CHAPTER XVII.

THE OLD BOROUGH OF SOUTHWARK.

The first object that still strikes the eye when we have passed over into the Borough is the beautiful old church founded by a Saxon maiden called Mary of the Ferry, which in time was corrupted into Mary Overy, and is now called St. Saviour's. No young poet need wish for a finer subject to try his hand on than this beautiful half holy old legend of the Ferryman's Daughter, who, day after day, winter and summer, was seen with her quaint old-fashioned Saxon boat, ready to row passengers from the Borough to the City, and back again to the landing-place, where the Ferry-house had stood centuries before a bridge united the two shores. Pleasant to her ear must have been the lapping of the waves as they washed her little freehold, and fell with a dreamy murmuring upon the ear, while she sat revolving in her mind how she should begin to build a house for the reception of a few poor and pious sisters, in which they might live in content and comfort, and holy quiet; and when she was no more, there pray for the soul of Mary of the Ferry. And thus was the present St. Saviour's first founded. In this ancient cathedral-like church, Gower, the contemporary of Chaucer, lies buried; his beautiful monument still exists. Our own immortal Shakspeare was no doubt a mourner here two hundred years ago, on the last day of December, 1607, when in the forenoon he attended the funeral of his brother Edmund. Perhaps the funeral took place earlier in the day, on account of the merry-making which our forefathers held at the close of the old year, and kept up until the new year had grown far into the day; and that this was the cause why Edmund Shakspeare was buried in the church "with a forenoone knell of the great bell." Edmund was himself a player, and we can readily conjure up the images of those who witnessed his interment.

Were we to dwell upon the solemn memories which float around this hoary pile, they would alone fill this chapter; for Fletcher is buried here, so is Massinger; but not, as was supposed, "in a gloomy corner amid a mass of misshapen and melancholy graves," for he is buried "within the church."

But the spot to which the lover of poetry still directs his steps is to the Tabard--Chaucer's old inn, still standing on the very spot, if not the identical building itself, from which the father of English poetry set out, when he accompanied his merry pilgrims to Canterbury. The portion of this old hostelry still remaining dates much further back than the period of Charles II., a proof that it escaped the terrible fire which raged in Southwark in the year 1676. The very style of the building needs not a second glance to proclaim its antiquity; it is beyond doubt the very inn which the old chronicler Stowe mentions by the name of the "Tabard," and which he himself had no doubt seen in 1598, and called the "most ancient of the many fair inns in Southwark for receipt of travellers." The old sign of the Tabard formerly hung swinging and creaking across the road, and there were then no houses in front to shut it in, as now; it lay openly and temptingly, as when Chaucer's host, the merry "Harry Baily," stepped out in the front in the sunny mornings of Spring and Summer, to see what the old Kent and Newington roads were producing him, and what sort of customers were riding up.

Even now there is something venerable in the old weather-beaten and iron-bound posts which prop up its comparatively modern gateway; they tell of the grazing and grinding of thousands of old wheels, while the stones are worn away with the tramping of many a worn-out steed.

Merry doings were there in that old inn-yard, on an April morning, five hundred years ago, for Harry Baily, the host was

"The early cock That gather'd them together in a flock."

And you might then have seen the Wife of Bath, leaning aside and listening as she sat in her saddle, for she could not hear very well, as she tells us Jankin, her fifth husband, had given her such a blow,

"For that she rent out of his book a leaf, That of the stroke her ear was always deaf."

Let those who have never read Chaucer, and who wish to become acquainted with the most minute and beautiful painting of character which poetry ever produced, only read the Prologue to his _Canterbury Tales_; it scarcely occupies more than twenty moderate pages of print. If, after reading these, they are not tempted to proceed further, it will be because "they have no poetry in their souls." In no work can we find such a faithful description of the dress, manners, customs, and language of our forefathers, as in the pages of Geoffrey Chaucer.

