About London

CHAPTER V.

TOM TIDDLER’S GROUND

Barry Cornwall tells us that when he was a little boy he was told that the streets of London were all paved with gold; and it must be admitted that, to the youthful mind in general, the metropolis is a sort of Tom Tiddler’s ground, where gold and silver are to be picked up in handfuls any day. There is a good deal of exaggeration in this, undoubtedly. To many, London is dark and dismal as one of its own fogs, cold and stony as one of its own streets. The Earl of Shaftesbury, a few years back, calculated there were 30,000 ragged, houseless, homeless children in our streets. The number of persons who died last year in the streets of London, from want of the necessaries of life, would shock a Christian. Last year the total number of casual destitute paupers admitted into the workhouses of the metropolitan districts amounted to 53,221 males, 62,622 females, and 25,710 children. We cannot wonder at this when we remember that it is said 60,000 persons rise every morning utterly ignorant as to the wherewithal to feed and maintain themselves for the day. Wonderful are the shifts, and efforts, and ingenuities of this class. One summer-day, a lady-friend of the writer was driving in one of the pleasant green lanes of Hornsey, when she saw a poor woman gathering the broad leaves of the horse-chestnut. She asked her why she did so. The reply was that she got a living by selling them to the fruiterers in Covent Garden, who lined the baskets with them in which they placed their choicest specimens. One day it came out in evidence at a police-court, that a mother and her children earned a scanty subsistence by rising early in the morning, or rather late at night, and tearing down and selling as waste-paper, the broad sheets and placards with which the dead walls and boardings of our metropolis abound. The poor sick needlewomen, stitching for two-and-six-pence a-week, indicate in some quarters how hard is the London struggle for life. But one of the worst sights, I think, is that of women (a dozen may be seen at a time), all black and grimy, sifting the cinders and rubbish collected by the dustmen from various parts, and shot into one enormous heap.

The last dodge exposed for making money is amusing. A writer in the Times wanted to know how it was we see advertisements in London papers for a million of postage-stamps. A writer in reply says all the stories about severe papas, who will not let their daughters marry till they have papered a room with them, are false. He says if the reader will go to some of the purlieus of the Borough (leaving his watch and purse at home) he will very possibly be enlightened. He will be accosted by a hook-nosed man, who will pull out a greasy pocket-book, and produce some apparently new postage-stamps, not all joined together, but each one separate, and will offer them for sale at about 2d. a dozen. If the enterprising stranger looks very closely, indeed, into these stamps, he may perhaps detect a slight join in the middle. They are made by taking the halves which are unobliterated of two old stamps and joining them, regumming the backs and cleaning the faces. This practice is, it is said, carried on to a great extent, in the low neighbourhoods of Ratcliff-highway, and the Borough.

During the year 1858 it appears 10,004 persons died in the public institutions of London: 5,535 in the workhouses, 57 in the prisons, and 4,412 in hospitals. Of the latter number 317 belong to the Greenwich and the Chelsea hospitals, 211 to the military and naval hospitals. About one in six of the inhabitants of the metropolis dies in the public institutions, nearly one in eleven dies in the workhouses. Only think of the population of London. In 1857 that was estimated by the Registrar-General at 2,800,000; since then the population has gone on steadily increasing, and it may be fairly estimated that the London of to-day is more than equal to three Londons of 1801. Now, amidst this teeming population, what thousands of vicious, and rogues, and fools there must be; what thousands suddenly reduced from affluence to poverty; what thousands plunged into distress by sickness or the loss of friends, and parents, and other benefactors; to such what a place of pain, and daily mortification, and trial London must be!

