Part 4

The first name of 'W. H.,' therefore, is Will. And this Will had great trouble at one period of his life, which silenced all his joy and merriment. Again I ask you, Who was the man?"

And the Spirit, bubbling and shaking with eagerness, peered anxiously into my face.

"What great Scotsman of that great period," he continued, screaming rather than speaking, "was brought up to the law and abandoned it for the pursuit of literature and poetry? was driven nearly to distraction by the loss of a mistress whom he loved more dearly than life? went abroad to seek solace, and, returning after many years, married another lady? wrote and left extant in his own name, sonnets which are acknowledged to be perfect models of sweetness and delicacy, sonnets which have never been eclipsed since his death? who was the Scottish poet, friend of the London actors; friend of Ben Jonson; the man who has left on record in British literature the report of his conversations with Jonson; the man who, as you have to-night seen by your landlord's letter, knew Shakespeare and lent him plays which are not known now by the names they then bore--come, come, man, who is this W. H.? Cannot you guess it even now?"

"William of Hawthornden?"

"Of course, of course," the Spirit cried. "Look you, now, how plain it is. William Drummond of Hawthornden was tinged with the conceits and romances of the Italian school, as was the author of _Romeo and Juliet_. He wrote histories, as did the author of _The History of Henry VII._, attributed to Bacon; as did the author of the historical plays, attributed to Shakespeare. He wrote many reflections on Death, as did the author of the _Sonnets_ and the _Plays_. And who but a Scotsman, I would like you to tell me, could have furnished the local colour and the Scottish character to the tragedy of _Macbeth_?"

"Why, man, it's as plain as a pikestaff. The greatest Englishman that ever lived was naturally a Scotsman. The greatest genius of any clime or time was William Drummond of Hawthornden."

And, in the frenzy of his exultation, Roderick leaped high again into the air, turned seventeen somersaults in succession, and, alighting upon my nose, danced a wild Highland fling of triumph and defiance.

It was certainly very plausible--as plausible, at least, as any argument that I had heard in support of the theory that Bacon wrote Shakespeare's _Plays_. I was almost persuaded: then a difficulty occurred to me.

"But," I said, "Drummond of Hawthornden was not born till 1585, and some of Shakespeare's _Plays_ appear to have been produced before 1593."

"Well," answered the Spirit, carelessly sticking his sword into my nose and sitting on it, "what has age to do with genius? Has not another poet said, 'He was not of an age, but for all time'? Besides, the Scottish are a precocious people and byordinar'. And furthermore, who told you that Drummond was born in '85?"

"English history says so."

"English history!" answered the Spirit, with a sneer; "try Scotch."

"But," I still objected, "if Shakespeare wrote nothing, why did Ben Jonson, who knew him well, praise his wit and his 'gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped'?"

"Well," said Roderick, "and who said that Shakespeare wrote nothing? I only said he did not write Shakespeare's _Works_. But he wrote other poetry--poetry which everybody knows--poetry as familiar in every child's mouth as butterscotch. There is nothing finer of its kind."

"It is strange," I muttered, "that I have never heard of it."

"What?" cried the Spirit, "never heard of 'Little Jack Horner'?

Little Jack Horner sat in a corner Eating a Christmas pie; He pulled out a plum with his finger and thumb, And said "What a good boy am I!"

"And is that Shakespeare's?" I exclaimed.

"And what for no'? It is a perfect specimen of pure Anglo-Saxon English, without corrupt admixture of Norman or Roman words. It is terse and dramatic. The very first line, in its revelation of the hero's remote and solitary state, presents a powerful suggestion of a contemplative character. His voracity, tempered by intense conscientiousness, is indicated in a few clear, pertinent touches that unmistakably betoken the master-hand. Yet the author's name is lost in the dust of the centuries; it has eluded the vigilance of antiquarian research. Only I am acquainted with the secret. If you doubt it, turn the poem into an anagram, and the truth shall be clear even to you."

"But," I began, "if"--

"Bah! Look at here!" cried Roderick, jumping to his feet and brandishing his sword, "I came here to improve your mind; but if you are not amenable to reason, it's no use talking. So get out of it, ye puir, daft, gawkie Southron loon!"

