The Lure of Old London Part 4

The place is a long, low-ceiled apartment (originally the monks'

refectory), pillared and wainscotted, with square lozenge-paned windows through which the light of the fading afternoon entered reluctantly. It must, at any time, be a dark room, the outstanding bookcases dividing it into aisles, at the end of which were the dusty old windows.

But in the twilight, with a ruby fire glowing on the hearth, a large crimson Turkey rug before it, and a semi-circle of empty wooden chairs ranged round, it struck a note of comfort and homeliness very welcome after our wanderings through rooms given over to ghosts. Not that those same ghosts did not lurk here too. The empty wooden chairs with their stiff, outstretched arms, had a suggestion of waiting for a company other than the black-robed pensioners who, apparently, were fonder of their own bed-sitting-rooms than this ancient apartment with its monkish a.s.sociations.

But the guide was waiting for us: there is no time allowed for dreaming in these places. One must do that afterwards at home, and I sometimes think, Agatha, that more even than my enjoyment in the actual visits to these old scenes, is the pleasure of talking to you about them in these letters.

A solitary gas lamp was flickering here and there in the cloisters when we came outside, and we found the sparrows and starlings still continuing their concert with indefatigable energy. As they flew round and round the trees it was difficult to distinguish between birds and falling leaves. The dusk was peopled with both.

The proximity to St. Bartholomew's suggested a visit, and we walked a few yards down Aldersgate Street and from thence into Cloth Fair. Of the original Cloth Fair there is very little left now. On every side you see empty s.p.a.ces where, not many years ago, had been tortuous streets and courts of ancient houses that must have witnessed the reign of many a king and queen--houses that stood there long before the Christian martyrs were burnt at Smithfield, and first plague, then fire, ravaged the city. Could they have told their terrible secrets those ancient dwellings might have recounted stories as terrorising as the most blood-curdling of nightmares.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A BIT OF OLD SMITHFIELD]

Of the particular row of houses which had always appealed to me by reason of their contiguity to the churchyard, part of one only remains.

Many a time have I stood and stared at the dingy backs of those unwholesome dwellings, wondering what it must feel like to live in a room with a discoloured tombstone peeping in at the window. Familiarity, one imagines, would breed contempt, but there would be times during sleepless nights, or in some hour of depression, when the horrid nearness of that sooty churchyard, with its mouldering bodies under the rank gra.s.s and refuse, would foster the evil imaginations of madness.

However, the houses, and many of their like, have gone now, and Cloth Fair and Little Britain, with the exception of little bits here and there such as in East Pa.s.sage, make s.p.a.ce for business premises and warehouses. In the midst of it all stands St. Bartholomew the Great, a thing of mutilated limbs--witness the scars on portions of its walls where its members have been dissevered, and where in their place mundane buildings have crowded up to within a few yards of it. Yet there it stands, in dignified aloofness from the intrusive neighbours who nudge its elbows with irreverent and familiar touch. They may rub shoulders with it at every point, but between them and it is no more intimacy than there is between Rahere, its founder, and the sight-seer who, gazing at his tomb, learns the story of his conversion from jester to monk. The strange story of a vision of St. Bartholomew, in which the Saint, with a practical regard to detail, ordered Rahere to build a church in Smithfield, a behest the n.o.ble fulfilment of which is made evident in the old walls that have weathered so many centuries, and the Hospital next door.

St. Bartholomew's is one of those buildings which has, like some people, to be known to be loved. At first one is almost repelled by its austere and dignified beauty. It is unapproachable with the unapproachableness of the great. It is dim, too, with the pathetic dimness of a lonely old age, and one's sense of reverence is violated when one learns that the Lady Chapel was at one time tenanted by a fringe manufacturer, and the north transept used as a blacksmith's forge.

But the age of vandalism is past, and within the old walls law and order are restored. The ring of the blacksmith's hammer has given place to the solemn notes of the organ, the blaze of the forge fire to the soft light of altar candles. The fret and hurry of life no more cross the threshold, and you can meditate undisturbed.

