Part 27

We who now object to the noise of a barrel-organ in the street, or a cry of milk, or a distant German band, would be driven mad by a single day of George the Second's London streets. Hogarth has touched the subject, but only touched it. No one could do more in a picture than indicate the mere fringe of this vast subject. Even on the printed page we can do little more than the painter. For instance, here were some of the more common and every-day and all-day-long noises. Many of the shopkeepers still kept up the custom of having a prentice outside bawling an invitation to buy--buy--buy. To this day, butchers at Clare Market cry out at the stalls, all day long, "Rally up, ladies! Rally up! Buy! Buy! Buy!" In the streets of private houses there passed a never-ending procession of those who bawled things for sale. Here were a few of the things they bawled--I am conscious that it is a very imperfect list. There were those who offered to do things--mend chairs, grind knives, solder pots and pans, buy rags or kitchen stuff, rabbit skins, hair, or rusty swords, exchange old clothes or wigs, mend old china, cut wires--this excruciating, rasping operation was apparently done in the open--or cooper casks. There were, next, the multitude of those who carried wares to sell--as things to eat and drink--saloop, barley broth, rice, milk, furmity, Shrewsbury cakes, eggs, lily-white vinegar, hot peascods, rabbits, birds, pullets, gingerbread, oysters, honey, cherry ripe, Chaney oranges, hot codlins, pippins, fruit of all kinds, fish taffity tarts, fresh-water, tripe, tansy, greens, mustard, salt, gray pease, water-cresses, shrimps, rosemary, lavender, milk, elder-buds; or things of domestic use--lace, ribbons, almanacs, ink, small coal, sealing-wax, wood to cleave, earthen-ware, spigots, combs, buckles, leghorns, pewter pots, brooms in exchange for old shoes, things of horn, Holland socks, woollen socks and wrappers, brimstone matches, flint and steel, shoelaces, scissors and tools, straps, and the thousand-and-one things which are now sold in shops. The bearward came along with his animal and his dogs and his drum, the sweep shouted from the house-top, the ballad-singer bawled in the road, the tumbler and the dancing-girl set up their pitch with pipe and drum. Nobody minded how much noise was made. In the smaller streets the good-wives sat with open doors, running in and out, gossiping over their work; they liked the noise, they liked this perambulating market--it made the street lively, it brought the neighbors out to look, and it pleased the baby. Then the wagons went ponderously grinding over the round stones of the road, the carts rumbled, the brewers' sledges growled, the chariot rattled, the drivers quarrelled, cursed, and fought. A great American, now, alas! gone from us, spoke of the continual murmur of London as of Niagara afar off. A hundred years ago he would have spoken of the continual roar.

At this time the wealth and trade of London had reached a point which surprised and even terrified those who considered the present compared with the past and looked forward to the future. "On a general view," writes Northouck in 1772, "of our national circumstances it is but too probable that the height of our prosperity is now producing our ruin." He hears the cry of the discontented; it means, he thinks, ruin. Well, there were to be mighty changes, and still more mighty changes of which he suspects nothing. Yet not ruin. For, whatever happens, the energy and the spirit of the people will remain. Besides, Northouck and those of his time did not understand that the world is always growing wider.

The great merchants of the City still lived within the old boundaries: they had their country-houses, but they spent most of their time in town, where their houses were stately and commodious, but no longer palaces like those of their predecessors. Two or three of them remain, but they are rapidly disappearing. One of these, destroyed about six years ago, illustrated the house of a merchant at a time when his offices and his residence were one. The rooms for his clerks were on the ground floor; the merchant's private room looked out upon a garden at the back. In the basement was his strong-room, constructed of stone, in a deep recess. On the first floor were the living-rooms. The garden was not large, but it contained a stone terrace fine enough for a garden of much larger dimensions, a mulberry-tree, and a vine.

