

Transcribed from the 1860 William Tinsley edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org





                              ABOUT LONDON.


                                * * * * *

                                    BY

                            J. EWING RITCHIE,

          Author of "Night Side of London;" "The London Pulpit;"
                     "Here and There in London," &c.

                                * * * * *

                                * * * * *

             "The boiling town keeps secrets ill."--AURORA LEIGH.

                                * * * * *

                                * * * * *

                                 LONDON:
                      WILLIAM TINSLEY, 314, STRAND.
                                  1860.




ADVERTISEMENT.


The author of the following pages, must plead as his apology for again
trespassing on the good nature of the public, the success of his other
books.  He is aware that, owing to unavoidable circumstances, the volume
here and there bears marks of haste, but he trusts that on the whole it
may be considered reliable, and not altogether unworthy of the public
favour.

                                * * * * *

FINCHLEY,
      _June_ 16_th_, 1860.




CONTENTS.

                      CHAPTER I.                             PAGE.
NEWSPAPER PEOPLE                                                 1
                     CHAPTER II.
SPIRITUALISM                                                    12
                     CHAPTER III.
ABOUT COAL                                                      23
                     CHAPTER IV.
HIGHGATE                                                        44
                      CHAPTER V.
TOM TIDDLER'S GROUND                                            60
                     CHAPTER VI.
WESTMINSTER ABBEY                                               68
                     CHAPTER VII.
LONDON CHARITIES                                                76
                    CHAPTER VIII.
PEDESTRIANISM                                                   84
                     CHAPTER IX.
OVER LONDON BRIDGE                                              92
                      CHAPTER X.
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS AND THE EARLY-CLOSING MOVEMENT            101
                     CHAPTER XI.
TOWN MORALS                                                    110
                     CHAPTER XI.
THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED                                     121
                     CHAPTER XII.
LONDON MATRIMONIAL                                             131
                    CHAPTER XIII.
BREACH OF PROMISE CASES                                        141
                     CHAPTER XIV.
COMMERCIAL LONDON                                              149
                     CHAPTER XV.
LONDON GENTS                                                   158
                     CHAPTER XVI.
THE LONDON VOLUNTEERS                                          165
                    CHAPTER XVII.
CRIMINAL LONDON                                                174
                    CHAPTER XVIII.
CONCERNING CABS                                                185
                     CHAPTER XIX.
FREE DRINKING FOUNTAINS                                        193
                     CHAPTER XX.
CONCLUSION                                                     203



CHAPTER I.
NEWSPAPER PEOPLE.


What would the Englishman do without his newspaper I cannot imagine.  The
sun might just as well refuse to shine, as the press refuse to turn out
its myriads of newspapers.  Conversation would cease at once.  Brown,
with his morning paper in his hand, has very decided opinions
indeed,--can tell you what the French Emperor is about,--what the Pope
will be compelled to do,--what is the aim of Sardinia,--and what is
Austria's little game.  I dined at Jenkins's yesterday, and for three
hours over the wine I was compelled to listen to what I had read in that
morning's _Times_.  The worst of it was, that when I joined the ladies I
was no better off, as the dear creatures were full of the particulars of
the grand Rifle Ball.  When I travel by the rail, I am gratified with
details of divorce cases--of terrible accidents--of dreadful
shipwrecks--of atrocious murders--of ingenious swindling, all brought to
light by means of the press.  What people could have found to talk about
before the invention of newspapers, is beyond my limited comprehension.
They must have been a dull set in those dark days; I suppose the farmers
and country gentlemen talked of bullocks, and tradespeople about trade;
the ladies about fashions, and cookery, and the plague of bad servants.
We are wonderfully smarter now, and shine, though it be with a borrowed
light.