Mrs. Darling was obviously bored. Historical details and dates leave her cold. She does not belong to the cla.s.s of sight-seers who, hungry for information, follow sheep-like in the wake of the guide. She wanders off on her own and has a curious faculty for seizing on some unimportant detail which makes a personal appeal to her. Charterhouse will always mean for her the figure of one of the old pensioners we saw in the cloisters. A funny old chap in a large slouch felt hat, a dirty trench coat, and with his trousers sagging about his ankles--that and the smell of stewed rabbit and apple tart, together with rumours of nips of whisky and gla.s.ses of ale, will stand out in her memory from an undigested ma.s.s of "dry" facts and a background of empty echoing rooms and old grey walls, which latter, as she expressed it, "give her the pip". The history of The Priory of St. Bartholomew made her tired, and I suggested an adjournment.

As we pa.s.sed St. Bartholomew's Hospital I pointed out to her the bra.s.s plate in the wall on which was inscribed the names of some who, within a few feet of the spot, had suffered for their faith at the stake in 1556-1557. Smithfield will always be a place of shuddering a.s.sociations, and even the prosaic market front and the cold-storage premises, with their rows of lighted windows starring the blue dusk, seemed in some strange fashion implicated in its awful memories. As late as March, 1849, when excavations were being made for a new sewer, there were discovered, three feet below the surface, immediately opposite the entrance to the church, charred human bones and the remains of some oak posts partially consumed by fire. From whence did the courage of those heroic citizens of old come? Life has no greater mystery than the undaunted spirit with which they faced the h.e.l.lish tortures of fire and the rack.

At the top of Giltspur Street I paused with a sudden recollection of having heard that there still existed the quaint statue of the Fat Boy who used to stand at Pie Corner, where the Great Fire ceased. The incident appealed to Mrs. Darling's curious faculty for selection. She said she would like to see that fat boy, and we promptly went in search of him.

There were no signs of Pie Corner, the spot where it should have been being occupied by the shop of a foot specialist. It was Mrs. Darling who discovered the Fat Boy standing in a little brick alcove, over the door, which had apparently been made for his reception.

He was not a model of symmetry or beauty, but Mrs. Darling promptly annexed him as she had annexed the old pensioner of the sagging trousers and slouched hat, and somewhere in the lumber-room of the old lady's memory the Fat Boy took his place with Charles II, the aforesaid old pensioner, and Samuel Pepys, to whom she invariably refers as "that saucy ole man with the curls".

The fact that the Great Fire broke out at the king's baker's in Pudding Lane and ended at Pie Corner struck her as something more than a coincidence. It was all very well for people to talk about "chance,"

_she_ didn't believe in chance. The very fact of the coincidence of names suggested, to _her_ mind, a well-thought-out plan. She would have sympathised with the Rev. Samuel Vincent, who, writing at the time, said, "This doth smell of a Popish design, hatcht in the same place where the Gunpowder Plot was contrived".

By the way, I never think of the Great Fire without remembering the description of an eyewitness of the burning of Guild Hall: "And amongst other things that night, the sight of Guildhall was a fearful spectacle, which stood, the whole body of it together, in view for several hours together, after the fire had taken it, without flames (I suppose because the timber was such solid oak), like a bright shining coal, as if it had been a palace of gold, or a great building of burnished bra.s.s". You won't beat that for a bit of word painting.

We walked on through the Old Bailey and into Fleet Street, where Shoe Lane reminded me of the fact that the man who was responsible for the phrase, "Before you could say Jack Robinson," was a tobacconist named Herdom, who lived at 98 Shoe Lane some hundred years ago.

The following verse is ascribed to him:--

Says the lady, says she, "I've changed my state."

"Why, you don't mean," says Jack, "that you've got a mate?

You know you promised me". Says she, "I couldn't wait, For no tidings could I gain of you, Jack Robinson, And somebody one day came to me and said That somebody else had somewhere read, In some newspaper, that you were somewhere dead".

"I've not been dead at all," says Jack Robinson,

the pathetic navete of which statement marks the simple sailorman.

