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Title: Chambers's journal of popular literature, science, and art, fifth series, no. 145, vol. III, October 9, 1886

Author: Various

Release date: October 1, 2024 [eBook #74501]

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: William and Robert Chambers

Credits: Susan Skinner, Eric Hutton and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL OF POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART, FIFTH SERIES, NO. 145, VOL. III, OCTOBER 9, 1886 ***





[Illustration:

CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL

OF

POPULAR

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART

Fifth Series

ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832

CONDUCTED BY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS)

NO. 145.—VOL. III.       SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1886.       PRICE 1½_d._]




HOUSES WITH SECRET CHAMBERS.


Though we have on former occasions referred to houses with
lurking-places, or secret chambers, the subject seems to be of such
interest as to warrant our giving some further examples.

Plowden Hall, county of Salop, with ‘its gable ends, high chimneys, its
floors, staircases, and doors of solid oak, and walls covered with oak
panelling,’ is described as being full of nooks and corners. There is
a hiding-hole in the closet of one of the bedrooms, where the boards
of the flooring are so arranged as to be easily moved; and underneath
is a trap-door, by which a small ladder leads down into a dark hole
where there is just room enough for a man to change his position with
ease from a standing to a sitting posture. There is a shelf, on which
the concealed person could eat his food. Tradition states that a priest
was actually concealed there for a fortnight whilst Cromwell’s soldiers
were posted outside the gates; and that these were obliged to leave
without having discovered him. Besides this hiding-place, there is an
escape about the width and form of a chimney, reaching from one of the
bedrooms down to the ground-floor of the house, to which a man might
be lowered by means of a rope. There is also an outlet over the chapel
through two trap-doors on to the roof, where a person might escape
between the eaves of the house; and a portion of the flooring of the
chapel is so formed as to lift up and cover a hiding-place below for
concealing the sacred vessels.

Raglan Castle, Hallam, Derbyshire; Maple-Durham House, Oxon; Oxburgh
Hall, Norfolk; Coughton Hall, Warwickshire; Harrowden, the seat of
the Lords Vaux; and the old Manor-house, Long Clawson, each has its
lurking-holes and secret chamber. That in the last named quaint, old,
picturesque-looking house is reached by the chimney of one of the
sitting-rooms.

‘White Welles House, which lies on the borders of Enfield Chase,
is said to have been’ full of holes, dark mysterious vaults, and
subterranean passages.

Recusants and priests found refuge in Little Malvern Court in the days
of their persecution, the position of one or two hiding-places in the
roof being still pointed out.

A secret chamber in Lowstock Hall, in the parish of Bolton, Lancashire,
which was pulled down in 1816, was associated with blood-stains on the
hearthstone of one of the rooms, and the supposed murder of a priest in
the troublous times.

In connection with Yorkshire, the old Red House is made mention of as
having had a secret chamber and gallery underneath the roof. These were
brought to light some years ago when workmen were employed in making
repairs and alterations on the mansion. The noted royalist, Sir Henry
Slingsby, lay for a time concealed in the hiding-place thus skilfully
contrived; but venturing forth one moonlight night to enjoy the freedom
of a walk in his garden, he was seen by a servant-man, who betrayed
him to his enemies; and soon after the gallant old colonel was seized,
conveyed to London, and beheaded on Tower Hill.

Kingerby Old Hall, situated in the same county, was also possessed of
one or more secret chambers.

Ashbourne Place, in Sussex, which was said to have been built by a
brother of Bishop Juxon, was often made use of as a place of refuge by
that persecuted prelate after the death of Charles I. At the time when
his royal master was beheaded, Juxon was Bishop of London and Clerk of
the Closet; and being implicitly trusted by his royal master, to whom
he was devotedly attached, he received his last confidences on the
scaffold, and his George, with the oft-referred-to word, ‘Remember!’
The father of the present proprietor of Ashbourne, in opening a
communication between the back and front chambers, discovered a room,
the existence of which was previously unknown, and to which access
could only have been gained through the chimney. In all probability,
this curious retreat was Bishop Juxon’s hiding-place.

There is a gallery situated in the attic story of the mansion at
Stanford Court, in Worcestershire, in which Arthur Salwin—an ancestor
of the present proprietor of the estate, who lived in the reigns of
Elizabeth and James I.—and his four sons and seven daughters, together
with others of their kindred, are portrayed on the oak-panelled walls
of the room in the costume of the day; the ladies in embroidered
dresses, with jewelled ornaments. Underneath each figure is a motto in
Latin. Behind the panels are secret passages, which, previous to the
alterations of modern times, extended over a great part of the mansion.

Sanston Hall, the seat of the ancient family of Huddlestone, in
Cambridgeshire, was destroyed on account of the owner’s adherence to
the ancient faith, and rebuilt in the time of Queen Mary, when the
precaution was taken to erect a chapel in the roof. It is approached
by a winding staircase, which also gives access to a secret chamber.
In the hiding-place near the chapel in the roof at the top of the old
winding staircase, there were found some oyster-shells; and a fowl’s
bone was picked up in the one belonging to Lydiate Hall—relics of some
poor prisoner’s solitary meal.

Upton Court, near Reading, the former residence of the Perkyns family,
has also its hidden retreat, which is difficult of access, being
approached by a trap-door in the midst of a chimney-stack near the
lesser Hall.

About the beginning of the present, or the end of last century, a
secret chamber was accidentally discovered in the ancient mansion
of Bourton-on-the-Water, a ‘large rambling house of many gables,’
situated in Gloucestershire. The door appeared on tearing off the
paper which was about to be removed. It was on the second (or upper)
floor landing-place, and opened into a small chamber about eight feet
square, containing a chair and a table. On the back of the former lay
a black robe; and the whole had the appearance as if some one had
recently risen from his seat and left the room. On the same floor there
were several other apartments, of which three only were in use, the
other (called the Dark Room) having been locked up for many years. Of
the three in use, one was styled the Chapel, and another the Priest’s
Room. The former had a vaulted roof or ceiling. All three were supposed
by the villagers to be haunted, and they had been known by the above
appellations in the family long anterior to the discovery of the door.
This interesting old mansion was sold in 1608 to Sir Thomas Edwards,
treasurer of the royal household, and subsequently privy-councillor
to Charles I., and it was probably during his occupancy that Charles
is said to have passed the first night there on his way from Oxford.
Since 1834, this house—except a small part of the south front—was
pulled down, the fine old trees in which it was embosomed felled,
the shrubberies made away with, the pleasure-grounds converted into
pasture, and the remains of the house into a dispensary!

The hiding-place in Heale House, near Amesbury, in Wilts, for several
days formed a retreat for King Charles II. after the battle of
Worcester.

In the course of this century, a movable panel was discovered in a
small panelled room in the old manor-house of Chelvey, county of
Somerset. This aperture, for some unexplained reason, was closed up
hastily, and the spring by which it was opened was said to be lost. In
an adjoining room, which was much larger, and panelled in a similar
manner, there was a cupboard, the floor of which—afterwards nailed
down—had been formerly movable. Underneath was a short flight of steps,
which again ascended, and led to a pretty long but very narrow room at
the back of the fireplace. This concealed chamber was furnished with an
iron sconce projecting from the wall, to hold a candle, and was also
provided with a small fireplace.

Parham, which belongs to the Curzon family, has a secret chamber close
to the chapel in the roof of the house, and the way down to it is
through a bench standing out from the wall.

Captain Duthy, in his _History of Hampshire_, says ‘that the old house
at Hinton-Ampner, in that county, was subjected to the evil report
of being haunted; that strange and unaccountable circumstances did
occur there, by which the peace and comfort of a most respectable and
otherwise strong-minded lady, at that time occupier of the mansion,
were essentially interfered with by noises and interruptions that to
her appeared awful and unearthly, and which finally led to her giving
up the house. Afterwards, on its being taken down, it was discovered
that in the thickness of the walls were secret passages and stairs not
generally known to exist, which afforded peculiar facilities for any
one carrying on without detection the mysteries of a haunted house.’

The following extract, taken from a state paper in the public Record
Office, is preserved among others relating to the Rebellion of 1745,
and obviously has reference to the search that was being made all over
the country for suspected persons. Worksop Manor as it then stood is
said to have been burned down in 1761. Examination of Elizabeth Brown,
taken upon oath before Richard Bagshaw, the 24th November 1745—‘Who
says that nine years ago last spring, upon that Easter Monday, she,
Catherine Marshall, and another young woman, went to Worksop Manor to
see Elizabeth Walkden, who lived as a servant with the Duke of Norfolk
there; and desiring to look at the house, the said Elizabeth Walkden,
she believed, showed them most of the rooms of the house; and at last
coming upon the leads of the house, and walking and looking about
them, the said Elizabeth Walkden said she would let them see a greater
variety than they had yet seen; after which she raised up the ledge of
a sheet of lead with her knife till she got her fingers under it, and
then she desired them to assist her, which they did; and then under
that she took up a trap-door where there was a flight of stairs, which
they went down, into a little room which was all dark; that the said
Elizabeth Walkden opening the window-shutter, there was a fireplace, a
bed, and a few chairs in the said room; and asking her what use that
room was for, she said it was to hide people in trouble—sometimes.
Then the said Elizabeth Walkden went to the side of the room next to
the stair-foot, and opened a door in the wainscot about the middle of
the height of the room, which they looked into, but it being dark,
they could not see anything in it; but the said Elizabeth Walkden said
they could not go into it, as it was full of arms; upon which the said
Elizabeth Walkden shut the door, and they went up-stairs; and then she
shut the trap-door, and laid down the sheet of lead as it was before,
which was so nice she could not discern it from another part of the
leads, and believes she could not find it if she were there again.’

In a very old house entered from the High Street of Canterbury, and
nearly facing Mersey Lane, which leads straight to the cathedral, one
of the rooms had a window opening into an adjoining church. In the
thickness of the walls there were two or three secret stairs. It was
said to have been a nunnery formerly; and that a subterranean passage,
it was ascertained, used to unite it with the cathedral.

Woodcote, Hampshire; Coldham House, Suffolk; Watcomb and Maple-Durham,
Berkshire; Stonyhurst in Lancashire; Treago, Herefordshire; Harborough
Hall, situated midway between Hagley and Kidderminster, all had their
secret chambers; and the ancient seat of the Tichbornes was similarly
provided, together with a complication of secret passages and stairs.

