Chapter 3 WHITECHAPEL, AND THE OLD REMAINS IN BISHOPSGATE-STREET.

ITHERTO our course has been eastward; we must now turn our faces towards the west, and describe a few of the objects which lie on our right hand, as we retrace our steps, and journey to where the sun sets. To the point from whence we started at the commencement of our work (the foot of Blackfriars Bridge) we shall find but little to detain us; for the Bank and Exchange are too commercial for our pages, as we have not undertaken to write a Guide-Book, and fear that we have already dwelt too minutely on many of the uninteresting portions of the City which we have already described.

But, up to the Tower, the neighbourhood we have gone over lies like a mere edging on the great skirt of London, compared to the labyrinths of streets that spread north and west-to say nothing of the Surrey side of the Thames. A mere glance at the map of London appals us. We shall therefore select a picturesque object here and there after having quitted the city, just as fancy guides the way.

Turning our back on the Docks, and taking the nearest cut to the Mile-end-road, we will at once dash into Whitechapel; for all behind us belongs to the suburbs, and our present descriptions lie not there.

We have in our opening article, entitled "Ancient London," glanced at the picturesque appearance of this neighbourhood in former years, and now turn to the present to find that these old-world splendours have given place to gin-shops, plate-glass palaces, into which squalor and misery rush, and drown the remembrance of their wretchedness in drowsy and poisonous potations of gin;-splendour and squalor, the very contrast of which makes thinking men pause, but are disregarded by those who contribute to the one and recklessly endure the other.

Our engraving represents the well-known row of butchers' shops; for the Whitechapel butcher still belongs to the old school, taking a delight in his blue livery, and wearing his steel with as much satisfaction as a young ensign does his sword. He neither spurns his worsted leggings nor duck apron; but, with bare muscular arms, and a knife keen enough to sever the ham-string of an old black bull, takes his stand proudly at the front of his shop, and looks "lovingly" on the well-fed joints that dangle above his head. The gutters before his door literally run with blood: pass by whenever you may, there is the crimson current constantly flowing; and the smell the passenger inhales is not such as may be supposed to have floated over "Araby the blest." A "Whitechapel bird" and a "Whitechapel butcher" were once synonymous phrases, used to denote a character the very reverse of a gentleman; but in the manners of the latter we believe there is a very great improvement, and that more than one "knight of the cleaver," who here in the daytime manufactures sheep into mutton-shops, keeps his country-house.

The specimens of viands offered for sale in these streets augur well for the strength of the stomachs of the Whitechapel populace; no gentleman of squeamish appetite would like to run the risk of trying one of those out-of-door dinners, which ever stand ready-dressed. The sheep's trotters look as if they had scarcely had time enough to kick off the dirt before they were potted; and as for the ham, it appears bleached instead of salted; and to look at the sandwiches, you would think they were veal, or any thing except what they are called. As for the fried fish, it resembles coarse red sand-paper; and you would sooner think of purchasing a pennyworth to polish the handle of a cricket-bat or racket than of trying its qualities in any other way. The black puddings resemble great fossil ammonites, cut up lengthwise; for while you gaze on them you cannot help picturing these relics of the early world, and fancying that they must have been found in some sable soil abounding in broken fragments of gypsum, which would account for the fat-like substance inside. What the "faggots" are made of, which form such a popular dish in this neighbourhood, we have yet to learn. We have heard rumours of chopped lights, liver, suet, and onions being used in the manufacturing of these dusky dainties; but he must be a daring man who would convince himself by tasting: for our part, we feel confident that there is a great mystery to be unravelled before the innumerable strata which form these smoking hillocks

will ever be made known. The pork-pies which you see in these windows contain no such effeminate morsels as lean meat, but have the appearance of good substantial bladders of lard shoved into a strong crust, from which there was no chance of escape, then sent to the oven and "done brown." The ham-and-beef houses display the same love of fatness, as if neither pig nor bullock could be overfed that comes to be consumed by the "greasy citizens" of the east end of London.

