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WELLS GARDNER, DARTON & CO. LTD.

3 & 4, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, E.C,
AND 44, VICTORIA STREET, S.W.

INTRODUCTION

_ LANCASTER HOUSE was opened as the London
Museum in the spring of 1914. It is situated at
the western end of Pall Mall, past St. James’s
Palace and St. James’s Street and Cleveland Row,
in the direction of Buckingham Palace and the Green _
Park, to which there is a footpath from the square
in front of the house. This square, named Stable
Yard, is really part of the grounds of St. James’s
Palace; and Lancaster House itself is on the site .
of a former royal building, the Queen’s Library,
erected in the reign of George I.

Until it became the London Museum, Lancaster
House was known as Stafford House, by which name
it was famous for half a century as the most magni-
ficent private house in London. It is, perhaps,
gorgeous rather than beautiful in its internal deco-
rations; but as a building suited to great recep-
tions and imposing social functions it was unique.
It is said that when Queen Victoria came to it from
Buckingham Palace, she remarked to her hostess,
the Duchess of Sutherland, “I have come from my
house to your palace.” The outside portico, the
Spacious entrance hall and staircase, and the fine

suite of communicating rooms on the first floor,
Vii

Vill THE LONDON MUSEUM

in which the collections of china and costume are
now exhibited, are the most striking features.

Stafford House was built for the Duke of York,
the second son of George III, by Benjamin Wyatt
(the architect of Drury Lane Theatre); but the
Duke died before it was fully completed, and in
1841 the house was sold to the second Duke of
Sutherland, in whose family’s possession it remained
till r912. Sir Charles Barry was employed to add
the upper storey to it, and he also designed the
internalarrangements. It is said that over £250,000
was spent on it.

In 1912, Sir William Lever, the well-known soap
manufacturer, and founder of the model village of
Port Sunlight, purchased the house, and in June
1913 presented it to the nation as a home for the
London Museum, the collections of which had
hitherto (from April 1912) been on view in the State
apartments of Kensington Palace. The collections,
partly the results of munificent private gifts, and
partly purchased by official funds vested in trustees,
were first got together in 1911, but have been
immensely enlarged since then. The foundation
of the Museum was chiefly due to the Rt. Hon.
Lewis Harcourt, in 1911 First Commissioner of
Works; and to the first and present Keeper, Sir
Guy Laking, Bart., C.B., M.V.O., its comprehen-
siveness and excellent organisation are largely to
be attributed.

Lancaster House is splendidly adapted to the needs
of a museum, and the collections are displayed with
a thoroughness, clearness, and skill unsurpassed in

INTRODUCTION 1x

any public exhibition of the kind. The Museum
is, for all practical purposes, arranged in chrono-
logical order (which this book follows); it begins
with prehistoric man, and ends, at present, with the
Coronation robes of King George V. That simple
statement shows at once what a good museum should
be, and what a story London can tell. A museum
contains dead things: but if we use it rightly, they
are no more dead than a man is dead when his
mortal life isended. Everything in Lancaster House,
every stone, every garment, every tool and weapon,
even the forlorn little toys of other ages, represents
some ideal, some hope or some passing thought, of
our forefathers. They made this out of vanity, or
that out of love; they did this to earn a living, or
that to fight for one unlawfully. Some were kings,
some rebelled against kings ; some were just ordin-
ary men going about their business cheerfully, or
unhappily, or lazily, as we do: of the greater part
not so much as their name is known. But high or
low, humble or ambitious, they lived and worked
in a city the like of which is not to be found in the
whole world to-day, nor has been seen in all the
history of mankind. They made London—all of
them, not the great ones only. We in our turn
have to make the London of to-morrow. When,
we look back here on the past, and see how its life
has changed and grown from generation to genera-
tion, we can try to understand how, centuries hence,
other men will look back on what we have achieved
and what we have left undone ; and with humility
and yet with pride we can strive to make it sure

x THE LONDON MUSEUM

that they look back on nothing unworthy of the
capital of England.

The aim of this book, then, is to provide a “ guide,
philosopher, and friend’’ to persons who do not
always know, or want to know, everything in the
minutest and most exact detail; to interpret,
rather than to catalogue, a museum which is de-
signed to re-create the immemorial life of a great
city: though it is hoped that the enumeration
of particular objects has omitted nothing of value
or interest from any other point of view. It
is not intended to record sale-prices or the rarity
of “‘antiques’’; nor is it meant to encourage the
misuse of the words “‘ quaint ’”’ and “ old-world,”’
by the disappearance of which English popular
history would be vastly enriched. It is, in a sense,
an outline of the story of London; and yet, since
the Museum has certain natural limitations, it is
not an entirely complete story (the Museum, for
instance, contains no relic of the ‘‘ commune,’’ or
of Charles I’s quarrel with the City). In the same
way, it is not, and could not be, an encyclopedia
of all the multitudinous subjects suggested or
covered by the Museum. It can only select types
and indicate tendencies.

8
There is very little difficulty of grasping the

arrangement of the collection. On the left of the
central hall is a passage running right and left,

LRug sell Corware

Lancaster House, from Stable Yard

INTRODUCTION Xili

into which visitors are first directed by the attend-
ants. On the right of this passage, on the ground
floor, lie the rooms illustrating the earlier periods
of London history. The first is the Palzolithic or
Prehistoric Room, dealt with in Chapter I of this
book. Opening out of it on the left is the Roman
Room (Chapter II). This is a blind alley, and
visitors must return and cross the Paleolithic
Room to reach the Saxon and Early Norman Gallery
or Corridor (Chapter II1)—which is really part of
a spacious room boarded off by screens. These
three sections are illustrated also by certain objects
shown in the Basement, which can be visited either
first of all or last—or better still, both—because it
contains exhibits bearing on the domestic life of
London, and a large number of prints, which are
an excellent introduction to the Museum and can
at the same time be appreciated even more fully
after the other sections have been seen. The chief
objects of the periods up to 1700 there displayed
are mentioned in this book in the chapters dealing
with their separate periods, with a note that they
are to be found in the Basement: the eighteenth
and nineteenth century objects, which are in a
large majority, are treated in the chapter on the
Basement.

The Saxon Gallery leads into a Medieval Room
(Chapter IV), and from this another “‘ blind-alley ”’
_ room opens, corresponding to the Roman Room.
In it is grouped a wonderful collection of jewellery
and plate, kept separate thus, out of chronological
order, for obvious reasons of convenience. This,

Xiv THE LONDON MUSEUM

and a case of nineteenth-century jewellery on the
first floor, are dealt with in Chapter V. Costumes
(with a few small exceptions) are isolated in a
similar manner, in a single group, on the first floor,
and are also dealt with separately in Chapter XI.

From the Jewellery Room the visitor has to re-
enter the Medizval Room, and leave it by a door
that leads again to the Central Hall, and so up the
right-hand half of the main staircase. From here
till the long Gallery of Costumes is reached the
rooms are arranged in clearly divided periods,
beginning with the Tudor; each period is treated
successively in Chapters VI to X.

The Basement, as has been said, contains objects
illustrating, chiefly, London’s domestic life, especi-
ally in the eighteenth century. It also contains
certain things for which some special provision of
space had to be made, like the Roman boat,
Wellington’s carriage, the Stuart parlour, and
the prison cells. The last chapter (Chapter XIII)
deals with these, so far as they have not been
mentioned in earlier portions of the book.

The writer is very greatly indebted to the Keeper
of the London Museum and his assistants for their —
courtesy and kindness in affording both artist and |
author facilities for this work, especially at a
time when for public reasons the Museum was
temporarily closed.

CONTENTS

CHAP.
INTRODUCTION . : .

I. LONDON BEFORE THE ROMANS .

Il. Tat Roman Room . ;
Ill. THz Saxon AND NORMAN CoRRIDOR :
IV. THe MepIzvAL Room :

_YV. THE JEWELLERY Room

VI. THE Tupor Room

VII. Tot Earty SEVENTEENTH CENTURY AND Com-

MONWEALTH Rooms

VIII. THe LATE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY Room ,

TX. THE JoIcEY AND OTHER COLLECTIONS OF CHINA

X. THE Late EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH

CENTURY Room . ; x

_ XI. Tot Costume GALLERY
XV

PAGE
vii

16
32
48
65

87

106
T21

145

166

180

xvi THE LONDON MUSEUM

CHAP.
XII. THE THEATRICAL AND VICTORIAN ROOMS

XIII. Tot BASEMENT. 3 ‘ : :

INDEX : i : q

aan

32°

L Resell Conway

LANCASTER HOUSE, FROM THE GREEN PARK

PAGE
203

213

247

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE STUART PARLOUR : : ; . Frontispiece

PAGE
LANCASTER HOUSE, FROM STABLE YARD . ‘ 20 sel
LANCASTER HousE, FROM THE GREEN PaRK . ue
PREHISTORIC “ DuG-oUT” OR TREE-TRUNK CANOE . 13
THE Roman Boat. : ‘ d : 4 oe

WEAPONS OF THE EARLY PERIODS, AND OTHER OBJECTS 49
FIFTEEN CENTURIES OF SHOES . : : : CR?

JEWELLERY OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND NINETEENTH
CENTURIES : : , : : : ae

PEDLAR’S Pack, SIXTEENTH CENTURY s ‘ AaOe

A Roman Gtass BoTtrLe, A LEATHER JUG, AND EartTH-

ENWARE JARS . : 2 : : . 17508
OLIVER CROMWELL’s GUN . : : : ; sie ERO
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ROcKING Horse . : 530
Hats AND HELMETS oF Four CENTURIES . bees WES
“THE Dancinc LESSON” . : : s : = I50

THE GrEorRGIAN Do.t’s House . ; i : - . EOE

XVii

XVill THE LONDON MUSEUM

PAGE
OFFICER’S UNIFORM WoRN AT THE BATTLE OF

WATERLOO 5 : 5 : 2 : ~ 2882
Tue DuKE or WELLINGTON’s Post-CHAISE f . 28g
THE GEORGIAN Toy-SHOP . : : : : SER
New Inn Doorway . : : ; ‘ : . 219
A Lonpon GROcER’S SIGN . ‘ ; : : . 255

PRISON RELICS . ; : ; i ; : . 239

THE LONDON MUSEUM

CHAPTER I
LONDON BEFORE THE ROMANS

THE oldest objects in the London Museum are two
little yellow flints, roughly chipped to a more or
less flat point, shown in a small framework of wood
in the case on the right hand as the Paleolithic or
Prehistoric Room is entered. They look as if they
‘were just stones picked up by chance. As a matter
of fact, they are the weapons of the first Londoners ;
_ they were found deep in the ground; and they
‘imply the whole story of how a city is born and
grows.

If you leave a stone like one of these lying on the
ground in the open air, in some place where the soil
is not likely to be washed away by rains or streams,
it will gradually be covered up, and become, as it
were, part of the soil on which it rests. This burial
of the stone will be due to various causes. First
of all, there is always a certain amount of dust
falling from the air, even if we cannot see it so
plainly as when it is raised in a cloud on a road by

a motor-car. The dust may be merely from the
A

2 THE LONDON MUSEUM

earth itself, blown into the air by some local wind.
Or it may be, as it often is in London, minute
particles of carbon, contained in the smoke of
chimneys: if you catch some London rain-water
in a clean bowl, you can see this carbon in it—the
rain washes the air and carries the carbon to the
ground. Or the dust may be “ cosmic’’—that is
to say, the fine powder to which fragments of other
stars, whirled violently through space, are reduced
in their journey through our atmosphere to the sur-
face of the earth.

The stone, then, may be slowly covered by
dust : and thus the air does its part in burying it.
Again, seeds borne by the wind, or dropped by the
birds, may alight near it ; and when they take root
and grow, they act as a sort of breakwater for the
soil. They hold it and bind it together, and it silts
up against them. The plants themselves, besides
storing up earth by the stone, may cling to it with
their roots, or grow over it. Thus the vegetable
kingdom helps to build up the world over the
stone.

Then there is the earth-worm always at work,
casting up soil from beneath as he wriggles along
on his underground journeys. And then there are
insects—digger beetles and others—whose great
work in life is to bury things they find lying on the
ground. In country districts there are rabbits and
moles as well to alter the surface. And so the
animal kingdom covers the stone too.

Lastly, there is man, who cannot build his houses,
of whatever material, without in some way marking

LONDON BEFORE THE ROMANS 3

and altering, however slightly, the soil upon which
he dwells.

Now since the surface of the earth is being raised
in this way, the oldest things that have formerly
lain on the surface will be found now deepest be-
neath it. This room contains some of the oldest
things in London ; and they (like a very large num-
ber of the objects shown in this Museum) have
nearly all been found by digging, underneath the
streets and houses of to-day; one little pointed
implement in the right-hand case, for instance, was
found beneath Piccadilly Circus. Roman London,
to which we shall come in the next chapter, shows
some of the most curious examples of this: in
many places we are literally walking to-day upon
the roofs of former men’s houses.

That, then, is one way in which “ our valiant dust
builds upon dust.’’ London has grown layer by
layer. But the process is so long that it goes back
more years than anyone can calculate exactly.
The label on this case says that one scientist believes
that the race of men who used these early stone
weapons lasted 700,000 years; another, that they
lasted a mere 139,000 years. When eolithic and
palzolithic man—man, that is, of the dawning or
earliest Stone Age, and of the Old Stone Age—when
he made these instruments, London, of course, did
not exist: there were no towns anywhere upon
earth. England was not an island. It was joined
to Europe, and where the North Sea and the English
Channel now are, ran two enormous rivers: the
Thames was a tributary of the North Sea River,

4 THE LONDON MUSEUM

which was a continuation of the present Seine and
Rhone, and issued in a Northern Ocean far up towards
Iceland and the North Cape. The other huge river
ran westwards into the Atlantic beyond Cornwall.
Man was a very little creature in that strange
world: very defenceless, very weak and miserable
from our point of view, and yet very wonderful.
These little chipped flints were his only weapons.
On the wall on the left hand you can see how they
could be mounted on stout sticks so as to become
axes and hammers. It was probably long before
that idea occurred to Stone Age man. In this right-
hand case are the remains of what the users of such
weapons had to face—the skulls and other bones of
huge beasts now extinct: and also the skull and
the cast of a skull of paleolithic man himself. On
the walls is a picture of a man encountering a mam-
moth: in the case are fragments of a mammoth,
dug up in London. The mammoth was the terrible
ancestor of the elephant. Near by are the skull and
bones of Bos primigenius, the Father of Bulls: he
was more like a bison or buffalo than our English
bull of to-day. There was another kind of bull
also, Bos priscus, the Ancient Bull: you can
guess from his bones ‘too’ how powerful he was.
There was a formidable rhinoceros whose bones lie
here too. There were other beasts not shown—
cave-lions, cave-bears, a monstrous tiger with long,
curved, sword-like teeth projecting from his awful
jaws, hippopotami, hyenas, and gentler creatures
like deer. Man fished and hunted for a living (a
wonderful little harpoon shows how he did his fish-

LONDON BEFORE THE ROMANS iF

spearing) : many atime he must have been hunted,
in turn, for his life. He could not spin nor weave :
he wore skins. He could not make even the roughest
pottery. Till very late in the generations of palzo-
lithic life, if at all, he could not make fire. He had
no domestic animals: he knew the horse (or the
horse’s ancestor), but he did not ride or use horses
for work: he ate them, seeming to prefer their
flesh, very often, to that of other animals. The
hyena and whatever dog-like beasts there were were
his enemies, not his friends or dependents. He
was lower than the lowest savage known to-day,
hardly better than the beasts he fought. But he
was man: he could use weapons and tools: and these
flints that look so feeble and useless are in one sense
the most striking things in the history of mankind:
they are the earliest sign that man could use means to
ends, and raise himself above all other living things.
It is worth while mentioning here that the first
flint implement ever dug up and recognised as a
weapon was found in London, in Gray’s Inn Lane, .
at the end of the seventeenth century. When, a
hundred years later, scientists began to examine
such finds more carefully, they realised that this
weapon (now in the British Museum) was the first
evidence of a previously unknown chapter in the
history of mankind.
_ Now there is another point about many of the
older objects in this room; and this concerns
London in particular, as well as primitive man.
London, as has been said, has grown higher and
higher: but its shape and situation have been

6 THE LONDON MUSEUM

influenced in another way. When the Thames flowed
into the North Sea River, and indeed much later,
when it was an independent river flowing into the
present North Sea, it must have looked very like
the picture on the left-hand wall. It was a great
marshy expanse, with a broad stream moving
through it, constantly changing its course. It had
many “ drifts ”’—little silted-up creeks and half-dry
patches of land. Paleolithic man lived either in
caves or in river drifts, whichever happened to be
on the spot. In the case of London, he lived in
river drifts. So the first association of man with —
the spot where afterwards the greatest city in the
world was to arise, was with the river that, through-
out history, has given that city its chief importance
—London River, as sailors still call the Thames;
and this river, bringing down earth and sand and
stones from its source at higher levels, helped to
build up the swampy land of London. In those
swamps, with flints for weapons, the first Lon-
doners fought for existence. They lived, appa-
rently, in rough huts of wattle and skins. They
must have been few and lonely, with little to bind
them together—no laws, no commerce, no roads,
nor other means of communication, no belongings
or treasures other than what they could get (with
great difficulty) for themselves. :

They did not live only in huts. At the end of
this Prehistoric Room, on the wall. between the
windows, are a few shrunken stakes, that look like
worn-out fence palings. Their exact age is not
known: but whether they themselves are of this

LONDON BEFORE THE ROMANS 7

oldest Stone Age, or much later, of the Celtic Bronze
Age, they are examples of a kind of dwelling which
was built very far back in the history of mankind.
They are the stakes or supports of a pile-dwelling,
or lake-village, sometimes called a crannog. They
were found at Walthamstow. In the left-hand case
is a flint axe found in the same place. Primitive man
drove these palings into the river or marsh, and
made a sort of mound with their aid: between he
put any solid material, gravel or earth, which was
available ; and on top of the mound he set up his
huts. Thus he made a kind of island fort, which
could not be easily taken by surprise, and gave a
look-out over the flat stretches of river. A picture
on the wall shows what such a house was, though
perhaps the people drawn are a little more pictur-
esque than they really should be (whatever else he
was, however brave and wonderful, prehistoric man
would soon disgust his descendants if they could
meet him alive) : and there is also a diagram of the
structure of a lake village. Buildings like this are
found in many parts of Europe, particularly in
Switzerland. The finest in England is near Glas-
tonbury, in Somerset, where many families must
have lived till as late as Roman times.

So far we have considered only paleolithic man,
our very oldest ancestor. He is not peculiar to
England, and it cannot be said that he was of any
particular race. So little is known about him that,
though it can be proved (from skulls and weapons
dug up in England, France, and elsewhere) that he
gradually became more and more “ civilised” (in

8 THE LONDON MUSEUM

a very rude sense), it is not possible to say much
more about him than that he was man. Whether
he came into “‘ England ”’ (which, it must be remem-
bered, was not yet England, not yet an island) from
east or south, why he disappeared, whether he
died out altogether, or simply went away and came
back later, cannot as yet be definitely settled. All
that can be said for certain is that before England
was an island, palezolithic man, whose pathetic
weapons we can here look upon with pity and re-
verence, was living upon the Thames: that when,
or before, the North Sea and the English Channel
were joined, he apparently vanished: that after
that tremendous alteration of the shape of Europe,
another race of men, with different habits of life,
was in England. The connection between the first
and second races, if there was any, is not yet known.
It may some day be discovered by those who dig
up the deep-buried relics of the past: only a hint,
very often, is needed to show that such and such a
find is a sign of some great change—a new thing that
yet is closely related to the old.

This second race is called neolithic man—man of
the New Stone Age. The case on the left-hand side of
the room is filled with remains of his period: and
there is a whole row of flint implements which tells
his story more plainly than words can. They run
from left to right, and from a mere chipped stone
to a most perfectly rounded and polished weapon.
There is as great a gap between the worst and the
best of them as there is between paleolithic and
neolithic man. If you think out the processes by

LONDON BEFORE THE ROMANS 9

which an utterly ignorant man, with no books and
very scanty inherited knowledge, would perfect a
flint weapon, you will realise that the progress to
perfection is infinitely long. Try to make one, even
without polishing it : then think of the experiments
and failures a savage must have had.

Neolithic man was much more advanced than his
palzolithic forerunner. He lived on higher ground,
not in caves or drifts. He built, at a late stage in
his existence, huge earthen forts on the tops of hills :
there was one once at Barking. He could weave,
and make simple pottery: there are examples of
his pottery in the left-hand case. He cultivated
crops (corn and similar cereals), and he had domes-
ticated animals; most of the more dangerous
beasts, like the mammoth and the sabre-toothed
tiger, were extinct in England by this time. He
could use the bow and arrow, which shows an in-
telligence far higher than that of the man who used
only hand- or striking weapons.

It cannot be said, even within a thousand years,
when the second of the Stone Ages began. But it
can be asserted that it ended, in England, roughly
about 1800 B.c.1 It ended because man had made
a great discovery—a discovery as important as his
first use of weapons. He found out how to work
in metals—how to mix tin and copper, so as to
make bronze. The middle case in this room, and
a case over the fireplace, show what his work was
like. They show, too, what an enormous difference

1 This is the date, more or less generally accepted, given by the
British Museum Guzde to the Antiquities of the Bronze Age.

Io THE LONDON MUSEUM

the new tools and the new methods must have made.
Imagine a man with a flint axe lashed to a staff
fighting a man with a keen, strong, cutting sword :
imagine the change from cutting up your meat
with a sharp stone: imagine the saving of time in
making the implements when you had simply to pour
molten metal into moulds (the moulds themselves
have been discovered in some parts of England).

If you look more closely at the objects in the
middle case you will notice several important points.
(1) There is a hoard of copper ingots, and below it
some currency bars—bars of metal (which, of course,
was valuable) used as money. (2) Some of the
objects are labelled as ‘“‘ of the Hallstatt type ’—
Hallstatt is in the Austrian Alps, and a great find
of early implements and similar objects was made
there in 1846. Hallstatt objects are both of bronze
and of iron, and very finely worked: they belong
to a period when iron had partly but not quite en-
tirely superseded bronze as the best metal for tools
and weapons. (3) Some of the objects are called
Celtic, and there are also pictures of a splendid
Celtic shield and helmet, the originals of which are
inthe British Museum. One was found at Battersea,
the other at Waterloo Bridge.

When you have noticed these three points, look
at a group of objects on the wall near the left-hand
door : it consists of stone, bronze, and iron weapons.
All three stages have been found together at once.

Now consider what these facts mean. If stone,
bronze, and iron were all in use at once, man must
have been developing much more quickly than

LONDON BEFORE THE ROMANS ES

before. The old things had not got out of date,
but the new inventions crowded in upon them :
there was no longer one stolid, unchanging pattern,
nor one universal material. If objects like those
found at Hallstatt are also found in London (and
in many other places), this new civilisation must
have been widespread. If there was a currency,
there must have been means of communication—
there must have been trade, for money is of no use
except to exchange for valuable objects you do not
already possess. If iron and bronze and copper
were used in London, again, still more must there
have been trade: iron and tin and copper ores are
not found in London, and the metal has to be
fetched from a distance. Trade means civilisation
—a recognition of other people, an agreement as
to the methods of trading, some means of under-
standing one another. In fact, mankind was no
longer a collection of scattered savage families
getting a hard living haphazard: it was becoming
a collection of races or nations. The race which
became dominant in England was the Celtic. We
have at last reached the “ ancient Britons.”

There are a great many details to be learnt about
the early history of the Celts, the founders of London
(London is a pure Celtic name). Much is known
about their movements before they reached Britain
(Britain also is a Celtic name), and about their
tribal organisation. Such matters, however, belong
to larger subjects than the London Museum. The
chief thing that concerns us now is that the civili-
sation of London, when first it comes into written

I2 THE LONDON MUSEUM

history (the history of Rome, that is), was Celtic.
When Cesar landed in 55 B.c., the Celts had been
here for many generations. Crossing from Europe
into England with their better weapons, they had
conquered the earlier (late stone age) race usually
called Iberians: they had not necessarily driven
them out or exterminated them, but they had appar-
ently overrun them altogether. They were in every
way asuperior race. Theswords and kelts (socketed
axe-heads), pins, and other objects in the bronze
and iron age cases are not merely good tools, well
adapted for their purpose. They are beautiful.
No one to-day could invent more beautiful shapes.
If we could see them as they originally were, before
rust and age ate into them, we should be surprised
to find that not only had the Celts nothing to learn
about the shape of their instruments, but that we
have learnt from them and cannot better the
teaching.

What their way of life was will be better treated
when we reach the next invaders of Britain, in the
Roman Room. We shall get there another contrast
between old and new, another long stage in the
growth of London. In this first room we have seen
the people who dwelt on the banks of the Thames
developing from half-animal savages, with a weak
hold on life, into a civilised nation, secure against
the struggle for bare existence, and fairly skilled
in the arts of living.

There is an object of this early period not shown
in this room. It isin the Basement. It is a “ dug-
out” or canoe made of the trunk of a tree hollowed

LONDON BEFORE THE ROMANS 13

out (see illustration): savages in other parts of
the world have used such boats almost until to-day.
The exact age of this canoe is not known: but it

Rrenistoric “DUG-OUT* or Tree-TRunk Canoe

belongs to the period before the Romans came.

Do not leave this Prehistoric Room too quickly.
It is easy to go on to objects which seem to be nearer
the life of to-day. Men in later ages of history
made things not very unlike what we make our-
selves, but primitive man and his implements were
utterly unlike anything of to-day. Yet those stones
which seem, perhaps, so uninteresting and so un-
romantic are just what we should have shaped and
used if we had lived then. Try, with only one very
rough tool, and no experience, and no model, to
make, say, a wooden box—try to make it in great
discomfort, with interruptions. The result will not
be much like a box turned out by a first-class car-
penter. If you look at it in detail you will probably
find it is utterly and ridiculously unlike a perfect
box. You are a primitive box-maker. Primitive
man had to face difficulties we simply cannot
realise: his handicap was infinitely more arduous
than that of a novice making a box to-day. He
overcame the difficulties, and his victory is a thou-
sand times greater than the failures we, countless

14 THE LONDON MUSEUM

centuries later, think we can see in his work. He
is our forefather, whose labour made the world
habitable for us: we shall be judged by later men,
as he is judged, by victories over what we have to
face, not by failures to achieve things not known
to us.

This London of pre-Roman times, then, was a
collection of islands in a marsh—islands that grew
stronger by fortification and embankment, and
forced the river into narrower and more regular
channels. It is impossible to say what its boun-
daries were, or what its centre: probably the region
now between Leadenhall Market and Ludgate
Circus was the most populous and important
district.

The Thames, by the time the Romans came, was
very nearly the river we know, but probably broader.
It had some tributaries which no longer exist—at
least as rivers. The West-bourne (west river) ran
from Hampstead along the course of the present
Serpentine—which is the result of damming it : its
course from the Serpentine onwards is now a drain.
Tybourne also rose at Hampstead, and came down
towards the Marble Arch (where Tyburn Tree, the
place of execution, once stood), through the Green
Park, where its valley can still be seen, and so to
the Thames : the lake in St. James’s Park is dammed
from it. The Holbourne ran from Highgate to
Blackfriars: it was called the Fleet in its later
stages: it too is now a drain. Walbrook (a Saxon
word—the brook of the Welsh, or Celts) ran along

LONDON BEFORE THE ROMANS 15

the street so named to-day, by the Mansion House.
There were others, but these alone will concern us
here.

Over the door of this Stone Age Room is an orna-
ment which has a curious significance. It belongs
to the great days of Stafford House as a private
residence. It is a relief of Garibaldi, with an in-
scription in Italian saying that it commemorates his
visit to the third Duke of Sutherland, in April 1864.
Garibaldi was one of the greatest men of the nine-
teenth century: he, with other famous patriots,
led his countrymen to set Italy free, and make her
a nation. Many Englishmen fought by his side.
The story of his life is a wonderful romance. Here
his bust looks down on the beginnings of mankind ;
and what he did was, in a way, a supreme achieve-
ment of mankind. Man is the only creature who
can form an ideal, and fight and die for it. The
story of these stones is the story of man’s mind—
a mind which after countless ages could set up, as
Garibaldi did, the noble ideal of freedom.

