BH

"THE STORY OF OUR LIVES FROM TEAR TO YEAR."—SHAKESPEARE. ALL THE YEAR ROUND. A WEEKLY JOURNAL. CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED HOUSEHOLD WORDS.

K°- 120.] SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 1861, [PiucE 2d.

been acquired. Thus, having an heir for the A STRANGE STORY. one, he had long looked about for an heir to the BY THE AUTHOR OF *'MY NOVEL," *'RIENZI," &C, other, and now resolved on finding that heir in me. So when we parted Dr. Eaber made me promise to CHATTER I. correspond with him regularly, and it was not long IN the year 18— I setlled as a physician at before he disclosed by letter the plans he had one of the wealthiest of our great English tow^ns, formed in my favour. He said that he was grow­ which I will designate by the initial L . I ing old; his practice was beyond his strength; was yet young, but I had acquired some repu­ he needed a partner; he was not disposed to put tation by a professional work which is, I believe, up to sale the health of patients whom he had still amongst the received authorities on the sub­ learned to regard as his children; money was no ject of which it treats. I had studied at Edin­ object to him, but it was an object close at his burgh and at Paris, and had borne away from heart that the humanity he had served, and the both those illustrious schools of medicine what­ reputation he had acquired, should suffer no loss ever guarantees for futui'c distinction the praise in his choice of a successor. In fine, he proposed of professors -may concede to the ambition of that I should at once come to L as his part­ students. On becoming a member of the College ner, with the view of succeeding to his entire of Physicians, I made a tour of the principal practice at the end of two years, when it was liis cities of Europe, taking letters of introduction intention to retire. to eminent medical men; and gathering from The opening into fortune thus afforded to me many theories and modes of treatment, hints to was one that rarely presents itself to a young enlarge the foundations of unprejudiced and com­ man entering upon an overcrowded profession. prehensive practice; I had resolved to fix my And to an aspirant less allured by the desire of ultimate residence in London. But before this fortune than the hope of distinction, the fame of preparatory tour was completed, my resolve was the physician who thus generously offered to me changed by one of those unexpected events which the inestimable benefits of his long experience, determine the fate man in vain would work out and his cordial introduction, was in itself an as­ for himself. In passing through the Tyrol, on surance that a metropolitan practice is not essen­ my w^ay into the north of Italy, I found in a small tial to a national renown. um, remote from medical attendance, an English I went, then, to L , and before the two traveller—seized with acute inflammation of the years of my partnership had expired, my success lungs, and in a state of imminent danger. I de­ justified my kind friend's selection, and far more voted myself to him night and day, and, perhaps, than realised my own expectations. I was fortu­ more through careful nursing than active reme­ nate in effecting some notable cures in the dies, I had the happiness to effect his complete earliest cases submitted to me, and it is every­ recovery. The traveller proved to be Julius Eaber, thing in the career of a physician when good a physician of great distinction—contented to re­ luck wins betimes for him that confidence side, where he was born, in the provincial city of which patients rarely accord except to lengthened L 3 but whose reputation as a profound and experience. To the rapid facility with which original pathologist was widely spread; and whose my way was made, some circumstances apart writings had formed no unimportant part of my from professional skiU probably combined. I special studies. It was during a short holiday ex­ was saved from the suspicion of a medical adven­ cursion, from which he was about to return with turer by the accidents of birth and fortiuie. I renovated vigour, that he had been thus stricken belonged to an ancient family (a branch of the down. The patient so accidentally met with, once powerful border clan of the Eenwicks), became the founder of my professional fortunes. that had for many generations held a fair estate He conceived a warm attachment for me; per­ in the neighbourhood of Windermere. As an haps the more affectionate because he was a only son I had succeeded to that estate on at­ childless bachelor, and the nephew who would taining my majority, and had sold it to pay off' succeed to his wealth evinced no desire to the debts which had been made by my father, succeed to the toils by which the wealth had who had the costly tastes of an antiquarian

VOL. V, 120 458 [August 10, 1861,] ALL THE YEAR ROUND. [Conducted by and collector. The residue on the sale en­ traders, and that of a few privileged families in­ sured me a modest independence apart from the habiting a part of the town aloof from the marts profits of ai profession, and as I had not heern of commerce, and called the Abbey Hill. These legally bound to defray my father's debts, so I superb Areopagites exercised over the wives and obtained that character for disinterestedness and daughters of the inferior citizens to whom all integrity which always in England tends to pro­ of L , except the Abbey HiU, owed its pro­ pitiate the pubhc to the successes achieved by sperity, the same kind of mysterious influence industry or talent. Perhaps, too, any professional which the fine ladies of Mayfair and Belgravia ability I might possess was the more readily con­ are reported to hold over the female denizens of ceded, because I had cultivated with assiduity Bloomsbury and Marylebone. the sciences and the scholarship which are col­ Abbey HiU was not opulent; but it was power­ laterally connected with the study of medicine. ful by a concentration of its resources in all Thus, in a word, I established a social position matters of patronage. Abbey Hill had its own which came in aid of my professional repute, and mUliner, and its own draper, its own confectioner, silenced much of that envy which usuaUy em­ butcher,^ baker, and tea-dealer, and the patronage bitters and sometimes impedes success. of Abbey HiU was like the patronage of royalty, Dr. Eaber retired at the end of the two years less lucrative in itself than as a solemn certificate agreed upon. He went abroad; and being, of general merit. The shops on which Abbey though advanced in years, of a frame still robust, Hill conferred its custom were certainly not the and habits of mind stiU inquiring and eager, he cheapest, possibly not the best. But they were commenced a lengthened course of foreign travel, undeniably the most imposing. The proprietors during which our correspondence, at first fre­ were decorously pompous—the shopmen super­ quent, gradually languished, and finally died ciliously polite. They could not be more so if they away. hadbelongedtotheState,andbeenpaidbyapublic I succeeded at once to the larger part of the which they benefited and despised. The ladies practice which the labours of thirty years had of Low Town (as the city subjacent to the Hill secured to my predecessor. My chief rival was had been styled from a date remote in the feudal a Dr. Lloyd, a benevolent, fervid man, not with­ ages) entered those shops with a certain awe, out genius—^if genius be present where judgment and left them with a certain pride. There they is absent; not without science, if that maybe had learned what the Hill approved. There science which fails in precision. One of those they had bought what the HiU had purchased. It clever desultory men who, in adopting a profes­ is much in this life to be quite sure that we sion, do not give up to it the whole force and are in the right, whatever that conviction may heat of their minds. Men of that kind habi­ cost us. Abbey Hill had been in the habit of tually accept a mechanical routine, because in appointing, amongst other objects of patron­ the exercise of their ostensible calling their ima­ age, its o"wn physician. But that habit bad ginative faculties are drawn away to pursuits faUen into disuse during the latter years of more alluring. Therefore, in their proper voca­ my predecessor's practice. His superiority over tion they are seldom bold or inventive—out of it all other medical men in the town had become they are sometimes both to excess. Aiid when so incontestable, that, though he was emphati­ they do take up a novelty in their own profession cally the doctor of Low Town, the head of its they cherish it with an obstinate tenacity, and an hospitals and infirmaries, and by birth related to extravagant passion, unknown to those quiet its principal traders, stiU as Abbey HUl was occa­ philosophers who take up novelties every day, sionally subject to the physical infirmities of examine them with the sobriety of practised meaner mortals, so on those occasions it deemed eyes, to lay down altogether, modify in part, or it best not to push the point of honour to the accept in whole, according as inductive experi­ wanton sacrifice of Ufe. Since Low Town pos­ ment supports or destroys conjecture. sessed one of the most famous physicians in Dr. Lloyd had been esteemed a learned England, Abbey HUl magnanimously resolved naturalist long before he was admitted to be a not to crush him by a rival. Abbey HiU let him tolerable physician. Amidst the privations of feel its pulse. his youth he had contrived to form, and with When my predecessor retired, I had presump­ each succeeding year he had perseveringly in­ tuously expected that the HiU would have creased, a zoological collection of creatures, not continued to suspend its normal right to a special alive, but, happily for the beholder, stuffed or physician, and shown to me the same generous embalmed. Erom what I have said, it will be favour it had shown to him, who had declared truly inferred that Dr. Lloyd's earlier career as me worthy to succeed to his honours. I had the a physician had not been brilliant; but of late more excuse for this presumption because the years he had gradually rather aged, than worked HiU had already aUowed me to visit a fan pro­ himself, into that professional authority and portion of its invaUds, had said some very gra­ station, which time confers on a thoroughly re­ cious things to me about the great respectability spectable man, whom no one is disposed to envy, of the Eenwick famUy, and sent me some invita­ and all are disposed to like. tions to dinner, and a great many invitations to Now in L there were two distinct social tea. circles. That of the wealthy merchants and But my self-conceit received a notable check.

•J^S— Charles Dickena.] A STRANGE STORY. [August 10, ISGl.] 459

Abbey HiU declared that the time had come to ment seldom agreed. Doubtless he thought I reassert its dormant privUege—it must have a ought to have deferred to his seniority in years; doctor of its own choosing—a doctor who might, but I held the doctrine which youth deems a indeed, be permitted to visit Low To\vn from truth aud age a paradox, namely, that in science motives of humanity or gain, but who must em­ the young men are the practical elders, inasmuch phatically assert his special allegiance to Abbey as they are schooled in the latest experiences HUl by fixing his home on that venerable pro­ science has gathered up, wliUe their seniors are montory. Miss Brabazon, a spinster of uncertain cramped by the dogmas they were schooled to age, but undoubted pedigree, with smaU fortune, beUeve when the world was some decades the but high nose, which she would pleasantly ob- younger. .serve was a proof of her descent from Humphrey MeanwhUe my reputation continued rapidly to Duke of Gloucester (with whom, indeed, I have advance; it became more than local; my advice no doubt, in spite of chronology, that she very was sought even by patients from the metropolis. often dined), was commissioned to inquire of me That ambition which, conceived in early youth, diplomatically, and withoiit committing Abbey had decided my career and sweetened all its HiU too much by the overture, whether I would labours—the ambition to take a rank and leave take a large and antiquated mansion, in which a name as one of the great pathologists, to abbots were said to have lived many centuries whom humanity accords a grateful, if calm, re­ ago, and which wasstUl popularly styled Abbots' nown—saw before it a level field and a certain goal. House, situated on the verge of the HiU, as in I know not whether a success far beyond that that case the " HiU " would think of me. usually attained at the age I had reached served "It is a large house for a single man, I aUow," to increase, but it seemed to myself to justify said Miss Brabazon, candidly; and then added, the main characteristic of my moral organisation with a sidelong glance of alarming sweetness, —inteUectual pride. •'^but when Dr. Eenwick has taken his true Though mUd and gentle to the sufferers under position (so old a famUy!) amongst Us, he need my care, as a necessary element of professional not long remain single, unless he prefer it." duty, I was intolerant of contradiction from those I replied, with more asperity than the occasion who belonged to my calUng, or even from those oaUed for, that I had no thought of changing who, in general opinion, opposed my favourite my residence at present. And if the HiU wanted theories. me, the HiU must send for me. I had espoused a school of medical phUoso­ Two days afterwards Dr. Lloyd took Abbots' phy severely rigid in its inductive logic. My creed House, and m less than a week was proclaimed was that of stern materialism. I had a contempt anedical adviser to the HUl. The election had for the understanding of men who accepted with been decided by the fiat of a great lady, who credulity what they coidd not explain by reason. reigned supreme on the sax3red eminence, under My favourite phrase was " common sense." At the name and title of Mrs. Colonel Poyntz. the same time I had no prejudice against bold "Dr. Eenwick," said this lady, "is a clever discovery, and discovery necessitates conjecture, young man and a gentleman, but he gives himself but I dismissed as idle all conjecture that could airs—the HUl does not allow any airs but its not be brought to a practical test. own. Besides, he is a new comer: resistance to As iu medicine I had been the pupU of Brous- new comers, and, indeed, to aU things new, sais, so in metaphysics I was the disciple of Con- •except caps and novels, is one of the bonds that dUlac. I believed with that phUosopher that keep old-established societies together. Accord­ " all our knowledge we owe to Nature, that in ingly, it is by my advice that Dr. Lloyd has the beginning we can only instruct ourselves taken Abbots' House; the rent would be too through her lessons, and that the whole art of high for his means if the HiU did not feel reasoning consists in continuing as she has com­ bound in honour to justify the trust he has placed peUed us to commence." Keeping natural phUo­ in its patronage. I told him that all my friends, sophy apart from the doctrines of revelation, I when they had anything the matter with them, never assaUed the last, but I contended that by would send for him; those who are my friends the first no accurate reasoner could arrive at the wUl do so. What the HiU does, plenty of existence of the soul as a third principle of being common people down there wiU do also:—so that equally distinct from mind and body. That by a question is settled!" And it was settled. miracle man might Uve again, was a question of Dr. Lloyd, thus taken by the hand, soon ex­ faith and not of understanding. I left faith to reli­ tended the range of his visits beyond the HiU, gion, and banished it from phUosophy. How de­ which was not precisely a mountain of gold to fine with a precision to satisfy the logic of phUoso­ doctors, and shared with myself, though in a phy what was to Uve again ? The body ? We comparatively small degree, the much more lucra­ know that the body rests in its grave till by the tive practice of Low Town. process of decomposition its elemental parts I had no cause to grudge his success, nor did I. enter into other forms of matter. The mind? But to my theories of medicine his diagnosis was But the mind was as clearly' the result of the shaUow, and his prescriptions obsolete. When bodUyorganisation as the music of theharpsichord we were summoned to a joint consultation, is the result of the instrumental mechanism. our views as to the proper course of treat­ The mind shared the decrepitude of the body in