Compton Wynyates, a remote and picturesque mansion belonging to the
Marquis of Northampton, has an upper chapel in the topmost gable,
with ancient wooden altar, three staircases leading to the Priest’s
room in the lower story, secret passages, and hiding-places behind
the wainscoting spacious enough to hold one hundred persons in case
of alarm. The existence of such a chapel sufficiently indicates that
the rites of the old religion were practised in private, although the
Protestant place of worship remained open below.

In Essex, the Wisemans of Braddox or Broadoaks were of the number of
those who suffered during the reigns of Elizabeth and James for their
noted ‘harbouring of priests.’ In _P. R. O. Dom. Elizabeth_, vol. 244,
n. 7, may be seen two forms of indictment of Richard Jackson, priest,
for saying mass at Braddox, and of various members of the Wiseman
family for being present at mass on the 25th August and the 8th of
September 1592. Again: ‘Mr Worseley and Mr Newall have been to Widow
Wiseman’s house in Essex, and found a mass preparing; but the priest
escaped.’ There were two hiding-places in Braddox: the most important
of these adjoined the chapel, and was constructed in a thick wall of
the chimney, behind a finely laid and carved mantel-piece.

In connection with the old mansion of the Carylls at West Grinstead,
the Abbé Denis tells us that it also has two hiding-places. ‘One of
these is between the mantel-piece and ceiling of the dining-room; and
the way to get to it is to go up the flue of the chimney as high as
the ceiling of the room on the second floor; and then, by an aperture
in the side of the chimney or flue, to drop down into the hiding-hole.
Another opening also exists in the chimney of the room above. The
second place of concealment is quite underneath the roof of the house.
It had likewise two ways of access—the one from an attic, the other
from a closet or small room underneath.’ In Benton, the original seat
of the Carylls in Sussex, there is one on the ground-floor between two
kitchen chimneys, which is entered by an opening in the room at the
back. At New Building, a house more recently erected by the Carylls,
there are also two secret rooms; one on the second floor, formed in the
thickness of the wall between two chimneys, but entered by a concealed
door in one of the two adjoining rooms. The other is in the opposite
gable, and is entered from the room on the ground-floor below, through
the top of a cupboard which stands in the wall close to the chimney.

The walls of the ‘ancient moated and turreted mansion’ of Lyford,
Berks, were ‘pierced with concealed galleries and hiding-places;’ one
of the latter was excavated in the wall above the gateway.

Several ‘hiding-holes’ have also come to light in the fine old house
of Sutton Place, near Guildford, Surrey; and some years ago, a ‘most
beautifully embossed leather casket, iron-bound, containing relics of
some of the martyred priests,’ was found in one of these places of
concealment behind the wainscot panelling of the chapel. A curious
printed volume entitled _A Sure Haven against Shipwreck_ was found
concealed ‘between the floor and the ceiling.’ It would seem that
Brother Nicholas Owen, alias Little John, S.J., ‘that useful cunning
joiner of those times,’ was the constructer of many of these secret
rooms, to be found in the greater portion of our ‘stately homes of
England,’ for we read in _Records of the English Provinces_ that ‘he
was divers times hung upon a Topcliff rack in the Tower of London, to
compel him to betray the hiding-places he had made up and down the
land.’ This said ‘skilful architect’ was afterwards seized, according
to the same authority, in company with Fathers Garnet and Oldcorne, in
one of the numerous hiding-places in Hendlip House, near Worcester,
already referred to in No. 1040 of this _Journal_. The secret chamber
in which these Jesuit Fathers were concealed is thus described in
Lingard’s _England_: ‘The opening was from an upper room through the
fireplace. The wooden border of the hearth was made to take up and put
down like a trap-door, and the bricks were taken out and replaced in
their courses whenever it was used.’ The former Westons of Sutton Place
were well known to government as shelterers of priests. It was searched
on the 5th of November 1578, by order of the Privy-council, for ‘popish
priests;’ and again on the 14th of January 1591, for one Morgan, a
‘massing priest,’ supposed to be ‘lurking there in secret sort.’

The far-famed ‘Burleigh Park by Stamford Town’ is also in possession
of a secret chamber. This concealed apartment, of whose existence the
family were altogether unaware, was brought to light in the course of
this century through the instrumentality of the law agent, and was
found to contain furniture of an old-fashioned description, together
with several framed engravings. These latter, when agitated by the
wind, which found its way in through a broken window-pane, struck
against the wall, thereby producing a flapping noise, which had long
procured for the adjoining sleeping apartment the designation of ‘the
Haunted Room.’

The grand old historic mansion of Knebworth, Herts, like others of
similar age and importance, possessed trap-doors, hiding-places, &c.;
and underneath a room adjoining the so-styled ‘Haunted Chamber,’
and belonging to one of the square towers of the gateway, there was
a mysterious room or _oubliette_, of which the late Lord Lytton
thus speaks: ‘How could I help writing romances, when I had walked,
trembling at my own footsteps, through that long gallery with its
ghostly portraits, mused in these tapestry chambers, and passed with
bristling hair into the shadowy abysses’ of the secret chamber. This
portion of Knebworth was pulled down in 1812.

Referring to houses north of the Border having secret chambers,
Sir Walter Scott says: ‘There were few Scottish houses belonging
to families of rank which had not such contrivances, the political
incidents of the times often calling them into occupation.’ ‘The
concealed apartment opening by a sliding panel into the parlour,’ in
the old mansion-house of Swinton, is made good use of by Sir Walter in
his beautiful novel of _Peveril of the Peak_.

Some ten or twelve years ago, while workmen were employed in making
alterations at the house of Nunraw, near the village of Garvald,
Haddingtonshire, they came upon a secret chamber in the depth of one
of the walls, which on inspection was found to contain some mummies,
pictures, and other property. In olden times, Nunraw was a nunnery
belonging to the priory of Haddington, and though modernised, still
exhibits evident marks of great antiquity.

There is an apartment now used as a bedroom in Sir George Warrender’s
house at Bruntsfield, near Edinburgh, which, however, can hardly be
called a secret chamber, inasmuch as it possesses windows and two
external walls, but having the interior walls on both sides of the
entrance of great thickness. The history of this room is somewhat
obscure. It is said to have been used as a place of concealment for
certain Jacobites after the rebellion of 1745; and blood-stains,
which are still distinctly visible on the floor, point remotely to
this theory. Another story is that a cadet of the house of Warrender
returned from Carlisle about 1760, and shortly afterwards died in this
room, which was immediately bricked up, so that all evidences of the
event might be removed. In any case, the room had remained sealed up
beyond the recollection of any one familiar with the house, and the ivy
with which the walls were at this time covered, had almost entirely
obliterated any external traces. It was rediscovered about sixty
years ago by Lee, the English landscape painter, who, when sketching
the house, found himself putting in windows of which he could not
remember the rooms. When opened, the room presented the appearance of
having been left hurriedly, by a departing guest, everything being in
disorder, even to the ashes left undisturbed in the grate. Bruntsfield
House dates from 1605.




BY ORDER OF THE LEAGUE.


CHAPTER V.

The weeping woman looked up, and beheld the loveliest face she had
ever seen. The girl standing before her possessed all the attributes
of southern beauty. Her hair, which was long and luxuriant, hung
in one thick plait down her back, and lay in careless waves upon a
forehead pure as chiselled marble; her face was full, with deep red
flushed under the transparent skin; her features exquisitely moulded;
whilst her eyes, deep as running water, conveyed an air of pride and
power—a sense of passion equally capable of looking implacable hate or
fondest love. They were commanding now, as the woman looked up in the
stranger’s face.

‘Who are you?’ she asked wonderingly.

‘Men call me Isodore,’ the stranger replied in a voice singularly
sweet. ‘I have no other name. Will you let me look at the coin you have
in your hand?’

Never dreaming of refusing this request, the woman handed over the gold
piece to the girl, who looked at it long and intently. Her eyes were
hard and stern when she spoke again. ‘Where did you get this?’ she
asked.

‘It was given me to stake at the table. I noticed that it bore some
device, and I exchanged it for a coin of my own.’

‘It has no meaning to you! It is not possible you are one of us?’

‘I do not understand you,’ the woman replied. ‘It is a curious coin. I
have seen one once before—that is all I know of it.’

‘Listen!’ the girl said in a hushed voice. ‘You do not comprehend what
its possession means to you. It is the symbol, the sign of membership
of the strongest political Brotherhood in Europe. If it was known to
be in your possession, your life would pay the forfeit; it would be
regained at all hazards. If one of the Brotherhood knew another had
deliberately parted with it, I would not give a hair for his life.’

‘And he is in danger of his life!’ the woman cried, starting to her
feet. ‘Give it me, that I may return it to him.’

‘No!’ was the stern reply; ‘he does not get off so easily. We do not
temper the wind thus to traitors.—Woman! what is Hector le Gautier to
you, that you should do this favour for him?’

‘He is a man, and his life is in danger. It is my duty’——

‘Mark me!’ Isodore replied with stern emphasis. ‘I have not the eyes of
a hawk and the hearing of a hare for nothing. I was opposite you in the
saloon, and I know that something more than womanly sympathy prompts
you. I saw the struggle in Le Gautier’s face; I saw you start and
tremble as he spoke to you; I saw you change the coin for one of yours,
and I saw you weeping over it just now. Woman! I ask again what is he
to you?’

Slowly the words came from the other’s lips, as if forced from them by
some mesmeric influence. ‘You are right,’ she said; ‘for—heaven help
me—he is my husband! I am Valerie le Gautier.—Now, tell me who you are.’

‘Tell me something more. How long has he been your husband?’

‘Nine years—nine long, weary years of coldness and neglect, hard words,
and, to my shame, hard blows. But he tired of me, as he tires of all
his toys; he always tires when the novelty wears off.’

‘Yes,’ Isodore said softly, ‘as he tired of me.’

‘You!’ exclaimed Valerie le Gautier, starting—‘you! What! and have you,
too, fallen a victim to his treachery? If you have known him, been a
victim to his perfidy, then, from the bottom of my heart, I pity you.’

‘And I need pity.’

For a short space neither spoke, as they sat listening to the murmur
of the leaves in the trees, broken every now and then by the sounds of
play or laughter within the glittering saloon. Isodore’s face, sad and
downcast for a moment, gradually resumed its hard, proud look, and when
she spoke again, she was herself.

‘We have a sympathy in common,’ she said. ‘We have a debt to pay, and,
by your help, I will pay it. Justice, retribution is slow, but it is
certain. Tell me, Valerie—if I may call you by your name—how long is it
since you saw your husband till to-night?’