And so saying, he struck me so terrible a blow across the nose with his sword that I sneezed, and lo, behold! he was gone, and in the place where he had been, was nothing but a great, busy, buzzing moth, that hovered round my nose as though it had been a joy-beacon.

* * * * *

It was a strange experience. I don't know what to make of it. But I don't think that Shakespeare was Bacon. And, as I hadn't the slightest trace of headache when I awoke, I think that, after all, the Scottish Spirit was right. Bacon hasn't a ham to stand on. Bacon is smoked. To honest nostrils Bacon hereafter is rancid.

Be that as it may, there can be no doubt henceforth as to the authorship of "Little Jack Horner." Following Roderick's instructions, I have taken the letters of the lines of that poem, and have constructed with them an anagram which establishes beyond possibility of dispute that Shakespeare wrote them.

I am prepared to prove it to the British Association, and defy _The Daily Chronicle_. It is true the spelling is rather bad, but Shakespeare's was notoriously beastly, so that is another proof in my favour.

It is moreover a perfect anagram, in which each letter is used, and used once only. The letters are L i t t l e j a c k h o r n e r s a t i n a c o r n e r e a t i n g a c h r i s t m a s p i e h e p u l l e d o u t a p l u m w i t h h i s f i n g e r a n d t h u m b a n d s a i d w h a t a g o o d b o y a m i.

Now, mark, hey presto! there's no deception; mix these letters and form them into new combinations, and you evolve this remarkable, startling, conclusive, and scientifically historical revelation:--

_=Mistir Shakesper aloan was the Lyturery gent wich rote this Bootiful Pome in Elizabuth Raign, and Jaimce had Damn Good Lauph.=_

Could anything be clearer?

FLEET STREET

When I go up that quiet cloistered court, running up like a little secure haven from the stormy ocean of Fleet Street, and see the doctor's gnarled bust on the bracket above his old hat, I sometimes think the very wainscot must still be impregnated with the fumes of his seething punch-bowl.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

My Bosom's Lord declares that it is more of a smell than a street; but there is not a journalist of any literary pretension in Britain who does not regard Fleet Street as the Mecca of his craft, and instinctively turn his face towards it when he has occasion to say his prayers.

It is the focus, the magnetic centre, and very heart of London's Fairyland--the Capital of the Territory of Brick and Mortar Romance.

Its enchanted courts are the inner sanctuary of Haunted London. It is the most astonishing sensation to step out of the hum and moan and fret of the rushing and turbulent City's most bustling and roaring street, into the absolute, cloistered stillness of, for instance, the Temple; where, within fifty yards of Fleet Street, you may stand by Oliver Goldsmith's grave and hear no sound save the cooing of pigeons and the splashing of a fountain.

Fleet Street's air is the quintessence of English History. From the Plague and the Fire to the Jubilee Procession, everything has passed here. All the literary eminence of the day comes to do business here. These paving-stones have felt the weight of George R. Sims, Clement Scott, Bernard Shaw, and the Poet Craig. It is the world's main artery, the centre of the Empire's nervous system, the brain and soul of England.

Be that as it may, I am conscious of an increase in my stature since I became a part of Fleet Street--a stretching of my boots since I began to walk in the footsteps of Swift, Steele, Pope, Goldsmith, Johnson, and all the other giants whose seething punch-bowls have impregnated the wainscot of the neighbouring taverns.

The chief of the ghosts, of course, is the burly lexicographer--the man with the inky ruffles, the dirty large hands, the shabby brown coat, and shrivelled wig. Methinks I see him now, clinging to his door in dingy Bolt Court, and waking the midnight echoes with his Cyclopean laughter, as he listens to a parting from fluent Burke or snuffy Gibbon.

There were no footpaths in Fleet Street in those days; spouts projected the rain-water in streams from the house-tops, and there were no umbrellas. The swinging of broad signs in high winds would sometimes bring down a wall--an accident which killed, on one occasion, in Fleet Street, "two young ladies, a cobbler, and the king's jeweller."