But, on the other hand, from the time of Whittington and his cat, London has abounded with instances showing how, by industry and intelligence, and – let us trust – honesty, the poorest may rise to the possession of great wealth and honour. Indeed all the great city houses abound with examples. Poor lads have come up to town, friendless and moneyless, have been sober and steady, and firm against London allurements and vices, have improved the abilities and opportunities God has given them, and are now men of note and mark. The late Lord Mayor was but an office-lad in the firm of which he is now the head. Mr. Herbert Ingram, M.P. for Boston, and proprietor of the Illustrated News, blackened the shoes of one of his constituents. Mr. Anderson, of the Oriental Steam Navigation Company, and formerly M.P. for the Orkneys, rose in a similar manner. Sir Peter Laurie was originally in a humble position in life, so was Mr. Dillon, of the house of Dillon and Co. Our great Lord Chancellor, when employment was scarce and money ditto, held a post as reporter and theatrical critic on the Morning Chronicle newspaper. Mr. Chaplin, the late Salisbury M.P., was an extraordinary instance of a man rising from the humblest rank. Before railways were in operation Mr. Chaplin had succeeded in making himself one of the largest coach proprietors in the kingdom. His establishment, from small beginnings, grew till, just before the opening of the London and North Western line, he was proprietor of sixty-four stage-coaches, worked by fifteen hundred horses, and giving yearly returns of more than half a million sterling. Mr. Cobden began life in a very subordinate position in a London warehouse. Sir William Cubitt when a lad worked at his father’s flour-mill. Michael Faraday, England’s most eminent chemist, was the son of a poor blacksmith. Sir Samuel Morton Peto worked for seven years as a carpenter, bricklayer, and mason, under his uncle, Mr. Henry Peto. The well-known Mr. Lindsay, M.P. for Sunderland, was a cabin boy. The editor of one morning paper rose quite from the ranks, and the editor of another well known journal used to be an errand-boy in the office before, by gigantic industry and perseverance, he attained his present high position. Mr. J. Fox, the eloquent M.P. for Oldham, and the “Publicola” of the Weekly Dispatch, worked in a Norwich factory. The great warehouses in Cheapside and Cannon-street, and elsewhere, are owned by men who mostly began life without a rap. Go to the beautiful villas at Norwood, at Highgate, at Richmond, and ask who lives there, and you will find that they are inhabited by men whose wealth is enormous, and whose career has been a marvellous success. Fortunes in London are made by trifles. I know a man who keeps a knacker’s yard, who lives out of town in a villa of exquisite beauty, and who drives horses which a prince might envy. Out of the profits of his vegetable pills Morrison bought himself a nice estate. Mrs. Holloway drives one of the handsomest carriages you shall meet in the Strand. Sawyer and Strange, who the other day were respectable young men unknown to fame, paid the Crystal Palace Company upwards of £12,000, as per contract, for the liberty to supply refreshments for a few months. In the city there, at this time, may be seen the proprietor of a dining-room, who drives a handsome mail-phaeton and pair daily to town in the morning to do business, and back at night. Thackeray has a tale of a gentleman who married a young lady, drove his cab, and lived altogether in great style. The gentleman was very silent as to his occupation; he would not even communicate the secret to his wife. All that she knew was what was patent to all his neighbours – that he went in his Brougham in the morning, and returned at night. Even the mother-in-law, prying as she was, was unable to solve the mystery. At length, one day the unfortunate wife, going with her dear mamma into the city, in the person of a street sweeper clothed in rags, and covered with dirt, she recognised her lord and master, who decamped and was never heard of more. The story is comic, but not improbable, for London is so full of wealth, you have only to take your place, and it seems as if some of the golden shower must fall into your mouth. Mr. Thwaites, when examined before the Parliamentary Committee on the Embankment of the Thames, said, “The metropolis contributes very largely to the taxation of the country. The value of the property assessed under Schedule A, is £22,385,350, whilst the sum for the rest of the kingdom is £127,994,288; under Schedule D the metropolis shows £37,871,644, against £86,077,676. The gross estimated rental of the property of the metropolis assessed to the poor rates is £16,157,320, against £86,077,676 from the rest of the kingdom.” The speculations on the Stock Exchange embrace a national debt of 800 millions, railway shares to the extent of 300 millions, besides foreign stock, foreign railway shares, and miscellaneous investments of all kinds. Land has been sold in the neighbourhood of the Exchange and the Bank at the rate of a million pounds an acre. The rateable value of the property assessed to the poor rates in the districts of the metropolis in 1857 amounted to £11,167,678. A Parliamentary Return shows that the total ordinary receipts of the Corporation of the city for the year 1857 amounted to £905,298, the largest item being the coal duty, £64,238. The London omnibuses pay government a duty of no less than £70,200 a year. The Thames even, dirty and stinking as it is, is full of gold. One fact will place its commercial value in the clearest light. In 1856 the Customs’ duties entered as collected from all parts of the United Kingdom were £19,813,622, and of this large sum considerably more than half was collected in the port of London, – the Customs’ duties paid in the port of London alone being £12,287,591, a much larger sum than paid by all the remaining ports of the United Kingdom put together. No wonder that the Londoners are proud of the Thames. Why, even the very mudlarks – the boys who prowl in its mud on behalf of treasure-trove – earn, it is said, as much as £2,000 to £3,000 by that miserable employment in the course of a year.

