WOOD CARVING AND ORIGINAL SIGN OF THE COCK INN, TOTHILL STREET, WESTMINSTER.
the Restoration the Soldier once more became an Angel and the Citizen returned to the Virgin Mary. But I think that the tavern languished. Cowley Street was not named after the poet, as one would like to believe, but after the village of Cowley, in Middlesex, by Mr. Booth Barton, who built the two streets. There are other associations about these streets; the name of Keats is mentioned. But they belong to the catalogue. It is enough for us to recall the babbling brook which once ran along the roadway here—on this side of the gray stone wall which still stands, the wall of the Monastery. It ran then through the bending reeds and the tall grasses of the marsh, and so out into the silver Thames; the swans came sailing up the brook, and made nests in the low bank of the eyot. The Abbot’s barge was moored close by the gateway, of which a modern successor still stands; and there were drawn up on the bank the boats in which the Abbot’s fishermen went out to catch salmon and sturgeon in the river. Later on they built these quiet houses along one side, something after the Dutch style; and they hung up before their fronts a curtain of green Virginia creeper, but not to hide from the windows the view of the broad lawns, the flower-beds, and the walnut trees of the garden behind the wall.
This part of Westminster has always been full of taverns; first for the solace of the men-at-arms, afterward for that of the Members of Parliament. The tavern has always been the national place of recreation and rest; for a time, it is true, the coffee-house displaced it, but only for a time—the tavern came back again to favor. The signs of these inns show the date of their erection. There was the White Hart of Richard II.; the Brown Bear of Warwick; the White Swan of Henry V.; the Old Rose of Henry VII. And there were the more common signs: the Blue Boar, the Salutation, the George, the Green Dragon, The Barley Mow, the Heaven tavern, the Fleece. One of the oldest of these taverns, the Cock, remained with its open court and its galleries till twenty years ago, when it was pulled down to make room for the Aquarium. The rafters and timbers of this tavern were of cedar, and the interior was also adorned with many curious carvings.
ORIGINAL SIGN, COCK INN.
More remarkable than the taverns, which we have with us everywhere, were the Almshouses of Westminster. Until they were destroyed they were remarkable for their number, for their endowments, and for the quaint pleasantness and beauty of their appearance. You may now look in vain for the old buildings: they are gone; in their place we have the consolidated almshouses and the consolidated schools.
There were almshouses—eight of them—in the Woolstaple, which is now Cannon Street; they looked out upon the river, and the bedesmen turned an honest penny by letting them in lodgings for Parliament men. There were other almshouses founded by Henry VII., outside the Gatehouse in Tothill Street. There was an almshouse for women founded by Lady Margaret in the Almonry. But these were ancient things. Perhaps they disappeared with the Dissolution; perhaps they were “consolidated” the other day. Of the modern almshouses with schools attached, the most important was Emanuel College, a lovely House of Refuge, which stood until yesterday in James Street on the way from Buckingham Gate to Victoria. After leaving the great mansions near the Park one came suddenly upon the low red-brick quadrangle open at one side, with its chapel in the middle and its broad smooth lawn and flower-beds in front—as peaceful a spot as could be found anywhere. It made one glad to think that Dives had really remembered Lazarus; it made one reflect that perhaps money can be put to no better use than to consecrate it to the maintenance of age. And now that College is taken down; soon the site will be covered with residential flats, and Lazarus will retire to his place upon the doorstep. Lazarus is old and worn out in the service of Dives; he ought to be in an almshouse; he has got rheumatism in all his joints; he wants a warm place and a quiet place to lie down and rest in. While this venerable Hospital stood, the world—the world of fashion, the world of pleasure—was reminded of Lazarus. It has disappeared; this means that Lazarus is shoved aside, put out of sight, forgotten; he spends his strength and his skill in the service of the rich man, who knows and thinks nothing about him, and when his strength and his skill fail there is nothing to remind his master that thus and thus should he deal with his old and faithful servant.
All the romance of Westminster City lay in its almshouses and schools. The City of London was fighting the battle of civic freedom; the City of London was finding money to fill the King’s Treasury; the City of London was sending its sails out to the uttermost parts of the earth. This other City, which was not really a city, but only a collection of houses, under the rule of Abbot and of Dean,—which had no trade, which had no municipality, which was a gathering of riffraff and Sanctuary rabble,—presented a continual spectacle of poverty, misery, and crime, lying at the very gate of Abbey and of King’s House. Lazarus, actual or prospective, lived in every house. The Dean