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Title: The Haunts of Old Cockaigne Author: Alex Thompson Release Date: January 23, 2015 [EBook #48055] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAUNTS OF OLD COCKAIGNE *** Produced by David Edwards, Kate Rooney & Ian Smith and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE HAUNTS OF OLD COCKAIGNE frontispiece BANKSIDE IN 1648 (FLAG FLYING OVER GLOBE THEATRE). titlepage THE HAUNTS OF OLD COCKAIGNE BY ALEX. M. THOMPSON (DANGLE) 1898 . LONDON . THE CLARION OFFICE 72 FLEET STREET, E.C. . WALTER SCOTT LTD., PATERNOSTER SQUARE, E.C. AN EPISTLE DEDICATORY My dear Will Ranstead,— When, in our too infrequent talks, I have confessed my growing fondness for life in London, your kindly countenance has assumed an expression so piteous that my Conscience has turned upon what I am pleased to call my Mind, to demand explanation of a feeling so distressing to so excellent a friend. My Mind, at first, was disposed to apologise. It pleaded its notoriously easy-going character: it had never met man or woman that it had not more or less admired, nor remained long anywhere without coming to strike kinship with the people and to develop pride in their activities. In its infancy it had been as Badisch as the Grossherzog of Baden, and had deemed lilac-scented Carlsruhe the grandest town in the world. In blue-and-white Lutetia, it had grown as Parisian as an English dramatist. When the fickle Fates moved it on to Manchester, it had learned in a little while to ogle Gaythorn and Oldham Road as enchanted Titania ogled her gentle joy, the loathly Bottom. It had looked with scorn on the returned prodigals who [7] [8] had been to London—"to tahn," they called it—and who came back to their more or less marble halls in Salford with trousers turned up round the hems, shepherds' crooks to support their elegantly languid totter, and words of withering scorn for the streets of Peter and Oxford, which my Mind had learned to regard as boulevards of dazzling light. Mine had always been a pliant and affable mind. Perhaps if it lived in Widnes it might prefer it to Heaven. But the longer I remained in London the more convinced I became that never again should I like Widnes, or Manchester, or Paris, or Carlsruhe, as well as this tantalising, fascinating, baffling city of misty light—this stately, monstrous, grey, grimy, magnificent London. Then I sought reason for my state, and the following papers—one or two contributed to the Liverpool Post, one to the Clarion, and the most part printed now for the first time—are the result of my inquiries. One day I found cause for liking London, another day the reverse. As the reasons came to me I wrote them down, and with all their inconsistencies upon their heads, you have them here collected. I have addressed the papers to you, because:— As you had inspired the book, it was only fair you should share the blame. By answering you publicly, I saved myself the trouble of separately answering many other country friends who likewise looked upon my love of London as a deplorable falling from grace. Thirdly, by this means, I save postages, and may actually induce a few adventurous moneyed persons to pay me for the work. Lastly, and most seriously, I lay hold on this occasion to publish the respect and gratitude I owe to you, and which I repay to the best of my ability by this small token of my friendship.—Sincerely yours, ALEX. M. THOMPSON. P.S.—You will naturally wonder after reading the book—should you be spared so long—why I call it Haunts of Old Cockaigne. I may say at once that you are fully entitled to wonder. It is included in the price. INDEX PAGE An Epistle Dedicatory 7 London's Enchantment 15 London Charlie 35 London Ghosts 57 The Mermaid Tavern 78 Was Shakespeare a Scotsman? 87 Fleet Street 116 London's Growth 135 A Truce from Books and Men 152 A Rude Awakening 161 London Pride and Cockney Clay 188 My Introduction to Respectability 202 Paris Revisited 215 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Bankside in 1648 Frontispiece [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] Strand Cross, 1547 61 Courtyard of an Old Tavern 81 A Barber's Shop in 1492 119 Whitehall in the Reign of James I. 137 Old House in Southwark 141 The Strand, 1660 143, 144 Whitefield's Tabernacle, 1736 147 Gorleston Pier 155 The Lifeboat 177 The Champs-Élysées 219 LONDON'S ENCHANTMENT I want the hum of my working brothers— London bustle and London strife. H. S. Leigh. Let them that desire "solitary to wander o'er the russet mead" put on their clump boots and wander. I prefer the Strand. The Poet's customary meadow with its munching sheep and æsthetic cow, his pleasing daisies and sublimated dandelions, his ecstatic duck and blooming plum tree, are all very well in their way; but there is more human interest in Seven Dials. The virtuous man who on the sunless side Of a romantic mountain, forest crowned, Sits coolly calm; while all the world without, Unsatisfied, and sick, tosses at noon— may have a very good time if his self-satisfaction suffice to shelter him from Boredom; but of what use is he to the world or to his fellow-creatures? I have no patience with the long-haired persons whose scorn of the common people's drudgery finds vent in lofty exhortations to "fly the rank city, shun the turbid air, breathe not the chaos of eternal smoke, and volatile corruption." By turning his back to "the tumult of a guilty world," and "through the verdant maze of sweetbriar hedges, pursue his devious walk," the Poet provides no remedy for the sin and suffering of human cities—especially if the Poet finds it inconvenient to his soulful rapture to attend to his own washing. It offends me to the soul to hear robustious, bladder-pated, tortured Bunthornes crying out for "boundless contiguity of shade" where they can hear themselves think, when they might be digging the soil or fixing gaspipes. I would have such fellows banished to remote solitudes, where they should prove their disdain of the grovelling herd by learning to do without them. I would have them fed, clothed, nursed, caressed, and entertained solely