London

by Walter Besant

"There was a Ewe had three lambs,
And one of them was blacke;
There was a man had three sons—
Jeffrey, James, and Jack.

"The one was hanged, the other drown'd;
The third was lost and never found;
The old man he fell in a sound—
Come fill us a cup of Sacke."

It was nearly high tide on the river, which spread itself out full and broad between the banks, reflecting the evening glow in the western sky. Numberless swans floated about the stream. It was also covered with boats. Some were state barges belonging to great people, with awnings and curtains, painted and gilt, filled with ladies who sang as the boat floated quietly with the current to the music of guitars. Others were the cockle-shell of humble folk. Here was the prentice, taking his sweetheart out upon the river for the freshness of the evening air; here the citizen, with his wife and children in a wherry; here the tilt-boat, with its load of passengers coming up from Greenwich to Westminster. There were also the barges and lighters laden with hay, wool, and grain, waiting for the tide to turn in order to unload at Queenhithe or Billingsgate.

"This," said Stow, "is the best place of any for a prospect of the city. Here we can count the spires and the towers. I know them every one. Look how Paul's rises above the houses. His walls are a hundred feet high. His tower that you see is near three hundred feet high, and his spire, which has been burned down these forty years, was two hundred feet more. Alas, that goodly spire! It is only from this bank that you can see the great houses along the river. There the ruins of White Friars—there those of the Dominicans. Ruins were they not, but splendid buildings in the days of my youth. Baynard's Castle, the Steel Yard, Cold Harbor, the Bridge—there they stand. The famous city of Venice itself, I dare swear, cannot show so fair a prospect. See, now the sun lights up the windows of Nonesuch on the Bridge—see how the noble structure is reflected in the water below. Good sir," he turned to me with glowing face and eyes aflame with enthusiasm, "there is no other city in the whole world, believe me, which may compare with this noble City of London, of which—glory to God!—I have been permitted to become the humble historian."

We took boat at Falcon stairs—Stow told me there were two thousand boats and three thousand watermen on the river—and we returned to Queenhithe, the watermen shouting jokes and throwing strong words at each other, which seems to be their custom. By the time we landed the sun had gone down. Work for the day was over, and the streets were thronged with people. First, however, it was necessary to think of supper. My guide took me to an old inn in Dowgate; you entered it as at the Mitre by a long passage. This was the well-known Swan, where we found a goodly company assembled. They seemed to be merchants all; grave men, not given to idle mirth, so that the conversation was more dull (if more seemly) than at the Falcon. For supper they served us roast pullet with a salad of lettuce, very good, and a flask of right Canary. My ancient guide swore—"Bones a' me"—that it contained the very spirit and essence of the Canary grape. "Sir," he said, "can a man live in London for eighty years and fail to discern good wine from bad? Why, the city drinks up, I believe, all the good wine in the world. Amsterdam is built on piles set in the ooze and mud. London floats on puncheons, pipes, and hogsheads of the best and choicest. This is truly rare Canary. Alas! I am past eighty. I shall drink but little more."

So he drank and warmed his old heart and discussed further, but it would be idle to set down all he said, because most of it is in books, and my desire has been to record only what cannot be found, by the curious, already printed.

After supper we had more wine and tobacco. Some of the company fell to card-playing, some to dice. Then the door opened, and a man came in with two children, boys, who sang with him while he played the guitar. They sang madrigals very sweetly, each his own part truly and with justice. When they finished, the boys went around with a platter and collected farthings. And having paid our reckoning we went away.

In the streets outside, the women sat at their doors or stood about gossiping with each other. At every corner a bonfire was merrily burning. This was partly because it was the Vigil of St. John the Baptist, partly because in the city they always lit bonfires in the summer months to purify and cleanse the air. But because of the day every door was shadowed with green branches—birch, long fennel, St. John's wort, orpin, white lilies, and such like—garnished with garlands of beautiful flowers. They had also hung up lamps of colored glass, with oil to burn all the night, so that the streets looked gay and bright with the red light of the bonfires playing on the tall gabled fronts, and the red and green light of the lamps. From all the taverns, as we passed, came the sound of music, singing, and revelry, with the clink of glasses and the uplifting of voices thick with wine. There was the sound of music and singing from the private houses. Everywhere singing—everywhere joy and happiness. In the streets the very prentices and their sweethearts danced, to the pipe and tabor, those figures called the Brawl and the Canary, and better dancing, with greater spirit and more fidelity to the steps, had I never before seen.

At last we stopped once more before the door of John Stow's house.

"Sir," he said, taking my hand, "the time has come to bid you farewell. It has been a great honor—believe me—to converse with one of a generation yet to come, and a great satisfaction to learn that my name will live so long beside those of the poets of this noble age. Many things there are into which I would fain have inquired. The looking into futurity is an idle thing, yet I would fain have asked if you have put a new steeple on Paul's; if you still suffer the desecration of that place; if London will spread still more beyond her walls; if her trade will still more increase; if the Spaniard will be always permitted to hold the Continent of America; if the Pope will still be reigning; with many other things. But you came this day to learn, and I to teach. When next you come, suffer me in turn to put questions. And now, good sir, farewell. Behold!" He raised his hands in admiration. "I have spent a day—a whole day—with a man of the nineteenth century!! Bones a' me!!!"