m 460 [August 10, 1861.} ALL THE YEAR ROUND. [Conducted by

extreme old age, and in the full vigour of youth To these doctrines I sternly opposed myself— a sudden injury to the brain might for ever the more sternly, perhaps, because on these doc­ destroy the intellect of a Plato or a Shakespeare. trines Dr. Lloyd founded an argument for the But the thirdpriiiciple—the soul—the something existence of soul, independent of mind, as of lodged within the body, which yet was to survive matter, and built thereon a superstnicture of it ? Where was that soul hid out of the ken of physiological phantasies, which, could it be sub­ the anatomist ? When philosophers attempted to stantiated, would replace every system of meta­ define it, were they not compelled to confound physics on wliich recognised philosophy conde­ its nature and its actions with those of the mind? scends to dispute. Could they reduce it to the mere moral sense, About two years before he became a disciple varying according to education, circumstances, rather of Puysegur than Mesmer (for Mesmer and physical constitution ? But even the moral had little faith in that gift of clairvoyance of sense in the most virtuous' of men may be swept which Puysegur was, I believe, the first auda­ away by a fever. Such at the time I now speak cious asserter), Dr. Lloyd had been afflicted with of were the views I held. Views certainly the loss of a wife many years younger than hun­ not orighial nor pleasing; but I cherished them self, and to whoni he had been tenderly attached. with as fond a tenacity as if they had been con­ And this bereavement, in directing the hopes solatory truths of which I was the first dis­ that consoled him to a world beyond the grave, coverer, I was intolerant to those who maintained had served perhaps to render him more credulous opposite doctrines—despised them as irrational, or of the phenomena in which he greeted additional disliked them as insincere. Certainly if I had ful- proofs of purely spiritual existence. Certainly, fiUed the career which my ambition predicted- if, in controverting the notions of another physi­ become the founder of a new school in pathology, ologist, I had restricted myself to that fair anta­ and summed up my theories in academical gonism which belongs to scientific disputants, lectures, I should have added another authority, anxious only for the truth, I should need no however feeble, to the sects which circumscribe apology for sincere conviction and honest ar­ the interests of man to the life that has its close gument; but wheu, with condescending good in his grave. nature, as if to a man much younger than Possibly that which I have caUed my intel­ himself, who was ignorant of the phenomena which he nevertheless denied. Dr. Lloyd in­ lectual pride was more nourished than I should vited me to attend his seances and witness hi& have been wUling to grant by that self-reUance cures, my amour propre became roused and which an unusual degree of physical power is nettled, and it seemed to me necessary to put apt to bestow. Nature had blessed me with the down what I asserted to be too gross an outrage thews of an athlete. Among the hardy youths on common sense to justify the ceremony of exa­ of the Northern Athens I had been pre-eminently mination. I wrote, therefore, a small pamphlet distinguished for feats of activity and strength. on the subject, in wliich I exhausted aU the wea­ My mental labours, and the anxiety which is in­ pons that irony can lend to contempt. Dr. Lloyd separable from the conscientious responsibUities of replied, and as he was no very skilful arguer, his the medical profession, kept my health below the reply injured him perhaps more than my assault. par of keen enjoyment, but had in no way dimi­ Meanwhile, I had made some inquiries as to the nished my rare muscular force. I walked through moral character of his favourite clairvoyants. I the crowd with the firm step and lofty crest of imagined that I had learned enough to justify me the maUed knight of old, who felt himself, in his in treating them as flagrant cheats—and hunself casement of iron, a match against numbers. as their egregious dupe. Thus the sense of a robust individuality, strong alike in disciplined reason and animal vigour— Low Town soon ranged itself, with veiy few habituated to aid others, needing no aid for itself exceptions, on my side. The HUl at firstseeme d —contributed to render mc imperious in will and disposed to raUy round its insulted physician, arrogant in opinion. Nor were such defects and to make the dispute a party question, in injurious to me in my profession; on the con­ which the Hill would have been signaUy worsted, trary, aided as they were by a calm manner, and when suddenly the same lady paramount, who had a presence not without that kind of dignity which secured to Dr. Lloyd the smUe of the Eminence, is the livery of self-esteem, they served to unpose spoke forth against him, and the Eminence respect and to inspire trust. frowned. "Dr. Lloyd," said the Queen of the Hill, "is CHAPTER ir. an amiable creature, but on this subject decidedly I HAD been about six years at L when I cracked. Cracked poets may be all the better for became suddenly involved in a controversy with being cracked;—cracked doctors are dangerous. Dr. Lloyd. Just as tliis iU-fated man appeared Besides, in deserting that old-fashioned routine, at the culminating point of his professional for­ his adlierence to which made his claim to the tunes, he had the impi-udence to proclaim himself Hill's approbation; and unsettling the mind of not only an enthusiastic advocate of mesmerism, the Hill with wUd revolutionary theories. Dr. as a curative process, but an ardent beUever of Lloyd has betrayed the principles on which the the reality of somnambular clairvoyance as an HiU itself rests its social foundations. Of those invaluable gift of certain privUeged organisations. principles Dr. Eenwick has made himself cham- CIiarTcs Dickf ns.] A STRANGE STORY. [AagustlO, 13G1.3 4GI pion; and the HiU is bound to support him. about fifteen, the youngest four; one little girl There, the question is settled!" —the only female child—was cUnging to her And it was settled. father's neck, her face pressed to his bosom, and Erom the moment Mrs. Colonel Poyntz thus in that room her sobs alone were loud. issued the word of command. Dr. Lloyd was de­ As I passed the threshold, Dr. Lloyd lifted his molished. His practice was gone, as well as his face, which had been bent over the weeping repute. Mortification or anger brought on a child, and gazed on me with an aspect of strange stroke of paralysis wliich, disabling my opponent, glee, which I faUed to interpret. Then, as I put an end to our controversy. An obscure stole towards him softly and slowly, he pressed Dr. Jones, who had been the special pupil his lips on the long fair tresses tliat streamed and protege of Dr. Lloyd, offered himself as wild over his breast, motioned to a nurse who a candidate for the HiU's tongues and pulses. stood beside his pillow to take the child away, The HUl gave him little encouragement. It and, in a voice clearer than I could have expected once more suspended its electoral privUeges, in one on whose brow lay the unmistakable and, without insisting on calling me up to it, it hand of death, he bade the nurse and the chil­ quietly called me in whenever its health needed dren quit the room. All went sorrowfully, but other advice than that of its visiting apothecary. sUently, save the little girl, who, borne off in the Again it invited me, sometimes to dinner, often nurse's arms, continued to sob as if her heart to tea. And again. Miss Brabazon assured me were breaking. by a sidelong glance that it was no fault of hers I was not prepared for a scene so affecting; it if I were still single. moved me to the quick. My eyes wistfully fol­ I had almost forgotten the dispute which had lowed the chUdren, so soon to be orphans, as one obtained for me so conspicuous a triumph, when after one went out into the dark chill shadow, one winter's night I was roused from sleep by a and amidst the bloodless forms of the dumb brute summons to attend Dr. Lloyd, who, attacked by nature, ranged in grisly vista beyond the death- a second stroke a few hours previously, had, on room of man. And when the last infant shape recovering sense, expressed a vehement desire to had vanished, and the door closed with a jarring consult the rival by whom he had suffered so click, my sight wandered loiteringly around the severely. I dressed myself in haste and hurried chamber before I could bring myself to fix it on to his house. the broken form, beside which I now stood in all A Eebruary night; sharp and bitter. An iron- that glorious vigour of frame which had fostered grey frost below—a spectral melancholy moon the pride of my mind. above. I had to ascend the Abbey HUl by a In the moment consumed by my mournful steep, bUnd lane between high waUs. I passed survey, the whole aspect of the place impressed through stately gates, which stood wide open, itself ineffaceably on life-long remembrance. into the garden ground that surrounded the old Through the high, deep-sunken casement, across Abbots' House. At the end of a short carriage- which the thin, faded curtain was but half drav/n, drive, the dark and gloomy building cleared itself the moonUght rushed, and then settled on the from leafless skeleton trees, the moon resting fioor in one shroud of v/hite glimmer, lost under keen and cold on its abrupt gables and lofty the gloom of the death-bed. The roof was low, chimney-stacks. An old woman servant re­ and seemed lower still by heavy intersecting ceived me at the door, and, without saying a beams, which I might have touched with my word, led me through a long low haU, and up lifted hand. And the tall, guttering candle by dreary oak stairs, to a broad landing, at which the bedside, and the flicker from the flre strug­ she paused for a moment, Ustening. Round and gling out through the fuel but newly heaped on about hall, staircase, and landing, were ranged it, threw their reflexion on the ceUiiig just over the dead specimens of the savage world which it my head in a reek of quivering blackness, like an had been the pride of the naturalist's life to col­ angry cloud. lect. Close where I stood yawned the open jaws Suddenly I felt my arm gi-asped; with his left of the feU anaconda—its lower coils hid, as hand (the right side was akeady lifeless); the dying they rested on the floor below, by the winding man drew me towards him nearer and nearer, tiU of the massive stairs. Against the dull wamscot his lips almost touched my ear. zind, in a voice walls were pendant cases stored with grotesque now firm, now splitting into gasp and hiss, thus unfamiUar mummies, seen imperfectly by the he said: moon that shot through the window-panes, and " I have summoned you to gaze on your own the candle in the old woman's hand. And as work ! You have stricken down my life at the now she turned towards me, nodding her signal moment when it was most needed by my chil­ to follow, and went on up the shadowy passage, dren, and most serviceable to mankind. Had I rows of gigantic birds—ibis and vulture, and lived a few years longer, my chUdren would have huge sea glaucus—glared at me in the false life entered on manliood, safe from the temptations of their angiy eyes. of want and undejectedby the charity of strangers. So I entered the sick-room, and the first glance Thanks to you, they wiU be penniless orphans. told me that my art was powerless there. Eellow-creatures afflicted by maladies your phar­ The chUdren of the stricken widower were macopoeia had faded to reach, came to me for grouped round his bed, the eldest apparently reUef, and they found it. ' The effect of imai^ina-

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462 [August 10, 18G1.] ALL THE YEAR ROUND. [Conducted by tion,' you say. What matters, if I directed the say, ' There, nature must close ;' in the bigotry imagination to cure ? Now you have mocked the which adds crime to presumption, you would unhappy ones out of their last chance of life. They stone the discoverer who, in annexing new reahus wUl suffer and perish. Did you believe me in to her chart, unsettles your arbitrary landmarks, error? Still you knew that my object was re­ VerUy, retribution shall await you. In those search into truth. You employed against your spaces which your sight has disdained to explore brother in art venomous drugs and a poisoned you shaU yourself be a lost and bewildered strag­ probe. Look at me! Are you satisfied with gler. Hist! I see them already! The gibbering your work ?" phantoms are gathering round you!" I sought to draw back and pluck my arm from The man's voice stopped abruptly; his ey& the dying man's grasp. I could not do so with­ fixed in a glazing stare; his hand relaxed its out using a force that would have been inhuman. hold; he fell back on his piUow. I stole from His Ups drew nearer still to my ear. the room; on the landing-place I met the nurse "Yain pretender, do not boast that you and. the old woman-servant. Happily the chU­ brought a genius for epigram to the service dren were not there. But I heard the waff of the of science. Science is lenient to aU who offer female chUd from some room not far distant. experiment as the test of conjecture. You I whispered hurriedly to the nurse, "AU is are of the stuff of which inquisitors are over!"—passed again under the jaws of the vast made. You cry that truth is profaned when anaconda—and, on through the blind lane between your dogmas are questioned. In your shaUow the dead walls—on through the ghastly streets, presumption you have meted the dominions of under the ghastly moon—went back to my soh~ nature, and where your eye halts its vision, you tary home.

THE new romance by Sm EDWAUD BULWEU LYTTON will be continued from week to week for six months. On its completion, it will be succeeded by a new serial story by Mu. WILKIE COLLINS, to be continued from week to week for nine months. The repeal of the Duty on Paper will enable us, with the commencement of our next volume, greatly to improve the quality of the material on which ALL THE YEAU ROUND is printed, aud therefore to enhance the mechanical clearness and legibUity of these pages.- Of the Literature to which we have a new encouragement to devote them, it becomes us to say no more than that we beUeve it would have been simply impossible, when paper was taxed, to make the present announcement.

CONEECTIONER'S BOTANY. year 1519, when Spanish Cortes made himself master of the country of the Aztecs, the luxuries WHEN in this nineteenth century we sip our and natural productions of this highly-favoured chocolate flavoured with vanilla, let us breathe land have been gradually introduced into Europe, a sigh for the degradation and imprisonment among which the vanilla is esteemed as one of of that grand old monarch, the Emperor Mon- the greatest additions to our delicate confec­ tezeuma, whose life is graphically described tionary. by MB. PKESCOTT in his charming history The VaiiiUa Aromatica is an orchidaceous of the Conquest of Mexico. The splendour climbing plant, partly parasitic in its habit. It and luxury of the royal household before the roots itself naturally in the ground; but, in the appearance of the Spaniards in Mexico, is upper part, receives its nourishment from the almost fabulous, and reminds one of an Arabian tree aramst which it grows. In the countries Nights tale. " The emperor took no other where the plant is cultivated for commercial beverage than the chocolate—a potation of purposes, care is taken to choose a position chocolate flavoured with vanilla and other where light and air are freely admitted. The spices, and so prepared as to be reduced to a upper branches are fastened to a tree, where froth the consistency of honey, which gradually they quickly take root and fasten themselves by dissolved in the mouth. This beverage, if so it means of their spiral tendrils. The leaves are could be called, was served in golden goblets, oblong, heart-shape, of a bright green colour with spoons of the same metal or of tortoise- on the upper side, paler underneath, and have shell, finely wrought. The emperor was ex­ several prominent veins running through them.. ceedingly fond of it, to judge from the quantity They are produced alternately at every joint, —no less than fifty jars or pitchers being pre­ and have very short footstaUcs. The flowersar e pared for his own daily consumption. When of a greenish white colour, very small, with five the royal appetite was appeased, pipes made of spreading divisions. The seeds are produced in a varnished and richly gilt wood were brought, long three-sided fleshy pods, which contain an from which he inhaled—sometimes through aromatic oil exhaling the pecuUar fragrance cha­ the nose, at _ others through the mouth—the racteristic of the plant, on which account they fumes of an intoxicating weed called tobacco, are imported to Europe. The name vanilla mingled with liquid amber." Ever since the seems to be a corruption of the Spanish word Charles Dickens.] CONFECTIONT:R'S BOTANY. [August 10, ISGl.] 4G3