by their own sufficiency. Let them enjoy themselves. Erycina's doves, they sing, and ancient stream of Simois! I sing the common people, and the vulgar London streets—streams of life, action, and passion, whose every drop is a human soul, each drop distinct and different, each coloured by his or her own wonderful personality. I never grow tired of seeing them, admiring them, wondering about them. Beneath this turban what anxieties? Beneath yon burnoose what heartaches and desires? Under all this sartorial medley of frock-coats, jackets, mantles, capes, cloth, silk, satins, rags, what truth? what meaning? what purport? How to get at the hearts of them? how to evolve the best of them? how to blot out their passions, spites, and rancours, and get at their human kinship and brotherhood? All day long these streets are crowded with the great, the rich, the gay, and the fair—and if one looks one may also see here the poorest, the most abject, the most pitiful, and most awful of the creatures that God permits to live. There is more wealth and splendour than in all the Arabian Nights, and more misery than in Dante's Inferno. [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] Such a bustling, jostling, twisting, wriggling wonder! "An intermixed and intertangled, ceaselessly changing jingle, too, of colour; flecks of colour champed, as it were, like bits in the horses' teeth, frothed and strewn about, and a surface always of dark-dressed people winding like the curves on fast flowing water." There is everything here, and plenty of it. As Malaprop Jenkins wrote to her "O Molly Jones," "All the towns that ever I beheld in my born days are no more than Welsh barrows and crumlecks to this wonderful sitty! Even Bath itself is but a fillitch; in the naam of God, one would think there's no end of the streets, but the Land's End. Then there's such a power of people going hurry-scurry! Such a racket of coxes! Such a noise and halibaloo! So many strange sites to be seen! O gracious! I have seen the Park, and the Paleass of St. Gimeses, and the Queen's magisterial pursing, and the sweet young princes and the hillyfents, and pybald ass, and all the rest of the Royal Family." In two minutes from Piccadilly Circus I can be at will in France, in Germany, in Italy, or in Jerusalem. Even at the loneliest hour of the night I can have company to walk with; for in Bond Street I meet Colonel Newcome's stately figure, in Pall Mall I encounter Peregrine Pickle's new chariot and horses, by the Thames I find the skulking figures of Quilp and Rogue Riderhood, in Southwark I am with Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller, in Eastcheap with immortal Jack Falstaff, sententious Nym, blustering Pistol, and glow-nosed Bardolph. With such companions at my side, I float on London's human tide; An atom on its billows thrown, But lonely never, nor alone. In a hundred yards I may jostle an Archbishop of the Established Church, a Prostitute, a Poet, a victorious General, the Hero of the last football match, a Millionaire, a "wanted" Murderer, a bevy of famous Actresses, a Socialist Refugee from Spain or Italy, a tattooed South Sea Islander, a loose-breeched Man-o'-War's man from Japan, Armenians, Cretans, Greeks, Jews, Turks, and Clarionettes from Pudsey. The mere picturesque externals suffice to entrance me; but the spell grips like a vice when I look closer and discriminate between the types. Such a commodity of warm slaves has civilisation gathered here! Such a fascinating rabble of addle-pated toadies, muddy-souled bullies of the bagnio, trade-fallen prize-fighters, aristocratic and other drabs, card and billiard sharpers, discarded unjust serving-men, revolted tapsters, touting tipsters, police-court habitués, cut-purses, area sneaks, and general slum-scum; pimpled bookmakers, millionaire sweaters and their dissipated sons; jerry-builders, members of Parliament, phosy-jaw and lead poisoners; African diamond smugglers, peers on the make, long-nosed company promoters, and old clo' men; Stock Exchange tricksters, fraudulent patriotic contractors, earthworms and graspers; fog-brained and parchment-hearted crawlers, pigeons, rooks, hawks, vultures, and carrion crows; the cankers of a base city and a sordid age; the flunkeys, pimps, and panders of society; the pride and chivalry of Piccadilly; the carrion, maggots, and reptiles of an empire upon whose infamies the sun never wholly succeeds in hiding its blushing countenance. There is no fear of my forgetting the misery and crime underlying London's splendour. I never invite Mrs. Dangle's admiration to the flashing lights of Piccadilly but she sharply reminds me of the pitiful sights which they illuminate. The ever-fresh and ever-wonderful magic of the Embankment's circle as seen by night from Adelphi Terrace does not efface the remembrance of Hood's "Bridge of Sighs," nor of Charles Mackay's "Waterloo Bridge." In she plunged boldly, no matter how coldly the rough river ran:— Over the brink of it, picture it, think of it, dissolute Man! Lave in it, drink of it, then, if you can! I have seen our painted sisters standing for hire under the flaring gas-lamps. I have seen ghastly wrecks of humankind slinking by the blazing shop fronts as if ashamed of their hungry faces; and others, bloated out of womanly grace, tottering from gin-palace doors into side-dens that make one pale and sick to glance into. And the interminable battalions of foolish-faced men in foolish frock-coats and foolish tall hats, who suck their foolish sticks as they foolishly amble by! What tragic and comic contrasts! What variety! Faces black and copper faces; yellow faces, rosy faces, and martyrs' faces ghastly white; cruel crafty faces, false and leering faces—faces cynical, callous, and confident; faces crushed, abject, bloodless, and woebegone; satyrs' faces, gross, pampered, impudent, and sensual; sneering, arrogant, devilish faces; and shrinking faces full of prayer and meek entreaty; vulture faces—eager, greedy, ravenous; penguin faces—fat, smug, and foolish; faces of whipped curs, fawning spaniels, and treacherous hounds; wolves' faces and foxes' faces, and