Sound doctrine. That was the one thing needful. It trampled on everything else. Of commercial morality, of the duties and responsibilities of masters towards servants, of any rights possessed by the producers either in their produce or in their government, or in their power to better their position, not one word was ever said. The same men who would gravely and earnestly and with fervent prayers discuss the meaning of a text, would take a share in a slaver bound for the Guinea Coast and Jamaica, or go out to watch the flogging of a wretch at the cart-tail, or the hanging of a poor woman for stealing a loaf of bread, without a thought that they were doing or witnessing anything but what was right and laudable. The same men would cheerfully pay their servants wages just enough to live upon and make tenfold, twentyfold profit to themselves, and think they were doing God service. So far the religious life of the century was low and feeble. But the science of morals advances; it has very little indeed to do with sound doctrine, but a great deal with human brotherhood; could we look into the middle of the next century we should perhaps shudder to discover how we ourselves will be regarded as inhuman sweaters and oppressors of the poor. Let us, therefore, cease to speak of our forefathers with contempt. They had their religion; it differed from ours; we have ours, and our grandchildren's will differ from that.
There were no Sunday-schools. These came in towards the end of the century; still there were schools in almost every parish in the City. At these schools the children were instructed in the rudiments of the Christian faith. Why, the free-schools of the City, without counting the great grammar-schools of St. Paul's, Merchant Taylors', Charter House, Christ's Hospital, the Mercers', St. Olave's, and St. Saviour's, gave instruction to five thousand boys and half that number of girls. There was not a poor boy of respectable parents in the whole City, I believe, who could not receive a sound education – quite as good as he would now get at a Board School, and on Sunday he had to go to church and was duly catechised.
The theory of parish organization in the last century was very simple, yet it was effective. The parishes were small – some of them tiny in their dimensions – so that, although they were densely populated, the rector or vicar knew every soul that belonged to his church. The affairs of the people – the care of the poor – were provided for by the companies. The children were taught at the free-schools or the grammar-schools. At fourteen a boy was made a prentice, and entered some livery. Once in a company, his whole life was assured. He would get regular work; he would have the wages due; he would marry; his children would be cared for as he had been. He would be looked after not by the Church – that was not the function of the Church – but by his company, in sickness and in age, as well as in time of strength and work. Every Sunday, Wednesday, Friday, and holy day there were services, with sermons; but we need not suppose that the working-man considered it his duty to flock to the week-day services. On Sunday, of course, he went, because the whole parish was expected to be in church. They did attend. Station and order were preserved within the church as without. The rich merchants and the masters sat in the most beautiful pews possible to conceive, richly carved with blazoned shields and figures in white and gold, with high backs, above which the tops of the wigs proudly nodded. These pews were gathered about the pulpit, which was itself a miracle of carved work, though perhaps it was only a box stuck onto the wall. The altar, the walls, the galleries were all adorned with wood-carvings. Under the galleries and in the aisles, on plain benches, sat the folk who worked for wages, the bedesmen and bedeswomen, and the charity children. The retail people, who kept the shops, had less eligible pews behind their betters. They left the church in order, the great people first, then the lesser, and then the least. No order and rank – all to be equal – in the house of the Lord? Nonsense! How could that be allowed when He has ordained that they shall be unequal outside His house? The notion of equality in the Church is quite a modern idea. It is not yet accepted, though here and there it is tolerated. It is, in fact, revolutionary; it is subversive of rank. Are we to understand that it is as easy for a pauper to get into the kingdom of heaven as a prince? We may say so, but, my friends, no prince will ever be got to believe it.