As for fish! the very oysters gape at you with open mouths, as if they knew how useless it would be to keep closed in such a ravenous-looking neighbourhood. They seem to cast imploring glances at the passers-by, as if begging to be taken out of the hot sun, and devoured as quickly as possible. You see great suspicious-looking whelks, sweltering in little saucers of vinegar; and you cannot help wondering what would be the result if you attempted to eat one; and while you are thus doubting, without "doating," some great broad-shouldered fellow comes up, throws down his penny, and, making but one mouthful of the lot, lifts the saucer to his lips, and drains the last drop of vinegar, then goes, for a finisher, into the nearest gin-shop. Pickled eels, cut up into Whitechapel mouthfuls, are fished up from the bottom of great brown jars, and devoured with avidity. You can never pass along without seeing brewers' drays unloading somewhere in the streets; and you cannot help thinking what hundreds a year Barclay and Perkins might save, in the wear and tear of men and horses, if they laid down pipes all the way from their brewery in the Borough to Whitechapel.

What little taste they display (if we may make use of so classical a phrase in contradistinction to their "palatal" or gastronomic propensities), is shewn in their love of pigeon-keeping; and many of the "fanciers" in this district can boast of possessing both a choice and an extensive stock of these beautiful birds. From this taste arise good results, inasmuch as it leads them into the suburbs, especially on Sundays, when they either carry the pigeons with them in bags or thrust them into their coat-pockets, and so wander for three or four miles out, when they turn the birds loose, both parties thus enjoying the luxury of a little fresh air. They are excellent hands at decoying pigeons, for all the "strays" that alight in the neighbourhood are pretty sure to become "Whitechapel birds." What means they use for entrapping these feathered favourites we have not been able to ascertain, though one knowing fellow told us, with a deep-meaning wink, that "it was the fineness of the climate, and a little hanky-panky' business." We paid a pot of beer for the information, without asking for any clearer definition of the latter phrase.

Having thus become enlightened in the art of pigeon-stealing, we turned up Houndsditch, and visited the real Rag Fair. The price of admission is "von halfpenny," a toll from which neither Jew nor Gentile is exempt. This market or fair for old rubbish of every description is well worth seeing; and to whatever use the trash could be turned that met our eye in every direction, did at first, as old Pepys says, "puzzle us mightily."

Rag Fair is a market consisting of long rows of standing or sitting places, having neither back nor front, but covered in by narrow penthouse roofs, supported on beams, under which the sellers or exchangers take their places: the wind and rain blow and beat through these open sheds, both drenching and sweetening the fusty rags that are exposed for sale. Those who wish to purchase pass up and down the "ragged" alleys. We were detained at the narrow entrance of the first row for several moments by two ancient and bearded children of Israel, who were endeavouring to bargain. The seller had the portions of two pairs of old shoes in his hand; one pair "soleless," the other nearly "upperless."

"How much for these, Mo'?" inquired the purchaser.

"Twopence," answered the other; "they be dirt-cheap."

"Bah!-won't do, Mo'," was the reply, after having examined them; "could not cut off enough to stop up a mouse-hole. Say von penny!"

"Vell, den, three-halfpence!"

We passed on, and did not witness the close of the bargain, our ears being now assailed with such cries of "Who vants three vaist-coats for old coat?" "Who vants old hats for old shoes?" "Two shirts for von pair of strong preeches!" and so on. There we saw the hook-nosed, large-eyed collector of "old clo' " whom we had that very morning stopped to look at while he carried off a whole suit in exchange for two geraniums which looked as if they could not live a week. The very things he was then running down, as he pointed out every thin spot and speck of grease to the little Cinderella he was bargaining with in the Borough, he was now extolling, and vowing that they had but been worn "wery leetle, wery leetle indeed." With keen eye the intended purchaser traversed every inch, examined carefully the knees of the trowsers, the arm-pits, elbows, and sleeves of the coat; then discovering something at last, as he shined it before the light, he pointed to the spot, and looked at the other in silence. "Vell, vot of dat?-Look at the pryshe!" was the reply of the geranium exchanger.

