The rent of the house was £26 a year. It contained two sitting-rooms and four bedrooms, with a kitchen. The parlor, or best sitting-room, was hung with five pieces of fine tapestry; the other sitting-room with gray linsey-woolsey and gilt leather; the bedrooms had hangings of striped cloth. Curtains of green cloth with a green carpet decorated the parlor; the other rooms had green, say, or "sad color" striped curtains. The best bedroom contained a magnificent "wrought" – i. e., carved – bedstead with a canopy, curtains, a valance, and chairs all of the same material. There were three other bedrooms, one for Mr. Arthur, one for the nurse and the baby, unless they slept at the foot of the big bed, and one for the maids. The gardener slept out of the house. The furniture of the parlor consisted of one central table – the dining-table – a table with a drawer, a cupboard, a clock case, a leather chair, a plush chair, six green cloth chairs, and two green stools. The carpet and curtains have been already mentioned; there were no pictures, no cabinets, no book-shelves, no mirrors, no sofas. The other room was more simply furnished with a Spanish table, a plain table, and a few chairs. Two of the bedrooms had looking-glasses, and there was a very generous provision of feather-beds, bolsters, pillows, and blankets, which speaks of comfort for the night.
The inventory of the kitchen furniture is, unfortunately, incomplete. There is no mention at all made of any china-ware. Yet porcelain was by this time in common use. It was made at Bow and at Chelsea. In middle-class houses the master and mistress used it at table, while servants and children still had pewter or even wooden platters. The inventory speaks of porringers, doubtless of wood, of pewter candlesticks – there are no brass candlesticks – of a three-pint pewter pot, of a great and little bowl – for possets and hot spiced ale – and of wooden platters. Nothing is said of silver; there are no silver cups – in the century before this no respectable householder was without one silver mazer at least; there are no silver candlesticks; there is no mention of forks. Now the two-pronged fork of steel was made in Sheffield certainly in the middle of the century. It would be curious if the ordinary household still kept up the old fashion of eating without forks so late as 1677.
Such was the equipment of the house, one sitting-room, and one bedroom handsomely, the rest plainly, furnished.
The first thing which strikes one in the accounts is the enormous consumption of beer. The household drank two kilderkins, or thirty-six gallons, of beer every week! One hundred and forty-four quarts a week! Twenty-one quarts a day! It means nearly three quarts a head. This seems impossible. There must have been some external assistance. Perhaps the master had some kind of farm, or employed other servants. But it is not really impossible. We must remember that there was no tea, that people would not drink water if they could get anything else, and that small beer was the national beverage, taken with every meal, and between meals, and that the allowance was practically à discretion. It was certainly quite possible, and even common, for a man to drink three quarts a day. A hundred years later Benjamin Franklin describes the daily beer-drinking in a London printing-house. The men took a pint before breakfast, a pint with breakfast, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at dinner, a pint at six, and a pint when work was knocked off. This makes three quarts, without counting any beer that might be taken in the evening. In the well-known and often-quoted account of Mr. Hastings (Hutchin's History of Dorsetshire), who lived over a hundred years, it is recorded of him that he would take his glass or two of wine or strong ale at dinner, but that he always had beside him his great "tun-glass" filled with small beer, which he stirred with rosemary. But, even if the men drank three quarts a day, the women could not.
In addition to the small beer, which cost threepence a gallon, there are continual entries of ale at twopence a quart. This was bought at the tavern. There were many kinds of ale, as cock ale, college ale, wormwood ale, sage ale, and scurvy-grass ale, some of them medicated, to be taken at certain seasons of the year. There was also wine, but not much. Occasionally they bought a cask – a tierce of forty-two gallons – and bottled it at home. The kind of wine is not stated. Sometimes they send out to the nearest tavern for a bottle, and it cost a shilling.
The accounts seem to set down everything wanted for the conduct of a house; every week, however, there is an unexplained item, called "cook's bill." This, I think, is the separate account of the servants' table. The "cook's bill" amounts every week to a good sum, a little above or a little below a pound. Perhaps it contained the wages as well as the board. The amount of food entered certainly does not seem enough for the servants as well as the family.