CHAPTER II
THE ROMAN ROOM

OLD histories of England used to begin with a plain
statement that Julius Czsar invaded Britain in
55 B.c., and found there savages painted with
woad : as though England had hardly existed before
then. Even now many people think of the Roman
government of England mainly as a matter of
roads which ran in straight lines across the country,
and of embankments and ditches on hills, called
camps. Asa matter of fact, the Roman roads are
often not straight, or not entirely straight; and
nine out of ten ‘‘ Roman camps ”’ are not Roman at
all, but are the work of the “ ancient Britons”
themselves, the Celts, or of the neolithic Iberians.
The Celts, as we have learnt from the Prehistoric
Room, had an immensely long history behind them
before even the Romans came. They were not so
comfortably or so thoroughly equipped as the
Romans, certainly. They had wandered far, for
many generations, and had not slowly built up, as
the Romans did, enduring laws and a great system
of civilisation. They were a less advanced race
than the Romans: their weapons and armour were
not so good (though Bis: feared their terrible

THE ROMAN ROOM 17

scythed chariots): they lived in wattle and mud
huts, instead of stone houses : they were more cruel
and less orderly—they made human sacrifices.
They were split up, apparently, into small divisions,
often warring upon one another. But they were
not utter savages. And they already, when Cesar
came, knew something of the Roman Empire.
They had close relations with the Celtic people of
Gaul (France), who had become part of that Empire ;
and one reason given by Cesar for invading Britain
was that his enemies in Gaul had a habit of crossing
the Channel for a refuge whenever necessary.

Look now at a few of the chief objects in the
Roman Room, and think what they imply. Ina
case on the left of the door, over the fireplace, is a
collection of pottery. Some of it is quite simple,
though well made: but some of it is smooth and
red, and very finely finished. This is called Samian
ware, from the Greek island (Samos) where it was
‘first made in perfection. As a matter of fact the
Samian ware found in Britain was probably made
at Marseilles (Massilia), a city which, though in
55 B.c. and earlier it was a part of the Roman
Empire, was originally a Greek colony. All these
beautiful bowls, lamps, and so on were found in
London: they are some of the most precious pos-
sessions of the Museum, for such good specimens
of the ware are very uncommon. Then at the end
of the room is a reproduction of a Roman pavement
found in London (the original is elsewhere). To
the right of it is a cast of a “ Mithraic”’ group—a
relief of the Eastern god, Mithras, slaying a bull :

B

18 THE LONDON MUSEUM

the original was found in Walbrook. Nearer the
windows, on the far side of the room from the door,
is a reproduction of a bronze head of the Emperor
Hadrian, who reigned from A.D. 117 to 138. It is
a fine strong piece of work, though a little heavy ”
in style. The original is in the British Museum :
it was found in the Thames at London Bridge.
Just to the right of the door is a huge Roman
amphora, or wine jar (see illustration of a similar
jar, p. 49). Finally, there is a Roman glass bottle,
excellently made (see illustration, p. 94).

Now for what these things tell us. The Samian
ware means that it was worth while to import
artistic objects into Britain from abroad, in great
quantities (pottery ware is easily broken and de-
stroyed, and so if it is found in many places, even
in fragments, very much more than has survived
to our day must originally have been in use). The
country under Roman rule, therefore, was peace-
ful enough, and highly enough civilised, to need and
use this ware plentifully. The great wine jar is an
equally certain sign of civilisation—indeed, of wealth
and luxury: so is the glass—Rome used glass as
much as we do, and made it almost as well. The
pavement proves that houses were built in London
in the solid Roman fashion, not in the hut style of
the Celts: that is to say, London was Romanised,
and a place of some importance. If it were merely
an obscure village, these and other signs of great
and settled prosperity would not occur. The
Mithras relief shows that the worship of this Eastern
god, common all over the Roman Empire, had

THE ROMAN ROOM 19

spread to Britain. If the Britons had not given
up their Celtic gods, or become Christian, they were
at any rate so far Romanised as to know something
of this fashionable foreign religion. Finally, the
_ bust of Hadrian suggests that Rome was recognised
as the head of British civilisation—not the con-
queror, but the central point of loyalty and power.
That bronze head probably had for London just
the same meaning as a statue of Queen Victoria
would have to-day for Bombay.

All these facts could be inferred from a few objects
in the Roman Room, even if that room itself did not
give plenty more evidence to prove them, and if
we did not know them also from written histories
of the time. Now, before examining the other
objects more closely, consider a little case of coins
on the end wall on the left of the Roman pavement.
They begin just before the Christian era. The first
Roman emperor shown on them is Tiberius, grand-
nephew of Julius Caesar; his head is on a splendid
little gold coin. Next comes Claudius, under whom
Britain was really conquered: in his reign Boadicea
burnt London and died. There is a fine silver
head of Hadrian, who built the great wall across
the north of England to keep the frontier tribes
of Picts at bay. There are later emperors like
Constantine (who probably built London wall) ;
and the series ends with Carausius (A.D. 286-293)
and Allectus (A.D. 293-496), of whom we shall speak
presently. The coins cover a period of over three
hundred years: almost exactly the time that has
passed since Shakespeare died. In that later

20 THE LONDON MUSEUM

period of three centuries, the Stuarts, the Common-
wealth, the Revolution, the Hanoverians, the
Victorian era, the reign of Edward VII, all with .
their diverse ideals and changes of outlook, succeeded
one another. In the earlier period, Britain was
Roman without a*break : and London was no mean
city of the Roman Empire. This little room, in
fact, contains the few remains of an epoch which
lasted as long as that which provides the objects
shown on the whole first floor of the London
Museum.

In the Basement are two important Roman ob-
jects (it is impossible to indicate exactly where they
are shown—the passage must simply be followed
till they are reached), which tell the same story of
that great lapse of time. The first is a thick, dried-
up stake, lying under a window. It comes from the
Thames near Brentford, and is believed to be one
of a palisade of stakes placed at the ford there to
prevent Cesar from crossing the river to attack
King Cassivellaunus in his cwn territory. Cesar
marched from the Kent coast to London in 54 B.c., —
and at Brentford the men of the London district
gave him battle—in vain. That is the first Roman
event in the history of London.

In the same room is the famous Roman boat,
found in 1910 when the foundations of the County
Hall, south of Westminster Bridge, were being
dug. That boat is almost a story in itself. It has
been set up in Lancaster House in a wonderful way,
so as to appear as it had lain for sixteen hundred years
in the bed of the Thames—in the old bed, that is,

THE ROMAN ROOM 21

before the river was embanked or had cut its middle
channel deep enough to leave the banks partly dry.
It was twenty-one and a half feet below the level

THe Roman Boar

of the present roadway at the spot: most of
Roman London was at least fifteen feet below the
present surface—so that we are walking on top of it.

22 THE LONDON MUSEUM

Pictures on the walls show how the boat was dug
out and packed, and how it made a triumphal pro-
gress, drawn by many horses, to the London Museum.
The wall of the room in which it now rests had to
be opened to accommodate it.

It is believed to be a ship of the fleet of Carausius,
the first British sea-captain whose name is known
to us. He was appointed, in the late years of the
Roman Empire, to command a fleet which had
been raised to repel the Saxon pirates, who even
then were beginning to ravage the English coasts.
- Carausius was successful, and seems to have roused
suspicion and jealousy of his power: at any rate,
he rebelled against Rome, and proclaimed himself
Emperor. He was welcomed as ruler in Britain.
Coins were issued in his name, as has been seen :
some were found in this very boat—they are in a
small case at the end of the same room. The joint-
emperors of Rome, Maximian and Diocletian, were
unable to suppress him, and finally they recognised
him for a time as sovereign in England. He was
murdered in A.D. 293 by one of his officers, Allectus,
one of whose coins was also found in the boat.
Allectus was not a very capable person, and a general
sent against him by the Roman emperors defeated
and killed him in 296. Allectus’ beaten army
(mercenaries from Germany) fled to London, and
plundered it: but they were overtaken and
slaughtered by the victorious Roman _ general,
Constantius Chlorus, to the joy of the Londoners.
So London had a close connection with Carausius
and his successor, and the Roman boat is a sign of

THE ROMAN ROOM 23

how the city must have grown in importance since
it resisted Cesar three hundred and fifty years
before. It is a relic of England’s first admiral—
a man great enough to set himself against the
might of Rome.

Before returning to the Roman Room upstairs,
there are one or two other Roman remains in this
boat room to be looked at. There are the objects
found in the boat itself—coins, horse-shoes, nails
very like nails of to-day, a piece of a sandal, frag-
ments of pottery. The boat itself was probably
about sixty feet long by eighteen feet wide, when
perfect : a picture on the wall shows what it looked
like. The remains of another boat, a few stout ribs,
are just inside the entrance door to this room, on
the right. In a case of domestic implements just
past these timbers are a few Roman objects—a
rushlight holder, and an iron “ strike a light,”’ for
use like a steel, to strike sparks, before matches
were invented ; and some discs or counters for use
inagame. They are little things, easily overlooked :
but once they gave pleasure to living men, who had
no thought that their whole social order must pass
away like themselves, and be no more seen.

Now to consider some of the individual objects
in the Roman Room itself. Think what a gap, not
only in years, but in the condition of London, lies
between the Brentford palisade and the fleet of
Carausius. It was Celtic when it fought Julius
Cesar: it was Roman when Carausius claimed a
share in the power of Cesar’s successors. This
room shows the difference. In the case of pottery

24 THE LONDON MUSEUM

over the fireplace, besides the Samian ware, there
is some New Forest ware: dark, well-moulded
pots with a very beautiful spiral design. It is better
than the early Celtic pottery: it is finished work
of which any potter might be proud. The New
Forest was then the “ Five Towns”’ of England—
a chief centre of pottery-making: under Rome
in Southern England there was peace and law, to let
quiet industries thrive. There is a little earthen-
ware lamp—a flattish hollow saucer, with a hole in
the middle of the top surface, through which a
wick was thrust into the oil beneath. In the case
in the middle is an example of what perfection the
Roman civilisation of London could achieve in the
making of lamps: it is a splendid work in bronze,
graceful and finished in every detail. The differ-
ence between it and the earthenware one is not less
than there is between a huge gilt candelabra, fitted
with electric light, like those in the Costume Gallery
at Lancaster House, and the ugly little straight
brass gas-pipes of a poor London tenement house.
It is the difference between the barest necessity
and the adornment of life.

Round the room are various other objects which
emphasize what has already been said as to the
Romanisation of London: three more wine jars
in fine preservation at the end of the room: a
piece of pavement showing an interesting green
monster of unknown breed: a cast of a group of
goddesses (Dez Matres) found in Crutched Friars
—another branch of Roman religion: and, in a
glass case in the further corner of the room, a little —

THE ROMAN ROOM 25

stone tombstone that speaks to us intimately
across the centuries. The inscription is in Greek—
Greek to Rome was as French to us, “ only more
so”’: it was the language of fashionable culture.
It runs, ‘‘ Dexios, son of Diotimus, excellent, fare-
well’’ (Distimus in the label seems to be a mis-
print). It may commemorate a child: Dexios
and Diotimus are alike lost from the annals of time :
in any case, someone loved Dexios, and thought well
of him, and was grieved at his death: and if we
win no worse epitaph than that, it will not matter
if not so much as our name is told to people
centuries later.

In this case, too, are the remains of a flute, dumb
for a thousand years and more ; some slender pins ;
and the beautiful little glass bottle: things that
mattered once to people we can never know.

A label on the left-hand wall has been passed over
for the moment : it will suit better the last exhibit
in the room to be dealt with. The central cases
may be mentioned here: they contain (besides the
lamp already referred to) more pottery, some of it
very good, and a few other objects, the most strik-
ing of which is perhaps a little weight shaped, and
very well shaped, in the form of a head. There is
also a “cinerary’’ urn. The Romans as a rule
practised cremation (as did the later Celts: the
prehistoric room contains Celtic cinerary urns).
The ashes of the dead were put into urns like this :
there are some in this specimen.

Under the central cases from the door are stone
mortars for crushing wheat. That is perhaps the

26 THE LONDON MUSEUM

oldest business in the world. Neolithic man used
exactly the same kind of implement: it was only
superseded when windmills came into use in the
Middle Ages (perhaps about the thirteenth century) :
and now windmills are dying out, and the simplest
and most necessary of crafts has taken another
step in its long, slow life. Britain in Roman days
was a great corn-growing country : to-day we must
live on bread from regions no Cesar ever knew.

But it is at the case nearest the window, opposite
the door, that we get nearest to the everyday life
of Roman London. It is filled with objects show-
ing the high state of civilisation in domestic life.
(Remember that metal, when corroded by long years
of burial in the earth, loses all its delicate finish and
polish, so that these rough-seeming things were
once smooth and bright “‘ asa new pin.’’) On the top
shelf are sandals, one a child’s. The lacing is very
complicated—it belongs to the end of a civilisation,
not the beginning (see illustration, p. 57). In
later rooms, just the same thing will be seen in the
shoes of other periods: they were simple at first,
and afterwards intricately wrought. Probably this
complicated sandal had not to be fully unlaced
before being put on: it was simply a net-work
into which the foot could be easily thrust. It was
netted, not solid—partly because the Roman
pattern came from Italy, where the climate makes
the open work more comfortable. The English
slipper-like shoes of later periods, when the Roman
rule and fashions were forgotten, were solid, to suit
the wetter, colder English weather.

THE ROMAN ROOM 27

Other finely finished objects in this case are the
spoons and pins, some of them with very delicate
carved patterns. Perhaps the most beautifully made
thing of all is what is called a bronze altar : it is like
a doll’s house table of to-day (it may possibly have
been a toy), and the workmanship is perfect. Look
also at a bronze balance, for weighing light objects :
it is very simple, but it is also very perfect for its
purpose. There is another balance or “ steelyard ”’
upstairs which will be mentioned later.

The horseshoes in this case are exactly like horse-
shoes of to-day. So are the nails and tools at the
window-end of the case. In things like these, meant
for solid use rather than for ornament, there is no
great change to be made when once the principle has
been mastered : the workmanship may grow better
and may be made more easy by new methods, but
there is little else to alter. Roman civilisation had
been in existence long enough, when it reached
London, to have perfected even the workmanship,
though of course the methods and machinery of
eighteen hundred years later allow of greater ease
of production to-day.

Lastly, beyond this case, on the wall, is a picture
of Roman London, as it probably was; and here
look again at the tablet on the other wall which
has been passed over. It says that in the time of
Boadicea (Boudicca is the form of the name given
by Roman historians) London was perhaps sur-
rounded by a stockade. Boadicea died in A.D. 59.
London Wall itself, an immensely strong work of
rubble, brick, tiles, and mortar, was itself built a

28 THE LONDON MUSEUM

good deal later, perhaps nearly three centuries
later. It ran, as the picture shows, right round the
city, with gates at the main roads, and bastions or
round towers at intervals. Many fragments of it
are still standing to-day: one is visible just off
Cripplegate, and under the General Post Office
yard, between Newgate Street and St. Bartholo-
mew’s Hospital, there is a whole bastion, in wonder-
ful preservation: the mail vans roll over its head.
There is a picture of it on the right hand of the
door. A city so stoutly walled must have bee
important.
What is known from other sources than the
remains dug up shows how London grew till it was
like the London of this picture. It was, as has been
said, in a position of natural importance even before
the Romans. In the period between Cesar’s in-
vasion and the real conquest of Britain by Rome
nearly a century later (by Aulus Plautius, A.D. 43).
Roman civilisation and trade generally must have
spread to London markedly, for though Camulo-
dunum (Colchester) was perhaps the chief town of
the south-east, there was probably, by A.D. 43, a
bridge at London; and Plautius fought a battle
there. Bridges, in early days, meant towns to build
and hold them. A little later, in A.D. 60, came the
rising of Boadicea. The Romans from Camulo-
dunum fled to London, and when the Roman general,
Suetonius Paulinus, reached the city with his troops,
he had to decide that for the moment he must
abandon it: it can hardly have been strongly
enough fortified for defence. Boadicea sacked it.

THE ROMAN ROOM 29

It must have been worth sacking, even though it
was not officially incorporated as a borough, so to
speak: the first written reference to it in history,
by the Roman historian Tacitus, says that it was
“a town which, though not honoured with the
title of a Colony, was very celebrated for the
number of its inhabitants and the abundance of its
resources.”

Soon after that period, probably, the great
Roman roads of England were made; and London
was a chief junction of them. Watling Street, the
road from Europe, there met other roads, and the
famous London Stone, in Cannon Street (of which
there is a photograph in the basement) was perhaps
a central milestone of London.

So from A.D. 60 onwards London, the old Celtic
town, had a bridge, some sort of defensive wall,
roads, and a settled and wealthy trading com-
munity. From that date until the outbreak by
the defeated troops of Allectus (see p. 22) it enjoyed
peace: and in peace there grew up that comfort,
and that interest in the comfortable arts of living,
that this room largely represents. The city had
its religions. It had its bishops, for it was probably
one of the earliest towns of Western Europe to
harbour the Christian faith: and Restitutus,
Bishop of London, was present at the important
European Council of Arles in A.D. 314. A little
later one Augulus, also a bishop, was martyred
in London: in the turbulent times in which the

1 «« Watling Street,” near St. Paul’s, is not the real Roman Watling
Street. The name is a corruption of Atheling Street.

30 THE LONDON MUSEUM | *

Roman Empire was broken up, even Christianity
sometimes suffered adversity. London coins were
stamped with Christian emblems before those of
many French towns: for Roman London was so
prosperous that it had its own mint. It was per-
haps most prosperous of all under the Emperor
Constantine the Great, who made Christianity the
established religion of the Empire. So important,
in fact, did London become that it was given the
honourable title of Colonia Augusta, which it bore
from about A.D. 340 to 410. But that period almost
belongs to the next rooms to be visited, the rooms
which show how London lost, for a time, its position
of pride and security.

So the Roman Room has added a long chapter
to the story of London : the chapter in which London:
first grew great—in which, perhaps, as Sir Laurence
Gomme points out, it began to be aware of its own
greatness, and proud of being London. And London
was London, we have seen, for precisely the same
cause as made it the home of palzolithic man:
because it is on a great river. A river meant and
still means traffic and intercourse with other people :
all the towns which have for any long period stood
high in the history of the world have been either
upon a river or at a natural harbour.

The chief place in Roman London was almost
certainly the temple and citadel on the site of
Leadenhall Market. The city stretched from the
Tower to Blackfriars Bridge, along the Thames,

THE ROMAN ROOM 31

with a settlement across the water in Southwark,
at the other end of London Bridge: the northern
boundary ran from Liverpool Street Station,
roughly, to Aldersgate Street Station (the Barbican
was a tower in the wall near here, built later).

CHAPTER III
THE SAXON AND NORMAN CORRIDOR

It has been seen, in the two first rooms of the
Museum, how long it took to build up a civilisation
in London, and yet how fully that civilisation was
developed. When the Roman Empire fell, history,
in a way, repeated itself. Just as the Stone Age
men had been superseded by the Bronze Age Celts,
and just as the Celts had in turn been superseded
by the Romans who used iron and steel, so the mixed
race thus produced in England was to be over-
whelmed by new invaders with utterly different
customs and weapons. They were the people
whom we call collectively, for convenience, the
Saxons. In London the division of them known
as the East Saxons (the name remains in Essex)
were to prevail: the Middle Saxons (of Middlesex)
were apparently only a part of the whole East
Saxons.

The Saxon and Norman Corridor leads out of the
Stone Age Room, on the right hand, opposite the
entrance to the Roman Room. It is a passage
(part of a larger room) looking out upon the green
garden of Lancaster House. It does not contain
very much at present, nor is it likely that it will

32

THE SAXON AND NORMAN CORRIDOR 33

ever contain so many objects as other periods
furnish ; and that in itself tells us a great deal. If
a particular period has not left many remains
below the surface to be dug up by later generations,
one of two things must have happened: either
what was left was very perishable or else there was
not much to be left. So far as we know, Saxon
utensils were strong enough: probably, therefore,
there was not much to be left. Why ?

Any history of England gives the answer. A
notice near the entrance to this corridor hints at it :
it says that when England was finally abandoned
by the Roman Empire (not entirely through Rome’s
fault, by any means), London was left desolate at
the approach of Saxon invaders. It is not quite
certain that that was the case; but at any rate
London, even then the richest city in England,
must have been in terror of these fierce pagan pirates,
who, about A.D. 420, began to cross the North Sea
and the English Channel not merely as casual
raiders, but as organised invading armies, bent on
conquest and on settlement. But, apart from
London, England itself was no less troubled. From
_ 420 to 1066 there were hardly thirty years (one
generation) of consecutive peace anywhere in the
country. First the Saxons fought with the Roman-
ised Britons : then they fought among themselves ;
then they fought against the Danes: and last of
all they fought against the Normans.

Now London, as its river presupposes, is by nature
'a trading city, and it was always inhabited by
traders. Tacitus, already quoted, spoke of its

Cc

34 THE LONDON MUSEUM

commerce, and almost all the relics in the Roman
Room are relics of peaceful life, not of war. But
almost all the Saxon relics are relics of war: that is
to say, Saxon London must have been unable to
grow so quickly as it did later, because it had to
fight for its existence, and could not follow, without
interruption, its natural life of trade: and there-
fore there is not much to show of the life of that

period—it was too uncomfortable for domestic ease. _

The Saxons, in fact, were not a trading nation.
They were first of all fighters; though, when they
established themselves fully, they were also, in a
sense, politicians—they had strong and powerful
institutions, which indeed were of great service to
London. |

The first wall case (on the right hand) shows the
Saxon weapon—the saex, or scramasax, a hand
knife. It is just the sort of weapon to terrify
hand-to-hand fighters, to say nothing of peaceful
citizens. The size of a sword, it should be re-
membered, is not necessarily its chief virtue: while
a man is swinging a great two-handed weapon, his
enemy with a scramasax may have wounded him
to death. Those weapons, then, tell of savagery
and battle coming very close to a peaceful, pros-
perous city.

The exact steps by which Roman-British London
became a great town of Saxon England are not
quite clear, nor does the London Museum contain
objects which suggest the change in any striking
way : except perhaps a bell “‘ of Celtic type,” found
in the Thames at Mortlake, and ascribed to the

ie ates

THE SAXON AND NORMAN CORRIDOR 35

eighth century after Christ. But before that date
many things had happened. When Hengist de-
feated the Britons at Crayford in 457 they fled to
London: London was a considerable city then,
clearly. It was an important city in 898, when Alfred
the Great “restored ’’ it (perhaps fortified it more
strongly, or repaired it after the Danish raids—
the Danes plundered it in 851). Between those
two dates, 457 and 851, little is known, except the
very striking thing that in 604 a Bishop of London
was consecrated by St. Augustine, soon after South-
eastern England in general had become Christian
again, and that in 610 the first cathedral of St.
Paul’s was built by Ethelbert. A little later, in
616, the Londoners turned out their bishop—so
that they were strong enough then to be independ-
ent, if wrong-headed. They were strong enough,
in fact, to reject for a time the Christian belief held
by the powerful kingdom of Kent close at hand.
The one object in this first case in the Saxon
corridor which suggests a comment upon this patch-
work history, as has been said, is the “‘ Celtic ”’ bell.
If the date and the workmanship are correctly given,
it implies that in at least one striking instance the
Celtic spirit, the racial genius of England that was
older even than the Roman Conquest, still survived.
The Roman Conquest, it should be remembered,
was quite different from the Saxon Conquest: it
was not the blotting out of a nation, and the incom-
ing of a whole new race: it was the taking over of
the government by an outside race, only a small
portion of whose people actually settled in the

36 THE LONDON MUSEUM

country. In this it resembled the Norman Conquest
more nearly than the Saxon; and nothing is more
likely (more certain, indeed, in many respects)
than that the conquered Celts kept much of their
old spirit and nationality under their new governors,
just as the conquered Saxons eventually grew strong
again under the governing Normans. The bell is
a little sign tending to prove that fact. Many
historians, indeed, believe that London, with its
prosperous Roman-British or half-Celtic population,
never became really Saxon, and was never really
conquered: that the Saxons stayed outside its
walls, at the places with Saxon names, like Chelsea
(Chelchith), Rotherhithe and Lambeth (Lambhithe):
and that they accepted London as an independent
fact—they tolerated it, and let it live, so that
London alone in England kept its ancient British
individuality. This view may not be proved be-
yond dispute: but there is more evidence for it
than for any other explanation of London’s con-
tinued existence during those centuries of war.

However, that is not a matter which the London
Museum illustrates in detail, though it is a chapter
in London’s story which the Celtic bell helps to
suggest.

Not less full of meaning is the reproduction of the
famous ‘‘ Alfred’s Jewel”’—a beautiful little pen-
dant of gold, the original of which is in the Ash-
molean museum at Oxford. ‘“ Alfred made me,”
is the inscription on it: and the jewel was found
in the marshes of Athelney in Somerset. That is
to say, Alfred had for his.kingdom a country which

THE SAXON AND NORMAN CORRIDOR ae

could produce work so fine as this: and yet, though
his capital was at Winchester, he was in hiding in
Athelney. The next great change in the history
of England and of London had come. The Danes,
burning, murdering, plundering, as the Saxons had
before them, were all over southern and eastern
England, and the great King of Wessex was a re-
fugee in the farthest corner of his dominions. Yet
Alfred had a coinage, minted in London (there are
specimens in this case) ; and the Saxons, as their
weapons show, and as we know from history, were
a sturdy race; and they eventually beat off the
invaders. But it was not until London had been
many times attacked, and until a great Danish
king, Canute, had ruled both in London and in
England that London stood out again triumph-
antly as the chief city of Britain.

The Alfred Jewel, apart from its historical interest,
is a well-known example of a particular branch of
handicraft. It is ornamented by cloisonné, or cell-
enamel—enamel in little nests or cells of very
thin metal. That is a very ancient art: it came to
Western Europe, probably from the East, by way
of Constantinople and the “barbarian” peoples
who broke up the empire of Rome. So a little relic
like this joins England, a lonely island fighting for
its bare existence, to centuries of old civilisations
and races of whom no Englishman of Alfred’s day
had ever heard.

There is another object close to this case which
shows how real was the Danish invasion. It is a
cast of a Danish monumental stone (the original,

38 THE LONDON MUSEUM

found in St. Paul’s Churchyard, is in the Guildhall
Museum). The inscription on it reads: ‘ Konal
and Tuki caused this stone to be made.’ The ©
Danes had a camp at Fulham; and they settled
in Aldwych: this stone means a long settlement.
Turn to the next case: here is a tremendous Danish
sword found in the Thames at Wandsworth: and
here also is a grimmer relic—a drinking-cup made
out of the skull ofafallenenemy. And this is what
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the chief record of those
terrible days, says of the worst period of the invasion,
A.D. 1018: ‘In this year tribute [to the Danes]
was paid over all England: it was in all £72,000,
exclusive of what the townsmen of London paid,
which was £10,500 pounds.” All England was
subject to the fierce pirates ; even London, which
in many battles before 1018 had resisted them suc-
cessfully ; and London, in spite of sieges and the
interruption of its trade, could afford to pay one-
eighth of the whole tribute of England.

Perhaps that history seems a little far away from
the few weapons shown in these cases. Yet it is
really very near them. That skull is the skull of
a London man who fought in those days for all that
was precious to him: by men like him the spirit of
London was kept alive, and the London of after
years made possible. This very case in which the
drinking-cup lies shows how quickly the life of the
great city could revive, for it contains relics also
of unwarlike days.

But before looking at them something must be
said of London Bridge, about which there are many

THE SAXON AND NORMAN CORRIDOR 39
details to be seen later. It was highly important
in Saxon times, for, like very many other things of
importance in the history of London, it goes back
into the most distant past. We have seen that it
existed in some form in the earliest Roman times.
The Thames led the Saxons into the very heart of
England, and when the Saxons had conquered
England, it led the next invaders, the Danes. But
London by then knew its strength. The Lon-
doners fortified the wooden bridge strongly, and
when Canute besieged the city in 1016 he had to
cut a trench south of the Bridge through South-
wark, to get his ships above the Bridge, and so keep
up the siege strictly. The river, in fact, so long as
London Bridge was not broken down, was a strong
fourth wall for the city, as well as the channel up
which trade and wealth flowed into it in times of
peace.

The Bridge is mentioned here to show the con-
tinuity of the main element in London’s life. The
London Museum has drawn many of its treasures
from the bed of the Thames. In later rooms are
evidences of the Bridge’s history, which, so far as
this Saxon Corridor is concerned, lies only in books,
not in the objects exhibited.

