Part 11

The unsophisticated lads were greatly impressed by this talk. Not so the others. “Some people,” broke in another woman’s voice, “give themselves a great many needless airs; better folks than any here have travelled in wagons before now. Some of us have rode in coaches and chariots, with three footmen behind them, without making so much fuss about it. What then! we are now all on a footing; therefore let us be sociable and merry. What do you say, Isaac? Is not this a good motion, you doting rogue? Speak, old Cent. per cent.! What desperate debt are you thinking of? What mortgage are you planning? Well, Isaac, positively you shall never gain my favour till you turn over a new leaf, grow honest, and live like a gentleman. In the meantime, give me a kiss, you old fool.”

The words, accompanied by hearty smack, enlivened the person to whom they were addressed to such a degree, that he cried, in a transport, though with a faltering voice: “Ah, you baggage! on my credit you are a waggish girl—he, he, he!” This laugh introduced a fit of coughing which almost suffocated the poor usurer—for such they afterwards found was the profession of their fellow-traveller.

At their stopping-place for the night they had their first opportunity of viewing these passengers. First came a brisk, airy girl, about twenty years of age, with a silver-laced hat on her head instead of a cap, a blue stuff riding-suit, trimmed with silver, very much tarnished, and a whip in her hand. After her came, limping, an old man, with a worsted night-cap buttoned under his chin and a broad-brimmed hat slouched over it, an old rusty blue cloak tied about his neck, under which appeared a brown surtout that covered a threadbare coat and waistcoat, and a dirty flannel jacket. His eyes were hollow, bleared, and gummy; his face shrivelled into a thousand wrinkles, his gums destitute of teeth, his nose sharp and drooping, his chin peaked and prominent, so that when he mumped or spoke they approached one another like a pair of nut-crackers; he supported himself on an ivory-headed cane, and his whole figure was a just emblem of winter, famine, and avarice.

The captain was disclosed as a little thin creature, about the age of forty, with a long, withered visage very much resembling that of a baboon. He wore his own hair in a queue that reached to his rump, and on it a hat the size and cock of Antient Pistol’s. He was about five feet and three inches in height, sixteen inches of which went to his face and long scraggy neck; his thighs were about six inches in length; his legs, resembling two spindles or drumsticks, two feet and a half; and his body the remainder; so that, on the whole, he appeared like a spider or grasshopper erect. His dress consisted of a frock of bear-skin, the skirts about half a foot long, a hussar waistcoat, scarlet breeches reaching half-way down his thighs, worsted stockings rolled up almost to his groin, and shoes with wooden heels at least two inches high; he carried a sword very nearly as long as himself in one hand, and with the other conducted his lady, who seemed to be a woman of his own age, still retaining some remains of good looks, but so ridiculously affected that any one who was not a novice in the world would easily have perceived in her deplorable vanity the second-hand airs of a lady’s woman.

This ridiculous couple were Captain and Mrs. Weazel. The travellers all assembled in the kitchen of the inn, where, according to the custom of the time, such impecunious wayfarers were entertained; but the captain desired a room for himself and his wife, so that they might sup by themselves, instead of in that communal fashion. The innkeeper, however, did not much relish this, but would have given way to the demand, providing the other passengers made no objection. Unhappily for the captain’s absurd dignity, the others _did_ object; Miss Jenny, the lady with the silver-trimmed hat, in particular, observing that “if Captain Weazel and his lady had a mind to sup by themselves, they might wait until the others should have done.” At this hint the captain put on a martial frown and looked very big, without speaking; while his yoke-fellow, with a disdainful toss of her nose, muttered something about “creature!” which Miss Jenny overhearing, stepped up to her, saying, “None of your names, good Mrs. Abigail. Creature! quotha—I’ll assure you—no such creature as you, neither—no quality-coupler.” Here the captain interposed, with a “D—n me, madam, what do you mean by that?”

“Sir, who are you?” replied Miss Jenny; “who made you a captain, you pitiful, trencher-scraping, pimping curler? The army is come to a fine pass when such fellows as you get commissions. What, I suppose you think I don’t know you? You and your helpmate are well met: a cast-off mistress and a bald valet-de-chambre are well yoked together.”

“Blood and wounds!” cried Weazel; “d’ye question the honour of my wife, madam? No man in England durst say so much—I would flay him, carbonado him! Fury and destruction! I would have his liver for my supper!” So saying, he drew his sword and flourished it, to the great terror of Strap; while Miss Jenny, snapping her fingers, told him she did not value his resentment that!