During the winter they bought no fresh beef at all. In November they bought great pieces, thirty, forty, even seventy pounds at a time. This was for the pickling-tub. Boiled beef played a great part in the winter's dinners. If they drank enormous quantities of beer they managed with very little bread. I find that, taking ten consecutive weeks, they spent no more than eight shillings upon bread. The price of wheat was then subject to very great variations. For example:
In other words, it was dearer in 1678 than it is in 1890, and that when the purchasing power of money was four times what it is now. Now it may be reckoned that in a house where there are children the average consumption of bread is at this day ten pounds weight a head. In this household of seven the average consumption was no more than eight pounds altogether. Setting aside the servants, the family had no more than two pounds of bread apiece every week, or four and a half ounces a day, which is one slice not too thick. Oat cake, however, they used in good quantity, so that the bread would be considered as a luxury.
The old vice of the English in eating vast quantities of meat to very little bread or vegetable could no longer be a reproach to them. By this time there was abundance of vegetables of every kind. We are especially told that in the serving of the boiled beef great quantities of vegetables, carrots, parsnips, cauliflowers, cabbage, spinach, beans, peas, etc., were served with it, and so also with other meat. There is no mention of potatoes, though one had always thought that they were firmly established in the country by this time. Their own garden was not able to furnish them with enough fruit or vegetables, which they have to buy constantly. They also buy nosegays in the summer.
The prices of things in the time of Charles the Second, may be found interesting. In considering them, remember, as stated above, that the general purchasing power of money was then four times that of the present time. A leg of mutton generally costs two-and-sixpence; a shoulder, two shillings; a hand of pork, eighteenpence; "a cheese" – they had one every week, but it is not stated how much it weighed – varies from one-and-twopence to one-and-eightpence. Butter is eight or nine pence a pound; they used about a pound a week. Sugar is sixpence a pound. They bought their flour by sixpennyworths, and their coals in small quantities for eighteenpence each week during the winter, so that their fires must have been principally kept going with wood. Once a month the washer-woman is called in, and sheets are washed; therefore, the washing was all done at home. Raisins and currants at twopence a pound, eggs, nutmegs, ginger, mace, rice, suet, etc., proclaim the pudding. It was made in fifty different ways, but the ingredients were always the same, and in this family they evidently had pudding every day. Cakes, also, they had, and pies, both fruit pies and meat pies, and open tarts. These were all sent to the bake-house to be baked at one penny each, so that the kitchen contained no oven. Candles were fivepence a pound, but the entries of candles are so irregular that one suspects the accounts to be imperfect. Herrings were bought nearly every week, and sometimes ling – "a pole of ling." Bacon was sevenpence a pound. Rice was also sevenpence a pound. Oranges came in about December; cherries in their season were twopence a pound; gooseberries, fourpence, sold, I suppose, by the measure; pease, sixpence a peck; beans, fourpence a quart; asparagus ("sparragrasse") was in April excessively dear – we find them giving six shillings and twopence, a most extravagant expenditure for a single dish; two weeks later it has gone down to eighteenpence for two hundred. But how could so careful a housewife spend six and twopence on a single dish? A "sallet" – that is, a lettuce – is one penny. Once in six weeks or so we find mention of "earbs" – that is, thyme, sage, rosemary, etc. – for twopence. "Cowcumbers" are a penny apiece, and a favorite vegetable. Radishes, carrots, turnips, French beans are also bought. In the spring cream-cheese appears. Sweet brier is bought every year, one knows not for what, and roses by the bushel, evidently for rose-water. This is the only allusion to the still-room, which undoubtedly formed part of the ménage. Nothing is said of preserved fruits, home-made wines, distilled waters, or pickles, which then formed a great part of house-keeping. They pickled everything: walnuts, gherkins, asparagus, peaches, cauliflowers, plums, nectarines, onions, lemons, barberries, mushrooms, nasturtium buds, lime-tree buds, oysters, samphire, elder roots. They distilled rose-buds and rose-leaves, lavender, walnut-water, and cherry-water. They always had plague-water handy, hysterical-water, and other sovereign remedies. They "jarred" cherries, quinces, hops, apricots, damsons, and peaches. They made syrups in many pleasing varieties. They knew how to keep green pease, green gooseberries, asparagus, and damsons till Christmas. They made wine out of all the fruits in their season; the art still survives, though the club-man of the town turns up his nose at the delicate cowslip, the robust ginger, and the dainty raspberry – a dessert wine. They potted everything, from pigeon to venison. Nothing is said of these things in the account-books. But the large quantity of vinegar bought every week shows the activity of the pickling department. Only once is there any appearance of spirits. It is when a bottle of brandy is bought, at one shilling and twopence. Perhaps that was used to fortify the raspberry and the currant wines. Very little milk is bought. Sometimes for many months there is no mention of milk. This may have been because their own dairy supplied them. Perhaps, however, milk was only occasionally used in the house. The food of very young children, infants after they were weaned, was not then milk but pap, which I suppose to have been some compound of flour and sugar. There is no mention in the accounts at all of tea, coffee, or chocolate. Tea was already a fashionable drink, but at this time it was sixty shillings a pound – a price which placed it quite beyond the reach of the ordinary household. Coffee was much cheaper; at the coffee-houses it was sold at a penny a cup, but it had not yet got into private houses.
