Christopher Crayon's Recollections Part 2

Inst.i.tute, where they had debates, but the people with whom I lived were orthodox Dissenters, and were rather afraid of my embracing Unitarian principles. The fear was, I think, groundless. At any rate, one of the most distinguished debaters was Mr. Jacob Henry Tillett, afterwards M.P., then in a lawyer's office; and another was his friend Joseph Pigg, who became a Congregational minister, but did not live to old age. Another of the lot-who was a great friend of Pigg's-was Bolingbroke Woodward, who was, I think, in a bank, from which he went to Highbury, thence as a Congregational minister to Wortwell, near Harleston, and died librarian to the Queen. Evidently there was no necessary connection, as the people where I lived thought, between debating and embracing Unitarian principles.

Norwich seemed to me a wonderful city. I had already visited the place at the time when it celebrated the pa.s.sing of the Reform Bill, when there was by day a grand procession, and a grand dinner in the open air; where a friend, who knew what boys liked, gave me a slice of plum pudding served up on the occasion; and then in the evening there were fireworks, the first I had ever seen, on the Castle Hill. It was a long ride from our village, and we had to travel by the carrier's cart, drawn by two horses, and sit beneath the roof on the top of the luggage and baggage, for we stopped everywhere to pick up parcels. The pa.s.sengers when seated endeavoured to make themselves as comfortable as circ.u.mstances would allow. Norwich at that time had a literary reputation, and it seemed to me there were giants in the land in those days. One I remember was the Rev. John Kinghorn, a great light among the Baptists, and whom, with his spare figure and primitive costume, I always confounded with John the Baptist. Another distinguished personage was William Youngman, at whose house my father spent a good deal of time, engaged in the hot disputation in which that grand old Norwich worthy always delighted. As a boy, I remember I trembled as the discussion went on, for

Mr. MacWinter was apt to be hot, And Mr. McKenzie a temper had got.

Yet their friendship continued in spite of difference of opinion, and well do I remember him in his square pew in the Old Meeting, as, with his gold-headed cane firmly grasped, the red-faced fat old man sat as solemn and pa.s.sionless as a judge, while in the pulpit before him the Rev. Mr.

Innes preached. But, alas! the parson had a pretty daughter, and I lost all his sermon watching the lovely figure in the pew just by. Another of the deacons, tall and stiff as a poker, Mr. Brightwell, had a pew just behind, father of a young lady known later as a successful auth.o.r.ess, while from the gallery opposite a worthy man, Mr. Blunderfield, gave out the hymn. Up in the galleries there were Spelmans and Jarrolds in abundance, while in a pew behind the latter was seated a lad who in after life attained, and still retains, some fame as a lecturer against Christianity, and later in its favour, well known as Dr. s.e.xton. To that Old Meeting I always went with indescribable awe; its square pews, its old walls with their memorial marbles, the severity of the aspect of the worshippers, the antique preacher in the antique pulpit all affected me.

But I loved the place nevertheless. Even now I am thrilled as I recall the impressive way in which Mr. Blunderfield gave out the hymns, and I can still remember one of Mr. Innes' texts, and it was always a matter of pride to me when Mr. Youngman took me home to dinner and to walk on his lawn, which sloped down to the river, and to view with wonder the peac.o.c.k which adorned his grounds. The family with which I was apprenticed attended on the ministry of the Rev. John Alexander, a man deservedly esteemed by all and beloved by his people. He was a touching preacher, an inimitable companion, and was hailed all over East Anglia as its Congregational bishop, a position I fancy still held by his successor, the Rev. Dr. Barrett. Dissent in Norwich seemed to me much more respected than in my village home. Dr. Brock, then plain Mr. Brock, also came to Norwich when I was there, and had a fine congregation in St.

Mary's, which seemed to me a wonderfully fine chapel. I was always glad to go there. Once I made my way to the Octagon, a still n.o.bler building, but my visit was found out by my master's wife, and henceforth I was orthodox, that is as long as I was at Norwich. The Norwich of that time, though the old air of depression, in consequence of declining manufacture, has given place to a livelier tone, in its essential features remains the same. There are still the Castle and the old landmarks of the Cathedral and the Market Place. The great innovation has been the Great Eastern Railway, which has given to it a new and handsome quarter, and the Colman mustard mills. Outside the city, in the suburbs, of course, Norwich has much increased, and we have now crowded streets or trim semidetached villas, where in my time were green fields or rustic walks. London did not dominate the country as it does now, and Norwich was held to be in some quarters almost a second Athens. There lived there a learned man of the name of Wilkins, with whom I, alas!

never came into contact, who had much to do with resuscitating the fame of the worthy Norwich physician, Sir Thomas Browne, immortal, by reason of his "Religio Medici" and "Urn Burial," especially the latter. The Martineaus and the Taylors lived there. Johnson Fox-the far-famed Norwich weaver boy of the Anti-Corn League, and Unitarian minister, and subsequently M.P. for Oldham-had been a member of the Old Meeting, whence he had been sent to Homerton College to study for the ministry, and a sister and brother, if I remember aright, still attended at the Old Meeting. When I was a lad there still might be seen in the streets of Norwich the venerable figure of William Taylor, who had first opened up German literature to the intelligent public; and there had not long died Mrs. Taylor, the friend of Sir James Mackintosh and other distinguished personages. "She was the wife," writes Basil Montagu, "of a shopkeeper in that city; mild and una.s.suming, quiet and meek, sitting amidst her large family, always occupied with her needle and domestic occupations, but always a.s.sisting, by her great knowledge, the advancement of kind and dignified sentiment. Manly wisdom and feminine gentleness were united in her with such attractive manners that she was universally loved and respected. In high thoughts and gentle deeds she greatly resembled the admirable Lucy Hutchinson, and in troubled times would have been specially distinguished for firmness in what she thought right." Dr.

