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London Antiques
----I do walk
Methinks like Guide Vaux, with my dark lanthorn,
Stealing to set the town o' fire; i' th' country
I should be taken for William o' the Wisp,
Or Robin Goodfellow.
FLETCHER.
I AM somewhat of an antiquity-hunter, and am
fond of exploring London in quest of the relics of old times.
These are principally to be found in the depths of the city,
swallowed up and almost lost in a wilderness of brick and mortar,
but deriving poetical and romantic interest from the commonplace,
prosaic world around them. I was struck with an instance of the
kind in the course of a recent summer ramble into the city; for
the city is only to be explored to advantage in summer-time, when
free from the smoke and fog and rain and mud of winter. I had
been buffeting for some time against the current of population
setting through Fleet Street. The warm weather had unstrung my
nerves and made me sensitive to every jar and jostle and
discordant sound. The flesh was weary, the spirit faint, and I
was getting out of humor with the bustling busy throng through
which I had to struggle, when in a fit of desperation I tore my
way through the crowd, plunged into a by-lane, and, after passing
through several obscure nooks and angles, emerged into a quaint
and quiet court with a grassplot in the centre overhung by elms,
and kept perpetually fresh and green by a fountain with its
sparkling jet of water. A student with book in hand was seated on
a stone bench, partly reading, partly meditating on the movements
of two or three trim nursery-maids with their infant charges.
I was like an Arab who had suddenly come upon an oasis amid the
panting sterility of the desert. By degrees the quiet and
coolness of the place soothed my nerves and refreshed my spirit.
I pursued my walk, and came, hard by, to a very ancient chapel
with a low-browed Saxon portal of massive and rich architecture.
The interior was circular and lofty and lighted from above.
Around were monumental tombs of ancient date on which were
extended the marble effigies of warriors in armor. Some had the
hands devoutly crossed upon the breast; others grasped the pommel
of the sword, menacing hostility even in the tomb, while the
crossed legs of several indicated soldiers of the Faith who had
been on crusades to the Holy Land.
I was, in fact, in the chapel of the Knights Templars, strangely
situated in the very centre of sordid traffic; and I do not know
a more impressive lesson for the many of the world than thus
suddenly to turn aside from the highway of busy money-seeking
life, and sit down among these shadowy sepulchres, where all is
twilight, dust, and forget-fullness.
In a subsequent tour of observation I encountered another of
these relics of a "foregone world" locked up in the heart of the
city. I had been wandering for some time through dull monotonous
streets, destitute of anything to strike the eye or excite the
imagination, when I beheld before me a Gothic gateway of
mouldering antiquity. It opened into a spacious quadrangle
forming the courtyard of a stately Gothic pile, the portal of
which stood invitingly open.
It was apparently a public edifice, and, as I was
antiquity-hunting, I ventured in, though with dubious steps.
Meeting no one either to oppose or rebuke my intrusion, I
continued on until I found myself in a great hall with a lofty
arched roof and oaken gallery, all of Gothic architecture. At one
end of the hall was an enormous fireplace, with wooden settles on
each side; at the other end was a raised platform, or dais, the
seat of state, above which was the portrait of a man in antique
garb with a long robe, a ruff, and a venerable gray beard.
The whole establishment had an air of monastic quiet and
seclusion, and what gave it a mysterious charm was, that I had
not met with a human being since I had passed the threshold.
Encouraged by this loneliness, I seated myself in a recess of a
large bow window, which admitted a broad flood of yellow
sunshine, checkered here and there by tints from panes of colored
glass, while an open casement let in the soft summer air. Here,
leaning my bead on my hand and my arm on an old oaken table, I
indulged in a sort of reverie about what might have been the
ancient uses of this edifice. It had evidently been of monastic
origin; perhaps one of those collegiate establishments built of
yore for the promotion of learning, where the patient monk, in
the ample solitude of the cloister, added page to page and volume
to volume, emulating in the productions of his brain the
magnitude of the pile he inhabited.
As I was seated in this musing mood a small panelled door in an
arch at the upper end of the hall was opened, and a number of
gray-headed old men, clad in long black cloaks, came forth one by
one, proceeding in that manner through the hall, without uttering
a word, each turning a pale face on me as he passed, and
disappearing through a door at the lower end.
I was singularly struck with their appearance; their black cloaks
and antiquated air comported with the style of this most
venerable and mysterious pile. It was as if the ghosts of the
departed years, about which I had been musing, were passing in
review before me. Pleasing myself with such fancies, I set out,
in the spirit of romance, to explore what I pictured to myself a
realm of shadows existing in the very centre of substantial
realities.
My ramble led me through a labyrinth of interior courts and
corridors and dilapidated cloisters, for the main edifice had
many additions and dependencies, built at various times and in
various styles. In one open space a number of boys, who evidently
belonged to the establishment, were at their sports, but
everywhere I observed those mysterious old gray men in black
mantles, sometimes sauntering alone, sometimes conversing in
groups; they appeared to be the pervading genii of the place. I
now called to mind what I had read of certain colleges in old
times, where judicial astrology, geomancy, necromancy, and other
forbidden and magical sciences were taught. Was this an
establishment of the kind, and were these black-cloaked old men
really professors of the black art?