Turning to other things besides food. Schooling "for E. J." was twopence a week. His shoes were one shilling and ninepence the pair. The cobbler who made them was Goodman Archer; Goody Archer was his wife. A letter cost twopence or fourpence; everything bought or ordered was brought by the carrier, which greatly increased the expense; a lady's gloves cost two shillings a pair; her silk stockings, ten shillings, and ordinary stockings, six shillings a pair; her shoes, three shillings; her mask, one shilling; her pattens for muddy weather were two shillings a pair; her knitting-needles cost a penny apiece; her steel bodkin, twopence; her needles, eightpence the half-hundred; her pins, ninepence a thousand; her ribbons, threepence a yard. As for the little things required for the house, they were far dearer than now, considering especially the value of money. For instance, a mop cost a shilling; a pitcher, fivepence; glasses, one shilling and eightpence each; an earthenware pan, fourpence; a broom, sixpence; a mustard-pot, one shilling and sixpence; a padlock, tenpence; a mouse-trap, tenpence; eleven shillings were given for a pair of candlesticks, probably of brass. Holland was two shillings a yard; a "newsbook" cost a penny. On one occasion – only once – it is recorded that the family bought a book. Only one, and then it was so expensive that they could never afford to buy another. This is the entry: "Paid a gentleman for a book, £3 10s. 0d." What book, one asks in wonder, could be worth seventy shillings in the year 1678 – that is, about £15 of present money – to a man who was neither a scholar nor a collector?
The servants were up and took their breakfast at six in the winter and at five in the summer. The family breakfasted at eight. They had, for the most part, cold meat and beer with oat-cake. Pepys tells us of a breakfast of cold turkey-pie and goose – imagine a poor, weak creature of this generation making a breakfast of turkey-pie and goose, or of goose alone, with small beer! At another time he had bread and butter, sweetmeats, and strong drinks. And on another occasion he sat down to a table spread with oysters, anchovies, and neats' tongues, with wine "of all sort."
At two o'clock dinner was served. If it was boiled-beef day, the broth was served in porringers, bread or oat-cake being crumbled into it with herbs. When it was not boiled-beef day, they had fresh meat or poultry (the latter only seldom), and, in season, what are called in the accounts "pateridges" – it really matters little how a bird is spelled, provided it is well cooked and ready to be eaten. The invariable rule of the house was to have two joints a week, mutton, veal, pork, or poultry. This provided four dinners, or perhaps five. The other two or three dinners were consecrated to boiled beef. Calf's head and bacon was (deservedly) a favorite dish; they did not disdain tripe; black puddings were regarded with affection; a hog's cheek was reckoned a toothsome kickshaw; anchovies, prawns, and lobsters are also mentioned with commendation. On most days they had a pudding – the good old English pudding, boiled or baked, with raisins and "currance" in it, flour, eggs, butter, sugar, nutmeg, mace, ginger, suet, and sometimes milk – a famous pudding of which no one was ever tired.