In the same case with the skull-cup are the less
dreadful things, which show that some time at
least in those centuries of war men loved peace
and lived in quiet happiness. There is a little toy
axe which never went into battle for harm: it may
be a toy, or an ornament, or a charm. There are
counters or pieces of some unknown game; a

40 THE LONDON MUSEUM

little forlorn bead: a beautifully finished bone
comb and its neat case, from Threadneedle Street.
Someone once was proud of these possessions.
Where now the Bank of England guards the gold
of the world’s capital, some nameless, forgotten
Saxon or Dane once made himself a fine figure of
a man, or some woman eagerly awaited the return
of her husband from his battle in her behalf.

In this case also is a chapter in the history of
warfare—an explanation of how a particular kind
of sword handle, with a “ lobated pommel,”’ arose.
A relic—a piece of some sacred thing, or something
blessed by a holy man—was bound on top of the
hilt ; it gave the hilt a kind of knobbed appearance,
and presently hilts were made all in one piece of
this shape, the original purpose of the “ knob”
or lobe being forgotten or neglected. Another
point to remember is that these relics had a re-
ligious origin : men therefore fought in the name of
God, or trusting in His aid. The Roman-Britons,
mainly Christians, had hated the pagan Saxon ;
the Saxon, converted to Christianity, hated no
less the pagan Dane.

This little piece of history deserves more than
passing notice. It is an excellent instance of the
way in which observation and deduction reveal
the mind of the past generations, and give life to
dead things. It is the belief that everything has
a human meaning, and the endeavour to find out
the meaning, which makes a museum a real thing.
It isa curious fact that some of the most important
discoveries in prehistoric history arose from the

THE SAXON AND NORMAN CORRIDOR 4I

careful study of weapons in this way. General
Pitt-Rivers, who perhaps did more than any other
man for the study of the Stone Age, had a great
collection of modern and fairly modern arms, and
was also in charge (and virtually founder) of the
Hythe Musketry School. He noticed that even in
such new weapons as muskets many details in a
modern gun seemed to have no purpose, until he
discovered the stages by which those details had
assumed their final shape, and saw what the original
purpose was. He applied this idea to his study of
stone weapons, and so was able to trace, more surely
than ever before, the way in which prehistoric man
had progressed. So in these lobated hilts we see
how a device formed by a religious hope ended in
a mere conventional knob, and we can work back-
ward from this meaningless knob to the very minds
of the men who first used such swords.

The game counters are said to be of the eleventh
century ; and so we reach the Normans, the last
race to overflow into England by way of war (race-
movements are still going on—at present, for ex-
ample, from Eastern and Central Europe to America
—but they are no longer warlike, though in the
long run they may have as lasting an effect as a war).
The third case in this corridor contains Norman
or “early medieval” objects.. They have a full
meaning. The spurs, for example, are made more
varied than in earlier times: they are the spurs of
men who had seen other nations, and had not been
shut off from Europe in an island struggle. There
is a bronze vessel of much more individual and

AZ THE LONDON MUSEUM

ambitious shape than anything but the best Roman-
British vessels in earlier days. There is a bronze
Christ, with traces of Limoges enamel—a moderate
but well-preserved example of the rich and beauti-
ful work which was already being done on the
Continent for religious purposes. There is (on the
wall close by) a facsimile of a reliquary, or case for
relics: the original is in the Guildhall Museum.
All these things show a great advance in civilisation :
it is no longer barbaric, no longer dominated by the
needs of war: the Christian religion is reasserting
its hold on everyday life. And there are also in
this case various pieces of pottery.

Those are two subjects (very dissimilar, and very
unlike, of course, in real importance) which are of
great value to those who study the history of London.
Religion, apart from whatever men believed per-
sonally at any time, has had an immense influence
in shaping the very stones of London all through
the centuries; while pottery reflects the history
of private life.

The Christian religion in London—and London,
as has been said, was one of the earliest and most
steadfast of Christian towns in Western Europe—
has had two centres, St. Paul’s Cathedral and
Westminster Abbey. St. Paul’s was first founded,
it is said, by Ethelbert, in a.p. 610-614. But it
was to the Normans (a race of great builders) that
the fame of St. Paul’s was chiefly due: the old
cathedral was burnt down in 1087: the cathedral

* For their history in detail, see the volume in this series dealing
with them, by Jocelyn Perkins and J. S. Bumpus.

THE SAXON AND NORMAN CORRIDOR 43

which lasted till the Great Fire of London, five and
a half centuries later, was then begun. West-
minster Abbey has an even more ancient history,
but its greatness really begins with Edward the
Confessor. The first Christian king of Essex,
Sebert, is said to be buried on its site, where he
had in 616 built a like Christian church. Saxon
kings later made grants of land to the church there.
Edward, however, began, in 1050, the far more
glorious building in the Norman style which stood
till the thirteenth century, when Henry III set up
the Abbey which we see to-day, enlarged and
made more beautiful in almost every century since
his day.

Under the Normans then, there was such faith
and such prosperity, at any rate among the richer
people, that these great houses of God could be built
with good hope of their endurance. It was, how-
ever, full of importance to Londoners that under
the Normans also the Tower of London was begun—
the only one of these three splendid buildings which
remains almost in its original form. The Keep, or
White Tower, was begun in 1078 at the request of
the Conqueror, by Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester:
it was intended to overawe the men of London.
Great buildings in the Middle Ages were very often
the sign of a rich and even tyrannical nobility.

There is in the Basement a model of the Tower of
London which may be mentioned here. It is in
the room opening out of the Roman Boat Room.
It shows the Tower practically as it is to-day—a
collection of buildings of all periods, the story of

44 THE LONDON MUSEUM

which would involve two other stories—that of
architecture and that of England. The keep is the
central square ‘‘ tower’’—the Tower. The later
Norman kings added the walls.

Pottery also is a subject which needs a special
study. The points to be remembered here are that
native pottery, in England, was as a rule very
simple ware; and ornamental pottery—‘ china ”’
or porcelain—was produced, comparatively late in
history, in imitation of foreign fashions. The
beautiful wares of later times, therefore, belong to
a period when England and London could turn their
attention to outside affairs, and could cater for
luxurious tastes, as well as for the necessities of
everyday life. In Norman times, only the neces-
sities were supplied.

Pottery, pure and simple, is a very obvious busi-
ness. It consists of moulding wet clay into any
desired shape, and letting it dry. By drying it in
a great heat, strength is obtained. Glaze is added
in the same way—a metallic or saline material is
put on wet, in the form of a thin paste called slip,
and cooked at a great heat till it is dried. Up to
about A.D. 1600, the glaze in England was of the
plainest kind, and the Saxons apparently used none :
they simply made clay pots, like the Celts before
them. A green glaze begins to appear on vessels
made about the thirteenth century—just after the
end of the period covered by this Saxon-Norman
Corridor, in fact. The Saxons and Normans, then,
to judge by their pottery, were not greatly
concerned with making the smaller details of life

THE SAXON AND NORMAN CORRIDOR 45

beautiful. They turned their attention to larger
matters.

So we have reached the foundations of the London
whose vestiges have lingered into our own day in
active use—the glorious churches and the begin-
nings of a continuous domestic life. There were to
be no more invasions, no more large changes in the
rulers or inhabitants of London: and every son was
to succeed his father as king succeeded king, and
without even the change of dynasty or race that
sometimes came into the monarchy. But if the
new London was that which continued right down
to our own time, it yet had also, even then, a past
which it has never since given up. It did not be-
come Norman London: it remained London.
Every Londoner ought to know the simple charter
given to his ancestors by William the Conqueror :

“ William the King salutes friendly William the
Bishop, and Godfrey the Portreeve, and all the
burgesses within London, French and English.
And I declare that I grant you to be all law-worthy
as you were in the days of King Edward [the Con-
fessor]; and I grant that every child shall be his
father’s heir, after his father’s days; and I will
not suffer any person to do you wrong. God
keep you.”

That is a unique charter—a recognition by a great
conqueror of the greatness of a city which it was in
his power to conquer, but which he did not conquer.
William made this special treaty with London: he
did not force it to make terms. He allowed London

woo. THE LONDON MUSEUM

of the infinite past to keep its old privileges and its
old character ; and his successors, though some of
them tried to take away the powers of the city, in
the end acknowledged its unique and splendid
position. Londoners could almost make and un-
make kings. They had elected Edmund Ironside
King of England in 1021, when all the rest of Eng-
land chose Canute. They called in the Empress
Matilda against Stephen in 1141, and then drove
her out when she sought to abuse their liberties.
They rebelled in 1191 against William Longchamps
(the Chancellor left in charge of England when
Richard Coeur de Lion went crusading), and set
up their own “‘ commune ’’—a picture on the wall
shows the expulsion of Longchamps. Truly, as an
old historian said, “it is a good city indeed when
it has a good master ”’ ; but it would have no master
whom it distrusted.

The peaceful charter, however, did not prevent
an unfortunate occurrence at William’s coronation,
when the citizens, acclaiming the king according to
their ancient custom, were thought to be rioting
and rebelling, and were attacked by the Norman
guards. A picture of this incident is shown on the
screen wall.

%

Except for the Danish settlement at Aldwych,
the memory of which still lives in the church of St.
Clement Danes, London in Saxon times must have
been in extent almost the same as Roman London.
Under Edward the Confessor and the Normans,

THE SAXON AND NORMAN CORRIDOR 47

Westminster began to have a steadily increasing
importance : the Court lay inside the city. Henry
I, however, gave, or rather leased in a perpetuity
which has never really been broken, Middlesex to
London as a “ farm.”

CHAPTER IV
THE MEDIEVAL ROOM

THE Saxon-Norman Gallery leads into the Medieval
Room, which covers the period, roughly, from a.D.
1200 to 1500—from John to Henry VII. At the
very entrance, the two great sides of the life of the
period are indicated. Immediately opposite the
door is a case of weapons, and on the wall on the
right hand is one of the first books printed in London
or in England—The Chronicle of England, printed
and published by Wynkyn de Worde in 1497.

To take the swords, and the warlike events, and
the affairs of state first. This was the period when
great kings went warring with English troops in
Europe, when the English archer overthrew the
knights of the age of chivalry; when warfare,
before gunpowder changed its whole aspect, at-
tdined the highest development that sword and
spear and steel armour could reach. Look at the
arms in the case in front of the entrance. They are
not the handy murderous weapons of pirates, who
wished to wound or kill with all speed, and be gone
with their plunder. They are the more solid and
cumbrous implements of orderly battle—of men
fighting under SaaS or under acode. The

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WEAPONS OF THE EARLY PERIODS, AND OTHER OBJECTS
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THE MEDIZVAL ROOM 51

huge ‘‘ bastard sword,”’ which is exactly like one on
a tomb of 1430, is, so to speak, a full-dress weapon
—a thing to be used in a set combat, where the
enemy was armed equally well. The great battle-
axes (and the pole-axes and mace in other cases in
this room) were meant to bite through stout armour,
plate or chain mail like that shown in a case on
the right hand of the door (this piece of mail was,
perhaps, on view at Don Saltero’s coffee-house in
Chelsea four hundred years later: the coffee-houses
will be reached further on in the Museum).

On the back slope of this first case are many fine
daggers. Inthe first case against the wall opposite
the door are some excellently worked leather sheaths
for knives or daggers. In the next case is an archer’s
“salade’”’ or round helmet. In 1347 the helmet-
makers of London obtained a regulation of their
trade to ensure that strangers or newcomers should
not work at it unless they were proved to be good
workmen: good workmanship, and the system of
apprenticeship and orderliness which it involved,
were considered to be essential. The great City
Companies of to-day probably originated in com-
binations of this kind to maintain the standard of
the trade: though this is not known with certainty.

In the central case are some pieces of plate armour,
some spurs of terrible length, arrow heads, chapes
(the tips of scabbards), gipciers and their mounts
(a gipcier or gipsire was a pouch or wallet, of various
shapes) ; all of which illustrate in various ways the
warfare of the period. It is often thought, perhaps,
that a knight in full armour was a splendid sight.

/

52 THE LONDON MUSEUM

So he was; and he was doubtless a very formidable
enemy too. But it must not be forgotten that
armour had its drawbacks. It is very unlikely that
the pictures of knights dashing at full speed into
battle, with fluttering pennon, the war-horse gallop-
ing wildly, are true. The war-horse was much
more like our cart-horse than our thoroughbred,
and few horses could really gallop with several
stone of steel on their backs in addition to a man ;
a fully-armed man as late as 1560—when armour
was falling into disuse—weighed twenty-five stone.
If the knight was unhorsed, he could move but
clumsily : if he was thrown down, he might even be
unable to rise. He needed a squire for the simplest
adjustment of his armour. That is why the English
archer, leather-jerkined, fighting at a distance, was
so terrible to mounted men; they could not reach
him, and his marksmanship found out the joints in
their armour before ever their heavy swords could
cut him down. The knights thought the archer
unfair : later on the archer with the longbow thought
the crossbowman unfair; and archers of all kinds
thought gunpowder unfair.

The archer had a significance outside his impor-
tance in war. He was not nobly born, but he was
just as good a man in battle as the noble. The
people of England—the Briton, the Saxon, and the
humbler Norman, all those races who were mixed
in the Englishman—were proving that they had a
place, and a very important place, in making the
history of their country. In the history of London
this period proved the same thing: the rebellions

THE MEDIZVAL ROOM 53

of Wat Tyler and Jack Cade fell within it. There is
a curious link with the past in a famous action of
Cade’s. Coming to London Stone, he struck it with
his sword, saying, ‘“‘ Now am I lord of this city.”
London Stone, by a very strong tradition, is said to
be Roman, or even pre-Roman. It has been sup-
posed (as has already been mentioned) to be either
a central mile-stone, from which distances were
measured, or the mark where the citizens met in
public assembly. Whatever it was, Londoners have
always held it important. It lies to-day behind a
grating in the wall of St. Swithin’s Church, Cannon
Street : in the basement of the Museum there is a
good photograph of it. The point here is that this
symbolic act showed how necessary Cade thought
it to be that he should be Lord of London. Neither
he nor Wat Tyler was a Londoner: they stood for
the common people of England, resisting what they
thought to be unjust and oppressive taxes; and
London was the place to obtain redress. As a
matter of fact, the more substantial Londoners
helped to put down the risings: the story of how
Walworth, the Lord Mayor, killed Tyler is well
known.

London, in fact, was now beyond all doubt the
chief city of England—the freest, the wealthiest,
the proudest, ready to oppose all, even kings, who
dared to infringe its liberties or threaten its pros-
perity. Kings enlarged and strengthened the Tower
of London, from which at will they could attack
the City ; but the citizens would not admit that the
Tower had any lawful right to control them. They

Ase THE LONDON MUSEUM

- would not even admit that the King could enter
the City without leave ; and the old ceremony by
which to-day the sovereign, on State occasions, is
met at Temple Bar by the Lord Mayor and formally
given the keys of the City, is a survival (or revival)
of that medizval independence.

Above all, the King, from Norman days onwards,
has been crowned in London, unless exceptional
circumstances prevented. In this Medieval Room
is a reminder of a very early coronation. In a
small case near the entrance to the Jewellery Room
(opposite the entrance from the Saxon Corridor) is
a fragment of Edward III’s coronation robe. Edward
was crowned at Westminster in 1327. Only the
year before the citizens had revolted against his
predecessor, Edward II, though five years earlier, in
1321, they had received from him a new charter,
defining their constitution. They were still “ good
citizens when they had a good master.”

It was Edward III who realised the importance
of the archer. In 1365, he wrote specially to the
Sheriffs of London about training in archery, by
which “‘ honour and profit have accrued to our
whole realm.’’ He bade the sheriffs see that the
young men in their leisure practised diligently with
“bows and arrows, or pellets, or bolts,” instead of
playing football or bandy, cockfighting, or “‘ such
other like vain plays, which have no profit in them.”
So there is a very close connection between the
archer’s salade and that little piece of a great king’s
vestment.

But there were victories of peace no less renowned

THE MEDIZVAL ROOM 55

than Crecy and Agincourt in this period, whereof
the Medizval Room gives abundant proof. It is
impossible to realise to-day what the world was like
without print. By their simple inventions, Caxton
and Wynkyn de Worde created a world in which
men could exchange ideas without ever meeting
face to face, in which news could be made known
without word of mouth, in which learning and litera-
ture could be spread abroad without schools. They
more than doubled the contents of men’s minds.

It is a wonderful coincidence that very little
before the invention of printing lived one of the
greatest of English writers, whose fame, perhaps,
might have been less, or at any rate far more slowly
acquired, but for Caxton. Chaucer was born in
London, lived in London most of his life, and wrote
most of his poems in London; and London first
printed his works among the earliest products of
the printing press. There are many things here to
remind us of him, if none directly connected with
himself. In the first case against the wall opposite
the entrance door are some flesh-hooks. They are
of exactly the same type as is borne by the Cook
in the famous illuminated Ellesmere manuscript of
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Those hooks were used
by rough, coarse, jolly, even drunken cooks like
Chaucer’s, who

* knew well a draught of London ale,
Could roast, and seethe, and broil, and fry,
And for blancmange, he made it with the best.”

In the same case is an ampulla—a little flask :

just such flasks as these did the pilgrims carry

56 THE LONDON MUSEUM

away from Canterbury when their pilgrimage was
ended—flasks said to contain a minute drop of
water tinged with the blood of the martyred Thomas
Becket.

In the next case on the same wall is a green-
glazed costrel, or pilgrim’s travelling flask. Against
the right-hand wall is a pilgrim’s staff. If it were
not for the Canterbury Tales, we should hardly
be able to realise what a pilgrimage was. We

should learn from other writers that some pil-

grims were noisy and riotous, making their errand
but an excuse for a boisterous holiday: or that
other pilgrims underwent great hardships in their
pious zeal. But that great London poet, who was
born in Thames Street, near Walbrook, and lived
long in the Gate House at Aldgate, shows us the
pilgrims as English folk like ourselves—gentle and
rough, rude and courteous, hopeful, sad, affected,
simple, rogues and honest men : our forefathers, and
our flesh and blood, every one of them. There is
hardly a word in the prologue to the Canterbury
Tales which does not fit equally well the people
of to-day. It was by men of like passions with
ourselves that this staff and costrel were borne.

Till very recently a few of the old inns of London,
like the Tabard (or Talbot, as it was mistakenly
called later), where Chaucer’s pilgrims first met
together, were still standing. In the rich collection
of London prints and photographs in the Basement of
the Museum will be found pictures of some of them.

There are in the cases on the right hand of the

entrance, on both sides of the room, other little

ee

IFTEENTH CENTURY.
RON STIRRUP AND SPU

FIFTEEN CENTURIES OF SHOES

THE MEDIZVAL ROOM 59

domestic objects which tell their simple story with-
out comment: some mortuary and absolution crosses,
placed upon the breast of the dead: some little
ornamental discs and bosses, and a mould in which
such things were cast : clogs to carry their wearers
dry over the muddy London streets: shoes, some
of them with the tremendous spurs already men-
tioned : a few keys and other pieces of metal work :
a fine bronze ewer: and thrift-boxes, or money-
boxes, and other pottery. (The money-boxes were
fairly safe receptacles : they could only be emptied
by being broken). The pottery is important be-
cause it is glazed with green: it is in this respect a
great advance on what has gone before, and shows
that the makers were beginning to think a little of
beauty as well as of use.

Last of all there are to be mentioned some archi-
tectural remains, and a picture, near the exit door,
of London in the fifteenth century. On the right-
hand wall are some bosses from the Grey Friars
Monastery, which stood where later Christ’s Hospital,
the famous ‘‘ Blue Coat ’’ School, was erected, and
where now is the General Post Office (Christ’s Hos-
pital was removed to Horsham in 1902). In the
centre is a piece of carving from Crosby Hall, all
that remains of which has now been restored and
set up at Chelsea, near Battersea Bridge.

The first half-century of this period was one of
great monastic activity. In 1221 the Dominicans
founded a house in Holborn (which then ran down
to the Oldbourne or Holbourne River roughly at
Holborn Viaduct, where Farringdon Street is now).

60 THE LONDON MUSEUM

Fifty years or so later the Dominicans moved to
Baynard Castle (between the present Queen Victoria
Street and Ludgate Hill—a tavern, the Baynard
Castle, preserves the name of the castle which for-
merly guarded London Wall at that point). In
1224, the Franciscans, the Grey Friars, built their
monastery on the north side of Newgate Street, and
in 1241 the White Friars, the Carmelites, settled
south of Fleet Street. The names of Blackfriars
and Whitefriars still remain: but of the great
buildings and of the monks not much more is left
than these bosses.

At the beginning of the period there had been two
other notable pieces of building, which should be
mentioned here, though they appear in this room
only in the picture of fifteenth-century London.
In 1209 the new London Bridge was finished (sixty or
seventy yards east of the present bridge). Formerly
there had been only a wooden bridge: the, new
one was of stone, and it lasted till 1831. It was
maintained in repair largely by the rents of the
houses built upon it. There is in the Basement of
the Museum a fine model of it as it was in 1630. It
must have appeared very much the same in the fif-
teenth century : perhaps even then the heads of the
traitors were stuck up over the gate-house, as they
are in the model. Stow tells some strange events
in its history. Four years after it was built, there
was a fire at either end, and the multitude of people
on the Bridge at the time fell into a panic, so that
about 3000 were drowned or burnt. In 1282,
“through a great frost and deep snow, five arches

THE MEDIEVAL ROOM 61

of the bridge were borne down and carried away.”
Later on we shall reach frost fairs upon the Thames,
when the whole river was frozen over : such occur-
rences were largely due to the narrow and dangerous
arches of London Bridge, which prevented the larger
fragments of ice from the upper river escaping, and
so locked the channels and allowed the river to
freeze all over.

In 1395 there was a tournament on the Bridge,
on St. George’s Day: Lord Crawfurd of Scotland
overthrew Lord Wells of England. Over the Bridge
also, in 138r and 1450, marched Wat Tyler and
Jack Cade with their forces. The houses were from
time to time burnt down and rebuilt up to the
seventeenth century, when they gradually fell into
disuse : the last of them was pulled down in 1757.
In the middle of the Bridge was a chapel dedicated
to St. Thomas Becket.

Crosby Hall is, or rather was, an instance of the
noble state maintained by the rich merchants of
London: ‘‘ was ’”’—because when, in 1908, there was
an opportunity of preserving the Hall intact on its
original site off Bishopsgate, the rich men of London
declined to subscribe enough money for the purpose,
and it was pulled down, to be set up again in its
present position in 1910. From the thirteenth to
the sixteenth centuries the merchants of London had
a public spirit seldom equalled anywhere. They
were wealthy enough to buy the royal plate of Henry
III, when that spendthrift king was hard pressed for
money : strong enough, as has been said, to revolt
against Edward II: patriotic enough to imprison,

62 THE LONDON MUSEUM

in 1415, one of their aldermen who refused to take
office when elected. Of their stateliness a famous
story is told.

The Mayor in 1464 was asked to the banquet of the
Sergeants of the Coif,! but on arrival he found that
the Earl of Worcester was given precedence of him.
Now ‘within London the Mayor is next to the
King, in all things.”” He therefore withdrew, and
with him the aldermen, to whom he at once gave a
rich feast. The'officers of the Sergeants’ feast, how-
ever, feeling Fashamed, sent him a present of

“meat, bread, and wine, and divers subtleties.” But
when the bearer of this present saw the feast the
Mayor was holding, he was himself ashamed, “‘ for
the present was not better than the service of meats
before the Mayor.”’

That is a tale of official magnificence. Stow gives
a long list of private benefactions to public causes.
A large part of London was supplied with water by
the gift of private citizens. In 1246~7 Simon Fitz-
mary, Sheriff, built Bethlehem Hospital or ‘“ Bed-
lam ’’—then near where Liverpool Street Station
now is: on the dissolution of the monasteries, in
1547, it became a madhouse. Sir John Poultney,
in 1337, built three churches (his name is preserved

1 The Sergeants of the Coif were sergeants-at-law—counsel admitted
to the Society of Sergeants-at-Law, and so named because of the coif,
or headdress, which was part of their official robes. Serjeant’s Inn,
in Fleet Street, was their headquarters during the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. It was pulled down at the end of that period,
and the present houses built: but of those houses themselves the
portion facing Fleet Street has just disappeared, to make way for the
new offices of a great insurance company.

THE MEDIZVAL ROOM 63

in the church of St. Laurence Poultney), and gave
much money to charity. In 1378, John Philpot,
formerly mayor, hired 1000 soldiers to put down
pirates, and two years later released from pawn, at
his own expense, the arms of 1000 English soldiers
in Brittany. Thomas Falconer, mayor in 1414, lent
Henry VI 10,000 marks (about £6600), built the
postern gate of Moorgate, and cleared the City
ditches. Richard Whittington, three times mayor,
built half the Guildhall library, repaired St. Bar-
tholomew’s Hospital, and built anew Newgate.
John Wills, mayor in 1433, paid for bringing water
from Tyburn to Cheapside. John Colet, a citizen
who became Dean of St. Paul’s, founded St. Paul’s
school, and there are countless other rich benefac-
tions. In fact, as an earlier chronicler says, ‘‘ Above
all other citizens everywhere, the citizens of London
are regarded as conspicuous and noteworthy for
handsomeness of manners and of dress, at table, and
in way of speaking.”

So in the Middle Ages, which is perhaps one of the
most difficult periods of history for us to-day to
imagine and realise, London was worthy of itself.
It lived through war and peace with the same high
spirit, a spirit based on a life then fifteen centuries
old, and more, and issuing in a greatness of which the
coming Tudor period was to be only the prelude.

Medieval London saw the beginnings of great
extensions outside the City walls. Almost all the
religious houses were so situated. Southwark be-

64 THE LONDON MUSEUM

came definitely part of the City, and westwards the
buildings must have stretched at least as far as the
Temple (the home of the Knights Templars up to
1313, and after that, as it still is to-day, the head-
quarters of the men of law).

CHAPTER V
THE JEWELLERY ROOM!

THE Jewellery Room opens out of the Medizval
Room, and is at the western corner of the garden
front of Lancaster House. It corresponds to the
Roman Room at the eastern corner. In it are ex-
hibited most of the jewellery and some of the finest
pieces of plate in the Museum, together with some
Nelson relics and kindred objects. For obvious
reasons, it is both safer and more convenient to
keep valuable articles of this kind all in one room,
even if it interrupts for the moment the general
chronological order of the Museum. For the sake
of clearness and contrast a case of nineteenth cen-
tury jewellery, shown upstairs in the long Gallery
of Costumes, is treated in this chapter with the
earlier objects which are in the Jewellery Room ;
and a few exhibits from the basement are mentioned
here also.

Jewellery and plate, of course, reflect, even more
closely than less valuable things, the mind and
character of their original owners. They are not,
strictly speaking, merely useful possessions: they

1 The author is greatly indebted, in this chapter, to the wonderfully
full, clear, and concise Guzde to the Medieval Room of the British

Museum—a guide to a noble collection, and an encyclopzdia in little.
65

66. THE LONDON MUSEUM

are made and bought to gratify the pleasure or the
vanity of the possessor, who therefore cannot help
showing, by his choice, what his private tastes and
preferences are. They suggest also, in most cases,
the state of society in which they were first pro-
duced: gold might be valuable in one place or
during one period, silver at another : one generation
might be more religious than another, and so in-
cline more to ecclesiastical or sacred figures in its
ornaments: another might be simply proud of
wealth, and therefore anxious to make a great display
of solid gold; andsoon. On the other hand, there
are really not very many different ways in which
jewels can be used; rings, chains, bracelets, pen-
dants, earrings, brooches, clasps, and pins—nearly
all the possibilities are exhausted, in one way or
another, in that list. Thus there is not a great deal
of variety or progressive change in the history of
jewellery. The changes are much more in the
detailed workmanship than in the main purpose, or

even in the general shape. It would be useless,

therefore, to describe every object in this room in
detail, because each visitor is capable of making his
own criticism of it. It is better to select for
comment those articles which are most typical or
suggestive.

