Part 8

“But now let me tell you a little about the Court Masques.... You saw how very roughly and simply the splendid plays of Shakespeare and the other play-writers, are performed in the newly-built theatres on Bankside? Well, there’s nothing rough or simple about the performances called _masques_ which take place sometimes in the palace yonder, sometimes in one or other of the beautiful halls of the great houses scattered about the city. These masques are not true plays. They are generally little scenes written for special occasions—the Queen’s birthday perhaps, or the anniversary of the day she came to the throne, for instance. They are usually written in the form of an allegory, in which such figures as Justice, Mercy, or Love appear. But they are presented with the utmost magnificence in the way of dresses and scenery, and beautiful surroundings, and it has become the fashion for the great noblemen as well as the Queen to keep companies of well-trained actors ready to perform whenever a masque or a play is to be given at Court. The Queen has groups of children trained to act in these masques, some of which are written by true poets, like Ben Jonson, and the scenery and costumes are designed by true artists. Inigo Jones is one of them. But the best of the masques written by Ben Jonson and ‘produced,’ as we say, in our century, by Inigo Jones, will be given in a few years’ time, when James the First is king. I want you to remember, however, that the sixteenth century is the great time for plays of all sorts. We saw how the theatres on Bankside were crowded. Everywhere, not only in the theatres, but in private houses, and public halls, acting is going on, and plays are being written to meet the taste for it. This is the great age of the drama and London is full of geniuses who are play-writers and poets.”

“Oh! I think it’s even more interesting than the last time we saw it—in the Middle Ages,” Betty declared, as they stepped again into the boat whose waterman seemed to have been waiting for them. “I should love to stay in Queen Elizabeth’s London for weeks.”

“We’ve only had a glimpse of it,” said Godmother, “but even this glimpse is enough, I hope, to show you that London is full of life and energy in the sixteenth century. Full of great men who love and are proud of England, and have already made her a famous country. If we had stayed longer just now at the Globe theatre where _King Richard the Second_ was being played, we should have heard what Shakespeare wrote this very year about England. He put his own thoughts about our country into the mouth of the dying John of Gaunt, who calls England ‘this little world, this precious stone set in the silver sea,’ and, later in his speech,

‘This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land, Dear for her reputation through the world ... ... England bound in by the triumphant sea.’

It is good to think that Shakespeare is living in London now, and has been for many years a Londoner.”

“I do wish we could see him!” sighed Betty.

It was growing dusk. Lights were already twinkling from the windows of the great houses on the Strand, but the last glow of sunset lingered on the river, where the swans floated between the stately barges that passed to and fro.

“‘_Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song_,’” quoted Godmother, after a long silence.

“What is that?” Betty asked.

“It’s the line with which each verse of a beautiful poem ends. It was written not long ago by Edmund Spenser, who is one of the great poets of this marvellous time, and he composed it in honour of the marriage of two girls, the ladies Elizabeth and Katherine Somerset. We are passing their home,” replied Godmother, pointing to Somerset House.

“The Thames _is_ running softly,” said Betty, as they drew near to a landing-stage on the Southwark side of London Bridge. “Isn’t it all quiet?”

And indeed there was a strange hush everywhere. Even the boatman’s oars made no sound as he drew them out of the water, and when they landed and walked up a lane with a row of gabled houses on one side of it, the people they passed, flitted by like ghosts.

It was nearly dark now, and only one dim lantern slung on a rope across the lane showed the way. Every now and then, however, a man or boy passed, carrying a lighted torch which flung a ruddy glare across the road.

“We are passing St. Saviour’s Church,” said Betty, looking up at its tower dark against the stars.

Just as she spoke, a man wrapped in a cloak hurried by, making no sound, and entered a house opposite the church. The light from a torch fell for a moment upon him, giving Betty a glimpse of him before he closed the door.

“That’s William Shakespeare,” whispered Godmother.

* * * * *

Betty rubbed her eyes.

“Oh! I’m so sorry to come back!” she exclaimed, glancing round the parlour.

“To come _forward_, you mean,” Godmother corrected her, smiling. “We’ve leapt more than three hundred years onwards since a second ago.”