BaynUla, or rather the word bayna, a sheU or and is rejected at the gas factories. By adding pod, of which baynilla is the diminutive, as cas- nitric acid|toJbenzol we get nitro benzol, or arti­ carilla is of cascara. ficial oil of almonds. There is also another The chief supply of these delicious and valu­ substance called hippuric acid, extracted from able pods is from Mexico, but they also attain the drainage of our cowliouses and pigsties, perfection in the Mauritius and in Surinam. which, when submitted to the action of the The care of the plants is confided to the Indians heat, can be made into nitro benzol, available in when they are under cultivation. Where they the same manner to become oil of bitter almonds. grow wild and luxuriantly under the rays of a Pear oU, or essence of Jargonelle pears, for tropical sun, the Indians coUect the ^pods as which we in England have long been celebrated, they lie thickly in the woods. The pods are is quite independent of the presence of pears for first laid in heaps to dry for two or three its manufacture. A compound called amyl, days in the sun, then they are fiattened and produced from the decomposition of starch, rubbed over with the oU of Palma Christe. which can be got from potatoes when united After repeating this process several times, they with vinegar or acetic acid in proper quantities, are considered fit for market, and fetch a very becomes at once pear oil, possessing all the high price. When these pods reach Europe fragrance of that fruit. Then pineapple oil, or they are used either in a powdered state in very essence, is in its chemical principles closely smaU quantities, or an extract is made of them associated with rancid butter; the peculiar dis­ which answers the same purpose. Attempts agreeable flavour of butter when decomposing have been made to grow the vanilla artificially, is due to butyric acid, which, when mixed with both on the continent of Europe and in England; ethyle, the principle of ether, gives the true but the process is too expensive to answer pineapple flavour. It is just so in the natural commercially. At the meeting of the British laboratory of that beautiful fruit; then, accord­ Association at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1838, ing to Nature's own incontrovertible laws, a Professor Morren, of Liege, read a paper on the manufactory of acid and ethyle has been going production of vanilla in Europe. He stated on during the process of growth and ripening, that he had for some time successfully grown which results in the natural production of the V. plauifolia in the Botanic Gardens at Liege; pineapple fragrance. and, although this species does not naturally With all these revelations of modern science produce odoriferous fruit, he had obtained from before us, we could almost doubt whether any­ it fruits as large and fragrant as those of V. thing is really what it professes to be; but a aromatica used in commerce. The chief diffi­ visit to Messrs. Eortnum and Mason's—that culty in the growth of the plant seems to be in tempting emporium of all that is elegant, taste­ the fructification of the stigma, which, as it is ful, and delicious in the art of confectionary— somewhat hidden and covered in, is accomplished will soon convince the most sceptical that, after in its native state by bees and other insects all, the botany of confectionary still exists. seeking for the honey it contains, and thus We have seen an epergne filled with genuine carry the pollen from one flower to another. botanical specimens, so disguised and sweetened At Sion House, the residence of the Duke of with candied sugar that the eye would cer­ Northumberland, the vanUla plant is successfully tainly never detect portions of some of our grown iu the hot-houses; shade, heat, and hu­ commonest wUd flowers. It is not until after midity seem to be the requirements of this inte­ a closer inspection of these little bonbons that resting plant. we discover, by their fragrance, that the flower All our most deUcious perfumes and refined of the sweet-scented violet—the Viola Odorata tastes are now-a-days reducible to very matter —has been transformed into a sweetmeat. We of fact formula—except vanilla, and we never are reminded by it of hedgerows and bright heard of that being imitated. The chemist by spring days, and can distinctly recognise its his art can almost set aside the agency of the bright purple petals thus singularly disguised. vegetable world, and, from the most unattrac­ Again, the petals of the fragrant orange-blos­ tive materials, can manufacture flavours and som, Citus Aurantium, lie aU snowy and glitter­ scents precisely similar to any produced in ing with crystals of sugar in a transparent saucer Nature's laboratory. The fruit of the vaniUa, by the side of the violets. What so appropriate when analysed, is found to contain its own pe­ for a bridal feast? We can imagine it may culiar volatile oil with a certain proportion of one day be possible to feed a bride on these benzoic acid. Amongst the numerous essences aromatic deUcacies, as well as to adorn her with and flavours now constantly sold for the pur­ the perfect blossoms of the orange-flower. A poses of confectionary, nearly all can be ob­ time-honoured custom this; but we scarcely tained artificially. It is by no means necessary know, with our newly-awakened taste, whether that the oil of bitter almonds should have ever we would not vote for fewer orange-blossoms been contained in an almond. Pear oil, apple being worn and more eaten, were it not for the oU, and pineapple essence are frequently obliged respect we have for ancient legends. to trace their origin to far different sources from The bright green crystalUsed knots so abun­ the fruit whose flavour they represent. Oil of dant on every dessert-table, and the tiny little bitter almonds can be obtained from a com­ triangles found in jellies and cakes of various pound substance known in the laboratory as sorts, are of native production. Angelica Arch- Benzol. This benzol is a product of coal-tar, angelica, though not strictly a British plant, 464 [August 10, 1S610 ALL THE YEAR ROUND, [Conducted by grows so weU in this country, and is so often Indeed, when we begin to think of the different found away from cultivation, that it may almost forms iu which we partake of tliis product of be considered naturaUsed. It originally came the Western world from our childhood to old from Lapland, and is now grown largely both age, and tlie multitudinous flavours imparted to in England and in Erance, for the benefit of the it by the aid of the confectioner, we shaU trace confectioner. It is an umbelliferous plant, and nearly all of them to Nature's laboratory. There flourishes by the side of streams, and in moist are the endless variety of lozenges tastinf> of shady places. The root consists of thick fleshy peppermint, a British wild plant, Mentha Pepe- fibres, sending forth several very large compound rita, yielding an oil in its leaves known to us leaves of a Ughtish green colour. Among these all; ginger, the most potent and useful of all arises a long jointed stalk about four or five feet our spices, the roots of the Zingiber Officinale- high, set with clasping leaves at the joints, ac­ cinnamon, the bark of a plant growing in the cording to the habit of the family. Towards the East Indies, Laurus Cinnamonum; cloves, which top the stem breaks into many branches, each are the unopened buds of a myrtle-like plant, the terminated by a compound umbel, the rays of Caryophyllus Aromaticus; and numberless other which are angular, and support globular heads spices equally agreeable. of whitish flowers. The stalks were at one time Then there are all the jelUes, creams, and blanched and used as celery; but they are now cakes, many of which are mere vehicles tor the chiefly preserved in sugar, and eaten as a sweet­ introduction of aromatic spices, interesting not meat. The aromatic flavour of angelica recom­ only to the palate but to the botanist. Nutsiiegs, mends it strongly to many palates; indeed, the the seeds of a plant belonging to the Bay family, names by which it is known are very significant MyristicaMoschata, with the curious outer shell, of its appreciation. Archangelica, Evangelica, or arillus, as it is called, constituting the well- and Pseudangelica, are the three genuine dis­ known and fragrant mace. Allspice, or Pimento tinctions given to different plants of the same Lenis, the fruits of a small tree growing iu the family. In Lapland it is much esteemed, and West Indies, known as Eugenia Pimento; the is supposed to have anti-pestilential pow'ers. In buds of some plants, as of the cassia; the seeds that country it is chewed after the manner of of others, as the anise seed, the cardamon seed; tobacco, and the Norwegians mix it with their and the leaves of many more, as the laurel, bread. Pruiius Lauroserasus, and the common bay-tree, Besides the angeUca, we have a sweet­ Laurus Nobilis, are frequent additions to om* meat prepared from a very common sea-side best confectionary. plant, known to all who frequent our English coast in the summer-time—the sea holly, Eryn- MANORS AND MANNERS. gium Maritenum, easily recognised by its stiff sharp-pointed prickly leaves of bluish green; To pay my rent punctually to my landlord, if or, as botanists say, glaucous colour. The I could, if I simply leased my house and garden, flowers are in heads of a pale blue colour. It or to see that the annual shillings were duly is very abundant on the eastern coast of Eng­ delivered over to the steward of the manor, for land, The long tough creeping root has a the lord's use, if I were a copyholder iu the pungent, aromatic, sweetish taste, which pecu­ country, with a few acres of meadow land, and liarity is taken advantage of by the confectioner, may be a reach of fell or a belt of copse by way of who boils and candies them, and thus prepares boundary, constituted about the sum of my know­ a pleasant variety for the table. At Colchester, ledge on the subject of rents and holdings. To in Essex, there still exists an establishment be sure, I had heard, in a hazy kind of way, such where, more than two centuries ago, the ex­ terms as quit-rent, andheriot, and soccage, aud the periment was first made by one Robert Buxton, lord's fines, and I knew that there was something an apothecary. The celebrated Dutch physi­ dreadful in a "rack-rent;" but I did not quite cian Boerhaave used to recommend the root comprehend what; and when people tried to of the sea holly in medicine as a restorative and explain, it was generally so mixed up with poor- stimulant. It is not necessary, however, to rate, and so many things that I did not under­ seek for the rare and costly preparations of the stand—being only a poor ignorant personage confectioner to indulge our taste for botanical with no head for figures—that I was never much research. the wiser for the glossary. But the other day I The little pink and white sugar-plums, so met \vith a quaint old book, written by the welcome in the nursery, contain each in its sugar learned Thomas Blount, and in this I read of case a miniature fruit, not a seed, as is commonly some of the strange rights and customs by which thought. Caraway is the entire fruit of the our forefathers held their manors in times long Carum Carui, a plant which abounds in various past. His book is caUedEragmentaAiitiquitatis, parts of Europe, and is cultivated in the gardens or Ancient Tenures of Land and Jocular Cus­ of this country. It belongs to the famUy toms of Manors; and is edited, annotated, and UmbeUifer^e, and has a long fleshy root, which enlarged by Hercules Malebysse Beckwith and is eaten as a vegetable in many parts of the his father, with not half so grand a name ; aud Continent, and is little inferior to the parsnip. out of the queer pot-pourri that it aU is, I pro­ The peculiar warm aromatic oil contained in the pose to pick some of the best bits, and hand little fruits recommend them for the purposes them round for the edification of the com­ of flavouring various preparations of sugar. pany.

J. •^v^sm

Charles Dickens.] MANORS AND MANNERS. [Augrusticisci.] 465

First, as to the meaning of Grand and Petit vessels of wine which lay under the bar;" Lord Serjeauty: I'homas by virtue of his lord high steward­ Grand Serjeauty means that a man holds his ship, and the Earl of Arundel because lie was lands or tenements direct of the king, on con­ chief butler. The king's son won tlie day, of dition of rendering him some service of the per­ course. son—such as carrying his banner or his lance, Another high office of the crown held by leading his army in time of war, bearing his Grand Serjeauty was, and is, that of the Lor'd sword before him at his coronation, being his Great Chamberlain. Tiie Lord Chamberlain has marshal—a kind of dignified policeman—his "livery and lodging" in the king's court, be­ carver, or his butler ; and Petit Serjeauty is sides sundry fees from bishops and archbishops, when he holds his lauds or tenements—also and from all the peers of the realm when they direct from the king—in consideration of some come to do homage and fealty; he has also as small material service, such as providing him perquisites, forty ells of crimson velvet for his with a lance, a dagger, a knife, a pair of gilt own robes at the coronation, and the royal bed spurs, or of mailed gloves; or perhaps a hundred and bed-furniture and night apparel used by the herrings made into four-and-twenty pies and monarch on the eve of the coronation, and the duly baked; which the town of Yarmouth, for basin and towels in wdiich the king washes his example, w^as bound to render to the sheriffs of hands on the day of coronation: giving for all Norwich, to be by them delivered to the lord these fees the personal service of " bringing the of the manor of East Carlton, and by him to king^ his shirt, coif, and wearing clothes when the king; or, as the owner of the lands of Ales- he rises," carrying at the coronation the coif, bury, Bucks, who held his fine estate on con­ gloves, and body linen, the sword and the scab­ dition of finding the king in rushes for his bard, the gold to be offered by the king, the chamber and straw for his bed, giving him, for robe royal and the crowai, dressing and undress­ food, three eels in winter, and two green geese ing the king, and serving him with water in summer, whenever he came to Visit him; throughout the day wherewith to wash his stipulating, though, that his visits should never hands. And then the lord great chamber­ be made oftener than thrice in the year. Eor lains, when the grand day was over, used to the lord of the lands of Alesbury knew that quarrel with the other great lords for the king's gracious majesty's too frequent presence would night apparel and the king's bed-furniture and be something Uke the gift of the white elephant dirty towels, and sometimes got the lawyers to —a mif^hty honour to receive, but ruinous to show how each had exclusive right thereto, and maintahi. how the other claimant was but an alien and an AU the great offices of the crown are held by intruder. Did not the Earls of Lindsey and Grand Serjeauty, but greatest and most power­ Derby each petition the Court of Claims for the ful of all the officers was the Lord High Steward forty cUs of crimson velvet and the dirty towels, of England. Eor, the Lord High Steward was due to some one after the coronation of James the viceroy or Ueutenant of the king, second the Second ? and did not the Court of Claims only to the king, the alter ego, that other I who assign to the Earl of Lindsey all the goods ruled everyw^here, and over aU, save anointed his soul longed for, to the discomfiture of the majesty itself. Among his most important Earl of Derby? All these things read very duties was that of reproving and admonishing strangely to us now, and marvellously like a the evil-doers among the nobiUty. Thus, in the leaf out of the Court Circular of an African time of Edward the Confessor, the then Lord kinc:. High Steward took Godwin, Earl of Kent, to The barons of the Cinque Ports claimed, as their task for his ill deeds and malicious counsels, ultimate of human honour, the right of bearino- and in the end deprived him of his earldom. "a canapye of cloth of golde over the kinsceptre; or, as "Peter Picot held the half Thomas Earl of Arundel, each claiming "the of Heydeiie (Heydon, in Essex), by the ser- m^ssi

