CARRINGTON MEWS,

1st November.

DEAR Agatha,—Yes, I am sure you would find the study of Pepys a profitable one. Why not read him to the Mothers' Meeting instead of "The Parent's Friend" or "How to Keep your Husband out of the 'Pub'"? The old chap can be as smug and moral as Sandford and Merton, and his instructiveness is always involuntary.

But to the continuation of the story of my wanderings.

Smithfield, apart from its terrible associations with the Christian martyrs, is not a pleasant place to visit. On every side one is confronted by corpses sewn up in muslin shrouds, whilst ghoulish men in greasy overalls, their hands smeared with blood, superintend the packing of dead flesh into huge vans. A vegetarian could not find a happier spot in which to point the moral of his message. Mrs. Darling said it made her feel as if she could never look a bullock or a sheep in the face again, and the mutton chop I had had for lunch haunted my digestion.

It was a relief to leave these horrors for Charterhouse Square, a sad enclosure behind iron railings where the yellow leaves lay thick on the grass and the benches stood empty under the avenue of limes.

The sparrows and starlings were as vociferous as they only can be on a November afternoon when dusk is approaching. Their notes made a volume of soft whistling sound which flowed like a tide in the still, cold air. It followed us through the gateway and into the courtyard, becoming muffled as we went, then giving place to the perfect peace and quiet of the old buildings and their surroundings.

Charterhouse has experienced three phases—first, the Carthusian monastery, then the residence of members of the nobility, lastly, the alms-house for old gentlemen; and it is in this latter capacity that its appeal has always lain for myself, or rather, perhaps, I should say it is the alms-house grafted on that background of ancient history which stirs the imagination.

In 1611, at the close of the occupation of the Duke of Norfolk and Lord Thomas Howard, it was bought and endowed as a hospital and school by Mr. Thomas Sutton. The school was removed in 1872, and the number of pensioners ("bachelors or widowers over sixty, gentlemen by descent and in poverty") has been reduced from eighty to fifty.

Mrs. Darling, who has a kindly feeling for "old chaps" (witness her good offices to the writer), was very particular in her enquiries as to what was done for the comfort of these particular old gentlemen, and, judged by the answers of the guide, they have a quite enviable time. I shouldn't mind being one myself.

A comfortable bed-sitting-room, with a fire to go to bed by (each pensioner is allowed two tons and a quarter of coal a year), good food, and forty pounds a year pocket money: what more could one want in those later years when desires become fewer with the growing restfulness of old age! Mrs. Darling was of the opinion that the banning of her sex was to be traced to the monkish associations of the place, and considered it a thing to be deprecated. Men, left to themselves, she declared, got "very narrer-minded and dull". They needed a woman to sharpen their wits "jest the same as a cat needs somethink to sharpen 'is claws on".

We went through a paved passage where are the memorial tablets to some of the old school boys since become famous—Thackeray, Wesley, Sir Henry Havelock, Addison, and Steele—and the guide opening a door at the end, we caught a glimpse of stained glass windows and the dark heavy interior of the Jacobean chapel. In the silence we could hear the tick-tock of the chapel clock, that same old clock which seems the familiar spirit of such places.

I suppose, Agatha, the Charterhouse chapel spells to you, as it does to me, Colonel Newcome, and in the raw dusk of the November afternoon I seemed, in the words of Thackeray, to hear "the old reverend blackgowns coughing feebly in the twilight——"

There were candles in those days; now, the guide touches a button and the place is illumined by electric lights—not too many, however—just enough to throw shadows across the aisles and burnish the carvings on the pensioners' seats. As we stared at the founder's tomb, and heard of the customs appertaining to the 12th of December, fiction became merged in fact, and Colonel Newcome grew from out the shadows of the past, a figure as convincing as any of those buried beneath the old flagstones.

"His dear old head was bent down over his prayer-book; there was no mistaking him. He wore the black gown of the pensioners of the Hospital of Grey Friars. His Order of the Bath was on his breast. He stood there amongst the poor brethren, uttering the responses to the psalm. The steps of this good man had been] ordered thither by Heaven's decree: to this alms-house! Here it was ordained that a life all love, and kindness, and honour should end!"

The guide stood back for us to leave, switched off the lights, and closed the door on the vision of those "reverend blackgowns coughing feebly in the twilight". But carrying the remembrance of them with us, we followed him to Norfolk House. The bare boards of the great oak staircase have a well-scrubbed appearance, and everywhere was silence, a dead magnificence, and chill austerity. One can imagine the brothers' rooms, homelike in the cheerful blaze of their fires, but Norfolk House, with its great staircase, its library and tapestry room, its tiny picture gallery and terrace, possesses the tragic aloofness of things which, having survived their uses, remain to be stared at as relics. The guide switched on the lights as he went, and there sprang to view the library with its book-lined walk—old books of Jesuit travel and divinity which are never opened from one year's end to another. In their dim bindings they make a scholarly background for the Chippendale furniture, and the portrait of the man who had bequeathed them to the institution presides wistfully over the neglected feast of letters. From thence into the governor's room, with its painted Florentine mantelpiece, its faded tapestries, leaden-paned diamond windows, and the arms of the Norfolk family emblazoning the ceiling.

All came to view with the switching on of the lights, then faded into the dusk again at the touch of a button. Our footsteps echoed hollow down the great dim staircase, and we entered the dining-hall, the most ancient of the buildings of pre-Reformation date. Here was the warmth of human contact again: the embers of a fire glowed on the wide hearth under the carved stone chimney piece, and Mrs. Darling said she could smell stewed rabbit and apple tart. She seemed quite pleased with this unofficial testimony to the kind of fare provided for the brothers, and when the guide told her that ale was allowed to all, and whisky to some, her opinion of the administration of the charity went up by leaps and bounds.

Mrs. Darling has no sympathy with the Pussyfoot movement. The late Mr. Darling, it seems, was, like Peggotty's husband, "a little near" when he was sober, and but for his habit of now and again taking too much his wife would never have got a new hat or frock. "Why this very ole plush jacket he bought me the day after 'e'd got drunk and give me a black eye!" she stated triumphantly, "an' it wasn't on'y wot 'e give me neither. It wos wot I used ter pinch when I turned out 'is pockets! I got as much as ten bob at a time, an' he daren't say 'e'd lost anythink, because I'd 'ave said 'e'd kep' bad company and bin robbed!"

Mrs. Darling has an ironic sense of humour you will observe.

I think, of all the pictures provided by the Charterhouse, the one which gave me the greatest enjoyment was that which met our eyes when the guide opened the door of the "brothers'" library. He had first taken the precaution to see that the room was unoccupied, so I imagine it is not exactly on the list of those parts of the buildings free to the public. 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 associations.

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 spaces 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.

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 grass 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 Passage, make space 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 noble 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 class 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 glasses of ale, will stand out in her memory from an undigested mass 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 passed St. Bartholomew's Hospital I pointed out to her the brass 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 associations, 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 hellish 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 brass". 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:—

the pathetic naÏvetÉ of which statement marks the simple sailorman.

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

together with—

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 associated 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 hoarding covered with advertisements 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 pass on the solution of the second of these conundrums to you, and remain,

Your old friend,

GEORGE.