And now as to Myself, for it is surely fitting that a proper young Fellow, such as I was now, stout and vigorous, and going for nineteen years of age, should no longer remain in the Background. First I hied me to London by the waggon, where, after four days' journey—for it was ill travelling in those days, between London and Dover—I arrived without any misadventure. I was my own Master, I had Ten Pound in my pocket (the two additional Pieces being now spent), and I did not know one single soul in a city of eight hundred thousand inhabitants. Is it to be wondered at, under these premises, that before I fixed upon any decided line of life, I went, first of all, to the Deuce. It took me but a woundily short time to reach that Goal. For ten pounds you may reckon, we will say—if you put up at a small alehouse in the Borough—upon about ten friends who shall be very fond of you for a couple of days. I think, at the beginning of the third, I had just three and sixpence left wherewith to buy a razor to cut my throat withal. "Stuff and nonsense!" cried the last of the fleeting friends who had abided with me. "Three and sixpence for a razor, forsooth! why, a yard of good new cord, quite strong enough to bear your weight, can be bought in any shop in Tooley-street for a penny. You have just three and fivepence left, brother, to make yourself merry for the day, and, please the pigs, we will be merry as grigs upon it until Sundown (for I took a fancy to you the first minute I set eyes upon you), and even then there are two ways out of the hobble, without twisting your weasand. I have a pair of pistols, and as I love you like a brother, will share anything with you; and we will pad the hoof betwixt this and Deptford, and see whether we can meet any fat Kentish hop-grower on his way to the Borough Market with more money than wit—a capital plan, any way, seeing that if you fail, the Sheriff will hang you for nothing, and you can keep your penny for drink, or else you can list for a soldier, as many a tall and pretty fellow in the like straits has done before."
I civilly declined this amicable and philosophical advice, for it had suddenly become apparent to me that my new friend was a confirmed Rogue. For opening of the Eyes there is nothing like having spent all your money. I gave him a shilling, however, out of my three and sixpence, and crossed London Bridge to see if I could find better luck on the Middlesex side, determined, if nothing offered itself during the day, to ask my way to the Barracks at the Savoy and list for a Soldier. I amused myself as I walked, with the thought that chance might so bring it about for the Sergeant who would give me the King's shilling to be the selfsame grenadier whose sconce I had broken years agone in Charlwood Chase with the Demijohn of Brandy.
I had heard, as most Ignoramuses have done, I suppose, that London Streets are paved with Gold; and I found 'em as Muddy, as Stony, and as Hardhearted as I dare say they have been discovered by ten thousand Ignoramuses before my time to be. I was quite dazed and stupified with the noise and uproar of the Great City, the more perplexing to me as I was not only a Stranger, but almost a Foreigner and Outlandish Man in Great Britain. I could speak my own tongue well enough with Parson Hodge and Mr. Pinchin, but when it came to be clamoured all around me by innumerable voices, I a'most lost heart, and gave up the notion that I was an Englishman at all. It must be confessed, that half a century since we English were a very Blackguard People, and that London was about the most disreputable city in all Europe. There were few public buildings of any great note or of Majestic Proportions, save St. Paul's Cathedral, the Monument, and the Banqueting House at Whitehall. The Mansion House and the Bank of England were not yet built, and between them and the Royal Exchange (the which, noble enough in itself, was girt about, and choked up with Shops and Tenements exceeding mean and shabby), was a nasty, rubbishing, faint-smelling place, full of fruiterers and herbalists, called the Stocks Market. The crazy and rotten City Gates blocked up the chief thoroughfares, and across the bottom of Ludgate Hill yawned a marvellous foul and filthy open sewer, rich in dead dogs and cats, called the Fleet Ditch. This street was fair enough, and full of commodious houses and wealthy shops, but all about Temple Bar was a vile and horrid labyrinth of lanes and alleys, the chief and the most villanous of which was a place full of tripe shops and low taverns, called Butcher Row, leading from the Bar down to the Churchyard of St. Clement's Danes. The Strand was broad and fair enough to view as far as the New Exchange; but in lieu of that magnificent structure which Sir William Chambers, the Swedish architect, has built for Government offices, and where the Royal Academy of Arts and the Learned Societies have their apartments (when I first came to town there was no Royal Academy at all, only a Mean School for painting from the Life and drawing from Bustos in St. Martin's Lane; the Royal Society held their sittings in a court off Fleet Street; the College of Physicians was chock-a-block among the butchers in Warwick Lane, Newgate Market, where it still, to the scandal of Science, remains; and Surgeon's Hall, where malefactors were anatomised after execution—a Sanguinary but Salutary custom—was in the Old Bailey, over against the leads of the Sessions House)—in place, then, of what we now call Somerset House, albeit it has lost all connexion with the proud Duke of that name, there stood the Old Palace of the Queens of England, a remarkable tumbledown barn of a place, hideous in its ugliness towards the Strand, but having some stately edifices at the back, built by that Famous Engineer, Mr. Inigo Jones. Here sometimes Queens were lodged, and sometimes Embassadors—'twas the Venetian Envoy, I think, that had his rooms in Somerset House when I first knew it,—and sometimes Masquerades were given. A company of Soldiers was kept on guard in the precincts, not so much for ornament as for use, for they had hard work every night in the week in quelling the pottle-pot brawls and brabbling among the Rogues, Thieves, Besognosos, Beggars, Ribbibes, Bidstands, and Clapper-dudgeons, male and female, who infested the outskirts of the Old Palace, or had Impudently Squatted within its very walls, and had made of the Place a very Alsatia, now that Scamp's Paradise in Whitefriars had been put down by Act of Parliament. Here they burrowed like so many Grice, till the shoulder-tapping Pilchers of the Compter came a badger-drawing with their bludgeons. 'Twas a perfect chaos of clap-dishes, skeldering, cranion-legged Impostors, fittous cripples, and gambling bullies, for ever roaring over Post and Pair, or Dust Point, or throwing their Highmen, or barbing gold, or yelling profane songs and catches. A man was killed here about every other day in some Callet and Cockoloch squabble, and there was a broil about twice in every hour. Of course there were Patricos here, who only wanted Fashionable Encouragement to rival the Feet Parsons in the trade of faggot-weddings. There were philosophers who devised schemes for paying off the National Debt, or for making roast ribs of beef out of brickbats. Here were swept the last pillings and frayings of the South Sea Bubble, in the shape of divers Speculators and Directors who had absconded from their Creditors, and were here pretty safe from arrest, for although not legally a sanctuary, it was as chancy to cop a man here on a capias as to put one's naked hand into a bag full of rats.