There were no palaces left in the City; no noblemen lived there any longer. The Lord Mayor's Mansion, built in 1750, was the only palace unless we count Guildhall, the Royal Exchange, Gresham College, and the Halls of the Companies. But in every street except those given up entirely to trade, such as Cheapside, stood the substantial house of the City Fathers.

Never before had the City been so wealthy. Despite the continual wars of the eighteenth century, nothing could check the prosperity of the country. French privateers scoured the ocean in chase of our merchantmen; every East Indiaman had to run the gantlet all the way from Madeira to Plymouth; the supremacy of the sea was obstinately disputed by France; yet more ships escaped than were taken. Our Indiamen fought the privateer and sank him; our fleets retaliated; our frigates protected the merchantmen, and when, as happened sometimes, we had the pleasure of fighting Spain as well as France, the balance of captures was greatly in our favor. "Sir," said Lord Nelson to the King, when Spain declared war against us, "this makes all the difference. It promised to be a poor war; it will now be a rich war."

"But, noble Thames, whilst I can hold a pen, I will divulge thy glory unto men. Then in the morning, when my corn is scant, Before the evening doth supply my want."

This was written by the Water Poet, John Taylor, a little later. The river was the most convenient and the most rapid road from one end of London to the other, at a time when the roads were miry and full of holes, and when there were no coaches. And long after coaches became numerous, the watermen continued to flourish. There were only two bridges over the river; many places of amusement--the Paris Gardens, Cupid Gardens, St. George's Fields, and Vauxhall--lay on the south side: it was pleasant and quiet on the water, save for the quarrels and the cursing of the watermen. The air was fresh: the view of the City was noble: the river was covered with barges and pleasure-boats furnished with banners and streamers of silk; flocks of swans swimming about--little wonder if the citizens continued to prefer the river to their muddy lanes and noisy streets. Even in the last century, too, the watermen had not ceased to sing as they rowed. They still sang--with a "Heave and hoe, rumbelow"--their old ballad of "Row the boat, Norman, to thy leman," made, it was said, on John Norman, first of the mayors who was rowed to Westminster by water instead of riding, as had been the previous custom.

Those who have read Professor Seeley's book on the Extension of Britain know how our conquests, our power, and our trade increased during that long struggle with France. We had losses; we made an enemy beyond the Atlantic who should have been our firmest friend and ally; we were hampered with continental possessions; we were continually suffering enormous drains of money and of men; we were throwing away our lusty youth by hundreds of thousands; yet we continued to grow stronger and richer every year. The wars advanced trade; the wars pushed forward our territories; our increased trade paid for the wars; the wars provided occupation for younger sons.

By this time, too, the companies were at their richest; their charities were at their fullest; their banquets and functions were most lavish and splendid.

Take the rich Company of Haberdashers alone for its benefactions. This company maintained two free-schools in London and three in the country; two almshouses in London and two in the country; it presented to six benefices in the country; it provided three lectureships in city churches and one in the University of Cambridge; it gave five exhibitions to Cambridge, and it provided pensions for forty-eight poor men and women. In these charities the company disbursed about £3400 a year. At the present day it gives away a great deal more owing to the increased value of its property, but as London is so much larger the effect is not so great in proportion. This list of charities, again, does not include the execution of certain testamentary and private charities, as broadcloth to poor widows, gifts to prisoners for debt, payments for ringing the church-bell, weekly doles of bread, and so forth. The Haberdashers' Company was one of the twelve great companies, all wealthy. If each of these gave away yearly the sum of £2000 only, we have £24,000 a year. There were, besides, all the smaller companies, and not one without some funds for charity, education, or pensions. A boy born in the City might be educated by his father's company, apprenticed to the company, taught his trade by the company, found in work by the company, feasted once a year by the company, pensioned by the company, buried by the company, and his children looked after by the company. If he fell into debt, and so arrived at Ludgate Hill Prison, the bounty of the company followed him there. And even if he disgraced himself and was lodged in Newgate, the company augmented the daily ration of bread with something more substantial. In all, there were (and are) eighty-four City companies, representing every trade except those which are of modern origin. Among these are not counted such companies as the Whitawers, the Fustarers, and the Megusers, long since dissolved. But the Pewterers, the Bowyers, the Fletchers, the Long Bowstring Makers, the Patten Makers, and the Loriners have survived the trades which they were founded to maintain. Some of them have no hall and very small endowments. One, the Card Makers, presents each member of the company with a pack of playing-cards every year, and with this single act expends, I believe, all the endowment which it possesses.

