—That, surely, was no longer the Terrace of the House of Commons, but a marshy bed of osiers and rushes! The dark shadow yonder, across the broad river, was it any more the grimy, disused Lambeth landing-stage, or had it changed to the rude primitive boats of the Saxon fisher-folk, "moored among the bulrush stems"? The clamour yonder,—was it the shouting of drunken bargees, or merely the voices of simple peasants, busy with their nets, singing the evening hymn?... And was that a barge being towed up stream, or was it not, rather, a boat crossing to the nearer shore, with its unknown, saintly passenger? Then, suddenly, a blaze of light irradiating the gloom—is it the miraculous glow from the consecrated Minster, or....
I start, for some one touches me gently on the shoulder. I turn round, half expecting to see a Saxon hind in leather jerkin and thonged sandals.... But a modern lamplighter with tall pole pushes past me, and——
"Please, lydy, gimme suthin' jis' to keep the life in my little byby," wails the voice of the professional beggar, breaking the spell, and disclosing an unhappy, shawled, and croupy infant. "I ain't got a place ter sleep in this night. Gawd knows I ain't, dear lydy."
The woman's appearance suggests the public-house, and I realise all the sinfulness of encouraging croupy (and possibly borrowed) babies to be out at unseasonable hours; nevertheless, the simpler Anglo-Saxon mood prevails, and the woman gets my sixpence. She departs with husky blessings ... and a chorus of coughs. "Ah, poor soul," I thought as I watched the wretched creature disappear to the shadow of some yet darker archway, "would not you, and such as you, have found better shrift in old days?—There was the convent;—there the sanctuary; there the gracious, unquestioning succour; there the majestic houses of the Father of Mankind and His special servants.... And ever at the sacred gates sat Mercy, pouring out relief from a never-failing store to the poor and the suffering; ever within the sacred aisles the voices of holy men were pealing heavenwards in intercession for the sins of mankind; and such blessed influences were thought to exhale around those mysterious precincts, that even the poor outcasts of society,—the debtor, the felon, and the outlaw—gathered round the walls as the sick men sought the shadow of the apostles, and lay there sheltered from the avenging hand, till their sins were washed from off their souls...."
But the vision has fled—the present once more dominates.... Now the lights begin, in serried rows and twinkling patterns, to glow along the shores of the vast and deceptive Armida-palace; the "cruel lights of London," hiding so much that is grim, sad, and terrible.... There, grey against a background of rosy opal, the Houses of Parliament rise from the silvery river in misty grandeur.... Then, gradually the "nocturne" changes its key; the darkness deepens, and the Westminster towers begin to loom up blackly against the lurid sky.... Big Ben booms solemnly through the invading mist.... For how many centuries, I wondered, has the evening bell resounded over the marshes of Thorney? Only in the lapse of time it has somewhat changed its note.... Convent bell,—church bell,—secular bell! It calls now no longer to prayer and devotion, but to business, or, maybe, pleasure ... as the blaze of light that now shines from its tower flashes forth the might of the Temporal power, not the miraculous workings of the Eternal.... Yet, "the Lord God of Israel, he slumbers not, nor sleeps." ... How loudly the strokes peal!... One ... two ... three ... four....
"Move on, please," sounds the voice of the burly policeman, evidently suspecting my motives, and accrediting me with suicidal intentions. "Can't stay 'ere all night, y'know."
So I "move on"; and Night, and the river-mist, between them envelop, as with a pall, the enormous city.
CHAPTER X
KENSINGTON AND CHELSEA
"In old days ... the hawthorn spread across the fields and market gardens that lay between Kensington and the river. Lanes ran to Chelsea, to Fulham, to North End, where Richardson once lived and wrote in his garden-house. The mist of the great city hid the horizon and dulled the sound of the advancing multitude; but close at hand ... were country corners untouched—blossoms instead of bricks in spring-time, summer shade in summer."—Miss Thackeray, Old Kensington.
"There is not a step of the way, from ... Kensington Gore to ... Holland House, in which you are not greeted with the face of some pleasant memory. Here, to 'mind's eyes' ... stands a beauty, looking out of a window; there, a wit, talking with other wits at a garden gate; there, a poet on the green sward, glad to get out of the London smoke and find himself among trees. Here come De Veres of the times of old; Hollands and Davenants, of the Stuart and Cromwell times; Evelyn peering about him soberly, and Samuel Pepys in a bustle.... Here, in his carriage, is King William the Third, going from the Palace to open Parliament ... and there, from out of Kensington Gardens, comes bursting, as if the whole recorded polite world were in flower at one and the same period, all the fashion of the gayest times of those sovereigns, blooming with chintzes, full-blown with hoop-petticoats, towering topknots and toupées.... Who is to know of all this company, and not be willing to meet it?"—Leigh Hunt.