‘Seven years—seven years since he deserted me cruelly and heartlessly,
leaving me penniless in the streets of Rome. I had to live how I could;
I even begged sometimes, for he has squandered the little money I
brought to him.’

‘Do you think he knew you to-night?’ Isodore asked.

‘Knew me?’ was the bitter response. ‘No, indeed. Had he known I was so
near, he would have fled from my presence.’

‘He laughs at us, no doubt, as poor defenceless women. But time will
show. I can ever find an hour in the midst of my great work to watch
his movements. I have waited long; but the day is coming now.—Would you
know the latest ambition of your honourable husband? He intends to get
married again. He has dared to lift his eyes to Enid Charteris.’

‘Hector dares to marry again!’ Valerie exclaimed, ‘and I alive? Oh, I
must take vengeance, indeed, for this.’

She drew a long breath, shutting her lips tightly. The passion of
jealousy, long crushed down, rose with overwhelming force; she was no
longer a weak defenceless woman, but a fury, maddened and goaded to the
last extremity.

Isodore watched her, well pleased with this display of spirit. ‘Now you
speak,’ she said admiringly, ‘and I respect you. All your womanhood is
on fire within you to avenge the wrongs of years, and it shall be no
fault of mine if they slumber again. Yes, your perfect husband designs
to wed again.’

‘I believe you are a witch. You have roused my curiosity; you must tell
me more than this.’

‘Hector le Gautier is in love,’ Isodore replied, a world of quiet scorn
running through her words, ‘and, strange as it may seem, I believe
true. An English girl—Enid Charteris, with the blue eyes and fair
hair—has bewitched him, satiated as he is with southern beauty.—You
look surprised! I have the gift of fern-seed, and walk invisible.
All these things I know. The Order is to be betrayed when the pear
is ripe, and the traitor will be Hector le Gautier. The price of his
treachery will enable him to become respectable, and lead a quiet
life henceforward with his loving fair-haired bride. Poor, feeble,
calculating fool!’ The bitter scorn in these words was undescribable,
and round the speaker’s lips a smile was wreathed—a smile of placid
unrelenting hate and triumph strangely blended.

‘It shall never be,’ Valerie cried passionately, ‘while I can
raise my voice to save an innocent girl from the toils of such a
scoundrel!—Yes,’ she hissed out between her white clenched teeth, ‘it
will be a fitting revenge. It would be bliss indeed to me if I could
stand between them at the altar, and say that man is mine!’

‘He is ours,’ Isodore corrected sternly; ‘do not ignore that debt
entirely. Be content to leave the plot to me. I have worked out my
scheme, and we shall not fail. Five years ago, I was a child, happy on
the banks of my beloved Tiber. It was not far from Rome that we lived,
my old nurse and I, always happy till he came and stole away my heart
with his grand promises and sweet words. Six short months sufficed him,
for I was only a child then, and he threw away his broken plaything. It
made a woman of me, and it cost me a lover worth a world of men like
him. I told him I would have revenge. He laughed then; but the time is
coming surely. I have a powerful interest in the Brotherhood; he knows
me by name, but otherwise we are strangers. To-night, I saw my old
lover in his company. Ah, had he but known!—Come, Valerie; give me that
coin, the lucky piece of gold which shall lure him to destruction. Come
with me; I must say more to you.’

Mechanically, Valerie le Gautier followed her companion out of the
Kursaal gardens, through the streets, walking till they got a little
way out of the town. At a house there, a little back from the road,
Isodore stopped, and opened the door with a passkey. Inside, all was
darkness; but taking her friend by the hand, and bidding her not to
fear, Isodore led her forward along a flagged passage and up a short
flight of steps. Opening another door, and turning up the hanging lamp,
she smiled. ‘Sit down,’ she said, ‘my sister that is to be. You are
welcome.’

The apartment was somewhat large and lofty. By the light from the
silver lamp, suspended from the ceiling in an eagle’s beak, the
stranger noticed the room with its satin-wood panels running half
way up the walls, surmounted by crimson silk hangings, divided over
the three long windows by gold cords; a thread of the same material
running through the rich upholstery with which the place was garnished.
The floor was paved with bright coloured woodwork of some mysterious
design; and heavy rugs, thick and soft to the feet, scattered about
sufficient for comfort, but not enough to mar the beauty of the
inlaid floor. Pictures on china plates let into the hangings were
upon the walls; and in the windows were miniature ferneries, a little
fountain plashing in the midst of each. There was no table in the room,
nothing whereon to deposit anything, save three brass stands, high and
narrow; one a little larger than the rest, upon which stood a silver
spirit-lamp under a quaint-looking urn, a chocolate pot to match,
and three china cups. There were cosy-looking chairs of dark massive
oak, upholstered in red silk, with the same gold thread interwoven in
all. A marble clock, with a figure of Liberty thereon, stood on the
mantel-piece.

Isodore threw herself down in a chair. The other woman took in the
scene with speechless rapture; there was something soothing in the
harmonious place. ‘You are pleased,’ Isodore said with a little smile
of pleasure, as she surveyed the place. ‘This is my home, if I can call
any place a home for such a wanderer; but when I can steal a few days
from the cares of the cause, I come here. I need not ask you if you
like my apartments?’

‘Indeed, I do,’ Valerie replied, drawing a long breath of delight. ‘It
is absolutely perfect. The whole thing surprises and bewilders me. I
should not have thought there had been such a place in Homburg.’

‘I will give you another surprise,’ Isodore laughed, ‘before the
evening is over. I am the princess of surprises; I surprise even the
followers who owe me loyal submission.’

‘Ah! had I such a paradise as this, I should forswear political
intrigue. I should leave that to those who had more to gain or to lose
by such hazards. I should be content to let the world go on, so that I
had my little paradise.’

‘So I feel at times,’ Isodore observed with a little sigh. ‘But I am
too deeply pledged to draw my hand back now. Without me, the Order is
like an army deprived of its general; besides, I am the creature of
circumstance; I am the sworn disciple of those whose mission it is to
free the down-trodden from oppression and to labour in freedom’s name.’
As she said these words, the sad look upon her brow cleared away like
mist before the sun, and a proud light glistened in the wondrous eyes.
Half ashamed of her enthusiasm, she turned to the stand by her side,
and soon two cups of chocolate were frothed out of the pot, filling the
room with its fragrance. Crossing the floor, she handed one of the cups
to her new-found friend. For a moment they sat silent, then Isodore
turned to her companion smilingly.

‘How would you like to go with me to London?’ she asked.

‘I would follow you to the world’s end!’ was the fervid reply; ‘but
there are many difficulties in the way. I have my own living to get,
precarious as it is, and I dare not leave this place.’

‘I permit no difficulties to stand in my way,’ Isodore said proudly;
‘to say a thing, with me, is to do it. Let me be candid with you,
Valerie. Providence has thrown you in my path, and you will be useful
to me; in addition, I have taken a fancy to you. Yes,’ she continued
fervently, ‘the time has come—the pear is ripe. You shall come with me
to London; you have a wrong as well as I, and you shall see the height
of Isodore’s vengeance.’ Saying these words in a voice quivering with
passionate intensity, she struck three times on the bell at her side.
Immediately, in answer to this, the heavy curtains over the door
parted, and a girl entered.

She was Isodore’s living image; the same style and passionate type of
face; but she lacked the other’s firm determined mouth and haughtiness
of features. She was what the lily is to the passion-flower. Her eyes
were bent upon her sister—for she was Lucrece—with the same love and
patient devotion one sees in the face of a dog.

‘You rang, Isodore?’ she asked; and again the stranger noticed the
great likeness in the voice, save as to the depth and ring of Isodore’s
tones.

‘Yes, Lucrece, I rang,’ the sister replied. ‘I have brought a visitor
to see you.—Lucrece, this lady is Hector le Gautier’s wife.’

‘Le Gautier’s wife?’ the girl asked with startled face. ‘Then what
brings her here? I should not have expected’——

‘You interrupt me, child, in the midst of my explanations. I should
have said Le Gautier’s deserted wife.’

‘Ah!’ Lucrece exclaimed, ‘I understand.—Isodore, if you collect under
your roof all the women he has wronged and deceived, you will have a
large circle. What is she worth to us?’

‘Child!’ Isodore returned with some marked emphasis on her words, ‘she
is my friend—the friend of Isodore should need no welcome here.’

A deep blush spread over the features of Lucrece at these words, as
she walked across the room to Valerie’s side. Her smile was one of
consolation and welcome as she stooped and kissed the other woman
lightly. ‘Welcome!’ she said. ‘We see both friends and foes here,
and it is hard sometimes to tell the grain from the chaff. You are
henceforward the friend of Lucrece too.’

‘Your kindness almost hurts me,’ Valerie replied in some agitation. ‘I
have so few friends, that a word of sympathy is strange to me. Whatever
you may want or desire, either of you, command me, and Valerie le
Gautier will not say you nay.’

‘Lucrece, listen to me,’ said Isodore in a voice of stern command.
‘To-morrow, we cross to London, and the time has come when you must be
prepared to assist in the cause.—See what I have here!’ Without another
word, she placed the gold moidore in her sister’s hand.

Lucrece regarded it with a puzzled air. To her simple mind, it merely
represented the badge of the Brotherhood.

‘You do not understand,’ Isodore continued, noticing the look of
bewilderment. ‘That coin, as you know, is the token of the Order, and
to part with it knowingly is serious’——

‘Yes,’ Lucrece interrupted; ‘the penalty is death.’

‘You are right, my sister. That is Le Gautier’s token. He staked it
yonder at the Kursaal, giving it to his own wife, though he did not
know it, to put upon the colour. The coin is in my hands, as you see.
Strange, how man becomes fortune’s fool!’

‘Then your revenge will be complete,’ Lucrece suggested simply. ‘You
have only to hand it over to the Council of Three, or even the Crimson
Nine, and in one hour’——

‘A dagger’s thrust will rid the world of a scoundrel.—Pah! you do
not seem to understand such feeling as mine. No, no; I have another
punishment for him. He shall live; he shall carry on his mad passion
for the fair-haired Enid till the last; and when his cup of joy shall
seem full, I will dash it from his lips.’

‘Your hate is horrible,’ Valerie exclaimed with an involuntary shudder.
‘I should not like to cross your path.’