We will pass over the Rabelaisian adventures of the night, which, amusing enough, are too robust for these pages; and will proceed to the next day’s journey. Before they started, Weazel had proved himself the arrant coward and braggart which the reader has already perceived him to be; but, notwithstanding this exposure, he entertained the company in the wagon with accounts of his valour: how he had once knocked down a soldier who had made game of him; had tweaked a drawer by the nose who had found fault with his picking his teeth with a fork; and had, moreover, challenged a cheesemonger who had had the presumption to be his rival.

For five days they travelled in this manner. On the sixth day, when they were about to sit down to dinner, the innkeeper came and told them that three gentlemen, just arrived, had ordered the meal to be sent to their apartment, although told that it had been bespoken by the passengers in the wagon,—to which information they had replied: “The passengers in the wagon might be d—d; their betters must be served before them; they supposed it would be no hardship on such travellers to dine on bread and cheese for one day.”

This was a great disappointment to them all, and they laid their heads together to remedy it, Miss Jenny observing that Captain Weazel, being a soldier by profession, ought to protect them. The captain adroitly excused himself by saying that he would not, for all the world, be known to have travelled in a wagon; swearing, at the same time, that, could he appear with honour, they should eat his sword sooner than his provision. On this declaration, Miss Jenny, snatching his weapon, drew it and ran immediately into the kitchen, where she threatened to put the cook to death if he did not immediately send the victuals into their room. The noise she made brought the three strangers down, one of whom no sooner perceived her than he cried, “Ha! Jenny Ramper! what brought thee hither?”

“My dear Jack Rattle,” she replied, running into his arms, “is it you? Then Weazel may go whistle for a dinner—I shall dine with you.”

They consented with joy to this proposal; and the others were on the point of being reduced to a very uncomfortable meal, when Joey, the wagoner, understanding the whole affair, entered the kitchen with a pitchfork in his hand, and swore he would be the death of any man who should pretend to seize the victuals prepared for the wagon. On this, the three strangers drew their swords, and, being joined by their servants, bloodshed seemed imminent; when the landlord, interposing, offered to part with his own dinner, for the sake of peace; which proposal was accepted and all ended happily.

When the journey was resumed in the afternoon, Roderick chose to walk some distance beside the wagoner, a merry, good-natured fellow, who informed him that Miss Jenny was a common girl of the town, who, falling in company with a recruiting officer who had carried her down in the stage-coach from London to Newcastle, was obliged to return, as her companion was now in prison for debt. Weazel had been a valet-de-chambre to my Lord Fizzle while he lived separate from his lady; but on their reconciliation she insisted on Weazel’s being turned off, as well as the woman who had lived with him: when his lordship, to get rid of them both with a good grace, proposed that Weazel should marry his mistress, when he would procure a commission in the army for him.

Roderick and the wagoner both had a profound contempt for Weazel, and resolved to put his courage to the test by alarming the passengers with the cry of “a highwayman” as soon as a horseman should appear. It was dusk when a man on horseback approached them. Joey gave the alarm, and a general consternation arose; Strap leaping out of the wagon and hiding himself behind a hedge; the usurer exclaiming dolefully and rustling about in the straw, as though hiding something; Mrs. Weazel wringing her hands and crying; and the captain pretending to snore.

This latter artifice did not succeed with Miss Jenny, who shook him by the shoulder and bawled out: “’Sdeath! captain, is this a time to snore when we are going to be robbed? Get up, for shame, and behave like a soldier and man of honour.”

Weazel pretended to be in a great passion for being disturbed, and swore he would have his nap out if all the highwaymen in England surrounded him. “What are you afraid of?” continued he; at the same time trembling with such agitation that the whole vehicle shook.

“Plague on your pitiful soul!” exclaimed Miss Jenny; “you are as arrant a poltroon as was ever drummed out of a regiment. Stop the wagon, Joey, and if I have rhetoric enough, the thief shall not only take your purse, but your skin also.”

By this time the horseman had come up with them, and proved to be a gentleman’s servant, well known to Joey, who told him the plot, and desired him to carry it on a little further, by going up to the wagon and questioning those within. Accordingly he approached, and in a terrible voice demanded, “Who have we got here?” Isaac replied, in a lamentable voice, “Here’s a poor, miserable sinner, who has got a small family to maintain, and nothing in the world but these fifteen shillings, which, if you rob me of, we must all starve together.”

“Who’s that sobbing in the corner?” continued the supposed highwayman.

“A poor, unfortunate woman,” answered Mrs. Weazel, “on whom, I beg you, for Christ’s sake, to have compassion.”

“Are you maid or wife?” said he.

“Wife, to my sorrow,” said she.

“Who, or what is your husband?” continued he.

“My husband,” continued Mrs. Weazel, “is an officer in the army, and was left sick at the last inn where we dined.”