By poetic license, quite pardonable when assumed by Austin Dobson or by Praed, we speak of the leisure of the eighteenth century. Where is it--this leisure? I can find it nowhere. In London City the sober merchant who walks so gravely on 'Change is an eager, venturesome trader, pushing out his cargoes into every quarter of the globe, as full of enterprise as an Elizabethan, following the flag wherever that leads, and driving the flag before him. He belongs to a battling, turbulent time. His blood is full of fight. He makes enormous profits; sometimes he makes enormous losses; then he breaks; he goes under; he never lifts up his head again; he is submerged--he and his, for the City has plenty of benevolence, but little pity. We are all pushing, struggling, fighting to get ahead. We cannot stop to lift up one that has fallen and is trampled under foot. In the City there stands behind us a Fury armed with a knotted scourge. Let us work, my brothers, let us never cease to work, for this is the terrible pitiless demon called Bankruptcy. If there is no leisure or quiet among the sober citizens, where shall we look for it? In the country? We are not here concerned with the country, but I have looked for it there and I cannot find it.

It was the dream of every tradesman not only to escape this fiend, but in fulness of time to retire from his shop and to have his own country-house; or, if that could not be compassed, to have a box three or four miles from town--at Stockwell, Clapham, Hoxton, or Bow, or Islington--whither he might drive on Saturday or other days, in a four-wheeled chaise. He loved to add a bow-window to the front, at which he would sit and watch the people pass, his wine before him, for the admiration and envy of all who beheld. The garden at the back, thirty feet long by twenty broad, he laid out with great elegance. There was a gravel-walk at each end, a pasteboard grenadier set up in one walk, and a sundial in the other. In the middle there was a basin with two artificial swans, over which he moralized: "Sir, I bought those fowls seven years ago. They were then as white as could be made. Now they are black. Let us learn that the strongest things decay, and consider the flight of time." He put weathercocks on his house-top, and when they pointed different ways he reflected that there is no station so exalted as to be free from the inconsistencies and wants of life.

His wife, of course, was a notable house-keeper. It is recorded of her that she would never employ a man unless he could whistle. So that when he was sent to draw beer, or to bottle wine, or to pick cherries, or to gather strawberries, by whistling all the time he proved that his mouth was empty, because you cannot whistle with anything in your mouth. She made her husband take off his shoes before going up-stairs; she lamented the gigantic appetites of the journeymen whom they had to keep "peck and perch" all the year round; she loved a pink sash and a pink ribbon, and when she went abroad she was genteelly "fetched" by an apprentice or one of the journeymen with candle and lantern.

The amusements and sights of London were the Tower, the Monument, St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey, the British Museum (after the year 1754, when it was first opened), the Royal Exchange, the Bank of England, Guildhall, the East India House, the Custom-house, the Excise Office, the Navy Office, the bridges, the Horse Guards, the squares, the Inns of Court, St. James's Palace, the two theatres of Drury Lane and Covent Garden, the Opera-house, Ranelagh, Sadler's Wells, Vauxhall, Astley's, the Park, the tea-gardens, Don Saltero's, Chelsea, the trials at the Old Bailey, the hangings at Newgate, the Temple Gardens, the parade of the Judges to Westminster Hall, the charity children at St. Paul's, Greenwich Fair, the reviews of the troops, the House of Lords when the King is present and the peers are robed, Smithfield, Billingsgate, Woolwich, Chelsea Hospital, Greenwich Hospital, and the suburbs. With these attractions a stranger could get along for a few days without much fear of ennui.