The first case on the left as the Jewellery Room
is entered contains domestic (household) silver from
1660 to 1831 (Charles II to George IV). It isa
fine but miscellaneous collection. Perhaps the best
piece is the standing cup and cover, dated 1640 (gold
and silver ware bears marks which almost invariably

tie

THE JEWELLERY ROOM 67

fix the date exactly: each year has a letter to
denote it, and other marks denote the reigning
sovereign and the place of manufacture). It would
be the possession of a wealthy household, and would
be used either simply as a drinking-cup, or as a
loving cup for drinking “ good health ”’ ceremonially.
The ritual of drinking healths in this way is pre-
served in many old societies, like the Oxford and
Cambridge Colleges, the City Companies, and else-
where : or, if it is not “ preserved,’”’ but rather re-
vived or invented yearly, it at any rate commemo-
rates the original idea of such a ceremony. The
most usual form is for the person behind or at the
unguarded side of the drinker to stand up as he
drinks to a third person, as if to protect him from
treacherous attack—for often a treaty or agreement
was solemnised by drinking a pledge, and in fiercer
ages treachery might seize this opportunity.

Cups of this shape (usually, as here, with a beau-
tiful cover) have been in use for many centuries,
though the oldest example known to be made in
England is of the fifteenth century.

It will be noticed that practically all the gold and
silver plate in the Museum is of the seventeenth
century or later. Few museums in England or
abroad have much that is earlier. The reason is
obvious. Plate was easily melted down into plain
metal which could be used for coinage. Wars and
consequent taxes, civil wars and consequent sacri-
fices for the cause, did away with quantities of valu-
able possessions of this kind. At Oxford, for
instance, nearly all the colleges melted down their

68 THE LONDON MUSEUM

rich stores of cups and flagons and tankards when
King Charles needed money. Apart from that, old
pieces were often melted and reshaped into new
designs to suit individual fancies.

The same case contains forks with three prongs,
dated 1723: in the right-hand corner case in this
room are two-pronged forks. Forks earlier than the
seventeenth century are very rare. One of the
truest of threadbare sayings is that “ fingers were
made before forks.” It implies a long-past chapter
in the history of manners. Before forks were in-
vented (if such a simple thing can be called an
invention), fingers weve forks. Medieval literature
is full of references to the need for wiping the fingers
after eating. The Prioress in Chaucer’s Canterbury
Tales, for example, was

“at meat well taught withal ;
She let no morsel from her lips downfall,
Nor wet her fingers in the sauces deep.

Well could she carry a morsel, and well keep,
That never a drop would fall upon her breast.”

It was a very important part of a squire’s education
“to know how to bring his master, the knight, the
washing basin at the right moment and in the polite
way. In the third case (as one goes round the room
from the left) is a fine example of a silver washing-
bowl of the time of Charles II. By that period,
however, forks had come into fairly general use
among the richer classes. Englishmen began to
travel on the Continent with some frequency in and
after Elizabeth’s reign, and there they learnt the
more dainty ways which were becoming fashionable

THE JEWELLERY ROOM 69

abroad, especially in Italy. Even up to the end of the
seventeenth century, however, guests usually brought
their own forks to a feast : they were not quite the
everyday equipment of a household. The two-
pronged forks were probably for fruit or sweetmeats.
Four-pronged forks, such as are used to-day, are
still later than the three-pronged examples here
shown.

The snuffers in this case (dated 1717), again, are
also signs of an age of inconvenience long finished.
It is hard to realise that only a hundred years ago
almost all houses depended upon candles—and
candles so clumsy that the wax or tallow melted
away from the wick long before it was consumed,
and so made snuffers necessary. But perhaps, as
candlesticks and snuffers were usually given more
graceful and delicate shapes than most modern gas
or electric fittings have succeeded in producing, what
we should regard as a disadvantage had very strong
compensations. A house lit entirely by candles, in
holders of beautiful design, tended by snuffers so
gracious as these, must have had an air of peace and
sedate harmony which might raise a feeling of envy
in our noisier, more hurried life of to-day : and yet
those snuffers may have kept the candles burning
for many a wild gamble or drinking bout, for many
a Vauxhall revel or St. James’s rout no whit less
gay and interminable than any festival of two
hundred years later.

It is worth while here to mention certain objects
shown in the Roman Boat Room in the basement.
They are the corollary of these snuffers, or rather,

70 THE LONDON MUSEUM

the problem to which the snuffers are the corollary.
The making of fire and light, as has been seen, was
one of the earliest and most difficult lessons which
primitive man had to learn: and yet the lesson,
once learnt, never varied for thousands of years.
You struck a flint, you obtained a spark, you had
some very dry substance ready for the spark, and
lo! flame. In a case on the right of the door into
the Roman Boat Room are flint and steel. They
are, in forms differing very slightly, one of the oldest
and most precious of man’s possessions. Just as
the Celt and Roman struck a light, so also did
Londoners under the Georges and the Stuarts.
There are matches here, too—strips or spikes of thin,
dry wood, lightly coated with sulphur. The Romans
used such matches. Englishmen used them till,
roughly, Queen Victoria’s accession. They did
not “‘ignite only on the box’’: they were con-
venient additions to the supply of tinder—little
torches, in fact ; small models or prototypes of the
torch shown in the Stuart Room upstairs. The
instrument for keeping a light, after striking it, was
either a torch, or a candle, or anoillamp. Oil lamps
have been seen already in the Roman Room. There
was no great change in their principle until modern
times. Lanterns, equally, do not change in prin-
ciple : there are examples in the Museum in various
rooms. Candlesticks did not change: they were
either prickets—spikes, with ornamental bosses or
brackets, upon which the candle was stuck—or
“sticks ’’ of the patterns with which we are familiar.
Both types are shown in different rooms of the

THE JEWELLERY ROOM wigs

Museum (see illustration, p. 49). There is a good
hanging pricket in the model of a Stuart parlour
in the basement.

Safety and other matches, as we understand them,
came into use, roughly speaking, about 1830: so
did the wax or composition candles, as distinguished _
from tallow. Gas was first used for lighting purposes
* in 1807, when Pall Mall was lit by it; but it did
not become general for some time. That is one of
the points to be remembered when we think of
London of almost any past age: the darkness or
the dimness when the sun had set. For more than
eighteen centuries, London after curfew—couvre

feu, put out your (dangerous) fire and light—was,
as far as illumination went, like a modern country
lane, except that in Tudor and later times there were
in the chief streets link-boys, torch-bearers, con-
stables with cressets (see p. 132), and a certain
number of lamps or lanterns on the houses. The
attendants of well-to-do persons carried torches
after dark, to light their masters home through the
dark roads.

The second case on the left in the Jewellery Room
is chiefly occupied with badges and seals. There
are here the seals and badges of some of the City
Companies. It would be irrelevant here to describe
the origin of those famous Companies (if indeed it
were possible—it is a matter of much controversy).
By the fifteenth century, however, they originally
arose, they controlled the trade of London and of
England. They had officers, as Froude says, ‘‘ whose
duty was to exercise authority over all persons pro-

72 THE LONDON MUSEUM

fessing the business to which they belonged ; who
were to see that no person undertook to supply
articles which he had not been educated to manu-
facture ; who were to determine the prices at which
such articles ought justly to be sold; above all,
who were to take care that the common people
really bought at shops and stalls what they supposed
themselves to be buying; that cloth put up for
sale was true cloth, of true texture and full weight ;
that leather was sound and well tanned ; wine pure,
measures honest ; flour unmixed with devil’s dust ;
who were generally to look te it that in all contracts
between man and man for the supply of man’s
necessities what we call honesty of dealing should be
truly and faithfully observed. An organisation for
that purpose did once really exist in England,
really trying to do the work which it was intended
to do. . . . No person was allowed to open a trade
or to commence a manufacture, either in London or
the provinces, unless he had first served his appren-
ticeship ; unless he could prove to the satisfaction
of the authorities that he was competent in his
craft ; and unless he submitted as a matter of course
to their supervision.”’

That explains the need for such formal seals as
these, and the pride with which such badges would
be worn. The Companies to-day still admit Lon-
doners to the freedom of the City, as they did five
hundred years and more ago : and still their Masters
and Wardens wear badges like these on occasions of
ceremony. In a few cases—notably in the case of
the goldsmiths and silversmiths—they still main-

THE JEWELLERY ROOM TS

tain some supervision of their trades. But for the
most part their great wealth is devoted less directly
to its object, in grants for educational and similar
purposes.

The Collar of the Bath is shown here. Upstairs,
in a case in one of the windows of the last room
(the room containing Royal Coronation and other
robes), are three other “‘ orders ’’—three varieties of
the insignia of the Royal Order of Victoria and
Albert, lent by Queen Alexandra ; and in the Cos-
tume Room is a blue Garter of the Most Noble Order
of the Garter. The Garter Order was founded in
the fourteenth century by Edward III, and is per-
haps the most famous and honourable order in the
world. The Bath is very little less ancient, having
been founded in 1399; but for fifty years or so
(ending in 1725), it ceased to exist. The Victoria
and Albert Order—a different thing from the Royal
Victorian Order—was instituted by Queen Victoria
in 1862, for ladies; but its membership has not
been added to since the Queen’s death.

A very different and sadder decoration is the badge
of the beadle of Bethlehem Hospital (‘‘ Bedlam,” as
the old conversational speech pronounced it). That
famous asylum, whose name has become a common
phrase for any madhouse, was founded in the thir-
teenth century (see p. 62), and until 1814, when
the present hospital was built in Lambeth, stood
north of the Thames, first in Bishopsgate, then in
Moorfields. This badge, which dates from the
eighteenth century, must have seen many dreadful
sights: for in that century, and both later and

74 THE LONDON MUSEUM

earlier, it was a species of amusement to go to see
the lunatics. Pepys sent his young relations there,
for a treat, when he went to his office. Evelyn once,
on his way home, “stepped into Bedlam, where I
saw several poor miserable creatures in chains; one
of them was mad with making verses.’’ Another
record, of 1753, tells of ‘“‘ a hundred people at least,
who, having paid their twopence apiece, were —
suffered, unattended, to run rioting up and down the
wards, making sport and diversion of the miserable
inhabitants.” The beadle would show the most
striking patients to visitors, and the unhappy in-
- mates, generally speaking, were treated with a harsh-
ness that seems almost incredible. Public exhibi-
tions of this kind, however, ceased about 1780.

The Bluecoat School, or Christ’s Hospital, of
which another badge is exhibited, was a more plea-
sant and enlightened place. It was founded on
the dissolution of the monasteries, on the site of
the Grey Friars buildings (see p. 60). Edward
VI himself instituted it, and the dress, still
worn by its scholars, dates from his day. In the
Costume Gallery, upstairs, there is a specimen of the
“Blue Coat.” It has altered only in the smallest
details. A flat cap was given up forty or fifty years
ago, but the rest of the garb is Tudor. The school
was originally a charity, and received some eight
hundred orphan boys and girls. While it has not
departed from its original idea, it has now developed
also into a great public school for boys: the girls’
school is at Hertford, the boys’ at Horsham in
Sussex. Among other famous “‘ Blues’’ may be

THE JEWELLERY ROOM 95

mentioned Coleridge, Lamb, and Leigh Hunt. The
buildings were pulled down in 1go2. Till then,
Londoners could often stop to watch the boys play-
ing football in the very heart of London.

Another badge in this case is a more cheerful
matter. It is an old specimen of Doggett’s badge
—part of the livery known as Doggett’s coat and
badge. These are trophies rowed for on August
Ist every year, by the young watermen of London,
in a race from London Bridge to Chelsea, under the
terms of the will of Thomas Doggett, a jovial actor
who died in 1721. Doggett was one of the most
skilful, amusing, and successful comedians of his
day: “he had a different look for every different
kind of humour.’’ The coat that goes with the
badge is of a bright scarlet with “ frogs’’ or loops
of braid.

The other cases against the windows and the wall
opposite the door contain various pieces of plate of
different periods, but they do not suggest any par-
ticular comment. The largest piece is a silver-gilt
wine-cooler of the time of George IV: it is dis-
tinctly heavy in design, but its massiveness is so
great as to be almost impressive. A gilt cup of
1621, in a case of silver ranging from Elizabeth to
George IV, is a very beautiful work. A presentation
vessel, in a glass case by itself towards the right
end of the long wall, is perhaps the least graceful
object in the Museum.

The case at the right end of the room contains
objects other than plate and jewellery, for the most
part. In the left corner of it are Jacobite and

76 THE LONDON MUSEUM

other portraits and miniatures ; among them a won-
derful little portrait of Prince Rupert composed
entirely of the finest seed pearls. In the middle are
ivory and bone theatre passes—season tickets, as
it were, for the two chief theatres—the Theatre
Royal, Drury Lane, and His Majesty’s, in the
Haymarket. The oldest theatres of London—
those famous wooden buildings where Shakespeare
first played, the Globe, the Curtain, and others—
have utterly vanished, and even their sites are no
longer used for the same purpose. Fire destroyed
them more than once; and in addition all theatres
were shut, by law, during the Commonwealth. The
theatres on sites still used for the same purpose
were built in and after the Restoration period.
Drury Lane Theatre, the earliest of them, was
opened in 1663, but this first (and rather incon-
venient) building was burnt down in 1672. The
new one was designed by Wren, and was opened
two years later. This lasted till 1809, when it too
was burnt down in a famous fire.

The present building was opened in 1812. It
was sometimes spoken of in early days as Covent
Garden Theatre, which is geographically an accurate
enough name. Covent Garden Theatre itself, on
the site of the present Covent Garden Theatre or
Opera House, was not built till 1732. Drury Lane
Theatre was also formerly known as the King’s
Theatre. Its most important rival at first was the
Duke’s Theatre, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields; but this
site has not kept up its theatrical connection. The
chief rivals to Drury Lane a little later were the

THE JEWELLERY ROOM Te

Little Haymarket Theatre (opened in 1721), almost
on the site of the present Haymarket Theatre (built
in 1821), and the Haymarket Opera House (opened
1705), which rose where His Majesty’s Theatre, the
fourth on the same site, now stands.

Here also are a few Nelson relics, and among
them a little torn rag of the Victory’s flag. Behind
them is a pocket-book or handy work-case given to
the great Admiral Collingwood.

The cases against the wall nearest the door con-
tain more plate, notably some spoons, besides the
two-pronged forks already mentioned. The collec-
tion of spoons in the London Museum is one of the
finest in existence, and each room from here on-
wards contains a number of them, according to the
various periods. The earliest examples have
straight stems, with a simple ornament at the top
and a round or nearly round bowl: in outline they
were rather like a Badminton racquet. In the six-
teenth century came “apostle spoons,’ with the
figure of an apostle as an ornament at the top of
the handle. Another pattern of this period, or a
little later, had a seal for head. Towards the end
of the seventeenth century the bowl began to be
slightly more oval, and the handle was broadened
out into wider patterns at its head. In the middle
of the eighteenth century the “ rat’s tail’ appeared
—a raised ridge on the back of the bowl, and the
handle, instead of being straight, was slightly curved
—upwards, not downwards: the downward curve
came a little later, and with it the more complete
concavity of the bowl, so that the spoons of George

78 _ THE LONDON MUSEUM

III’s time were in shape practically like our own.
Spoons for special purposes, of course, varied ac-
cording to the purpose.

A hundred years or so of coffee-pots are also
covered by the exhibit in this room. Coffee first
came into use in Lendon in 1657, so that coffee-pots
have naturally not a very ancient history: the
berry had travelled westwards across Eurcpe from
Vienna, which had learnt the use of it from the
Turks, who were perpetually at war upon the borders
of what is now Austria-Hungary. Naturally, as the
methods of preparing and drinking coffee have not
changed very greatly, the coffee-pots are very
similar in design. The differences between them are
in the elegance of shape and finish of workmanship.

The period they cover—1686 to 1773—might
almost be called the age of coffee-houses. In the
reigns of Anne and the first three Georges, the coffee-
houses of London ruled public opinicn, and settled
the standards of taste in matters of fashion, in
literature, in the drama, in a dozen different ways
to which, perhaps, the popular newspapers of
to-day are the nearest parallel. At them the wits
met to gossip over their coffee or chocolate—and the
‘wits’ really were “ witty’: they were widely-
read, well-educated men of the world, whose idle life
took itself very seriously. They talked of every-
thing from China to Peru: they would discuss as
readily the cut of a coat or the merits of a poem, -
the politics of the day or the latest acrobat. The
coffee-houses, in one sense, were the beginning of
the modern clubs, and clubs met at them : but there

THE JEWELLERY ROOM 70

was this difference in coffee-house discussions, that
they were open to any chance visitor who happened
to come for refreshment. At them the newspapers
of the day could be read; and the people who fre-
quented them were those for whom and about
whom the great essayists of the day—Addison, Steele,
and their imitators—produced The Spectator, The
Tatler, and other famous periodicals. The life of
that day will be seen in closer detail when we reach
the China and Costume Rooms on the first floor ; but
these coffee-pots, which must have ministered to
many a gay lady in hoop and wig, and many a wit
in a flowered coat, must always remind us of that
far-off, artificial world which they served.

Pope, in a famous mock-heroic passage, describes
the ceremony of coffee-drinking in a private house ;
in the coffee-houses it was less formal :

“For lo! the board with cups and spoons is crowned.
The berries crackle, and the. Mill goes round.
On shining altars of Japan they raise
The silver lamp, and fiery spirits blaze !
From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide ;
And China’s earth receives the smoking tide.
At once, they gratify their scent and taste,
While frequent cups prolong the rich repast.”

The chief glory of the Jewellery Room—indeed,
oneof the most remarkable possessions of the London
Museum—has been left till the last. It is the
“hoard ”’ of precious things which fills the case in
the middle of the room. It is not known for certain
why this jewellery was hidden where it was found
—in the earth in Wood Street, off Cheapside, the
chief centre for gold- and silver-smiths’ shops in

80 THE LONDON MUSEUM

London till late in the seventeenth century. It is
not even known, strictly speaking, that it was hidden,
though the circumstance that it was buried makes
that practically certain. It is probable, from the
position of the box containing the articles, and from
the fact that there is more than one example of
several of them, that they are actually part of a
seventeenth century jeweller’s stock-in-trade. Why
they were buried, it is to be feared, can never be dis-
covered: some alarm of the Civil War, even some
local alarm of riot or thieves, perhaps fear of fire or
of the Great Fire, or flight from the Plague, caused
the owner to put them into the safe keeping of the
earth, to await his return, or more secure times :
and he never returned, and no man knew of the
buried treasure till it was dug up, by chance, in
1912, and handed over to the London Museum by
Mr. Lewis Harcourt.

The striking feature of the collection is the extra-
ordinary delicacy of the workmanship, and the
beauty of the designs. The chains and pendants
far surpass, in their exquisite shapes and execution,
any other pieces of jewellery in the Museum. The
little ornaments fashioned like bunches of grapes,
with jewels for fruit, and golden filigree for stems,
are in every way perfect. The chains, of various
patterns, are delightfully proportioned, and finished
to the tiniest details. The small flagons or tankards,
of crystal and silver gilt, have been wrought by
a worker who loved and honoured his work.
Examine closely everything in this noble treasure,
Whenever these things were made, by whomsoever,

a _ Border of
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JEWELLERY OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND NINETEENTH
CENTURIES

THE JEWELLERY ROOM 83

they have been fashioned by one who saw in his
mind’s eye the loveliness of perfection—the fitness
of every part, the harmony and the grace that no-
where sets too much gold or too large a jewel for
the sake of display. There is a famous passage in
Pepys’ Diary in which the writer rather dismally
estimates the worth of his two silver flagons, and
concludes that they were worth five shillings an
ounce for the metal, and five shillings an ounce for
the “ fashion ’’—the workmanship. The fashion of
this hoard, fine though some of the jewels are, far
outweighs the intrinsic value of the metal and
precious stones.

It is well for the credit of the nineteenth century
that a case of jewellery of that epoch exhibited
(not far from the door) in the long Gallery of Cos-
tume on the first floor of the Museum is not shown
side by side with this seventeenth century collection.
There are indeed sufficient contrasts in the Jewel-
lery Room itself, if one turns from the “ hoard ”’ to
the Companies’ insignia, or to the huge presentation
vessel already mentioned. But this nineteenth
century case supplies even a stronger contrast than
these. Except for two or three of the smaller pieces,
there is nothing in the case which is not utterly
vulgar and ugly. It is well to preserve such things :
they teach a harder lesson than is realised from
looking at objects so perfect as to seem easy. They
were made with the idea that jewellery must be
valuable—that what is costly is necessarily beautiful.
The inherent quality of jewellery is that it should
adorn the wearer. If, of course, the wearer merely

84 THE LONDON MUSEUM

wishes to invest his savings in solid gold in a por-
table form, it is no use arguing with him—though it
would be cheaper, if that was his purpose, to buy
solid gold than to pay more for the workmanship.
But if jewellery is not merely a way of carrying
about your wealth on your person, if it is to be an
ornament, not an advertisement of the amount of
money you possess, then it ought to be beautiful.
Ruskin, whose criticisms have not always remained
so true, sums up the virtues of the most pliant of
precious metals: “‘ Goldsmiths’ work is made to
last, and made with the man’s whole heart and soul
in it... . Gold has been given us, among other
_ things, that we might put beautiful work into its
imperishable splendour.”’ And he adds that so long
as the buyer and the workman simply ask, “ How
much does it weigh ?”’ ‘so long you cannot have a_
goldsmith’s art in this country.”

Thesefat andexpensive nineteenth century objects,
then, show us what jewellery should not be. But
it is easy to condemn them too unreservedly. If
they have no claim to be fitted for the true adorn-
ment of life, or to any ideal of beauty, they yet
stand for something not much less necessary—for
success in the struggle for existence. They were
prized once, purchased once for a great sum by
someone who knew the value of money : who knew,
perhaps, even if in prosperity he had half forgotten
the lesson, the happiness of toil and the pleasure of
a dearly-bought gift. In the age when they were
made, the trade of England grew into the trade of
the world, and the London merchant was a mer-

THE JEWELLERY ROOM 85

chant prince. He did not gain that position by
inheritance—he made it ; and he and his craftsmen,
if they had low standards of art and beauty, had
high standards of honesty and conduct.

Jewellery, as has been said, is always an intimate
thing—something personal, something chosen with
more care than objects of daily use. These nine-
teenth century pieces, in their solid unloveliness,
have yet the pathos of great possessions. There is
a wonderful little play by Sir J. M. Barrie, The Will,
which they recall in an odd way. In the first short
scene a young man just married is about to make
his will: he has only a few pounds to leave, but he
is desperately eager to let his wife have the full
benefit of what seems to their trembling happiness
a great inheritance. In the second scene he is
winning, in the third he has won, a fortune; and
he is embittered by wealth, and remakes his will
with capriciousness and sadness. These are the
brooches and necklaces he would have chosen for
his wife: first of all, when he was young, to show
her his love by the measure of what he spent ; last of
all, when he was old, to show other people, by the
same standard, what they were to believe his love
still was, and what they were to see his career and his
wealth could achieve. Old jewels are the most human
of things: there is nothing so sad—so full of dead
and untold hopes and fears, of little joys and sorrows
no words can ever be subtle enough to make plain.

It is pleasant to record that though London in
the past has often learnt her gold- and silversmith’s

86 | THE LONDON MUSEUM

craft from abroad, to-day she can teach rather than
learn. Modern English jewellery, at its best, shows
little of the vulgarity and ostentation of the last
century. Societies like the Art Workers’ Guild and
the Arts and Crafts Society have influenced the
craftsmen themselves, and set a standard: while
London itself has realised a high ideal in the craft
schools established by the County Council, and in
particular, in the work of Mr. Harold Stabler and his
pupils, whose work has deservedly won high awards
at foreign exhibitions.

CHAPTER | VI
THE TUDOR ROOM

THE Jewellery Room, like the corresponding Roman
Room at the other side of Lancaster House, is a
“blind alley.” To reach the other parts of the
Museum it is necessary to re-enter the Medieval
Room and then go through it towards the left, into
a spacious passage which leads into the Central Hall
once more: it contains pictures of the frescoes of
the House of Commons. Here it is possible to visit
either the first floor or the basement: but as the
chronological order is continued directly on the first
floor, it is advisable to go upstairs, by way of the
right-hand half of the gorgeous main staircase. The
staircase ends in a landing, on the left of which is
the entrance to the first floor galleries. Just out-
side the entrance is a valuable exhibit lent by the
King—an oak cradle, probably of the fifteenth
century, from Chepstow.

There are a few small prints on the walls to the
right of this cradle, and then comes the opening to
the Tudor Room. It is small, but crowded. On
the right-hand wall is a large collection of little
domestic objects—knives and scissors, combs, a
piece of chain mail, an archer’s gauntlet, a gipcier
mount (which shows the continuity from the Medi-

87

88 THE LONDON MUSEUM

zval Room). Underneath are some books printed
during the period (1500-1600, roughly) ; and one of ©
the objects shown is a Bible chain. Books being
still very valuable in Henry VIII’s reign, it was
found necessary to chain them to the bookcase or
desk or lectern. Many churches still possess their
chained Bibles: probably the largest collection of
such books in their original state is that at Wimborne
Minster.

On this wall also isa long picture of jousts held at
Westminster ; and now, with the domestic objects,
the pageantry of the tournament, the command of
Henry VIII, and the books, there is enough evidence
to give some idea of what the Tudor period meant
to London: it will then be possible to see how well
the Museum brings out that meaning.

First of alla great deal is known about domestic
life of the period. The spoons in this room, for
instance, suggest a high degree of luxury and finish
in the smaller details of daily life. Against the wall
nearly opposite the door is a further and more vivid
proof of this—two superb pieces of glass, one Italian,
the other manufactured—perhaps by Italian work-
men—in London, in Crutched Friars. In the six-
teenth century Venetians were first brought to
London to encourage the making of fine glass, in
which, then as now, they excelled. The two bowls
are marvels of delicate workmanship: the pattern
is like lace made by a spider.

The glass, and some delft pottery close by, are
examples of the way in which foreign immigrants
broadened and improved London trade. Not only

THE TUDOR ROOM 89

Venetians but Frenchmen made glass in London in
the sixteenth century—glass infinitely better than
the thick, dull, home-made article. The result was
that in the succeeding century glass-making was a
flourishing English industry, and still later, in the
eighteenth century, flint-glass (the normal glass of
to-day) was actually invented and first made in
England—probably in London. The importance of
delft ware will be seen later (p. 140).

In the case to the left of this are two sets of cake
platters, richly ornamented. A little earlier, only
the rich could afford plates, and these plates were of
metal—pewter, silver, or gold: poor persons used
trenchers—slabs of bread or toast baked firm,
which when they were thoroughly soaked with the
dregs of food could be given to the dogs—or to even
poorer persons. These decorated platters show a
great advance—an adaptability which is the sign
of a vigorous progressive civilisation ; when persons
of fashion vary their possessions, less eminent people
are likely to get some benefit from the changes.

In the same case are (among other things) two
more notable objects—Sir Thomas Gresham’s steel-
yard, or balance, which will be dealt with presently,
and a pewter dish bearing Queen Elizabeth’s cypher.
The dish has a curious history: it was found,
doubled up and battered, at Westminster; it had
evidently been thrown away by the Queen’s ser-
vants as worthless—a fact which in itself tells a
tale which does not need to have its moral em-
phasized here.

There are in this and the neighbouring case many

go THE LONDON MUSEUM

other things of interest on which it is impossible to
dwell now—cups, pewter plates, shoes (‘‘ slashed ”’
according to the fashion of the day, to match the
slashed sleeves and doublets and hose: an under
colour showed through the slashes), glass vessels of
various kinds, much finer than any glass produced
in England before that time, buckles, chessmen,
(chess, an Eastern game originally, is far older than
the Tudor period), pins, spurs, rosary beads, girdle
chains, books, gloves, candlesticks, and all manner
of objects which once were the everyday possessions
of Londoners. In the right-hand window is a fabric
of value for the history of child life in England: —
it is the earliest known ‘‘ sampler.’ It bears the
arms of Queen Elizabeth. The sampler was an
elaborate method of learning fine needlework, which
was practised till late in the nineteenth century :
specimens older than the eighteenth century are
very rare. This example shows that people were
beginning to find occupation—amusement, perhaps,
they called it—for children outside the teaching of
the alphabet and the strict education in languages
and manners which well-to-do young people had
hitherto received. There were no books for chil-
dren yet—nor for a century to come—and not many
toys: but the sampler was at least a beginning in
the way of recreation, even if it was a dull and
difficult one.