‘My friends find me true,’ Isodore answered sadly; ‘it is only my
enemies that feel the weight of my arm.—But enough of this; we need
stout hearts and ready brains, for we have much work before us.’

Three days later, and the women drove through the roar and turmoil of
London streets. They were bent upon duty and revenge. One man in that
vast city of four or five million souls was their quarry.


CHAPTER VI.

Mr Varley, Sir Geoffrey Charteris’ valet and factotum, and majordomo
in the baronet’s town residence, Grosvenor Square, was by no means
devoid of courage; but the contents of the note he was reading in the
hall one fine morning early in May were sufficient to put to flight
for the moment any vengeful schemes he was harbouring against the wily
gentleman who has just quitted the house, and that gentleman no less a
person than our old friend Le Gautier.

Timothy Varley was an Irishman, and had been in his youth what is
termed a patriot. In his hot blood he had even joined a League for
the ‘removal of tyrants;’ but the League, in spite of its solemn form
and binding oaths, had died a natural death. At times, however, the
recollection of it troubled Mr Varley’s conscience sorely. It was
destined to be brought to his mind now in a startling manner.

    ‘G. S. I. You will be at the corner of Chapel Place to-night at
    nine. A girl will meet you, and show you the way. You are wanted;
    your turn has come. Do not fail.—NUMBER XI.’

Never did Bob Acres, in that celebrated comedy, _The Rivals_, feel
the courage oozing from his finger-tips as did Timothy Varley now. He
turned the missive over in his fingers; but no consolation was to be
derived from that; and bitterly did he revile the juvenile folly that
had placed him in such a position at this time of life.

‘It is no sham,’ he muttered to himself. ‘God save Ireland—that is the
old countersign; and to think of it turning up now! I had forgotten the
thing years ago. This comes of joining secret societies—a nice thing to
bring a respectable family man to! Now, by the powers! who was Number
Eleven? That used to be Pat Mahoney; and a mighty masterful man he was,
always ready with his hands if anything crossed him. O dear, O dear!
this is a pretty thing. Maybe they want to mix me up with dynamite; but
if they do, I won’t do it, and that’s flat. I suppose I shall have to
go.’

Giving vent to these words in a doleful tone of voice, he betook
himself to his private sanctum. His spirits were remarked to be the
reverse of cheerful, and he declined a glass of sherry at lunch, a
thing which roused much speculation below stairs.

Punctual to the moment, Timothy Varley stood in Chapel Place waiting
for his unknown guide. Just as he was beginning to imagine the affair
to be a hoax, and congratulating himself thereon, a woman passed him,
stopped, and walked in his direction again. ‘God save Ireland!’ she
said as she repassed.

‘Amen, not forgetting one Timothy Varley,’ he returned piously.

‘It is well,’ the woman replied calmly, ‘that you are here. Follow me!’

‘With the greatest of pleasure.—But hark here; my legs are not so young
as yours: if we are going far, let us have a cab, and I’ll stand the
damage.’

‘There is no occasion,’ the stranger said in a singularly sweet voice.
‘We have not a great distance to travel.’

‘Not good enough to ride in the same carriage with a gentleman’s
gentleman,’ Varley muttered, for he did not fail to note the stranger’s
refined tones.

His guide led him along Tottenham Court Road, and thence to Fitzroy
Square. Turning into a little side-street, she reached at length a
door, at which she knocked.

In a room on the first floor, Isodore and Valerie le Gautier were
seated, waiting the advent of Lucrece and the stranger. Varley began
to feel bewildered in the presence of so much beauty and grace; for
Isodore’s loveliness overpowered him, as it did all men with whom she
came in contact. Scarcely deigning to notice his presence, she motioned
him to a chair, where he sat the picture of discomfiture, all traces of
the audacious Irishman having disappeared.

‘Your name is Timothy Varley?’ Isodore said.

‘Yes, miss; leastways, it was when I came here, though, if you were to
tell me I was the man in the moon, I couldn’t say nay to you.’

‘I know you,’ Isodore continued. ‘You were born near Mallow, joined the
United Brotherhood thirty years ago, and your Number was Twenty-six. If
I am wrong, you will please correct me.’

‘For goodness’ sake, miss—my lady, I mean—don’t speak so loud. Think
what might happen to me if any one knew!’

‘No wonder your countrymen fail, with such chicken-hearts among them,’
Isodore observed scornfully. ‘I do not want to do you any harm; quite
the contrary. There is an advertisement in to-day’s _Times_. Your
mistress is in search of a maid. Is that so?’

Timothy Varley began to breathe a little more freely. ‘Yes,’ he
answered glibly; ‘she does want a maid. She must be honest, sober, and
industrious; ready to sit up all night if necessary, and have a good
temper—not that Miss Enid will try any one’s temper much. The last girl
was discharged’——

‘Now, Mr Varley, I know a girl who must fill that vacancy. I do not
wish to threaten you or hold any rod of terror over your head; but I
shall depend upon you to procure it for my protégée.’

The conversation apparently was not going to be so pleasant. Timothy
Varley’s mind turned feebly in the direction of diamond robberies.

‘Well, miss—that is, my lady—if I may make so bold as to ask you a
question: why, if the matter is so simple, don’t you write to my young
mistress and settle the matter that way?’

‘Impossible,’ Isodore replied, ‘for reasons I cannot enter into with
you. You must do what I ask, and that speedily.—You have a certain
Monsieur le Gautier at your house often?’

This question was so abruptly asked, that Varley could not repress a
start. ‘We have,’ he growled—‘a good deal too often, to please me. My
master dare not call his body his own since he first began to come to
the house with his signs and manifestations.—You see,’ he explained,
‘servants are bound to hear these things.’

‘At keyholes and such places,’ Isodore smiled. ‘Yes, I understand such
things do happen occasionally. So this Le Gautier is a spiritualist, is
he; and Sir Geoffrey is his convert?’

‘Indeed, you may say that,’ Varley burst out in tones of great
grievance. ‘The baronet sees visions and all sorts of things.’

‘Is it possible,’ Valerie whispered to her friend, ‘that Hector has
really succeeded in gaining an influence over this Sir Geoffrey by
those miserable tricks he played so successfully at Rome?’

‘It is very probable,’ Isodore murmured in reply. ‘This Sir Geoffrey
is very weak in intellect.—Tell me, Mr Varley,’ she continued, turning
in his direction, ‘does the baronet keep much of Monsieur le Gautier’s
company? Does he visit at his rooms?’

‘I believe he does; anyway, he goes out at nights, and always comes
back looking as if he had seen a ghost. Whatever his game may be—and
sure enough there is some game on—it’s killing him by inches, that’s
what it’s doing.’

‘And this change you put down to Le Gautier? Perhaps you are right. And
now, another question. Is not there another reason, another attraction
besides discussing spiritualism with Sir Geoffrey, that takes him to
Grosvenor Square?’

Varley so far forgot himself as to wink impressively. ‘You might have
made a worse guess than that,’ he said. ‘I am not the only one who can
see what his designs are. Miss Enid is the great attraction.’

‘And she?’

‘Hates him, if looks count for anything.—And so do I,’ he continued;
‘and so do all of us, for the matter of that. I would give a year’s
salary to see his back turned for good!’

‘Mr Varley,’ Isodore said in grave tones, ‘I sent for you here to work
upon your fears, and to compel you, if necessary, to do my bidding.
That, I see, is not necessary, for we have a common bond of sympathy.
For reasons I need not state here, we have good reasons for keeping a
watch over this Le Gautier; but rest assured of one thing—that he will
never wed your mistress. I shall hold you to secrecy.—And now, you must
promise to get my protégée this situation.’

‘Well, I will do my best,’ Varley replied cheerfully. ‘But how it is
going to be done, I really can’t see.’

‘Irishmen are proverbial for their inventive powers, and doubtless
you will discover a way.—The new maid is a French girl, remember,
the daughter of an old friend. Perhaps you would like to see her?’
With a gesture she indicated Lucrece, who came forward, turning to
the Irishman with one of her most dazzling smiles. The feeling of
bewilderment came on again.

‘She!’ he cried; ‘that beautiful young lady a servant?’

‘When she is plainly dressed, as suitable to her lowly station, she
will appear different.’

‘Ah, you may pull the leaves from the flowers, but the beauty remains
to them still,’ Varley replied, waxing poetical. ‘However, if it must
be, it must; so I will do my best.’

Varley’s diplomacy proved successful, for, a week later, Lucrece was
installed at Grosvenor Square.




MINERAL SUBSIDENCE.


The alarming subsidence which took place some time ago in Scotland, on
the North British Railway near Prestonpans, and which was fortunately
unattended with any accident, has doubtless added a fresh source
of fear to the nervous railway passenger. That the permanent way
of a railway for a distance of about fifty yards should suddenly
sink to the extent of two feet is almost incomprehensible at first;
and had this subsidence occurred whilst the train was passing,
instead of immediately afterwards, the consequences might have been
disastrous. It is the case, however, though it may not be generally
known, that subsidences—fortunately only gradual, and comparatively
inappreciable—are taking place over many of our railway lines, and that
‘minerals’ are actually being extracted from underneath nearly every
line of railway under which there is any mineral to get.

The damage done to the line at Prestonpans was reported to have been
caused by coal-workings which were there long before the railway was
laid; but if it was caused by them at all, it was on account of their
being influenced by the working of a seam of coal below them, which was
going on at the time the subsidence occurred. It is the fact, however,
that when a Railway Company acquires ground under its parliamentary
powers, the minerals underneath the ground do not pass along with it.
This may seem a little surprising at first; but it is not so when it is
considered that very frequently the proprietor of the surface of the
ground and the proprietor of the minerals underneath it are different
persons. Of course the proprietor of an estate under no reservations
is proprietor as high as he can get and as deep as he cares to go; but
he may sell or lease the minerals and retain the surface, or _vice
versâ_. Thus it is that a Railway Company has only, as it were, a right
of passage over the surface; and that its right goes no deeper, except
for the construction or up-keep of its lines. By Act of Parliament,
however, the proprietor of minerals below any railway line, before
proceeding to work them, must give notice to the Railway Company of
his intention to do so, so as to give the Company an opportunity of
buying him off, should it feel disposed. If it does not declare its
option to purchase the minerals, the workings proceed, and the railway
has to take its chance. The mineral owner will, however, be held
liable, should any damage occur owing to improper working.