many hapless heads of puzzled sheep floating helpless down the current; faces of all tints and forms and characters; and not a few, thank Heaven! of faces strong and calm, of faces kind, modest, and intrepid! of faces blooming, healthy, pretty, and beautiful! Gold and grime, purple and shame, squalor and splendour, contrasts and wonders without end. And all of it—all the flotsam and jetsam of these tumultuous streets—gallant hearts, heroes, criminals, millionaires, pretty girls, and wrecks— they are all charged, and overbrimming with interest, for, as Longfellow says, "these are the great themes of human [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] thought; not green grass, and flowers, and moonshine." Yet flowers too can London show. In the densest quarters of Whitechapel I have seen grass and trees as green as the best that can be seen in the choicest districts of Oldham or Bolton. As for the West End, no richer, riper scenes of urban beauty are to be found in Europe than the stretch of park and garden spread out between the Horse Guards and Kensington Palace. Stand on the steps of the Albert Memorial and feast your gaze on the woody vistas of Kensington Gardens; or, from the suspension bridge of fair St. James's Park, look over the water to the up-piled, towering white palaces of Whitehall; or, without exertion at all, lie down amongst the sheep in the wide green fields of Hyde Park, and listen to the hum of the traffic. Hyde Park's verdurous carpet is shot in its season with the golden lustre of the buttercup, dotted with the peeping white of the timorous daisy, and spangled with the flaunting, extravagant dandelion. Every tree is in spring a gorgeous picture, and every thorn bush a bouquet of fragrant flower. As for London's outside suburbs, no English town can show such charming variety of wood and meadow, of hill and plain. Smiling uplands and blooming slopes; bushy lanes, flowered hedges, and crystal streams; cottages overgrown, according to the season, with honeysuckle, roses, and creeping plants of gorgeous varying hues; smooth green lawns bedecked with flowers; bracken and woods upon the hills; scampering rabbits, scattered meditative cattle, placid sheep, singing birds, swifts and swallows, rooks high sailing o'er tufted elms; and, above all, the sweet, blue, cloudless, southern sky;—all these may be found on a fine summer's day within an easy cycle-ride in any direction from London. Where shall we find nobler views than those exposed from Muswell's woody slopes, or Sydenham's stately terraces; from happy Hampstead, or haughty Highgate; from rare Richmond, or, best of all, from glorious Leith? Where are sweeter woods than those of Epping or Hadley? Where such glades as at Bushey or Windsor? Where so sweet a garden, or so gracious a stream to water it, as lies open to the excursionist in the valley of the Thames between Maidenhead and beautiful Oxford? To hear the lark's song gushing forth to the sun on Hampstead's golden heath, to see the bluebells making soft haze in the Hadley woods, to watch the children returning through Highgate to their feculent rookeries laden with the fair bloom of hawthorn hedges, to lie on Hyde Park's soft green velvet, is to bring home the knowledge to our tarnished hearts that even this city of fretful stir, weariness, and leaden-eyed despair, might be sweet and of goodly flavour—that even London's cruel face might be made to beam upon all her children like a maternal benediction, if they were wise enough to deserve and demand it! But— Mammon is their chief and lord, Monarch slavishly adored; Mammon sitting side by side With Pomp and Luxury and Pride, Who call his large dominion theirs, Nor dream a portion is Despair's. The wealth and the poverty! the grandeur and the wretchedness! Sir Howard Vincent, a Conservative M.P., lately told his Sheffield constituents, after a round of visits paid to "almost every state in Europe," that— He had no hesitation in saying that in a walk of a mile in London, and in the West End too, they saw more miserable people than he met with in all the countries enumerated—more bedraggled, unhappy, unfortunate out-of-works, seeking alms and bread, and strong men earning a few pence loitering along with immoral advertisements on their shoulders. He granted that there were more people in London with palatial mansions, luxurious carriages, and high-stepping horses, but there was much greater poverty and dire distress among the aged. As regards the luxury, this is true enough. As regards poverty, London's state is bad—God knows!—infinitely worse than that of Paris, which I know intimately; but not so bad, according to my more travelled friends, as that of Russian, Italian, or even Saxon industrial regions. London's destitution at its worst is perhaps more brutal, and more repellent, but not more hopeless than the more picturesque poverty of sunnier climes. Poplar, Stepney, Hoxton, Bethnal Green, and Whitechapel are as hideous tumours upon a fair woman's face. They are vile labyrinths of styes, where pallid men and women, and skeleton children,—guileless little things, fresh from the hands of God,—wallow like swine. Yet, except for vastness, London slums are not more shameful than the slums Sir Howard Vincent may find, if he will [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] look in the town which he has the dishonour of representing in Parliament. I saw the slum-scum sweltering in their close-packed, fœtid East End courts during the great water famine last summer (miles of luxuriously appointed palaces in the gorgeous West standing the while deserted), but even then I found them cleaner, fresher, and sweeter than the slums of Manchester, Liverpool, Dublin, Dundee, Glasgow, Birmingham, or Darkest Sheffield. For over all these London possesses one precious, inestimable advantage—the wide estuary and great air avenue of the Thames, through which refreshing winds are borne into the turbid crannies, bringing precious seeds of health and sweeping out the stagnant poisons. I have beheld the great city in many aspects, fair and foul. I have seen St. Paul's pierce with