I was reluctant to leave the river-side. It is an ideal spot for "loafing". The men employed on wharves and barges are a class apart from the ordinary workman, it always seems to me. They may not be conscious of it, but the meditative spirit of the lazy tide, the slow-moving barges, and those silent activities of the river's life have instilled in them a poetical and contemplative outlook on existence which no other calling can inspire.
We crossed the river by the temporary bridge, and turning to the right made our way along Upper Thames Street. As we went I meditated on "What's in a name?" the question being suggested by the quaint nomenclature of the courts and alleys of the city. From the stores of my memory I could produce Hanging Sword Alley, Dark House Lane, Passing Alley, Pudding Lane, Hen and Chicken's Court, World's End Passage, Fig Tree Court, Green-Arbour Court, Boss Alley, Maypole Alley, Crucifix Lane, Sugar Loaf Court. And last week I came across a book dated 1732 in which was an alphabetical table of all the streets, courts, lanes, alleys, yards, rows, within the bills of mortality. Some day I'm going to take that old book with me and go on a voyage of discovery. Are Dirty Lane and Deadman's Place still to be found in the parish of Southwark? Is Coffin Alley still in St. Sepulchre's? I'm afraid not, and I'm quite sure that Damnation Alley no longer graces St. Martin's in the Fields.
By way of Fish Street Hill, Eastcheap, Great Tower Street, and Mark Lane we approached St. Olave's in Hart Street. As, however, I wanted to look through the railings at the old churchyard, we turned the corner into Seething Lane, where, on top of the iron gate, is a sinister memento of the Plague. They were weird times, those old days, with their childish spirit of fee-faw-fum, and the skulls and crossbones on top of the gate bring a breath from the dark ages into some moment of to-day. Probably not one person in a hundred notices the skulls or pauses to look through the iron railings and reflect that Pepys himself must have walked down that very pathway between the gravestones on that occasion of which he wrote. "This is the first time I have been in the church since I left London for the Plague," he says, "and it frighted me indeed to go through the church, more than I thought it could have done, to see so many graves lie so high upon the churchyard. I was much troubled at it, and do not think to go through it again a good while." Later he records the reassurance he had experienced in seeing those same graves mantled in snow.
I believe it was the custom when making the entry to add the letter P after the names of those who had perished by the Black Death, but I have never had the privilege of seeing the registers. Mary Ramsey, who is supposed to have brought the Plague into London, is buried in the churchyard.
The church is square, with a columned nave, and the old glass in the large east window sheds a mellow light on some painted figures on a tomb near. The building does not wear its history on its sleeve, but Samuel Pepys (the only man who ever told the unromantic truth about himself) could, if he would, paint pictures of some of the scenes those old walls have witnessed. His body lies beneath the altar, and high above it, on the north-east wall, is the monument to his wife. She has a girl-like, engaging face, the head bent slightly forward as if in the act of listening for some message from her lord and master who lies so silent below.
It is certain that when Pepys was so frank with himself about his weaknesses, he never imagined he was going to have an audience which would last through the centuries. I wondered as I looked at the sculptured face with its expression a little wistful, and a little supercilious, which of us would care to purchase notoriety at such a price?
Mrs. Darling inquired curiously about the nature of those self-revelations, and as we consumed our chops and baked potatoes, and drank our ale at a little restaurant near, I told her of a certain Cock Tavern opposite the Temple, where Pepys in his diary mentions bringing Mrs. Knipp (an actress of whom his wife was jealous), and where they "drank, eat a lobster and sang and mighty merry till almost midnight". And how these meetings went on until Mrs. Pepys came to the bedside of her husband one night and threatened to pinch him with red-hot tongs.... Whereupon Mrs. Darling found a resemblance between the Essayist and "that other old gentleman in the waxworks". "Saucy kippers," she called them both, bracketing King Charles with the roving Samuel.
In justice to poor Samuel, however, I told the old lady how he had said, "My wife seemed very pretty to-day, it being for the first time I had given her leave to wear a black patch". How on another occasion he records, "Talking with my wife, in whom I never had greater content, blessed be God!" How he had given her five pounds to buy a petticoat, and how he states that he is "as happy a man as any in the world.... And all do impute almost wholly to my late temperance, since my making of my vows against wine and play."
Mrs. Darling, who had finished her second glass of ale and felt cheerful, pulled on her woollen gloves and set her ten-and-elevenpenny hat at a more jaunty angle. Men, she declared, were "rovin' by nature," and if a woman wanted to be happy there were "some things she got to shut her eyes to". Half the women who grumbled about their husbands had in her opinion got nobody but themselves to thank for it. The theme is a favourite one of the old lady's, and she continued her discourse as we made our way to Houndsditch—a "melancholy" spot, according to Shakespeare, taking its name from the old city ditch full of dead dogs. A region of small wholesale shops in the drapery line which made no pretentions at setting out the wares to advantage, everything being conducted on strict business principles which left no room for trifling. One came across such announcements as "Grand Order of Israel Friendly Society," and names of such Biblical association as Abraham Lazarus, Isaac Levi, and Simon Solomon. You might by favour purchase a solitary blouse or a dozen of buttons, but it was not with such casual purchasers the little shops wished to trade.
We happened on a gateway over which was inscribed, "Phil's Buildings, Clothes and General Market". A man who had been sitting unnoticed in a pay-box thrust his head out of the little window. "Want anyone in there, sir?" he asked.