And yet the daintiest and prettiest of women came tripping down Fleet Street, and up the narrow court, to see the blustering, pompous Lichfield bear; unless, indeed, Miss Burney, witty Mrs. Montague, charming Miss Reynolds, and shrewd Miss Piozzi only called to caress Hodge, the doctor's cat.

(Happy thought! who knows? MEM.: _We_ must get a cat.)

* * * * *

It was Dr. Johnson who set the excellent Fleet Street fashion of tempering the fierce delights of literary achievement with staid and lingering meditation in the pleasant taverns.

In fact, the Fleet Street taverns are visited by reverend pilgrims to this day as monuments consecrate to the great lexicographer; and at all times of the day one may find faithful congregations of Fleet Street men of letters devoutly lingering there to pour out libations to his glory.

It was at the Cheshire Cheese, whilst the chops hissed on the grid, that Dr. Johnson was wont to snub Boswell, quiz Goldsmith, and brutally beat down his opponents with his "Why, sir," "What, sir?" and "What then, sir?"

"Here, sir," he himself admitted, "I dogmatise and am contradicted, and I love this conflict of intellect and opinion." It was in another tavern, up another narrow court, that the pompous author of _Rasselas_ said to his delighted biographer, "Sir, give me your hand; I have taken a liking to you." And it was under the influence of this place that Boswell wrote:--

The orthodox High Church sound of the Mitre, the figure and manner of the celebrated Dr. Johnson, the extraordinary power and precision of his conversation, and the pride arising from finding myself admitted as his companion, produced a variety of sensations and a pleasing elevation of mind beyond what I had ever before experienced.

Dear, garrulous, faithful old Bozzy! I have myself seen literary men mentally elevated in the same hallowed atmosphere, but never have I met any who expressed his emotions with nicer precision.

But the first and foremost to me of all Fleet Street's illustrious ghosts--as actual and inevitable a feature of the famous thoroughfare as the taverns, the restaurants, the overhanging signs, the newspaper offices, the Griffin, and the Law Courts--is our old friend and colleague the Bounder.

I cannot walk from Ludgate Circus to the Griffin without meeting him. I see him stalking into Edwards', with solemn visage and weighty stride, for the momentous function of dinner. I see him with beaming countenance and abdominal "Haw, haw!" of full content, nimbly stepping out of Bower's, his "percentage restored" and his soul "satisfied in Nature." I see him striding gloomily with downcast eyes, hands in fob, and bludgeon under his arm, oblivious of the traffic and the world, wrestling in desperate conflict with the reluctant Muses, for a happy phrase or eccentric rhyme.

His Gargantuan figure is never absent from _my_ Fleet Street. Were he to slap me on the back, I should say "Hello, Ned," as naturally as if he had never left us.

Ah me! how we get carried away from those by whose side we would have chosen to fight!

Happily, there is no settled sadness in the Bounder's ghost.

One of the earliest recollections I have of him is connected with a _tête-à-tête_ dinner (the tater-tart came many years after) in one of the Fleet Street taverns.

We had finished our ample meal, when in came my old friend Tom Sutton, of the _Athletic News_, and seeing nothing but empty plates before us, cheerily invited us to dine.

I was about to explain the situation, when the Bounder, to warn me off, winking sideways, affably answered, "All right, old chap. I'll have a steak and a tankard of stout."

This he consumed, together with several accessories and supplements pressed upon his easy acquiescence by our genial host.

At last came the solemn moment

When the banquet's o'er, The dreadful reckoning, and men smile no more.

Tom Sutton looked, and looked again, pulled his moustache, and called the waiter.

"I say," he protested, "there's a mistake here. We haven't had all this."

"Mistake, sir?" said the waiter. "No, dere vas no mistake, sir; I haf charge for dat gentleman all his two dinner. Dat gentleman always have two dinner sometimes. No mistake."

"Two dinners? Why"--

But at that moment Tom looked across the table, saw the Bounder's huge frame shaking with inward chuckles, which rose to a roar as their eyes met, and then he paid and said no more.

The Bounder was of course the Mentor who introduced me to Bower's. I was "up" for a day, and of course we "signified the same in the usual manner."

"Albert," said the Bounder, "bring me a glass of _my_ port--from behind the glue-pot."

I said I would take the same, and put down half a crown.