A daily newspaper is, to a man of my way of thinking, one of the most
wonderful phenomena of these latter days.  It is a crown of glory to our
land.  It is true, in some quarters, a contrary opinion is held.  "The
press," Mr. David Urquhart very seriously tells us, "is an invention for
the development of original sin."  In the opinion of that amiable cynic,
the late Mr. Henry Drummond, a newspaper is but a medium for the
circulation of gossip; but, in spite of individuals, the general fact
remains that the press is not merely a wonderful organization, but an
enormous power in any land--in ours most of all, where public opinion
rules more or less directly.  Our army in the Crimea was saved by the
_Times_.  When the _Times_ turned, free-trade was carried.  The _Times_
not long since made a panic, and securities became in some cases utterly
unsaleable, and some seventy stockbrokers were ruined.  The _Times_ says
we don't want a Reform Bill, and Lord John can scarce drag his measure
through the Commons.  But it is not of the power, but of the organization
of the press I would speak.  According to geologists, ages passed away
before this earth of ours became fit for human habitation; volcanic
agencies were previously to be in action--plants and animals, that exist
not now, were to be born, and live, and die--tropical climates were to
become temperate, and oceans, solid land.  In a similar way, the
newspaper is the result of agencies and antecedents almost equally
wondrous and remote.  For ages have science, and nature, and man been
preparing its way.  Society had to become intellectual--letters had to be
invented--types had to be formed--paper had to be substituted for
papyrus--the printing-press had to become wedded to steam--the
electric-telegraph had to be discovered, and the problem of liberty had
to be solved, in a manner more or less satisfactory, before a newspaper,
as we understand the word, could be; and that we have the fruit of all
this laid on our breakfast-table every morning, for at the most
five-pence, and at the least one-penny, is wonderful indeed.  But,
instead of dwelling on manifest truisms, let us think awhile of a
newspaper-office, and those who do business there.  Externally, there is
nothing remarkable in a newspaper-office.  You pass by at night, and see
many windows lighted with gas, that is all.  By daylight there is nothing
to attract curiosity, indeed, in the early part of the day, there is
little going on at a newspaper-office.  When you and I are hard at work,
newspaper people are enjoying their night; when you and I are asleep,
they are hard at work for us.  They have a hot-house appearance, and are
rarely octogenarians.  The conscientious editor of a daily newspaper can
never be free from anxiety.  He has enough to do to keep all to their
post; he must see that the leader-writers are all up to the mark--that
the reporters do their duty--that the literary critic, and the theatrical
critic, and the musical critic, and the city correspondent, and the
special reporter, and the host of nameless contributors, do not
disappoint or deceive the public, and that every day the daily sheet
shall have something in it to excite, or inform, or improve.  But while
you and I are standing outside, the editor, in some remote suburb, is, it
may be, dreaming of pleasanter things than politics and papers.  One man,
however, is on the premises, and that is the manager.  He represents the
proprietors, and is, in his sphere, as great a man as the editor.  It is
well to be deferential to the manager.  He is a wonder in his
way,--literary man, yet man of business.  He must know everybody, be able
at a moment's notice to pick the right man out, and send him, it may be,
to the Antipodes.  Of all events that are to come off in the course of
the year, unexpected or the reverse, he must have a clear and distinct
perception, that he may have eye-witnesses there for the benefit of the
British public.  He, too, must contrive, so that out-goings shall not
exceed receipts, and that the paper pays.  He must be active, wide-awake,
possessed of considerable tact, and if, when an Irish gentleman, with a
big stick, calls and asks to see the editor or manager, he knows how to
knock a man down, so much the better.  Of course, managers are not
required for the smaller weeklies.  In some of the offices there is very
little subdivision of labour.  The editor writes the leaders and reviews,
and the sub-editor does the paste-and-scissors work.  But let us return
to the daily paper;--outside of the office of which we have been so rude
as to leave the reader standing all this while.

At present there is no sign of life.  It is true, already the postman has
delivered innumerable letters from all quarters of the globe--that the
electric telegraph has sent its messages--that the railways have brought
their despatches--that the publishers have furnished books of all sorts
and sizes for review--and that tickets from all the London exhibitions
are soliciting a friendly notice.  There let them lie unheeded, till the
coming man appears.  Even the publisher, who was here at five o'clock in
the morning, has gone home: only a few clerks, connected with the
financial department of the paper, or to receive advertisements, are on
the spot.  We may suppose that somewhere between one and two the first
editorial visit will be paid, and that then this chaos is reduced to
order; and that the ideas, which are to be represented in the paper of
to-morrow, are discussed, and the daily organs received, and gossip of
all sorts from the clubs--from the house--from the city--collected and
condensed; a little later perhaps assistants arrive--one to cull all the
sweets from the provincial journals--another to look over the files of
foreign papers--another it may be to translate important documents.  The
great machine is now getting steadily at work.  Up in the composing-room
are printers already fingering their types.