ghostly whiteness through a mist that swathed and wholly hid its lower parts, the great dome rising like a phantom balloon from out a phantom city. I have seen a blue-grey "London particular" transform a dingy, narrow street into a portal of mystery, romance, and enchantment. I have loitered on Waterloo Bridge to gaze on the magic of the river and listen to the eerie music of Time's roaring loom. I have heard the babel of Petticoat Lane on Sunday morning. I have surveyed the huge wen and contrasted it with the pleasant Kentish weald from Leith Hill's summit. And I would not go back from London to any place that I have lived in. I like London. I am bitten as I have seen all bitten that came under its spell—bitten as I vowed I never could be. London's air is in my lungs and nostrils, its glamour in my eyes, its roar and moan and music in my ears, its fever in my blood, its quintessence in my heart. I came to scoff and I pray to remain. LONDON CHARLIE Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood, Our greatest evil, or our greatest good. Moore. The celebrated novelist Ouida has made a general indictment against the "cruel ugliness and dulness" of the streets of London. The greatest city in the world, according to Mdlle. de la Ramé, has "a curiously provincial appearance, and in many ways the aspect of a third-rate town." Even the aristocratic quarters are "absolutely and terribly depressing and tedious"; and as for decorative beauty, this is all she can find of it in London:— An ugly cucumber frame like Battersea Park Hall, gaudily coloured; a waggon drawn by poor, suffering horses, and laden with shrieking children, going to Epping Forest; open-air preachers ranting hideously of hell and the devil; gin-palaces, music-halls, and the flaring gas-jets on barrows full of rotting fruit, are all that London provides in the way of enjoyment or decoration for its multitudes! Instead of which, I am free to maintain that no town of my acquaintance has such diversity of entertainment. Paris has the bulge in the trifling, foolish matter of theatrical plays and players. But London has more and finer playhouses; as good opportunities of hearing great music; and infinitely larger and better-appointed music-halls. London has now the finest libraries, museums, and picture-galleries; and as for out-door entertainment, no town possesses such remarkable variety as is offered at the Imperial Institute, the Crystal and Alexandra Palaces, Olympia, and Earl's Court. Thereby hangs a tale. It must be that the provincial friends who visit me are not as other men. I hear of people receiving guests from the country and taking them out for nice walks to the National Gallery, South Kensington Museum, the Tower, and other places of cultured dissipation provided by the generous rate-payer to discourage and kill off the cheap-tripper; but I have no such luck. To my ardent, blushing commendation of national eleemosynary entertainments, the rude provincials who assail my hospitality reply with a rude provincial wink. Frequent failure has, I fear, stripped my plausibility of its pristine bloom. Time was when I could boldly recommend Covent Garden Market at four o'clock in the morning as a first-rate attraction to the provincial pilgrim of pleasure, but your stammering tongue and quailing eye are plaguy mockers of your useful villainy. [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] Mrs. Dangle herself begins to look doubtfully when, on our periodical little pleasure trips, I repeat the customary: "Tower! eh? It will be such a treat!" Ah me! Confidence was a beautiful thing. The world grows too cynical. Earl's Court is the thin end of the wedge by which the hydra-headed serpent of unbelief is bred to fly roughshod over the thin ice of irresolute dissimulation, to nip the mask of pretence in the bud, and with its cold, uncharitable eye to suck the very life-blood of that confidence which is the corner-stone and sheet-anchor of friendly trust 'twixt man and man. Be that as it may, my praise of County Council Parks and County Council Bands, of Tower history and Kensington culture, is as ineffectual as a Swedish match in a gale. My visitors, as with one accord, reply, "That is neither here nor there. We are going to Earl's Court." Thus, Captandem had come to town, and said "he wanted to see things." I tempted him with the usual programme. "I am told," I insinuated, "that the Ethnographical Section of the British Museum 'silently but surely teaches many beautiful lessons.'" "I daresay," he sneered. "The educational facilities furnished by South Kensington Museum"— "Educational fiddlesticks," interrupted he. "The Tower," I went on, "is improving to the mind." "I have had some." "The National Gallery"— "Be hanged!" he snorted. "Do you take me for an Archæological Conference? or a British Association picnic?" "Well," I began, in my most winning Board-meeting manner, "if you don't like my suggestions, you can go to"— "Earl's Court," he opportunely snapped. He then explained that he had been reading in The Savoy, a poem by Sarojini Chattopâdhyây on "Eastern Dancers," commencing thus:— Eyes ravished with rapture, celestially panting, what passionate spirits aflaming with fire Drink deep of the hush of the hyacinth heavens that glimmer around them in fountains of light? O wild and entrancing the strain of keen music that cleaveth the stars like a wail of desire, And beautiful dancers with houri-like faces bewitch the voluptuous watches of night. The scents of red roses and sandalwood flutter and die in the maze of their gem-tangled hair, And smiles are entwining like magical serpents the poppies of lips that are opiate-sweet, Their glittering garments of purple are burning like tremulous dawns in the quivering air, And exquisite, subtle, and slow are the tinkle and tread of their rhythmical slumber-soft feet. Now silent, now singing and swaying and swinging, like blossoms that bend to the breezes or showers, Now wantonly winding, they flash, now they falter, and lingering languish in radiant choir, Their jewel-bright arms and warm, wavering, lily-long fingers enchant thro' the summer-swift