The subsidence of a railway line underneath which the minerals
have been worked is as a rule very gradual, and extends over some
length of time. Many railway passengers must have noticed the walls
of waiting-rooms disfigured by ungainly cracks, the stone lintels
displaced, the hearthstones awry, and many other signs, which are
caused by the working of minerals underneath. Some station-masters
can show you on the stone face of the platform the number of inches
the line has sunk. As a matter of fact, were it not for the gangs of
surfacemen the Railway Companies employ to watch any irregularities
in their lines, in a very short space of time the permanent way would
in many places probably represent something like the proposed line of
the Undulating Railway, a fantastical scheme of long ago. The railway
in Ayrshire which runs over the old workings of the famous Wishaw
coal-seam, especially suffers in the way of subsidence; and some parts
of the railway in the west of Fife are known to have gradually sunk to
an extent of over ten feet.

But railway lines are not the only parts of the surface which are
subsiding owing to the working of minerals. The whole surface of
the land surrounding the many pits and mines which are continually
belching forth their wagon-loads of coal or other mineral, is gradually
subsiding as the extraction of the mineral proceeds; and damage
amounting to thousands of pounds is annually being done to the surface
and the buildings on it owing to mineral workings. As the period and
extent of the subsidence and the damage following on it depend greatly
on the method employed in working the coal, a word or two here on this
subject may not be out of place.

There are two recognised methods of working out coal. The old method
is what is known as the ‘stoop-and-room’ or ‘pillar-and-room’ system;
and the method introduced into Scotland about the beginning of the
present century is known as the ‘longwall’ or ‘Shropshire’ system of
working. The first system explains itself by its name. After the bed of
coal is struck, ‘rooms’ are worked out, leaving ‘pillars’ or ‘stoops’
to support the superincumbent strata. The object to be attained in
this system, as practised in the olden times, was to have as large a
room worked out, and as small a stoop or pillar of the coal itself
left, as was consistent with the safety of the mine and the support
of the surface, while the mine was open. But this system entailed the
entire loss of the pillars so left. To obviate this loss, the method
now generally adopted is to drive narrow rooms or passages, seldom
exceeding fourteen feet, through the seam, leaving large pillars—about
seventy-five per cent. of the mineral—until the extremity of the
available coal is reached. When, however, no regard is to be had for
the surface, and the coal has been thus worked out as far as can be
done, the miner commences to work backwards, taking out the stoops or
pillars as he goes. The whole roof of the mine then comes down; and
this is the most dangerous kind of subsidence. It does not only take
effect immediately above the place where ‘stooping’ has been going on,
but it also ‘draws’ round about it.

The ‘longwall’ or Shropshire method of working is what is known as
the system of complete excavation; that is, the miner takes out the
whole coal as he proceeds, leaving only perhaps a foot on the roof,
should the overlying strata be soft, and props up a passage with wooden
supports as he proceeds, to enable him to keep an open way to the face
of the coal. The portions worked out are packed on each side of the
‘road’ with the waste material taken out with the coal. This method
of working, though it necessarily implies subsidence, is on the whole
the safest for the surface, and is generally the one adopted. In fact,
as mineral landlords are paid, in lieu of rent, a royalty or lordship
on every ton of coal or other mineral brought to the surface, and as
the tenant can more quickly extract the mineral by the wooden props
method, he is generally bound in his lease to work in this manner, when
practicable.

Should the coal be worked on the stoop-and-room system, and pillars of
coal of sufficient size be left in, the surface will not be injured
to any appreciable extent, at least not for many years. As is often
the case, however, seams of coal are worked out one below the other;
and when the lower one gives way, the pillars above may fall like a
pack of cards. There is no saying where the subsidence would reach in
such a case. If the pillars do not break, the way in which the ‘rooms’
close up, if the floor is soft, is rather peculiar. The roof does not
all fall in, as would be expected; but the enormous weight of the
superincumbent strata pressing on the pillars causes the floor between
them to rise up or ‘creep,’ and the room becomes closed. On the other
hand, if the stoops of coal are taken out, the roof comes down with a
crash, and the effects on the surface may be disastrous; but of course
it sometimes pays better to get out all the coal and let the surface
go, than to allow the workings to get closed up and the coal in the
pillars to be lost for ever.

The subsidence following on a ‘longwall’ working is gradual, but sure.
The surface is not broken to any great extent, but comes down in one
sheet, and not irregularly, as in stoop-and-room workings. The strata
generally come to rest in about three or four years. A row of houses
which have been cracked through and through on the subsidence reaching
the surface, have been known to close up again when the strata have
settled.

The damage done by pillar-and-room workings is irregular both as
regards effect and time. It may commence, stop, and commence again.
Houses are literally wrecked by it. So palpable is it, indeed, that
actually the sound of the crushing and subsiding of the house can be
distinctly heard. The slates are twisted off the roof, the chimneys
hang in all directions, the walls are rent asunder, the foundations
give way, and the house is rendered uninhabitable. An instance of this
is to be found in the salt-workings of Cheshire, in the neighbourhood
of which, houses are constantly being wrecked. Thousands of pounds are
paid every year by mine-owners for damages done to surface proprietors,
farmers, and others; and there is no more fruitful source of litigation
than surface-damage.

Even under public roads, we find the minerals being worked. The public
have only a right of passage, the minerals underneath belonging to the
adjoining proprietor, and it is not an uncommon circumstance in mining
districts for a road to suddenly sink several feet.

In the case of a proprietor of minerals in lands adjoining the sea, his
right, as a general rule, extends only to high-water mark. Below that
line, underneath the foreshore and the sea itself, the minerals belong
to the Crown. The Crown, of course, can lease the minerals, and they
are very frequently worked under the sea itself. In such a case, great
precautions have to be observed in the workings, to prevent any chance
of the sea breaking in, though, when the stratum above is rock, the
mineral is sometimes worked out within a very few feet of the bottom of
the sea! In some mines, the roar of the ocean above can be distinctly
heard.

This, however, is a digression from the subject of subsidence.
Subsidence of the surface above our almost inexhaustible beds of coal
has been going on, and will go on more or less, until that day in
the dim futurity which has been foretold, when our coal-seams will
have become exhausted, but when, let us hope, the inventive genius of
posterity will have discovered another fuel, or done away with the
necessity of fuel altogether.




GEORGE HANNAY’S LOVE AFFAIR.


CHAPTER II.—LOVE’S YOUNG DREAM.

For a few days Anne Porteous felt rather miserable. She was angry
with herself for her imprudence in allowing such a misfortune to have
happened; her feminine vanity was not in the least bit tickled at
having the refusal of the famous editor, for she was not at all of
that class of savage females who gloat over the roll of their rejected
suitors as a Red Indian does over his string of scalps. No; she felt
really and truly vexed for her old and kind friend, though, with the
inconsistency of her sex, she could not but feel just the least bit
piqued that, seeing he had cared for her so much as to ask her to be
his wife, he had taken her unavoidable refusal so calmly and in such
good part. She was glad to find, however, he had not forgotten her
altogether; although he was now at Lucerne, she got the _Olympic_
and other London magazines addressed to her in his familiar splashy
handwriting, just as before. But there were no letters now. Formerly,
she used to act as correspondent between him and her father, whose
fingers were too stiff from rheumatism to make writing convenient. She
missed the gay cheerful letters, with their satirical sketches of the
lions of the circles he moved in, and their playful banter of herself
even. However, one day the postman brought a letter which turned her
thoughts into an entirely different channel. It ran as follows:

                                        BRUSSELS, 19th _Sept._ 188-.

    MY DARLING NAN—I have just time to write this before starting
    for London by the tidal train. Old Uncle Joseph is dead. I have
    just got the telegram announcing the event, which took place this
    morning. I hope he will have left me a good round sum, so that I
    can start practice at once, and then a certain young lady I know of
    will not be long of coming to keep house for me. With a thousand
    kisses.—Yours ever,

            ALFRED ROBERTON.

She mused over this letter for a few minutes; something in it jarred on
her feelings. She did not quite like the matter-of-fact way in which
the writer announced the death of his uncle, to whom he was entirely
indebted for his upbringing and education. Nor was she quite pleased
at the assured way he spoke of a ‘certain young lady’ coming to keep
house for him. Why, as yet he had not even seen her father—not to speak
of his having got no consent to their union. Nan was a pre-eminently
practical young woman; but a kind, loving, faithful heart beat in her
bosom, and it resented the tone of the note as being callous and far
too self-assured. Of course, it was written under a pressure for time;
but still it might have contained some little expression of sorrow for
the death of one who had done so much for him, instead of hoping for a
good legacy.

Alfred Roberton was her engaged lover. She met him at a dancing
party given by a mutual friend in le Quartier l’Anglais, Brussels.
He was possessed of a stalwart handsome figure, and an agreeable
face and voice. That he was clever, might possibly be inferred from
the fact that he had carried off quite a number of college honours.
That he thought himself clever, didn’t require to be inferred from
anything—it was stamped on his face, and showed itself in his every
look and gesture. Whether Anne saw this, we know not; if she did, it
was insufficient to prevent her falling deeply in love with him. A few
moonlight strolls under the linden trees, a few soft pressures of the
hand, a few sighs and tender speeches, and practical, sober-minded
Anne gave her whole heart to this handsome youth—the first who had
ever addressed her in the magic accents of love. And he? Well, he
loved truly and sincerely enough in his own sort of way, just as he
had loved other young ladies before. He was one of those men who seem
to hold a power of fascination over the other sex. He did not mean
to be a flirt—but how could he help the girls falling in love with
him? He couldn’t make a brute of himself, and be rude and insolent to
them—could he? His conquests were, however, usually of brief duration;
for some reason or other not known, his previous love affairs had come
to an untimely end. It was generally thought by his friends—and himself
too—that his love for Anne was sincere and genuine, and could end in
nothing else than matrimony. His uncle’s demise would bring matters to
a crisis. He had adopted him at an early age, being himself a childless
widower. Mr Joseph Roberton was a Scotchman, and had gone early in
life to push his fortune in the great Metropolis. Starting business
after a while as a cheesemonger, he had in the course of years managed
to scrape together quite a little fortune; and when his brother died,
he gladly adopted his only son Alfred, and gave him a first-class
education. When he arrived at an age for choosing a business or
profession, he expressed a desire to be a doctor, so his uncle sent
him to Edinburgh University, where, in due course of time, he received
his diploma of M.D. While he was engaged pursuing his medical studies,
his uncle took it into his head to marry his housekeeper, Mrs Janet
Grant. Alfred did not like this change in the old gentleman’s domestic
arrangements, for, truth to say, there was little love lost between
him and the late housekeeper; but any unpleasant feeling he might have
felt in the matter was changed into unmitigated disgust by the advent
of a baby-cousin—his uncle’s son and heir. The old gentleman was of
course delighted at this addition to his family; but it did not make
any difference in his treatment of his nephew. He still gave him an
allowance of three hundred pounds a year; and as he had now got his
professional degree, it was arranged that he should travel on the
continent for a year, visiting the various centres of medical science,
and making himself acquainted with the latest discoveries, before
beginning practice in London. It was while on this tour that he met
Anne Porteous.