“Can’t we go at once to Southwark while it’s all fresh in my mind?” urged Betty. “I should like to see how that part of London where we’ve just seen Shakespeare, looks now.”

“Very well. We can’t have the car out again, but we’ll go on the top of an omnibus that runs over London Bridge, and you shall see all that remains to be seen, of the Southwark Shakespeare knew when he lived there.”

Rather more than half an hour later as they approached the south end of the bridge, Godmother pointed to the right. “That’s where you saw the Globe and the Rose theatres, and farther down the river, you remember we saw in the distance Paris-Gardens.”

“Oh, how different it is now!” Betty said, looking at the crowded warehouses and dingy houses along the waterside. “There’s nothing of it left.”

“Nothing but the names of streets. Come down this one, now called Park Street. Look. That turning is Rose Alley.”

“Then here was the Rose Theatre?” Betty exclaimed, glancing up the dingy, grimy little road.

“Now look at the tablet on this brewery which tells us that here stood the Globe Theatre. It may have done; though some people think it is not the exact site.”

They walked farther along by the river’s edge, towards the next bridge, till Betty saw painted up at the entrance to another dingy street, _Bear Gardens_.

“From that name you know that you are on the spot where some of the poor bears were baited,” said Godmother, “and having so recently seen Southwark as it _was_, you can in imagination sweep away all these dreary streets and see the green fields and gardens round each of the separate buildings. Now we’ll go back to London Bridge, and walk straight on from it up what is now called the Borough High Street in Southwark.

“This,” she explained when they reached the crowded thoroughfare, “as you remember, was the country road along which, in the fourteenth century, the pilgrims passed on their way to Canterbury. Look on the left of the street for names of turnings which will bring the line of inns back to your memory. Here,”—she stopped at a turning called Talbot Yard—“was the _Tabard_ you visited in Chaucer’s day, and as it was standing when Shakespeare lived here, he too must often have visited it.”

“But why isn’t it called _Tabard_ Yard?”

“It was burnt down about seventy years after Shakespeare’s day, and rebuilt and re-christened, but this is the actual place on which the old Tabard stood. Let us cross the road. Do you see that Court nearly opposite?”

“_St. Margaret’s Court_,” Betty read as they turned into a dingy-looking place with rather old but very poverty-stricken houses on either side. “Why, this must be where St. Margaret’s Church stood, and where we saw the Miracle play in the Middle Ages!”

“It is. The church was still there when Shakespeare lived, though I doubt whether he saw a Miracle play acted. They had gone out of fashion in his day.”

“Well, I’m glad that at least the _names_ of the old places are kept,” sighed Betty, “for there’s nothing else, is there? It’s all ugly and dirty and _modern_ now. How I wish even one bit of an old inn was left!”

“Well, you have your wish,” said Godmother. “There _is_ one tiny bit of an inn left standing. Come in here.”

They recrossed the road, and at No. 77 in the High Street entered a yard, the end of which was occupied by the carts and other belongings of a railway. But on the right, with its two rows of wooden galleries still there, stretched one wall of an ancient tavern.

“This is the George Inn, and, so far as I know, the only old one left in Southwark,” Godmother said. “Having seen the Tabard Inn as it looked in the days of Chaucer and Shakespeare, you can sweep away in thought, all the railway part of the yard, and see it as it used to be. But I agree with you that except for its memories, Southwark is dreary enough, though even now at the back of this High Street where in ancient times so many processions have passed in and out of London, there are old houses still standing.”

They took an omnibus again at the beginning of London Bridge, and looking back towards St. Saviour’s Church, she added, “There’s the only building which Shakespeare would recognize to-day, and even _that_ is much altered since he lived near it three hundred years ago or more.”

“You said you’d take me to see the Charterhouse. Can’t we go now?” urged Betty, almost before they were off the bridge.

Godmother laughed. “Haven’t you had enough sight-seeing yet? Well, as what we’ve just been looking at isn’t _beautiful_, however interesting it may be, we’ll end our excursion at Charterhouse. You shall see there, not only a really lovely place, but the only one of the great London schools which in our day looks more or less as it did in the sixteenth century. This same omnibus will take us near it, so on the way I’ll tell you a little of its history.”