In the law-courts, a briefless barrister is taking notes--in the
police-courts, reporters are at work, and far away in the city, "our city
correspondent" is collecting the commercial news of the hour--and in all
parts of London penny-a-liners, like eagles scenting carrion, are
ferreting out for the particulars of the last "extraordinary elopement,"
or "romantic suicide."  The later it grows the more gigantic becomes the
pressure.  The parliamentary reporters are now furnishing their quota;
gentlemen who have been assisting at public-dinners come redolent of
post-prandial eloquence, which has to be reduced to sense and grammar.
It is now midnight, and yet we have to wait the arrival of the close of
the parliamentary debate, on which the editor must write a leader before
he leaves; and the theatrical critic's verdict on the new play.  In the
meanwhile the foreman of the printers takes stock, being perfectly aware
that he cannot perform the wonderful feat of making a pint bottle hold a
quart.  Woe is me! he has already half a dozen columns in excess.  What
is to be done?  Well, the literature must stand over, that's very clear,
then those translations from the French will do to-morrow, and this
report will also not hurt by delay--as to the rest, that must be cut down
and still further condensed; but quickly, for time is passing, and we
must be on the machine at three.  Quickly fly the minutes--hotter becomes
the gas-lit room--wearier the editorial staff.  But the hours bring
relief.  The principal editor has done his leader and departed--the
assistants have done the same--so have the reporters, only the sub-editor
remains, and as daylight is glimmering in the east, and even fast London
is asleep, he quietly lights a cigar, and likewise departs; the printers
will follow as soon as the forms have gone down, and the movements below
indicate that the machine, by the aid of steam, is printing.

We have thus seen most of the newspaper people off the premises.  As we
go out into the open air, we may yet find a few of them scorning an
ignoble repose.  For instance, there is a penny-a-liner--literally he is
not a penny-a-liner, as he is generally paid three-farthings a line, and
very good pay that is, as the same account, written on very thin paper,
called flimsy, is left at all the newspaper-offices, which, if they all
insert, they all pay for, and one short tale may put the penny-a-liner in
funds for a week.  The penny-a-liner has long been the butt of a
heartless world.  He ought to be a cynic, and I fear is but an
indifferent Christian, and very so-so as head of a family.  His
appearance is somewhat against him, and his antecedents are eccentric;
his face has a beery appearance; his clothes are worn in defiance of
fashion; neither his hat nor his boots would be considered by a swell as
the correct stilton; you would scarce take him as the representative of
the potent fourth estate.  Yet penny-a-liner's rise; one of them is now
the editor of a morning paper; another is the manager of a commercial
establishment, with a salary of almost a thousand a year; but chiefly, I
imagine, they are jolly good fellows going down the hill.  Charles Lamb
said he never greatly cared for the society of what are called good
people.  The penny-a-liners have a similar weakness; they are true
Bohemians, and are prone to hear the chimes at midnight.  Literally, they
take no thought for to-morrow, and occasionally are put to hard shifts.
Hence it is sub-editors have to be on their guard with their dealings
with them.  Their powers of imagination and description are great.  They
are prone to harrow up your souls with horrors that never existed; and as
they are paid by the line, a harsh prosaic brevity is by no means their
fault.  Occasionally they take in the papers.  Not long since a most
extraordinary breach of promise case went the round of the evening
papers, which was entirely a fiction of the penny-a-liners.  Yet let us
not think disparagingly of them--of a daily newspaper no small part is
the result of their diligent research.  And if they do occasionally
indulge in fiction, their fictions are generally founded on fact.  The
reader, if he be a wise man, will smile and pass on--a dull dog will take
the matter seriously and make an ass of himself.  For instance, only this
very year, there was a serious controversy about Disraeli's literary
piracies, as they were called in the _Manchester Examiner_.  It appears a
paragraph was inserted in an obscure London journal giving an account of
an evening party at Mr. Gladstone's, at which Mr. Disraeli had been
present--an event just as probable as that the Bishop of Oxford would
take tea at Mr. Spurgeon's.  Mr. Disraeli's remarks were reported, and
the paragraph--notwithstanding its glaring absurdity--was quoted in the
_Manchester Examiner_.  Some acute reader remembered to have read a
similar conversation attributed to Coleridge, and immediately wrote to
the _Examiner_ to that effect.  The letter was unhandsomely inserted with
a bold heading,--several letters were inserted on the same subject, and
hence, just because a poor penny-a-liner at his wits' end doctored up a
little par, and attributed a very old conversation to Mr. Disraeli, the
latter is believed in Cottonopolis guilty of a piracy, Cottonopolis being
all the more ready to believe this of Mr. Disraeli, as the latter
gentleman is at the head of a party not supposed to be particularly
attached to the doctrines of what are termed the Manchester School.
Really editors and correspondents should be up to these little dodges,
and not believe all they see in print.