hours, Eyes ravished with rapture, celestially panting, their passionate spirits aflaming with fire. When I had finished reading this too-too all but morsel of exquisiteness, the Boy said he'd be punctured if he could exactly catch the hang of the thing (the Philistine!), but he thought he would like some of those (the heathen!), and having seen an announcement that a troupe of Eastern Dancers were then appearing at Earl's Court, he had determined to let his passionate, with fire-aflaming spirit "drink deep of the hush of the hyacinth heavens." On the way to Earl's Court, I filled up the Boy with such general information about Nautch Girls, as I had gathered in my studies. I informed him that nothing could exceed the transcendent beauty, both in form and lineament, of these admirable creatures; that their dancing was the most elegant and gently graceful ever seen, for that it comprised no prodigious springs, no vehement pirouettes, no painful tension of the muscles, or extravagant contortions of the limbs; no violent sawing of the arms; no unnatural curving of the limbs, no bringing of the legs at right angles with the trunk; no violent hops or jerks, or dizzy jumps. The Nautch Girl's arms, I assured him, move in unison with her tiny, naked feet, which fall on earth as mute as snow. [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] She occasionally turns quickly round, expanding the loose folds of her thin petticoat, when the heavy silk border with which it is trimmed opens into a circle round her, showing for an instant the beautiful outline of her form, draped with the most becoming and judicious taste. She wears, I continued, scarlet or purple celestial pants, and veils of beautiful gauze with tassels of silver and gold. The graceful management of the veil by archly peeping under it, then radiantly beaming over it, was in itself enough, I assured him, to make one's eyes celestially pant, but— "Dis way for Indu juggler, Indu tumbler, Nautch Dance," at this moment cried a shrill voice at my side; and I perceived that we were actually standing outside the Temple where the passionate spirits in celestial pants drink deep of the hush of the hyacinth heavens! The performance had begun. An able-bodied, well-footed Christy Minstrel was doing a sort of shuffling walk-round, droning out the while a monotonous wail in a voice that might have been more profitably employed to kill cats. "Lor'," the Boy complained, "will that suffering nigger last long? Couldn't they get him to reserve his funeral service for his own graveyard? Ask them how soon they mean to trot out the exquisite, subtle Tremulous Dawns,—the swaying and swinging Sandalwood Slumber-soft Flutter in celestial pants,—the wantonly winding Lingering Languishers?" I approached one of the artistes—a lean and dejected Fakir, picturesquely attired in a suit of patched atmosphere. "That's very nice," I said conciliatorily, "very nice indeed, in its way. But we don't much care for Wagner's music, nor Christy Minstrels. We would prefer to take a walk until your cornerman is through: at what time will the Nautch Girls appear?" "Yes, yes," the heathen Hindu replied, with a knowing leer, "Nautch Girl ver' good, ver' good; Lonndonn Charlee, he likee Nautch Girl, ver' good." "Yes," I said. "What time do they kick off?" "Yes, yes, ver' good, ver' good, Nautch Girl," the mysterious Oriental replied; "she Nautch Girl bimeby done now; me go do conjur, ver' good, ver' good." "Nautch Girl nearly done?" I cried. "Why, where is the Nautch Girl!" "That Nautch Girl is dance now, ver' good, ver' good. Lonndonn Charlee, he likee Nautch Girl, ver' good." At last the horrible truth dawned on me! The person we had taken for a Christy Minstrel was the wantonly winding, lingeringly languishing Nautch Girl!!! After that we visited other "side shows," and saw more dejected Hindoos perform marvellous feats of jugglery and conjuring, with the aid of trained mongooses, monkeys, and goats. Also an extraordinary game of football by Burmese players, who catch a glass ball on their necks and ankles as dexterously as Ranjitsinhji catches a cricket ball with his hands. Also we saw the acrobats who balance themselves on a bamboo pole by gripping it with their stomachs—a trick which I have since practised with but incomplete success. We also saw the juggling of an Indian humorist with two attendants, who, if they did not realise all the wonders we have read about Indian conjurers, did at least perform miracles with the English language and the linked sweetness of music too long drawn out. The attendants sat on the ground and beat monotonous drums, what time the conjurer walked to and fro and played a peculiarly baneful type of Indian bagpipe. "Ram, ram, ram, ram, kurte heren ugh!" sang the conjurer. "Ugh! ugh! ugh! ugh!" sang the chorus, rolling their eyes and swaying their shoulders. "Baen, deina, juldee, chup, chup!" droned the conjurer. "Chup, chup, chup, chup," wailed the chorus. "Hum mugurer hue! hum padre hue! hum booker se mur jata hue!" cried the conjurer. "Hue! hue! hue! hue!" replied the chorus. Then, "one, two, three, four, five, nine, sumting, fifteen, twenty," cried the conjurer, fumbling with his conjuring gear; "see dere, dere de egg; Lonndonn chicken egg, chicken egg, chicken egg." "Chicken egg, chicken egg," repeated the chorus in triumphant tones; and banged the mournful drums. By weird Hindu enchantment, they beguiled Captandem to the platform to assist, and having got him there, proceeded to make him wish he wasn't. "Lonndonn Charlee," cried the conjurer, triumphantly introducing him; "Lonndonn Charlee, Lonndonn Charlee, say [44] [45] [46] [47] [48] [49] now uchmeechulouchuadmee," and grinned like a heathen. "Uchmeechulouchuadmee," wailed the chorus. "Uchmee—uchmee—oh! I can't say it," cried poor London Charlie, and the chorus, showing all its flashing teeth, victoriously droned a mocking "Bu-u-uh!" which obviously completed London Charlie's discomfiture and distress. "Lennee me Lonndonn sixpence, Lonndonn Charlee," cried the conjurer; and the youthful Captandem, after much inward searching, produced the coin