These surmises were passing through my mind as my eye glanced
into a chamber hung round with all kinds of strange and uncouth
objects--implements of savage warfare, strange idols and stuffed
alligators; bottled serpents and monsters decorated the
mantelpiece; while on the high tester of an old-fashioned
bedstead grinned a human skull, flanked on each side by a dried
cat.
I approached to regard more narrowly this mystic chamber, which
seemed a fitting laboratory for a necromancer, when I was
startled at beholding a human countenance staring at me from a
dusky corner. It was that of a small, shrivelled old man with
thin cheeks, bright eyes, and gray, wiry, projecting eyebrows. I
at first doubted whether it were not a mummy curiously preserved,
but it moved, and I saw that it was alive. It was another of
these black-cloaked old men, and, as I regarded his quaint
physiognomy, his obsolete garb, and the hideous and sinister
objects by which he was surrounded, I began to persuade myself
that I had come upon the arch-mago who ruled over this magical
fraternity.
Seeing me pausing before the door, he rose and invited me to
enter. I obeyed with singular hardihood, for how did I know
whether a wave of his wand might not metamorphose me into some
strange monster or conjure me into one of the bottles on his
mantelpiece? He proved, however, to be anything but a conjurer,
and his simple garrulity soon dispelled all the magic and mystery
with which I had enveloped this antiquated pile and its no less
antiquated inhabitants.
It appeared that I had made my way into the centre of an ancient
asylum for superannuated tradesmen and decayed householders, with
which was connected a school for a limited number of boys. It was
founded upwards of two centuries since on an old monastic
establishment, and retained somewhat of the conventual air and
character. The shadowy line of old men in black mantles who had
passed before me in the hall, and whom I had elevated into magi,
turned out to be the pensioners returning from morning, service
in the chapel.
John Hallum, the little collector of curiosities whom I had made
the arch magician, had been for six years a resident of the
place, and had decorated this final nestling-place of his old age
with relics and rarities picked up in the course of his life.
According to his own account, he had been somewhat of a
traveller, having been once in France, and very near making a
visit to Holland. He regretted not having visited the latter
country, "as then he might have said he had been there." He was
evidently a traveller of the simple kind.
He was aristocratical too in his notions, keeping aloof, as I
found, from the ordinary run of pensioners. His chief associates
were a blind man who spoke Latin and Greek, of both which
languages Hallum was profoundly ignorant, and a broken-down
gentleman who had run through a fortune of forty thousand pounds
left him by his father, and ten thousand pounds, the marriage
portion of his wife. Little Hallum seemed to consider it an
indubitable sign of gentle blood as well as of lofty spirit to be
able to squander such enormous sums.
P.S.--The picturesque remnant of old times into which I have thus
beguiled the reader is what is called the Charter House,
originally the Chartreuse. It was founded in 1611, on the remains
of an ancient convent, by Sir Thomas Sutton, being one of those
noble charities set on foot by individual munificence, and kept
up with the quaintness and sanctity of ancient times amidst the
modern changes and innovations of London. Here eighty broken-down
men, who have seen better days, are provided in their old age
with food, clothing, fuel, and a yearly allowance for private
expenses. They dine together, as did the monks of old, in the
hall which had been the refectory of the original convent.
Attached to the establishment is a school for forty-four boys.
Stow, whose work I have consulted on the subject, speaking of the
obligations of the gray-headed pensioners, says, "They are not to
intermeddle with any business touching the affairs of the
hospital, but to attend only to the service of God, and take
thankfully what is provided for them, without muttering,
murmuring, or grudging. None to wear weapon, long hair, colored
boots, spurs, or colored shoes, feathers in their hats, or any
ruffian-like or unseemly apparel, but such as becomes
hospital-men to wear." "And in truth," adds Stow, "happy are they
that are so taken from the cares and sorrows of the world, and
fixed in so good a place as these old men are; having nothing to
care for but the good of their souls, to serve God, and to live
in brotherly love."
For the amusement of such as have been interested by the
preceding sketch, taken down from my own observation, and who may
wish to know a little more about the mysteries of London, I
subjoin a modicum of local history put into my hands by an
odd-looking old gentleman, in a small brown wig and a
snuff-colored coat, with whom I became acquainted shortly after
my visit to the Charter House. I confess I was a little dubious
at first whether it was not one of those apocryphal tales often
passed off upon inquiring travellers like myself, and which have
brought our general character for veracity into such unmerited
reproach. On making proper inquiries, however, I have received
the most satisfactory assurances of the author's probity, and
indeed have been told that he is actually engaged in a full and
particular account of the very interesting region in which he
resides, of which the following may be considered merely as a
foretaste.
-THE END-
Washington Irving's short story: London Antiques
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