An excellent example of a last-century church is to be seen in Thames Street. It is the Church of All Hallows the Great. The building is a square room, with no beauty except that of proportion; it is rich in wood-carvings; the pulpit, lavishly adorned with precious work, ought to belong to some great cathedral; it has got a screen of carved wood right across the church which is most beautiful. The old arrangement of the last century is still preserved; the pulpit is placed against the middle of the wall; the pews of the merchants are gathered about, while the pews of the common people are those nearest to the communion table. Formerly the latter were appropriated to the watermen's apprentices. These youths, once the hope of the Thames, sat with their backs to the table, and have left the record of their presence in their initials carved with dates on the sloping book-stand. There they are, "J. F. 1710," "B. R. 1734," with a rude carving of a ship, showing how they beguiled the tedium of the sermon. The arrangement of the pews illustrates the importance in which the sermon was held. The people, as at Paul's Cross, gathered about the preacher. The modern impatience with which the sermon is received is mainly owing to the fact that we no longer feel so strongly the importance of sound doctrine; we have come to think, more or less clearly, that the future of a man cannot possibly depend upon the question whether he has at any time expressed assent or consent to certain doctrines which he is wholly incapable of understanding. We see around us so many forms of creed that we have grown careless, or tolerant, or contemptuous, or charitable concerning doctrine.
There were penalties for absence from service. A man who stayed away was liable to the censure of the Church, with a fine of one shilling for every offence. He was called upon to prove where he had been to church, because it was not thought possible that anybody should stay away from service altogether. If a person harbored in his house one who did not attend the parish church, he was liable to a fine of £20 a month; the third part of the fine being given to the informer. I do not suppose that these laws were ever rigidly enforced; otherwise the Nonconformists would have cried out oftener and louder. But their spirit remained. During the week, the parish, save for the services, was left to take care of itself. There were no visits, no concerts, no magic lanterns, no Bible classes, no missionary meeting – nothing – everybody attended to his own business. The men worked all day long; the women looked after the house all day long; in the evenings the taverns were crowded; there were clubs of all kinds; everybody took his tobacco and his glass at a tavern or a club, and no harm was thought of it.
For the old people there were almshouses, and there was the bounty of the companies. And since there must be always poor people among us, there were doles in every parish. Special cases were provided for as they arose by the merchants themselves. Finally, if one was sick or dying, the clergyman went to read the office appointed for the sick; and when one died, he read the office appointed for the dead.
All this is simple and intelligible. The Church provided instruction in doctrine for old and young, forms of prayer, consolation in sickness, baptism, communion, and burial for all; some churches had charitable endowments; the rest was left to the parishioners themselves. This is not quite the modern idea of the parish, but it seems to have worked as well as our own practice. Their clergyman was a divine, and nothing more; ours undertakes the care of the poor first of all; he is the administrator of charity; he is, next, the director of schools, the organizer of amusements, the leader of athletics, the trainer of the choir, the president of musical societies, the founder of working-lad's institutes; he also reads the service at church, and he preaches a short sermon every Sunday; but the latter functions are not much regarded by his people. Their clergyman was a divine; he was therefore a scholar. Therein lies the whole difference. We have no divines now, and very few scholars among the parish clergy, or even among the bishops. Here and there one or two divines are found upon the Episcopal bench, and one or two at Oxford and Cambridge; in the parish churches, none. We do not ask for divines, or even for preachers; we want organizers, administrators, athletes, and singers. And the only reason for calling the time of George the Second a dead time for the Church seems to be that its clergy were not like our own.
Let us walk abroad and view the streets. They are changed, indeed, since Stow led us from St. Andrew's Undershaft to St. Paul's. The old gabled houses are all gone, except in the narrow limits of that part spared by the fire; in their places are tall houses with large sash windows and flat façade. Within, they are wainscoted, the fashion of tapestry having completely gone out. Foot-passengers are protected by rows of posts at intervals of four or five feet. Flat paving-stones are not in general use, and those that have been laid down are small and insecure. The shops are small, and there is little pretence at displaying the goods; they have, however, all got windows in front. A single candle, or two at the most, illuminate the wares in the evening or the short afternoons of winter. A sign hangs out over every door. The drawing of St. Dunstan's in the West shows that part of Fleet Street before the paving-stones were laid down. The only pavement both for the road and the footway consisted of large, round pebbles, over which the rolling of the vehicles made the most dreadful noise. In the year 1762, however, an improvement was introduced in Westminster, followed by the City of London in 1766. The roads were paved with squares of Scotch granite laid in gravel; the posts were removed; a curb was laid down; gutters provided, and the footway paved with flat stones. About the same time the corporation took down the overhanging signs, removed the City gates, covered over Fleet Ditch, and broadened numerous narrow passages. The drawing here reproduced of the Monument and the beginning of London Bridge dates between 1757 and 1766; for the houses are already down in the bridge – this was done in 1757, and the posts and signs are not yet removed from the street. The view gives an excellent idea of a London street of that time. The posts were by no means all removed. The drawing of Temple Bar from Butcher Row, taken as late as 1796, in which they are still standing, shows this. It also shows the kind of houses in the lower streets. Butcher Row, though it stood in the Strand at the back of St. Clement's Church, a highly respectable quarter, was one of the most disreputable places in the whole of London – given over to crimps, flash lodging-houses, and people of the baser sort.