466 [August 10,1861.]] ALL THE YEAR ROUND. [CoQdaot«a by jeanty of serving with a towel at the coronation ensign forty days at the holder's own charges of the king; and Peter, the son of Peter Picot, whenever the sovereign makes war in Scotland? held the other moiety, by the serjeauty of Or is OvenhiUs, also in Kent, held on coiisil serving with the basons;" or as a certain mea­ deration of forty days' service in the king's army sure ("one carucate") of land in Addington when he goes i'orth into Wales for battle with was held " by the service of making one mess in the rebels there, the lord being further bound an earl hen pot, in the kitchen of oui- lord the to provide himself with a horse worth exactly king, on the day of his coronation, called dUi- five shUlings, and a sack worth sixpence, and grout, and if there be fat or lard in the mess, a needle or skewering-pin to fasten the sack ? it is called maupigyrnun." But what w^as dili- These services of accompanying the kino- to grout and what maupigyrnun, no one now living, the wars, and taking a horse, and a sack, aud I believe, can exactly determine. In Blount's a skewering-pin, make a most frequent manner time, this manor of Addington belonged to one of tenure. As also, that blowing of a horn, hi Thomas Legh, Esq., who, at the coronation of the border counties, to frighten away moss­ his then majesty Charles 11. (1661), brought troopers and the lUce.. Burgh-on-the-Sands, in up to the table a mess of pottage, called dili- Cumberland, was held by the service of blowing grout, "whereupon the Lord High Chamberlain a horn in the van of the king and his army presented him to the king, who accepted the when he went into Scotland, and blowing the service, but did not eat of the pottage"—a same horn in his rear when he returned. Some not very surprising omission on the part of the lords of manors have to find " a shield of brawn," Merry Monarch. Other lands are held by or a loaf of oat bread, when majesty goes a serving the king with w^afers or towels: many hunting and is hungry; and some have to dis­ for this service, by pouring out his wine; and member malefactors, some to specially watch one—and a beautiful manor too—by performing and ward the king's private aud peculiar pretty the redoubted office of champion, that very use­ horsebreakers—or laundresses—for the coarser less relic of chivalry and feudal barbarism, and word means both these sections of womanhood; love of theatrical attitudes, and fine dressing. and some have to measure all the bushels and Thus, the noble estate of Scrivelsby is held by gallons in the king's household. Others have the Dymokes on consideration of a Dymoke, to play chess with the king when he is so armed cap-a-pie, as in the time of Don Quixote minded, and to put away the chessmen into a and his saints, riding into Westminster HaU bag when the game is done; and some have on the day of coronation, flinging down a to guard certain castles for a certain period; gauntlet on the floor, and challenging all foul and some to find a ship when caUed on to do traitors to attack the legitimate right of the so. One manor was held by the serjeauty of sovereign to the crown—which right no one in providing the king with a hobeler (a kind of the world is disposed to question; but which ight horseman, not very unlike our light dra­ he, nevertheless, is prepared to defend with his goons),.who was to keep watch and ward inPor- life. It is an easy tenure. chester Castle for forty days, at the lord's cost; and one other lord had to present the king with What has become of that house in Saint two white capons, with this speech done into Margaret's which belonged to old Isaac the Latin: "Behold, my lord, these two capons, Jew of Norwich, and which King John granted which you shall have another time, but not now." to William de Eerrars, Earl of Derby, on con­ And TaxaU, in Chester, was held by the service sideration that he and his heirs would serve the of blowing a horn on Midsummer-day at a king and his heirs at dinner on all annual feasts, high rock near, called Windgather—what a fine and whenever else beside they celebrated a old Norse flavour in the word!—with the fur­ feast, " with his head uncovered, without a ther service of holding the king's stirrup, and cap, with a garland of the breadth of the little rousing the stag, whenever he came to hunt in finger of him or his heirs" ? And do the re­ Macclesfield Eorest. presentatives of Ela Countess of Warwick, or whoever they may be that now hold the manor Now we come to the tenures by Petit Ser­ of Hoke Norton, in the county of Oxford, stUl jeauty, with their quaint glimpses into old feu­ carve for the sovereign on Christmas-day, and dal life and manners. And at first, there is take as much care as of old to carry off the nothing but war service to be rendered. Knights carving-knife as a perquisite ? And is the manor and esquires, and armed men, and horsemen, and of Bondby, in Lincolnyhire, yet held by bearing footmen, and suits of mail; in one instance, a w^hite wand before the sovereign, likewise on only the moiety of a knight and a horse Christmas-day ? Or Coperland and AUerton, in without a saddle is to be given, and quivers or Kent, for the service of holding the head of sea­ sheafs of arrows, aud cross-bow-men or baUstai'S, sick majesty when sailing betw^een Dover and and sergeants-at-arms,one or more—which corps, Whitsand ? Or Hoton, in Cumberland, for the by the way, was first instituted by Richard Cceur service of holding the royal stirrup while the king de Lion, in imitation of the like corps created mounts his horse at Carlisle Castle ? Or Pen- by PhUip Augustus, during the crusades, as a kelly, in Cornwall, by the serjeauty of delivering body-guard against the assassins—those pleasant a grey riding-hood at Paulton-bridge, whenever subjects of the Old Man of the Mountain, so the king enters Cornwall, in knightful considera­ terribly famous for their love of hachshish and tion of the Cornish skies ? Or the manor of private murders. Sometimes, by way of diver­ beautiful Shorne, in Kent, for carrying a white sity, a footman with a lance and an iron trum-

.iL..b.l> k.imts Cliaxles Dickens.] MANORS AND MANNERS. [August 10, IGSI.] 467

pet is to be found for forty days, at the ma­ first coming in; two white doves and two white norial lord's proper chai'ges; and sometimes a capons; a pound of cummin seed, two pairs of footman with a bow and four arrows ; and some­ gloves, and a steel needle ; a hot simnel sent up times the footman has a bow and only three ar­ every day for the king's dinner; a pot-hook for rows ; but, to make up, he must have " one pale" the king's meat; a gallon of honey; one table­ and " one bacon or salted hog," half of which cloth and one towel yearly; several rents of he is to give to the earl marshal, and on the gloves and capons, and tuns of ale, and firkins other half to feed himself, following the army so of butter; a nightcap—value one half-pemiy; long as that moiety of salted hog shall last; a snow^ball in June and a red rose at Christmas; and sometimes he, the unfortunate footman, is two white hares yearly—rather a troublesome to go with the army into Scotland, barefoot, tenure, as white hares were at all times exceed­ •clothed with a shirt and breeches, having in the ingly rare in England; taking care of the king's one hand a bow without a string, and in the hawks, or breeding them in independent mews; other an arrow unfeathered, which, unless he are among the most frequent services to be ren­ gets better tailoring among the heather, wUl be dered for the gift of an estate, " with all that but scanty covering or protection for his poor grow on it as high as heaven, and all that Saxon thews and sinews against the stark and was within it as low as hell." They show the supple Highland foe. Some lords paid a yearly great scarcity of money, and the slackness of service in ouziell, or young birds (a corruption commerce in those days, and carry one down to of oiseaux); and some in ouzels, which are not the verv rudiments of societv, when all barter young birds, but a species apart and of itself, was in kind, and when there were but two es­ comprehending blackbirds and thrushes, and tates in the realm—royalty and the nobles—who served up at the royal table, as they are to this divided the earth and the villeins between them. day in Erance and Italy, Sir Walter Hunger- Sometimes it was enough if the king could ford held the manor of Homet, in Normandy, count on having his horse shod with royal nails, in consideration of rendering to the king and if he came witliin the boundaries of a certain his heirs a lance with a foxtaU hanging thereto, manor; sometimes, if the lord and his villeins yearly, upon the Eeast of the Exaltation of the would go out once a year gathering wool for the Holy Cross, and also of finding ten men-at- queen, from off the thorns and briars; and arms and twenty archers in the English king's sometimes—in the case of religious houses— wars with Erance. royalty was content with a daily mass, or a Another lord had to find a spindle-full of raw special office, said at stated times, or when the thi'ead to make a false string for the kuig's cross­ king would honour the rich abbey with a visit, bow; another, a currycomb when wanted; an­ and thought the bargain no bad one between other, an esquire with a purple lance and an iron lands and masses. John de Listen held the cap; whUe brave old Egremont Castle was once farm of Listen, in Essex, by the serjeauty of held "bythe service of one knight's fee, that making baskets for the king; and Roger de the lord should march at the king's command, Leyburn might have Bures, so long as he would in the army, against Wales and Scotland." scald the kina*'s 1IOG:S when require^d;. and Three "fletched" arrows, feathered with eagle's WiUiam Eitz-Daniel held four "ox-c:angs" of feathers, made up all the service to be rendered land for paying yearly a flasket, -which was by one lord; two arrows with peacock's fea­ either a wickered bottle or a small wooden tub thers, that of another; a loaf of oat bread, value —commentators are undecided which; and half a farthing—value stamped thereon—and Nicholas de Mora rendered two knives, one three barbed arrows feathered with peacock's very good, the other very bad, for certain lands feathers, whenever our lord the king should held in Shropshire; and Stene and Hinton, hunt in Dartmoor Eorest, the service to be ren- Northampton, w^ere held by the service of pre­ •dered by the lord of Loston; one footman, a senting one rose yearly at the Eeast of St. John bow without a string, and an arrow without fea­ the Baptist; aud Ralph de Waymer had the thers, the service to be rendered bv another lord: right of farming the fish-ponds of Stafford, if litter for the king's bed, and hay for the king's when the kmg fished therein he had aU the horse, together with the services of an esquire pikes and breams that he might catch: Ralph for forty days, duly equipped with a hambergeU reserving to himself all other fish, including eels, or coat of mail, redeemed the broad lands of that might come to the hooks, royal or other­ Brokenhurst; the like services of providing wise—which w^as not a bad look out for P^alph hay for the king's horse, straw for the king's de Waymer. As for Levington, in York, it was bed, and rushes for the king's chamber, made held for no greater service than the owner's re­ good the title to many a noble manor through­ pairing to Skelton Castle every CJiristmas-day, out England. A pair of gloves turned up with hareskin, a pair of scarlet hose, a coat or cloak there leading the lady from her chamber to of grey furred skins, two hogsheads of red wine, chapel, and, after mass, leading her from the and two hundred pears of the kind called " per- chapel to her chamber again, departing without meines,"—to be paid at the Eeast of St. Michael noise or mystery after dining with her in all yearly; a sextary (about a pint and a half) of honour, as liege and tenant should. Does the clove wine or July-flower wine; two hundred lord of the manor of Sockburne, in Durham, pullets, a cask of ale and a firkin of butter; stiU meet the Bishop of Durham, on his first twenty-four pasties of fresh herrings on their, entrance into the diocese, with Sir John Conyers's ancient falchion in his hand?—that falchion 468 [August 10, 18G1.] ALL THE YEAR ROUND, [Conducted by which so valiantly slew " a monstrous creature, repenting of his marriage for a year and a day, I a dragon, a worm, or flying serpent, that de­ miglit then repair to the priory of Dunmow] voured men and women and children :" though, and there "take his oath before prior and con- i indeed, some w^eak-minded rationalists of the vent and the whole town, humbly kneelino- in I seventeenth centuiy did say that this worm, this the churchyard upon tw*o hard-pointed stones." flyinj^ serpent, was no other than the Scots who And then after long kneeling and long oath- had invaded the country-side, as their manner taking the flitch of bacon was duly handed over was, and been mightily discomfited by Sir to him, and the possessor of the bacon and the John Conyers and his weapon. And is there a wife was carried on men's shoulders round the mad buU stiU hunted, as it was quite of late, on priory churchyard and about the tow'ii, the Christmas-day in the castle meadows round whole concourse applauding. Stamford, which castle meadows were given to the Stamford people as common land, so long as THE FORM OF THE OATH TAKEN BY THOSE AT nU^s'MOW WHO ARE TO HAVE TITE BACON. they should provide the bull? And do the You shall swear by custom of confession, tenants living about White Hart Eorest still If ever you made nuptial transgression. pay theAVhite Hart silver, which Henry the Third Be vou either married man or wife, imposed on them all, in local punishment of the If you Iiave brawls or contentious strife ; foul deed of T. de Linde, a Dorsetshire man, Or otherwise at bed, or at board, who killed the milk-white hart which he, Henry, Offended each other in deed or word; had spared ? EuUer paid his proportion in liis Or since the parish clerk said amen, time; but since Euller we have had the Reform Yo wished y^'selves unmarried agen, BiU, and a little matter of utilitarian common Or in a twelvemonth aud a day, sense superadded; and perhaps ihe tenants Repented not in thought any way; living about White Hart Forest object to having But continued true in thought and desire, a fine levied on them because T. de Linde kiUed As when you joined hands in the quire. If to these conditions, without all leare, a forbidden deer seven hundred years ago. Of your owm accord you will freely sweare, ^^Whiclmour," in Staffordshire, was held by A whole gammon of bacon you shall receive, Sir Philip de Somervileon very easy terms. He And bear it hence with love and good leave : paid only half the fees and fines levied on the For this is our custom at Dunmow well knowne, other landowners of the place, but then he had Though the pleasure be ours, the bacon's your own. "to fynde, meynteigne, and susteigne one bacon Seventeen hundred and fifty-one is the date flyke, hanging in his halle at Wichenore, ready of the last claimant given by Hercules Malebysse arrayed all tymes of the yere," save in Lent; to Beckwith ; but has not the custom of the be given to every man and woman who after a gammon been renewed wdtliin the last few- year and a day of married life together; taking years, and has not Mr. Harrison Ainsworth had two responsible witnesses to swear that they a hand in it ? Brindwoods, at Chingford, Essex, believed them; should there and then—he used to be held by a very strange custom. At kneeling on his knee, and holding his right every alienation the owner of the farm had to go hand on a book laid on the bacon—the bacon to the parsonage with his wife, man, and maid­ itself laid on half a quarter of wheat and half a servant, each mounted on a single horse, he quarter of rye—make oath in this manner, and himself carrying a hawk on his fist, and the man as ibllov/eth:' leading a greyhound in the slips ; both for the Here ye, Sir Philip de Soraervyle,lord of Whiche- rector's use that day. Arrived at the parsonage, nour, mayntayner and giver of this baconne, that I he did his homage and paid his relief by blowing A. syth I wedded B. my wife, and syth I had her in three blasts with a horn. The rector then gave^j my liepyng and at my wylle, by a yere and a daye him a chicken for his hawk, a peck of oats for^P after our inarryage, I wold not have chaunged for his horse, and a loaf of bread for the greyhound; none other, farer ne fowler, richer ne powrer, ne for after which they all dined; when the master of none other descended of gretter lyuage, slepyng nc Brindwoods again blew three blasts with his •waking, at noo tyme. And if the seid B. were sole horn ; and so they all departed. At Carlcoats, and I sole, I wolde take her to be my wyfe before all York, two farms paid, the one a right hand, the wymen of the worlde, of what condytions soevere and the other a left hand, glove yearly to the they be, good or evyle, as lielpe me God and his lord; and the owner of Isleham (Cambridge) seyutys, and this flesh and all fleshes. paid, also yearly, a gammon of bacon, stuck on If, then, his witnesses made oath that they the point of a lance, to the Earl of Arundel. believed him, the lucky possessor of the peerless But the services rendered to the king, either B. was given the classic flitch]; and, if a free by Grand or Petit Serjeauty, w^ere trifles com­ man, half a quarter of wheat and a cheese be­ pared with those which the landholders and side ; but, if a villein, then half a quarter of rye villeins under feudal lords had to give. Where only, without cheese, all of which was laid on a majesty Avas content with a rose or a loaf of oat- horse, and so the cavalcade passed away, " with bread, the feudal lord must have the tenant's trompets, tabourets, and other manoir of myn- "whole family at work in his fields, excepting, stralce." This custom was of Edward the Third's perhaps, the husew^ia, or housewife (our modem time. hussy). The viUeins had to pay fines ou aU The Dunmow flitch was the bequest of Robert occasions, too. If a she-villein or naif married; Eitzwalter, "long beloved of King Harry, son or, being married, if she loved another than her of King John," who ordained that any, also not husband, unlawfully; or, not being married, if -^^^^