“You must be mistaken, madam,” said he, “for I myself saw him get into the wagon this afternoon.” Here he laid hold of one of Weazel’s legs, and pulled him out from under his wife’s petticoats, where he had concealed himself. The trembling captain, detected in this inglorious situation, rubbed his eyes, and affecting to wake out of sleep, cried, “What’s the matter?”

“What’s the matter? The matter is not much,” answered the horseman; “I only called in to inquire after your health, and so adieu, most noble captain.” So saying, he clapped spurs to his horse, and was out of sight in a moment.

It was some time before Weazel could recollect himself; but at length, reassuming his big look, he said, “’Sdeath! why did he ride away before I had time to ask him how his lord and his lady do? Don’t you remember Tom, my dear?” addressing his wife.

“Yes,” replied she; “I think I do remember something of the fellow; but you know I seldom converse with people of his station.”

“Hey-day!” cried Joey; “do you know the young man, coptain?”

“Know him?” cried Weazel; “many a time has he filled a glass of Burgundy for me at my Lord Trippett’s table.”

“And what may his neame be, coptain?” said Joey.

“His name!—his name,” replied Weazel, “is Tom Rinser.”

“Wounds!” cried Joey, “a has changed his own neame then! for I’se lay any wager he was christened John Trotter.”

This raised a laugh against the captain, who seemed very much disconcerted; when Isaac broke silence and said, “It was no matter who or what he was, as he had not proved the robber they suspected. They ought to bless God for their narrow escape.”

“Bless God!” said Weazel, “for what? Had he been a highwayman I should have eaten his blood and body before he had robbed me or any one in this diligence.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” cried Miss Jenny; “I believe you will eat all you kill, indeed, captain.”

The usurer was so well pleased at the end of this adventure that he could not refrain from being severe, and took notice that Captain Weazel seemed to be a good Christian, for he had armed himself with patience and resignation, instead of carnal weapons, and worked out his salvation with fear and trembling; whereupon, amidst much laughter, Weazel threatened to cut the Jew’s throat. The usurer, taking hold of this menace, said:—“Gentlemen and ladies, I take you all to witness, that my life is in danger from this bloody-minded officer: have him bound over to the peace.” This second sneer procured another laugh against the captain, who remained crestfallen for the rest of the journey.

XXV

THE remaining miles to Gateshead are made up of the shabby village of Low Fell, where the road begins to rise, and the uninteresting way over the ridge of the Fell itself. By the word “Fell,” North of England people describe what Southerners call a hill. The common land of Gateshead Fell, 675 acres, was enclosed under Acts of Parliament, 1809, 1822.

[Picture: Modern Newcastle: from Gateshead]

Many were the gibbets erected in the old days on Gateshead Fell. The last was that on which swung the body of Robert Hazlett, who on this spot, on the evening of August 6th, 1770, robbed a young lady, Miss Margaret Benson, who was returning to Newcastle in a post-chaise from Durham. On the same night a post-boy was relieved of his bags at the same place. Hazlett was hanged at Durham, and his body gibbeted here, twenty-five feet high. For some time afterwards, every day for an hour, an old man was seen to kneel and pray at the foot of the gibbet. It was the wretched man’s father! A beacon was fixed on the Fell in the winter of 1803–4, on an alarm of invasion; hence this height was afterwards known as “Beacon Hill.”

The present-day aspect of the road does not hint at anything so tragical, and is merely commonplace, the last touch of vulgarity added by the trams that ply along it from Gateshead.

The place-name of Gateshead seemed to John Ogilby, in his book, _Britannia Depicta_, 1676, to require explanation, and he proceeded to say that it was “alias Gate-Side, seated on the Banks of the Tine, by the Saxons call’d Gates-heved, i.e. _Caprae Caput_, or Goat’s-head, perchance from an Inn with such a sign.”

But perchance not. While the Saxon name certainly was Gatesheved, it meant “road’s head,” either in allusion to the Roman bridge across the river being broken down and passage being possible only by water, or else referring to the abruptly-descending land on either side, where the road would seem to be coming to a sudden end.