“You said it was a monastery before it was a school, didn’t you?”

“Yes, it was a monastery when your friend Richard the Second was reigning, and remained a monastery till the time of Henry the Eighth, when the monks were turned out. In Elizabeth’s reign, the place was sold to the Duke of Norfolk, who altered it to make it suitable for a private house. A little later—and here the school part comes in—the Duke of Norfolk sold it again to a rich man called Thomas Sutton, who turned it into a home of rest for old gentlemen and a school for boys. The school, as you know, has in our day moved into the country, but as a home for poor gentlemen who are still called ‘the Brethren,’ Charterhouse goes on to this day.

“We must get down here, at the Church of St. Sepulchre’s in Holborn, and walk through Smithfield,” she broke off to say, as the omnibus at the moment, stopped.

“Smithfield? Is this where the martyrs were burnt?” asked Betty while they crossed a wide space in front of the modern market.

“Yes. It’s full of memories, and all round about it there are wonderful buildings that we shall have no time to see to-day. Here we are at the entrance gate of the Charterhouse.”

They passed into a courtyard so quiet and old-world that for the moment Betty forgot that “the magic” was not working now, and thought herself once more back again in the sixteenth century. Indeed but for the modern clothes of the porter who showed them the place, she _was_ as completely there, as she had been a few hours previously.

As they presently went up a splendid carved oak staircase, Godmother said, “You see here a beautiful private house and the remains of a monastery and of a great school, all in one, and that’s what makes Charterhouse specially interesting.”

A little while later Betty cried out in delight when they entered the dining-hall where once upon a time Queen Elizabeth was entertained by the Duke of Norfolk in the sixteenth century, and where that very evening of the _twentieth_ century the poor gentlemen, “the Brethren” as they are still called, would dine as usual.

“What a beautiful room!” she exclaimed, looking at its arched roof and panelled walls.

“It’s a very fine example of a sixteenth-century hall,” Godmother agreed. “There’s the minstrels’ gallery opposite us, you see, where no doubt the musicians played their best when Queen Elizabeth was here to listen to them.”

“I don’t know which I like best, the Chapel we’ve just seen, or this Hall, or the Library, or the pretty Gardens where ‘the Brethren’ are walking or sitting,” Betty declared. “What a lovely place for them to have. I’m so glad Sir Thomas Sutton left it to be a home always for poor gentlemen. But what a pity that the boys have all gone!”

“Yes, it’s sad, but even the present Charterhouse boys, who have, of course, never lived in this old place at all (because it’s fifty years since the school was moved to Godalming), are very proud of this ancient dwelling which they feel still belongs to them. Did you notice that new marble tablet in the stone passage or _cloister_, as it is called, leading to the Chapel? On it are written the names of Charterhouse boys who fell a year or two ago in the Great War and are commemorated in the old school-house. Many famous men have been educated here, of whom you’ll learn something when you know more about the literature and history of our country. But there’s one of whom you may have heard. He was a boy here and afterwards wrote a celebrated novel in which Charterhouse plays a part.”

“Thackeray wrote about it in _The Newcomes_, I know! and I’ve just read it!” Betty exclaimed. “In the book, Colonel Newcome comes here and is one of the poor brothers. Thackeray was alive not so very long ago, wasn’t he?”

“It seems to me a very little while ago,” Godmother answered, “but it’s considerably over fifty years since he died, as I discovered just now by looking at the tablet to his memory in the Chapel Cloister.”

“Oh! I’m so glad I’ve seen this place,” Betty said as they were leaving, and she turned at the gate to look back at a sunny courtyard with a glimpse of green lawn beyond. “I shall read _The Newcomes_ again now, and imagine old Colonel Newcome walking just here. I had no idea there were such beautiful places in London, Godmother—even without the magic, I mean,” she added.

“Thousands of people live in this wonderful city of ours and _never_ find them—never even take any trouble to know of their existence,” was Godmother’s reply. “And that seems strange to me, and also a great pity. They lose much pleasure.”