demanded. The conjurer took it in his hand, placed it under a flower-pot, and said: "Ulla ulla juldeechupalee"; and the chorus shouted, "Chupalee." Then followed two or three more experiments and practical jokes on London Charlie's confiding innocence, till at last London Charlie, unwilling to bear any more ridicule, leaped from the platform and desperately fled the scene—looking as unlike the cocksure London Charlie that went up, as doth the tin-kettled feline maniac which has fallen amongst felonious boys, to the smug and purring pet of the ancient spinster's fireside. Poor little London Charlie. It was not till long afterwards that he remembered his sixpence. Poor Captandem! Still he enjoyed himself, and, if the truth must be told, there are moments when even I am less amused by the mummies and fossils of the museums than by the lights, the fountains, the colour, and the movement of Earl's Court. I wonder why it never occurs to the philanthropists and municipalities which provide picture-galleries, libraries, and other elevating institutions for the people, to try the effect upon Whitechapel or Ancoats of a genuine place of amusement. The class from which our philanthropists chiefly spring, regard with suspicion nearly everything in which the common people find spontaneous pleasure; and, instead of helping the development and improvement of such natural sources of delight, they only aim to "elevate" the masses by mortifying their flesh and wearying their souls. To "elevate" them, the philanthropists close their eyes to all that delights the common people, and thrust upon them, willy-nilly, something which interests them not at all, something which they cannot understand, something which nips and chills and infinitely bores them. The philanthropists, when they give of their benefactions to the people, cannot, or will not, see that to teach a mouse to fly, it is needful for the teacher to begin by stepping down to the earth. They insist, as a condition of their generosity, that the people shall be thereby flabbergasticated, petriflummoxed, and aggrawetblankalysed with everlasting doldrums. Show me, anywhere, 'twixt Widnes and Heaven—which is as wide a stretch as imagination may compass—any public institution founded by private munificence for the people's delectation, to which the people flock with cheerful alacrity, or wherein the people bear themselves with anything like holiday jauntiness. The public museums and picture-galleries are very fine institutions, but how much do they affect or brighten the lives of the mass? How do they touch the common people? How many of the Slum-scum come? and how often? Do they enjoy the painted and sculptured masterpieces presented to their admiration? Is it possible that, without guidance or explanation, they can understand the beauty of these, their treasures? Behold the stragglers that come—how puzzled, awestruck, furtive, and ill-at-ease they are! There is fear of the Superior Person in their face, and of the policeman in their tread. They stare at the frames, at the skylights, at the polished floors, at the attendants, and at the modified Minervas in No. 9 pince-nez who are the most regular frequenters of such places; but they scarcely see the pictures. They walk on their toes to prevent noise, cough apologetically, shrivel under the withering glances of the modified Minervas, and look ostentatiously unhappy. The modified Minervas walk round with the air of exclusive proprietorship. They are at home. They pervade the place. The young ones stare with mild amazement or languid curiosity at the unaccustomed, aberrant hewer of wood or drawer of water, as if speculating as to which of the more remote planets he sprang from; the elder ones glare at him through their eyeglasses with such scathing disdain as to confirm him in his opinion that his entrance there was an unpardonable liberty. The public museums and picture-galleries are made, not for the common people of the seething slums, but for the modified Minervas of the genteel suburbs. These are the legatees of the public philanthropists. That which is given for the "elevation of the masses" tends in practice to elevate nothing except the already tilted tips of their particularly cultured noses. The benevolent Crœsus produces no happiness by his benefaction, except that which these ladies derive from the admiring contemplation of their refined superiority. What the common people want is the glitter of spectacle, the intoxication of beauty and grace, of music and dance; the sensation of light and brightness and stirring movement. The wisest thing to do with appetites so old-established and deep-rooted is, not to suppress, but to guide them. [50] [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] [56] Obstruct them, and they will run into dark and dirty channels out of sight; recognise and cultivate them in the clear light of day, and they may produce in every town even better sources of amusement than Earl's Court. LONDON GHOSTS I pass the populous houses In terrace or street or square, I hear the rattle of chariots And the sound of life on the air; And up at the curtained windows, Where the flaming gaslights glow, I see 'mid the flitting shadows Of the guests that come and go, The paler and dimmer shadows Of the ghosts of the Long Ago. Charles Mackay. Once upon a time, as the charmed books tell, there was a mountain covered with stones, of which each particular flint or pebble had been, "upon a time," a live and sentient man or woman. The stones lay, with no attribute of life except a power to appeal in such wise to passers-by as to compel them to remain. But there came, one happy day, a beauteous maiden with a pitcher full of the Water of Life, and she, sprinkling the precious fluid over the stones, transformed them again into animated creatures of flesh and blood—"a great company of youths and maidens who followed her down the mountain." As I take my walks in London-town, I think of that story and long for a pitcher of the magic Water of Life. For if imagination may trace the noble dust of Alexander till he find it stopping a bung-hole, and if, as biologists