It was quite half a century ago, when I came across good, honest, kind-hearted Mr. and Mrs. Cheevers, who, as you know, were so intimately connected with the baby lives of poor neglected Nick and Nan. I came up from Oxford to my parochial work in the East-end of London, fired with enthusiasm, and settled down determined to do my best for the poor, who were not so well looked after, in those days, as they are now. My first curacy was in the New North-road, Hoxton—the long, new thoroughfare, that led in a pretty straight line from the heart of the City to the green and delightful suburbs of Highbury and Canonbury.
But what a difference between the old London of those days and the new London of to-day! Within an easy walk of my lodgings in Brudenell Place I could pick may off the country hedges.
Mr. Rydon had not commenced his building operations, and the North Pole Gardens were a rustic retreat for the citizens among the fields. Highbury and Hornsey were fairly out in the country; Islington was like the provincial hamlet of to-day; Canonbury was embowered in greenery.
I could walk across fields all the way to Dalston and Hackney; I played cricket in the Cat and Mutton Fields; and there was still something of an old-world romance in the Shepherdess Walk!
Yes! it was quite true Samuel Phelps was playing Shakespeare at Sadler’s Wells in those days, and gathering round him the intelligent playgoers of his time; and I have often handled a racket at the dear old open court at the “Belvedere” on Pentonville Hill, which was one of the last of the roadside ale-houses with green benches and trim gardens facing the road, inns that were dotted about the coach road between the “Angel” at Islington and the “Yorkshire Stingo” in Marylebone.
Why, we passed through a turnpike between Hoxton and the City, and in those days the River Lea and the New River flowed through summer fields and hay meadows, and skirted houses, as romantically situated as any that can be found in the Warwickshire of to-day.
I often chat of old times with Mr. and Mrs. Cheevers, and have a friendly pipe with the old man in the almshouse garden; and, though now they are spending the winter of their content in a peaceful paradise, I trust they have still a warm corner in their hearts for many scenes in the London of fifty years ago.
And as you may know also, it was my blessing and great privilege to be of some comfort to poor Nick in the dreadful London prison.
Never for a moment did I doubt his innocence, for there is a ring in a good man’s voice, a warmth in his hand-clasp, and honesty in his eyes that are absolutely convincing to those who have made a study of criminal life.
But what can a prison chaplain do, after all, towards establishing justice and right? He can listen to the heartfelt confession, can comfort the innocent or the penitent, but he can do little more than pray that right in the end will overmaster wrong, and that true love, like truth, will ultimately prevail.