There are certain dangers and inconveniences in walking along the streets: the finest dress may be ruined by the carelessness of a dustman or a chimney-sweep; the custom of exposing meat on open bulkheads leads to many an irreparable stain of grease. Bullies push the peaceful passenger into the gutter – it is a great time for street swagger; barbers blow the flour into wigs at open doorways, causing violent wrath among those outside; mad bulls career up and down the streets; men quarrel, make a ring, and fight it out before the traffic can go on; pickpockets are both numerous and dexterous; footpads abound in the open squares of Lincoln's Inn, Bloomsbury, and Portman; highwaymen swarm on all the roads; men-servants are insolent and rascally; the noise in the leading streets is deafening; in a shower the way becomes impassable from the rain-spouts on the roof, which discharge their contents upon the streets below.
We who now object to the noise of a barrel-organ in the street, or a cry of milk, or a distant German band, would be driven mad by a single day of George the Second's London streets. Hogarth has touched the subject, but only touched it. No one could do more in a picture than indicate the mere fringe of this vast subject. Even on the printed page we can do little more than the painter. For instance, here were some of the more common and every-day and all-day-long noises. Many of the shopkeepers still kept up the custom of having a prentice outside bawling an invitation to buy – buy – buy. To this day, butchers at Clare Market cry out at the stalls, all day long, "Rally up, ladies! Rally up! Buy! Buy! Buy!" In the streets of private houses there passed a never-ending procession of those who bawled things for sale. Here were a few of the things they bawled – I am conscious that it is a very imperfect list. There were those who offered to do things – mend chairs, grind knives, solder pots and pans, buy rags or kitchen stuff, rabbit skins, hair, or rusty swords, exchange old clothes or wigs, mend old china, cut wires – this excruciating, rasping operation was apparently done in the open – or cooper casks. There were, next, the multitude of those who carried wares to sell – as things to eat and drink – saloop, barley broth, rice, milk, furmity, Shrewsbury cakes, eggs, lily-white vinegar, hot peascods, rabbits, birds, pullets, gingerbread, oysters, honey, cherry ripe, Chaney oranges, hot codlins, pippins, fruit of all kinds, fish taffity tarts, fresh-water, tripe, tansy, greens, mustard, salt, gray pease, water-cresses, shrimps, rosemary, lavender, milk, elder-buds; or things of domestic use – lace, ribbons, almanacs, ink, small coal, sealing-wax, wood to cleave, earthen-ware, spigots, combs, buckles, leghorns, pewter pots, brooms in exchange for old shoes, things of horn, Holland socks, woollen socks and wrappers, brimstone matches, flint and steel, shoelaces, scissors and tools, straps, and the thousand-and-one things which are now sold in shops. The bearward came along with his animal and his dogs and his drum, the sweep shouted from the house-top, the ballad-singer bawled in the road, the tumbler and the dancing-girl set up their pitch with pipe and drum. Nobody minded how much noise was made. In the smaller streets the good-wives sat with open doors, running in and out, gossiping over their work; they liked the noise, they liked this perambulating market – it made the street lively, it brought the neighbors out to look, and it pleased the baby. Then the wagons went ponderously grinding over the round stones of the road, the carts rumbled, the brewers' sledges growled, the chariot rattled, the drivers quarrelled, cursed, and fought. A great American, now, alas! gone from us, spoke of the continual murmur of London as of Niagara afar off. A hundred years ago he would have spoken of the continual roar.