* * * * *

Betty would gladly have lingered in Smithfield, and was full of questions about various buildings which attracted her attention, but Godmother hurried her away even from the great beautiful church of St. Bartholomew near the Charterhouse.

“We must visit that another time,” she declared. “We’ve done enough for the present. But before next Saturday,” she added, “go to the London Museum. You will find all sorts of things in it to interest you if you keep in mind what we’ve seen to-day. Go to the gallery in the basement and look at the model of London in the sixteenth century. You will see the bridge with the quaint houses clinging to it, and recognize some of the buildings we saw on our magic visit. Then look at the big model of the Tower in another room. Because it was more or less like that model in Elizabeth’s day, and indeed except for the water in the moat, it has nearly the same appearance now.

“Don’t forget also to look for the life-size figure of Queen Elizabeth on horseback and one of the courtiers leading her horse. That also is in the basement of the Museum, and will remind you of how you saw her riding through the Chepe. There are, in fact, dozens of things in the Museum belonging to London of the sixteenth century that ought to be full of meaning to you now.”

“And Shakespeare’s plays will be more interesting too, and Edmund Spenser’s poetry, and all about Raleigh, and Drake,” exclaimed Betty rather incoherently. “Oh, the magic makes all the difference, Godmother!”

IV

The Restoration

THE LONDON OF CHARLES II AND OF MR. SAMUEL PEPYS

“We can’t go for a drive to-day before the ‘magic’ begins,” said Betty ruefully on the following Saturday,—a day of pouring rain.

“No. But how lucky that the rain won’t interfere with our visit to the London of Charles the Second,” Godmother returned.

“Is that what we’re going to see to-day? Oh, do let’s go at once, Godmother,” was Betty’s eager reply.

“Wait a little. I’m going to give you a short history examination first, to make sure that you will understand what we see, when we _do_ see it. Elizabeth was reigning when we last went to old London. Who was the next king?”

“Her cousin James the First, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots,” returned Betty promptly. “We’ve just had it in the History class,” she added, to explain her readiness.

“And then?”

“_His_ son, Charles the First. And he was beheaded, and then Cromwell ruled and was called the Protector, and when he died, the people wanted a king again, so they sent for Charles the First’s son from abroad, and he was crowned, and that was called the Restoration,” said Betty very fluently.

Godmother nodded. “The Restoration of course meaning the restoring of kings to the English throne. Now Elizabeth died in the year 1603, and Charles the Second was crowned in 1660, so as the London we shall see will only be about sixty years older than it was in the time of Elizabeth, you wouldn’t expect to find it much altered, would you?”

“No. Except that I suppose it will be a little bigger?”

“Yet during the reign of Charles the Second, London was almost _completely_ changed for a reason you will understand presently,” Godmother returned. “Now before we go back to Restoration days, I want to tell you something about a man who lived in London in the time of Charles the Second. His name was Samuel Pepys. He was educated at that St. Paul’s School we talked about when we looked at some of the great schools that had just begun to flourish in the reign of Elizabeth. Afterwards he went to Cambridge, and then for some years he held posts in the Admiralty,—that is the great office in which the affairs of the Navy are managed. We have passed the street he lived in, many times on our journeys to London Bridge. It is called Seething Lane, and is close to the bridge, and not far from the Monument.”

“I remember seeing it,” Betty answered.

“Well, he was not a great man, though he was industrious and did his work well. He was vain and stingy, and had a great many petty faults, though on the whole he was lovable and kind-hearted. But we can never think of the days of Charles the Second without thinking of Samuel Pepys, and I’ll tell you why. He had the habit of keeping a diary, and that diary, now printed, is one of the most interesting and amusing books you can imagine. It is also very valuable, because as Pepys was a great gossip, and described everything he did, and everything he saw, and every place he went to, very fully, we seem to know the life of London in his day almost as though we had lived it ourselves.”

“Shall we see him?” asked Betty with interest.

“We are sure to. He went a great deal to the Palace of Whitehall, so perhaps we shall meet him there. Anyhow I can’t imagine going to London any time between 1660 and 1670 without seeing Samuel Pepys. I think it is he who must take us back to Restoration London.”

