IN one of the many courts on the north side of Fleet Street, might be seen, somewhere about the year 1820, the last of the shoe-blacks. One would think that he deemed himself dedicated to his profession by Nature, for he was a Negro. At the earliest dawn he crept forth from his neighbouring lodging, and planted his tripod on the quiet pavement, where he patiently stood till noon was past. He was a short, large-headed, son of Africa, subject, as it would appear, to considerable variations of spirits, alternating between depression and excitement, as the gains of the day presented to him the chance of having a few pence to recreate himself, beyond what he should carry home to his wife and children. For he had a wife and children, this last representative of a falling trade; and two or three little woolly-headed décrotteurs nestled around him when he was idle, or assisted in taking off the roughest of the dirt when he had more than one client. He watched, with a melancholy eye, the gradual improvement of the streets; for during some twenty or thirty years he had beheld all the world combining to ruin him. He saw the foot-pavements widening; the large flag-stones carefully laid down; the loose and broken piece, which discharged a slushy shower on the unwary foot, instantly removed: he saw the kennels diligently cleansed, and the drains widened: he saw experiment upon experiment made in the repair of the carriage-way, and the holes, which were to him as the "old familiar faces" which he loved, filled up with a haste that appeared quite unnecessary, if not insulting. One solitary country shopkeeper, who had come to London once a year during a long life, clung to our sable friend; for he was the only one of the fraternity that he could find remaining, in his walk from Charing Cross to Cheapside. The summer's morning when that good man planted his foot on the threelegged stool, and desired him carefully to turn back his brown gaiters, and asked C him how trade went with him, and shook his head when he learned that it was very bad, and they both agreed that new-fangled ways were the ruin of the country-that was a joyful occasion to him, for he felt that he was not quite deserted. He did not continue long to struggle with the capricious world. "One morn we miss'd him on th' accustom'd stand." He retired into the workhouse; and his boys, having a keener eye than their father to the wants of the community, took up the trade which he most hated, and applied themselves to the diligent removal of the mud in an earlier stage of its accumulation-they swept crossings, instead of cleaning shoes. The last of the Shoe-blacks belongs to history. He was one of the living monuments of old London; he was a link between three or four generations. The stand which he purchased in Bolt Court (in the wonderful resemblance of external appearance between all these Fleet Street courts, we cannot be sure that it was Bolt Court) had been handed down from one successor to another, with as absolute a line of customers as Child's Banking-house. He belonged to a trade which has its literary memorials. In 1754, the polite Chesterfield, and the witty Walpole, felt it no degradation to the work over which they presided that it should be jocose about his fraternity, and hold that his profession was more dignified than that of the author: "Far be it from me, or any of my brother authors, to intend lowering the dignity of the gentlemen trading in black ball, by naming them with ourselves : we are extremely sensible of the great distance there is between us and it is with envy that we look up to the occupation of shoe-cleaning, while we lament the severity of our fortune, in being sentenced to the drudgery of a less respectable employment. But while we are unhappily excluded from the stool and brush, it is surely a very hard case that the contempt of the world should pursue us, only because we are unfortunate.' Gay makes "the black youth"-his mythological descent from the goddess of mud, and his importance in a muddy city-the subject of the longest episode in his amusing Trivia. The shoe-boy's mother thus addresses him : "Go thrive at some frequented corner stand; : This brush I give thee, grasp it in thy hand; Temper the foot within this vase of oil, And let the little tripod aid thy toil; On this methinks I see the walking crew, At thy request, support the miry shoe; The foot grows black that was with dirt embrown'd, The goddess plunges swift beneath the flood, And dashes all around her showers of mud: The youth straight chose his post; the labour ply'd And Whitehall echoes- Clean your Honour's shoes!'" The cry is no more heard. The pavements of Whitehall are more evenly laid than the ancient marble courts of York Place, where Wolsey held his state, and Henry revelled; and they are far cleaner, even in the most inauspicious weather, *The World, No. 57. than the old floor beneath the rushes. Broad as the footways are-as the broadest of the entire original streets-the mightiest of paving stones is not large enough for the comforts of the walker; and a pavement without a joint is sought for in the new concrete of asphaltum. Where the streets which run off from the great thoroughfares are narrow, the trottoir is widened at the expense of the carriageroad; and one cart only can pass at a time, so that we walk fearless of wheels. If we would cross a road, there is a public servant, ever assiduous, because the measure of his usefulness is that of his reward, who removes every particle of dirt from before our steps. No filth encumbers the kennels; no spout discharges the shower in a torrent from the house-top. We pass quietly onwards from the Horse Guards to the India House without being jostled off the curb-stone, though we have no protecting posts to sustain us; and we perceive why the last of the shoe-blacks vanished from our view about the time when we first noticed his active brothers at every corner of Paris-a city then somewhat more filthy than the London of the days of Anne. He who would see London well must be a pedestrian. Gay, who has left us the most exact as