The menu of a dinner where there was company is preserved in Pepys. Everything was served at once. They had marrow-bones, a leg of mutton, three pullets, and a dozen larks in one dish, a tart, a neat's tongue, anchovies, and a dish of prawns, and cheese. This was for thirteen persons.
The dishes were served in pewter, as they are still for the students in the hall of Lincoln's Inn. The supper, of which very little is said, was like the breakfast, but not quite so solid. Cheese played a large part in the supper, and in summer "a sallet" – cost, one penny – or a dish of "redishes" helped out the cold meat. After supper a cool tankard of ale – not small beer – stood within the master's reach while he took his pipe of tobacco. In the winter there was a posset or a toasted crab in the jug.
One is sorry to part with this interesting family, but, unfortunately, further information is lacking; I could give the inventory of the master's linen and that of his wife, but these details want general interest. So they disappear, the master, the mistress, Mr. Arthur, and the baby. Let us hope that they all enjoyed a long life and prospered exceedingly. After pondering so long over their account-books, one seems to know them so well. They have become personal friends. They sit on the green cloth chairs in the room with the green carpet and the green curtains and the fine tapestry. The chairs are high and straight in the back. Madam has her knitting in her lap. The master and Mr. Arthur sit on opposite sides of the fire, their heads adorned with beautiful flowing perriwigs of brown hair, their own color, which they have curled every week at an expense of twopence. They are sipping hot spiced ale and talking of last Sunday morning's sermon. They are grave and responsible people, rather fat in the cheeks because they take so little exercise and so much beer. In the window stands a row of books. Among them was Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Dying, Herrick's Hesperides, Baxter's Saints' Rest, Braithwaite's Arcadian Princess, Milton's Paradise Lost, the first edition in ten books; a Book of Husbandry, a Prophetical Almanack – that of Montelion – and I suppose, if we only knew it, the book for which they paid the "gentleman" £3 10s. – was it a Bible, illustrated? It is only seventeen years since the commonwealth; there are Puritans still; their talk chiefly turns on godly matters; the clamor and the scandal of the Court hardly so much as reaches their ears. The clouds roll over; they are gone. Oh, world of change and fleeting shadows! Whither do they go, the flying shadows, the ghosts, the groups and pictures of the men and women that flit before our eyes when we raise the wizard's wand and conjure up the spirits of the past?
IX
GEORGE THE SECOND
From the accession of the First to the death of the Fourth George very little change took place in the outward appearance or the customs of London and its people. Not that these kings could have had anything to do with the manners or the changes of the City. The first two Georges were Germans who understood not their chief town, and had neither love nor fear for the citizens, such as possessed the Plantagenets, the Tudors, and the Stuarts. There was little change, because the forces that produce change were working slowly. Ideas, for instance, are always changing, but the English people are slow to catch the new ideas. They were born in this country, but they were developed in France, and they produced the French Revolution. For this they were suppressed in England, only to grow and spread more rapidly underground, and to produce changes of a more stable kind than the effervescence of the First Republic.
There was little communication between town and town or between town and country. The rustic never left his native village unless he enlisted. Then he never returned. The mechanic lived out his life over his work on the spot where he was born and where he was brought up. The London shopkeeper never went farther afield than Hampstead, and generally found sufficient change of air at Bagnigge Wells or in Moorfields. If wealth and trade increased, which they did by leaps and bounds, it was still on the old lines: the City jealous of its rights, the masters keeping the wealth for themselves, and the men remaining in silence and submission.
One important change may, however, be noted. The City had by this time ceased altogether to attract the younger sons of the country gentry; the old connection, therefore, between London and the counties was severed. The chief reason was that the continual wars of the century found employment and a career for all the younger sons in the services, and that the value of land went up enormously. Trade was no longer recruited from the better sort, class distinctions were deepened and more sharply defined even among the middle class: a barrister looked down upon a merchant, and would not shake hands with an attorney, while a simple clergyman would not associate with a man in business. Sydney Smith, for instance, refused to stay a night at a country-house because its owner was a banker and a tradesman. The real extent of the contempt with which trade was regarded, and the width of the breach between the court and the City, was illustrated when the corporation entertained the Queen on her accession at Guildhall, when the Lord Mayor and the corporation, the givers of the feast, were actually set down at a lower table separate from the Queen their guest! Think of that other great dinner chronicled above, where the mayor entertained four kings and played cards with them after dinner!