About a week after receiving her lover’s letter, a tall, gentlemanly
looking stranger entered the coffee-room of Lochenbreck Inn, and, much
to the waiting-maid’s surprise, asked to see Miss Porteous. Anne did
not need to look at the stranger’s card; she knew instinctively it was
her lover, and there being no one else in the room, she went to meet
him. The first fond greetings over, she saw there was something on
his mind, and that not of a pleasant nature. She was not long kept in
suspense.

‘Do you know, Nan, I have been swindled—thoroughly swindled? After my
uncle’s funeral, I waited to hear the will read, of course. The family
lawyer was there; and he said there was no will. His client, he said,
had been talking some time ago of making one, and had even given him
some general directions about it; but he says it was never executed,
and that the scheming old housekeeper and her brat are heirs to all.
Isn’t it shameful?’

‘Well, Alfred dear,’ Anne replied in a consolatory tone, ‘you know they
were nearer to him than you could ever be, and you mustn’t grudge them
taking what is justly their own. Besides, remember how kind your uncle
was to you in his lifetime. Look at what a lot of money he spent on
your education and in fitting you for a profession.—But did your aunt
give you nothing—not even a remembrance of your uncle?’

‘Well, yes,’ he grumblingly rejoined; ‘she gave me a cheque for a
hundred guineas, and had the impudence to tell me she never wanted to
see my face again.’

‘And you took it?’

‘Why, yes. Why shouldn’t I?’

‘Well, Alfred, if I had been in your place, I would not have accepted
of a gift given in such a spirit. However, it will be useful when you
begin practice, which I suppose you will be doing at once now.’

‘Start business as a doctor in London, with only a hundred pounds to
fall back on! Why, Nan, you’re surely joking. But I forget: girls don’t
understand these matters.’

‘Then, what do you purpose doing?’ she asked anxiously.

‘Oh, my mind is quite made up as to that,’ he said, drawing himself up
proudly. ‘I intend devoting myself to literature.’

‘And throw away all your medical study and training for nothing,’ she
exclaimed. ‘Surely, that would be folly, Alfred.’

‘There’s no folly about it,’ he answered. ‘Lots of fellows, without
half the education or, I may say, ability that I possess, make a
thousand or two a year by writing science articles, stories, and what
not for the monthlies. I’m told it’s about the best paying thing that’s
going. And then, you see, it does not require any capital. You just jot
down your thoughts on a quire of paper, forward it to an editor, and
you get a cheque back by return of post for twenty or thirty guineas—or
far more, if your name is well known—as mine will soon be,’ he added
confidently.

This piece of news was not very pleasant to poor Nan. To be a doctor’s
wife in a year or two was an agreeable enough prospect, especially when
she so fondly loved the man. But to enter on matrimony with no more
assured means of living than the honorariums which fall to the lot
of an ordinary literary hack, was a bleak lookout. How often had she
heard Mr Hannay aver that not one in a hundred who tried literature as
a profession succeeded in earning a decent living. True, Alfred must
be very clever, from the number and value of his college prizes; but
then, hadn’t her old friend often said that education had but little
to do with literary success, and that he had rejected more manuscripts
from college-bred would-be contributors than from any other class. She
did not fear a life of haphazard poverty for herself; but her woman’s
instinct told her that it would press hardly on Alfred. She was not
blind to the imperfections of his nature; she was far too clear-headed
for that. But she regarded him from two distinctly different points
of view: from the one, her common-sense showed him in all his human
imperfections and failings; from the other, or ideal one, he appeared
as a being so far exalted above the common herd of men that to love
and serve him all the days of her life would be her chiefest joy and
happiness. As the stereoscope projects two different images into one
more seemingly real than either taken singly, so did her woman’s love
commingle these diverse impressions of her lover into a glorified and
lovable whole. Who on this earth could be to her what he was to her?
Not being of an exacting or jealous nature, she had never asked herself
the question—Did he love her as she loved him? If she had done so,
she would have smiled in scorn at the very suggestion of such a mean
doubt; for did not she remember his warm, trembling words of love—his
soft sighs and tender caresses—his declarations of hopeless despair,
if she withheld her heart from him? It certainly was a pity this
abandonment of his profession; but then, it might only be a temporary
one. He perhaps might find that, clever as he was, the paths leading
to literary success were steeper and less flowery than he imagined.
If so, then, of course, he would start practice, and all would yet
be well. The slight shadow on her countenance cleared off. She said:
‘Well, Alfred, you should know best—perhaps you are right. Come and
I’ll take you to our private parlour. Papa is sitting out in the
garden. I must bring him in and introduce him to you.—He must know all
now,’ she added with a slight tremor. She had put off the evil day as
long as she could; but further concealment was now impossible.

It was with faltering accents she confessed her secret to the old
gentleman, as she sat down beside him in the garden arbour. If she had
informed him that Lochenbreck had suddenly run dry, he could not have
been more astonished. Then he got angry, and made use of some very
uncomplimentary expressions regarding Anne and her sex in general. But
he was a man of sense and feeling at heart; and when he saw the hot
tears coursing down her cheeks, he checked himself at once, caressed
her, and told her not to make a fool of herself. He knew Anne’s
character too well to think that he, or any one, could prevent her
permanently from doing anything her heart was set on, and which her
sound moral consciousness told her was right and justifiable. He, it
is true, had cherished secret hopes that his old friend Hannay might
have taken a fancy for the girl, and he would have parted with her to
him freely; now he was asked to give her to a man that he had never yet
seen. It was monstrous; but then girls always do act in a ridiculous
and contrary manner in these matters of love.

‘Well, Nan, I’ll see the lad—there can be no harm in that; and I’ll not
thwart your happiness if I find him deserving of you.’

Ay, there was the rub. Was he, or almost any one else in the world,
deserving of his Nan?

Seated in the cosy parlour, and the embarrassment of the unexpected
introduction over, Nan prudently withdrew, leaving the two gentlemen
to feel their way into each other’s acquaintanceship over a bottle
of claret and a box of cigars. Alfred was a good talker, easy,
self-possessed, and even genial in his style.

He felt no diffidence in proposing for Anne; true, meantime he was
almost impecunious, and had no established or certain means of living;
but he was a gentleman, well educated and bred, and, as he inwardly
thought, a very eligible son-in-law for any innkeeper in the land.
Anne was now called in, and blushingly joined in the conversation. The
suitor pressed for an immediate union. This was, however, decisively
negatived by both father and daughter. Porteous had been favourably
impressed by his proposed son-in-law; but when he learned that his
future income was to be derivable solely from literary emoluments, it
became him to act in the matter with great caution, for the sake of his
daughter’s future. If this literary venture was to be gone into, its
success must be thoroughly demonstrated in actual pounds, shillings,
and pence, before the marriage could take place. Anne thought this
a reasonable stipulation: her lover didn’t. His pride felt hurt at
finding obstacles where he imagined he had an easy walk over. He
had, however, to pocket his pride and submit to the inevitable. On
these conditions the lovers became engaged, with the old gentleman’s
approval. A great weight of concealment was now off Anne’s mind.
Her spirits rose, and for a few brief days the happy pair abandoned
themselves to the innocent delusions and delights of ‘Love’s young
dream.’

Anne was the first to awake to the realities of life. She was nothing
if not practical, and she soon realised that all this sweet billing
and cooing was but a waste of time. Her knight must go forth into the
tournament of life, gain his trophies, and then come back to claim her
as his guerdon.

‘Now, Alfred,’ she said one day, ‘I think it is high time you should
put your literary projects into execution. That, you can’t well do
here. I think you should take a cheap lodging in Edinburgh, or some
place where you would have the advantage of good reference libraries,
and set to work at once.’

‘True, Nan; I must think of making a start one of these days.—But you
don’t wish me away, dearest, do you?’ he said in a tender way.

‘Oh, you know well enough I don’t!’ she returned with the slightest
trace of impatience in her tone. ‘But if we are to get married, it will
not be by your idling your time away here. You’ll find a hundred pounds
won’t keep you long in a large city; and think in what an awkward
position you would be, if it got done before you found a regular and
profitable market for your literary work.’

He was forced to admit the soundness of the advice, which was
emphatically indorsed by Mr Porteous. So, the following day he packed
up his traps; and the evening found him established in a modest lodging
in Nicolson Street, Edinburgh, which had formerly known him as a
student.

The lovers might have served as a model for all others so situated, in
the regularity and length of their communications to each other. For
fully a month, Alfred wrote in the brightest of spirits. He was engaged
on a lengthy paper, ‘A Comparative Analysis of the Literature of Greece
and Rome.’ This was intended for a famous London quarterly; he would
act prudently, however, and would not commit himself until he had
ascertained the very highest sum obtainable for it.

This first venture was completed and posted. In a few days the
manuscript was returned with a polite note from the editor. The
paper, he admitted, was well written, although not containing any
particularly new views on the subject; and at anyrate there was no
demand for classic literature on the part of the reading public at
present: therefore, he was under the necessity of declining it with
thanks, &c. He sent it to some other magazines; but the result in
substance was the same. He was surprised and disappointed, of course;
but buoyed up by his own self-esteem and Anne’s kind sympathetic
letters, he determined to make a new venture on different lines. He
had been very successful in taking prizes in the science classes at
college. The science of optics was a strong point with him, so he set
to to compose ‘A Dissertation on the Polarisation of Light.’ This he
sent when completed to a celebrated science monthly. The manuscript was
returned, and the note accompanying it was discouraging. The editor
thought the article fairly well written, and the facts and theories
were correctly given so far as it went, but it was rather behind the
times. Repulsed in the higher branches of his chosen profession, he
now condescended to write ordinary magazine sketches and stories; but
still the long-looked-for success failed to come. He wrote scores of
papers—tales, social sketches, &c.; but not one of them found their way
into print. In most cases they were returned with a printed form of
letter, expressive of the editor’s regret at being unable to use the
manuscript. In some cases, however, they were good enough to append a
line or two of criticism. One said his style was a little stilted, and
that he used too many long-syllabled words. Another said, in effect,
that he lacked dramatic instinct in the grouping of his incidents and
characters, and that the plot was bald and destitute of any probable
_motif_. Many never returned his manuscripts at all, or paid the least
attention to his oft repeated inquiries regarding them. Disheartened
by these repeated failures, it was with delight he read in one of the
daily papers an advertisement addressed ‘To Authors.’ The advertiser,
who seemed to be of a philanthropic disposition, professed deep
sympathy with the difficulties that beset the path of young aspirants
to literary fame. Many a splendid intellect, the advertisement went on
to say, had been doomed to languish in obscurity through the want of
enterprise of selfish publishers. It was his (the advertiser’s) wish
to assist struggling merit—in other words, to enable young authors
to publish their works on exceptionally favourable terms. Letters
inclosing a stamped envelope for reply, and addressed to ‘Author,’
G. P. O., London, would receive instant attention.