The London fairs--Bartholomew, Greenwich, Southwark, May Fair--no longer, of course, pretended to have anything to do with trade. They were simply occasions for holiday-making and indulgence in undisguised license and profligacy. They had bull and bear baiting, cock-fighting, prize-fighting, cudgel-playing--these of course. They also had their theatres and their shows and their jugglers. They had races of women, fights of women, and dancing of girls for a prize. They continued the old morris-dance of five men, Maid Marian and Tom Fool, the last with a fox-brush in his hat, and bells on his legs and on his coat-tails. They were fond of rope-dancing--in a word, the fairs drew together all the rascality of the town and the country around. May Fair was stopped in the year 1708, but was revived some years afterwards. Southwark Fair, which was opened by the Lord Mayor and sheriffs riding over the bridge through the borough, was not suppressed till 1763. The only good thing it did was to collect money for the poor prisoners of Marshalsea Prison. Bartholomew and Greenwich Fair continued till thirty or forty years ago.

The picturesqueness of the time is greatly due to the dress. We all know how effective on the stage or at a fancy ball is the dress of the year 1750. Never had gallant youth a better chance of displaying his manly charms. The flowered waistcoat tight to the figure, the white satin coat, the gold-laced hat, the ruffles and dainty necktie, the sword and the sword-sash, the powdered wig, the shaven face, the silk stockings and gold-buckled shoes--with what an air the young coxcomb advances, and with what a grace he handles his clouded cane and proffers his snuffbox! Nothing like it remains in this century of ours. And the ladies matched the men in splendor of dress, until the "swing swang" of the extravagant hoop spoiled all. Here comes one, on her way to church, where she will distract the men from their prayers with her beauty, and the women with her dress. She has a flowered silk body and cream-colored skirts trimmed with lace; she has light blue shoulder-knots; she wears an amber necklace, brown Swedish gloves, and a silver bracelet; she has a flowered silk belt of green and gray and yellow, with a bow at the side, and a brown straw-hat with flowers of green and yellow. "Sir," says one who watches her with admiration, "she is all apple blossom."

The white satin coat is not often seen east of Temple Bar. See the sober citizen approaching: he is dressed in brown stockings; he has laced ruffles and a shirt of snowy whiteness; his shoes have silver buckles; his wig is dark grizzle, full-bottomed; he carries his hat under his left arm, and a gold-headed stick in his right hand. He is accosted by a wreck--there are always some of these about London streets--who has struck upon the rock of bankruptcy and gone down. He, too, is dressed in brown, but where are the ruffles? Where is the shirt? The waistcoat, buttoned high, shows no shirt; his stockings are of black worsted, darned and in holes; his shoes are slipshod, without buckles. Alas! poor gentleman! And his wig is an old grizzle, uncombed, undressed, dirty, which has been used for rubbing shoes by a shoeblack. On the other side of the street walks one, followed by a prentice carrying a bundle. It is a mercer of Cheapside, taking some stuff to a lady. He wears black cloth, not brown; he has a white tye-wig, white silk stockings, muslin ruffles, and japanned pumps. Here comes a mechanic: he wears a warm waistcoat with long sleeves, gray worsted stockings, stout shoes, a three-cornered hat, and an apron. All working-men wear an apron; it is a mark of their condition. They are no more ashamed of their apron than your scarlet-coated captain is ashamed of his uniform.

Let us note the whiteness of the shirts and ruffles: a merchant will change his shirt three times a day; it is a custom of the City thus to present snow-white linen. The clerks, we see, wear wigs like their masters, but they are smaller. The varieties of wigs are endless. Those that decorate the heads of the clerks are not the full-bottomed wig, to assume which would be presumptuous in one in service. Most of the mechanics wear their hair tied behind; the rustics, sailors, stevedores, watermen, and river-side men generally wear it long, loose, and unkempt. There is a great trade in second-hand wigs. In Rosemary Lane there is a wig lottery. You pay sixpence, and you dip in a cask for an old wig. It may turn out quite a presentable thing, and it may be worthless. Here is a company of sailors rolling along armed with clubs. They are bound to Ratcliffe, where, this evening, when the men are all drinking in the taverns, there will be a press. Their hats are three-cornered, they wear blue jackets, blue shirts, and blue petticoats. Their hair hangs about their ears. Beside them marches the lieutenant in the new uniform of blue, faced with white.