Richard Lovelace, the Cavalier poet, who lives in the lines--

I could not love thee, dear, so much, Lov'd I not honour more,

together with--

Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage,

died in Gunpowder Alley, Shoe Lane, and I wondered whether the Alley still existed under that name.

It did not take many minutes to find out. Yes, there it was, just at the top on the left-hand side, but no trace of poor Lovelace--nothing but new offices, one or two dingy little shops, and the patient thump, thump, of printing presses.

We went by way of New Street through Nevill's Court, where, behind an old wall and sooty front gardens, stand a row of ancient red brick houses. I like to go through Nevill's Court on one of those mild days in February when Spring lurks behind the grey stillness and there are buds on the lilac bush which looks over the top of that same old wall. The little greengrocer's at the end, too, always strikes a welcome note of colour with its flaming oranges and rosy-cheeked apples.

Nevill's Court leads to Fetter Lane, which Mrs. D. at once a.s.sociated with Newgate. In order to mitigate her disappointment on hearing that "Fetter" was a corruption of Fewterers (otherwise the beggars and disorderly persons who used to frequent the place), I told her the story of Elizabeth Brownrigge, the celebrated murderess who was executed at Tyburn, September 14th, 1767, for beating her apprentice to death. The house where the infamous deed was done was in Fetter Lane, looking into Fleur-de-lys Court, and the cellar in which the child was confined, together with the iron grating through which her cries were heard, used, according to a London historian, to be shown. After the execution, the corpse was put into a hackney coach and taken to Surgeons' Hall for dissection, and somewhere in a London collection the skeleton is still preserved. A h.o.a.rding covered with advertis.e.m.e.nts stood on the spot, marking the demolition of some old premises. Mrs.

Darling, however, must needs explore Fleur-de-lys Court, and we discovered an old shut-up house with a cellar grating, which Mrs.

Darling was quite satisfied was the scene of the sinister crime. So pleasantly excited was she that she forgot her bad feet and walked on with a swing down Fetter Lane, past "The Record" Office and the entrance to the Moravian Chapel, that drab little building where Baxter preached in 1672 and Wesley and Whitfield thundered of the wrath to come, giving sinners bad nights, and cheating the devil of his due.

I did not remind Mrs. Darling of these things. She was, I knew, looking forward to tea and toasted scones, over which she would demand a fuller account of the murder committed by Elizabeth Brownrigge, and speculate on how the Charterhouse pensioners spent their pocket-money, and what would happen if they fell in love.

I pa.s.s on the solution of the second of these conundrums to you, and remain,

Your old friend, GEORGE.

CHAPTER VI

CARRINGTON MEWS, _13th November._

Dear Agatha,--I quite agree with you that it isn't altogether a kind thing to drag these poor old ghosts out of their hiding-places and talk scandal about them. One pictures them blinking their dust-dimmed eyes in the strong light of to-day and resenting the conduct of Paul Prys like myself. But one must take the bad with the good, and if with stories of heroism, human kindness, and tenderness one unearths a good deal that is unworthy, one cannot do better than adopt Mrs. Darling's att.i.tude. _She_ is neither depressed nor demoralised by learning of the frailties and pa.s.sions of those who have had their little day, and, going out into the great unknown, become creatures of Romance and Mystery. That may be because death has not invested them, for _her_, with any dignity which can suffer from these familiarities, and her charity, always large for the living, is just as large, and no larger, for the dead. Mrs. Darling is a philosopher, and finds in the human comedy her entertainment. She is also, by the way, an optimist of the first water. "Never say die till yer shin-bone cuts the blanket," is her advice when there's a yellow fog and one has a cold in one's head.

