“Bah!—won’t do, Mo’,” was the reply, after having examined them; “could not cut off enough to stop up a mouse-hole. Say von penny!”
“Vell, den, three-halfpence!”
We passed on, and did not witness the close of the bargain, our ears being now assailed with such cries of “Who vants three vaist-coats for old coat?” “Who vants old hats for old shoes?” “Two shirts for von pair of strong preeches!” and so on. There we saw the hook-nosed, large-eyed collector of “old clo’ ” whom we had that very morning stopped to look at while he carried off a whole suit in exchange for two geraniums which looked as if they could not live a week. The very things he was then running down, as he pointed out every thin spot and speck of grease to the little Cinderella he was bargaining with in the Borough, he was now extolling, and vowing that they had but been worn “wery leetle, wery leetle indeed.” With keen eye the intended purchaser traversed every inch, examined carefully the knees of the trowsers, the arm-pits, elbows, and sleeves of the coat; then discovering something at last, as he shined it before the light, he pointed to the spot, and looked at the other in silence. “Vell, vot of dat?—Look at the pryshe!” was the reply of the geranium exchanger.
There is an old and mouldy smell about the place, telling that dank and fetid corners have been rummaged out to contribute to the stock of filth there accumulated. And yet, through the dirty mass the eye may here and there detect the trappings of pride. Court-dresses, from which the former owners would now run, exclaiming with Hamlet—
“And smelt so? Pah!”
Small satin slippers which had once been white, but now wore a little of the hue of every foul thing they had come in contact with. The worn-out wedding-dress, now a heap of rags, bundled up beside the thread-bare blackness of the poor widow’s cast-off weeds. One might almost fancy that Pride had come here to crawl out of its shabby habiliments, and gone and laid down in some one of the dark alleys in the neighbourhood to die, having “shuffled off” the last vestiges of respectability.
“To what vile uses do we come at last!”
Rags that may have touched a young and beautiful duchess, not now fit for dusters. A remnant of the dress-coat of some young lord, thrown down with disdain by the hunger-bitten jobbing-tailor, because he cannot get a patch out of it large enough to seat the “continuations” of the Whitechapel hawker.
Passing on to Leadenhall-street, and nearly facing the East India House (which we have already described), we come upon two old churches, standing nearly together, that escaped the Great Fire, namely, St. Andrew’s Undershaft and St. Catherine Cree. In the first Stowe was buried, and there his monument still stands; and the second (according to the authority of Strype) contains the remains of Hans Holbein, the great painter; also of Sir Nicholas Throgmorton.
Part of the tower is said to be very old, though the body of the church was rebuilt in 1628, and, as it appears, without much disarranging the interior, though one magnificent window has been walled up, as may be seen by looking at it from the adjoining alley. Prynne has left us a splendid piece of half-quizzical and satirical description of the consecration of this church in 1630 by Laud, Bishop of London, which will not seem out of place in this age of Puseyite performances. “When the bishop approached near the communion-table, he bowed, with his nose very near the ground, some six or seven times; then he came to one of the corners of the table, and there bowed himself three times; then to the second, third, and fourth corners, bowing at each corner three times: but when he came to the side of the table where the bread and wine was, he bowed himself seven times; and then, after the reading of many prayers by himself and his two fat chaplains which were with him (and all this while were upon their knees by him, in their surplices, hoods, and tippets), he himself came near the bread, which was cut and laid in a fine napkin, and then he gently lifted up one of the corners of the said napkin, and peeping into it till he saw the bread (like a boy that peeps into a bird’s nest in a bush), and presently clapped it down again, and flew back a step or two, and then bowed very low three times towards it and the table. When he beheld the bread, then he came near and opened the napkin again, and bowed as before; then he laid his hand upon the gilt cup, which was full of wine, with a cover upon it: so soon as he had pulled the cup a little nearer to him, he let the cup go, flew back, and bowed again three times towards it: then he came near again, and lifting up the corner of the cup, peeped into it; and seeing the wine, he let fall the cover on it again, and flew nimbly back and bowed as before. After these and many other apish, antick gestures, he himself received and then gave the sacrament to some three principal men only, they devoutly kneeling near the table; after which, more prayers being said, this scene and interlude ended.”