There is an old and mouldy smell about the place, telling that dank and fetid corners have been rummaged out to contribute to the stock of filth there accumulated. And yet, through the dirty mass the eye may here and there detect the trappings of pride. Court-dresses, from which the former owners would now run, exclaiming with Hamlet-

"And smelt so? Pah!"

Small satin slippers which had once been white, but now wore a little of the hue of every foul thing they had come in contact with. The worn-out wedding-dress, now a heap of rags, bundled up beside the thread-bare blackness of the poor widow's cast-off weeds. One might almost fancy that Pride had come here to crawl out of its shabby habiliments, and gone and laid down in some one of the dark alleys in the neighbourhood to die, having "shuffled off" the last vestiges of respectability.

"To what vile uses do we come at last!"

Rags that may have touched a young and beautiful duchess, not now fit for dusters. A remnant of the dress-coat of some young lord, thrown down with disdain by the hunger-bitten jobbing-tailor, because he cannot get a patch out of it large enough to seat the "continuations" of the Whitechapel hawker.

Passing on to Leadenhall-street, and nearly facing the East India House (which we have already described), we come upon two old churches, standing nearly together, that escaped the Great Fire, namely, St. Andrew's Undershaft and St. Catherine Cree. In the first Stowe was buried, and there his monument still stands; and the second (according to the authority of Strype) contains the remains of Hans Holbein, the great painter; also of Sir Nicholas Throgmorton.

Part of the tower is said to be very old, though the body of the church was rebuilt in 1628, and, as it appears, without much disarranging the interior, though one magnificent window has been walled up, as may be seen by looking at it from the adjoining alley. Prynne has left us a splendid piece of half-quizzical and satirical description of the consecration of this church in 1630 by Laud, Bishop of London, which will not seem out of place in this age of Puseyite performances. "When the bishop approached near the communion-table, he bowed, with his nose very near the ground, some six or seven times; then he came to one of the corners of the table, and there bowed himself three times; then to the second, third, and fourth corners, bowing at each corner three times: but when he came to the side of the table where the bread and wine was, he bowed himself seven times; and then, after the reading of many prayers by himself and his two fat chaplains which were with him (and all this while were upon their knees by him, in their surplices, hoods, and tippets), he himself came near the bread, which was cut and laid in a fine napkin, and then he gently lifted up one of the corners of the said napkin, and peeping into it till he saw the bread (like a boy that peeps into a bird's nest in a bush), and presently clapped it down again, and flew back a step or two, and then bowed very low three times towards it and the table. When he beheld the bread, then he came near and opened the napkin again, and bowed as before; then he laid his hand upon the gilt cup, which was full of wine, with a cover upon it: so soon as he had pulled the cup a little nearer to him, he let the cup go, flew back, and bowed again three times towards it: then he came near again, and lifting up the corner of the cup, peeped into it; and seeing the wine, he let fall the cover on it again, and flew nimbly back and bowed as before. After these and many other apish, antick gestures, he himself received and then gave the sacrament to some three principal men only, they devoutly kneeling near the table; after which, more prayers being said, this scene and interlude ended."