At this time the wealth and trade of London had reached a point which surprised and even terrified those who considered the present compared with the past and looked forward to the future. "On a general view," writes Northouck in 1772, "of our national circumstances it is but too probable that the height of our prosperity is now producing our ruin." He hears the cry of the discontented; it means, he thinks, ruin. Well, there were to be mighty changes, and still more mighty changes of which he suspects nothing. Yet not ruin. For, whatever happens, the energy and the spirit of the people will remain. Besides, Northouck and those of his time did not understand that the world is always growing wider.
The great merchants of the City still lived within the old boundaries: they had their country-houses, but they spent most of their time in town, where their houses were stately and commodious, but no longer palaces like those of their predecessors. Two or three of them remain, but they are rapidly disappearing. One of these, destroyed about six years ago, illustrated the house of a merchant at a time when his offices and his residence were one. The rooms for his clerks were on the ground floor; the merchant's private room looked out upon a garden at the back. In the basement was his strong-room, constructed of stone, in a deep recess. On the first floor were the living-rooms. The garden was not large, but it contained a stone terrace fine enough for a garden of much larger dimensions, a mulberry-tree, and a vine.
There were no palaces left in the City; no noblemen lived there any longer. The Lord Mayor's Mansion, built in 1750, was the only palace unless we count Guildhall, the Royal Exchange, Gresham College, and the Halls of the Companies. But in every street except those given up entirely to trade, such as Cheapside, stood the substantial house of the City Fathers.
Never before had the City been so wealthy. Despite the continual wars of the eighteenth century, nothing could check the prosperity of the country. French privateers scoured the ocean in chase of our merchantmen; every East Indiaman had to run the gantlet all the way from Madeira to Plymouth; the supremacy of the sea was obstinately disputed by France; yet more ships escaped than were taken. Our Indiamen fought the privateer and sank him; our fleets retaliated; our frigates protected the merchantmen, and when, as happened sometimes, we had the pleasure of fighting Spain as well as France, the balance of captures was greatly in our favor. "Sir," said Lord Nelson to the King, when Spain declared war against us, "this makes all the difference. It promised to be a poor war; it will now be a rich war."
"But, noble Thames, whilst I can hold a pen,
I will divulge thy glory unto men.
Then in the morning, when my corn is scant,
Before the evening doth supply my want."
This was written by the Water Poet, John Taylor, a little later. The river was the most convenient and the most rapid road from one end of London to the other, at a time when the roads were miry and full of holes, and when there were no coaches. And long after coaches became numerous, the watermen continued to flourish. There were only two bridges over the river; many places of amusement – the Paris Gardens, Cupid Gardens, St. George's Fields, and Vauxhall – lay on the south side: it was pleasant and quiet on the water, save for the quarrels and the cursing of the watermen. The air was fresh: the view of the City was noble: the river was covered with barges and pleasure-boats furnished with banners and streamers of silk; flocks of swans swimming about – little wonder if the citizens continued to prefer the river to their muddy lanes and noisy streets. Even in the last century, too, the watermen had not ceased to sing as they rowed. They still sang – with a "Heave and hoe, rumbelow" – their old ballad of "Row the boat, Norman, to thy leman," made, it was said, on John Norman, first of the mayors who was rowed to Westminster by water instead of riding, as had been the previous custom.
Those who have read Professor Seeley's book on the Extension of Britain know how our conquests, our power, and our trade increased during that long struggle with France. We had losses; we made an enemy beyond the Atlantic who should have been our firmest friend and ally; we were hampered with continental possessions; we were continually suffering enormous drains of money and of men; we were throwing away our lusty youth by hundreds of thousands; yet we continued to grow stronger and richer every year. The wars advanced trade; the wars pushed forward our territories; our increased trade paid for the wars; the wars provided occupation for younger sons.
By this time, too, the companies were at their richest; their charities were at their fullest; their banquets and functions were most lavish and splendid.