Cfcaries Dickens.] MANORS AND i^lANNERS. [August 10, IS(U.3 469 11

she loved any man at ail, unlawfully, she had to thereto, and appears not, forfeits to his lord pay a fine, or "merchet," for "the redemption double ,his rent for every hour of absence,'* of her blood." If she was a she-viUein entire, Kidlington, Oxford, had a different kind of cus­ she had to pay five shUlings and fourpence, for tom. Here, a fat lamb was set adrift among right or punishment—as the case might be; if the maids of the town, the maids having their the daughter of a cottager, half that sum. No thumbs tied behind them; and whosoever villein could marry, put his chUdren to school, caught the fat lamb in her mouth, had part of send his son into the church, or seU au ox fatted it for her pains, aud was called for the day by himself, without the leave and allowance of " The Lady of the Lamb." And there was a the lord ; leave and aUowance ahvays exjiresscd "' morisco dance " of men, and another of by the inevitable fine or " merchet" of so much women; and the lamb was roasted and eaten solid silver. Grimston, in Norfolk, had rather for supper, and the day was "spent in dancing, a liard custom with its viUeins, called " Love- mirth, and merry glee." At Coleshill, War­ bone." Those with a horse and cart paid their wick, if the young men could catch a live hare lord " one day's journey of barley-seed time," before ten o'clock on Easter Monday, and carry receiving three-halfpence for breakfast, in re­ it to the rector's, he was bound to give them a turn ; and those with cows on the common paid hundred eggs and a calf's head for breakfast,. him so many days' work in harvest, having, at and a groat in money. On the first coming or three o'clock, flesh to eat, and ale to drink, and our lord the king to Rochester, the sealers of getting three loaves every evening. But the his writs ought to have four loaves of esquires' unfortunate villeins own harvest must rot on bread, and four of grooms' bread; four gal­ the ground whUe he is husbanding the lord's, lons of convent ale, and four of common ale; and eating his daUy dole of flesh and bread. four dishes of convent meat, and four of com­ These are only one or two of the very many in­ mon meat; to wit, twenty-four herrings, and stances of oppression and cruelty under which twenty-four eggs; seven small bushels of pro­ the villeins laboured in the good old days wdien vender, and eight halfpence to buy hay. All every man was brave and every w^oman chaste— these things ouglit the sealers of the king's at least, according to the saying of the lovers writs to have, when the lord his majesty rode- of the past. into Rochester town for the first time. Among The old Welsh had some curious customs other strange customs was the Minstrel's Court respecting that last quality in their women at Tutbury, which got abolished because of the worth noting. If a maiden who had loved abominable licentiousness to which it gave rise; not wisely but too well was deserted by her also, the apple-pies and furmenty of Hutton-Con- seducer, and made complaint thereof, a young yers, York, where each shepherd brought a three-year-old buU, wath its tail well greased, spoon, and he w'ho was spoonless had to Ue aU was pushed through a wicker door; if the liis length along " and sup the furmenty with his deserted maiden could hold the bull by its face to the pot or dish;" also, the " picked greased tail while two men goaded it on to bones" of Ratby, Leicester, aud the pins make it as mad and w^Ud as might be, she kept which every Roman Catholic fiung once a year it as some kind of compensation for her faithless into the well at North Lees, near Hathersedge;. lover, also as a sort of acknowledgment that a also, the odd idea of adornment which the Knuts- lass of her strength deserved a better fate; if ford people had, when they strewed their door­ the buU got away from her, she had only the step with brown sand, and made thereon pat­ grease on her hands for her pains. If the wafe terns of scrolls and crosses, &c., in white sand, of a Welsh prince had a lover, and the lover adding thereto also " the fiowers of the season," was found out, there was no blood and thunder on the marriage of their friends; also, the stiU in the case, and no formal divorce court, but odder custom iu the Middleton Hundred, -when the man was adjudged to pay the injured prince a man who had made himself the father of an a gold cup and cover, as broad as the king's face unlaw^ful chUd, forfeited all his goods and chat­ and as thick as a ploughman's nail who has tels to the king. Aud then there was the ploughed nine years; a rod of gold as tall as sUghtly tragic "Burning of the Hill " at Men- the king, and as thick as his little finger; a dippe, which was thus: Whenever one of the hundred cows for every " cantref"he ruled over; miners had stolen his comrades'tools, or clothes^ and a white buU, with two different coloured or other things, he w'as shut up in a very slightly- ears, for every hundred cows. And by other built hut, which was then surrounded with dry laws and enactments did Wales strive to keep fern, furze, &c.s and set alight; if he could, the the pubUc morals pure on that aU-important man was free to break his way out of the hut, point of women and fidelity ; but these two in­ but must never come to work again on tho stances are sufficient as specimens of the spirit Mendippe Hills. He had his choice between, and direction of the rest. death by burning, or banishment and starva­ tion, (jrave respectable Magdalen CoUege paid Rochford, Essex, used to hold a Lawless yearly a certain sum, "pro mulieribus hockanti- Court. Tins was a yearly assemblage of all the bus " on some of its manors, which bit of choice suitors and tenants of the estate, who met the dog Latin meant, that on a certain Monday iu steward at cock-crowing on King's Hill, having the year the men "hocked" the women, and, no light and no fire, obUged to speak in whis­ on the Taesdav foUowins:, the women "hocked" pers, and to write without pen and ink, and only the men: that is, stopped the way with ropes. with coals; and "he that ow^es suit and service 470 [Au-ust 10, 13C1.] ALL THE YEAR ROUND. [Conducted by and pulled down all passers-by, desiring money words of the few^ foolish men who would, if they to be laid out in pious uses. (?) And the fine could, have made laws simple, rights equal, and old Coteswold Hills had a grand annual solem­ mere humanity of more regard than sceptres nity every Whitsuntide, which, however, was crowns, royal robes, or patents of nobUity. chiefly remarkable to us, as showing the origin of the mace, which, to judge by analogy, was UNDERGROUND LONDON. originaUy a rod, as now, filled with spices and perfumes at the top, for the king, lords, and CHAPTEK IV. dignities to smell at. Not an unnecessary prac­ MY friend Agrippa, with aU his practical ex­ tice in those days of foul odours, and dirt and perience, anecdotes, and attentiveness, did not disease consequent thereon, and taking its rise, appear to me to be what is called "exhaus­ most probably, from the same cause as the rue tive" on the subject of old sewers. His stories and bitter herbs of the prisoners' dock. wanted the fine full flavour that only age can The men of Gotham are proverbial, and this is bring, and his experience was entirely confined why they are so. King John, going by Gotham to the north side of the river. WhUe the under- on his way to Nottingham, desired to pass ground channels of the sunny south remained through some meadows, but the wise men of the unexplored, I could not have felt that I had viUage prevented him, thinking that, once as done my duty to my employers—the public. I king's highway, the road would be as king's should have been haunted by a suspicion that I highw^ay for ever, and so they would lose their had left many stories and features buried in the meadow^s. King John was very angry at the old borough of Southwark and its surrounding impudence of these Gothamites, and sent his districts, which would be as seasoning pepper to messengers to inquire into the reason of their far more statistics than I think proper to rudeness, and otherwise report on what they offer. Going to the Guildhall Museum, and heard and saw, to the end of better devising the seeing a piece of wood found in the neigh­ punishment befitting. " So," thought the wdse bourhood of St. George's-fields in excavating men, "our best plan wUl be to appear a race of the great Duffield Sewer, and which w^as labelled fools, when surely the king's heart will be as being part of one of the piles of King Canute's softened, and our offence will be forgiven." trench, made in May, 1016, ray curiosity about Accordingly, the king's messengers found some the southern sewers was naturaUy stimulated. of the villagers trying to drown an eel in a pond; WhUe I gave those who hold the keys of Under­ some, dragging carts upon a large barn to shade ground London to understand that I was not the wood from the sun; some, laboriously dissatisfied with the King's Scholars' Pond tumbling cheeses down hill to find their way Sewer, I plainly told them that my appetite for to Nottingham for sale; and some, trying to information on sewer subjects was not yet half build a w^all round a cuckoo which had just gratified. perched on a cuckoo bush. Then the king's A friendly official statement, that no length of anger was diverted, for were they not all irre­ covered main sewer on the south side was more sponsible idiots ? And the wise men of Gotham than fifty years old, failed to damp my ardour. became raised to the rank of a proverb, as they The reports of Mr. Gwilt and Mr. I'Anson, deserved to be. technically interesting as they undoubtedly were, Do the present owners of any manors spoken only told me that most of the old sewers were of in this paper desire to part with the whole or anciently mill-streams and monastic water-, part of them ? If so, they will be glad to have courses; and that the whole southern vaUey the form for "an absolute conveyance of all district is under high-water mark — in some right and title therein," as given in Symonds's places as much as five feet. I went into various Mechanics of Law-making: old sewers on the south side, which, in conse­ " I give you all and singular, ray estate and quence of their peculiar geological position, can interest, right, title, claim, and advantage of and only be entered when the tide is low. In one I in that orange, with all its rind, skin, juice, pulp saw a barrow that had been washed down from and pips, and all right and advantage therein, some opening in the road at some higher point; with full power to bite, cut, suck, and otherwise and I heard of a bedstead that had been picked eat the same, or give the same away as fully and up in the flood not many months before. The effectually as I, the said A. B., am now entitled theory was, that it had been carried away by to bite, cut, suck, or otherwise eat the same a heavy rain-storm from some yard or garden orange, or give the same away, with or without on the Surrey HiUs, plunged into the sewers its rind, skin, juice, pulp, and pips, anything where they still form open ditches, and streamed hereinbefore, or hereinafter, or in any other deed down the tunnels towards the Thames. I was or deeds, instrument or instruments, of what told of many dead children that had been nature or kind soever, to the contrary, in any­ picked up on tliis side of the river, in the same wise, notwithstanding," manner; along with washing-tubs, mops, w^ater- That the wise men of Gotham drew up the butts, and trunks of trees. In one old sewer form of conveyance used in EngUsh law does under the Blackfriars-road, not remarkable for not, I think, admit of a doubt. Indeed, I should its purity or its freedom from chemical re­ imagine they had been consulted on very nearly fuse, I saw a cluster of mushrooms on the roof every point of law or custom mentioned in this that were almost as large as ordinary soup- paper, and that their voices had drowned the tureens. CharlesBickens.] UNDERGROUND LONDON. C August 10. 1S6L] 471