I would also speak of another class of newspaper people--the newspaper
boy, agile as a lamp-lighter, sharp in his glances as a cat.  The
newspaper boy is of all ages, from twelve to forty, but they are all
alike, very disorderly, and very ardent politicians; and while they are
waiting in the publishing-office for their papers they are prone to
indulge in political gossip, after the manner of their betters at the
west-end clubs.  On the trial of Bernard, the excitement among the
newspaper boys was very great.  I heard some of them, on the last day of
the trial, confess to having been too excited all that day to do
anything; their admiration of the speech of Edwin James was intense.  A
small enthusiast near me said to another, "That ere James is the fellow
to work 'em; didn't he pitch hin to the hemperor?"

"Yes," said a sadder and wiser boy; "yes, he's all werry well, but he'd a
spoke on t'other side just as well if he'd been paid."

"No; would he?"

"Yes, to be sure."

"Well, that's wot I call swindling."

"No, it ain't.  They does their best.  Them as pays you, you works for."

Whether the explanation was satisfactory I can't say, as the small boy's
master's name was called, and he vanished with "two quire" on his
youthful head.  But generally these small boys prefer wit to politics;
they are much given to practical jokes at each other's expense, and have
no mercy for individual peculiarities.  Theirs is a hard life, from five
in the morning, when the daily papers commence publishing, to seven in
the evening, when the second edition of the _Sun_ with the _Gazette_
appears.  What becomes of them when they cease to be newspaper boys, must
be left to conjecture.  Surely such riotous youths can never become
tradesmen in a small way, retailers of greens, itinerant dealers in coal.
Do not offend these gentry if you are a newspaper proprietor.  Their
power for mischief is great.  At the _Illustrated __News_ office I have
seen a policeman required to reduce them to order.

Finally, of all newspaper people, high or low, let me ask the public to
speak charitably.  They are hard-worked, they are not over-paid, and some
of them die prematurely old.  Ten years of night-work in the office of a
daily newspaper is enough to kill any man, even if he has the
constitution of a horse; one can't get on without them; and it is a sad
day for his family when Paterfamilias misses his paper.  Whigs, tories,
prelates, princes, valiant warriors, and great lawyers, are not so
essential to the daily weal of the public, as newspaper people.  In other
ways they are useful--the great British naturalist, Mr. Yarell, was a
newspaper vendor.




CHAPTER II.
SPIRITUALISM.