Sayers was also one of the stars of the Norwich literary circle, and I recollect Mrs. Opie, who had given up the world of fashion and frivolity, had donned the Quaker dress, and at whose funeral in the Quaker Meeting-house I was present. The Quakers were at that time a power in Norwich, and John Joseph Gurney, of Earlham, close by, enjoyed quite a European reputation. It was not long that Harriet Martineau had turned her back on the Norwich of her youth. The house where she was born was in a court in Magdalen Street. But it never was her dwelling-place after her removal from it when she was three months old. Harriet was given to underrating everybody who had any sort of reputation, and she certainly underrated Norwich society, which, when I was a lad, was superior to most of our county towns. I caught now and then a few faint echoes of that world into which I was forbidden to enter. Norwich ministers were yet learned, and their people were studious. A dear old city was Norwich, with much to interest a raw lad from the country, with its Cathedral, which, as too often is the case, sadly interfered with the free life of all within its reach, with its grand Market Place filled on a Sat.u.r.day with the country farmers' wives, who had come to sell the produce of their dairy and orchard and chickenyard, and who returned laden with their purchases in the way of grocery and drapery; and its Castle set upon a hill. It was there that for the first time I saw judges in ermine and crimson, and learned to realise the majesty of the law. Then there was an immense dragon kept in St. Andrew's Hall, and it was a wonder to all as he was dragged forth from his retirement, and made the rounds of the streets with his red eyes, his green scales, his awful tail. I know not whether that old dragon still survives. I fear the Reformers, who were needlessly active in such matters, abolished him. But the sight of sights I saw during my short residence at Norwich was that of the chairing of the M.P.'s. I forget who they were; I remember they had red faces, gorgeous dresses, and silk stockings. Norwich was a corrupt place, and a large number of electors were to be bought, and unless they were bought no M.P. had a chance of being returned. The consequence was party feeling ran very high, and the defeated party were usually angry, as they were sure to contend that they had been beaten not by honest voting, but by means of bribery and corruption, and thus when the chairing took place there was often not a little rioting, and voters inflamed with beer were always ready for a row. The fortunate M.P.'s thus on chairing days were exposed to not a little danger. The chairs in which they were seated, adorned with the colours of the party, were borne by strapping fellows quite able to defend themselves, and every now and then ready to give a heave somewhat dangerous to the seat-holder, who all the time had to preserve a smiling face and bow to the ladies who lined the windows of the street through which the procession pa.s.sed, and to look as if he liked it rather than not. The sight, however, I fancy, afforded more amus.e.m.e.nt to the spectators than to the M.P.'s, who were glad when it was over, and who had indeed every right to be, for there was always the chance of a collision with a hostile mob, and a _denouement_ anything but agreeable. But, perhaps, the sight of sights was Norwich Market on Christmas Day, and the Norwich coaches starting for London crammed with turkeys outside and in, and only leaving room for the driver and the guard. At that time London was chiefly supplied with its turkeys from Norfolk, and it was only by means of stage coaches that the popular poultry could be conveyed. In this respect Norwich has suffered, for London now draws its Christmas supplies from all the Continent. It was not so when I was a lad, but from all I can hear Norwich Market Place the Sat.u.r.day before Christmas is as largely patronised as ever, and they tell me, though, alas, I have no practical knowledge of the fact, the Norwich turkeys are as good as ever. As long as they remain so Norwich has little to fear. I have also at a later time a faint recollection of good port, but now I am suffering from gout, and we never mention it. In these teetotal days "our lips are now forbidden to speak that once familiar word."

CHAPTER VI.

AT COLLEGE.

What more natural than that a son should wish to follow in his father's steps? I had a minister for a father. It was resolved that I should become one. In Dissenting circles no one was supposed to enter the ministry until he had got what was denominated a call. I persuaded myself that I had such a call, though I much doubt it now. I tried to feel that I was fitted for this sacred post-I who knew nothing of my own heart, and was as ignorant of the world as a babe unborn. I was sent to a London college, now no more, and had to be examined for my qualifications by four dear old fossils, and was, of course, admitted. I pa.s.sed because my orthodoxy was unimpeachable, and I was to preach-I, who trembled at the sound of my own voice, who stood in terror of deacons, and who had never attempted to make a speech. I hope at our colleges they manage these things better now, and select men who can show that the ministry is in them before they seek to enter the ministry. As it was, I found more than one of my fellow-students was utterly dest.i.tute of all qualifications for the pastorate, and was simply wasting the splendid opportunities placed within his reach. The routine of college life was not unpleasant. We rose early, attended lectures from our princ.i.p.al and the cla.s.ses at University College, and took part in conducting family service in the hall. Occasionally we preached in the College chapel, the princ.i.p.al attendant at which was an old tailor, who thereby secured a good deal of the patronage of the students. By attending the cla.s.ses at University College we had opportunities of which, alas! only a minority made much use. They who did so became distinguished in after life, such as Rev. Joseph Mullens, Secretary of the London Missionary Society; and John Curwen, who did so much for congregational singing; Dr. Newth, and Philip Smith, who was tutor at Cheshunt, and afterwards Headmaster at Mill Hill. Nor must I forget Rev. Andrew Reed, a preacher always popular, partly on his own and partly on his father's account; nor Thomas Durrant Philip, the son of the well-known doctor whose splendid work among the Hottentots is not yet forgotten; nor Dr. Edkins, the great Chinese scholar; nor the late Dr. Henry Robert Reynolds, who won for Cheshunt a world-wide reputation. As regards myself, I fear I took more interest in the debates at University College, where I made acquaintance with men with whose names the world has since become familiar, such as Sir James Stansfeld, Peter Taylor, M.P. for Leicester, Professor Waley, of Jewish persuasion, C. J. Hargreaves, Baron of the Enc.u.mbered Estates Court, and others who seemed to me far superior to most of my fellow-students training for the Christian ministry. I was much interested in the English Literature Cla.s.s under the late Dr. Gordon Latham, the great Anglo-Saxon scholar, who would fain have had me Professor in his place.

I cannot say that I look back with much pleasure on my college career.