‘The very thing to meet my case,’ said Alfred to himself. ‘I’ll write
a novel, and then these beggarly editors will see how the public will
appreciate my writings.’ In high spirits he wrote a letter asking
further particulars from the literary philanthropist; and in due course
received a courteous reply, stating that if he forwarded the manuscript
of the proposed work when finished, it would be examined carefully,
and, if judged worthy, would be published on the ‘half-profit’
system—that is, the resulting profits to be equally divided between the
author and the advertiser. It was necessary that a registration fee
of ten guineas should be paid in the first instance; this, however,
was only as a guarantee of bona fides, and it would be returned when
the book was published. The requisite fee was at once forwarded; and
Alfred set to work in great spirits to compose a short high-class
novel; he purposed giving the story a literary _personnel_, to afford
him an opportunity of holding up to his readers’ derisive scorn the
ridiculous pretensions of ignorant London editors. He wrote to Anne,
and depicted in glowing terms the brilliant prospects before him in the
near future; and putting his whole soul in his work, and working twelve
hours a day, he finished his story (which was somewhat after the style
of the _Caxtons_) in less than two months. In sending it to London,
he earnestly requested that it should be put in type and published
with the least possible delay. The manuscript was duly acknowledged,
and compliance with his request promised. It had been handed to the
reader, who would at once set to work on it; and his fee was ten
guineas, payable in advance. Poor Alfred’s store of sovereigns was
now pretty well reduced, and it was with reluctance that he sent this
second remittance. In a week his manuscript was returned with a polite
note, saying that while the story showed germs of genius, it was not
of sufficient general literary merit to warrant publication. Inquiries
made through a London friend revealed the fact that he had been the
victim of a used-up penny-a-liner, a man without means, influence,
or respectability, who made a discreditable living by playing on the
credulity and vanity of amateur authors. Dark despair would have taken
hold of most people in his circumstances; his money was now reduced
to a trifle; his health affected by his prolonged and severe efforts;
but his self-esteem was in no way abated. He still believed literature
to be his forte, and determined to give it _one_ more chance. First
of all, though, he required rest; and having an invitation from Nan,
he took the train one day for Lochenbreck, where he arrived with a
portmanteau full of rejected manuscripts, and ten pounds in his pocket.




BLEEDING HEART YARD.


With the demolition of Bleeding Heart Yard, many a pilgrim to London
will have one goal the less. But it has been too graphically pictured
in _Little Dorrit_ ever to be forgotten. Of all Dickens’ many sketches
of the London slums, this is one of the best, although it requires
great imaginative powers now to recognise here any ‘relish of ancient
greatness.’ The ‘mighty stacks of chimneys,’ now much the worse for
wear, are still here, and still ‘give the Yard a character.’ But the
poor people who had ‘a family sentimental feeling’ about the Yard have
nearly all flitted, like rats from a sinking ship. Indeed, piles of
massive warehouses, which have sprung up on all sides, have already
almost swamped their habitations; and any one seeing them in the gray
gloaming of a wet winter afternoon, will have some difficulty in
devising pleas for their preservation. The Yard is altogether dreary
and unlovely, now that it is deserted, save for a couple of workshops,
which, possibly, have replaced the factory of Daniel Doyce. A few
carriers’ carts and costers’ barrows, too, seem to have been left here
by accident. But for the most part the picture is one of dilapidated
desolation. The three-storied brown-brick houses with their low-pitched
red-tiled roofs, that run down the southern side, seem to have been
the scene of an explosion or a conflagration; or, possibly, they may
have been besieged by an army of urchins. Anyhow, not a pane of glass
remains in the windows, which were probably cut through the wall at odd
times, when wanted; and but for a tattered fringe which still decorates
the frames, they might never have been glazed. Some of the cart-sheds
and stables which form the ground-floor—to use an appellation that
properly belongs to suburban villas—have been converted into shops,
but bear no signs of ever having done a thriving trade; and it is easy
to believe that the Yard, ‘though as willing a yard as any in Britain,’
was never ‘the better for any demand for labour.’

But whatever its past, before very long it will have been improved
away, and visitors will probably soon have some difficulty in finding
out even its site. The witchery of Dickens is shown in nothing so much
as the atmosphere of vivid actuality with which he surrounded nearly
all his characters, and the localities in which they lived and moved.
For years, crowds have paid visits of devotion to the shrines which
he has surrounded with such a halo of romance; and he possessed in a
remarkable degree the faculty of appropriating all the charm with which
legend and tradition had surrounded spots, and endowing them with a new
glamour, until he made himself the true _genius loci_. His knowledge
of London was certainly ‘extensive and peculiar.’ It would be easy to
name a dozen nooks within a stone’s throw of Holborn alone which he
made his own. The narrow and crowded streets which, when Dickens wrote,
were even more squalid than they are now, had for him an irresistible
attraction. From his chambers in Furnival’s Inn as a centre, he was a
veritable explorer in all directions; and he has painted for us with
his pen a series of sketches of these courts and alleys the realism of
which the pencil of even George Cruikshank could not rival.

The nomenclature of London presents an endless succession of problems
which never seem to get much nearer solution; and so far as many
disputed sites are concerned, there is every likelihood that they will
soon be removed from the field of controversy by being obliterated
and altogether forgotten. It is notoriously a perpetual cause of
surprise to foreigners, and especially our American cousins, that we
are so heedless of being a nation with a history as to take no pains
to preserve our historical landmarks. There are a thousand-and-one
buried sites in the streets of London alone, which have played their
parts in our national and municipal development, and there is none that
cares to put up a stone to preserve their traditions from oblivion.
But for Bleeding Heart Yard no very heroic etymology can be claimed.
Dickens, it is to be feared, drew largely on his imagination, which
he doubtless found served him in better stead than any number of old
folios, for his amusing derivations. Except in _Little Dorrit_, there
seems to be but scanty authority for the tradition that this was the
scene of a murder. It is, however, beyond dispute that Ely Place and
the adjacent streets were occupied by the luxurious town palace of the
Bishops of Ely. Within the walls were included twenty acres of ground.
This was, about the year 1577, sold to Christopher Hatton by the
Bishop of Ely, who was, however, only made to carry out the contract
by Elizabeth’s memorable threat that otherwise she would unfrock him.
It was here that the famous chancellor died in 1591. But his house
and garden do not seem to have been demolished until the middle of the
seventeenth century, for Evelyn, writing in 1659, tells us how he went
to see ‘the foundations now laying for a long street and buildings in
Hatton Garden, designed for a little town, lately an ample garden.’
Of a certain Lady Hatton, probably the wife of Sir Christopher’s
great-nephew, it is gravely recorded that she had a compact with
the Evil One, and that on the night when this came to an end, that
personage, in the guise of a cavalier, attended certain festivities
which were being held at Hatton House, and having lured her into the
garden, tore her in pieces—her ‘bleeding heart’ being afterwards found.
But if this weird legend had even so solid a foundation as a murder, it
is probable that some record of it would have survived.

_Little Dorrit_ is also the authority for the story of the young lady
who was closely imprisoned in her chamber here by her cruel father for
refusing to marry the suitor he had chosen for her. The legend related
how the young lady used to be seen up at her window behind the bars,
murmuring a love-lorn song, of which the burden was, ‘Bleeding heart,
bleeding heart, bleeding away,’ until she died. It will be remembered
that although the Yard was divided in opinion, this story carried the
day by a great majority, notwithstanding that it was supposed to have
originated with ‘a tambour-worker, a spinster, and romantic,’ living in
the Yard.

It is scarcely necessary to say that the point has received the
attention of the seekers after miscellaneous knowledge, and a number
of alternative derivations have been suggested. One learned antiquary,
for instance, reminds us that ‘bleeding heart’ is the name of the red
wallflower in certain parts of England, but omits to point out the
connection. The most plausible is the suggestion that the court may
have taken its name from a hostel known as the _Bleeding Hart_, and
it is well known that sign-painters frequently prove shaky in their
orthography. Thus, he records that in Warwickshire, an inn known as the
_White Hart_ was some years since adorned with a signboard representing
a human heart, or at least an ace of hearts. Then some people still
cling to the belief that the sign of the Bleeding Heart dates from
pre-Reformation times, and is emblematical of the five sorrowful
mysteries of the rosary. We must leave it to others to reconcile these
conflicting theories. But for its associations with the fortunes of
_Little Dorrit_, the bare existence of the court would certainly have
remained in oblivion, and its demolition would have excited no unusual
regret.

But there are those for whom the Yard has been associated with the
history of a set of very real personages. Hither many folk have gone
in search of ‘the domicile of Plornish, plasterer,’ and have sought to
identify ‘the parlour’ in which the Plornish family lived, and which
was pointed out to callers by ‘the painted hand, on the forefinger of
which the artist had depicted a ring, and a most elaborate nail of the
genteelest form.’ Here, too, they have probably pictured for themselves
the Patriarch ‘floating serenely through the Yard in the forenoon’ with
the express purpose of getting up trustfulness in his shining bumps
and silken locks, to be succeeded a few hours later by Pancks, that
prince of rent-collectors, who, ‘perspiring, and puffing and darting
about in eccentric directions, and becoming hotter and dingier every
moment, lashed the tide of the Yard into the most agitated and turbid
state.’ They may further have looked for the small grocery and general
dealer’s shop ‘at the crack end of the Yard,’ where Mrs Plornish was
established by Mr Dorrit; and for ‘Happy Cottage,’ that most wonderful
of interiors. And they may have wondered whereabouts was the spot where
Pancks tackled the Patriarch, snipped off short the sacred locks, and
cut down the broad-brimmed hat to a stewpan, thereby converting the
venerable Casby, ‘that first-rate humbug of a thousand guns,’ into ‘a
bare-polled, goggle-eyed phantom.’