Could the cross, crop-eared old Puritan ever have been like other boys, and gone a bird-nesting? The simile seems to call up such a question, as if in his grim humour he reverted to his youthful days, little dreaming then that he should have to lose his ears and stand in the Westminster pillory. And Laud-he too (after all his pious "anticks," as Prynne calls the ceremony of the consecration of St. Catherine Cree) was beheaded at the Tower. While we stood within this old church, we pictured those two earnest men in that cold January morning-the one religiously performing his duties, with no doubt reverential awe; the other, with a sneer on his lips, leaning, perhaps, near the effigy of the recumbent knight, and scarcely able to suppress the contempt he felt for the ceremonies which such as he and the stern-souled Cromwell despised, with many others who were so soon to shake a throne, and trample on the "divinity of kings," as if it were but dust. But we are forgetting Stowe and the adjoining church of St. Andrew's Undershaft. Why it was so called, the pleasing historian, who has long slept (not undisturbed) within the church, shall tell us in his own sweetly-quaint old language; for though "dead, he yet speaketh," and never hath London before or since had so pleasing a chronicler. He says, "because that of old time every year, on May-day morning, it was used that an high or long shaft or May-pole was set up there before the south door of the said church." And he had often seen that "long shaft" set up-perhaps in his younger days danced around it, eyeing askance some citizen's pretty daughter: it may be she who outlived him, and at her own expense raised the present monument to his memory; and as she came in after-days to look at it, sighed as she thought of the bygone years when they danced, hand in hand, together around the May-pole, or of their walks in the summer evenings, when he pointed out to her some old surviving landmark that to him was hallowed by its historical associations, little thinking then that to him after-ages would be so much indebted for all that is known of ancient London. Peace to his venerable ashes! his shadow seems to fill the old church, and we think only of him. The ribbed roof and "deep-dyed" window are all we can remember; but what the stained glass represents we cared not to inquire, so much was our mind occupied with Stowe and the merry May-days of old London.

We will now turn up Bishopsgate-street, and glance at Crosby Hall (endeared to us through Shakspeare having made mention of it).

Crosby Hall, or Place, was built by Sir John Crosby; who, according to Stowe, obtained a lease of the ground, in 1466, of Alice Ashfield, prioress of the adjoining convent of St. Helen's, for ninety-nine years, at an annual rent of 11l. 6s. 8d. From grocer and woolman he became alderman of London, and was knighted by Edward IV. in 1471. His monument yet stands in the church of St. Helen.

Sir Thomas More states that it was in Crosby Place where Gloster, afterwards Richard III., planned the murder of the princes in the Tower, and by their removal paved his way to the throne. He says, "By little and little, all folk withdrew from the Tower, and drew to Crosby Place, in Bishopsgate-street, where the Protector kept his household. The Protector had his resort, the king (prince?) in a manner desolate; while some for their business made suit to them who had the doing; some were by their friends secretly warned that it might haply turn them to no good to be too much attendant about the king without the Protector's appointment; who removed also divers of the prince's old servants from him, and set new about him. Thus many things coming together, partly by chance, partly of purpose, caused at length, not common people only, who wave with the wind, but wise men also, and some lords eke, to mask the matter and muse thereon."

Shakspeare makes Gloster appoint the place of meeting with the murderer, after he has given him the warrant, at Crosby Place. Here he also requests the Lady Anne to "repair" while he inters the remains of the king at Chertsey monastery. Marriage and murder were planned under the very roof which we can still look at by that daring duke. It is one of the few remaining places in the City in which the deeds recorded in our history were plotted, and to which afterwards was given an enduring name in the pages of England's greatest poet.

Here the rich Sir John Spencer resided; and when the Tower was the court-end of London, it was frequently the residence of foreign ambassadors. It is said to have been the dwelling of Sir Thomas More at one period; but this assertion is not well authenticated. The hall, at a first glance, appears somewhat narrow for its height-the latter exceeding its width by about 13 feet, while its length is 54 feet. From the depth of the oriel the dimensions appear magnificent, while the innumerable dyes thrown out from the stained glass carry the imagination back to "feast and revelry," when beauty and valour there congregated, and all "went merry as a marriage-bell."

The hall was long used as a packer's warehouse; and during the period it was thus occupied much damage was done to its ornaments. The work of restoration commenced in 1836, and the building was re-opened in 1842. It is now used as a Literary Institution.