Godmother went to the Cabinet where the magic talismans were kept, and took out a book. “Here is his ‘Diary,’ Shut your eyes, and I’ll read you what he wrote in it one May, two hundred and sixty years ago. He is recording in his ‘Diary’ how he spent that day, now so far in the past.

“‘_To Westminster. In the way meeting many milkmaids with their garlands upon their pails, dancing with a fiddler before them, and saw pretty Nelly standing at her lodging door.... She seemed a mighty pretty creature._’”

“Who was ‘pretty Nelly’?” asked Betty, holding the book which Godmother put in her hand in the special “magic” way.

“You will see her if you look now.”

Betty’s eyes flew open upon a charming scene.

In place of the ordinary-looking street of Drury Lane, leading at one end into the Strand, she saw a road lined with gabled dwellings, rather like the old houses still left over Staple Inn in Holborn. The houses were not very close together, and slips of garden with trees in them, gave the “lane” a countrified look. A group of girls wearing muslin caps, short skirts and frilled aprons, and carrying milk-pails slung from their shoulders, came dancing down the road to the music played on a fiddle by a man who walked in front of them. From the milk-pails hung garlands of bluebells and cowslips, and some of the girls carried on their heads instead of pails, little pyramids of silver plates adorned with ribbons and flowers.

Opposite to where Betty and her godmother found themselves standing, leaning in the door of one of the gabled houses, was a pretty, merry-looking little creature, who had evidently only just got up, for she wore a flowered bed-jacket over her short skirt, and a night-cap trimmed with pink ribbons.

“That’s ‘pretty witty Nelly,’” said Godmother. “Nell Gwynne, the famous actress. She often plays at Drury Lane Theatre, lower down the road, and the King greatly admires her.”

“Why, there was a play acted in London not very long ago called _Sweet Nell of Old Drury_, wasn’t there?” Betty exclaimed. “Mother was talking about it the other day.”

“Yes, a modern play with ‘sweet Nell’ as heroine. Well, there she is. And this is ‘Old Drury’ where she lives.”

Just at the moment, the milkmaids and the fiddler stopped before Nell Gwynne’s house, and began to sing.

“London, to thee I do present The merry month of May”—

Betty heard these words, but the rest of the song was drowned by the loud music of the fiddle, and the laughter of the girls, in which the charming little actress joined as they came crowding round her to take the coins she distributed right and left.

“If you look round,” said Godmother, “you will see Samuel Pepys, who is a great admirer of pretty Nelly, watching this little scene.”

Betty turned her head, and saw a fat-faced, good-natured, rather conceited-looking man grandly dressed in a black satin coat with silver buttons, huge sleeves made of fine white lawn, a lace cravat, and a wig with long curls. A sword in a scabbard hung at his side, and he carried a tall gold-mounted cane.

“He is very gorgeous because he is going on to Court—to the Palace of Whitehall,” said Godmother. “But _we_ will follow the milkmaids to the Maypole.”

“The Maypole? How lovely!” Betty exclaimed. “Where is it?”

“Quite close. In the Strand. You know the church called St. Mary-le-Strand? It is the first of the two churches that stand in the middle of the road as you go up the Strand from Charing Cross. Well, just in front of that church, we shall find the Maypole. You can hear the shouts of the people now.”

In a minute or two they were in the Strand, and there, in the middle of the road, with long coloured streamers hanging from its summit, stood an enormously tall pole wreathed with flowers, round which with laughter and shouting, men and girls were dancing. Some of the boys had garters with bells round their knee-breeches, and nearly all of them were waving handkerchiefs. The whole street was crowded with noisy, merry-making people, and one boy in particular, standing on a high wooden stool close to the Maypole, seemed to be directing the dance.

“He is the May-Lord, and he arranges the fun,” Godmother said. “Listen to what he is reciting.”

“Up then, I say, both young and old, Both man and maid a-Maying, With drums and guns that bounce along And merry tabor playing! Which to prolong. God save our King, And send his country peace, And root out treason from the land! And so, my friends, I cease.”