Still I asked for more. I wished to see one of asked, " during the long time you have worked the oldest working hands on the sewer establish­ in the sewers ?" ment ; a hoary mudlark w^ho had been seasoned " Oh yes," he said; " I've bin knocked down by nearly half a century's training, and who a dozen times by the gas ; spesh'ly nigh the dead might fairly be regarded as a hermit of the ends o' shores, an' I've bin burnt over an* over sewers. !My ideal of such a man was that of a agen. When your light goes out, you may know sewer-flusher, who, by long familiarity w-ith little summat is wrong, but the less you stirs about else than the black underground streams of the muck the better. I've carried a man as *as London, had come to regard the whole universe bin knocked dowm, nigh a mile on my lines as one vast pool of sew'age. No man who would [loins] in the old days afore we could get to the have felt astonished at seeing the En2:Ush Chan- man-hole. It's pretty stuff, too, the gas, if you nel bricked over by contractors, and turned into can only lay on your back when it goes ' wliish,* a main sewer; or who would have thought it sin­ an' see it runnin' aU a-fire along the crown o* gular to live over an outfall flood of sewage as the arch." large as Niagara, would have come up to my ideal. " I dare say," I said; " but sewers are quite With some little difficulty, an old workman was bad enough to walk in, without such illumina­ found, who was not surprised to hear that I had tions." been down various sewers, and took a deep in­ " Shores is all right," he returned, rather terest in them. Nothing appeared to him more pettishly; " it's the people as uses 'em that don't natural than that people should Uke to go know how to treat 'em. There's the naptcha- down sewers, and to talk about them for hours makers, an* those picklin' yards where they together. soaks iron in some stuff' to make it tough; Our interview began in a kind of underground they're nice places, they are, an' nice messes cell, side-entrance, or bower, where a man is thev makes the shores in, at times. Then there's often put to watch the tide; but it ended in can'le an' soap-manyfact'rers, which sends out a district engineer's office. The waUs were a licker, that strong, that it will even decay i'on •covered with maps and plans; the tables had an' brickwork. Then there's gas-tar-manyfac- many specimen brick bats upon them, all labelled t'rers agen. We're 'bliged to go to all o' these and numbered ; there were many pieces of pipe- people afore we goes down the shore, an' ask drain on the floor; many curious fossUs on the 'em to 'old 'ard. If we didn't do that, there'd mantelshelf; and a row of champagne-bottles be more on us killed than is.'* fiUed with specimens of river sewage. There " I suppose," I said—of course with a view was method, business, and science, in all this, of getting information—" the sewers you go up but the degraded condition of the champagne- are often very smaU ?" bottles struck me as approaching desecration. " Some is two foot shores," he replied, "an* "Them's not quite the things to squench they're tighteners ; others is three foot barrels; your thii'st," said my companion, the old sewer an' others is larger." workman, alludmg to the bottles. "Did you ever hear of any murder being com­ "Not exactly," I said; "the man who could mitted in the sewers ?" I asked, not being wiU­ so treat old wine-bottles must have been a ing to give up the chance of a romantic story savage teetotaUer." without a struggle. My companion, encouraged from time to time " There was one open shore," he said, " that by my questions, began to unfold his flfty years' some o' the foremen used to call ' old Grinacre,* oxperiences. He was a stout, healthy-looking in the S'uth'ark districk, but that's bin covered old man, with a face not unlike a large red over many years." potato. He was good-tempered, aud proud of "What about that ?" I asked, eagerly. his special knowledge; but not presuming. In " Well," he said, " it used to bother us a good this he differed from one or two other workmen deal. One mornin', when the tide was all right, whom I had met, who seemed to wish me to we goes down to work, an' picks up a leg!" understand that they, and they alone, knew aU "A human leg?" I asked. about the London sewerage system. His lan­ " Yes," he said, "all that, an* not a wooden guage was frequently rather misty ; but a very one neither. Another night, when the tide was little grammar will go a long way in the sewers, all right agen, we goes down, an' we finds an­ and working men have something else to think other leg!" of beyond aspirating the letter H. " Another human leg ?** I asked, in astonish­ "' They was like warrens," he said, alluding to ment. the old south-side sewers ; " you never see such " Ev'ry inch on it," he returned, "an* that ain't shores (sewers). Some on 'em was open; some all. Another time we goes into the same shore, was shut; an* some was covered over with an* we finds a arm, an' another time we goes wooden platforms, so's to make the gardings all down, an' we finds another arm." the larger. Some o' the shores was made o' wood, It seemed very annoying to me that my com­ spesh'ly about Roderide; an* at S'uth'ark the panion was compelled to sneeze and cough at ^ people used to dip their paUs in *em for water. this point of his story for about five minutes. They made holes in'em, so's to get at the water "What did you do?" I asked. when the tide was up, an' I've seen 'em dippiii' "Oh," he said, "the foreman put *em down often nigh Backley and Puckins's.'* in his book, an' they went afore the Board, an* "Did you ever meet with any accident,'* I it was a long time afore the Board could make 472 [Aus;u3tl0, 18C1.] ALL THE YEAR ROUND. [Conducted by anythin' of *em. They sent a hinspector down, remember a case o' this kind, acos a fr'end o' an' we found a few more legs,—ah, an* even mine was mixed up in it." *eads, to show 'im." " Let us have it, by all means," I said. "What ^^rt^ the solution of the mystery?" I "WeU," he began, "a fr'end o' mine was said, getting impatient. smokin' his pipe one niglit at his garret-window, "WeU," he replied, "the cat came out o' the just as you might be, when he thought he 'eard bag, at last. It was body-snatchers an' med'cal a cough right agen his left ear. He starts up studen's. When the gen'elmen at the hospital in a fright, an' looks roun', expectin' to see *ad done cutting up the bodies, they gets rid some one, but his missus 'ad gone out to get o' the limbs by pitchin' 'cm into the open somethin' for supper, an' there wasn't nobody shore." except 'imself in the room. WeU, he goes back I w^as disappointed by this tame conclusion to the v/inder, an' looks out, to see if any neigh­ to what I thought was goin^ to prove a ro­ bours was pokin' their fun at 'im, but he mantic story ; and yet I persisted in question­ couldn't see no one right nor left. He sits ing my witness, in the hope of stiU meeting with down agen, an' begins smokin', when he hears some startUng experiences. a muffled voice say, ' Where am I ? Tiie Avater's "People ?;22^5^ get down the sewers," I said, up to my neck; for GaAvd's sake let me " by picking the locks of the side-entrances, out !* even if they don't always come up at the low^ "When my fr'end 'card this, he drops his tide on this side of the river." pipe into the street, an' stan's for a minit struck " Oh, they get down fast enough, sometimes," all of a 'eap. He couldn't see no one, an* returned my companion, with a chuckle, "faster couldn't make out where the voice come from. than they're always able to get up. I once 'ad While he Avas lookin' about, he 'eard the same a dog that got shut in a shore for a week, an' voice say, as nigh as he could recollect, ' Oh, how d'ye think we got 'im out?" dear me ! Let me out, an' I'll never come down "I can't imagine," I replied. the shore agen.' "Well," he continued, "tw'O on us was agoin' " When my fr'end *eard the word shore men­ along Roderide one day, when I thought I 'card tioned, somethin' struck 'im the voice came up a pen-an'-inkin''-^ sound corain' up a gully. My the rain-pipe which Avent down the side o' the mate didn't seem to see it, acos not having lost 'ouse into the main. The top o' this pipe was a dog, he wasn't thinldn' of dogs; but I made werry nigh my fr'en's winder, so he leans out, up my mind that it was a hanimal down the an' snouts aown in, "Who are you? What's shores, an' what's more, that it was Elusher." your game ?' "Who's Plusher?" I asked. " ' Oh, sir,' says the voice, ' I'm BiU Stevens, "Why the dog," he said, "that's what we of Num'er two. Mill Pond-court, Roderide. I called his name. I goes to the nex' side en­ didn't go to do it, an' I'm bein' washed away in trance, an' almost afore I could get the trap the shore.' open, up springs the very hanimal, an' falls " It was a lucky job for Master Bill Stevens senseless at my feet." that my fr'end knew^ me, and knew wliere I "Was he dead?" I inquired. lived at that time. He runs roun' to me at "No," he replied, triumphantly, "not he; once, an' foun' me just goin' to turn into bed; he'd taken pretty tidy care of himself down the I comes out with a key, an' goes down arter shores; an' he W'as only a little drunk with the my gen'elman, an' finds 'im arf dead wi*" fresh air. fright. There's no mistake about it; it ud 'a' " Talking about drunk," he continued, " w^e've bin over with 'im in another 'our, as the tide 'ad one or tw^o rum goes o' that kind in the w^as comin' up fast. He'd stuck 'imself agen shores. I remember once the side wall of a old the side o' the shore, like a rat, 'oldin' on to main giv' way, an' the men found theirselves in the end o* the pipe, up which he shouted to my a public-'ouse cellar. P'raps they 'adn't ought fr'end. We took 'im 'ome to his father, quite to've done nothink, but giv' the parties notis, agen his grain; an' the father says, "Ang the but none on us, you know^, is alw^ays perfec'. sliores; he's always down the shores; we can't They took a little o' this, an' they took a little keep 'im out o' the shores; I wish there wasn't o' that, till I don't think they knew which was no shores.' shore an' w^hich was cellar. Lucky for 'em one " 'Well,' I says to the father, 'you needn't 0* the foremen came down afore the tide got up, go on about the shores. The best thing you an' 'ad the wall all made right, or they'd bin can do, if the boy's 'ead runs that way, is to washed aw^ay, like a shot, tubs an' all." put *im under a reg'lar flusher, an' let 'im larn "These were your regular men," I said; "but the bus'ness.'" don't you remember any instances of strangers " Did the father take your advice?" getting into trouble or danger down the SCWTTS; " He did," replied my companion, regret- like those men who w^ent in the other day, after fuUy, "but some 'ow it didn't answer. The boy the tallow from the Tooley-street fire ?" wouldn't go into the shores when they w-auted "Oh yes," he returned, "many cases; but 'im; an' no\v, I think, he's a bricklayer, or we never took much notice on 'em. Once I somethin' o' that sort." I soon found, after this, that I had ex­ *A curious phrase, whicli is held to mean the hausted my companion's stock of sewer anec­ yelping of a dog. dotes. I spoke lo him about the great inter- Chailea Dickens.] ELEPHANTS, FOSSIL AND MUSICAL. [August io,i86i.] 473

cepting sewers now in progress, but the plan teeth of the fossil elephant, although ribbon-Uke appeared to be a sealed book to him, and the and festooned, have thinner and more numerous discussion of it seemed to make his head ache. layers, with thinner and less festooned inter­ Thanking him, therefore, for the information he cepting lines of enamel. " Elephants," observes had given me, I turned my back, to some extent, Professor Owen, " possessing molar teeth of a upon the old works and the old workpeople, highly complicated and very peculiar structure, and proceeded to make an inspection of the alone crunch the branches of trees, the vertical new ones. enamel plates of their huge grinders enabling them to pound the tough vegetable tissue, and ELEPHANTS, EOSSIL AND MUSICAL. fit it for decrlutition. No doubt the foliasce is the more tempting, as it is tae most succulent THEUE are three species of elephants, and not part of the boughs devoured; but the relation two only, as commonly represented—the African, of the complex molars to the comminution of the Asian, and the European. These three species the coarser vegetable substance is unmistakable. are distinguished from each other by several Now, if we find in an extinct elephant the same specific characteristics, but chiefly bythe forma­ peculiar principle of construction of the molar tion of their teeth. The forests of the regions teeth, arising from a greater number of triturat­ now called Europe, were roamed by herds of ing plates, and a greater proportion of the dense elephants, of a species known at present only enamel, the infercftce is plain that the ligneous from their fossU remains. Whether they perished fibre must have entered in a larger proportion when the climate changed, or with the forests into the food of such extinct species. Eorests which provided them w4th food and shelter, of hardy trees and shrubs still grow upon the is a question requiring discussion and solution. frozen soil of Siberia, and skirt the banks of the When the ancestors of the present races of Eu­ Lena as far north as latitude sixty degrees. In ropeans, first discovered, a few centuries since, Europe, arboreal vegetation extends ten degrees the bones of gigantic mammals, they fancied nearer the pole, and the mammoth midit have they had discovered the remains of a race of derived subsistence from the leafless branches Titans, the giants who had fought the gods. of trees in regions covered during a part of the The bones of a huge mammal havins; been dug year with snow." up in Dauphiny, were actually exhibited in After Professor Owen has thus conflrmed La Paris as tliose of Teutobochus Rex, the king Place, we can scarcely be deemed over bold in of the Cimbri, furnishing indisputable proofs calling the fossil elephant the European species. of the lamentable degeneracy of the modern Judging from the localities in which his remains Gauls. are found, the mammoth (Elephus primogenius) During the course of the eighteenth century, must have ranged over all the north of Europe, however, the ice of Siberia revealed a rhinoceros They are uncommon neither in Erance nor in with preserved eyelids, and an elephant the Germany, nor in Great Britain. Teeth, uii- pupils of whose eyes were still discermble. The rubbed and unworn, have been found in the -curiosity of the men w^ho live to discuss, and Elephants' Bed, near Brighton, and tusks dis­ inquire, and obtain knowledge, w^as greatly ex- covered between Edinburgh and Selkirk were oited by this discovery; and they created a new carved into chessmen. But the best remains •science, the knowledge of ancient animals, or are found preserved in ice. As the very pupils the history of life upon the globe. This they of the eyes of the mammoth have been found did, wliUst demanding how the remains of preserved with his flesh, still in a condition animals, the like of which are now found only whicli obtained the approbation of canine gas­ •among the flame breezes of Asia and Africa, tronomers, the period of his extinction need not oame among the icy mountains and frozen be so remote as has been imagined. As man seas of Siberia. Gmelin supposed that the ele­ came northward he cleared the land of the phants had been driven northward by storms forests, and deprived the elephants of the leaves, and floods, and when there, caught in snow­ twigs, and branchesof treeswhichnourishedthem, drifts, and frozen in perpetual ice. Buffon con­ and of the deep and dark recesses which formed jectured that the north having become gradu­ their habitats. Man, the exterminator, destroys aUy colder, the great mammals had migrated every animal which lie finds or fancies noxious •southward. Cuvier argued that the same sud­ to him; aud the mammoth, graduaUy driven to den catastrophe had kUled the animals and pre- more and more ungenial climes, would become •served their remains. La Place, observing that the victim of a wet summer, a hard winter, and the Siberian elephants were covered with much a change of climate such as has repeatedly wool and long hair, concluded that they had occurred from geological and astronomical been adapted for a cold or temperate climate; causes. •and Cuvier yielded somewliat to the opinion of Droves of elephants, then, have lived where La Place; and Professor Owen, having studied we live. Surely there is evidence enough to the teeth of elephants more minutely than any­ warrant this supposition, and we had almost body else, has powerfully confirmed the conjec­ said, support this conclusion. When the first ture of La Place. The layers, plates, scales, or men came from Asia to Europe, they most pro­ laminae, crowning the teeth of the Asian elephant, bably witnessed scenes such as are observed and resemble narrow ribbons festooned at the edges; described by Mr. Pringle at the Cape of Good those of the African, look like lozenges; the Hope, and by Sir Stamford Rafles iu India.