Nor is the "Talbot," as it is now called, the only ancient inn in the Borough. There are others which contain their surrounding galleries, and spacious yards open to the sky. Some years ago we glanced at other portions of this ancient Borough--especially that part called the old Mint. This is now fast disappearing; many of the houses that escaped the fire in 1676 have of late been pulled down. The following is a description which we wrote seven years ago, after visiting the remains of this dilapidated neighbourhood. Stretching from St. George's Church, in the Borough, into the high road which leads to the cast-iron bridge of Southwark, are no end of narrow courts, winding alleys, and ruined houses, which a bold-hearted man would hesitate to thread after dusk. Here stand numbers of houses which are unroofed and uninhabited. Years ago they were doomed to be pulled down, and it was resolved that a wide, open street should be built upon the space they now occupy: years may still roll away before they are removed. There is no place like this in the suburbs of London--no spot that looks so murderous, so melancholy, and so miserable. Many of these houses, besides being old, are very large and lofty. Many of these courts stand just as they did when Cromwell sent out his spies to hunt up and slay the Cavaliers, just as they again were hunted in return, after the Restoration, by the Royalists, who threaded their intricacies, with sword and pistol in hand, in search of the fallen Roundheads. There is a smell of past ages about these ancient courts, like that which arises from decay--a murky closeness--as if the old winds which blew through them in the times of the Civil Wars had become stagnant, and all old things had fallen and died just as they were blown together, and left to perish. So it is now. The timber of these old houses looks bleached and dead; and the very brick-work seems never to have been new. In them you find wide, hollow-sounding, decayed staircases, that lead into great ruinous rooms, whose echoes are only awakened by the shrieking and running of large black-eyed rats, which eat through the solid floors, through the wainscot, and live and die without being startled by a human voice. From the Southwark-bridge Road you may see the roofs of many of these great desolate houses; they are broken and open; and the massy oaken rafters are exposed to the summer sun and the snow of winter. Some of the lower floors are still inhabited; and at the ends of those courts you will see standing, on a fine day, such characters as you will meet with nowhere beside in the neighbourhood of London. Their very dress is peculiar; and they frequent the dark and hidden public-houses which abound in these close alleys,--places where the gas is burning all day long. Excepting the courts behind Long-lane, in Smithfield, we know no spot about London like this, which yet fronts St. George's Church, in the Borough.

Southwark, as all remember who are at all acquainted with history, beside containing Shakspeare's Theatre, at Bankside, was, in former days, famous for its Bear-garden; which, we fear, was often more crowded than the spot where the author of "Hamlet" so frequently played.

What a different feature does the Southwark entrance to London Bridge present to what it did only a few brief years ago! Every few minutes omnibuses are now thundering to and from the railway terminus; while passengers think no more of journeying to Brighton and back, and remaining eight or ten hours there, on a long summer's-day, than they formerly did of travelling to Greenwich; for it took the old slow stage-wagons as long to traverse the five miles to the latter as our iron-footed and fire-fed steed can with ease drag the five hundred passengers at his heels, and land them within sight of the wide, refreshing sea.

Were it possible to revive again the forms of those old Canterbury Pilgrims, and, instead of sending them out of the Tabard-yard on horseback, to place them in an express train, then start them off with all the quaint, queer notions which haunted their living brains, what strange conclusions they would come to. Even the "perfect knight," who had fought in "fifteen battles," and seen many a strange sight in heathen lands, would, with all his wisdom, think he had at last fallen into the hands of the evil one, while gentle Chaucer would renounce his disbelief in fairy lore, and be ready to admit that the land was now filled with greater wonders than

"In old days of the King Arthur, Of which the Britons speak great wonder; When all the land was filled full of faery-- The Elf-Queen, with her jolly company, That danced full oft in many a green mead." _Wife of Bath's Tale._

What a change! to look up the ascent which led to that old London-bridge, with its Traitor's-gate and ghastly heads grinning above the vaulted gateway, and the scene that now meets the eye! Living heads piled high on moving omnibuses, and journeying in every direction, for twopenny or threepenny fares; steamboats passing from east to west, and carrying passengers for one halfpenny per head; such changes has the old square tower of St. Saviour's overlooked--such things has the wonder-working hand of man accomplished. And yet the world is believed by many to be still in its infancy; that two more centuries will see mankind as far advanced and improved as the last two have placed us in the lead of our forefathers. That the London of the present day will then be as great a matter of curiosity to some future antiquary as old London-bridge and the ancient borough of Southwark is to us; that others will follow and exclaim as we do now:

"The race of yore, Who danced our infancy upon their knee, And told our marvelling boyhood legends store Of their strange ventures happ'd by land or sea, How are they blotted from the things that be."--_Scott._