We had two heads, neither of whom had any influence with the students, nor did it seem to me desirable that they should. One of them was an easy, pleasant, gentlemanly man, who was pleased to remark on an essay which I read before him on Christianity, and which was greeted with a round of applause by my fellow-students, that it displayed a low tone of religious feeling. Poor man, he did not long survive after that. The only bit of advice I had from his successor was as to the propriety of closing my eyes as if in prayer whenever I went into the pulpit to preach, on the plea, not that by means of it my heart might be solemnised and elevated for the ensuing service, but that it would have a beneficial effect on the people-that, in fact, on account of it they would think all the better of me! After that, you may be sure I got little benefit from anything the good man might feel fit to say. As a scholar he was nowhere. All that I recollect of him was that he gave us D'Aubigne's History of the Reformation in driblets as if we were rather a superior cla.s.s of Sunday scholars. Mr. Stowell Brown tells us that he did not perceive that the members of his church were in any respect better than those who were hearers alone. And to me something similar was manifested in college. We pious students were not much better than other young men.

It seemed to me that we were a little more lazy and flabby, that was all.

As a rule, few of us broke down morally, though such cases were by no means rare. I cannot say, as M. Renan did, that there was never a breath of scandal with respect to his fellow-students in his Romanist Academy; but the cla.s.s of young men who had come to study for the ministry was not, with very rare exceptions, of a high order, either in a religious or intellectual point of view. In this respect I believe there has been a great improvement of late.

My pulpit career was short. At times I believe I preached with much satisfaction to my hearers; at other times very much the reverse. De Foe writes: "It was my disaster first to be set apart for, and then to be set apart from, the honour of that sacred employ." My experience was something similar. I never had a call to a charge, nor did I go the right way to work to get one. I felt that I could gladly give it up, and yet how could I do so? I had a father whom I fondly loved, who had set his heart on seeing me follow in his honoured steps. I was what they called a child of many prayers. How could I do otherwise than work for their fulfilment? And if I gave up all thought of the ministry, how was I to earn my daily bread? At length, however, I drifted away from the pulpit and religious life for a time. I was not happy, but I was happier than when vainly seeking to pursue an impossible career. I know more of the world now. I have more measured myself with my fellows. I see what ordinary men and women are, and the result is-fortunately or not, I cannot tell-that I have now a better conceit of myself. I often wish some one would ask me to occupy a pulpit now. How grand the position!

how mighty the power! You are out of the world-in direct contact with the living G.o.d, speaking His Word, doing His work. There in the pew are souls aching to be lifted out of themselves; to get out of the mud and mire of the world and of daily life; to enter within the veil, as it were; to abide in the secret place of the Most High. It is yours to aid them. There are those dead in trespa.s.ses and sins; it is yours to rouse them. There are the aged to be consoled; the young to be won over. Can there be a n.o.bler life than that which makes a man an amba.s.sador from G.o.d to man?

Yet they were pleasant years I spent at Coward College, Torrington Square, supported by the liberality of an old wealthy merchant of that name, the friend of Dr. Doddridge, and at Wymondley-to which Doddridge's Academy, as it was termed, was subsequently moved-where were trained, at any rate, two of our most distinguished Nonconformists, Edward Miall and Thomas Binney. I am sorry Coward College ceased to exist as a separate inst.i.tution. We were all very happy there. We had a splendid old library at our disposal, where we could learn somewhat of

Many an old philosophy On Argus heights divinely sung;

and for many a day afterwards we dined together once a year. I think our last dinner was at Mr. Binney's, who was at his best when he gathered around him his juniors, like himself, the subjects of old Coward's bounty. It was curious to me to find how little appreciated was the good merchant's grand bequest. I often found that in many quarters, especially among the country churches, the education given to the young men at Coward's was regarded as a disqualification. It was suspected that it impeded their religious career, that they were not so sound as good young men who did not enjoy these advantages, that at other colleges the preachers were better because not so learned, more devotedly pious because more ignorant. It was held then that a student might be over-educated, and the more he knew the more his religious zeal diminished. In these days the feeling has ceased to exist, and the churches are proud of the men who consecrate to the service of their Lord all their cultivated powers of body and mind. The Christian Church has ceased to fear the bugbear of a learned ministry. One can quite understand, however, how that feeling came into existence. The success of the early Methodists had led many to feel how little need there was for culture when the torpor of the worldly and the poor was to be broken up. The Methodists were of the people and spoke to them in a language they could understand. Learning, criticism, doubt-what were they in the opinion of the pious of those days but snares to be avoided, perils to be shunned? For good or bad, we have outgrown that.

CHAPTER VII.

LONDON LONG AGO.

In due time-that is when I was about sixteen years old-I made my way to London, a city as deadly, as dreary as can well be conceived, in spite of the wonderful Cathedral of St. Paul's, as much a thing of beauty as it ever was, and the Monument, one of the first things the country cousin was taken to see, with the exception of Madame Tussaud's, then in Baker Street. In the streets where the shops were the houses were mean and low, of dirty red brick, of which the houses in the more aristocratic streets and squares were composed. Belgravia, with its grand houses, was never dreamt of. The hotels were of the stuffiest character; some of them had galleries all round for the sleeping chambers, which, however, as often as not were over the stables, where the coach horses were left to rest after the last gallop into London, and to be ready for the early start at five or six in the morning. Perhaps at that time the best way of coming into London was sailing up the Thames. As there were few steamers then the number of ships of all kinds was much greater than at present, when a steamer comes up with unerring regularity, discharges her cargo, takes in a fresh one, and is off again without a moment's delay.