But we stop. The magnitude of Loudon wealth and even crime can never be fully estimated. It is a boundless ocean, in which the brave, sturdy, steady swimmer – while the weak are borne away rapidly to destruction – may pick up precious pearls.

CHAPTER VI.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY

On Monday, Jan. 9, 1860, we formed part of a crowd who had assembled in the Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey, to view the burial of the only man of our generation who, by means of his literary and oratorical efforts, has won for his brow a coronet. Of Babington Macaulay, as essayist, poet, orator, historian, statesman, we need not speak. What he was, and what he did, are patent to all the world. Born in 1800, the son of Zachary Macaulay, one of the brilliant band of anti-slavery agitators of which Mr. Wilberforce was the head, young Babington commenced life under favourable circumstances. At Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was educated, the world first heard of his wondrous talent. In 1830 he was returned by Lord Lansdowne for his borough of Calne; the Reform agitation was then at its height, and how bitterly, and fiercely, and eloquently Macaulay spoke we remember at this day. Then, in 1834, commenced his Indian exile, at the end of which he returned to Parliament with a competency. His Essays in the Edinburgh Review and his History were the chief business of his life. He might have shone as a poet had he not betaken himself to prose; but in this department he remained unrivalled, and the result was riches and fame. On one occasion, it is said, his publisher gave him a cheque for £20,000, and he was made by the Whigs a peer. His burial at Westminster Abbey, at the foot of Addison, was a fitting climax to his career of wondrous achievement and gorgeous success. Men most distinguished in literature – in science – in law – in statesmanship – in divinity – in rank – were present. The funeral was not as touching as might have been expected. It may be that the choral service itself interferes with the inner feeling of sadness the death of such a man arouses in every mind; it may be that the human voice is inadequate to express the power, and pathos, and majesty of the form of words used on such occasions; and it is certain that the many ladies present were dressed in the most unbefitting costumes, and that ribbons, and bonnets, and dresses of all the colours of the rainbow were quite out of keeping with the place and the occasion. The saddest sight, the one most suggestive of deep feeling, was that of one or two ladies, high up in a recess above the grave. They were real mourners. Indeed, it was said one of them was the sister of the deceased peer. Lord John Russell also exhibited an emotion for which the general public will scarce give him credit. At the grave he was so much overcome, that it seemed as if he would have fallen had not the Duke of Argyle held him up. Well might his Lordship be moved to tears. Could he keep from thinking, while standing there, how soon his own turn would come, and how well and worthily he, who slept the sleep of death in the plain coffin at his feet, had fought the battle of the Whigs in their palmy days? We looked back, as we stood there, to other days. We saw a theatre in Gower Street filled with intelligent youths. A winter session had been closed: all its work and competition were over; to the successful candidates prizes were to be awarded. The fathers and mothers, the friends and sisters of such had come together from far and near. Seated in a chair was a stout, mild, genial man, with face somewhat pale, and hair scant and inclined to grey. He rose, and was received with rapturous applause; he spoke in plain language – with little action, with a voice rather inclined to be harsh – of the bright future which rises before the rapt eye of youth. He spoke – and as he did so, as he mounted from one climax to another, every young heart filled and warmed with the speaker’s theme. That was Macaulay, just come from India, with an honourable competence, to consummate the fame as a man he had acquired in younger years. Again, we thought of that last speech in the House of Commons, when, at an early hour on a beautiful summer evening, the Parks, and Clubs, and Rotten Row had been deserted, for it had gone forth to the world that Macaulay was about to speak. Poor Joseph Hume had moved the adjournment of the debate, and, as a matter of right, was in possession of the House; but the calls for Macaulay on all sides were so numerous, that even that most good-natured of men, as Hume was, grew a little angry and remonstrated; but it was in vain that he sought the attention of the House: all were anxious for the next speaker, and no sooner had Hume sat down than Macaulay delivered, in his hurried feverish way, one of those speeches which not merely delight, but which influence men’s votes and opinions, and may be read with delight when the occasion which gave rise to them has long since passed away. We have heard much in favour of competition in the civil service, at home and in India, since then, but never was the argument more clearly put – more copiously illustrated, more clothed in grace and beauty; and then came a few short years of infirmity of body, of labour with the pen, and sudden death, and the burial at Westminster Abbey. Out of the thousands standing by the grave, few could ever expect to see the career of such another genius. He is gone, and we may not hope to see his work finished. In vain we call up him —