tell us, the whole of our mortal tissue is unceasingly being shed and renewed, every brick and stone in London pavement, church, inn, and dwelling-house must have in it some part of human greatness; for the flower of Britain's brain and valour, the heroes of her most glorious service and achievement—poets, philosophers, prelates, princes, statesmen, soldiers, scientists, explorers—the greatest of those who have "toiled and studied for mankind," have lived in London. Milton used to thank God that he had been born in London. Shakespeare acted in Blackfriars and near London Bridge; his wit flashed nightly at the Mermaid; in the shadow of Whitehall, he broke his heart for Mary Fitton; and here he wove the magic of his plays. That is the consideration which makes London's enchantment so irresistible. Here is the actual, visible scene of the most momentous deeds of our history, of the most memorable episodes in our country's fiction, and of the workaday, toiling, rejoicing, and sorrowing of the greatest of our English brothers and sisters. At Charing Cross the statue of Charles I. on his Rabelais horse faces the site of the scaffold "in the open street," on to which the king stepped one morning through a window of his palace of Whitehall. Pepys saw General Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered at Charing Cross, he (Harrison) "looking as cheerful as any man could in that condition." And he gravely adds that Sir Harry Vane, about to be beheaded on Tower Hill, urgently requested the executioner to take off his head so as not to hurt a pimple on his neck. [57] [58] [59] [60] cross STRAND CROSS, COVENT GARDEN, &c. Anno 1647. Trooper Lockyer, a brave young soldier of seven years' service, though only twenty-three years old, having helped to seize General Cromwell's colours at the Bull in Bishopsgate, was shot in Paul's Churchyard by grim Oliver's orders. His crime was that he was a Leveller or early Socialist, "with hot notions as to human freedom, and the rate at which millenniums are obtainable. He falls shot in Paul's Churchyard on Friday, amid the tears of men and women," says Carlyle, Paul's Cathedral being then a horse-guard, with horses stamping in the canons' stalls, and its leaden roof melted into bullets. On the following Monday the corpse having been "watched and wept over" meantime "in the eastern regions of the City," brave Lockyer was buried "at the new churchyard in Westminster":— The corpse was adorned with bundles of Rosemary, one half stained with blood. . . . Some thousands followed in rank and file: all had sea-green and black ribbon tied on their hats and to their breasts; and the women brought up the rear. How actual and visible and present they are, as one stands on the spots where these great events were transacted! And such histories has nearly every street and every ancient building. London is not paved with gold. It is paved with the glory of England's mighty dead. The name is Legion of the eminences whose last cumbrous clog of clay is buried here. In Westminster's venerable and beautiful Abbey, where I saw Gladstone buried last June, I can look on the bury- hole of Edward the Confessor, King of our remote Anglo-Saxon ancestors, and one of the prime founders of English liberties; I see the tomb of that butcher Edward who subdued Wales and overthrew Scotland's Wallace; here, too, is the grave of the third Edward, who, by his raiding and stealing, laid the foundations of England's glorious commerce. Here, under his Agincourt helmet, lies the valiant dust of Falstaff's Prince Hal, and of three other Royal Henrys. Bloody Mary rests from her fiery rage; Mary Queen of Scots is united in death to her terrible foe, Elizabeth of England; and two Stuart Kings repose uncomplainingly by the side of William of Orange. [61] [62] [63] [64] [65] Here mighty troublers of the earth, Who swam to sov'reign rule through seas of blood; The oppressive, sturdy, man-destroying villains, Who ravag'd kingdoms, and laid empires waste, And in a cruel wantonness of power Thinn'd states of half their people, and gave up To want the rest; now, like a storm that's spent, Lie hushed. From these crumbled majesties I turn with reverence to aisles hallowed by the mould of Darwin, Dickens, Thackeray, Browning, Macaulay, Livingstone, Garrick, and Handel. Beneath St. Paul's great dome my gratitude can tender homage to the names of Titanic Turner, Reynolds, Landseer, Napier, Cornwallis, Wellington, and Nelson. Think what a procession if all these could be sprinkled with the Water of Life! If to each fragment of noble dust in this huge, unshapely, and overgrown wilderness of masonry, one could call back the soul that sometime quickened it, what a great city, in Walt Whitman's sense, would London be! Every town cherishes the sacred memory of its own particular great man, but London bears in its bosom intimate and familiar tokens of them all. The city and its neighbourhood for miles round are marked with historic and literary associations. The place is all composed of great men's fame and chapters of world-history. London Clay is made of London's Pride, and London Pride grows in the London Clay. Not a quarter, not a suburb is free of hallowed associations. Within half an hour's stroll from my home at Highgate I can visit the pleasaunce of which Andrew Marvell wrote— I have a garden of my own, But so with roses overgrown, And lilies, that you would it guess To be a little wilderness. I cross the threshold of the adjoining house, and stand within the actual domicile of staid Andrew's improper neighbour, Mistress Nell Gwynne. It was from a window of this house she threatened to drop her baby, unless her Merry Monarch would there and then confer name and title on him; and thus came England into the honour and glory of a ducal race of St. Albans. When Nell Gwynne looked up from that signally successful jest, she may have seen, across the street, the two houses wherein, a few years before, had dwelt the stern Protector of the Commonwealth and the husband of his daughter, Ireton. I wonder what she thought of old Noll! The houses stand there yet, substantial, square, their