You saw Greenwich Hospital, as beautiful then as now, the big docks with the foreign produce, the miles of black colliers in the Pool, the Tower of London, the Customs House, and Billingsgate, a very inconvenient hole, more famed for cla.s.sic language then than now. Yet it was always a pleasure to be landed in the city after sitting all day long on the top of a stage coach. In many ways the railway was but a poor improvement on the stage coach. In the first place you could see the country better; in the second place the chances were you had better company, at any rate people talked more, and were more inclined to be agreeable; and the third place, in case of an accident, you felt yourself safer. As an old Jehu said, contrasting the chances, "If you have an accident on a coach there you are, but if you are in a railway carriage where are you!" And some of the approaches to London were almost dazzling. Of a winter's night it was quite a treat to come into town by the East Anglian coaches, and to see the glare of the Whitechapel butchers' shops all lit up with gas, and redolent of beef and mutton. It was wonderful in the eyes of the young man from the country.

The one great improvement in London was Regent Street, from Portland Place and Regent's Park to the statue an infatuated people erected to a shady Duke of York in Trafalgar Square. Just by there was the National Gallery, at any rate in a situation easy of access. Right past the Mansion House a new street had been made to London Bridge, and there the half-cracked King William was honoured by a statue, which was supposed to represent the Royal body and the Royal head. In Cornhill there was an old-fashioned building known as the Royal Exchange, which kept alive the memory of the great civic benefactor, Sir Thomas Gresham, and the maiden Queen; but everywhere the streets were narrow and the houses mean.

Holborn Hill led to a deep valley, on one side of which ran a lane filled with pickpockets, and cut-throats and ruffians of all kinds, into which it was not safe for any one to enter. And as you climbed the hill you came to Newgate Market, along which locomotion was almost impossible all the early morning, as there came from the north and the south and the east and the west all the suburban butchers for their daily supply. Just over the way on the left was that horror of horrors, Smithfield, where on a market day some thousands of oxen and sheep by unheard of brutality had been penned up, waiting to be purchased and let loose mad with hunger and thirst and fright and pain all over the narrow streets of the city, to the danger of pedestrians, especially such as were old and feeble.

Happily, St. Bartholomew's Hospital was close by, and the sufferer had perhaps a chance of life. The guardians of the streets were the new police, the Peelers or the Bobbies as they were sarcastically called.

The idiotic public did not think much of them; they were the thin edge of the wedge, their aim was to destroy the glorious liberty of every man, to do all the mischief they could, and to enslave the people. Was not Sir Robert Peel a Tory of the Tories and the friend of Wellington, so beloved by the people that he had to guard his house with iron shutters? At that time the public was rather badly off for heroes, with the exception of Orator Hunt, who got into Parliament and collapsed, as most of the men of the people did. Yet I was a Liberal-as almost all Dissenters were with the exception of the wealthy who attended at the Poultry or at Walworth, where John and George Clayton preached.

In the City life was unbearable by reason of the awful noise of the stone-paven streets, now happily superseded by asphalte. Papers were dear, but in all parts of London there were old-fashioned coffee and chop houses where you could have a dinner at a reasonable price and read the newspapers and magazines. Peele's, in Fleet Street, at the corner of Fetter Lane, was a great place for newspapers and reporters and special correspondents. Many a newspaper article have I written there. Then there were no clubs, or hardly any, and such places as the Cheshire Cheese, with its memories of old Dr. Johnson, did a roaring trade far into the night. There was a twopenny post for London, but elsewhere the charge for letters was exorbitant and prohibitory. Vice had more opportunities than now. There was no early closing, and in the Haymarket and in Drury Lane these places were frequented by prost.i.tutes and their victims all night long. A favourite place for men to sup at was Evans's in Covent Garden, the Cider Cellars in Maiden Lane, and the Coal Hole in the Strand. The songs were of the coa.r.s.est, and the company, consisting of lords and touts, medical students, swell mobsmen, and fast men from the City, not much better. At such places decency was unknown, and yet how patronised they were, especially at Christmas time, when the country farmer stole away from home, ostensibly to see the Fat Cattle Show, then held in Baker Street. Of course there were no underground railways, and the travelling public had to put up with omnibuses and cabs, dearer, more like hea.r.s.es than they are now.

I should be sorry to recommend any one to read the novels of Fielding or of Smollet. And yet in one sense they are useful. At any rate, they show how much the England of to-day is in advance of the England of 150 years ago. For instance, take London. It is held that London is in a bad way in spite of its reforming County Council. It is clear from the perusal of Smollet's novels that a purifying process has long been at work with regard to London, and that if our County Councillors do their duty as their progenitors have done, little will remain to be done to make the metropolis a model city. "Humphry Clinker" appeared in 1771.

It contains the adventures of a worthy Welsh Squire, Matthew Bramble, who in the course of his travels with his family finds himself in London.

The old Squire is astonished at its size. "What I left open fields, producing corn and hay, I now find covered with streets and squares, and palaces and churches. I am credibly informed that in the s.p.a.ce of seven years 11,000 new houses have been built in one quarter of Westminster, exclusive of what is daily added to other parts of this metropolis.

Pimlico is almost joined to Chelsea and Kensington, and if this infatuation continues for half-a-century, I suppose, the whole county of Middles.e.x will be covered with brick." A prophecy that has almost come to pa.s.s in our time. At that time London contained one-sixth of the entire population of the kingdom. "No wonder," he writes, "that our villages are depopulated and our farms in want of day labourers. The villagers come up to London in the hopes of getting into service where they can live luxuriously and wear fine clothes. Disappointed in this respect, they become thieves and sharpers, and London being an immense wilderness, in which there is neither watch nor ward of any signification, nor any order or police, affords them lurking-places as well as prey." The old Squire's complaint is to be heard every day when we think or speak or write of the great metropolis.