Take the rich Company of Haberdashers alone for its benefactions. This company maintained two free-schools in London and three in the country; two almshouses in London and two in the country; it presented to six benefices in the country; it provided three lectureships in city churches and one in the University of Cambridge; it gave five exhibitions to Cambridge, and it provided pensions for forty-eight poor men and women. In these charities the company disbursed about £3400 a year. At the present day it gives away a great deal more owing to the increased value of its property, but as London is so much larger the effect is not so great in proportion. This list of charities, again, does not include the execution of certain testamentary and private charities, as broadcloth to poor widows, gifts to prisoners for debt, payments for ringing the church-bell, weekly doles of bread, and so forth. The Haberdashers' Company was one of the twelve great companies, all wealthy. If each of these gave away yearly the sum of £2000 only, we have £24,000 a year. There were, besides, all the smaller companies, and not one without some funds for charity, education, or pensions. A boy born in the City might be educated by his father's company, apprenticed to the company, taught his trade by the company, found in work by the company, feasted once a year by the company, pensioned by the company, buried by the company, and his children looked after by the company. If he fell into debt, and so arrived at Ludgate Hill Prison, the bounty of the company followed him there. And even if he disgraced himself and was lodged in Newgate, the company augmented the daily ration of bread with something more substantial. In all, there were (and are) eighty-four City companies, representing every trade except those which are of modern origin. Among these are not counted such companies as the Whitawers, the Fustarers, and the Megusers, long since dissolved. But the Pewterers, the Bowyers, the Fletchers, the Long Bowstring Makers, the Patten Makers, and the Loriners have survived the trades which they were founded to maintain. Some of them have no hall and very small endowments. One, the Card Makers, presents each member of the company with a pack of playing-cards every year, and with this single act expends, I believe, all the endowment which it possesses.
By poetic license, quite pardonable when assumed by Austin Dobson or by Praed, we speak of the leisure of the eighteenth century. Where is it – this leisure? I can find it nowhere. In London City the sober merchant who walks so gravely on 'Change is an eager, venturesome trader, pushing out his cargoes into every quarter of the globe, as full of enterprise as an Elizabethan, following the flag wherever that leads, and driving the flag before him. He belongs to a battling, turbulent time. His blood is full of fight. He makes enormous profits; sometimes he makes enormous losses; then he breaks; he goes under; he never lifts up his head again; he is submerged – he and his, for the City has plenty of benevolence, but little pity. We are all pushing, struggling, fighting to get ahead. We cannot stop to lift up one that has fallen and is trampled under foot. In the City there stands behind us a Fury armed with a knotted scourge. Let us work, my brothers, let us never cease to work, for this is the terrible pitiless demon called Bankruptcy. If there is no leisure or quiet among the sober citizens, where shall we look for it? In the country? We are not here concerned with the country, but I have looked for it there and I cannot find it.
It was the dream of every tradesman not only to escape this fiend, but in fulness of time to retire from his shop and to have his own country-house; or, if that could not be compassed, to have a box three or four miles from town – at Stockwell, Clapham, Hoxton, or Bow, or Islington – whither he might drive on Saturday or other days, in a four-wheeled chaise. He loved to add a bow-window to the front, at which he would sit and watch the people pass, his wine before him, for the admiration and envy of all who beheld. The garden at the back, thirty feet long by twenty broad, he laid out with great elegance. There was a gravel-walk at each end, a pasteboard grenadier set up in one walk, and a sundial in the other. In the middle there was a basin with two artificial swans, over which he moralized: "Sir, I bought those fowls seven years ago. They were then as white as could be made. Now they are black. Let us learn that the strongest things decay, and consider the flight of time." He put weathercocks on his house-top, and when they pointed different ways he reflected that there is no station so exalted as to be free from the inconsistencies and wants of life.
His wife, of course, was a notable house-keeper. It is recorded of her that she would never employ a man unless he could whistle. So that when he was sent to draw beer, or to bottle wine, or to pick cherries, or to gather strawberries, by whistling all the time he proved that his mouth was empty, because you cannot whistle with anything in your mouth. She made her husband take off his shoes before going up-stairs; she lamented the gigantic appetites of the journeymen whom they had to keep "peck and perch" all the year round; she loved a pink sash and a pink ribbon, and when she went abroad she was genteelly "fetched" by an apprentice or one of the journeymen with candle and lantern.