In the other window is a hardly less rare treasure
—a pedlar’s pack. It throws light on the life of
the country rather than London, though doubtless
many such a pack was made up by the rich mer-

THE TUDOR ROOM gI

chants of the city. It is hard to realise nowadays
what a pedlar’s arrival in a country village meant :
but sometimes it is possible to get a faint idea.
A few years ago the writer was staying in a

Pe 3

NU =. = f
| Pedlarsy Pack
RS eek Centuay

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village some fifty miles from London, and five miles
from a railway station. It is a village with two
grocers’ shops, one butcher’s, one baker’s, one
greengrocer and dairyman’s. A great railway strike
broke out. Within a few days the price of every-
thing was doubled, and certain foods could not be
obtained at all. All supplies—in spite of motors
and other vehicles and excellent roads—depended

92 THE LONDON MUSEUM

entirely upon the railways, and the local producers
were so accustomed to sending their wares to London
that they could not quickly change their methods
and sell them nearer home. In fact, the village was
for a short period thrown back four hundred years.
Of course, in Elizabeth’s day, food supplies were
well managed locally: but manufactured articles
had usually to come from afar, and the state of
affairs must often have been similar to that just
described. What is more, there was in this Sussex
village a further example of the pedlar’s difficulties.
A few hundred yards from the main road to London
runs the old pack-horse road. It is a grass-grown
lane some ten feet or so wide, on an average ; very
muddy when there is the least rain, unpaved, a mere
track between hedges. That was the high road in
Elizabeth’s time—an inferior lane of to-day. Along
it stumbled pedlars with those great wooden boxes
bowing them down and making their footsteps
heavy.

The reproduction of a stained glass window shows
how the pack was borne. Practice doubtless would
make such a burden easier ; but it is probable that
in some ways the Elizabethans were stronger than
we. They bore pain as no one could bear it now:
they fought sometimes with a demoniac fury which
few could feel to-day: they lived in perhaps the
cruellest age in history. That they endured hard-
ships thus does not mean that we are degenerate :
we are not : but in many directions we enjoy greater
ease, and so have lost, to a certain extent, their
insensibility to discomfort.

THE TUDOR ROOM 93

The pottery in this room is significant. The
shapes of the vessels are beginning to change, and
the glaze is becoming much finer and more varied.
The Tudor period, in fact, shows the beginning of
English pottery as a fine art, not merely as a trade
which supplied bare necessities. The politics of the
Tudors led to a good deal of intercourse—social
rather than warlike—with foreign nations, and
especially with the Netherlands and Flanders, re-

Roman Glass 4 "*Cent:Cartenware Leatner Juc oF Becanmine Ware
Bottle Jar ComMoNWEALTH TIME (7 Cent:

gions in which pottery was flourishing. Two Flem-
ings, in 1570, settled at Norwich and set up pottery
workshops there, producing fine wares in their
native manner, and so benefiting the English crafts-
men by their example. The numerous examples of
“ Bellarmines”’ or ‘‘ Greybeards,” in this and the
next two rooms are instances of this foreign in-
fluence. These jugs receive their names from Car-
dinal Bellarmine, a famous anti-Protestant writer of
Rome, who died in 1621: the jugs were not neces-
sarily first made with a likeness of the Cardinal—it

94 THE LONDON MUSEUM ~

is possible that an old pattern happened to resemble
his features. The pattern became a standard one
even for potters who might never have heard of
the dignitary whose portrait they tried to model.

A strong substitute for pottery, used especially
for “jacks’”’ (huge jugs) and small barrels with
handles, was leather, waxed and tarred. In the
case opposite the door is a leather black jack; the
next two rooms contain even larger specimens.

Near the exit door is another exotic product—
a Nonsuch chest. Nonsuch Palace stood a little way
out of London, in Surrey. It was very wonderfully
and lavishly decorated in the most ornate Continen-
tal manner. Pepys saw it—“‘all the house on the
outside filled with figures of stories . . . most of
the house is covered with lead, and gilded.” It
became a byword for magnificence, and so struck
the English fancy that all kinds of objects were
manufactured with similar diffuse ornament, and
labelled ‘‘ Nonsuch.”’ There was a Nonsuch House
on Old London Bridge : the model in the Basement,
already referred to, shows it. We in our own day
have not lost this trick of imitation, in a small way :
when the Eiffel Tower in Paris was built, English
shops were full of Eiffel Tower wares—inkpots,
paper-weights, ornaments, andsoon. The Nonsuch
Chest is the same in idea, but more beautiful in
execution. Nonsuch Palace was eventually given
by Charles II to one of his favourites, Lady Castle-
maine, who pulled it down.

Return now to the case near the window, on the
farther side of the room from the entrance. Here

THE TUDOR ROOM 95

are some objects hitherto passed over—the greater
part of a doublet, a rapier, very delicately wrought
(probably made by Italian workmen in London),
some flat caps (it is very unusual to find such things
so well preserved), an apprentice’s staff, and an
archer’s bracer, inscribed ‘‘ Well shot.” (A bracer
was worn on the inside of the left forearm, to break
the force of the bowstring as the arrow was loosed :
even when a bracer protects the arm, the string can
still strike a painful blow.) These objects bring us
right into the social life of the London apprentices
—the young City men of the day, who had a habit
of objecting forcibly to what they did not like.
Riots were not at all uncommon; but the worst of
all took place on what was afterwards known as
Evil May Day, in 1517.

The citizens were very jealous of the foreigners
who were settling in England in such numbers :
they thought, not unnaturally, that the aliens would
deprive them of trade, not realising, as we can now,
after the event, that the superior foreign craftsmen
would set a higher standard and so encourage fuller
trade. On May Day it was customary to go into
the fields round London for sport and amusement
—just as on a Bank Holiday Londoners now go to
Hampstead and Richmond, and similar places a
little way out of the City. There was already a
great deal of resentment at the way in which “ the
towns about London, as Islington, Hoxton, Shore-
ditch,” had enclosed the fields outside the City walls,
and, prevented, among other things, the sport of
archery: in 1514, indeed, the citizens had taken

|) Tle Ot oe ee
“se Ratio

96 THE LONDON MUSEUM

the matter into their own hands, and levelled the
new hedges and ditches with spades and shovels.
So probably in 1517 they were still dangerously
suspicious of anything they disliked—such as aliens.
Certain foreigners, on April 28th, had been assaulted
by apprentices, who were sent to prison for their
misconduct. Somehow a rumour ran round (“and
no man could tell how it began’’) that on May Day
the citizens would kill or expel all aliens.

May Day came: the Aldermen, hearing the rumour,
issued an order that everyone should remain indoors.
But one of the Aldermen found two young men in
Cheapside playing a game, apparently in ignorance
of the order: many others were looking on. He
bade them desist, and after argument tried to seize
one of them, whereupon the rest raised a shout of
“°Prentices and clubs.’”’ At that familiar battle-
cry, “out at every door came clubs and weapons,”
and the Alderman had to flee for his life. More
*prentices assembled, and the whole body went
about the City, breaking into the lock-up houses,
and plundering shops and houses, especially those of
foreigners. It was not until several hours later that
they dispersed ; and when they scattered to go to
their homes, over three hundred were arrested and
imprisoned.

Never again, after Evil May Day, was the City
maypole set up in Cornhill. Only its name lives in
the church of St. Andrew Undershaft—St. Andrew
under the shadow of the maypole.

That was neither the first time nor the last that
the ’prentices proved unruly ; and later in the six-

THE TUDOR ROOM : 97

teenth century strict rules were passed for their
conduct, covering almost every detail of life, down
to their very clothing. They had to wear the apparel
given them by their master, which was, ordinarily,
“a flat round cap, narrow falling bands, coarse side
coats, close hose, cloth stockings :’’ they also wore
blue cloaks in the summer, and blue gowns in the
winter. They might show no ruffles, cuffs or loose
collar, and carry no sword, dagger, or other weapon,
but only a knife.

The doublet in this case, then, was that of a well-
to-do man—perhaps even that of a “page” at
court : the pages were wont to call the apprentices,
in derision, “‘ flat-caps.’”’ The staff and bracer may
well have been used by some of those identical young
citizens who created the famous riot of Evil May
Day, just as the rapier was probably the handiwork
of the very foreigners whom they detested so bitterly.

That, therefore, was the life of the younger
Londoners. To draw near to the wealthier citizens,
look again at Gresham’s steelyard, in the central
case on the side of the room farthest from the en-
trance. It is one of the most highly prized posses-
sions of the Museum, for many reasons: for one
thing, it is a unique piece of metal work, and for
another, it is a relic of one of the greatest of Lon-
doners. ‘‘ Sir Thomas Gresham, mercer, 1566, built
the Royal Exchange in London, and by his testa-
ment left his dwelling-house in Bishopsgate Street
to be a place for readings, allowing large stipends
to the readers, and certain almshouses for the
poor:”’ that is Stow’s simple entry in his summary

G

98 THE LONDON MUSEUM

of the ‘‘ Honour of Citizens, and Worthiness of Men
in the Same.” In his charities, Gresham did not
differ greatly from many others of the noble mer-
chants of London, from men like Sir Thomas White,
William Lambe, John Fuller, Sir John Allen, or Sir
Andrew Judde. The names of such benefactors
are to be seen to-day in all parts of England: and
London, at the Guildhall, perhaps, more than else-
where. But Gresham’s founding of the Royal
Exchange was an act of foresight as well as of
generosity. With the world-wide discoveries of the
sixteenth century, and, towards the end of it, the
adventures of Englishmen upon all the seas of the
globe, London’s trade was increasing more rapidly
than could be accommodated in its old streets. A
common Bourse or meeting-place for merchants—
men from all parts of England and the continent,
not Londoners alone—was surely needed. Gresham
undertook to give the building if the City would
purchase ground. On June 7, 1566, he laid the
first stone: by November 1567, ‘‘ the same was
covered with slate, and shortly after fully finished.”
_ A little over two years later “ the Queen’s Majesty,

attended with her nobility, came from her house at
the Strand called Somerset House, and entered the
City by Temple Bar, through Fleet Street, Cheap
[-side], and so by the north side of the Bourse
through Threadneedle Street, to Sir Thomas
Gresham’s in Bishopsgate Street, where she dined.”
After dinner she inspected the new building, ‘“‘ every
part thereof,” and “‘ caused the same Bourse by an
herald and a trumpet, to be proclaimed the Royal

THE TUDOR ROOM 99

Exchange, and so to be called from henceforth, and
not otherwise.’ Andso it has been called ever since,
though the first Exchange perished in the Great Fire
a hundred years later, and a second building also
was burnt down in 1838.

In the basement are pictures of the second Ex-
change, of the fire of 1838, and of the opening of
the present building by Queen Victoria. To-day
Gresham’s sign—the grasshopper which forms the
weathercock at the Royal Exchange—still stands
over the same site on which he built two hundred
and fifty years ago.

This steelyard was ordered by Gresham for his
Exchange, though its history is not fully known.
It is dated 1572. Some of the work in it is of
later date: the little figures (said to represent Gog
and Magog) were probably added in the seventeenth
century. The name steelyard is itself significant :
it implies a great branch of London’s foreign trade.
The Steelyard (roughly where Cannon Street Station
now is) was “the place for merchants of Germany,”
who in return for privileges undertook to keep
Bishopsgate in repair. ‘‘Steelyard ’’ is a mistransla-
tion of ‘‘staal (sample) yard.”’ A standard balance,
or weighing machine, was kept there, and so the
term steelyard came to be applied to any balance.

From Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Gresham, we are
led to the general position of London in regard to
England and the sovereign. By the sixteenth cen-
tury, London had become thoroughly national. It
was no longer a city fighting for its privileges and
its very existence, though from time to time the

I0o THE LONDON MUSEUM

citizens were forced to uphold old rights and cus-
toms against State interference. It was the capital
of England, a great city of the world. In Tudor
days it saw many pageants like the jousts at
Westminster coronations, marriages (Philip of
Spain, whén he married Queen Mary, brought to
the Tower of London ninety-nine horseloads and
two cartloads of gold and silver), the reception of
ambassadors and envoys, processions on the Thames,
Lord Mayor’s Shows, whose far-off origin is un-
known, departures of sailors and soldiers, visits by
the great Queen to her navy at the time of her
Armada, or to Drake’s ship, the Golden Hind, as
she lay at Deptford after her wonderful voyage
“round about the whole globe of the earth.” It
must have been a gay and lovely city, even if its
streets were narrow, dirty, and too crowded for the
ever-increasing volume of traffic. Brightly painted
signs, rosy red brick, gleaming black and white, half-
timbered houses with overhanging gables (like those
of Staple Inn, at Holborn Bars, to-day): nobles
with gorgeous doublets and hats, merchants in
grave and splendid robes, blue-cloaked apprentices
—it was a many-coloured city.

But it was also at times grim and terrible. Tower
Hill, in the sixteenth century, saw many executions
in Tudor days: no sight in the world, perhaps, can
have been more full of horror, with the executioner
in black, the red uniforms of the Yeoman, the for-
lorn little bare-necked figure bowed over the black
block in the open space of the great yard. On the
wall of the Tudor Room, near the exit door, is a

THE TUDOR ROOM rot

reminder of these sombre scenes: the warrant for
the arrest and execution of the Earl of Northum-
berland.

There was one other horror in Tudor London.
An old chronicler of the twelfth century says that
“the only plagues of London are the immoderate
drinking of fools, and the frequency of fires.” Stow,
three hundred years later, says that the drinking
still continued: it is not ended yet. Fires there
were still in plenty, though the use of stone and tiles
for roofs instead of thatch had abated the danger :
and there was a greater fire yet to come. But there
was a new plague by Stow’s time—dhe plague, or
rather, the various epidemics which were indis-
criminately called plague. Such epidemics were not
infrequent : for all its good water supply, and the
strict order kept, London was utterly unsanitary,
and the narrow streets, closely packed houses, and
general ignorance of proper treatment caused any
contagious or infectious disease to spread as quickly
as a fire. In the left-hand window of the Tudor
Room is a little framed print, a rough, discoloured
woodcut, inscribed, “‘ Lord Have Mercy upon Us.”
It is a relic of the awful outbreak of typhus fever
in 1592-3. A list of the regulations for dealing with
that plague has survived. Inquiry was to be made
“what houses be infected.’’ Constables had to
report cases to the Aldermen, in writing, and to
provide women to carry necessaries to infected
houses. Clerks and sextons had “to see bills set
upon the doors of houses infected ’’—this woodcut
is such a bill. Infected houses were to be shut up,

I02 THE LONDON MUSEUM

and none to go in or out, for twenty-eight days:
various methods of airing and cleansing were to be
adopted ; and “‘ two viewers of dead bodies and two
viewers of sick suspected’’ were to be appointed
and sworn, with a penalty of the pillory for making
false reports.

Ten years later came another outbreak, in which
over 30,000 people died.

In this room also begins the fine series of prints
and drawings with which the Museum is so well
furnished. The chief ones here are by Dr. Philip
Norman, an enthusiastic historian of London.

That, then, is a little of the story of London under
the Tudors. There is much that cannot be added
here: the story of Shakespeare and his theatres,
of the religious persecutions, of the great literature
of all kinds inspired by and written in Elizabethan
London. All Lancaster House would not suffice to —
display that history in detail. This one little room
gives, as it were, a bird’s-eye view of one of the
fullest and most memorable of London’s centuries
of life.

The Basement also contains some exhibits of the
Tudor period : in particular a piece of ship’s timber
and some stone cannon balls, dug up from the
Thames at the end of 1912. It is not known for
certain what ship thus lay so long drowned, but it
seems probable that it was either the Great Harry,
a man-of-war built for Henry VIII, about 1521, or
the Pelican, one of Drake’s ships, “‘ which was long
preserved at Deptford, as a monument of Drake’s
voyage [round the world], and is supposed to have

THE TUDOR ROOM 103

been removed to Woolwich some time in the eight-
eenth century.” ?

Under the Tudors many suburbs now almost in
the heart of London began to grow populous.
Bloomsbury, Holborn, Piccadilly, Poplar, Black-
wall, Islington, Hoxton were all what now would
correspond to Richmond, or Surbiton, Epsom or
Bromley—though they were distinctly cut off
from the City by fields. The Strand, literally a
strand, or river bank, was an avenue of palaces,
with gardens running down to the river. Bankside,
the Southwark shore, was a place of pleasure gardens
and theatres. Whitefriars became “ Alsatia ’’—a
warren of obscure streets and lanes where rogues and
fugitives from justice lived in a lawless community
of their own. The population was about 125,000.

There are in the Basement, besides some less
notable objects which will be mentioned when the
Basement as a whole is treated, models which
belong especially to this period. Those of London
Bridge and the Tower have already been men-
tioned. There is one of Old St. Paul’s as it was
in 1560—one of the most beautiful cathedrals of
Christendom. The next year, 1561, the lovely
spire was struck by lightning, and “‘ within the
space of four hours the same steeple, with all the
roofs of the church, were consumed, to the great
sorrow and perpetual remembrance of the be-
holders.’’ Contributions were immediately made

1 See Sir L. Gomme’s London (Williams & Norgate, 1914),
Appendix VI; the quotation is from the Z7zmes.

I04 THE LONDON MUSEUM

by the Queen, the City, the clergy, and many
private persons, for rebuilding the steeple: but,
says Stow mournfully, “‘ Divers models were de-
vised and made, but little else was done, through
whose default, God knoweth. It was said that the
money appointed for new building of the steeple
was collected.”

The spire was never rebuilt: the Cathedral re-
mained with its mutilated stump till the whole
was burnt down in the Great Fire.

Other Tudor models are those of Cheapside in
1580, and of the mouth of the river Fleet in 1550.
They are so well described by labels that it is not
necessary to say much of them here. The most
striking features in Cheapside are, perhaps, the
Cross and the Conduit. The Cross is said to have
been one of those set up by Edward I wherever
the body of his Queen Eleanor rested on its way
to Westminster Abbey. It was pulled down by
the Puritans in 1643, to the sound of trumpets.
The Great Conduit, or fountain and “tap,” was
first made in 1285: it was rebuilt and enlarged in
1479. On great occasions both it and the Little
Conduit (at the west end of ‘“‘Chepe’’) ran with
wine, and were the scene of pageants and shows.

The Fleet to-day is a drain, like other streams
of old London. It enters the Thames under Black-
friars Bridge. This model shows Baynard Castle—
the western fortress of the City wall, corresponding
to the Tower on the east —still standing, the
Blackfriars monastery buildings (see p. 60), and
Bridewell Palace. Bridewell House, or Palace, was

-THE TUDOR ROOM 105

built by Henry VIII in 1552, and was used for
various state purposes. But Edward VI, in 1553,
presented it to the City as a “‘ house of correction ”’
or prison, and for other uses also. In the eighteenth
century it was a common amusement for idlers or
country visitors to go to Bridewell to see the pris-
oners whipped. It was rebuilt in 1668, and pulled
down in 1863. There was a dock between the
Palace and the Whitefriars buildings to the west,
while the Fleet River separated it from the City on
the east.

A model of Gresham’s first Royal Exchange is
in preparation.

CHAPTER VII

‘THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY AND
COMMONWEALTH ROOMS

THE Tudor Room leads into a room named the
Seventeenth Century Room. It deals only with
the first two Stuart kings, and the transition from
the Monarchy to the Commonwealth, and it will
be convenient to consider it and the next room (the
Commonwealth Room) together. Though the state
of society naturally differed greatly in the two short
periods covered by these small rooms, the gear and
fabrics of the periods were much the same. It was
at the Restoration that England in London began
to take on a new aspect in outward appearance as
well as in the lives of the people.

Stuart London—it will be convenient to label the
reigns of James I and Charles I “Stuart,” and
those of Charles II and James II “ Restoration ”’
—Stuart London was full of contradictions, to
judge by the contents of these two rooms. It had
become, as has been said, national rather than local :
that is to say, the affairs with which it dealt cor-
porately were in the main national affairs ; but at
the same time it lived a domestic life as consistently

as was possible in such days of public tumult.
106

THE STUART AND COMMONWEALTH ROOMS 107

To take the domestic life first, as it is more pro-
minent in this part of the Museum. The first case
on the left in the Seventeenth Century Room con-
tains, among other things, some excellently con-
structed little cases of weights. Recall Gresham’s
steelyard, and think of the difference. Of course,
one was a public weighing machine, the other a
private one; nevertheless, that fact itself is sig-
nificant. It was worth while to turn out these
“pocket ’’ sets in some quantities (the weights
were cast from moulds, and a mould almost invari-
ably means a good many copies, or it is not worth
the trouble of making). That is to say, trade was
becoming more like the trade of to-day—more
individual and varied: it was not a matter for
assembling formally and solemnly in a_ public
hall, or seeking out one particular quarter of the
city for a particular business (even in Stow’s time
the trades were becoming less local and more gener-
ally diffused).

On this wall is a case of spoons: compare them
with the Commonwealth spoons in the next room.
There is, perhaps, not a very wonderful difference,
but the Commonwealth examples are plainer and
more severe.

The coins, badges, and medals may be passed
over for a moment. Look at the large piece of
furniture, half sideboard, half chest, in the left-
hand corner. It is full of strength and solidity,
yet graceful. It has not got quite the artistic, con-
scious beauty of later furniture (of the eighteenth
century, for instance), but it is not heavy or cum-

108 THE LONDON MUSEUM

brous in design, nor is it florid. It is a sign of a
transition in taste. The terra-cotta head above it,
perhaps, proves nothing for certain, except that
some one in London knew fine work when he saw
it. It is a singularly beautiful example of Italian
work ; the fact that it belonged to a Londoner (it
was found in the Thames) simply shows that there
was some trade in such things, or that some Italian
artist in London could make them, or else that the
original owner travelled abroad, as Englishmen were
now beginning to do with greater frequency.

The mirror close by, and the clothing, dressing
cases, caps, and objects in the cases on the other
side of this room are evidence of another phase of
social life. What faces, what hopes or fears that
mirror has reflected: with what simple pleasure
or less simple vanity those dressing cases were
opened: who drew on so proudly those gloves
wrought gloriously with seed-pearls: who put his
faith in that fine little gun, or felt safe and bold
in the stout leathern jacket, we can never know.
The bright colours are a little faded now : the bright
hopes that once looked on them are dead. We can
only say that in these things, too, our unnamed
forefathers found pleasures or sorrows not in any
way different from our own.

The workmanship of the mirror and dressing
cases deserves close attention. No machine to-day,
however complicated, however swift, can reproduce
the delicacy, the personal touch, of these labori-
ous handiworks. This was a great age of needle-
craft.

THE STUART AND COMMONWEALTH ROOMS 109

Against the wall farthest from the windows is a
collection which, in some ways, is very near our day.
It contains clay pipes, and pipe-stoppers of various
designs. There are others in the Commonwealth
Room. Tobacco, “‘ the Indian weed,” as everybody
knows, was probably introduced into England by
Sir Walter Raleigh at the end of the sixteenth
century. The number of these pipes alone—for clay
pipes are very frail things—shows how rapidly the
habit of smoking must have spread, in spite of
James I’s hostility to it. Towards the end of the
seventeenth century, and throughout the eight-
eenth, it increased still more, and Bristol, the chief
tobacco port, had an immense trade with Virginia.
Except for the use of other materials as well as
clay, and some trifling developments in design,
there is not much change in pipes from Stuart times
to the present day. The pipe-making industry
is a very‘old one. At Broseley pipes have been
made for three centuries, and the Broseley ‘“‘ church-
wardens’’ were widely celebrated. Winchester,
Derby, and Exeter also manufactured them in early
days. The stems, or specially made tubes of
similar shape, were used in the eighteenth century
for another purpose than smoking—for “ putting
the head in pipes.’”” They were wig-curlers, the
strands of hair being wound tightly round the stems
and so left for a time.

Other exhibits which hardly call for comment
are the rushholder (in the Commonwealth Room ;
see p. 49), the knives, the scriveners’ instruments

1 See The A BC of Collecting Old English Pottery, by J. Blacker.

IIo THE LONDON MUSEUM

{the use of which is obvious), the cloth marks and
implements, the combs, the needles and thimbles,
the torch strongly made of tow threads and wax.
They show various natural occupations and interests
of the day, as do the tremendous jack boot, the fine
broadsword, the rushholder, and the huge leather
jack in the Commonwealth Room (see p. 93).
The little top in the latter room is a reminder that
through the Civil War children were growing up
to whom the war could be not much more than a
* bewildering, and sometimes terrifying, game: they
were to be London’s citizens of a more peaceful
generation. The watering-pot in the Commonwealth
Room is ofa strange shape ; it is a peaceful comment
on the times of civil strife. Native English garden-
ing, perhaps, reached one climax in its history
under the Tudors: a new impulse was to come_
when William and Mary introduced the formal
Dutch fashions,

Two other domestic objects in the Stuart Room
are of strange interest: through them we are led
very close to the most private thoughts of Londoners
long dead. One is in the case at the end of the room
farthest from the windows, on the right hand, the
other in the central case. The first consists of
eight farthings of James I’s reign, found con-
cealed in an old shoe. Who hid that poor little
hoard, and why? The second and unique exhibit
is a bundle of hair and nails. It is a relic of the
belief in witchcraft. If you had an enemy, you
obtained somehow a lock of his or her hair, and
put it in a bottle with some nails and buried it :

THE STUART AND COMMONWEALTH ROOMS III

as the hair decayed, so would the enemy waste
away in health. It is seldom that these fantastic
treasures are dug up: this was found in Rathbone
Place : but who the spell-binder was, who the be-
witched, none can say.

_ Witchcraft, indeed, was a topic of more than
usual moment in the reign of James I, who took
a deep interest in the subject. It was not a supersti-
tion of uneducated folk alone: many learned men
accepted it. Nor is it certain that some of the
““ witches ’’ were not, in a sense, guilty of some of
the offences for which so many died a terrible death.
When all the conditions of thought in an epoch
are favourable to such dreadful imaginings, women
and men could, without doubt, work themselves
into an hysterical belief that they possessed vile
powers. :

The pottery of the period in both rooms, again
shows development. There are, as before, plenty
of Bellarmines, of foreign pattern (see p. 93). But
there are new native patterns, like the tyg (a loving
cup with several handles), and the fuddling cup.
This last was an ingenious device to make a man
drink more than he expected. It was a group of
small cups joined together, and the drinker might
think that he could, if he pleased, empty one cup,
and so take but a moderate draught. But all the
cups communicated with one another, so that to
empty one he would have to empty the whole—and
be fuddled. Puzzle jugs are practical jokes of
another kind. They are of all manner of patterns,

but the principle of them all is much the same. It

II2 THE LONDON MUSEUM

is impossible to pour the liquid out of them unless
a certain hole is stopped with the finger, or (in some
cases) unless the vessel is held at a certain angle,
or unless a certain hole only is used.

In addition to this rough but welcome humour,
the pottery begins to display an individual deco-
ration. The Puritans, in particular, liked their
cups and jugs to point a moral. In the Common-
wealth Room are glazed vessels inscribed with
texts or mottoes in “slip’’ (a wet coloured paste
put on and fired after the earthenware pot itself
has been shaped and fired). Most of the black ware
of this kind was made in Staffordshire and Derby-
shire: the red wares are usually from Wrotham
or London (“ Metropolitan ”’ ware).

In the Basement is a well-arranged “ interior,”
which should be mentioned here, though it is not
Stuart or Commonwealth in all its details. It isa
reconstruction of what a small seventeenth century
room must have looked like (see Frontispiece). The
two figures are in the costume, approximately, of
Charles II’s reign. The iron and stone fireplace is
of the sixteenth century, the panelling, the candle-
sticks, the warming-pan, and most of the smaller
objects, of the seventeenth. The outside of the
room consists of seventeenth century London door-
ways, very simple and solid, some fine oak corbels
(beam ends under a roof, supporting the weight
of the roof) and wooden pilasters. Outside are
two old signs of the same period or a little later.
The whole gives a good idea of the look of domestic
scenes when the Stuarts ruled or misruled England.

THE STUART AND COMMONWEALTH ROOMS II3

The models in the Basement also have reference
to this period. Here is Charing Cross as it was in
1620, with the cross and the pillory, and Whitehall
Palace rising in the distance. Charing Cross itself
(not the present erection in the station yard) was
set up in 1291 to mark the last place where the
body of Queen Eleanor lay before burial in West-
minster Abbey. It was pulled down by the Puri-
tans in 1647. Proclamations, executions, pilloryings
took place on the site for generations. In a sense,
Charing Cross is the very centre of the world—the
chief meeting-place of east and west, north and
south, in the world’s capital. It has been said by
a great traveller that if you wish to meet a long-
lost friend,-you should wait for him at Charing
Cross : he will turn up sooner or later. Dr. John-
son’s famous sentence—‘‘ I think the full tide of
human existence is at Charing Cross ’’—is hardly
an exaggeration.