The poor Squire writes bitterly of London life: "I start every hour from my sleep at the horrid noise of the watchmen calling the hour through every street, and thundering at every door." "If I would drink water I must quaff the mawkish contents of an open aqueduct, exposed to all manner of defilement, or swallow that which comes from the Thames, impregnated with all the filth of London and Westminster. Human excrement is the least offensive part of the concrete, which is composed of all the drugs, minerals and poisons used in mechanics and manufactures, enriched with the putrefying carcases of beasts and men, and mixed with the scourings of all the washtubs, kennels, and common sewers within the bills of mortality." The City churches and churchyards were in my time constant sources of disease, and the chapels were, where they had burying-grounds attached, equally bad. One need not remark in this connection how much better off we are in our day. Again the Squire writes: "The bread I eat is a deleterious paste, mixed up with chalk, alum and bone ashes." Here, again, we note gladly a change for the better. The vegetables taste of nothing but the dung-hills from whence they spring. The meat the Squire holds to be villainously bad, "and as for the pork, it is an abominable carnivorous animal fed with horseflesh and distillers' grains, and the poultry is all rotten in consequence of fever, occasioned by the infamous practice of sewing up the guts, that they may be the sooner fattened in crops in consequence of this cruel restriction." Then there is the b.u.t.ter, a tallowy, rancid ma.s.s, manufactured with candle grease and butcher's stuff. Well, these enormities are permitted no longer, and that is a step gained. We have good water; the watchman is gone, and the policeman has taken his place; but London as I knew it was little better than it was in the Squire's time. I fear in eggs we have not improved. The old Squire complains that they are imported from Scotland and France. We have, alas! for our fresh eggs to go a good deal further now. Milk, he tells us, was carried through the streets in open pails, exposed to foul rinsings discharged from doors and windows, and contaminated in many other ways too horrible to mention. No wonder the old Squire longed to get back to his old mansion in Wales, where, at any rate, he could enjoy pure water, fresh eggs and real milk. It is hard to conceive how the abominations he describes could have been tolerated an hour. There was no Holborn Viaduct-nothing but a descent into a valley-always fatal to horses, and for many reasons trying to pedestrians. One of the sights of London which I sorely missed was the Surrey Gardens, with its fireworks and half-starved and very limited zoological collection. It has long been built over, but many is the happy summer evening I have spent there witnessing the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, or some other representation equally striking and realistic. In the City Road there were tea-gardens, and at Highbury Barn was a dancing establishment, more famous than those of the Eagle or White Conduit Fields, and all at times made the scene of political demonstrations and party triumphs. In this way also were much celebrated the London Tavern and Freemasons' Hall. There was no attention paid to sanitation, and Lord Palmerston had not horrified all Scotland by telling the clergy who waited on him that it was not days of humiliation that the nation wanted, but a more intimate acquaintance with the virtues of soap and water. The clergy as a rule looked upon an outbreak of disease, not as an ill.u.s.tration of the evils of want and water and defective drainage, but as a sign of the Divine disgust for and against a nation that had admitted Dissenters in Parliament, and emanc.i.p.ated the Roman Catholics. Perhaps the greatest abomination of all was the fearful custom which existed of burying the dead in the midst of the living. The custom died hard-churches and chapels made a lot of money in this way, careless of the fact that the sickly odours of the vault and the graveyard filled up the building where, on Sunday, men and women and children came to worship and pray. Yet London got more country air than it does now. The Thames was not a sewer, and it was all open fields from Camden Town to Hampstead Heath, and at the back of the Holloway Road, and such-like places. There was country everywhere. As a whole, the London of to-day is a far statelier city than the London of my earlier years. Everything was mean and dirty. I miss the twopenny postman, to whom I had always to entrust a lot of letters-when I came up from my village home-as thus the writers save a good sum of money on every letter. There were few omnibuses, and they were dear. Old hackney coaches abounded, and the cabs were few and far between, and very dirty as well, all of which have immensely improved of late. The cab in which I rode when I was set down by the coach at the White Horse, Fetter Lane, then a much-frequented hotel of the highest respectability, was an awful affair, hooded and on two high wheels, while the driver was perched on a seat just outside. I was astonished-as well I might be-when I got to that journey's end in safety.

In London and the environs everything was dull and common-place, with the exception of Regent Street, where it was tacitly a.s.sumed the force of grandeur could no further go. There was no Thames Embankment, and only a collection of wharves and coal agencies, and tumble-down sheds, at all times-especially when the tide was out-hideous to contemplate. The old Houses of Parliament had been burnt down, and no costly palace had been erected on their site. The Law Courts in Westminster Hall were crowded and inconvenient. Where now Queen Victoria Street rears its stately head were narrow streets and mean buildings. Eating-houses were close and stuffy, and so were the inns, which now we call by the more dignified name of hotels.

As to the poor sixty years ago, society was indifferent alike as to the state of their souls or bodies. In Ratcliff Highway the sailor was robbed right and left. The common lodging-house was a den of thieves.

The poor shirt-maker and needlewoman lived on starvation wages. Sanitary arrangements were unknown. There was no decency of any kind; the streets, or rather lanes, where the children played, with their open sewers, were nurseries of disease. Even in Bethnal Green, the Sanitary Commission found that while the mean age of death among the well-to-do residents was forty-four, that of the working-cla.s.ses was twenty-two; and yet Bethnal Green with its open s.p.a.ces was a garden of Eden compared with the lodging-houses in some of the streets off Drury Lane. Perhaps the most unfortunate cla.s.ses in the London of that time were the poor chimney-sweeps-little children from four to eight years of age, the majority of them orphans, the rest bartered or sold by brutal parents.

In order to do their work they had to move up and down by pressing every joint in their bodies against the hard and often broken surface of the chimneys; and to prevent their hands and knees from streaming with blood, the children were rubbed with brine before a fire to harden their flesh.

They were liable to a frightful disorder-the chimneysweeper's cancer, involving one of the most terrible forms of physical suffering. They began the day's work at four, three, and even two in the morning; they were half suffocated by the hot sulphurous air in the flues; often they would stick in the chimneys and faint; and then if the usual remedy-straw lighted to bring them round-failed, they were often half killed, and sometimes killed outright, by the very means used to extricate them.