Gateshead is to Newcastle what Southwark is to London, and the Tyne which runs between may be likened in the same way to the Thames. Comparison from any other point of view is impossible. Gateshead is nowadays a great deal worse than it was when Doctor Johnson called it “a dirty lane leading to Newcastle.” It may be ranked among the half-dozen dirtiest places on earth, and the lane which the Doctor saw has sent forth miles of streets as bad as itself, so that the geographical distribution of filth and squalor has in modern times become very wide. There are two ways of entering Newcastle since the High Level Bridge across the Tyne has supplemented what used to be the old Tyne Bridge, once, and until fifty years ago, the only way of crossing the river except by boat. When Stephenson flung his High Level Bridge across that stream, as yellow, if not as historic, as the Tiber, he provided a roadway for general traffic beneath the railway, and the old bridge lost its favour, simply for the reason that to cross it the steeply descending West Street and Bottle Lane had to be taken and the just as steeply ascending bank of the river on the Newcastle side to be climbed; while by the High Level a flat road was provided. It is true that all traffic, pedestrian and wheeled, pays a small toll for the privilege, but it is the lesser of the two evils.

Let those who have no concern with old times take their easeful way through the gloomy portals of the High Level Bridge, eighty-five feet above high-water mark. But let us examine the steep and smelly street, paved with vile granite setts and strewn with refuse, which conducts to the Tyne Bridge, or the Swing Bridge as it is nowadays, since the old structure was removed, the channel of the river deepened, and the wonderful swinging portion of the remodelled bridge, 281 feet in length, and swung open or closed by hydraulic power, constructed in 1876. With that work went the last fragments of the Roman bridge built by Hadrian (_Publius Aelius Hadrianus_) more than a thousand years before; a bridge which, indeed, gave the Roman camp its name of _Pons Ælii_. His bridge, long in ruins, was replaced in 1248 by a mediæval structure which was destroyed by a flood in 1771.

This way came the coaches, climbing into Newcastle up Sandhill and the Side, whose steep and curving roadway remains to prove how difficult were the ways of travellers as well as transgressors in the old times. Old and new jostle here. The Swing Bridge turns silently on its pivot to the touch of a lever in its signal tower, and a force our grandfathers never knew performs the evolution; but side by side with this miracle still stand the darkling lanes and steep waterside alleys of Gateshead and Newcastle that were standing before science and commerce, mother and daughter, came down upon the Tyne and transformed it.

A writer in an old-time Northern magazine appears to have been jolted into a bad humour respecting Newcastle’s precipitous old approach:—“We have no connection whatever with the coal-trade, and were never at Newcastle but once, passing through it on the top of an exceedingly heavy coach, along with about a score of other travellers. But, should we live a thousand years, it would not be possible for us to forget that transit. We wonder what blockhead first built Newcastle; for before you can get into and out of it, you must descend one hill and ascend another, about as steep as the sides of a coal-pit. Had the coach been upset that day, instead of the night before and the day after, there would have been no end and, indeed, no beginning, to this magazine. We all clustered as thickly together on the roof of the vehicle (it was a sort of macvey, or fly) as the good people of Rome did to see Great Pompey passing along:—but we, on the contrary, saw nothing but a lot of gaping inhabitants, who were momentarily expecting to see us brought low. We remarked one man fastening his eye upon our legs that were dangling from the roof under an iron rail, who, we are confident, was a Surgeon. However, we kept swinging along, from side to side, as if the macvey had been as drunk as an owl, and none of the passengers, we have reason to believe, were killed that day—it was a maiden circuit. But, after all, we love Newcastle, and wish its coals may burn clear and bright till consumed in the last general conflagration.”

[Picture: Old Newcastle: Showing the now Demolished Town Bridge]

High over head goes the High Level, and the smoke and rumble of its trains mingle with the clash of Newcastle’s thousand anvils and the reek of her million chimneys; but there still stands against the sky-line—most fittingly seen from the Gateshead bank at eventide, when petty details are lost and only broad effects remain—the coroneted steeple of St. Nicholas and the great black form of the Norman keep, reminding the contemplative that Monkchester was the name of the city before the Conqueror came and built that fortress whose fame as the “New Castle” has remained to this day to give a title to the place, just as the “new work” at Newark has ever since stood sponsor for that town. Again, no sooner have you crossed the Swing Bridge and come to Quayside than other vestiges of old Newcastle are encountered, in the remains of the Castle wall and the steps that lead upwards to Castle Garth, where shoemakers and cobblers of footgear of the most waterside and unfashionable character still blink and cobble in their half-underground dens, the descendants, probably, of those whom a French traveller remarked here in the time of Charles the Second. If, instead of climbing these stairs, the traveller elects to follow the track of the coaches, he will traverse Sandhill, which in very early days was an open space by the river, but has for centuries past been a street. It was at Sandgate close by, according to the ballad, that the lassie was heard to sing the well-known refrain of “Weel may the keel row, the boat that my love’s in,” and indeed it is a district that breathes romance, commonplace though its modern offices may look. Does not the Moot Hall look down upon Sandhill? “Many a heart has broken inside those walls,” said a passer-by, with unwonted picturesqueness, to the present writer, gazing at that hall of justice.