In the picture of London just before the present age we will confine ourselves as much as possible to the life of the bourgeois. For the court, for the life of the aristocracy, the statesmen, the poets, the scholars, the artists – they are sufficiently written about elsewhere. Here we will keep as much as we can to the great mass of the London citizens who know nothing of court and noble, but are sober, hard-working, honest folk, their chief care being to pay their way, avoid bankruptcy, and amass a certain sum of money before they die; their chief subject of admiration being the man who leaves behind him a great fortune made in trade; their chief pleasures being those of the table.
First, for the extent of the City.
London in 1750 was spreading, but not yet rapidly. East and west it spread, not north and south. Eastward the City had thrown out a long arm by the river-side. St. Katherine's Precinct was crowded; streets, two or three deep, stretched along the river-bank as far as Limehouse, but no farther. These were inhabited by the people who made their living on the river. Immediately north of these streets stretched a great expanse of market-gardens and fields. Whitechapel was already a crowded suburb, filled with working-men. This was one of the quarters where the London mob was born and bred, and free from interference of clergy or rich folk. Clerkenwell, with the parts about Smithfield, was another district dear to thieves, pickpockets, and rowdies. Within its boundaries the City was well and carefully ordered. Unfortunately, this order did not extend beyond the walls. Outside there were no companies, no small parishes, no rich merchants, no charities, schools, or endowments, and practically it was without churches.
On the north side, Moorfields still remained an open space; beyond lay Hoxton Fields, White Conduit Fields, Lamb's Conduit Fields, and Marylebone Fields. The suburb of Bloomsbury was beginning. A crowded suburb had sprung up north of the Strand. Westminster was a great city by itself. Southwark, now a borough with half a million people, as great as Liverpool, occupied then a little strip of marshy land not half a mile broad at its widest. East and west, to Lambeth on the one side and to Redriff on the other, was a narrow strip of river-side, dotted with houses and hamlets.
The walls of the City were never formally pulled down. They disappeared bit by bit. Houses were built close to them and upon them: they were covered up. Excavations constantly bring to light some of the foundations. When a church-yard was placed against the wall, as at St. Giles's, Cripplegate, and at St. Alphege, London Wall, some portions were allowed to remain. The course of the wall is perfectly well known, and has often been mapped. It is strange, however, that the corporation should have been so careless as to make no attempt at all to preserve some portions of this most interesting monument.
The gates still stood, and were closed at sunset, until the year 1760. Then they were all pulled down, and the materials sold. Temple Bar, which was never a City gate, properly speaking, remained until the other day. The gates were, I suppose, an obstruction to traffic, yet one regrets their disappearance. They were not old, but they had a character of their own, and they preserved the memory of ancient sites. I wish they could have been preserved to this day. A statue of Queen Elizabeth, which formerly stood on the west front of Lud Gate, is, I believe, the only part of a City gate not destroyed. It is now placed on the south wall of St. Dunstan's, Fleet Street, where thousands pass by every day, regardless of this monument of London before the fire!
I have found, in a pamphlet written (1754) to advocate certain improvements in the City, glimpses of things too petty for the dignity of history, yet not without interest to one who wishes to reconstruct the life of the time. For instance, the streets were not cleaned, except in certain thoroughfares; at the back of the Royal Exchange, for instance, was a scandalous accumulation of filth suffered to remain, and the posterns of the City gates were equally neglected and abused. The rubbish shot into the streets was not cleared away; think of the streets all discharging the duty of the dust-bin! Cellar doors and windows were left open carelessly; stone steps projected from the houses far across the foot-path. Where pavement had been laid down it was suffered to become broken and ruinous, and so left. Houses that had fallen down or been burned down were left unbuilt, an ugly hole in the line of the street. Sheds for shops were placed against the walls of churches, as at St. Antholin's, Budge Row, and at St. Ethelburga's, where they still remain, transformed into houses. Sheds for shops have been built out in the street before the houses in certain places. Houses rebuilt are pushed forward into the street. Live bullocks driven through the streets are a constant danger; mad dogs are another danger – why is there no tax on dogs? Beggars and vagrants swarm in every street. The common people practise habitually a profaneness of speech which is shocking. These are some of the things complained of by my pamphleteer. He next advocates certain improvements. He would establish a public Mercantile Library – we now have it at the Guildhall. He complains that the City gates have been encroached upon and defaced – six years later they were taken down. He shows us that while within the City itself there were oil-lamps set up at regular intervals in all the streets, there were none outside the Freedom. At that time beyond St. Martin's le Grand, and in the district of St. Bartholomew's, the streets were left in darkness absolute. This was shortly afterwards remedied. He wants stronger and stouter men for the City watch, and would have some stationed in different parts of the City in the daytime. That, too, was done, after many years. We must consider that the old theory was that the citizens should in the daytime keep order for themselves. He asks why no wheel carriages are permitted on the north side of St. Paul's. He might ask the same question still, and the answer would be that it is a very great happiness to be able to keep one, if only one, street in London free from carts and omnibuses.