••• 474 [August 10, 1661.] ALL THE YEAR ROUNT). [c

denied to the elephant the possession of a musi­ before it shall be exterminated out of London, cal ear. M. Toscan, however, in his Decade and that we have made some little head against PhUosophique, describes some apparently de­ the monster is precisely the best reason why we cisive experiments which were made in the should not relax in the war of extermination we beginning of the present century in the Garden are bound to wage against it. Now is the of Plants at Paris. An orchestra was erected time, in days when there is no panic, to recruit where the elephants could not see it. "'On our force and strengthen every outpost against hearing the fii'st chords, the elephants left off the enemy. eating, and went in the direction whence the In the Liverpool-road, IsUngton, there is a sounds came, testifying their surprise by dif­ hospital—the London Eever Hospital — ex­ ferent movements and various attitudes. Eveiy pressly designed as a place of shelter for the new air, every piece sufficiently different from poor, who suffer from those fevers caused by the preceding one to be seized by the ear, dirt and overcrowdins:, usuallv called infectious- made them undergo a new motion, and gave to It is not buUt story over story, but its buUdings their movements characteristics approaching lie wide, covering much ground, and with a free nearer and nearer to the measure of the music. airy space of enclosed land around them, Aliss Under the influence of the tender and melo- Nightingale has said that after seeing aU the dious air, O ma tendre musette! thev fell into a London Hospitals, she found the Eever Hos­ sort of enchantment; marching a few steps and pital the first for wholesomeness. The large then stopping to hear better, and then they wards, full of windows letting in both air and came and placed themselves under the orchestra, Ught, allow, by their measured proportion be­ movinc^ their trunks erentlv, and seemincr to in- tween space and number of beds, double the hale the amorous emanations of the music. The customary proportion of air to each patient; and gay and Uveiy accents of the air Ca ira ! seemed that double allowance is incessantly renewed by to throw them entirely into a state of enthusiasm open windows, and by every other available and disorder.** means of wholesome ventilation. The part of With whatever deductions it may be wise to Islington in which the Eever Hospital occupies receive the report of this Republican naturaUst its space of open ground, is itself airy and respecting the democratic sympathies with the wholesome; a fresh and quiet quarter of the air Ca ira! of the elephants of the 10th Prai- suburb that once had such good repute for rial of the year VI., the balance of evidence bracuQg air as to be itself called the Londcai palpably inclines in favour of the conclusion Hospital. So many hopeless city invaUds for­ that individual young elephants may have been merly took lodgings in IsUngton that it had some­ found by the ancients endowed with musical ap­ thing of the unnatural mortality of a Madeira. titudes fltting them for a training, not merely to That is a melancholy sort of wholesomeness, dance in step themselves, but to guide the move­ no doubt; and so it is with the wholesomeness of ments of a dancing circle of their elephantine the fever nest kent readv for the heaUn^ of the comrades by clashing cymbals fastened to their smitten poor who Ue where, to themselves or knees and trunks, correctly both in time and those about them, it is almost certain death to tune. lie. Nevertheless, it is a nest which anybody bom to wholesome things and wholesome GROWTH OE A HOSPITAL. thoughts might some day be not sorry to have helped in feathering. WE have all heard of the fever-nests of Its history being associated with the later London. We know how men, women, and history of London, typhus, the prevalence of chUdren, hungry and Ustless, lie among rags which is to a certain extent a measure of tbe with gUstening eyes and throbbing pulses. How want of sanitary knowledge, or of the neglect of the wife may recover, and the liusband who has sanitary discipline, is not without interest. At nursed her may drop into her grave, leaving the the beginning of this century there was no fever widow weak from her sick-bed with sick little hospital in England; but there were in Man­ chUdren on the floor at her feet, there tossing chester, Chester, and one or two other towns, and moaning tiU they die and shall be happy, or valuable houses of reception for bad fever cases recover and return to wretchedness. We aU withdrawn from the unwholesome fever nests of wish to send solace into these unhappy comers those towns, and such houses were connected of the town, and to help as we can in making with small systems of inspection and whitewash­ the lives of the very poor in London wholesomer ing, directed by committees managing the funds and happier. Much has been done. The vic­ raised for such purposes by private subscription. tims of typhus—since we have had the Boards Those efforts for good were based upon a more of Health with their medical officers, and their limited sense than we now have of the cause of inspectors studying each court and alley—are typhus. All that had to be done in the way of reduced in number. It is now five years since drainage and construction of dwellings was very we had a serious and open epidemic," such fluc­ dimly recognised, but the belief stopped at the tuations there have always been; the filthy pool fact that infection rather spread from person to of fever if it has not overflowed is stiU among person than that it arose in the same way us ready to overflow again, and it has no rif^ht among many persons exposed to the same to be among us. All typhus and typhoid fever noxious influence. Therefore, when anybody was is preventable. There is much to be done found in a close neighbourhood smitten''with ^ X

476 [August 10, isr.i.]; ALL THE YEAR ROUND. [CoDducted l;y typhus, or typhoid, or a severe form of scarlet think proper, to be given after the cessation of fever, the first impulse was—as it stiU is, and fever, on condition that the rules prescribed for ever must be—to remove and place in condi­ cleanliness, ventilation, and the prevention of tions favourable to his own recovery, the indi­ infection, have been faithfully observed. The re­ vidual, as the centre from which infection would ward to be proportioned to the degree of previous be sure to spread; to purify or destroy his danger, and the success of the measures by which clothes and bedding, and to apply hot limewash it had been counteracted." The ordinary at­ to his w^aUs. It was in this sense—true as far tendant physician was to be elected by baUot as it goes—that the physicians of St. Bartho­ and to have no salary, but a yearly honorarium • lomew's, Guy's, and the London Hospitals—of which, according to the state of the funds, was the General, the Westminster General, the in one year a hundred, in another fifty pounds. PubUc, and the New Einsbury Dispensaries— There were to be two extraordinary physicians, signed the professional certificate upon which without any fee or reward. There was to be an on May-day in the year eighteen hundred and apothecary, resident near the house, attendino* one, action was taken by a meeting of the in­ regularly once a day, and also at any time in habitants of the metropolis, convened by public case of emergency, to compound: the institution advertisement from the Society for Bettering the finding drugs. Each house was to have a matron Coudition of the Poor, and held at the Thatched- and nurses, with such domestic servants as might House Tavern. xVfterthe reading of the medical be necessary; and a porter, part of whose duty opinion, it was "Resolved—That it appears to would be the conveyance of the sick. These this meeting by the above certificate, that the preliminaries settled, officers were elected. The -contagious malignant fever has been for some suggestion since acted upon w^as at once thi'own time past, and now is, prevalent in the metro­ out by Lord Sheffield, w^ho proposed an "inquiry polis, and that it has been occasioned by indi­ whether parishes would agree to pay a Umited vidual infection, which, with proper care, might sum annually to entitle them to send a limited have been immediately checked,—or has been number of persons infected with contagious produced or renewed by the dwellings of the fever to the several houses of reception which poor not having been properly cleansed and might be established." purified from contagion after the fever has been Search was then made by energetic promoters prevalent in them: That it also appears that of the institution for a house that might be lius evil (the injury and danger of which ex­ fitted up as the first "House of Reception." A tends to every part of the metropolis) might be house in Acton-street, Gray's Inn-lane, was only prevented by cleansing and purifying the clothes, unsuitable because it was a part of property in furniture, aud apartments of persons attacked Chancery; but No. 2, Constitution-row, Gray's by this disease, and by removing them from Inn-lane, was taken. The committee having thus situations where, if they remain, the infection of got possession of its house, and being ready to others is inevitable." Upon this ground it was work out its plan, studied with care the last farther resolved to set on foot a subscription for report of the House of Recovery at Manchester, forming an institution for checking the progress as well as the last report of that at Water- of contagious malignant fever in the metropolis; ford. also, that a committee of five should be ap­ The new house in Gray's Inn-lane was but a pointed to draw up the plan and lay it, w^hen stone's throw from the rejected house in Acton- ready, before a meeting of subscribers to the street. At that time, and for some years later, new institution. Gray's Inn-lane, north of GuUdford-street, was In a month, the plan was ready to be laid be­ utterly unlike what it is now. At Guildford- fore the subscribers assembled at the Thatched- street, the houses stopped; St. Andrew's burial- House Tavern. "Houses of Recovery" were ground on one side of the way, and, on the other to be provided for those whom it might be side, more removed from the road, the burial- thought necessary—as shown by an order from ground of Bloomsbury and St. Geoige's, lay the physician — to remove from their own among fields and gardens. The Blue Lion Inn, homes, and those houses were to be "in airy on one side of St. Andrew's burial-ground, and situations, sufficiently detached from other the Welsh Charity School, standing iu grounds buildings, and in the neighbourhood of a of its own, on the other, were the only build­ populous district of the town." The per­ ings in the green lane between GuUdford-street sons so removed were to be conveyed at and Constitution-row. Erom the bottom or the expense of the institution by " a chair pro­ Acton-street, then a very short street, which vided with a movable lining, or some other ran out of Constitution-row on the right-hand means of conveyance kept at each house." The side, and led into fields, one might w^alk over infection of public conveyances by the use of fields without passing a single house, to them for the removal of fever patients, was to Sadler's Wells, and thence on across the thin be thus avoided. The institution was to keep and airy slip of the houses of Islington; but also a stock of bedclothes and apparel to be lent otherwise stiU over fields without touching^ or given, under the direction of the committee, a house, except the thinly scattered line ot to infected poor. The directors appointed to detached viUas m the City gardens, all the conduct the alfairs of each house might also way to Hoxton. In those days even the Lon­ *'order a rew^ard to such amount (subject to the don Hospital, now blocked in by a dense dis­ regulations of the committee) as they might trict of East London, had hardly a house be- Charles Dickens.] GROWTH OF A HOSPITAL. [AuffustlO, 13C1.] 477

tw^ecn its back-windows and the church of St. gave him up to justice. She had a stout heart, George's-in-the-East, Ratcliffe-higluvay. The or she would not have served as six-pound maid- whole town district of the New Commercial- of-all-work in a fever house. road being then in the future, whUe beyond Perhaps w^e linger too long over these old the opposite houses and short streets, in the days, but it is pleasant to speak of the begin­ broad Whitechapel-road, there were field-paths nings of good things. When in July, eighteen to Bethnal Green. In Constitution-row, then hundred and two, Cripplegate parish clothed opposite fields, although number two of a row two children who were returned cured from the and in contact with houses on each side, the House of Recovery, but whose infected clothes forty-six pound house was rented, and fitted up had been destroyed, the first movement was as a house of recovery: to the great horror of its made by the parishes in recognition of the value neighbours, who threatened indictment, and pre­ of the fever institution to themselves. Very pared for litigation. Of course they had no case soon afterwards, St. Clement Danes leading the until the nuisance was estabUshed and proved ; way with a vote of twenty guineas a year, offers experience elsewhere had show^n that the ex­ were made of contribution from the parishes istence of a house for the reception of malig­ towards the cost of fever cases sent from them; nant fever cases is especially beneficial to the but St. GUes's at first not only refused to con­ district in which it is situated, since by offer­ tribute to the care of its sick cherished in the ing its handy and ready help it diminishes the fever-house, but would not even bury its dead risk of infection there, more than elsewhere. in a fatal case—the parish officers provoking a Reassuring medical opinions were obtained and remonstrance from tlie fever institution by tell­ pubUshed, there was a printing committee ing its inspector that " where the tree had fallen formed to superintend the diffusion of means it might lie." The first movement in the right for a right understanding of the new establish­ direction w^as made in the same month by St. ment, and the opening of the House of Recovery Andrew's, for, upon its being then represented was resolved upon, at a half-yearly meeting, to the " governors and directors" of that parish caUed by advertisement—not where we should that twenty-five cases of malignant fever had look for such advertisement, in the Times, for been brought into the House of Recovery the Times was not then advertiser-general for within a year from a single court in their district England, but in the True Briton, the Porcu­ —Spread Eagle-court, Gray's Inn-lane—they pine, and the Morning Chronicle. themselves set about the purification with a AU this was the work of foundation done in goodwUl; and soon afterwards a vote for the the year eighteen hundred and one. At the payment of two guineas with each pauper of beginning of the next year, the House of Reco­ theirs taken into the Eever House was passed by very was opened. But the dread of infection the overseers and ancients within the Liberty of worked within its waUs as well as outside. The the'Rolls. Meantime, much good had been done first apothecary who was appointed, at a salary of by a parochial fever house estabUshed by the thirty pounds, declined to serve. The first porter vestry of St. Pancras, wliUc the general institu­ soon decamped. The first matron died within tion w^as in course of formation. The pre­ a year, but not of fever. The first physician, valence of typhus in that parish w^as decidedly brave young Doctor Murray, who had flinched abated. from nothing, and who had done everything that The " Institution for the Cure and Prevention his hand could find to do, died also within the of Contagious Fevers" was now fairly launched. year—of fever caught among the wretchedness Subscriptions came in, already some money was of a fever-smitten house in Stonecuttcr's-alley, paid under a will, and three thousand pounds of Lincoln's Inn-fields, that he w^as cleansing of Consols could be bought, which in the year its sores. Father, mother, and child, had been eighteen hundred and two, after eight years of struck down in that house, but they were re­ war, were, thanks to Bonaparte, to be had for moved to the House of Recovery and cured. less than two thousand pounds. One of the The institution gave a silver urn, with an in­ early purchases made by the institution was, scription in the doctor's honour engraved on it, even of Consols, below sixty. Between Ee­ to his mother. He was one of thousands who bruary, eighteen hundred and two, when the have died and wlio die every year in this great House of Recovery was opened, and the middle town, the death that good and wise men do not of eighteen hundred and four, when there was fear to meet, in the sacred service of their discussion of a government grant of three fellows. thousand pounds to the new Fever Institution, In those old days, beside the matron and the five hundred and fifty cases of typhus fever had nurses in the house (of which the full accommo­ been received into it. In the last-named year dation was of fifteen iron bedsteads for the sick a petition was addressed to the House of Com­ and three for nurses), there was a maid-of-all- mons for parliamentary aid tow^ards checking work, Martha Hill, giving her heart to a place the prevalence of infectious fevers in London, that was no sinecure for her, at w^agcs of six signed by the Duke of Somerset, the Bishop of pounds a year. When a man caUing himself Durham, Mr, Wilberforce, Mr. Vansittart, aud Hugh Loftus having got admission to the pre­ Mr. Bernard, members of the Society for Bet­ mises, assaulted the matron, broke the windows, tering the Condition of the Poor, and also of and ran out, Martha ran after him all the w^ay the Fever Institution, which that society had to Battle-bridge, and seizUig him by the collar. originally suggested and set in action.* The >*«iH