The adjoining church of St. Helen was founded in 1216. What alteration it has undergone, it is difficult to point out. It is a rich storehouse of ancient monuments, and perhaps, with the exception of the little church in the Tower, abounds more in these valuable records than any other building in the City that escaped the Great Fire. Here, as we have before stated, the founder of Crosby Hall is interred. The same altar-tomb also contains the recumbent effigy of Ann his wife.

Here Sir Thomas Gresham, the founder of the Royal Exchange, is also buried: he died in 1579. The "rich Spencer," who bought Crosby Hall, and was Lord Mayor in 1594, lies here: he is said to have been worth near a million of money in his day, a sum which, multiplied according to the value of the period, almost throws our Rothschilds into the shades. These are but a few of the many interesting monuments dedicated to the memory of the "grey forefathers" of the City.

On one of the walls stands a richly-sculptured niche, below which runs a row of little open arches, through which the refractory nuns, it is said, were sentenced to hear mass, while they stood in the crypt. These nuns appear to have been an unruly race at times, and must often have caused great anxiety to such worthy prioresses as Alice Ashfield; for it was not safe to entrust them with the "latch-key," according to what is whispered by a dean of St. Paul's, who, it seems, made a few unpleasant inquiries about them in 1439, long before Crosby Hall was built, and when all around the nunnery there stood old-fashioned tenements, full of ins and outs, and which required some "sad (grave) woman and discreet" to "keep the keys of the posterngate."

THE FOUR SWANS' INN YARD.

It may be that many of the citizens' daughters were only sent hither to be educated, and that they were not disciplined as rigidly as those who took the veil and vowed to lead a secluded life; if so, this will account for these little irregularities in those old devout days.

We have in Bishopsgate-street one of those real old-fashioned London inns, with just such a yard and galleries as we may suppose were occupied by our early dramatists, while the stage was in its infancy. Our engraving requires no second glance to confirm the antiquity of the Four Swans Inn-yard.

What merry masques have been played in that old open inn-yard-what beautiful forms have leant over that antique and pillared gallery! Oh, for a volume filled with the names and doings of those who have slept under that sloping roof-who have peeped through the old ancient bannisters of the wooden gallery! What saddling and mounting "in hot haste" must there have been in former times at the doors of those stables! What a tramping of feet on those spacious landing-places! What a staggering of jolly old Englishmen, who, when in their cups, went up those wide old-fashioned staircases.

Or we can picture some newly-imported nun, arriving in her litter, or coming in with a string of pack-horses, staring about her for a few minutes, until carried away by the lady-prioress of St. Helen's from the old inn-yard and across the street, and along the grey weather-beaten cloisters, never, perhaps, to see the green country again from which she had journeyed.

Or we call up the figures of old carriers, such as Shakspeare has described, exclaiming:

"Pease and beans are as dank here as a dog; and that is the way to give poor jades the bots. This house is turned upside down, since Robin died. Poor fellow! never joyed since the price of oats rose: it was the death of him."-Henry IV. act 2.

Higher up the street we find another old house, in which Sir Paul Pindar resided (who contributed so largely towards restoring old St. Paul's): it is now a public-house, still bearing his name. The monument of the worthy knight still remains in the adjoining church of St. Botolph's, though the church has been rebuilt. It stands on the edge of what was the old City moat, "without" the ancient gate which, in former times, opened into the wide waste of fen and moor that lay beyond, and the names of which are still retained in Finsbury and Moorgate. Stowe says, "it continued a waste and unprofitable ground a long time, so that the same was all letten for four marks the year, in the reign of Edward II."

Thomas Falconer, Lord Mayor of London, was the first to break down the old city wall, and to make walks over this fenny ground, so that the citizens might get to the green fields beyond, though it was not until nearly two centuries after this time that the fen was drained. Throughout all these changes the church of St. Botolph stood, escaping storm and fire, until in 1720 it was pronounced unsafe-worn out with age.