He then proceeds to propose the erection of equestrian statues in various parts of the City. This has now been accomplished, but yet we are not wholly satisfied. He would put up piazzas, porticos, and triumphal arches here and there; he would remove the bars and chains of Holborn, Smithfield, Aldersgate, Bishopsgate, and Whitechapel, and would put up stone piers with the City arms upon them. We have almost forgotten those bars and chains. He proposes a new stone bridge across the river at the mouth of Fleet Ditch. Blackfriars Bridge has been erected there. It is a most instructive pamphlet, written, it is evident, by a man much in advance of his age.
The best description of London about this time is certainly Gay's "Trivia." Witness the following lines on Thames Street:
"O who that rugged street would traverse o'er,
That stretches, O Fleet Ditch, from thy black shore
To the Tow'r's moated walls? Here steams ascend
That, in mixed fumes, the wrinkled nose offend.
Where chandler's cauldrons boil; where fishy prey
Hide the wet stall, long absent from the sea;
And where the cleaver chops the heifer's spoil,
And where huge hogsheads sweat with trainy oil;
Thy breathing nostril hold: but how shall I
Pass, where in piles Carnavian cheeses lie;
Cheese, that the table's closing rites denies,
And bids me with th' unwilling chaplain, rise?"
If you were to ask any person specially interested in the Church of England – not necessarily a clergyman of that Church – which was the deadest and lowest and feeblest period in the history of the Anglican Church, he would, without the least hesitation, reply that the reign of George the Second covered that period. This is universally accepted. I think, however, that one may show, without much trouble, that this belief is not based upon inquiry into the facts of the time. The Church of George the Second did not, it is true, greatly resemble that of this generation: it had its own customs, and it had its own life. It is certain that the churches were what is commonly called "ugly" – that is to say, they were built by Wren, or were imitations of his style, and had nothing to do with Early English, or Decorated, or even Perpendicular. Also, it is certain that the congregations sat in pews, each family by itself; that there were some few pews of greater dignity than others, where sat my Lord Mayor, or the aldermen, or the sheriffs, or the masters of City companies. It is also certain that all the churches had galleries; that the services were performed from a "three-decker;" that the sermon was preached in a black gown, and that the clergyman called himself a minister, and not a priest. All these things are abominations to some of us in the latter half of the nineteenth century. There were also pluralists; the poor were left very much to themselves, and the parish was not "worked" according to modern ideas. There were no mothers' meetings, no day in the country, no lectures and tea-meetings; no activity; no "working," in fact, at all. But was it quite a dead time? Let us see.
There were at that time a hundred and nine parish churches in London and Westminster. At forty-four of these there was daily service – surely this is a recognized indication of some religious activity – at one of these there were three daily services; at all of them – the whole hundred and nine – there were services every Wednesday and Friday, and on all holy days and saints' days. There were endowments for occasional sermons in nearly every church. So much of the Puritan spirit remained that the sermon was still considered the most important part of Church service; in other words, sound doctrine being then held to be essential to salvation, instruction in doctrine was considered of far greater importance than prayer or praise; a fact which quite sufficiently accounts for the slovenly character of Church services down to thirty or forty years ago. The singing, observe, might be deplorable, but the sermon – the essential – was sound.