Whitehall consisted originally, for the most part,
of a great palace and its offices, built by Henry
VIII. It suffered severely from successive fires in
the seventeenth century, and nothing is left of the
original Tudor building. The only remnant of the
palace standing to-day is the beautiful Banqueting
Hall, now the Museum of the Royal United Service
Institution!: it was built in the reign of James I,
from the designs of Inigo Jones. All the rest of
the palace was burnt down in the reign of William
III, in 1698, after which it ceased to be a royal

1 See Greenwich Hospital and the United Service Museum, by

Edward Fraser, in the Treasure House Series.
H

II4 THE LONDON MUSEUM

residence. It had been the seat of the Court for
over a hundred and fifty years. From the Ban-
queting Hall Charles I walked to his execution on
the scaffold erected in front of the building ; and
on its roof, by the weathercock which still stands,
James II watched for a wind that would bring or
repel the fleet of William of Orange.

The London Bridge model really belongs to this
epoch, though, as has been said, it will serve as well
for some generations earlier.

These models bring to mind a great Londoner,
who is (of necessity) not commemorated in the
Museum: John Stow, the chronicler. He was a
poor tailor of London, who loved his native city,
and spent his life in collecting information about
it. Without his great Survey of London, published
in 1598, the fruit of years of labour, no history of
London would be possible, and such models as are
in the London Museum could not be made. Stow
made a little money by his trade, but he made none
out of his books. All his reward in his lifetime was
a grant from James I permitting him to beg for
contributions to his expenses. So this “ very aged
and worthy member of our City of London ”’ toiled
obscurely, working for love of his city and for the
benefit of those who came after. ‘‘He always
protested never to have written anything either
for malice, fear, or favour, nor to seek his own
particular gain and vain glory: and that his only
pains and care was to write truth.’”’ He died in the
reign of James I, in 1605, and was buried in the
church of St. Andrew Undershaft, hard by the spot

THE STUART AND COMMONWEALTH ROOMS ITI5

where once stood the maypole. The maypole might
stand for a symbol of the old buildings of London,
broken and lost beyond recall ; but the work of John
Stow, with all its faults, is no less a symbol of the
undying spirit of London’s citizens. Stow was
that kind of patriot which knows that in the strength
and purity and hope of a great city’s life there is
involved also the life of the country of which it is a
part.

The only other local, as distinct from national,
objects in the Stuart and Commonwealth Rooms
are the two figures of cripples from St. Bartholo-
mew’s Hospital, and the fine portrait, by Janssen,
of Sir George Whitmore. Not only charitable
institutions like the hospitals possessed signs or
emblematic figures. Shops, now and later, also ex-
hibited them, the best known being the tobacconists’
Scotchman: in the Basement are several such
figures; one is illustrated below (see p. 210).
As regards the portrait, Whitmore was a wealthy
and vigorous citizen of London who in 1631 was
elected Lord Mayor, and in 1632 knighted. He
was a strong supporter of Charles I, and suffered
imprisonment and loss in the king’s cause. He
was interested in the colonisation of Virginia. His
house at Balmes or Baulmes, in Hoxton, appears
to have been a well-known resort: it afterwards
became a madhouse. Whitmore died in 1654.

A document in the Stuart Room brings us to
public affairs. The Museum is very fortunate in

116 ' THE LONDON MUSEUM

possessing the unique Tangye collection of Crom-
wellian papers, books, and prints. Sir Richard
Tangye, who created this fine collection, was a
self-made man who amassed a large fortune in the
course of building up a great engineering business.
He was born in 1833, and died in 1906. He was
a constant benefactor to Birmingham, where his
business was situated. .

It is impossible here, of course, to deal with all
the papers fully: that indeed would be a matter
for a close detailed history of the period. Only a
few will be mentioned specially now: and the first
of these is a printed ‘“‘ benevolence,’’ or request
for an act of benevolence towards the king, which
is ina case of Stuart and Cromwellian documents
against the wall on the side of the room farthest
from the window. In plain words (and the mean-
ing of ‘‘ benevolence ’’ was. perfectly well under-
stood by Charles I and his subjects), this paper
represents a forced loan of {20 by a London citizen
to Charles I. It was called an act of loyal grace,
but was nothing of the kind. It was simply a
fraudulent form of taxation. The City of London
opposed Charles I persistently: he attempted to
extort money from it in all kinds of ways, legal and
illegal, and London resisted his attempts strenu-
ously and not unsuccessfully. (Whitmore was an
exception among the City officials.) Charles asked
point blank for £100,000 as a loan: it was flatly
refused. He issued all manner of patents and
monopolies, at a price, thereby hindering the general

THE STUART AND COMMONWEALTH ROOMS 117

bulk of trade : he levied ship money, but did nothing
with it to put down the pirates of the Mediterra-
nean, who ruined many a London merchant. He.
imprisoned citizens who refused to pay: he dis-
missed the Parliament which would not vote him
supplies. London, in fact, was genuinely harassed
and even oppressed, so that men had to borrow to
pay their rent, and trade was almost at a standstill.
London, as we know, was not alone in England in
resisting the king’s unwise methods : it was, indeed,
simply the leader in refusing to obey. The City
trained bands were solemnly mustered, and fought
against the king at Newbury in 1643 ; for which he
set a ban upon London—ineffectually : he said that
none should trade with London. A story, pointed
if untrue, is told of James I, and of more than
one English sovereign. The king, angry with the
Londoners, threatened to remove to some other
city the Parliament and the courts of justice. ‘‘ Can
your Majesty remove the Thames too ?”’ asked the
Londoners, knowing (as Celtic and Roman London
knew) that no human power could take away
that natural channel of prosperity. Neither could
Charles I shut up and bar off the great port of the
world.

The stirring events which led to the setting up
of the Commonwealth need not be dealt with here.
London had played a great part in opposing the
king : it beheld the tragedy of his execution, that
tragedy in which the gallant bearing of the victim
went far to outweigh the culpable mistakes of his

118 _ THE LONDON MUSEUM

rule. The London Museum has a ghastly relic
of the drama in Whitehall when Charles

‘Nothing common did, nor mean,
Upon that memorable scene,
But laid his comely head
Down, as upon a bed.”

It is a skull which is said to be that of the king’s
executioner, taken from his reputed grave in
Whitechapel. It is in a case on the farther side
of the Commonwealth Room.!

In this room also are the death mask and other
relics of Charles’s great successor, Oliver Cromwell,
Lord Protector of England: one who, whatever his
faults and mistakes, and however violent the means
by which, under the force of circumstances, he
reached the supreme power, must ever be held
among the very greatest of Englishmen. It is
curious, and suggestive, to notice how the portraits
of Cromwell in this room differ. Sometimes the
engraving is bad, sometimes the artist unskilful:
one picture (in the farther window) is certainly
a contemporary one: but, after all qualifications
have been made, the likenesses show as many
varieties as do the opinions of historians upon
the man.

Cromwell’s family Bible is here, and his private
Bible, with his autograph: his watch also, and a
button from his coat—possessions which bring his
burning and tremendous personality very near to

1 It is only right to say that the skull may not deserve this gloomy

title to fame. It is probably that of Brandon, an executioner; but
Brandon, it is very likely, did not execute Charles I.

THE STUART AND COMMONWEALTH ROOMS IIQ
us. On the central screen, on the side nearest the
entrance door, is a whole letter, written and signed
by him, in his clear handwriting. In the same
room is a contemporary bust of Charles I, perhaps
the handsomest of English kings ; and in the first
case in the Stuart Room are medals to commemo-
rate his death, and royalist badges. In the case
between the windows, in the Stuart Room, is Crom-
well’s official inventory of the king’s estates. So
close does the London Museum draw us to the two
chief figures in that sad struggle.

All the papers and prints are worthy of the closest

Oliver Cromurell's Gun

study. Here there is space to mention only two or
three more exhibits. In the case at the end of the
Cromwellian Room are documents of Richard Crom-
well, the quiet, ineffectual second Lord Protector.
Here, too, is the staff of office of the great Parlia-
mentarian general, Fairfax, presented to him by
Parliament on his appointment as Commander-in-
Chief. On top of a case to the left is Cromwell’s
gun. A rent in the breech can be seen: but the
gun has been greatly restored, and a good deal of
it is really eighteenth century work. Neverthe-
less the strong hand of the Lord Protector must
once have guided the weapon.

In the window of the Commonwealth Room is
the autograph of General Monk (afterwards Lord
Albemarle), which brings us almost to the Restora-

I20 THE LONDON MUSEUM

tion, of which he was the principal agent. London
had grown weary and distrustful of the Common-
wealth and its system of government, though when
Cromwell was first made Protector the citizens
invited him ‘‘to a very splendid entertainment at
Grocers’ Hall, the streets being railed, and the solem-
nity of his reception such as had been at any time
performed to the king ; and he, as like a king, graci-
ously conferred the honour of knighthood upon
the Lord Mayor at his departure.”’

There is one Londoner of the Commonwealth
period who will never be forgotten—John Milton. He
is not as yet represented by anything in the Museum,
though he was born in London, and worked and
lived most of his life there. London has a worthy

memorial of him outside the church where he wor- ~

shipped—St. Giles’s, Cripplegate ; and in the base-
ment of the Museum are pictures of many London
houses with which he must have been familiar. It
was in and of London that Milton wrote perhaps
the noblest praise and the noblest ideals ever ex-
pressed of any city: “‘ Behold now this vast city ;
a city of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, en-
-compassed and surrounded with God’s protection.
. . . What could a man require more from a nation
so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge ?
What wants there but wise and faithful labourers,
to make a knowing people, a nation of prophets,
of sages and of.worthies? We reckon more than
five months yet to harvest ; there need not be five
weeks ; had we but eyes to lift up, the fields are
white already.”

CHAPTER VIII
THE LATE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ROOM

THE late Seventeenth Century Room, or Restora-
tion Room, is a large and well-lighted chamber
opening out of the previous apartment. It contains
a collection of very varied interest. The period it
illustrates was itself many coloured, and London
begins now to seem almost a different place from the
city which had fought so long for its ancient rights,
and had seen within its walls so many changes,
not only of families but of whole races. ‘‘ With-
in its walls ’’—that is really a misleading phrase,
a metaphor now, instead of a fact. The greatness
of London lay henceforth outside the old City, at
Whitehall, St. James’s, and later even farther west.
The King and the Court and the Parliament were to
be the centre of London’s world, instead of the
Lord Mayor and Aldermen and the Court of Com-
mon Council. Under the later Stuarts London
actually lost its constitution for a time—a thing
which would have stirred even England deeply a
hundred years before ; but now there was no rebel-
lion, no vital interruption of trade. It was a ques-
tion which concerned the City and its officials rather
than the mass of Londoners, to whom it was perhaps

not much more than a matter of excited gossip. In
121

I22 THE LONDON MUSEUM

fact, the interesting feature of London henceforth
is the picture it affords of English society, of which
it was the focus.

The welcome given to Charles II on his return
in 1760 shows that the occasion was national. He
was met south of London Bridge by the Lord Mayor
and Aldermen, and escorted through the city, the
way being lined by the London trained bands
(London’s citizen army) and the liverymen of the
great City companies. Innumerable gay banners
were waving, drums and trumpets sounding, citi-
zens cheering wildly : “‘ there was never such a sight
of noblemen and gentlemen that marched then,
brandishing their swords all along.”” But the king
did not stay in the City : he went right through it,
without halting, to his palace at Whitehall; and
in the evening it was not the City alone which
rejoiced (with ‘‘ almost as many bonfires in the
streets as houses’), but London and Westminster.
There was a new and greater London springing up.

The Museum contains at present no relic specially
connected with the Restoration rejoicings. But in
the case between the two windows on the right
there is something to recall the end of the Stuart
dynasty in England—a summons to the London
trained bands to muster in 1688, when London was
in confusion through the flight of James I. The
trained bands succeeded the old “‘ Marching Watch ”’
of the sixteenth century and earlier—a levy of all
the freemen and apprentices of the City companies,
once a year. The massed watch, numbering in
I5I0 some 2000 men (thirty years later it reached

THE LATE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ROOM 123

15,000) used to parade and march formally through
the City. It became, however, little more than a
show, and, as an armed force, was superseded by
the trained bands, who, as has been seen, were mus-
tered for ceremonial purposes like the Restoration
procession as well as in real earnest for war against
King Charles I.

The trained bands were the body of London
citizens organised as soldiers. It was always the
custom of the young men to practise archery and
other military exercises, and Henry VIII in 1537
gave the Guild of St. George (to-day the Honour-
able Artillery Company) a charter embodying its
right to such practice. The Guild formed a nucleus
of skilled men, who could in turn drill the trained
bands, which at that period numbered about
15,000 men. A hundred years later there were
about 17,000. In 1653 the trained bands all over
England were dissolved—except those of London,
which survived till 1794, when they were developed
into the London militia.

In this same case between the windows are some
tokens which show how strong was the Stuart sense
of the divine right of kings. They are “touch
pieces.”” It was believed for many centuries that
the touch of the king would cure the disease of
scrofula, or “the king’s evil.” The practice of
“touching for the evil’? was begun by Edward the
Confessor, and continued, so far as can be ascer-
tained, by almost all the kings of England up to
1688. Henry VII made a solemn ceremony of the
custom, with a religious service and the bestowal

I24 ; THE LONDON MUSEUM

of a token on the person touched. No English king
after James II performed the rite ; but James and
his son and grandson in exile continued to “ touch,”
and struck silver coins for the ceremony. Evelyn
has preserved an exact account of the first “ touch-
ing ’’ after the Restoration. It took place in 1660.
“ His Majesty sitting under his state in the Banquet-
ing House [Whitehall—the present United Service
Museum], the surgeons cause the sick to be brought,
or led, up to the throne, where they kneeling, the
king strokes their faces or cheeks with both his hands
at once, at which instant a chaplain in his formali-
ties, says, ‘He put his hands upon them, and he
healed them.’ This is said to every one in parti-
cular. When they have all been touched, they
come up again in the same order, and the other chap-
lain, kneeling, and having angel gold [the touch-
pieces] strung on white ribbon on his arm, delivers
them one by one to his Majesty, who puts them
about the necks of the touched as they pass, while
the first chaplain repeats, ‘ That is the true light
who came into the world.’ Then follows an Epistle
(as at first a Gospel) with the Liturgy, prayers for
the sick, with some alteration ; lastly the blessing ;
and then the Lord Chamberlain and the Comptroller
of the Household bring a basin, ewer, and towel,
for his Majesty to wash.”

The window case contains also a long folding
print of the Coronation of James II: sheets of this
kind, which are issued on similar occasions to-day,
show that printing, whether from engraved plates
or from type, had become a much more practic-

THE LATE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ROOM 125

able, easy and widespread art. The reign of
James II, indeed, saw the first English newspapers
of note.

There is also here a lease from the New River
Company. It has been said already that London
owed much of its water-supply to the generosity
of private merchants, who at their own expense
laid down pipes or conduits for the public use:
Lamb’s Conduit Street, for instance, off Red Lion
Square, near Holborn, commemorates one such gift
by William Lambe, a rich clothworker of Eliza-
beth’s reign. But under James I, in 1612-13, a
much more important undertaking was carried out
by Sir Hugh Myddelton, a London merchant, who
caused the New River to be cut from near Ware to
Islngton—a great canal bringing water, so to speak,
to the doors of London. It still supplies a large
part of London’s water, and shares in it are very
valuable.

Other objects in the case are some miniatures,
sleeve links, a pathetic little heart-shaped love-
token, a hunting-knife, a tobacco-box, and a locket
containing a piece of the hair of Queen Mary (con-
sort of William III). These are more or less domes-
tic things, and. we may turn from the window case
to the window nearest the door, and see kindred
objects—some magnificent samplers, full of the
most minute work, and a leather trunk brightly
studded with a pattern in nails. In two cases on
the other side of the entrance door are another in-
stalment of the Museum’s great collection of spoons ;
an old sundial ; a mazer or wide, shallow drinking

126 THE LONDON MUSEUM |

bowl of wood—a kind of cup which had been in
existence for some four hundred years; a metal
mortar cast in Whitechapel in 1668—at a famous
bell foundry which has continued in exactly the
same place of business to this very day ; some more
pipes and pipe stoppers; and horse-bells. On a
screen close by is a document, half-domestic, half-
public. It is an order, dated 1673, for six horse-
men to convey a sum of money from Lewes, in
Sussex, to the Exchequer, for the king’s use.
Charles II was often in need of money, and this
order illustrates both that trait in his curiously
interesting character, and the realities of finance in
his day. There were no postal orders, and very
few facilities for cashing drafts upon persons at a
distance : the money had to be carried, in actual
coin, by special messengers. Hence it was profit-
able for highwaymen to plunder travellers and
coaches, because persons going from place to place
had to carry about with them much larger sums of
money than to-day, to last out their needs till their
return home. It is a sign of the increase of travel
in England itself, and the necessity for better com-
munications, that the first public postal service
(other than that which carried the king’s de-
spatches) was established in the reign of Charles I,
in 1635 ; indeed, the first penny postal service was
not much later, for a certain William Docwra for a
short time—until he was stopped for infringing
the State’s monopoly in the posts—instituted a
penny service for Londoners. In Charles I’s reign
the post-coaches from London to the provinces

THE LATE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ROOM 127

covered fifty or sixty miles a day, and the mounted
postmen twice as far. An ordinary letter was
carried eighty miles for twopence.!

In the central case in the room, there is much
beautiful glass. Burial in the ground has increased
its beauty by giving it rainbow colours. There are
some fine pewter dishes and tankards—pewter
ware was common and good during this period; a
pipe case, which with the tobacco-box mentioned
above is one of the earliest indications of pipes
having been carried about, instead of being kept
in private houses or taverns; a barber’s bowl—
perhaps a bowl for blood, for barbers were then
surgeons as well, and bleeding was the chief remedy
for many complaints—not at all a bad remedy in an
age of fevers and apoplexy ; and some bone skates,
which bring us to the Frost Fair on the Thames in
1684.

It need not be supposed, from this and other
Frost Fairs, that the English climate has changed
greatly. We are looking back not over the lifetime
of one Londoner only, but over many generations :
whenever there was a hard frost, men made special
note of it, so that it seems more important and
more frequent than it really was. And the fact that
the Thames was frozen over, for reasons already
mentioned, makes the frost appear to us now even
more tremendous. As a matter of fact, it needed
little larger frost then to cover the Thames with
solid ice than is required now to cover Highgate

1 See The Post Office: an Historical Summary. Published by
order of the Postmaster-General, 1911.

128 THE LONDON MUSEUM

Ponds. Three weeks of continuous frost meant
a Frost Fair; and three weeks of frost still occur
at intervals—at least three times, for instance, in
the last thirty years. So that Restoration London
was really not more Arctic than the London of
George V.

In the Basement of the Museum are three specimens
of bills printed on the frozen Thames : one is dated
1684, one 1739-40, one 1814. On each occasion
much the same scene was witnessed : booths were
set up, for the sale of food, drink, and commemora-
tive trifles. There were entertainments of various
kinds ; royal personages visited the fair, and sheep
were roasted whole. In 1814 the main walk, from
Blackfriars Bridge to London Bridge, was a con-
tinuous line of traders’ stalls: it was called City
Road. There are many prints of this last fair
(see p. 227).

The ice on the Thames itself, as it consisted to a
great extent of larger blocks from farther up the
river (the remains of a previous thaw, or the begin-
nings of the frost), was rough, though there were
smooth places. It was possible to skate upon it
here and there. But skating on metal runners was
comparatively strange to Englishmen in Charles II’s
reign. It was called sliding, and John Evelyn, the
diarist, speaks of it with interest and surprise, as
if it were a new thing : he first saw it in 1662 :

“Having seen the strange and wonderful dexter-
ity of the sliders on the new canal in St. James’s
Park, performed before their Majesties by divers
gentlemen and others with skates, after the manner

THE LATE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ROOM 129

of the Hollanders, with what swiftness they pass,
how suddenly they stop in full career upon the
ice; I went home by water, but not without ex-
ceeding difficulty, the Thames being frozen, great
flakes of ice encompassing our boat.”

Skates before this time were just bones tied to
the foot: this is one of them. The new fashion
of using metal skates was learnt by the refugee
cavaliers in Holland during the Commonwealth.

Not far from the Frost Fair prints in the Base-
ment are other seventeenth century exhibits. One
is in a glass case under the first window in the long
room filled with prints of the London Parks. It
consists of the mallets and ball of the game of Pall
Mall—an early species of croquet, which came to
England from France in the seventeenth century,
and became very popular at the Restoration. It was
played on a special ground in the fields which are
now the famous street of Pall Mall. Pepys de-
scribes the “ pitch ’’ as being covered with “‘ cockle
shells powdered and spread, to keep it fast, which,
however, in dry weather, turns to dust and deads
the balls.” It was the fashionable open-air game
for Londoners of Charles II’s court ; and it is partly
to the fashion of walking in the parks in the neigh-
bourhood of St. James’s Palace and “ Pall Mall”
that we owe the public parks of that district to-day.
Charles II loved to walk there with his favourites,
his little dogs, feeding the waterfowl with which
he had stocked the lake; and it was he who made
the land into a public park for ever. Many of the
birds on the lake in St. James’s Park are the

I

130 THE LONDON MUSEUM

direct descendants of the very birdshe placed
there. We shall return to the parks for a moment
when we go through the Basement for the last
time.

The other seventeenth century object is a little |

farther on in the Basement. It is a child’s rocking
horse, worn and faded, but still a gallant enchanted
courser of the right grey breed. The stirrups, it is
true, are only wooden foot-rests, and the brave beast

n = =
17 Century Rocwinc-Horse

has no visible legs, but curvets upon a solid round
base. Yet he has borne many a child to fairy-
land, and galloped along the high road of nursery
adventure with a faithful simplicity, in far-off ages
when real life knew no such simple joys.

And so back to the upper floor to King Charles
the Second’s London, where, in the case in the angle
of the left-hand walls, are grim realities. Many
fires and many plagues had London experienced
before, as has been said, but never such a fire or so

THE LATE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ROOM PSG

great a plague as those of 1665 and 1666. It was
fortunate for the health of the City that the Fire
came after the Plague.

The Plague relics here shown are a bell, fuming
pots, ointment pots, anda drug jar. London, inthe
summer of 1665, was a city of the dead. On every
other door were the terrible red crosses that showed
infection, or the bills with ‘‘ Lord have mercy upon
us.’ In every street bellmen tolled dismally, cry-
ing, ‘‘ Bring out your dead.’ Death carts, laden
with bodies, rolled noisily over the cobbled pave-
ments, the empty street redoubling the hollow
sound with echoes. ‘‘ Now,” says a contemporary
writer, ‘‘ Death rides triumphantly on his pale horse
through our streets, and breathes into every house
almost, where any inhabitants are to be found. .. .
Now shops are shut in, people rare and very few
that walk about, insomuch that the grass begins to
spring up in some places, and a deep silence almost
in every place, especially within the walls; no
rattling coaches, no prancing horses, no calling in
customers, nor offering wares; no London cries
sounding in the ears: if any voice be heard, it is
the groans of dying persons, breathing forth their
last, and the funeral knells of them that are ready
to be carried to their graves. . . . Now the nights
are too short to bury the dead ; the long summer
days are spent from morning until the twilight in
conveying the vast number of dead bodies unto
the bed of their graves.”’

The story is too well known to need further repeti-
tion. It can be read in the form of vivid fiction in

132 THE LONDON MUSEUM

Harrison Ainsworth’s Old St. Paul's or Defoe’s
Journal of the Plague Year. It left a deep mark
upon the life of London and the memory of her
citizens, and even to read of it two and a half cen-
turies later stirs a feeling of pity and awe.

Not less terrifying was the Fire, which broke
out on the night of September 1, 1666, and lasted
till September 7. The Museum possesses a fire
helmet of the period (see illustration), a torch-
holder, and a cresset, or holder for balls of flaming
material, such as was borne by constables appointed
for the purpose : it is easy to guess from such things
how readily a fire might arise in the narrow streets,
with their wooden buildings and lack of good ex-
tinguishing appliances. The objects in the glass
case are the charred and calcined remains found on
the site of the burnt houses.

The area devastated stretched from the Monu-
ment, by London Bridge, to Giltspur Street, where
Holborn and Newgate Street meet. Pepys, looking
on it from Southwark, saw it ‘‘as one entire arch
of fire from this to the other side of the bridge,
and in a bow up the hill for an arch above a mile
long.’ All who could do so moved the chief part
of their goods to the outer suburbs: the rest looked
on in fear and wonder, or lent a hand to pull down
houses in the line of the fire’s probable advance—
the only real remedy they could think of. The
King and the Duke of York (afterwards James II)
visited the scene, and gave whatever orders were
possible to stop the disaster : Charles II showed not
a little of the real ability he so seldom chose to
exert.

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THE LATE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ROOM 135

There was a magnificent chance after the Fire to
rebuild London with a breadth of outlook worthy
of its greatness. Wren and Evelyn submitted
plans to the King which would have given a noble
setting to the new St. Paul’s that was to arise
through Wren’s genius. The King approved them
heartily : he could form ideals, if he never lived up
to them. But jealousies and smaller interests stood
in the way of a real reform; and though the old
dangerous squalor was not renewed, St. Paul’s
Cathedral alone—after a display of incredible
meanness towards the architect—was made worthy
of the London that was to be.

It may be mentioned here, perhaps, that Evelyn,
who loved London with a serious devotion, found
one of the chief drawbacks to it a nuisance which
no multitude of complaints has to this day con-
trived to abate to any appreciable extent—
the smoke of London’s chimneys. He wrote a
work upon the subject, complaining bitterly of the
«clouds of smoke and sulphur, so full of stink and
darkness’’: he attributed them largely to the
growing use of coal instead of wood as fuel.

The case on the right of the Plague relics contains
some miscellaneous objects: a facsimile of a great
silver-gilt cup, the original of which belongs to the
Merchant Taylors’ Company; some Dutch tiles ;
William ITI’s watch, and a watch by Tompion (see
p. 158); a glass goblet made in commemoration of
the Coronation of William III and Mary; and
wax-relief busts of those sovereigns. James II had
given recognition to this art by inviting a famous

136 THE LONDON MUSEUM

French modeller, Benoist, to England. But before
we reach the Restoration of 1688 there are two other
features to be considered—the two models of ships,
and the cases of china at the end of the room.

The two ships are fully rigged men-of-war of
James II’s period, bearing the ‘“‘Jack’”’ of the
period (the Union Jack without St. Patrick’s cross)
‘ and the Royal Standard. The larger one is a 92-
gun three-master. The label states that James Il
was the founder of the British Navy. He had
every opportunity of founding it. Under Crom-
well, the fleet, commanded by Blake, had made
England respected alike in European and West
Indian waters: other nations feared the power of
the Protector. Under Charles II the Navy reached
the depth of degradation. In 1667 the Dutch
sailed up the Thames to Chatham, entered the
Medway, burnt the ill-equipped, helpless men-of-
war there, and took the Royal Charles, in which
Charles II had returned to England. Pepys tells
us what London thought of it: “‘ people make
nothing of talking treason in the streets openly.”
There were proposals to sink ships in the Thames
at Woolwich and Barking to stop any further
advance by the Dutch. The City was terrified:
‘the alarm was so great,’’ says Evelyn, “that it
put both country and city into a panic, fear and
consternation, such as I hope I shall never see more :
everybody was flying, none knew why or whither.
. . . A dreadful spectacle as England ever saw, and
a dishonour never to be wiped out.’’ Someone had
to be blamed ; and the disgrace was fastened upon

THE LATE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ROOM 137

Pett, the then head of the celebrated Chatham
shipbuilding family. But the real culprit was
Charles II, whose personal extravagance had de-
prived the navy of money. The sailors were
unpaid, and the ships unfurnished. James II,
ably helped by Mr. Secretary Pepys—whose great
talents as an administrator would not easily be
guessed from his famous diary—brought about a
better state of things. He had, during his brother’s
reign, stoutly resisted the parsimony which led
to the Chatham disaster; and when he came to
the throne, he appointed a commission which
examined thoroughly and impartially the affairs
of the navy, and created a formidable fleet. The
chief feature of these two models of ships may seem
to-day to be the beauty of their lines, the delicate
strength and grace of their whole appearance. But
their real value in the Museum is to recall the time
when, because our sea power had been left to decay,
London, with all its wealth and its immense inter-
’ ests, was at the mercy of an invader.