Since then another public funeral has taken place in Westminster Abbey; only the other day we saw deposited there the ashes of Sir Charles Barry, and here, as year by year passes over our heads, richer, and dearer, and wider are the associations which cluster around that venerable pile. I don’t envy the man who can point a sneer at Westminster Abbey; how placid and beautiful is the outside, how eloquently it speaks to the ambitious lawyer, the busy merchant, the statesman bent on fame, the beauty armed for conquest; what a testimony it bears to the religious spirit of the age which witnessed its erection, and of the brain or brains which conceived its magnificent design.

The Abbey is open to public inspection between the hours of eleven and three daily, and also in the summer months between four and six in the afternoon. The public are not admitted to view the monuments on Good Friday, Christmas Day, or fast days, or during the hours of Divine Service. The nave, transept, and cloisters are entirely free. The charge for admission to the rest of the Abbey, through which you are accompanied by a guide, is sixpence each person. The entrance is at the south transept, better known as Poet’s Corner. It will do you good to walk in there any Sunday during Divine Service. The appearance of the place is singularly striking. The white-robed choristers; the benches filled with well-dressed people the dark religious columns; the lofty and fretted roof; the marble monuments and busts looking down on you from every wall and corner; the gleams of mellow sunlight streaming in from richly painted windows – all tend to produce an effect such as you can find nowhere else – an effect of which you must be sensible if you care not for the rich notes of the organ, or sleep while the parson preaches.

The Abbey, originally a Benedictine monastery – the Minster west of St. Paul’s London – was founded originally in what was called Thorney Island, by Sebert, King of the East Saxons, 616. The patron Saint, Peter himself, is said to have consecrated it by night, and in a most miraculous manner. Till the time of Edward the Confessor the Abbey does not seem to have made much way; but the meek-minded Prince was led to give the Abbey a patronage which led to the building becoming what it is. It seems the Prince had been ill, and vowed to take a journey to the Holy Land if he should recover. But, as often is the case with vows made in sickness, the Prince, when well, found it exceedingly inconvenient to fulfil his vow. The only course left for him was to appeal to the Pope. The Holy Father, of course, was appealed to, and freed the pious king from his vow on one condition – that he should spend the money that the journey would have cost him in some religious building. The Prince, too happy to be freed from the consequences of this foolish vow, gladly promised to do so; and, whilst he was considering as to what building he should favour with his royal patronage, one of the monks of Westminster – rather an artful man, we imagine – was reported to have had a wonderful dream, in which no less a personage than St. Peter himself appeared to him, and charged him to take a message to the King, to the effect that his celestial saintship hoped he would not overlook the claims of Westminster. Of course, to so pious a prince as Edward, the saintly wish was law; and on Westminster were lavished the most princely sums. Succeeding kings followed in the same steps. Henry III. and his son, Edward I., rebuilt it nearly as we see it now. It is difficult to say what the building must have cost its royal patrons. In our own time, its repairs have amounted to an enormous sum.