They lived in low, ill-drained, ill-ventilated, and noxious rooms and cellars, and often slept upon the soot heaps. They remained unwashed for weeks, and on Sundays they were generally shut up together so that their neighbours might not see their miserable condition. Perhaps the worst part of London when I knew it was Field Lane, at the bottom of Holborn Hill, now happily improved off the face of the earth. It was known as "Jack Ketch's Warren," from the fact that the greater part of the persons hanged at Newgate came from the lanes and alleys in the vicinity. The disturbances that occurred in these low quarters were often so great that from forty to fifty constables armed with cutla.s.ses were marched down, it being often impossible for officers to act in fewer numbers or disarmed.

Some of the houses close beside the Fleet Ditch were fitted with dark closets, trapdoors, sliding panels, and other means of escape, while extensive bas.e.m.e.nts served for the purpose of concealing goods; and in others there were furnaces used by coiners and stills for the production of excisable spirits. It was here that in 1843 the Ragged School movement in London commenced its wonderful and praiseworthy career.

Naturally in this connection I must speak of the Earl of Shaftesbury, the great philanthropist of the Victorian era, a n.o.bleman whose long and honourable life was spent in the service of man and the fear of G.o.d. He was somewhat narrow-minded, an Evangelical Churchman of a now almost extinct type, not beloved by Cobden and the Free Traders, occasionally very vehement in his utterances, a man who, if he had stuck to the party game of politics, would have taken a high place in the management of public affairs. I knew him well, and he was always friendly to me. In his prime he must have been a remarkably handsome man, tall, pale, with dark hair and a commanding presence. Perhaps he took life a little too seriously. To shake hands with him, said his brother, was a solemn function. But his earnestness might well make him sad, as he saw and felt the seriousness of the great work to which he had devoted his life.

He had no great party to back him up. The Dissenters regarded him with suspicion, for he doubted their orthodoxy, and in his way he was a Churchman to the core. He was too much a Tory for the Whigs, and too Radical a philanthropist for the old-fashioned Tory fossils then abounding in the land. On one occasion Lord Melbourne, when dining with the Queen in his company, introduced him to royalty as the greatest Jacobin in her dominions. In Exeter Hall he reigned supreme, and though dead he still lives as his works survive. He was the friend of all the weak, the poor, the desolate who needed help. He did much to arouse the aristocracy to the discharge of their duties as well as the maintenance of their rights. All the world is the better for his life. It was a miracle to me how his son, the eighth Earl, came to commit suicide, as he always seemed to me the cheerfullest of men, of the rollicking sailor type. I often met him on board the steamer which took us all down the river to the _Chichester_ and _Arethusa_, founded by the late Mr. William Williams in 1843-a good man for whom Earl Shaftesbury had the most ardent esteem-as refuges for homeless and dest.i.tute children to train up for a naval career.

London poverty and London vice flourished unchecked till long after Queen Victoria had commenced her reign. When I first knew London the streets after dark were fearful, and a terrible snare to all, especially the young and idle and well-to-do. The public-houses were kept open till a late hour. There were coffee-houses that were never closed; music-halls, where the songs, such as described in Thackeray's "Cave of Harmony," were of a most degrading character; Judge and Jury Clubs, where the low wit and obscenity of the actors were fearful; saloons for the pickpocket, the swell mobsman, and the man about town, and women who shone in evening dress, and were alike fair and frail. It is only within the last twenty years that the Middles.e.x magistrates refused Mr. Bignell a licence for the Argyle Rooms; that was not until Mr. Bignell had found it worth while to invest 80,000 in the place. Year after year n.o.ble lords and Middles.e.x magistrates had visited the place and licensed it. Indeed, it had become one of the inst.i.tutions of the metropolis, one of the places where Bob Logic and Corinthian Tom-such men still existed, though they went by other names-were safe to be found of an evening. The theatre was too staid and respectable for them, though dashing Cyprians, as they were termed, were sure to be found at the refreshment saloon. When the Argyle was shut up, it was said a great public scandal was removed. Perhaps so; but the real scandal was that such a place was ever needed in the capital of a land which handsomely paid clergymen and deans and bishops and archbishops to exterminate the l.u.s.t of the flesh, and the l.u.s.t of the eye, and the pride of life, which found their full development in such places as the Argyle Rooms. It was a scandal and a shame that men who had been born in English homes, and nursed by English mothers, and confirmed by English bishops, and had been trained in English public schools and Universities, and worshipped in English churches and cathedrals, should have helped to make the Argyle Rooms a successful public inst.i.tution. Mr. Bignell created no public vices; he merely pandered to what was in existence. It was the men of wealth and fashion who made the place what it was. It was not an improving spectacle in an age that sacrificed everything to worldly show, and had come to regard the brougham as the one thing needful-the outward sign of respectability and grace-to see equipages of this kind, filled with fashionably dressed women, most of them

Born in a garret, in a kitchen bred-

driving up nightly to the Argyle, or the Holborn, or the Piccadilly, or Bob Croft's in the Haymarket, with their gallants or protectors or friends, or whatever they might term themselves, amidst a dense crowd of lookers-on, rich or poor, male or female, old or young, drunk or sober.

In no other capital in Europe was such a sight to be seen. It was often there that a young and giddy girl, with good looks and a good const.i.tution, and above all things set on fine dresses and gay society, and weary of her lowly home and of the drudgery of daily life, learned what she could gain if she could make up her mind to give her virtue; many of them, indeed, owing to the disgusting and indecent overcrowding in rustic cottages and great cities having but little virtue to part with. Then a.s.sailed her the companionship of men of birth and breeding and wealth, and the gaiety and splendour of successful vice. I knew of two Ess.e.x girls, born to service, who came to town and led a vicious life, and one became the wife of the son of a Marquis, and the other married a respectable country solicitor; the portrait of the lady I have often seen amongst the photographs displayed in Regent Street. The pleasures of sin, says the preacher, are only for a season, but a similar remark, I fancy, applies to most of the enjoyments of life. It is true that in the outside crowd there were in rags and tatters, in degradation and filth, shivering in the cold, wan and pale with want, hideous with intemperance, homeless and dest.i.tute, and prematurely old, withered hags, whom the policemen ordered to move on-forlorn hags, who were once _habitues_ of the Argyle and the darlings of England's gilded youth-the bane and the antidote side by side, as it were. But when did giddy youth ever realise that riches take to themselves wings and fly away, that beauty vanishes as a dream, that joy and laughter often end in despair and tears? The amus.e.m.e.nts of London were not much better when the music-hall-which has greatly improved of late-came to be the rage. One has no right to expect anything intellectual in the way of amus.e.m.e.nts.