Last of all we come to the pottery of this period.
It is in several cases on the farther side of the room
from the entrance. The cases in the large bay
window are filled chiefly with Lambeth delft ware :
nearer the exit door are specimens of the handi-
work of John Dwight, of Fulham. We have ar-
rived at the beginnings of the great English pottery
industry, which to-day we so easily take for granted.
When you have a cup of tea, even in the humblest
tea-shop, you are indebted to John Dwight and
his fellow-workers in London under the Stuarts.

138 THE LONDON MUSEUM

Before their time there was no such white glazed
ware made in England.

Pottery and china, as has been said, are in prin-
ciple very simple products. It is in practice that
the difficulties and developments arise. But it is
now time to define them a little more exactly, or
else the succeeding rooms of the Museum will have
little meaning. Broadly speaking, all the wares
covered by either term fall into two main divisions
—(i) earthenware, and (ii) porcelain. Now earthen-
ware, in its plainest form, it has been pointed out, —
is just earth moulded and baked, and it is not neces-
sary here to go into the technical differences in
methods of production. The next stage was to
apply to the rough earthenware a finer and thinner
paste or glaze, and fix it by baking again. The
Celts, as we have seen, made plain earthenware.
The Romans glazed their best ware. In the chaos
that followed Rome’s fall, the art of glazing van-
ished from England for a time: but it gradually
came back, and we have seen specimens of it in the
Tudor and Stuart Rooms. Glazing means, simply,
giving the ware a shiny surface—covering it with
a sort of very thin glass: the glaze might be
coloured, of course.

As soon as the art of glazing began to be well
understood once more, earthenware grew more
varied, and from the seventeenth century onwards
it is divided into classes according to its most
characteristic feature. The green glaze was a
very elementary form of ornament. The next to
it in simplicity, perhaps, is what is known as slip

THE LATE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ROOM 139

ware: this consists of (as always) an earthenware
body, coated with a thin paste of different colours,
which was dried, glazed, and then baked. Delft
ware, on the other hand, has a more highly refined
body, and a white surface, and the glaze is obtained
from tin. Dwight or Fulham ware will be dealt
with in a moment. Salt glaze ware is ware glazed
by the use of salt: it produces a very hard glaze.
Other earthenwares were named after their makers,
like Elers and Wedgwood ware. In fact, all the
different kinds of earthenware ave different because,
first of all, the earth itself is mixed more or less
finely, so that the body colour varies, and secondly
and chiefly, because the slip and glaze applied to
it is also varied in fineness and in colour. There
is really no difference in essence: the difference is
in proportions and in chemical action.

Stoneware really comes almost half-way between
earthenware and porcelain, as will be seen when we
deal with John Dwight : it is, however, for purposes
of classification, earthenware. China or porcelain,
on the other hand, is, properly speaking, the ware
made from a very pure clay, called, in fact, china
clay: the main quality of all porcelain is that it
is translucent—nearly transparent, so that, for
instance, one’s fingers show faintly through it. It
is not necessary here to go into the details of manu-
facture. All that need be done, as we are draw-
ing near a very fine collection of English china, is
to say that it is, for all practical purposes, an
eighteenth century product in Europe. Until in
1709 Boéttger discovered the secret of handling china

140 THE LONDON MUSEUM

clay in the Chinese manner, and the great Dresden
wares began to be produced, China alone could make
real porcelain. Englishmen did not master the art
to any great extent until the London workers at
Chelsea and Bow, in the middle of the eighteenth
century, began to supply the fashionable world
with their fine wares.

But in the Restoration Room we are still only
in the earthenware period. The porcelain has been
mentioned here simply for clearness, to show the
gradual spread and development of the potter's
art in England. Up to the Restoration, as the
previous rooms have shown us, England had not
succeeded in doing more than making quite simple
earthenware with a quite simple glaze fired on to
it. Why, then, was there this outbreak of white
and other coloured ware in the seventeenth cen-
tury ? The names—china and delft—give the clue
to an answer. For centuries past the Chinese had
had their knowledge of the art of mixing glazes
and moulding the finest “‘china”’ clay. It was
the Dutch merchants of the Far East who made the
Chinese wares well known in Holland and Europe
generally ; and the Dutch and German potters
began at once, with more or less success, to copy
the gleaming whites and clear blues of real “ china ”’
—hbut as yet with earthenware as a basis. Work
of this kind began to be produced at Delft, in Hol-
land, about 1600—we have seen an imported piece
in the Tudor Room (p. 88). It is not certain when
it was first made in England, but it was probably
produced in Lambeth by Dutch settlers in London.
A famous patent granted to J. A. van Hamme, of

THE LATE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ROOM I41I

Lambeth, in 1671, for making “tiles after the way
practised in Holland,” is a landmark in the history
of English pottery. Thereafter “ delft’’ ware—
usually neither so fine nor so well made as the
original Dutch—was made in great quantities in
many parts of England. But it is to London, and
to Lambeth in particular, that the foundation of
the industry in this country is due. The chief
feature of delft is the white enamel upon the earthen-
ware : it takes blue and other colours admirably.
The Venus dish in the central window case is a
typical piece of a well-known pattern. There is a
fine set of wine bottles: they were used for table
purposes, being filled from the cask. The fuddling
cups, the use of which has already been explained,
are near relatives of the bottles: and perhaps the
fever of intemperance might be allayed by bleeding
—barber’s bleeding bowls of delft ware are shown
here too. All the pieces in these cases deserve
Close attention: they show the way in which the
English potters tried, successfully or not, as the
case might be, to obtain always a purer and clearer
colour. Even when the bluish or reddish tinge
is too suffused and widespread, the bowls and
dishes and bottles are still an immense advance
upon the brown and green ware of earlier periods.
John Dwight, of Fulham, to whom the case
nearer the door is given up, was perhaps the
greatest of all English potters, though it may be that
the later fame of Wedgwood has overshadowed
him. He was born in 1637, was an M.A. of Christ
Church, Oxford, and died at Fulham in 1703.
He obtained patents for his wares in 1671 and 1684 :

142 THE LONDON MUSEUM

they stated that ‘‘ by his own industry and at his
own proper costs and charges, he hath invented
and set up at Fulham, in our county of Middlesex,
several new manufactures of earthenware.’’ He
claimed that he had discovered the secrets of Co-
logne (i.e. of German stoneware), and of Persian
porcelain : but he took very good care to keep most
of his own secrets. He was for ever making ex-
periments, as though out of an ardent curiosity
and love of the work : he hid or destroyed, however,
moulds, tools, and notebooks dealing with those of
his wares which were unsuccessful or unprofitable.

Pieces of Dwight’s ware are now very uncommon,
and the London Museum is fortunate to possess
even this little hoard. Compare these figures even
with the best of the delft—with, for example, the
portraits of Charles II on the caudle cups of Lam-
beth delft. The latter is the work of a craftsman,
but not of an artist. Dwight’s productions were
the work of both; and if, as seems probable, he
was his own designer and modeller, he must have
been a very remarkable man indeed. As regards
his claim to have made both German and Persian
ware, it does not seem to be accurate, unless,
indeed, as might be the case with so whimsical a
genius, he hid or destroyed his “ Persian ’’ products
irretrievably. What was most like porcelain was his
stoneware, which is a very fine kind of earthenware.
When it was glazed—if it was, and if its polish
is not the natural effect of baking—it had a salt glaze
applied, which produced a hard, gleaming brown
surface. Dwight was also able to use many colours,
but the specimens here shown are typical of his work.

THE LATE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ROOM 143

That, then, is one great benefit the Restoration
period conferred upon London—it founded the
pottery industry, and adorned daily life with its
beautiful wares. Though the chief English pot-
teries now for the most part lie far away from
London, it was London which gave them birth.
In the next three rooms we shall see how London
enjoyed its own productions.

In the case nearest the exit door, on the right
hand of it, there are other objects of some interest,
though they do not need comment. One isa lantern
clock—a clock, that is, shaped like a lantern, with
ornamental openwork. This was a favourite seven-
teenth century pattern. Clocks of a private kind,
so to speak, were not common in England at all till
late in the sixteenth century. During that period
also watches became more or less popular, and
before long they were made in England instead of
being imported from Germany. The most famous
of all English clock- and watch-makers, Tompion,
lived from 1638 to 1713 (see p. 158).

Another object in this case is a large white and
blue dish, with some strange figures of an owl and
a cat anda monkey upon it. It is a squib of the
day—a humorous attack upon certain new fashions
—the rail and the top knot. It belongs to the
last year when a Stuart was sovereign in England—
1688, when James II, perhaps the ablest, and
certainly the most unstatesmanlike of his interest-
ing dynasty, waited in Whitehall for an easterly
‘Protestant ’’ wind to bring William of Orange
past the navy which James had created, and which,

144 THE LONDON MUSEUM

by a bitter irony, preferred the new dynasty to his.
So we are introduced by two suggestions—fashions
and a memorable date—to the eighteenth century
rooms, and to that world of elegance and taste
and complacency which its delightful literature
can make so real to us.
On the walls high up over the exit door are two
groups of weapons. Especially notable are the
crossbows, in this century superseded, for good
and all, by the long musket, which was rested upon
a forked staff and let off by means of lighted tinder
—far enough from the rifle of to-day, but equally
distant, in efficiency, from the old bow and arrow.

It was under the Stuarts that London began
to grow a little like the London we know. West
London, the West End, sprang up rapidly: no
longer was Piccadilly in the country and Westmin-
ster a place apart. That unending succession of
brick which is now London began to be consolidated
on all sides. Clerkenwell, Bermondsey, Newing-
ton Butts, Mayfair (most of the Piccadilly great
houses arose in this period), St. James’s (diversi-
fied by parks) became nearly continuous with the
City. The City itself was more like what we call
now the City—the place of business. The life of
London itself began at Temple Bar and ran to the
parks and palaces, the theatres and gardens and
coffee-houses of Whitehall, St. James’s, Drury Lane,
Covent Garden (laid out as a great square or piazza
under Charles I), and Westminster.

CHAPTER EX
THE JOICEY AND OTHER COLLECTIONS OF CHINA

THE last five rooms on the first floor of the Museum
tend to overlap one another slightly. They contain,
in order (i) the Joicey collection of china (with a
few other notable pieces, and some miscellaneous
objects)—this fills two rooms ; (ii) a further collection
of china and pottery, with some exhibits illustrat-
ing social life in various ways—assembled in “‘ the
Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century
Room ”’ ; (iii) two fine collections of costumes ; (iv)
a small case of theatrical exhibits ; and (v) costumes
of the Regency and Victorian periods, ending in
the Coronation robes of King George V. For the
purposes of this book, it will be convenient to group
the first two rooms together, and consider them as
representing the eighteenth century, or most of
it: the third room will be treated as covering the
period from about 1800 to 1837; the Costume Room
demands separate treatment; and the Victorian
era, with the theatrical collection, will make a
fourth chapter to end the suite. As the Basement
also, apart from the exhibits in it which have
already been mentioned, is chiefly filled with relics
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it too
should, strictly speaking, be treated in these chap-
ters. But its contents, with a few exceptions, are
145 K

146 THE LONDON MUSEUM

largely architectural or topographical, and so form
a complete subject in themselves, capable of the
separate treatment which they receive in the last
chapter of this book.

We come, then, to the Joicey collection of English
china or porcelain; and a very fine collection it is.
Mr. Joicey has been a generous benefactor to the
London Museum, and the gift of this collection is
an invaluable one, for the cases in these two rooms
show us the life of the eighteenth century from many
different angles. The Joicey treasures are supple-
mented by some very fine pieces lent by Mrs. Salt-
ing, the widow of the great collector, whose magnifi-
cent bequests have enriched the National Gallery
and the Victoria and Albert Museum so splendidly.

The first case on the left of the first room contains
*‘ Battersea enamels.’’ The name itself is import-
ant. The wares were made in London, and were ena-
melled—not merely glazed, or merely decorated with
a pattern of thin paste. They are, in fact, porce-
lain or very fine earthenware painted or printed
with an enamel design. York House, Battersea,
was a noted place for such work : it became famous
for it about 1750, having been founded, perhaps,
a little before that date, by Stephen Janssen.
China factories elsewhere in London occasionally
had their designs painted at Battersea.

Whether the supply of such wares created the
demand for them, or whether the demand for them
sprang from interest in the similar and even more
perfect French enamels of the day, and so created
an English source of supply, it would be difficult

THE COLLECTIONS OF CHINA 147

to say. But the objects in this case show very
clearly what sort of people made the demand.
They are all connected with luxury or adornment
of life—with a state of society which evidently
called for elegance and gaiety and “‘ fashionable ”’
manners. Cane-tops, scent-flagons, needle-cases,
snuff-boxes, patch-boxes—they are the belongings
of people to whom polite intercourse and enter-
tainment was the chief joy of life. That is one
aspect of the eighteenth century in London.

The next case on the left contains humbler things
—slip ware, in the form of bowls, porringers, fuddling-
cups and the like: the objects of daily use among
people who lived robustly and coarsely. Slip ware
was, so to speak, the china of the poor in the eight-
eenth century. It was the cheap, natural, strong,
native product which slender purses and unfashion-
able tastes could afford to buy. It is earthenware,
not porcelain, as has been said already (see p. 138).

Look next, for a comment on this slip ware, at
certain pictures on the walls in the next room—
original drawings by Thomas Rowlandson, and a
print of Hogarth’s “Southwark Fair.’’ Rowland-
son was one of the greatest draughtsmen among
English artists, though he often allowed his skill to
be used for the wildest, ugliest and coarsest sort of
caricature. Hogarth, “the first. great English
painter,’ as he has been called, portrayed and
satirised all sides of English life in the eighteenth
century. He was a stern and faithful moralist as
well as a great artist, and his pictures are often
depressing because of the debased side of existence

148 THE LONDON MUSEUM

which they reveal. If the eighteenth centuryhad con-
tained nothing but the events shown in “‘ The Rake’s
Progress,’’ it would have left a black mark upon
English history: but there was another side to it.

These pictures are the counterpart of the slip
ware, to a certain extent: they stand for low life
in London under Queen Anne and the Georges—a
life that was often brutal, boisterous, drunken, and
dirty, and yet brave and strong in its squalor. In
the Basement we shall see more of it.

Next to the case of slip ware is one of Chelsea
ware, of the period from 1745 to 1769. On the
right hand of the room is another case of this ware,
and in the next room still more cases. Except
one or two special pieces, the objects can hardly
be described in full detail here. A short account
of the Chelsea works, which produced the finest of
all English porcelain, will enable the visitor to form
his own judgments. .

The earliest known piece of Chelsea ware is dated
1745: the factory may have been in existencefor some
years before that. It is said to have been supported
by the Duke of Cumberland : the two first managers
were Frenchmen—Charles Gouyn and Nicholas
Sprimont. The works were in Lawrence Street,
Chelsea: a few traces still survive in the cellars
of a house there—a great arched kiln, and evidence
of a passage below the house level ; and little broken
pieces of the old wares are still picked up when the
garden of the house is dug.

Sprimont had been a silversmith, and as he
“furnished or oversaw the models of all that

THE COLLECTIONS OF CHINA 149

was made at the works,’ he must have been a
man of remarkable talent, both artistically and
practically. His management made the Chelsea
wares famous all over Europe: the best examples
are unsurpassed for beauty and perfect workman-
ship. The London Museum is the proud possessor
—or depository, for the object is only on loan—of
perhaps the finest piece of Chelsea china in exist-
ence—one of the finest pieces of china of any kind,
indeed. It is the celebrated ‘‘ Dancing Lesson,”’
or “‘ group within a boscage,”’ lent by Mrs. Salting.
It stands in a case at the end of the second and
larger China Room, on the right of the exit door. A
shepherd and shepherdess, of the wonderful French
Court type, are seated in a boscage—a shelter of
most minutely wrought branches and leaves and
flowers. All round are flowers of a delicacy and
artificiality suited to the shepherd and shepherdess.
The shepherd plays a musical instrument, the
shepherdess nurses a dog fantastically dressed,
which she is trying to induce to dance: two other
dogs are prancing on the ground on their hind legs.
Only one other specimen of this group is known
to have been preserved. It is in perfect condi-
tion. It has been reproduced on a very striking
poster of the Underground Railway.

The whole scene of the group is typical of the
period, of an age which had rediscovered what it
was pleased to call Nature: nature, that is, “to
advantage dressed,’’ not allowed to retain its crude
wildness. English polite taste was modelled on
that of France, where the court of Louis XIV.

150 THE LONDON MUSEUM

at the end of the seventeenth century, had fallen
in love with mock simplicity. Fairy tales, for
instance, came into favour: told, probably, by

; ee — >
(The Dancing LESSOR
Growh wtthin a Boscage~
Chelsea China 1759-1760
an old country nurse to M. Perrault’s little son,

the’ Tales of Mother Goose, as Perrault wrote
them, set a fashion among the wits and beauties,

THE COLLECTIONS OF CHINA Se

and everyone was for dressing as a fairy, or a
peasant, or a shepherd. Poets wrote and artists
painted nothing but scenes of rustic elegance,
of country innocence and peace, of courtly ways
set in groves and gardens and charming woods.
The uncomfortable side of country life was for-
gotten. There were no wasps or spiders, no rain,
no burning sun, no work to be done willy-nilly,
in such a boscage as this which the French artist
Roubillac designed for the Chelsea china works :
nothing but a reasonable amount of sunshine
(tempered by a pleasant shade from “day’s de-
tested glare’’), docile animals, the silver sound of
streams, birds singing discreetly and not too loudly,
and fine raiment and pretty speeches for the happy
children of nature.

Another point to be noticed in this superb piece
of china is the view it gives of performing animals
and pets. The eighteenth century fashionable lady
had invariably a lapdog, or a monkey, or a parrot.
And the “animal comedians’’ were one of the
chief sights at Vauxhall Gardens, as will be shown
when we reach the Basement.

So this pretty fantasy in porcelain is not so
artificial or so remote from real life as it might
seem. Once it was part of the airs and graces
of a graceful age—a thing which Lady Betty
Modish might believe the last word in high fashion,
or upon which even the stupid Sir Plume,

“ Of amber snuff-box justly vain,
And the nice conduct of a clouded cane,
With earnest eyes and round, unthinking face,”

152 THE LONDON MUSEUM

might turn a light compliment. These Chelsea
scent-flagons, cane-heads, and snuffi-boxes must
have been borne by men of whom the groups and
ornamental figures, gleaming new, were no bad
likeness: from these Battersea patch-boxes many
a lady of quality must have taken a patch for her
smooth cheek, the better to resemble her model
in porcelain fresh from the kilns of Lawrence Street.

The wealth and variety of the Chelsea figures
is extraordinary: harlequins, sheep, Chinamen,
frogs, famous actors in noted parts, hens with their
brood, Cupid in a hundred postures, trees, dogs,
rabbits, dancers—there is no end to the charm-
ing “toys.” The output of the factory was enor-
mous. Its activity in London lasted some thirty
years or so, of which the last four or five pro-
duced the finest work. The British Museum Guide
divides the ware conveniently into classes; the
first consists of ware mainly white or creamy
white : the second of objects “thickly made... .
and often decorated with oriental patterns.” The
third period is from 1750 to 1758, when Sprimont
was most active. In the fourth, from 1759 to 1770,
French influence is very marked. In 1769, appa-
rently, Sprimont resigned through ill-health: the
works were sold to a Mr. Cox, who, in 1770, re-
sold them to William Duesbury, whom we shall
mention again shortly. Duesbury carried on the
works for fourteen years, and then removed them
to Derby, where for many years ‘‘ Chelsea-Derby ”
ware was produced. That was the end of the great
Chelsea china industry so far as London is concerned.

THE COLLECTIONS OF CHINA 153

On the right hand of the Joicey Room is a case
of Bow china, and there are other specimens in the
succeeding room. The Bow factory, like that at
Chelsea, was the direct outcome of the interest in
Chinese porcelain, and of the successful attempts in
Germany and France to produce these delicate
wares. Bow china, perhaps, shows its origin even
more closely than Chelsea, for the decorations are
often the little blue flowers and branches which
appear on the best Eastern china: and the works
were called New Canton. It is not quite certain
when the factory was opened ; but it was in exist-
ence in 1744, when Edward Heyleyn and Thomas
Foy took out a patent for making porcelain after
a recipe of their own, which was specified as de-
pending largely upon “an earth, the produce of
the Cherokee nation in America, called by the
natives unaker.’’ The noble red man was to
furnish gay ornaments for the nymphs and swains
of Vauxhall and Ranelagh Gardens. The output
of the Bow works was enormous for that time: in
1754, for instance, the worth of the sales amounted
to over eighteen thousand pounds. The pieces
are as a rule less fine than those of Chelsea, but they
are, at their best, of a high standard. The history
of the factory is much the same as that of the
Chelsea works. It flourished exceedingly for a
time, but gradually declined in public favour, till, in
1762, the sole survivor of the then partners, John
Crowther, went bankrupt. He continued in busi-
ness, however, and was finally bought out in 1775
by William Duesbury, who, the next year, re-

154 THE LONDON MUSEUM

moved the manufacture to Derby, to be joined by
the Chelsea products later and be merged at last -
in the all-conquering Derby ware.

Derby china is no direct concern of the London
_ Museum, except in so far as it was sent to London
for the use of Londoners—as it was, in great quanti-
ties. It evidently was popular enough to super-
sede, gradually, the London wares of Chelsea and
Bow, when the splendid artistic and practical vigour
of the first workers had begun to fade a little.
In fact, William Duesbury formed something very
like a “trust’”’ in the best china. He had had a
business of his own in London for a few years: he
made enamels from 1751 to 1753, and presumably
thus became acquainted with china-workers who
came to him to have their wares ornamented. In
17560 he apparently started china works at Derby,
in association with a financier (to use the modern
term)—John Heath, a banker—and an inventor
or artist, a French refugee, Andrew Planché:
Duesbury, whatever his other qualifications, was
obviously the business man, the promoter, of the
concern. John Heath had owned already, among
other property, a pottery at Derby, and he too
probably knew a good investment when he saw it.
So the Derby works were set up, and like Aaron’s —
rod, swallowed the opposition. |

That is all that is relevant in the story of Derby
china, and not much more need be said now about
the splendid specimens of Bow and Chelsea ware
and Battersea enamel shown in these two rooms.
They are important for three reasons. First of all,

THE COLLECTIONS OF CHINA 155

anything beautiful, anything to which the loving
skill of true artists has been dedicated, is important
to us to-day—important as a model of form or
execution, and important as a relic of the hope and
sincerity and toil of men of our flesh and blood.
Secondly, these specimens stand for an industry
which brought wealth and interest to London.
- And lastly, they are a mirror of the life of Lon-
doners. They were not only objects of daily use in
the fashionable world : they were objects of ardent
thought. The satirists and essayists were always
finding matter for ridicule in the devotion of ladies
of quality to the frail ware of China. (China, by
the way—the China of gardens and architecture
and manners and porcelain and silk and tea—was
a subject of deep attention all through the eight-
eenth century.) One writer, for instance, invents
a mocking story of how ‘“‘a famous virtuoso lady ”’
bought a fine “‘ mandarin and a joss’’ for her Chi-
nese temple, the envy of all her friends: “‘ but the
brutish waggoner happening to overturn his car-
riage, they were crushed to pieces’”’: the shock was
so great that she lost her reason, and her cell at
the Bethlehem Hospital is described as decorated
with ‘‘ Chelsea urns, which she believes to be the
true Nankin.”’

That is satire; but, as we have seen, and as we
shall see again, the eighteenth century did take
its adornments and its pleasures very earnestly :
good taste was the breath of life, though, by a
seeming contradiction, a certain amount of eccen-
tricity might be considered good taste. ‘‘ England,”’

156 THE LONDON MUSEUM

says an essayist, “affords a greater variety of char-
acters than the rest of the world.’’ But if you
would be eccentric, you must let your eccentricity
emphasize the prevailing good taste rather than
criticise it—you must use an extreme of fashion, not
a parody of it.

There are other articles of fashion in these rooms.
The central cases in each contain clocks, watches,
snuff-boxes; and trinkets. As most of the clocks
and watches of the Museum are here, it is advis-
able to say something of them in general at this
point. Why should they be so plentiful during
this period ?

Clocks are older than watches, which require
more delicate and experienced workmanship. The
early clocks were worked by an arrangement of
weights, which, by falling, set wheels in motion:
probably they were in use from the twelfth century
onwards. The wonderful old church clocks still to
be seen in various parts of England—at Wells
Cathedral, for instance, where at the hours two
figures of mounted knights rush forth and tilt vio-
lently against one another, or at Wimborne Minster,
where the sun solemnly crawls round the earth in
a model of the solar system—are worked in this
way. Obviously, they require so much room that
they could only be set up in large buildings ; and it
was not till the invention of the mainspring—a
fine spring of steel which, by gradually uncurling
until it is wound tight again, keeps the system of
wheels in motion—that clocks of a smaller size
were possible. A clockmaker of Nuremberg, Peter

THE COLLECTIONS OF CHINA 157

Henlein or Hele (1480-1542), probably made this
invention for the first time.

But there is another device, which seems at first
sight very mysterious, before the watch or clock
can “‘ go ’’—whether it is worked by weights, or by
pendulum (which is a weight in another form),
or by a spring—and that is what is called the escape-
ment. Weight and pendulum really involve just
the unrolling of a reel: the mainspring means the
loosening of a pent-up force. Ifa weight dropped,
it would drop (by a law of gravity) so many velos
—so many feet per second in an increasing ratio:
it would accelerate. If a pendulum swung un-
regulated, it would gradually slow down. If a
spring uncurled without a check, it would uncurl
more vigorously at first, when it is tight, than when
it has become slack. True time, in fact, would not
be kept if these devices were left to themselves.
The escapement is at once a brake and a higher
gear, to use the modern term. It is a contrivance
(of two projecting flanges and many more com- .
plicated arrangements), which acts upon the bar
moved by the spring, weight, or pendulum, so
as to hold its work back at one moment, and assist
it the next. It gives the automatic movement,
in short, a check in the one direction and a push in
the other, so that it is equalised. The uneven
working of the mainspring is further checked by a
device called the fusee, invented by Jacob Zech,
about 1525. But the escapement is what, in all
watches and clocks, harmonises the various move-
ments.

158 THE LONDON MUSEUM

The sixteenth century, then, was the period in
which watches were first made with some perfec-
tion. The art of making them reached England
slowly, just as other arts did—that of making
porcelain, for example. The first English-born
watchmaker was Bartholomew Newsum, who had
a shop in the Strand in 1568. Naturally, however,
it was some time before so highly skilled a trade
could be provided with many craftsmen, and the
great age of English watchmaking did not really
begin till the seventeenth century, since when
English watches have been held in very high repute.
The Clockmakers’ Company was incorporated by
charter in 1631 : its collection of clocks and watches —
is shown in the Guildhall Museum.

The greatest of all English watchmakers was
Thomas Tompion (1638-1713), a specimen of whose
work is in the Restoration Room near the exit door,
on the left. His shop, at the sign of the Dial and
Three Crowns, was where the Daily News office
now stands in Fleet Street. He made many im-
provements in the machinery of timekeepers, and
his watches and clocks were noted for their accu-
racy. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, and
his partner and successor, George Graham, was
afterwards laid to rest in the same grave. The
epitaph records that his “curious inventions do
honour to the British genius, his accurate perfor-
mances are the standard of mechanic skill.”’

The snuff-box was a habit and a ritual in itself:
tobacco, either for pipes or as snuff, was a feature
of coffee-house life, and it was the most elementary

THE COLLECTIONS OF CHINA I59

mark of politeness and recognition to offer a pinch
of snuff from your elegantly finished box. The
variety of snuff-boxes was endless: they show in
their workmanship every fine handicraft of the day,
and in their shape, ornament, and inscriptions,
every fashion. A mock advertisement (yet not
far from the truth) of 1711 runs:

«The Exercise of the Snuff-Box, according to the
most fashionable Airs and Motions, in opposition
to the Exercise of the Fan, will be Taught with the
best plain or perfumed Snuff, at Charles Lillie’s, Per-
fumer, at the Corner of Beaufort Buildings in the
Strand, and Attendance given for the Benefit of the
young Merchants about the Exchange for two Hours
-every Day at Noon, except Saturdays, at a Toy-
shop near Garraway’s Coffee-House. There will be
likewise Taught the Ceremony of the Snuff-Box, or
Rules for offering Snuff according to the Degrees
of Familiarity or Distance ; with an Explanation of
the Careless, the Scornful, the Politic, and the Surly
Pinch, and the Gestures proper to each of them.”