well as the most lively picture of the external London of a hundred and twenty years ago, is enthusiastic in his preference for walking: "Let others in the jolting coach confide, Or in the leaky boat the Thames divide, Or, box'd within the chair, contemn the street, And trust their safety to another's feet: But what a walk has he described! He sets out, as what sensible man would not, with his feet protected with "firm, well-hammer'd soles;" but if the shoe be too big, "Each stone will wrench th' unwary step aside." This, we see, is a London without trottoirs. The middle of a paved street was generally occupied with the channel; and the sides of the carriage-way were full of absolute holes, where the ricketty coach was often stuck as in a quagmire. Some of the leading streets, even to the time of George II., were almost as impassable as the avenues of a new American town. The only road to the Houses of Parliament before 1750 was through King Street and Union Street," which were in so miserable a state, that fagots were thrown into the ruts on the days on which the King went to Parliament, to render the passage of the state-coach more easy."* The present Saint Margaret's Street was formed out of a thoroughfare known as Saint Margaret's Lane, which was so narrow that "pales were obliged to be placed, four feet high, between the foot-path and coach-road, to preserve the passengers from injury, and from being covered with the mud which was splashed on all sides in abundance." The pales here preserved the passengers more effectually than the posts of other thoroughfares. These posts, in the principal avenues, constituted the only distinction between the foot-way and carriage-way; for the space within the posts was as uneven as the space without. This inner space was sometimes so narrow that only one person could pass at a time; and hence those contests for the wall that filled the streets with the vociferations of anger, and the din of assaulting sticks, and sometimes the clash of naked steel. Dr. Johnson describes how those quarrels were common when he first came to London; and how at length things were better ordered. But the change must in great part be imputed to the gradual improvement of the streets. In Gay's time there was no safety but within the posts. "Though expedition bids, yet never stray Where no ranged posts defend the rugged way; Here laden carts with thundering waggons meet, Wheels clash with wheels, and bar the narrow street." In wet and gusty weather the unhappy walker heard the crazy signs swinging over his head, as Gulliver describes the Red Lion of Brentford. The spouts of every house were streaming at his feet, or drenching his laced hat and his powdered wig with unpitying torrents. At every step some bulk or shop-projection narrowed the narrow road, and drove him against the coach-wheels. The chairmen, if there was room to pass, occupied all the space between the wall and the posts. The "hooded maid" came sometimes gingerly along, with pattens and umbrella (then exclusively used by women), and of courtesy he must yield the wall. The small-coal man, and the sweep, and the barber, took the wall, in assertion of their clothes-soiling prerogative; and the bully thrust him, or was himself thrust, "to the muddy kennel's side." The great rule for the pedestrian was, "Ever be watchful to maintain the wall." The dignity of the wall, and its inconveniences, were as old as the time of James and Charles. Donne, in his first Satire, describes the difficulties of one who took the wall: The streets, in the good old times, often presented obstructions to the pedestrian which appear to us like the wonders of some unknown region. In the more recent unhappy days of public executions the wayfarer passed up Ludgate Hill with an eye averted from the Old Bailey; for there, as Monday morning came, duly hung some three, and it may be six, unhappy victims of a merciless code, judicially murdered according to our better notions. Then was the rush to see the horrid sight, and the dense crowd pouring away from it; and the pickpocket active under the gallows; and the business of life interrupted for a quarter of an hour, with little emotion even amongst the steady walkers who heeded not the spectacle it was a thing of course. And so was the pillory in earlier times. Gay says nothing of the feelings of the passer-on; he had only to take care of his clothes: "Where, elevated o'er the gaping crowd, People used to talk of these things as coolly as Garrard wrote to Lord Strafford of them: "No mercy showed to Prynne; he stood in the pillory, and lost his first ear in a pillory in the palace at Westminster in full term; his other in Cheap side, where, while he stood, his volumes were burnt under his nose, which had almost suffocated him."* The cruelty is not mitigated by the subsequent account of Garrard, that Mr. Prynne "hath got his ears sewed on, that they grow again, as before, to his head." If the mob round the pillory was safely passed, there was another mob often to be encountered. Rushing along Cheapside, or Covent Garden, or by the Maypole in the Strand, came the foot-ball players. It is scarcely conceivable, when London had settled into civilization, little more than a century ago,-when we had our famed Augustan age of Addisons and Popes,-when laced coats, and flowing wigs, and silver buckles, ventured into the streets, and the beau prided himself on "The nice conduct of a clouded cane,-" that the great thoroughfares through which men now move, "intent on high designs," should be a field for foot-ball: "The prentice quits his shop to join the crew; Increasing crowds the flying game pursue." ‡ This is no poetical fiction. It was the same immediately after the Restoration. D'Avenant's Frenchman thus complains of the streets of London: "I would now make a safe retreat, but that methinks I am stopped by one of your heroic games, called foot-ball; which I conceive (under your favour) not very conveniently civil in the streets; especially in such irregular and narrow roads *Strafford's Letters, vol. i. p. 261. † Id. p. 266. Trivia. |