478 [August 10, isr,!.] ALL THE YEAR ROUND. [Conducted by

public meeting at which it was formed had been May and May, eighteen nine and ten, was only called by the elder society, and prepared for thirty. In (October, eighteen hundred and with a physician's pamphlet of their circulation. eleven, ground and premises in Coldbath-fields, A parliamentary committee reported the evi­ including the bath-house and garden-ground ia dence it had taken from Dr. Garthshore, Mr. the centre of Coldbath-square, about to be sold by Bernard, and other workers at the Fever Insti­ auction in three lots, were considered ehgible, tution, as to the death of three thousand per­ and w^erc bought by the Institution for three sons a year from typhus within bills of mor­ thousand eight hundred and thirty pounds. But tality, the inadequacy of the means of the Fever the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Institution to cope with the evil, and its posses­ Poor, which held the money-bag, raised doubts sion of sixteen hundred pounds of its small means as to the propriety of buying all this ground. only, on the condition of its getting pailiamentary The doubts were overcome, the purchase (with support. Upon that report, on the motion of a deduction of two hundred pounds for a pos­ Mr. Wilberforce, a grant of three thousand was sible claim of public right of way through oue made, and after a due amount of friendly con­ of the lots) was completed, and at the beginning fusion and doubt whether certain wordings gave of the year eighteen fourteen the parliamentary the money to the elder society or to its off­ grant of three thousand pounds, with six hun­ spring in Gray's Inn-lane, the money was held dred pounds of the subscription money also held in trust by the elder society, and an immediate in trust, was paid over to the Fever Institution. donation of three hundred pounds was contri­ There still remained two thousand pounds appli­ buted by that society to the Institution out of cable to the buUding of a new House of Re­ the funds received from government. It was covery ; and an appeal might, on such an occa­ at the same time intimated to the committee of sion, safely be made to the public for much fur­ the Eever Institution, that if they could find ther increase of the building fund. Typhus had ground in or near Gray's Inn-lane on which to just then been especially prevalent, and for ten establish a better House of Recovery than the years the house in Constitution-row had never one then in use, the elder society would pay been so full. Many cases of scarlet fever had over the whole of its fund tow^ards the purchase necessarily been denied admission; and it was and maintenance of the same. resolved that in the new house to be built in In this sixth year of the Institution, the num­ the centre of Coldbath-square, a distinct provi­ ber of patients admitted into the Plouse of Re­ sion should be made for the reception of scarlet covery was ninety-three, and there were two in fever cases. Meanwlule (in January, eighteen the house on the first of May w^hen the account fifteen), the ClerkenwcU vestry resolved to op- began. Of the whole number of ninety-five, lose to the uttermost the erection of a fever fourteen were dead: eighty had gone out cured, lOuse in Coldbath-square, "by reason of its, and one remained, the oiUy patient at the date proximity to the parochial w^orkhouse and the of the report. And this, too, was a fuller year House of Correction, and inasmuch as the pro­ than either of the two preceding it. In the posed site is a very populous and crowded same year, among the London courts, thirty neighbourhood." St. Pancras, however, sent fifty rooms had been limewashed and fumigated, pounds tow^ards the building fund. In the follow­ many others being fumigated only. ing month, SirThomas Bernard, who had been the It was at this time that active inquiry began most influential mover in all these arrangemeuts, to be made for the more convenient house, which stated that there was a disposition in some of was to be built or bought. In April, eighteen the governors of the hospitals for the small-pox, hundred and nine, Mr. MeUisli, member for Mid­ for inoculation and vaccination, at King's-cross, dlesex, was being pressed as to the necessity of to appropriate their building next the Hamp- getting ground—apiece near ClerkenwcU Prison stead-road, containing about eighty beds with being especially desired. The landlord of the the furniture, to use as a fever house upon Eever liouse vfas urging that his adjacent gar­ moderate compensation, if the fever committee den had become useless to him in consequence was disposed to apply for it. The suggestion was of the opinion that there was danger in the air at once acted upon, the building was inspected, of it, and, as it would grow its rent in vege­ and was considered, except for the want of a tables, it was rented by the Institution for eight kitchen, which could easily be added, remarkably pounds a year. But the committee was not rich well suited to the object in view. So it came in funds. A suggestion at a meeting in the to pass that for four thousand pounds, with the Tower Hamlets for the establishment of a House payment of incidental charges and the cost^ of of Recovery in the eastern district of London, building boundary walls, the western building to be placed under the control of the Fever In­ and garden of the old Small-pox Hospital be­ stitution, could not be entertained unless East came converted into the London House of Re­ London w^ould yield a hundred new subscribers covery, for the Cure and Prevention of Infec­ likely to be permanent. The funds of the In­ tious Fevers. The best was, of course, made stitution, with a subscription-list that had been of the Coldbath-fields estate, which at this day for several years declining, could not support is yielding one hundred and fifty pounds a year two houses. Eighteen hundred and nine W'as a to the revenues of the institution. The House healthy year; and the number of typhus cases of Recovery at King's-cross, opened for sixty (the only sort admissible) admitted into the patients, but afterwards enlarged so that it Fever House during the whole year, between would hold twice that number, is the old Fever Chnrles Dickens.1 GROWTH OF A HOSPITAL. [August 10, ISGl.] 479^

Hospital that Londoners remember in the the inner open squares, with the detached wards Pancras-road, where it divided the attention of for the men on one side, and the detached wards the stranger with its neighboui' tlie SmaH-pox for the women on the other side. There are Hospital, King George's statue at King's-cross, great double w^ards, parted only by open arches, built from the design of the Literary Dustman, very lofty, lighted by as many windows on each and the Camera Obscura, to which access was waU as the w^alls will conveniently hold, the obtained by drinking beer. Here the work of rows of windows opposite to each other ad­ the Institution was still forwarded bv the exer- mitting a through draught whenever it is re- tions of an indefatigable committee. The annual quked. Besides the w-indows, there arc venti­ supply of malignant fever cases—scarlet fever lators in the floor, ventilators in the roof, and now being received as well as typhus and ventilating slits associated with the very beams typhoid—varies much. There will be a lull for of the roof. The freest natural ventilation, an four or five years, then an outbreak. During allowance of two thousand cubic feet of space to the lull, wlien there is nothing strongly to direct every bed, and means of artificial ventilation public attention to the value of a hospital like added for use when required, ensure to these this, although the efficiency of the hospital lias wards all the wliolesome airiness that is the first to be maintained, its subscriptions faU off, and necessity in fever. Over the double w'ard on it languishes for want of support. Yet it has either side, only a narrower single ward is built, done its work so well, that in the year 'forty- so that there is nothing to impede roof ventila­ three, the fuUest year for the house in Pancras- tion of the rooms on the ground floor; and tho; road, nearly one thousand five hundred patients single upper floor is even more spacious than were admitted, and in the years 'forty-seven and that below\ In the large open square, between 'forty-eight, the last years of the old house, the the wards on either side, tliere are the engine- number was about one thousand four hundred. house and a detached laundry, in which the During those years the present Fever Hospital linen undergoes three soaks and a boil, before it was in course of erection. comes to the last washing, which is by machine.. For, the Great Northern Railway bills had, The mere removal from a close court to the airy during the years 'forty-four, five, and six, been ward of such a hospital, would often save lifer watched in parUament on the part of the old though no medicine were given. Of course Fever Hospital, whose house was on the site of there are baths, and all such needful appliances. its proposed terminus, and the result W'as a The newly-admitted patient has his bed placed settlement of compensation in May, 'forty-seven, side by side with the bath in which he is to the foUowing effect. The railway company cleansed, and passes at one lift from the bath to W'as to pay for the hospital they wanted, twenty the bed, which is then smoothly wlieeled, in an, thousand pounds, wherewith its governors could ingenious machine made for the purpose, to the build a new one, and a thousand pounds to part of any ward assigned to him. Besides the cover law expenses that had been and were to public, there are private, wards. To such a ward, be incurred. The raUway was also to make a a colony of drapers assistants was sent from a further payment of five thousand pounds to­ large London establishment into w'hich typhus wards the purchase of the ground abutting on had entered. To such wards, domestic servants the Liverpool-road, in which the new hospital may be sent wlien contagious fever comes, as it now stands. The whole cost of the site was not seldom does, into a private household by seven thousand five hundred. Thus the railway way of the kitchen. Only a payment of tw^o paid, in all, twenty-five thousand compensation guineas is taken from the servant's employer, if and one thousand lawyers' bUl, so that after the he be not privileged as a subscriber to the purchase of the site, seventeen thousand five charity. Many domestic servants are thus hundred pounds, together with a hundred and taken charge of every year, and, being of a class eighty pounds out of the thousand paid to cover better nourished than the very poor, the propor­ lawyers' biUs, remained in hand as a buUding tion of deaths among them is below the common fund. This, with the help from interest while average. How much risk of desolation among the cash remained in hand, was raised to about famUies is removed by such a provision; how nineteen thousand pounds : the whole of which great a power of securing the best treatment sum, except about five hundred pounds left to for a sick servant is thus given to the humane meet the cost of occasional changes and addi- master or mistress, it needs no words to ex­ tions, was fairly and well spent between the press. These payments for care of servants, middle of the year 'forty-seven and the beginning and the more considerable sums now paid by the of the year 'forty-nine, in building that admirable parishes for reception of fever cases from among New Fever Hospital in the Liverpool-road, their paupers, are a part of the comparatively which is not only the single hospital of its kind smnU revenue of the hospital. The other day, in London, but probably the best hospital of its wlien we went through its airy wards, seemg, kind in Europe. here a mother and her two young chUdren ui their three adjacent beds ; there, a convalescent It will hold two hundred patients. It lies, as widow, of whom her husband, a few wrecks ago, we have said, entirely surrounded by its own when she was desperately ill, and he weU, had open garden ground. A detached central house taken in their own narrow room a last farew^eU, is the dweUing of the resident officers, and this but who now lives,'when he, seized by the same is connected by open corridors on either side, fever, is dead; and here and there those groups through which a fresh draught of air passes into X

480 ALL THE YEAR ROUND. [August 10,1861.} of stricken families which only such diseases as ters to the sick caught typhus fever, the resi­ these yield in all their misery—it was painful to dent medical officer being himself among the think that a special hospital so needful above number; and out of the twelve three died. No­ others, should be absolutely threatened with body flinched for that. decay for w^ant of funds. After tlie new hospital It is not only under this discouragement of \vas opened, there were several years during an unfounded cowardice among its neighbours, which London was unusually free from fever, that the hospital suffers. It has made for itself and the full measure of its resources was not great opportunities of good, and done wonders tested. For the three years preceding the year with little means. It has grown from the pri­ *fifty-six, the number of annual admissions rose vate house with fifteen beds, a nurse or two, and to the average of a few more than a thousand, a maid-of-all-work, to be one of the best ap­ but in the year *fifty-six the number suddenly pointed and most valuable hospitals in London. rose to one thousand seven hundred and sixty. But it has no more grants or compensation There w^ere eight hundred less, in the year fol­ windfalls to expect, and its yearly work now lowing. A run of comparatively healthy years costs it nearly a thousand pounds more than it has come again, and a great year of fever gets from the public, on whom solely it depends epidemic also will come again as surely. The for income. It has no sort of endowment, and fluctuations are incomprehensible. W^e only has for some years past met its expenses by a know that typhus, typhoid, and malignant draught upon its capital. Not long ago, it con­ scarlet fevers never are extinct, although trived, and built, and paid for—partly by a spe­ they are almost, if not quite, extinguishable; cial subscription—an admirable ambulance for and that the removal of cases to an airy fever the conveyance of patients, who had been too hospital not only may save the lives of those often brought to the hospital in cabs. By this Vv^ho are nursed, but must prevent an incal­ conveyance, in which two patients can lie re­ culable amount of suffering from the spread of cumbent, and two attendants can ride, the sick sickness and death. An ordinary case taken person is conveyed from his own bed to the hos­ into a general hospital is cured, and the pital bed, without chano-e of posture, and without patient's Ufe is given to his friends and the fatigue. It is thorouglily ventilated, and every community. But wlien an infectious fever case part is contrived to be w^ashed and disinfected is brought into the Fever Hospital and cured, after use. The governors have got the ambulance, the saving is not only of that single life, but of but to place it perfectly at the disposal of any the lives of all to whom the infection might one requiring it, they need also a horse and a have spread in the sick man's unhealthy home man, and these cost more money than the present or neighbourhood. Sudden and ruinous is the small resources of the hospital enable them to devastation of disease like this; it is an especial add to its expenses. The great difficulty is, and scourge of the poor. They who are smitten are, has always been, the maintenance of a sufficient like the plague-smitten of old, too liable to be body of staunch permanent subscribers. Money shunned by their fellows, and too many of them in the lump is a good thing in its way, but the are not at all desirable as inmates of a general life-blood of a hospital fiows most safely through hospital, in which the greater part of the disease its guinea and two guinea subscription-list, is not infectious. Even the Fever Hospital is when that is large, and steadily maintained. dreaded by its neighbours. Why ? When it was And if the London Fever Hospital cannot secure a close house in a row, it communicated none to itself such a list, in less than twenty years it of its sickness to next door. How it is to hurt is to be feared that there wiU no longer be a anybody in Islington, now it is a wide airy Fever Hospital in London. building, in an open space, one might be much puzzled to discover. The vicar of the parish has not dared to put a foot across its threshold. NEW WORK Once, wlien a clergyman from another district BY SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. was procured, the vicar stood upon his paro­ chial rights and caused his ejection; but those NEXT WEEK sacred rights he has, for all that, never himself WiU be continued (to be completed in six months) exercised. A substitute sent by him after he had turned out the "interloper," took fright A STRANGE STORY, and disappeared in a week. The Catholic priest BY THE attends on the sick of his fold, faithful to his AUTHOR OF "MY NOVEL," " RIENZI," &C. &c. trust; but our own Church in the Fever Hospital leaves all its w^ork to be done by the half-lettered Scripture reader, or the City mis­ Now ready, ia 3 vols, post Svo, sionary. There is no such lack of courage in SECOND EDITION of the officers and servants of the hospital, though they have really a risk to run. In 'fifty-five, when GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 1 he cases admitted were unusually severe, though BY CHAKLES DICKEKS. not unusually numerous, twelve of these minis­ CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.

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