red brick "mellowed but not impaired by time." The "restored" Charles had had the corpses of over a hundred Puritans, including Admiral Blake's, and that of Cromwell's old mother, dug up from their graves and flung in a heap in St. Margaret's Churchyard; he had hung in chains on Tyburn gallows the disinterred clay of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw. I wonder he was not prompted to pull down these dwellings of his father's "murderers." He must have seen them often. Their windows overlooked the garden of his light-o'-love. Did she intercede to have them preserved? As I linger there, I like to think so. Still within a half-mile circle of my home, on the same Highgate Hill whereon stand the houses of Nell Gwynne and Ireton, I can show my children the "werry, indentical" milestone from which—ita legenda scripta—Dick Whittington was recalled by the sound of Bow Bells. At the top of Highgate Hill, and on the slope of another hill where a man (since dead in the workhouse) saved Queen Victoria's life, stands the house where Samuel Taylor Coleridge lived. Here, and, it is said, in a little inn near by, he entertained such company as Shelley, Keats, Byron, Leigh Hunt, and—surely not in the little inn?—Carlyle. Coleridge lies buried in the churchyard hard by, and in Highgate Cemetery I find the graves of George Eliot, Michael Faraday, Charles Dickens' daughter Dora, Tom Sayers the prize-fighter, and Lillywhite the cricketer. Harry Lowerison has a way of teaching children by taking them to see the streets and monuments of London; and I can think of no more interesting or promising mode of instruction. [66] [67] [68] [69] [70] For in these scenes English history is indelibly and picturesquely written, back to the date of our earliest records. I stood one day in Cannon Street, when a passing omnibus-horse chanced to slip. The vehicle swerved across the asphalt, and, to complete the catastrophe, the horse fell. Then, hey, presto! in the twinkling of an eye, the street was blocked with a compact mass of "blue carts and yellow omnibuses, varnished carriages and brown vans, green omnibuses and brown cabs, pale loads of yellow straw, rusty red iron clanking on paintless carts, high white wool packs, grey horses, bay horses, black teams; sunlight sparkling on the brass harness, gleaming from the carriage panels; jingle, jingle, jingle." A bustling, shuffling, pushing, wriggling, twisting wonder! One moment's damming of the stream had caused such a gathering as Imperial Cæsar never dreamt of. I was pushed back against the wall, and then observed that I stood by the London Stone—a stone which "'midst the tangling horrors of the wood" by Thames side, may have been drenched with the human gore of druidical sacrifices. Captives bound in wicker rods may have burned upon its venerable surface to glut the fury of savage gods. That stone stood here when Constantine built the London Wall around the "citty." It was here when, upon an island formed by a river which crept sullenly through "a fearful and terrible plain," which none might approach after nightfall without grievous danger, King Sebert of the East Saxons built to the glory of St. Peter the Apostle that church which is known to our generation as Westminster Abbey. The London Stone stood when Sebert built a church on the ruins of Diana's Temple, where now stands St. Paul's Cathedral. London was built before Rome, before the fall of the Assyrian monarchs, over a thousand years before the birth of Jesus Christ. Who knows? Where I stood, old Chaucer may have stood to see his Canterbury Pilgrims pass. Falstaff, reeling home from Dame Quickly's Tavern with his load of sherris-sack, may have sat here to ponder on his honour. Shakespeare may have leaned on the old milestone as he watched the Virgin Queen's pageant to Tilbury Fort in Armada times. Through James Ball's and Jack Cade's uprising, through the Wars of the Roses, the Fire of London, the Plague, the Stuart upheaval, and Cromwell's stirring times—through all these the London Stone stood, "fixed in the ground very deep," says Stowe, "that if carts do runne against it through negligence the wheels be broken, and the stone itself unshaken." And now it links the bustle and roar of modern London with the strife out of which London grew, and keeps our conceits reminded of the forefathers who lived and fought in Britain here to make the way more smooth for us. Ere cabs or omnibuses were; ere telephones, telegraphs, or railways; ere Magna Charta; before William the Conqueror brought our ancient nobility's ancestors over from Normandy—London knew this stone. It has endured longer than any king, it has survived generations and dynasties of monarchs. "Walls have ears," they say, and Shakespeare "finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks, and sermons in stones." What a tale would he tell that could find the tongue of the London Stone! Think of all the men and women who have passed it, seen it with their eyes, felt it with their hands; the millions of simple, faithful, anonymous people who have cheerfully slaved, and bled, and died, to help—as each according to his lights conceived—the honour, safety, and well-being of his country. We have paid homage to the celebrated dead: what about those that have done their duty and have received neither fame nor monument? Their blood, too, cries out to me from the paving-stones of London. Alas for men! that they should be so blind, And laud as gods the scourges of their kind! Call each man glorious who has led a host, And him most glorious who has murdered most! Alas! that men should lavish upon these The most obsequious homage of their knees— That those who labour in the arts of peace, Making the nations prosper and increase, Should fill a nameless and unhonoured grave, Their worth forgotten by the crowd they save— But that the Leaders who despoil the earth, Fill it with tears, and quench its children's mirth, Should with their statues block the public way, And stand adored as demi-gods for aye. But thanks to the efforts of Mr. G. F. Watts, R.A., and Mr. Walter Crane, London is at last in a fair way to...