In the _Morning Star_, a few months since, appeared a letter from William
Howitt, intimating that if the religious public wished to hear a man
truly eloquent and religious, a Christian and a genius, they could not do
better than go and hear the Rev. Mr. Harris.  Accordingly, one Sunday in
January, we found ourselves part of a respectable congregation, chiefly
males, assembled to hear the gentleman aforesaid.  The place of meeting
was the Music Hall, Store-street; the reverend gentleman occupying the
platform, and the audience filling up the rest of the room.  It is
difficult to judge of numbers, but there must have been four or five
hundred persons present.  Mr. Harris evidently is an American, is, we
should imagine, between thirty and forty, and with his low black
eye-brows, and black beard, and sallow countenance, has not a very
prepossessing appearance.  He had very much of the conventional idea of
the methodist parson.  I do not by this imply that the conventional idea
is correct, but simply that we have such a conventional idea, and that
Mr. Harris answers to it.  As I have intimated that I believe Mr. Harris
is an American, I need not add that he is thin, and that his figure is of
moderate height.  The subject on which he preached was the axe being laid
at the foot of the tree, and at considerable length--the sermon lasted
more than an hour--the reverend gentleman endeavoured to show that men
lived as God was in them, and that we were not to judge from a few
outward signs that God was in them, and, as instances of men filled and
inspired by God's Spirit, we had our Saxon Alfred, Oliver Cromwell, and
Florence Nightingale.  In the prayer and sermon of the preacher there was
very little to indicate that he was preaching a new gospel.  The
principal thing about him was his action, which, in some respects,
resembled that of the great American Temperance orator, Mr. Gough.  Mr.
Harris endeavours as much as possible to dramatise his sermon.  He stands
on tiptoe, or he sinks down into his desk, he points his finger, and
shrugs up his shoulders.  He has a considerable share of poetical and
oratorical power, but he does not give you an idea of much literary
culture.  He does not bear you away "far, far above this lower world, up
where eternal ages roll."  You find that it was scarce worth while coming
all the way from New York to London, unless the Rev. Gentleman has much
more to say, and in a better manner, than the sermon delivered in
Store-street.  Of course I am not a Spiritualist.  I am one of the
profane--I am little better than one of the wicked, though I, and all men
who are not beasts, feel that man is spirit as well as flesh; that he is
made in the image of his Maker; that the inspiration of the Almighty
giveth him understanding.  Spiritualism in this sense is old as Adam and
Eve, old as the day when Jehovah, resting from his labours, pronounced
them to be good.  But this is not the Spiritualism of Mr. Harris, and of
the organ of his denomination, _The Spiritual Magazine_.  That spirits
appear to us--that they move tables--that they express their meaning by
knocks, form the great distinctive peculiarity of Spiritualism, and they
are things which people in our days are many of them more and more
beginning to believe.  At any rate the Spiritualists of the new school
ought not to be angry with us.  Mr. Howitt writes, "Moles don't believe
in eagles, nor even skylarks; they believe in the solid earth and
earth-worms;--things which soar up into the air, and look full at the
noon sun, and perch on the tops of mountains, and see wide prospect of
the earth and air, of men and things, are utterly incomprehensible, and
therefore don't exist, to moles.  Things which, like skylarks, mount also
in the air, to bathe their tremulous pinions in the living aether, and in
the floods of golden sunshine, and behold the earth beneath; the more
green, and soft, and beautiful, because they see the heavens above them,
and pour out exulting melodies which are the fruits and streaming
delights of and in these things, are equally incomprehensible to moles,
which, having only eyes of the size of pins' heads, and no ears that
ordinary eyes can discover, neither _can_ see the face of heaven, nor
hear the music of the spheres, nor any other music.  Learned pigs don't
believe in pneumatology, nor in astronomy, but in gastronomy.  They
believe in troughs, pig-nuts, and substantial potatoes.  Learned pigs
_see_ the wind, or have credit for it--but that other [Greek text], which
we translate SPIRIT, they most learnedly ignore.  Moles and learned pigs
were contemporaries of Adam, and have existed in all ages, and,
therefore, they _know_ that there are no such things as eagles, or
skylarks and their songs; no suns, skies, heavens, and their orbs, or
even such sublunary objects as those we call men and things.  They _know_
that there is nothing real, and that there are no genuine entities, but
comfortable dark burrows, earthworms, pig-troughs, pig-nuts, potatoes,
and the like substantials."  If this be so,--and Mr. Howitt is an old man
and ought to know, especially when he says there are not in London at
this time half-a-dozen literary or scientific men who, had they lived in
Christ's time, would have believed in him--well, there is no hope for us.
Spiritualism is beyond our reach; it is a thing too bright for us.  It is
high, we cannot attain unto it.  The other Sunday night, Mr. Harris was
very spiritual, at any rate, very impractical and unworldly.  At the
close of the service he informed us that some few of his sermons,
containing an outline of his religious convictions, were for sale at the
doors, and would be sold at one penny and a half, a mere insignificant
sum, just sufficient to cover the expense of paper and printing.  On
inquiring, we found, of the three sermons, one was published at
three-halfpence, one at twopence, and one at fourpence, prices which, if
we may judge by the copy we purchased, would yield a fair profit, if the
sale were as great as it seemed to be on Sunday night.