People require them, and naturally, as a relief from hard work, a change after the wearying and wearisome drudgery of the day. A little amus.e.m.e.nt is a necessity of our common humanity, whether rich or poor, saintly or the reverse. And, of course, in the matter of amus.e.m.e.nts, we must allow people a considerable lat.i.tude according to temperament and age, and their surroundings and education, or the want of it; and it is an undoubted fact that the outdoor sports and pastimes, in which ladies take part as well as men, have done much to improve the physical stamina and the moral condition of young men. Scarcely anything of the kind existed when I first knew London, and the amus.e.m.e.nts of the people chiefly consisted in drinking or going to see a man hanged. At one time there were many debating halls, where, over beer and baccy, orators, great in their own estimation, settled the affairs of the nation, at any rate, let us hope, according to their own estimation, in a very satisfactory manner. In Fleet Street there was the Temple Forum, and at the end, just out of it, was the Codgers' Hall, both famous for debates, which have long ceased to exist. A glance at the modern music-hall will show us whether we have much improved of late. It is more showy, more attractive, more stylish in appearance than its predecessors, but in one respect it is unchanged. Primarily it is a place in which men and women are expected to drink. The music is an afterthought, and when given, is done with the view to keep the people longer in their places, and to make them drink more. "Don't you think," said the manager of one of the theatres most warmly patronised by the working cla.s.ses, to a clerical friend of mine-"don't you think that I am doing good in keeping these people out of the public-house all night?" and my friend was compelled to yield a very reluctant consent. When I first knew London the music-hall was an unmitigated evil. It was there the greenhorn from the country took his first steps in the road to ruin.

CHAPTER VIII.

MY LITERARY CAREER.

I drifted into literature when I was a boy. I always felt that I would like to be an author, and, arrived at man's estate, it seemed to me easier to reach the public mind by the press than by the pulpit. I could not exactly come down to the level of the pulpit probationer. I found no sympathetic deacons, and I heard church members talk a good deal of nonsense for which I had no hearty respect. Perhaps what is called the root of the matter was in me conspicuous by its absence. I preached, but I got no call, nor did I care for one, as I felt increasingly the difference between the pulpit and the pew. Now I might use language in one sense, which would be-and I found really was-understood in quite an opposite sense in the pew. My revered parent had set his heart on seeing me a faithful minister of Jesus Christ; and none can tell what, under such circ.u.mstances, was the hardness of my lot, but gradually the struggle ceased, and I became a literary man-when literary men abode chiefly in Bohemia, and grew to fancy themselves men of genius in the low companionship of the barroom. Fielding got to a phase of life when he found he had either to write or get a living by driving a hackney coach.

A somewhat similar experience was mine.

It is now about sixty years since I took to writing. I began with no thought of money or fame-it is quite as well that I did not, I am inclined to think-but a new era was opening on the world, a new divine breath was ruffling the stagnant surface of society, and I thought I had something to say in the war-the eternal war of right with wrong, of light with darkness, of G.o.d and the devil. I started a periodical. In the prospectus I stated that I had started it with a view to wage war with State Church pretensions and cla.s.s legislation. I sent some copies of it to Thomas Carlyle-then rising into prominence as the great teacher of his age. He sent me a short note back to the effect that he had received and read what I had written, and that he saw much to give his cordial consent to, and ended by bidding me go on and prosper. Then I sent Douglas Jerrold a paper for his _Shilling Magazine_, which he accepted, but never published it, as I wanted it for a magazine which came out under my own editorship. One of my earliest patrons was Dr. Thomas Price, the editor of the _Eclectic_, who had formerly been a Baptist minister, but who became secretary of an insurance society, and one of a founders of the Anti-State Church a.s.sociation, a society with which I was in full accord, and which, as I heard Edward Miall himself declare, owed not a little to my literary zeal. We had a fine time of it when that society was started. We were at Leicester, where I stayed with a dear old college friend, the Rev. Joseph Smedmore, and fast and furious was the fun as we met at the Rev. James Mursell's, the popular pastor of the Baptist Chapel, and father of a still more popular son. Good company, good tobacco, good wine, aided in the good work. Amongst the company would be Stovel, an honoured Baptist minister Whitechapel way, at one time a fighter, and a hard hitter to the end of his lengthy life; John Burnett of Camberwell, always dry in the pulpit, but all-victorious on the public platform, by reason of his Scotch humour and enormous common-sense; Mursell in the Midlands was a host in himself; and Edward Miall, whose earnestness in the cause led him to give up the Leicester pulpit to found the London _Nonconformist_. John Childs, the well-known Bungay printer, a.s.sisted, an able speaker himself, in spite of the dogmatism of his face and manner. When the society became rich and respectable, and changed its name, I left it. I have little faith in societies when they become respectable. When on one occasion I put up for an M.P., I was amused by the emissary of the society sending to me for a subscription on the plea that all the Liberal candidates had given donations! "Do you think,"

said I, "that I am going to bid for your support by a paltry 5 note?

Not, I, indeed! It is a pity M.P.'s are not made of sterner staff." One of my intimate friends at one time was the late Peter Taylor, M.P. for Leicester. He was as liberal as he was wealthy, yet he never spent a farthing in demoralising his Leicester const.i.tuents by charity, or, in other words, bribery and corruption. The dirty work a rich man has to do to get into Parliament-especially if he would represent an intelligent and high-toned democracy-is beyond belief.

