and two or three
other natural curiosities, are usually exhibited together for the small
charge of a penny, they attract very numerous audiences. The best thing
about a dwarf is, that he has always a little box, about two feet six
inches high, into which, by long practice, he can just manage to get,
by doubling himself up like a boot-jack; this box is painted outside
like a six-roomed house, and as the crowd see him ring a bell, or fire
a pistol out of the first-floor window, they verily believe that it is
his ordinary town residence, divided like other mansions into
drawing-rooms, dining-parlour, and bedchambers. Shut up in this case,
the unfortunate little object is brought out to delight the throng by
holding a facetious dialogue with the proprietor: in the course of
which, the dwarf (who is always particularly drunk) pledges himself to
sing a comic song inside, and pays various compliments to the ladies,
which induce them to ‘come for’erd’ with great alacrity. As a giant is
not so easily moved, a pair of indescribables of most capacious
dimensions, and a huge shoe, are usually brought out, into which two or
three stout men get all at once, to the enthusiastic delight of the
crowd, who are quite satisfied with the solemn assurance that these
habiliments form part of the giant’s everyday costume.

The grandest and most numerously-frequented booth in the whole fair,
however, is ‘The Crown and Anchor’—a temporary ball-room—we forget how
many hundred feet long, the price of admission to which is one
shilling. Immediately on your right hand as you enter, after paying
your money, is a refreshment place, at which cold beef, roast and
boiled, French rolls, stout, wine, tongue, ham, even fowls, if we
recollect right, are displayed in tempting array. There is a raised
orchestra, and the place is boarded all the way down, in patches, just
wide enough for a country dance.

There is no master of the ceremonies in this artificial Eden—all is
primitive, unreserved, and unstudied. The dust is blinding, the heat
insupportable, the company somewhat noisy, and in the highest spirits
possible: the ladies, in the height of their innocent animation,
dancing in the gentlemen’s hats, and the gentlemen promenading ‘the gay
and festive scene’ in the ladies’ bonnets, or with the more expensive
ornaments of false noses, and low-crowned, tinder-box-looking hats:
playing children’s drums, and accompanied by ladies on the penny
trumpet.

The noise of these various instruments, the orchestra, the shouting,