Albert brought tenpence change.

As I counted it, I began, "I say, is this change"--

The Bounder, who had been watching, at once interrupted me. "Don't expose your untutored provincial ignorance," he said; "tenpence a time. Always have it with provincials. Tenpence left? Order another."

* * * * *

It was soon after the _Clarion_ removed its headquarters to London, that I paid my first visit to the Cheshire Cheese, the primitive tavern, with "nicely sanded floor," which, in a dingy Fleet Street court, still rears its antique head in proud and successful defiance of the gimcrack modern amply-mirrored restaurant.

It was a damp, cold, miserable November night, and I had been tramping with the partner of my joys all day through slush and mire in search of houses.

Looking in for letters at the _Clarion's_ gloomy little office in Bouverie Street, I found Fay crouching disconsolately over a handful of expiring embers in the grate.

He had been ill for many weeks, and had been reduced to a painful diet of buns and milk, but yet, if he might not feast, he could still take an interest in other people's feasting. Doctors could not rob him of that comfort.

So he inquired with touching interest where we proposed to dine.

My Bosom's Lord, with native Cornish trend, asked where was food the cheapest.

"Tut tut," said the Bounder. "Are you blessed with an appetite, yet grudge its entertainment? Is dinner-time a time to think of thrift? Go to, woman. Do you never give thanks? It is Saturday night. The Cheshire Cheese pudding is now on. Take this poor victim of your avarice to the Cheshire Cheese, and let him for once be decently fed."

"All right," answered my frugal spouse; "if it's the Board's orders, and the Board pays, I don't object," and with a laughing "Good-night," she prepared to depart.

But as we were crossing the threshold the Bounder stopped me. "Are you going to the Cheese?" he asked.

"I expect so."

"Hum! and I'm doomed to the bun-and-milk shop." His voice quivered as he spoke. Then suddenly--"No, hang it! I'll come with you. That doctor of mine is an ass. I'll try the pudding."

And he did--several times; though I, in robust health, could stomach no more than one helping of the rich and bilious compound.

As we came out he walked on his heels and slapped his chest. "Haw! haw!" he said, "I never felt better in my life. That doctor is an ass. Bread and milk? Bah!" And he swaggered all the way down Fleet Street.

On the next evening I found him crouching again over the little fire in Bouverie Street. I could feel his "hump" as soon as I opened the door. He was very bad.

"What's the matter, old chap? Don't you feel well?"

"No," he said, very ruefully; "I'm very bad. You know, I begin to think my doctor is a fool. I've been trying this perishing bread-and-milk diet for nearly two months, and, upon my word, I never felt worse. Really, I've given this doctor a fair trial, but, hang it all, the fellow does not understand me at all!"

* * * * *

Oh the gaps left by the passing years in a man's little circle of friends!

Time was when the cordial hand-grip of friends met me in Manchester at every corner, and almost every face in the streets was familiar.

I was there last Christmas, and I walked for half a day without a welcoming voice or smiling countenance to greet me. I thought of them that I had known, and walked with, and drank and eaten with there, and desolation fell upon me. To stroll through the crowded, bustling thoroughfare was like walking through a graveyard at midnight. The buildings loomed upon my gaze like monuments of the departed; and the only inhabitants I saw were spectres of the dead.

It was holiday time, and the passers-by were many. Their laughter sounded in my ears like the sobbing of wind through willows.

Then I fell into a cluster of survivors from the fray, a band of staunch and hearty friends of old, who took me by the hand and "trated me dacent."

"Well, I am glad to see you," said one; then another, then another, and all together in lusty chorus.

That was good.

Then they began to talk. "Do you remember being here with Tom Sutton on such a night? Ah, poor old Tom! His death was an awful shock!"

And, "You heard how Jones's two boys went down in the pleasure yacht? Jones has been out of his wits ever since."

And so on, and so on, till I rejoiced to hear the signal of parting.

We'll have no more of these reminiscences of graves and worms and epitaphs. "Some grief shows much of love; but much of grief shows still some want of wit."