FLEET STREET MARRIAGES.


It is said that the Fleet Street marriages of London originated with
the incumbents of Trinity, Minories, and St James’s, Duke Place. The
incumbents claimed to be exempt from the jurisdiction of the Bishop of
London, and performed the marriages without banns or license. It is
not exactly known in what year these gentlemen started their lucrative
profession; but one named Elliot, who was rector of St James’s,
was suspended by the Bishop of London in 1616 for performing these
ceremonies. The trade was then taken up by clerical prisoners living
within the Rules of the Fleet; and Mr Burn tells us that, as a rule,
these were just the men—having neither money, character, nor liberty to
lose—to adopt the profession; and he further says that they were in the
main ‘lusty jolly fellows, but thorough rogues and vagabonds, guilty
of various offences.’ That they were not ashamed of the business is
evident from the fact that they advertised in the _Daily Advertiser_ of
that year to the following effect: ‘G. R.—At the true chapel, at the
old _Red Hand and Mitre_, three doors up Fleet Lane, and next door to
the _White Swan_, marriages are performed by authority by the Rev. Mr
Symson, educated at the university of Cambridge, and late chaplain to
the Earl of Rothes.—_N.B._ Without imposition.’

‘J. Lilley, at the _Hand and Pen_, next door to the China Shop, Fleet
Bridge, London, will be performed the solemnisation of marriages by
a gentleman regularly bred at one of our universities, and lawfully
ordained according to the institutions of the Church of England, and is
ready to wait on any person in town or country.’

There must have been great competition in the business, for we are
told that there might be seen in corners of windows tickets stating
‘Weddings performed cheap here,’ ‘The Old and True Register,’ &c. But
the great trade was at the ‘marriage houses’ whose landlords were
also publicans, the _Bishop Blaire_, the _Horseshoe and Magpie_, the
_Fighting Cocks_, the _Sawyers_, the _Hand and Pen_, the _Bull and
Garter_, and the _King’s Head_, the last two being kept by warders of
the Fleet prison.

The parson and landlord—the latter usually acting as clerk—divided the
fees between them, after paying a shilling to the tout who brought in
the customers.

The _Grub Street Journal_ of January 1735 has the following: ‘There
are a set of drunken, swearing parsons, with their myrmidons, who wear
black coats, and pretend to be clerks and registers of the Fleet, and
who ply about Ludgate Hill, pulling and forcing people to some peddling
alehouse or brandy-shop to be married; even on a Sunday, stopping them
as they are going to church and almost tearing their clothes off their
backs.’

This is confirmed by Pennant, who says: ‘In walking along the streets
in my youth, on the side next the prison, I have often been tempted by
the question, “Sir, will you be pleased to walk in and be married?” The
parson was seen walking before his shop, a squalid, profligate figure,
clad in a tattered plaid nightgown, with a fiery face, and ready to
couple you for a dram of gin or a roll of tobacco.’

Ladies who were possessed, or supposed to possess means, were often
kidnapped and forced to marry ruffians whom they had never seen. For
instance, we read that a young lady of birth and fortune was forced
from her friends, ‘and by the assistance of a wry-necked swearing
parson, married to an atheistical wretch, whose life was a continual
practice of all manner of vice.’

Again, we learn that a young lady appointed to meet a gentlewoman at
the Old Playhouse, Drury Lane; but something prevented the gentlewoman
coming, and the young lady being alone when the play was over, told a
boy to fetch a coach for the city. ‘One like a gentleman helps her into
it and jumps in after her. “Madam,” says he, “this coach was called for
me; and since the weather is bad and there is no other, I beg leave
to bear you company. I am going into the city, and will set you down
wherever you please.”’

The girl begged to be excused; but the man told the coachman to drive
on. The result was that she was driven to a house, where she was
induced to go in on the pretext of seeing the man’s sister, who would
accompany her the rest of the journey. The sister came, but immediately
vanished, and in her place appeared a ‘tawny fellow in a black coat and
black wig,’ who said: ‘Madam, you are come in good time; the doctor was
just agoing!’

‘The doctor!’ exclaimed the girl; ‘what has the doctor to do with me?’

‘To marry you to that gentleman. The doctor has waited for you these
three hours, and will be paid by you or that gentleman before you go!’

‘That gentleman,’ replied the girl, recovering herself, ‘is worthy a
better fortune than mine,’ and begged to be allowed to go; but the men
were obdurate; and when she found she could not escape without money
or pledge, told them that she liked the gentleman so much, that she
would meet him the next night and be married; but they did not allow
her to go before she had given them some pledge, and she therefore gave
them a ring, which, to quote her words, ‘was my mother’s gift on her
death-bed, enjoining that, if ever I married, it should be my wedding
ring;’ and by this means she escaped.

The indecency of these practices, and the facility they afforded for
accomplishing forced and fraudulent marriages, were not the only evils,
for we are told that marriages, when entered in the register, could be
antedated without limit, on payment of a fee, or not entered at all;
and women frequently hired temporary husbands at the Fleet, in order
that they might be able to plead marriage to an action for debt. These
hired husbands were provided by the parsons at five shillings each; and
we are told that one man was married four times under different names,
and received five shillings on each occasion ‘for his trouble.’

That the parsons did not always get the best of it may be supposed
from the following extract from the register of the Fleet Marriages:
‘1740. Geo. Grant and Ann Gordon, bachelor and spinster: stole my
clothes-brush.’—‘Married at a barber’s shop next Wilson’s—namely, one
Kerrils, for half a guinea; after which it was extorted out of my
pocket, and for fear of my life, delivered.’

We are told that all sorts and conditions of men flocked to the
Fleet to be married in haste, from the barber to the officer in the
Guards—from the pauper to the peer. Timbs, in his book on _London_,
states that among the aristocratic patrons of these unlicensed clergy
were Lord Abergavenny; the Honourable John Bourke, afterwards Viscount
Mayo; Sir Marmaduke Gresham; Lord Banff; Lord Montague, afterwards Duke
of Manchester; Viscount Sligo; the Marquis of Annandale; Henry Fox,
afterwards Lord Holland; and others. Walpole writes to Sir Horace Mann
about Fox’s marriage as follows: ‘The town has been in a great bustle
about a private match, but which, by the ingenuity of the ministry,
has been made politics. Mr Fox fell in love with Lady Caroline Lennox
(eldest daughter of the Duke of Richmond), asked her, was refused, and
stole her. His father was a footman; her great-grandfather, a king. All
the blood-royal have been up in arms.’

The Bishop of London attempted to put a stop to these marriages in
1702, but with very little effect; and it was not until 1754 that an
Act of Parliament was passed to prevent them. It is stated that the day
before the Act was to come into force (March 24), there were no fewer
than two hundred and seventeen marriages recorded in one register book;
and these were the last of the Fleet weddings.

A collection of the registers of Fleet Marriages was made in 1821, and
was purchased by the government; they weighed over a ton.

After the Marriage Bill of 1754, the Savoy Chapel came into vogue. The
following advertisement appeared in the _Public Advertiser_ of January
2, 1754: ‘By authority—Marriages performed with the utmost privacy,
decency, and regularity at the ancient royal chapel of St John the
Baptist, in the Savoy, where regular and authentic registers have
been kept from the time of the Reformation (being two hundred years
and upwards) to this day. The expenses not more than one guinea—the
five-shilling stamp included. There are five private ways by land to
this chapel, and two by water.’

The proprietor of this chapel was the Rev. John Wilkinson, who
fancied—as the Savoy was extra-parochial—that he was privileged to
issue licenses upon his own authority, and so took no notice of the
Act. During the following year, 1755, he married no fewer than eleven
hundred and ninety couples. The authorities at last took the matter
up, and Wilkinson went into hiding; but he got a curate named Grierson
to perform the ceremonies, he still giving the licenses, by which
he thought his assistant would be harmless; but this was not so.
Two members of the Drury Lane company were united by Grierson; and
Garrick hearing of this, obtained the certificate, and had Grierson
arrested. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to fourteen years’
transportation; by which sentence, we are told, fourteen hundred
marriages were declared void. We are not told what became of Wilkinson,
whose trade was thus put a stop to.




TO A LADY.


    Again I welcome the familiar pen;
      Again I sit me down to think and write;
    Fairly and free should flow my fancies when
      So fair a subject calls me to indite.
    And thou, O Muse, whose gracious fingers oft,
      And ne’er, I trust, in vain, have beckoned me,
    Grant that thy spirit, breathing numbers soft,
      May now descend to aid thy humblest votary.

    So, when the lark, in fullest tide of song,
      Makes sudden pause amidst his music clear,
    As seeking which, of all the thoughts that throng,
      First to embody for the listening ear,
    So do I hesitate and pause, in doubt
      With such diversity where to begin,
    For outward eyes would praise those charms without,
      Whilst Love would greet the soul enshrined those charms within.

    Ah, gracious lady, words alone are vain
      Thy finer, subtler traits to fitly show;
    Rather Apollo’s art, in sweetest strain,
      With long-drawn symphonies, as soft as low,
    And cunningly devised by master-hand,
      Thy worth and beauty better would express
    Than my rude phrases—serving but to stand
      As tokens of thy power and of my faithfulness.

    Yet tokens true are they; as tender shoots,
      Just peeping through the earth, are sureties good
    That deep below are hidden strongest roots,
      Which give this evidence of lustihood,
    So doth the love, long ’prisoned in my breast,
      Forced by its growth, at length expression find;
    I place my life, my all, at thy behest;
      I could not love thee more, nor oaths could stronger bind.

    Yet what are words? Mere breaths which pass away;
      And words are at the service of us all.
    Vows, true or false, ring all the same to-day;
      We by our after-actions stand or fall.
    Give me to do some deed, some work, to show
      And prove the love I bear thee; test my faith.
    I speak no more; in silence, love shall grow,
      And silent witness give that love shall last till death.

            E. G. W.

       *       *       *       *       *

Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON,
and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH.

       *       *       *       *       *

_All Rights Reserved._





*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL OF POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART, FIFTH SERIES, NO. 145, VOL. III, OCTOBER 9, 1886 ***


    

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