Let us consider the private life of the people day by day. For this purpose we must not go to the essayists or the dramas. The novels of the time afford some help; books corresponding to our directories, almanacs, old account-books, are the real guides to a reconstruction of life as it was about the year 1750. From such books as these the following notes are derived.

The most expensive parts of the town were the streets round St. Paul's Church-yard, Cheapside, and the Royal Exchange. Charing Cross, Covent Garden, and St. James's lie outside our limits. Here the rent of a moderate house was from a hundred to a hundred and fifty guineas a year. In less central places the rents were not more than half as much. There were six or seven fire insurance offices. The premium for insurance on houses and goods not called hazardous was generally two shillings per cent. on any sum under £1000, half a crown on all sums between £1000 and £2000, and three and sixpence on all sums over £3000, so that a man insuring his house and furniture for £2500 would pay an annual premium of £4 7_s._ 6_d._

The taxes of a house amounted to about half the rent. There was the land-tax of four shillings in the pound; the house-tax of sixpence to a shilling in the pound; the poor-rate, varying from one shilling to six shillings in the pound; the window-tax, which made you pay first three shillings for your house, and then, with certain exceptions, twopence extra for every window, so that a house of fourteen windows paid four and sixpence. In the year 1784 this tax was increased in order to take the duty off tea. The church-wardens' rate for repairing the church; the paving-rate, of one and sixpence in the pound; the watch; the Easter offerings, which had become optional; the water-rate, varying from twenty-four shillings to thirty shillings a year.

The common practice of bakers and milkmen was to keep a tally on the door-post with chalk. One advantage of this method was that a mark might be added when the maid was not looking. The price of meat was about a third of the present prices; beef being fourpence a pound, mutton fourpence halfpenny, and veal sixpence. Chicken were commonly sold at two and sixpence the pair; eggs were sometimes three and sometimes eight for fourpence, according to the time of year. Coals seem to have cost about forty shillings a ton; but this is uncertain. Candles were eight and fourpence a dozen for "dips," and nine and fourpence a dozen for "moulds;" wax-candles were two and tenpence a pound. For out-door lamps train-oil was used, and for in-doors spermaceti-oil. For the daily dressing of the hair, hair-dressers were engaged at seven shillings to a guinea a month. Servants were hired at register offices, but they were often of very bad character, with forged papers. The wages given were: to women as cooks, £12 a year; lady's-maids, £12 to £20; house-maids from £7 to £9; footmen, £14 and a livery. Servants found their own tea and sugar, if they wanted any. Board wages were ten and sixpence a week to an upper servant; seven shillings to an under servant. Every householder was liable to serve as church-warden, overseer for the poor, constable--but he could serve by deputy--and juryman. Peers, clergymen, lawyers, members of Parliament, physicians, and surgeons were exempted.

The principle of life assurance was already well established, but not yet in general use. There seem to have been no more than four companies for life assurance. The Post-office rates varied with the distance. A letter from London to any place not exceeding one stage cost twopence; under two stages, threepence; under eight miles, fourpence; under 150 miles, fivepence; above 150 miles, to any place in England, sixpence; to Scotland, sevenpence; to Ireland, sixpence; to America and the West Indies, a shilling; to any part of Europe, a shilling to eighteenpence. There was also a penny post, first set up in London by a private person. This had five principal offices. Letters or packets not exceeding four ounces in weight were carried about the City for one penny, and delivered in the suburbs for a penny more. There were no bank-notes of less than £20 before the year 1759; but when the smaller notes were issued, and came into general use, people very soon found out the plan of cutting them in two for safety in transmission by post.