I dined this day at a sixpenny ordinary in the New Exchange, and after that asked my way to the Savoy, which I found to be close by. So I walked down to the old Tower, and passed the time of day to the Sergeant of the Guard, who was for having me empty a can of ale with him on the spot, but I would not then, and concealed my intention, being minded to defer the execution of it till sunset. I don't know what Vain and Foolish Hope possessed me that something might yet turn up which might save me from the sad necessity of listing for a soldier, to the which vocation, mindful of my early experiences among the Blacks in Charlwood Chase, I entertained a very sincere Abhorrence. So I wandered up and down the Streets, asking from time to time where I was, and being (as is usual with the People of England in their intercourse with strangers) cursed or laughed at for a fool or a bumpkin. Half a dozen times I felt that some rogue was trying my pocket; but I knew I had no money to be robbed of, and kept my kerchief in my hat; only the bare endeavour made me mad, and the next time one of my gentleman nick-skins made a dive into my pouch, I turned round and hit him a crack over the head with a short knobbed-stick I carried, which, I warrant, made him repent of his Temerity.
I had gotten into St. James's Park about four o'clock in the afternoon, and was walking very moodily by the side of the long water trench called Rosamond's Pond, when at once a desire seized hold of me to behold the Tower of London. Whether in my fantastic Imagination I deemed that I might find Tower Hill paved with gold, or pick up some Profitable Acquaintance there, it is fruitless as this distance of time to inquire. But I must needs see the Tower, and was as eager for a view of that famous Fortress as though I had been the veriest holiday-making and sight-seeing Country Cousin. I made my way into the Birdcage walk, and so through Palace-yard down to the stairs at the foot of where they were driving the first piles of that great structure which is now called Westminster Bridge. Here a Waterman agreed to take me to the Tower stairs for a shilling, which was not above thrice his legal fare, but yokels and simpletons are common prey in this great village of London. I observed more than once as he rowed me down stream that we were followed by a heavy wherry, manned by stout, smart fellows in frocks of blue duck, who kept stroke remarkably well together, and whose coxswain eyed me very narrowly. As we were shooting one of the narrow arches of London Bridge—(then covered with shops and houses, with barbicans, and traitors' heads spiked upon 'em at each end, and I have heard old people say that many a time they have fished for perch and grayling standing on the starlings of the Bridge)—this wherry fouled our craft, and my waterman burst into a volley of horrible ribald abuse, till he who was coxswain among the blue-frocked gentry spake some words to him in a low voice, at which he touched his cap, and became quite Meek and Humble. I caught him eyeing me, quite as narrowly as the steersman of the wherry had done, and when I asked him what ailed him, he stuck his Tongue in his cheek and grinned audaciously.
"Who were those rough fellows in the wherry, yonder, that fouled us?" I asked.
"Bluebottles," says he, with another grin.
"What d'ye mean, fellow?" I continued.
"Well, fresh-water fishermen, if you like," he went on, "that bait their hooks with salt worms. Will you please pay me my fare now, Master, since I am a Fellow forsooth, and Murphy's Murrain to you?"
What Murphy's Murrain was—except some term of waterside sculduddrey I did not know—but I paid the knave his shilling, whereupon he very importunately craved another sixpence to drink my health, saying that it might be a very long time before he saw me again. Now I happened only to have one and fourpence left in the world, and suspecting that I had already overpaid him, I resisted further extortion, upon which he became more and more clamorous for money, and finding that I was as obstinate as he, rested on his oars and declared that, burn him—with many other execrations too unseemly to transcribe—he would not pull a stroke further. This it seems was by no means an uncommon occurrence among the dishonest waterside knaves of those days, and it afforded vast sport to a mob of small craft that gathered round, and the people in which covered me with ridicule and abuse, calling me a Thames Bilk, and advising the waterman to hold me over the side of the boat by the scruff of the neck and give me a Ducking. I was in a great Quandary, and knew not what to do.