LONDON'S GROWTH

Why, how nowe, Babell, whither wilt thou build? I see old Holbourne, Charing Cross, the Strand, Are going to St. Giles' in the Field. St. Katerne, she takes Wapping by the hand, And Hogsdon will to Hygate ere't be long. London has got a great way from the streame. I think she means to go to Islington, To eat a dish of strawberries and creame.

THOMAS FREEMAN (1614).

"Hogsdon" has come to Hygate long since, as our friend Cartmel, wearily pedalling his bicycle through the up-piled accumulation of dingy streets that divide his slum from my elevated fastness, can sadly testify.

Where will "she" be a hundred years hence?

Where when "she" is finished?

I wonder.

James I. predicted that London would shortly be England and England would be London. Yet London in his time was literally the village that modern facetiousness calls it.

Little more than fifty years ago a magazine writer, bewailing London's vastness, declared that it must on no account be permitted to grow larger. The population was then less than a million and a half.

The monstrous growth which has taken place since then and the stupendous rate of present increase fill the thoughtful observer with dread. The problems of communication and distribution grow year by year more complicated and difficult. The congestion of clever men attracted from all parts of the country by the glitter of the capital, impoverishes the provinces, and fills London with starving unemployed talent, much of which gradually degenerates into hopeless drunkenness, or still more degraded flunkeyism. The surplus artists, sculptors, writers, and actors stagnating and rotting in London would, and should, set up throughout the counties living, healthy, beneficial schools of art, culture, and general enlightenment.

The only comfort visible in the actual distortion is, that by its wholesale exaggeration of the evils afflicting the whole country, it will the more speedily bring a breakdown of the whole system, and so precipitate its own cure. Through the growth of population between 1866 and 1891 the "value" of land in London increased by £110,000,000. Ground in the City is sold at the rate of ten guineas per superficial foot. £16,000,000 a year is drawn as rent of land whose agricultural value is about £16,000 a year. That is to say, the people of London have to pay £50 every year for what would have cost, but for their own industry, only one shilling.

But these are matters for discussion in weightier works than mine. Here I merely skim the surface, and catch the superficial fact.

For instance, I observe that London's growth is steadily destroying London's picturesqueness. The embowered palaces of dukes and earls are giving place, more or less, to workmen's model dwellings; and the spots, such as Charing Cross and Tower Hill, where kings and princes were formerly decapitated in a gentlemanly way, never rise nowadays beyond the breaking of the crowns of rude and clamorous agitators.

Nowhere, in short, is Democracy advancing so visibly as in London; nowhere is it so manifestly pushing back, and crawling over, and supplanting Aristocracy.

Southwark's palaces have been famous for hundreds of years. St. Saviour's Church, where the bones of Fletcher and Massinger and Edmond Shakespeare are laid, was built on the site of a church built before the Norman Conquest, from the profits of a ferry across the Thames. Anne Boleyn had an abode here, and hither rode the enterprising Royal Henry to walk and talk with her. Elizabeth came by water with the French Ambassador to see the bull-baiting in the building near the Globe Theatre.

A famous old London tavern, the Tabard, from which Chaucer's nine-and-twenty pilgrims started on their journey, stood near London Bridge within living memory. In Southwark too, until our time, stood the galleried inn where Mr. Pickwick discovered Sam Weller. In fact, Southwark was, until our time, full of historical associations, and once ranked amongst London's most fashionable suburbs. Now it is a labyrinth of slums, and Barclay & Perkins' brewery occupies the site of the Bankside Globe Theatre.

The narrow thoroughfares between the Strand and the river, where modern provincial visitors have their caravanserais, rustled once with fashionable satins and groaned under the weight of gilded coaches. Here dwelt dukes and earls and the pick of our nobility. Mark Twain, in _The Prince and the Pauper_, has pictured for us a Royal river pageant, such as many bright and flashing eyes must have beheld from the windows and steps of the palaces that lined the Strand or Middlesex bank of the Thames between London and Westminster, for the king's town residence stood hard by in Whitehall; and thence to his country palace at Greenwich--Elizabeth's favourite "Manner of Pleasaunce"--the richly caparisoned and silk-canopied State barges fluttered splendidly.

Now the stateliest craft that ride the Cockney surge are the rackety penny packet and dingily plebeian coal barge.