The ups and downs of a literary career are many. Without writing a good hand it is now impossible to succeed. It was not so when I first took to literature; but nowadays, when the market is overstocked with starving genius in the shape of heaven-born writers, I find that editors, compositors, readers, and all connected with printing, set their faces rigidly against defective penmanship. I look upon it that now the real literary gent, as _The Sat.u.r.day Review_ loved to call him, has ceased to exist altogether; there is no chance for him. Our editors have to look out for articles written by lords and ladies, and men and women who have achieved some pa.s.sing notoriety. They often write awful stuff, but then the public buys. A man who masters shorthand may get a living in connection with the Press, and he may rise to be editor and leader-writer; but the pure literary gent, the speculative contributor to periodical literature, is out of the running. If he is an honourable, if he is a lord or M.P., or an adventurer, creditable or the reverse, he has a chance, but not otherwise. A special correspondent may enjoy a happy career, and as most of my work has been done in that way, I may speak with authority. As to getting a living as a London correspondent that is quite out of the question. I knew many men who did fairly well as London correspondents; nowadays the great Press agencies keep a staff to manufacture London letters on the cheap, and the really able original has gone clean out of existence. Two or three Press agencies manage almost all the London correspondence of the Press. It is an enormous power; whether they use it aright, who can say?

I had, after I left college, written reviews and articles. But in 1850 Mr. John Ca.s.sell engaged me as sub-editor of the _Standard of Freedom_, established to promote the sale of his coffees, or rather, in consequence of the sale of them-to advocate Free Trade and the voluntary principle, and temperance in particular, and philanthropy in general. In time I became chief editor, but somehow or other the paper was not a success, though amongst the leader writers were William Howitt and Robertson, who had been a writer on the _Westminster Review_. It was there also I saw a good deal of Richard Cobden, a man as genial as he was unrivalled as a persuasive orator, who had a wonderful facility of disarming prejudice, and turning opponents into friends. I fancy he had a great deal of sympathy with Mr. John Ca.s.sell, who was really a very remarkable man.

John Ca.s.sell may be described as having sprung from the dregs of the people. He had but twopence-halfpenny in his pocket when he came to town; he had been a carpenter's lad; education he had none. He was tall and ungainly in appearance, with a big head, covered with short black hair, very small dark eyes, and sallow face, and full of ideas-to which he was generally quite unable to give utterance. I was always amused when he called me into his sanctum. "Mr. Ritchie," he would say, "I want you to write a good article on so-and-so. You must say," and here he would wave his big hand, "and here you must," and then another wave of his hand, and thus he would go on waving his hand, moving his lips, which uttered no audible sound, and thus the interview would terminate, I having gained no idea from my proprietor, except that he wanted a certain subject discussed. At times he had a terrible temper, a temper which made all his friends thankful that he was a strict teetotaler. But his main idea was a grand one-to elevate morally and socially and intellectually the people of whose cause he was ever an ardent champion and true friend. He died, alas too soon, but not till he saw the firm of Ca.s.sell, Petter, and Galpin one of the leading publishing firms of the day. _The Standard of Freedom_ was incorporated with _The Weekly News and Chronicle_, of which the working editor was Mr. John Robinson-now Sir John Robinson, of _The Daily News_-who was at the same time working editor of _The Inquirer_. I wrote for _The Weekly News_-Parliamentary Sketches-and for that purpose had a ticket for the gallery of the House of Commons, where, however, I much preferred to listen to the brilliant talk of Angus Reach and Shirley Brooks, as they sat waiting on the back bench to take their turns, to the oratory of the M.P.'s below. Let me not, however, forget my obligations to Sir John Robinson. It was to him that I owed an introduction to _The Daily News_, and to his kindness and liberality, of which many a literary man in London can testify, I owe much. Let me also mention that again I became connected with Mr. John Ca.s.sell when-in connection with Petter and Galpin-the firm had moved to Playhouse Yard, next door to _The Times_ printing office, and thence to the present magnificent premises on Ludgate Hill. At that time it became the fashion-a fashion which has been developed greatly of late years-to print for country papers a sheet of news, or more if they required it, which then was filled with local intelligence, and became a local paper.

It was my duty to attend to the London paper, of which we printed fresh editions every day. In that position I remained till I was rash enough to become a newspaper proprietor myself. Mr. John Tallis, who had made a handsome fortune by publishing part numbers of standard works, was anxious to become proprietor of _The Ill.u.s.trated London News_. For this purpose he desired to make an agreement with Mr. Ingram, M.P., the proprietor of the paper in question, but it came to nothing, and Mr.

Tallis commenced _The Ill.u.s.trated News of the World_. When he had lost all his money, and was compelled to give it up, in an evil hour I was tempted to carry it on. It came to an end after a hard struggle of a couple of years, leaving me a sadder and a wiser and a poorer man. Once, and once only, I had a bright gleam of sunshine, and that was when Prince Albert died, of whom and of the Queen I published fine full-length portraits. The circulation of the paper went up by leaps and bounds; it was impossible to print off the steel plates fast enough to keep pace with the public demand, but that was soon over, and the paper sank accordingly. Next in popularity to the portraits of Royalty I found were the portraits of John Bright, Cobden, Spurgeon, and Newman Hall. For generals, and actors and actresses, even for such men as Gladstone, or Disraeli, or Charles Kingsley, the public at the time did not seem greatly to care. But that was an episode in my career on which I do not care to dwell. I only refer to it as an ill.u.s.tration of the fact that a journalist should always stick to his pen, and leave business to business men. Sir Walter Scott tried to combine the two, and with what result all the world knows. In my small way I tried to do the same, and with an equally disastrous result. Happily, I returned to my more legitimate calling, which if it has not led me to fame and fortune, has, at any rate, enabled me to gain a fair share of bread and cheese, though I have always felt that another sovereign in any pocket would, like the Pickwick pen, have been a great blessing. Alas! now I begin to despair of that extra sovereign, and fall back for consolation on the beautiful truth, which I learned in my copy-book as a boy, that virtue is its own reward.