The amusements and sights of London were the Tower, the Monument, St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey, the British Museum (after the year 1754, when it was first opened), the Royal Exchange, the Bank of England, Guildhall, the East India House, the Custom-house, the Excise Office, the Navy Office, the bridges, the Horse Guards, the squares, the Inns of Court, St. James's Palace, the two theatres of Drury Lane and Covent Garden, the Opera-house, Ranelagh, Sadler's Wells, Vauxhall, Astley's, the Park, the tea-gardens, Don Saltero's, Chelsea, the trials at the Old Bailey, the hangings at Newgate, the Temple Gardens, the parade of the Judges to Westminster Hall, the charity children at St. Paul's, Greenwich Fair, the reviews of the troops, the House of Lords when the King is present and the peers are robed, Smithfield, Billingsgate, Woolwich, Chelsea Hospital, Greenwich Hospital, and the suburbs. With these attractions a stranger could get along for a few days without much fear of ennui.
The London fairs – Bartholomew, Greenwich, Southwark, May Fair – no longer, of course, pretended to have anything to do with trade. They were simply occasions for holiday-making and indulgence in undisguised license and profligacy. They had bull and bear baiting, cock-fighting, prize-fighting, cudgel-playing – these of course. They also had their theatres and their shows and their jugglers. They had races of women, fights of women, and dancing of girls for a prize. They continued the old morris-dance of five men, Maid Marian and Tom Fool, the last with a fox-brush in his hat, and bells on his legs and on his coat-tails. They were fond of rope-dancing – in a word, the fairs drew together all the rascality of the town and the country around. May Fair was stopped in the year 1708, but was revived some years afterwards. Southwark Fair, which was opened by the Lord Mayor and sheriffs riding over the bridge through the borough, was not suppressed till 1763. The only good thing it did was to collect money for the poor prisoners of Marshalsea Prison. Bartholomew and Greenwich Fair continued till thirty or forty years ago.
The picturesqueness of the time is greatly due to the dress. We all know how effective on the stage or at a fancy ball is the dress of the year 1750. Never had gallant youth a better chance of displaying his manly charms. The flowered waistcoat tight to the figure, the white satin coat, the gold-laced hat, the ruffles and dainty necktie, the sword and the sword-sash, the powdered wig, the shaven face, the silk stockings and gold-buckled shoes – with what an air the young coxcomb advances, and with what a grace he handles his clouded cane and proffers his snuffbox! Nothing like it remains in this century of ours. And the ladies matched the men in splendor of dress, until the "swing swang" of the extravagant hoop spoiled all. Here comes one, on her way to church, where she will distract the men from their prayers with her beauty, and the women with her dress. She has a flowered silk body and cream-colored skirts trimmed with lace; she has light blue shoulder-knots; she wears an amber necklace, brown Swedish gloves, and a silver bracelet; she has a flowered silk belt of green and gray and yellow, with a bow at the side, and a brown straw-hat with flowers of green and yellow. "Sir," says one who watches her with admiration, "she is all apple blossom."
The white satin coat is not often seen east of Temple Bar. See the sober citizen approaching: he is dressed in brown stockings; he has laced ruffles and a shirt of snowy whiteness; his shoes have silver buckles; his wig is dark grizzle, full-bottomed; he carries his hat under his left arm, and a gold-headed stick in his right hand. He is accosted by a wreck – there are always some of these about London streets – who has struck upon the rock of bankruptcy and gone down. He, too, is dressed in brown, but where are the ruffles? Where is the shirt? The waistcoat, buttoned high, shows no shirt; his stockings are of black worsted, darned and in holes; his shoes are slipshod, without buckles. Alas! poor gentleman! And his wig is an old grizzle, uncombed, undressed, dirty, which has been used for rubbing shoes by a shoeblack. On the other side of the street walks one, followed by a prentice carrying a bundle. It is a mercer of Cheapside, taking some stuff to a lady. He wears black cloth, not brown; he has a white tye-wig, white silk stockings, muslin ruffles, and japanned pumps. Here comes a mechanic: he wears a warm waistcoat with long sleeves, gray worsted stockings, stout shoes, a three-cornered hat, and an apron. All working-men wear an apron; it is a mark of their condition. They are no more ashamed of their apron than your scarlet-coated captain is ashamed of his uniform.