But Mr. Harris is a poet--there is not such another in the universe.
_The Golden Age_ opens thus:--

    "As many ages as it took to form
    The world, it takes to form the human race.
    Humanity was injured at its birth,
    And its existence in the past has been
    That of a suffering infant.  God through Christ
    Appearing, healed that sickness, pouring down
    Interior life: so Christ our Lord became
    The second Adam, through whom all shall live.
    This is our faith.  The world shall yet become
    The home of that great second Adam's seed;
    Christ-forms, both male and female, who from Him
    Derive their ever-growing perfectness,
    Eventually shall possess the earth,
    And speak the rythmic language of the skies,
    And mightier miracles than His perform;
    They shall remove all sickness from the race,
    Cast out all devils from the church and state,
    And hurl into oblivion's hollow sea
    The mountains of depravity.  Then earth,
    From the Antarctic to the Arctic Pole,
    Shall blush with flowers; the isles and continents
    Teem with harmonic forms of bird and beast,
    And fruit, and glogious shapes of art more fair
    Than man's imagination yet conceived,
    Adorn the stately temples of a new
    Divine religion.  Every human soul
    A second Adam, and a second Eve,
    Shall dwell with its pure counterpart, conjoined
    In sacramental marriage of the heart.
    God shall be everywhere, and not, as now,
    Guessed at, but apprehended, felt and known."--p. 1.

I will take, says Mr. Howitt, as a fair specimen of the poetry and broad
Christian philosophy of this spiritual epic, the recipe for writing a
poem.  In this, we see how far the requirements of Spiritualism are
beyond the standard of the requirements of the world in poetry.  They
include the widest gatherings of knowledge, and still wider and loftier
virtues and sympathies.

    "To write a poem, man should be as pure
    As frost-flowers; every thought should be in tune
    To heavenly truth, and Nature's perfect law,
    Bathing the soul in beauty, joy, and peace.
    His heart should ripen like the purple grape;
    His country should be all the universe;
    His friends the best and wisest of all time.
    He should be universal as the light,
    And rich as summer in ripe-fruited love.
    He should have power to draw from common things
    Essential truth!--and, rising o'er all fear
    Of papal devils and of pagan gods,
    Of ancient Satans, and of modern ghosts,
    Should recognise all spirits as his friends,
    And see the worst but harps of golden strings
    Discordant now, but destined at the last
    To thrill, inspired with God's own harmony,
    And make sweet music with the heavenly host.
    He should forget his private preference
    Of country or religion, and should see
    All parties and all creeds with equal eye;
    His the religion of true harmony;
    Christ the ideal of his lofty aim;
    The viewless Friend, the Comforter, and Guide,
    The joy in grief, whose every element
    Of life received in child-like faith,
    Becomes a part of impulse, feeling, thought--
    The central fire that lights his being's sun.
    He should not limit Nature by the known;
    Nor limit God by what is known of him;
    Nor limit man by present states and moods;
    But see mankind at liberty to draw
    Into their lives all Nature's wealth, and all
    Harmonious essences of life from God,
    And so, becoming god-like in their souls,
    And universal in their faculties,
    Informing all their age, enriching time,
    And blinding up the temple of the world
    With massive structures of eternity.
    He shall not fail to see how infinite
    God is above humanity, nor yet
    That God is throned in universal man,
    The greater mind of pure intelligence,
    Unlimited by states, moods, periods, creeds,
    Self-adequate, self-balanced in his love,
    And needing nothing and conferring all,
    And asking nothing and receiving all,
    Akin by love to every loving heart,
    By nobleness to every noble mind,
    By truth to all who look through natural forms,
    And feel the throbbing arteries of law
    In every pulse of nature and of man."

The peculiar doctrine of the Spiritualists seems to be the belief in
Spiritual intercourse, and in mediums; as _The Spiritual Magazine_ tells
us "the only media we know accessible to the public are Mrs. Marshal and
her niece, of 22, Red Lion-street, Holborn," we need not give ourselves
much trouble about them.  Concerning intercourse with departed spirits,
an American Judge writes, "The first thing demonstrated to us is that we
can commune with the spirits of the departed; that such communion is
through the instrumentality of persons yet living; that the fact of
mediumship is the result of physical organization; that the kind of
communion is affected by moral causes, and that the power, like our other