This afternoon the old lady and I have been playing a sort of game of hide and seek in the courts and alleys on the northern side of Fleet Street. Our ambition was to find Dr. Johnson's house in Gough Square, always an elusive object, I had been told by those who had been there, and I, unfortunately, was born without the b.u.mp of locality. This afternoon the strange fact that man, left to himself, travels in a circle, found startling corroboration. For one solid half-hour the pair of us revolved round the Doctor's abode, sometimes within a few yards of it, without finding it. As you may remember, I would always rather lose a train than question a porter, and I have the same dislike for confessing the ignorance of my whereabouts to strangers. Besides, I want to cure myself of this ridiculous habit of rotating. Mrs. Darling, to whom I explained the situation, had solutions to offer. Was it, she said, that man was _not meant_ to extend his travels, or was it because the world was round? Meanwhile it certainly seemed that Providence didn't intend us to find No. 17 Gough Square. I blush to tell you, Agatha, that I stared into its side windows without recognising it, and that I pa.s.sed entrances to Gough Square from three points of the compa.s.s without being aware of them, but that may have been because I was mentally employed in sorting out suitable anecdotes about the Doctor for Mrs. Darling's entertainment when once we reached our goal.

A little public-house called "The Red Lion," squeezed into a corner of Red Lion Court (a most unsuitable spot, one would have thought, for a "pub"), exercised an unholy attraction for us. Three times did we make it our starting point, and three times did we come back to it with feelings of surprise at finding an old friend from whom we thought we had parted for good. I hope it isn't necessary to add _that we hadn't been inside_. Getting clear of "The Red Lion" at last, we got entangled with Bolt Court, Hind Court, and Wine-office Court on the other side, only escaping their labyrinthine twists and turns to get mixed up in Shoe Lane, East Harding Street, and Goldsmith's Street. At last we emerged into Fleet Street once more to take breath and Mrs. Darling triumphantly pointed to "Johnson's Court," which, by the way, has no connection with the Doctor. I had no faith in the promise held out by the august name, but in desperation I turned into it. This time, however, it was impossible to go astray, because once inside Johnson's Court we had no choice but to follow our noses. Up the court, across a paved square, through a narrow pa.s.sage, along by the backs of some houses, round an abrupt turn to the left, and behold one was in Gough Square, and the object of one's pilgrimage come into being, as it were, by magic. In fact, so suddenly and unexpectedly did it break on us that the wonder is we didn't pa.s.s it unnoticed and forge straight ahead again for "The Red Lion".

[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. JOHNSON'S HOUSE IN GOUGH SQUARE.]

Mrs. Darling claimed acquaintance with the Doctor by virtue of an old copy of the Dictionary which she told me she found lying on the kerb near a bookstall in Farringdon Road. I suggested that she should have made enquiries of the owner of the stall as to whether the book was his.

But she said that seeing she had at different times lost a watch which didn't go, a purse containing two and sevenpence three farthings, a flat iron, and a set of artificial teeth belonging to an old friend who died, she thought it was time she _found_ something.

There was a poetic sort of justice about this reasoning which I was loth to question, and I evaded the issue by directing the old lady's attention to the tablet on the wall of the house, which informs pa.s.sers-by that Dr. Johnson lived there from 1748 to 1758.

She answered, "Well, I never," and in her turn drew my attention to the fact that someone had opened the door and was waiting for us to enter.

Mrs. Darling followed at my heels with an apologetic clearing of her throat. I think she antic.i.p.ated being introduced to some alarming social function. This was not a museum nor a church. This was a house with curtains at the windows, pictures on the walls, and even flowers in vases, and Mrs. Darling had never heard of the idea of turning a house into a shrine. I pointed out to her the portrait of the author of the Dictionary, and she gave it as her opinion that he was trustworthy but of a bilious disposition.

There were no other visitors, at the moment, and we wandered unmolested from room to room, finding everywhere a strange silence set in the monotonous hum and clack of the printing presses outside--a sound which fills the neighbouring courts and alleys with a ceaseless thump, thump, as of the labouring heart of this backwater of Fleet Street.

Mrs. Darling stared out of the windows and took an occasional rest in one of the stiff rush-bottomed chairs, whilst I peered into the gla.s.s cases containing yellow letters inscribed with faded brown characters, thinking how surprised the writers would have been could they have foreseen this day, nearly two hundred years ahead, when some chance note, scribbled on the spur of the moment, was read by the curious eyes of strangers, eager to put an eye to any hole in the curtain of the past.