What the other Inns were like, can be more or less seen from this small portion of one. They have mostly vanished with the march of progress of recent years, for fifty years ago Dickens could still write:
"In the Borough there still remain some half-dozen old inns which have preserved their external features unchanged. Great rambling queer old places, with galleries and passages and staircases wide enough and antiquated enough to furnish materials for a hundred ghost stories."
At the old "White Hart," now destroyed, Dickens first introduced to the world the immortal Sam Weller, as he appeared cleaning the spinster aunt's boots after that sentimental lady's elopement with the deceiving Mr. Jingle. These old inns, in the heyday of their prime, were made still more famous by the open-air theatrical representations that took place in their balconied courtyards. Toil and trouble, the eternal struggle-for-life, may be the portion of "the Surrey Side" to-day, but in Shakespeare's time it was principally noted for its amusements and its junketings. Now, the chief buildings of Southwark and Walworth are gaols and asylums, and its best-known localities are the omnibus terminuses, dignified mysteriously by names of public-houses,—such as the "Elephant," &c. Even the dramatic tastes of the people "over the water" are now supposed to be primitive; and "transpontine" is the adjective applied to melodrama that is too crude for the superior taste of northern London. Yet here, in Shakespeare's day, were all the most fashionable theatres—theatres, too, frequented by all the literary and dramatic lights of the day. Here stood that small martello-tower-like theatre, the "Globe," the "round wooden 'O'" alluded to in Henry V., where Shakespeare and his companions played; here also were the "Rose," the "Hope," and the "Swan." And below St. Saviour's, and its neighbouring Bishops' Palace and park, were the localities known as "Bankside" and "Paris Garden," the former famous for its bull and bear-baiting ("a rude and nasty pleasure," says Pepys), the latter for its theatre, and also for its somewhat doubtful reputation. There were, of course, a few plague-spots, inseparable from places of public amusement; but the Southwark of Elizabeth's day was a centre of national jollity and merry-making. Open gardens fringed the river-banks, by which flowed a clear and yet unsullied Thames, and their salubrious walks were the favourite resort of citizens. Certainly, Shakespeare and his associates would hardly recognize Southwark now: Messrs. Barclay and Perkins's famous brewery now covers the site of the Globe Theatre; the ancient gardens have given place to wharves and warehouses; the fashionable promenade to railway lines and goods offices; the green turfy banks to streets and lanes of sticky Southwark mud. And Southwark mud is surely of a quite peculiar stickiness! The big brewery, covering some twelve acres, is not exactly an improvement on the landscape. It belonged, in 1758, to Mr. Thrale, husband of the witty lady whom Johnson loved as a daughter. And though some among us have, as Dr. Johnson prophesied at the sale of the brewery in its early days, "grown rich beyond the dreams of avarice," yet the source of riches is seldom in itself beautifying.
Winchester House, the ancient palace of the Bishops of Winchester, stood in Tudor days between St. Saviour's and the river; "a very fair house, with a large wharf and a landing-place." Here Bishop Gardiner lived in great state, and here, to please his patron the Duke of Norfolk, he arranged "little banquets at which it was contrived that Henry VIII. should meet the Duke's niece, Katherine Howard, then a 'lovely girl in her teens.'" Poor thing! in a short year or two her head was destined to fall, by the headsman's axe, within the precincts of the gloomy Tower, on the river's opposite bank! The extent of the old palace is uncertain; its remains are now nearly all destroyed, except an old window and arch, built up into the surrounding warehouses. The name, however, of the "Clink," the prison used by the Bishops for the punishment of heretics, still exists in the modern Clink Street. In the same way, "Mint Street," Borough, recalls an ancient and forgotten mint, established here by Henry VIII. for coinage; and Lant Street—but Lant Street recalls nothing so much as Dickens, and his creation Mr. Bob Sawyer. Dickens lived in Lant Street himself as a boy, while his insolvent family were rusticating in the neighbouring Marshalsea; hence he knew it well.
A County Court.
"A bed and bedding" (he writes) "were sent over for me" (from the Marshalsea), "and made up on the floor. The little window had a pleasant prospect of a timber-yard; and when I took possession of my new abode, I thought it was a Paradise."
"The Crown Revenues," Dickens further adds (in describing the abode of Mr. Bob Sawyer), "are seldom collected in this happy valley; the rents are dubious, and the water communication is very frequently cut off."
If Southwark contained many doubtful characters in Shakespeare's time, it contains, as Mr. Charles Booth's book shows us, some "black spots" of crime still! The old Marshalsea and the King's Bench Prisons must always have been a centre of drifting and shiftless population. All parts of the "Borough" do not enjoy a thoroughly good reputation; bad sanitation, overcrowding, all the worst sins of the much-abused "East End," may here too be seen. "Is any one," asks a recent writer, "ever young in the Borough? Is not carking care their birthright?" In crowded Southwark and Walworth, round the "Elephant,"—the mysterious "Elephant," to which all roads lead,—"aflare, seething, roaring with multitudinous life," are miserable human rabbit-warrens, where they even live ten in a room. "Pore, sir," cries Mrs. Pullen (one of the submerged), "pore! why, the Mint, sir, the Mint, sir, is known for it; you've 'erd on it your ways, ain't you?" Mrs. Pullen held up her hands and laughed, as if she was really proud of "the Mint and its poverty." But, though the Borough children—poor little wastrels—are still wild,—Education, it seems, is slowly taming them.