(Garraway’s was a famous City coffee-house, which
lasted even till the days of Mr. Pickwick ; Garraway
is said to have invented our “‘national’’ dish ‘‘ eggs
and bacon.’”’ A toy-shop meant a shop where these
Chelsea and Bow “toys ”’ or trifles were sold.)

The jewellery of the period, so far as it appears
here, was not very striking. A great poem of the
time explains, in a few lines of imaginary history,
the fate of many ornaments of gold and silver. It
describes a bodkin or hair-pin of Queen Anne’s day,

160 THE LONDON MUSEUM

one belonging to a person of rank, “‘ Belinda,”’ Mrs.
Arabella Fermor :

“The same, his ancient personage to deck,

Her great-great-grandsire wore about his neck
In three seal rings ; which, after, melted down,
Formed a vast buckle for his widow’s gown.
Her infant grand-dame’s whistle next it grew ;
The bells she jingled, and the whistle blew.
Then, in a bodkin, graced her mother’s hairs ;
Which long she wore, and now Belinda wears.”

But the eighteenth century contained not only
low life and fashionable life. Look at the grave
‘‘ srandfather ’’ clock in the Joicey Room, and go
into the next room, and see the heavy, pompous
chiming clock, with a mill scene and little figures,
‘‘all made to work,”’ on the left hand. Then walk
down the middle of this large room, on the window
side, to a central case near the far end. It con-
tains a perfect example of Georgian domestic life
—a fine doll’s house of 1740, all complete, with
parlour, drawing-room, kitchen, large bedroom,
two bedrooms on the top floor, and two basement
rooms. Lady dolls preside over this little world:
how real a world to how many generations of chil-
dren can but be imagined. Here is the quiet life of
the day: the life of decency and fixed opinions,
without extravagance, of gravity and peace with-
out pomp. The age of George II, of which so
little is heard but of its follies or its miseries, must
have known many such a sober, pretty, complacent
home as this, where a tall clock would tick away
the unchanging minutes year after year, and its

THE COLLECTIONS OF CHINA I6I

companion with the striking apparatus sound the
hours with a solemnity unbroken and unvarying
for little things and great alike.

There are probably a good many dolls’ houses
of the eighteenth century still in existence; but

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rom)
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ee io

CEA

SSeS — = Sr

Feorctan Dolls -Houge.

there are few older. Mrs. Neville Jackson, in Toys
of Other Days, only enumerates eight, the earliest
of which was made in 1558.

Dolls themselves are the oldest of all toys: they
have been found in remains of the ancient Egyp-
tian civilisation, and Greek and Roman children
used them two thousand or more years ago. Almost

L

162 THE LONDON MUSEUM

equally old are the materials still used — rag,
pottery or china, and wax: india-rubber, of course,
does not appear before the nineteenth century,
and early in that century, too, the device for open-
ing and shutting the eyes seems to have been in-
vented. The first “‘talking’’ doll, which said
‘“‘ Papa ’”’ and ‘“‘Mamma,’’ is ascribed to 1824.

The young City bloods, as the advertisement
already quoted shows, were ready enough to imi-
tate the ways of their social betters. But they
would often have to do it secretly, for apprentices
were still under severe legal control of their masters.
Even the son of a merchant, if he were apprenticed
to his father, might have to sleep under the counter
and tend the shop. The merchants themselves
were men of substance. Addison said of his crea-
tion, Sir Andrew Freeport, “‘ there is not a point in
the compass but blows home a ship in which he is
an owner’’: and he was delighted to see at the
Royal Exchange “so rich an assembly of country-
men and foreigners consulting together upon the
private business of mankind, and making this
metropolis a kind of emporium for the whole earth.”
There is a case in the larger room (in the middle
of the room) which suggests the civic pride of the
day : it contains armorial china of the City Com-
panies, whose wealth now was growing rapidly, as
their trade spread over the widening world, and
property in the City increased in value. The pieces
are not particularly beautiful, nor very interesting |
in themselves ; but they show the City’s readiness
to take advantage of the best china productions.

THE COLLECTIONS OF CHINA 163

The life of London, indeed, had changed utterly
since the Commonwealth. Her citizens began to
be no longer Londoners, but citizens of the world
—Englishmen who lived, by the accident of geo-
graphy, in the great fair or market-place of man-
kind. It is true that in this century London showed
its old spirit more than once: especially when it
stoutly supported Middlesex’s persistent return
to Parliament of John Wilkes. It is true also
that the commerce of the place expanded amazingly,
as the rapidly widening world sent ever more
varied and richer wares up the London river. It
is true also that one of the greatest of Londoners
is of this epoch—Samuel Johnson. But the char-
acter of the town was altered : its pride now was not
in its rights and privileges so much as in its claim
to lead the fashion of England in art, and letters,
and social usages. That is the significance of the
Costume Room, which we shall reach presently:
it is the significance also of these gracious china
wares.

A picture, on the left hand, of Pope’s “ grotto ”’
at Twickenham suggests that leadership in fashion.
Pope, that genius, whose life, from disease, was
“one long agony,’ was, next to Addison, the head
of English literature in the first half of the eight-
eenth century: he both inspired and followed the
standard of elegant taste. His grotto, like Horace
Walpole’s house at Strawberry Hill later, was a
storehouse of the curiosities and “toys,’’ valuable
and worthless alike, in which the age delighted :
and here the wits debated with him the prose and

¢

164 THE LONDON MUSEUM

poetry, the history and philosophy, all the topics of —
interest of an epoch never surpassed in alertness and
critical excitement.

In a window on the right hand is the bust of a
rival poet, James Thomson. He brought back into
English literature a little of that love of the real
country (not the well-arranged, artificial country of
Pope) which earlier ages had felt so keenly, and
which was to be deepened and broadened so glori-
ously by Wordsworth at the end of the century.
Thomson could look out from a formal eighteenth
century room and see not only arbours and neat
walks and pretty gardens, but that larger vision of

“ Gay castles in the clouds that pass,
For ever flushing in a summer sky.”

It is a sign of London’s position that now Pope and
Thomson, Addison and Swift, Defoe and Prior
must all write in London and all win their fame
from the approval of Londoners.

There are many other pictures in these rooms.
The chief, perhaps, are those of Covent Garden—
without the market-house, but with the colonnade
and the church front : of Hyde Park Corner, with
the toll-houses—the beginning of London on the
west; and of the first Westminster Bridge,
opened in 1750, and rebuilt between 1854 and
1860..

There is also in the middle of the second room
a very fine model of the church of St. Martin’s-in-
the-Fields, the masterpiece of the architect Gibbs,
and one of the most typical and attractive of

THE COLLECTIONS OF CHINA 165

London’s churches. It was built in 1721-206.
In the churchyard lie buried Nell Gwynne and
Roubillac, the designer of the “group within a
boscage ’’: he settled in England as a young man,
and carved many public monuments in London.

CHAPTER X

THE LATE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY
ROOM

A mapP of London in 1814 lies open beside the paper
on which this book is being written. Its colours
are faded to soft blues and drabs, but its clean
copper-engraving is as sharp and clear as ever, and
it shows how small, even a hundred years ago,
was the town that now stretches east and west,
almost unbrokenly, from Ealing to Ilford—fifteen
miles. In the year when Napoleon was sent to Elba
its uttermost limits from east to west were from Pad-
dington to Stepney Green—hardly more than half

the former distance. Beyond those limits were fields ©
and villages such as to-day even the longest motor
omnibus journey barely reaches. There were
turnpike gates on all sides shutting off the traffic
until dues for the upkeep of the roads had been
paid: a famous one stood at Hyde Park Corner
(the previous room contains a picture of it, as has
been mentioned), and another about where the
Marble Arch now is islanded. There were but
three bridges in this London proper—London
Bridge, Blackfriars Bridge (at first called New

Bridge—the approach is still named New Bridge
166

EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY ROOM 167

Street), and Westminster Bridge. Waterloo Bridge
(which also was to have been called New Bridge)
was planned, but not yet made. To the south—
beyond a line drawn from Kennington to Rother-
hithe—and east were open fields. Fields separated
Ranelagh Gardens, in Chelsea, from Mayfair and
Westminster : fields were where now the squares of
Belgravia and Pimlico stand in their regiments.
To the north were fields, rising to the tree-clad
heights of Hampstead and Highgate; and where
now the dismal streets of Pentonville and Clerken-
well shut out all green, Londoners of 1814 took
their pleasure in yet other fields—the famous Spa
Fields, where taverns and gardens maintained the
practice of selling the medicinal waters of the
numerous springs. Of these pleasure resorts we
shall see more in the prints in the Basement.

The main streets ran in very much their present
line. The stretch between Oxford Street and
Holborn, however—now New Oxford Street—took
a large curve to the south, along the line of the
present Broad Street (W.C.) and High Street.
Holborn Viaduct was Holborn Hill and Snow Hill—
a steep valley, in the bottom of which was the
river Fleet. There was no Shaftesbury Avenue, no
Charing Cross Road, no Kingsway, no Trafalgar
Square, no Victoria Street, no Embankment, no
railway stations. The streets were almost all nar-
rower, the houses less lofty than these of to-day—
but often more beautiful.

It is of that smaller, more compact London that
many objects in the Late Eighteenth and Nine-

pe gp

SST

- 168 THE LONDON MUSEUM

teenth Century Room (we may call it more shortly
the Regency Room, though, of course, it covers a
larger period than the Regency) reminds us. The
case against the wall on the left hand contains
relics of some very famous buildings. There is a
fine tea-caddy, for instance, in the form of Old
Carlton House. Carlton House stood formerly at
the bottom of Lower Regent Street, in Pall Mall.
It was built early in the eighteenth century, and
pulled down in 1826: its columns are now part of
the portico of the National Gallery. It was chiefly
notable for its association with the Prince Regent,
afterwards George IV: it came into the possession
of the royal family in 1732, and George III also
used it for social functions. Perhaps the most cele-
brated of all the entertainments given there was
that in honour of the Prince of Wales’ appointment
to the Regency, in 1811. George IV was always
lavish in his public and private expenditure, but
on this occasion he exceeded all bounds. There
were over two thousand guests (including the exiled
French royal family), and the festivities cost, it
is said, £15,000. Six tons of gold and silver plate
were used, and the house was a mass of heavy gilt
and ormolu decorations and crimson satin. This was
an age of display rather than of taste, and seldom
can there have been a greater parade of luxury and
solid wealth. The supper-table of the Prince was
decorated very wonderfully, and, according to a
contemporary account, ‘“‘exhibited a grandeur
beyond description.’’ In front of the royal seat
was “‘a circular basin of water, with an enriched

EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY ROOM 169

temple in the centre of it, from whence there was
a meandering stream to the bottom of the table,
bordered with green banks. Three or four fantas-
tic bridges were thrown over it, one of them with
a small tower upon it, which gave the little stream
a picturesque appearance. It contained also a
number of gold and silver fish.”’

The general public were admitted to view the
decorations during the following week, with the
result that on the last day of such admission the
crowd was so great that many visitors were seri-
_ ously injured : others had their clothes so seriously

torn that they had to send for fresh garments before
they could go home ; while the odd shoes picked up
afterwards “‘ filled a large tub.”’

It was an age of exuberant entertainments and
high living. One of the most notorious figures in
it was the Marquis of Hertford—the supposed ori-
ginal of Lord Steyne in Thackeray’s Vanity Fawr :
a great noble and a bad man. His dressing-case is
here.

Here also are things that bring back the van-
ished older London—London of the merchant
‘princes and the proud, indomitable civic spirit.
There is a piece of the timber of the famous cob-
webless roof of Westminster Hall—of the oak that
only in 1914 has needed help in its old age. West-
minster Hall, one of the greatest glories of London
and of England, was built originally by William
Rufus, and parts of that old foundation still remain.
But the present building was completed in the last
year of the reign of Richard II (1399) ; and in that

170 THE LONDON MUSEUM

very year the unhappy king was forced to abdicate in
the hall he had so nobly built :

“With mine own hands I give away my crown,
With mine own tongue deny my sacred state,
With mine own breath release all duty’s rites:
All pomp and majesty I do forswear.”

Here the law of England built up its stately pre-
cedents and learned procedure, for in this Hall
the Courts sat for near five hundred years. Here
Cromwell was made Lord Protector of England,
here Thomas More condemned, Anne Boleyn tried,
the Seven Bishops acquitted ; here all the eloquence
of England pleaded for or against Warren Hastings.
No spot in the world, save Westminster Abbey
itself, is more deeply wrought into the fabric of
English life: the glorious roof has echoed to every
great cry in our history.

The Hall has been restored from time to time ;
but in essence it is as it was when King Richard laid
down his majesty in it.

The Royal Exchange of Gresham we know al-
ready (see p. 98): here is a box made from a frag-
ment of the oak left when it was burnt down in
1838. Here, too, is a box made from the piles of
Old London Bridge, that had stood for well-nigh
seven hundred years. The last houses left upon the
Bridge had been removed in 1757-8, not long before
George III came to the throne: the new bridge
was opened by William IV. And in this case, too,
is a snuff-box made of the roof-timber of the old
Guildhall. The present Guildhall is a hybrid build-

EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY ROOM I7TI

ing. The fine porch is part of the second Hall,
built in 1411: it is not known when the still older
building which stood here before that was built.
Most of the rest of the Hall, the least beautiful part
of it, was erected in 1789. The whole was restored
in 1870. This little piece of wood must have helped
to shelter the Lord Mayor and Sheriff and citizens
century by century: under it Lady Jane Grey was
tried : under it the men of London resolved to stand
up against King Charles.

Newer London is to be seen on this wall, too, in
an odd fashion. There is a group of the relics of
the building of the Thames Embankment—forge-
ries, made to sell to those who expected great finds
of antiquities during that huge undertaking. It
seems strange that London had to wait so long
to control the Thames: the Embankment was only
opened in 1870. Wren had planned it in his scheme
for rebuilding the City after the Great Fire : but, as
we have seen, little came of that scheme. It was
left to a great engineer of the Victorian era, Sir
Joseph Bazalgette (to whom a relief monument
has been erected by Charing Cross Railway
_ Bridge), to set up this immense river wall,
and, incidentally, to reorganise the drainage of
London.

Of the great Queen herself, in whose reign so much
of the London we know took on its present form, the
first of the many relics possessed by the Museum
is here exhibited: it is the writing-case she used
when she ‘was only Princess Victoria—that simple
girl whose modesty and strength of character so

172 THE LONDON MUSEUM

soon impressed her ministers when, still young, she
was called to the throne.

This room, indeed, is. a mirror of varied and rather
mixed life. In the case on the left of the door,
for instance, is a collection of later Fulham stone-
ware—flasks, “‘ pocket pistols’’ (flasks in pistol
shape), jugs in the likeness of faces or people (of
Queen Victoria, for instance): the simple native
humour of London, through many centuries a
constant feature in the character of its citizens,
breaks out once more in these well-finished but
homely vessels. Equally homely are the Stafford-
shire figures in the corresponding case against the
opposite wall. There is something oddly pleasant —
about these queer likenesses of the great and good,
with their fine rich blues and their shining black
hair. Here are Queen Victoria again—this time
with baby princes to look after and a British lion.
to guard her—and Spurgeon (the famous preacher),
and many other celebrities. This, unlike the Ful-
ham vase, is a kind of porcelain, not earthenware ;
and so, very often, is Isleworth ware, of which
specimens are in the same case. “Staffordshire”
is a general name for the work of many potters:
potters worked in the county from time immemo-
rial. The white “delft’’ manufacture was intro-
duced there, apparently, early in the eighteenth
century ; but it was a development yet newer than
the use of china clay which really gave Stafford-
shire the chief place in the pottery industry
—the adoption of bone-ash as the founda-
tion of the porcelain. Late in the eighteenth cen-

EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY ROOM 173

tury this material began to be employed, and it is
still the chief substance of the wares of everyday
use. In figures like these, English pottery, having
first learnt the lesson of finer manufacture from
abroad, expressed the blunt, unsophisticated, yet
on the whole, kindly joviality of the race. The
Isleworth works were established in the last half of
the eighteenth century and lasted till 1810 : earthen-
ware was made there also.

In the left-hand wall-case, too, is a hint of the
literary life and the commercial life of the day—
one of the prize pens annually awarded at Christ’s
Hospital: the school was then and always famous
for its penmanship, and there Charles Lamb learnt
that delicate, neat handwriting that is so full of
character. There, too, doubtless, many a lesser
person learnt the “‘copperplate hand ’’ which the
merchants of the day demanded of their clerks.
Good writing was a milestone on the road to
success, as Nicholas Nickleby found: “ Nicholas
dipped his pen into the inkstand before him, and
plunged into the books of Cheeryble Brothers.
Tim Linkinwater turned pale, and tilting up his
stool on the two legs nearest Nicholas, looked over
his shoulder in breathless anxiety ... ‘He has
done it !’ said Tim, looking round at his employers
and shaking his head triumphantly. ‘ His capital
B’s and D’s are exactly like mine; he dots all his
small 2’s and crosses every ¢ as he writes it. There
ain’t such a young man as this in all London,’ said
Tim, clapping Nicholas on the back—‘ not one.’ ”’
And so to affluence.

I74 THE LONDON MUSEUM

The cases on the right hand of the room illustrate
social life more minutely than it is possible to de-
scribe here. If we knew the full story of all the |
routs and balls, all the. ceremonies and formalities
that these visiting cards and invitations record, we
should have a picture of human vanity and hope
and disappointment and joy, that it would take a
lifetime to examine in detail. Let one exhibit
suffice to imply the elaborate pomp and parade
of emotion of the day—the pictures of funeral
mutes above the case nearest the door. No gran-
deur that could by any artifice be compassed was
omitted from the barbaric show of public sorrow
on such occasions: grief was thought to be mea-
sured by the amount of money spent on gloomy
and mournful emblems.

Apart from the cards and notices, the objects in
these two cases are, on the whole, connected with
individual persons of eminence, or public displays,
or the buildings of London. There is a card belong-
ing to the first Duke of Wellington ; a little sketch
by Queen Victoria—a by no means incapable artist,
as another exhibit later shows; medals and seals
commemorating public events and the opening or
foundation of buildings; a foundation plate of
Hammersmith Bridge (the first suspension bridge
over the Thames, opened in 1827); medals struck
in honour of the visit of the Emperor of the French
to the City in 1855; a letter of Nelson; a cheque
signed by the writer who has been called “ Lon-
don’s special correspondent for posterity,’’ Charles
Dickens ; a vue optique, or folding telescopic view

EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY ROOM 175

of the Thames Tunnel, built between 1824 and
1843—when the view is opened out, it becomes a
kind of peepshow, inspected through the holes in
the front: and a season ticket for the Exhibition
of 1851. That was the first of the great inter-
national exhibitions of which England hoped so
much. The Crystal Palace was erected for the
occasion, in Hyde Park, about where now the
Albert Memorial stands: there are prints of the
scene in the Basement. The Queen herself opened
the Exhibition, and all London marvelled at the
palace of glass which Sir Joseph Paxton had set
up. It was rebuilt at Sydenham in 1884, and in
1913-14 purchased for the nation by public
subscription. Londoners have, perhaps, lost faith,
to-day, alike in exhibitions and in the Crystal Palace;
but in 1851 the brotherhood of man and the world-
wide supremacy of British trade both seemed to be
proclaimed by the dazzling “‘ greenhouse ’’ in Hyde
Park.

There are many pictures round the room which
are worthy of study by those interested in the exact
changes in the streets of London. Perhaps the
most suggestive to us to-day is one above the case
on the farther wall, on the right hand—a painting
of an old horse omnibus, with the ‘* knifeboard ”’
seat on top of it. The story of the London omnibus
is one of those byways of history which will for
many years to come wake recollections, and per-
haps regrets, in the minds of Londoners. It is not
ten years since the ’bus-driver was a London insti-
tution, and his pair of fine horses a wonder and

176 THE LONDON MUSEUM

delight. The streets rang with the sound of hoofs
instead of the grinding of changing gears. To-day
not one regular service of horse “buses runs in the
City. The drivers had a steady outlook and a
philosophy of life which, if it was sometimes rough
and crude, was also human and above all Cockney
—and no Londoner need be ashamed of being a
Cockney, if such a thing exists now. Wonderful
stories were current of the wit and repartee of rival
drivers of the old ‘buses : though, if the truth must
be told, they were often neither very ready nor very
witty. The writer remembers but two from per-
sonal experience, each the result of a race between
drivers. Two ’buses drew up abreast at the Bank
crossing, after desperate efforts by each to secure the
lead all along Cornhill. One driver became rather
abusive: the other made no reply, but remained
in silent contemplation of the opposition horses :
at length he answered. “ Pore things!’’ he said,
solemnly regarding the other’s horses with pro-
found sympathy : “‘ pore things!’’ And that ended
the controversy.

The other retort was of the direct personal kind
in which Cockneys have often excelled. A purple-
faced driver, with an inordinate nose, was being
taunted by a rival, whose-face was large and flabby
and also provided with plenty of nose, of a pale
fleshiness. Red-face endured the insults in a silent
fury for some time, but at last found speech. “ My
nose may be red,’’ he said hoarsely, “ but it ain't
made of putty, and it ain’t spread all over my
face.”’

EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY ROOM 177

They are gone now, the drivers and the horses :
never again will Mr. Punch be sure of a subject
for a picture in the strife between old ladies and the
““cad,’’ as the early conductors were called. To
some extent the South African War destroyed the
vitality of the horse omnibus: too many of the
gallant beasts went out, like the Londoners them-
selves, to take their share in the war, as members
of artillery teams; and few came back. But that
was an evil which time would have cured. The
real danger was, of course, the motor omnibus with
the petrol engine—a much more convenient vehicle,
it must be admitted, if less picturesque, and or-
ganised in a service a thousand times more efficient.

Omnibuses—a plural which shocked persons of
precise speech, when it was first used, almost as much
as did the mock suggestion of an alternative, “ om-
nibi ’’—were a French invention. The name is at-
tributed to a grocer of Nantes, named Omnés, who
set up as his sign a Latin pun—Omnés ommibus,
« All for all.’”’ The owner of some baths saw the
sign, and borrowed the ‘‘omnibus”’ part of it, for
a vehicle he ran for the use of his customers.
From this it was transferred to the public vehicles
which, in 1819, Jacques Laffitte started in Paris.
Laffitte gave an order for “‘ omnibuses’’ to Shilli-
beer, a coach-builder of London and Paris, who,
struck by the convenient design, adopted it, and
began a similar service of vehicles in London. The
first to run started from the ‘ Yorkshire Stingo ”’
Tavern, at Paddington, on July 4, 1829, and tra-
velled to and from the Bank. Seventy years later

; M

178 THE LONDON MUSEUM

the first modern motor omnibus traversed the
streets of London. It is, perhaps, worthy of record
that the first vehicle to cross Holborn Viaduct
when it was-opened in 1869 was a “City Atlas”’
horse omnibus.

Shillibeer died in 1866. He had revolutionised
London traffic. Omnibuses were for a long time
called shillibeers; but as, before his death, the
owner of the name became an undertaker, and a
hearse was also liable to be called a shillibeer, the
term quickly disappeared.

Motor omnibuses, it should be said, are not a
modern invention, though the petrol engine is.
In the Basement there are several pictures of
‘“‘horseless carriages ’’ of the period from 1830 to
1840: the best known was Mr. Goldsworthy Gur-
ney’s, which ran many hundreds of miles and car- —
ried a large number of passengers. But the great
cost of working, the jealousy of coach and omnibus
proprietors, and the very heavy turnpike dues pre-
vented these unwieldy engines from becoming a
financial success; and so the motor omnibus dis-
appeared till the twentieth century.’

We shall have to go backwards and forward
over the years in the last chapters of this book,
beholding permanence and change side by side
from generation to generation. There is one thing
that remained continuous throughout the eight-
eenth and nineteenth centuries—the throne. In

1 For fuller details see Mr. H.C. Moore’s very interesting work,
Omnibuses and Cabs, upon which the above account is largely based.

EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY ROOM 179

the case against the left-hand wall is a dumb
chronicle of English history—medals struck for
every coronation from James I to George V. Here
are the likenesses of that Stuart dynasty which
twice had to learn that England, like London, is a
good subject when it has a good master. Here is
William III, that serious, able Dutchman, and
Queen Anne, who “sometimes counsel took and
sometimes tea’’; unpopular George I and II;
‘“‘ Farmer ’’ George III, whose life ended so piti-
fully; and George IV, the “first gentleman in
Europe,” the “fat friend ’’ of the bloods and dan-
dies : the sailor William IV, in whose reign England
was nearer revolution than at any time since 1688 ;
Victoria, whose long reign strengthened the mon-
archy immeasurably; and her son and grandson,
in whose time it has been said that the sovereign of
England is ‘a king among free men, and a free man
among kings.”’

CHAPTER XI
THE COSTUME GALLERY

THE Regency Room opens into the largest room
on the first floor of Lancaster House, the splendid
apartment in which are arranged three fine collec-
tions of costume—the Joicey collection, given by
the same benefactor whose treasures are to be seen
in so many other rooms of the Museum; the Abbey
collection, presented by Mrs. Abbey in memory
of her husband ; and the Seymour Lucas collection,
presented by the collector, who happily is still
living. Mr. E. A. Abbey was an American by
birth, but he lived much in England, and worked
there ; his historical paintings and wall decorations
are to be seen in many buildings in England and
America. He died in 1913. Mr. Lucas is the well-
known painter of historical and “‘ subject ’’ pictures
and an authority on costume.

The costumes shown are very varied, and as they
are arranged in groups according to their donors,
it is impossible to consider them in strict chrono-
logical order. It will be best to mention first
a few striking exhibits of special and individual
interest, and then to give a brief history of the
garments as they arise—men’s dress, women’s,

hats, shoes, gloves, umbrellas, hair-modes, orna-
180

THE COSTUME GALLERY 181

ments and small articles of various kinds. There
are also some specimens of weapons of different
sorts, and at the far end of the room a “‘ Georgian
dinner-party ’’ group, which will round off our
survey, made in the last three rooms, of indoor life
in the eighteenth century and a little later.

To begin with the specially notable exhibits. In
a case in the middle of the room, almost opposite
the entrance door, but a little towards the right,
are the oldest complete costumes in the Museum.
For obvious reasons, it is unusual to find garments
intact three hundred or more years after they were
worn : but here are two fine complete suits of an
Elizabethan noble. In just such raiment as this
the great Englishmen of the spacious days paid court
to the Virgin Queen, or sailed cheerfully to “ singe
the King of Spain’s beard,” or went to look on,
perhaps a little contemptuously, at the people’s
theatre set up by Burbage and Shakespeare on
Bankside in Southwark. The men who wore these
trunk-hose and doublets may have heard Eliza-
beth’s brave words to the sailors of London as
they set forth against the Armada—‘‘I have the
body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have
the heart of a king, and ofa King of England, too”;
or they may have died the cruel death of the day
for the sake of their faith : or they may just have
lived the quiet life of sober Englishmen, remote
from strife and tumult.

In the case against the wall on the right hand
of the door are two more relics of warlike days
—a uniform worn at the battle of Waterloo, and a

182 THE LONDON MUSEUM

SSS = =
OrFicer’s UnNiFoRM WORN AT

Battle or Watertoo

panel from the trappings
of a horse in the funeral
procession of the Iron
Duke who won _ that
battle. We think idly of
the victory ; we can real-
ise a little the horrors
of a fight that was, for
all practical purposes,
hand “to © hand. amd
imagine something of
what it meant to Europe
to have the terror of
Napoleon taken away at
last and for ever: we
can glory in the unbreak-
able courage of the British
soldier. But there is
more in a battle than
that: more that, died
could speak, a uniform
like this could tell. There
is no nobler passage in
English literature, none
truer to the facts of life
and death, than those
chapters by Thackeray
that describe Brussels

before and _ after

Waterloo. Here is
“such a scene as that

red sash may have

THE COSTUME GALLERY _ 183

seen: “Amelia was wrapped in a white morning
dress, her hair falling on her shoulders, and her large
eyes fixed and without light. By way of helping on
the preparations for the departure [to the front] and
showing that she too could be useful at a moment
so critical, this poor soul had taken up a sash of
George’s from the drawers wherein it lay, and fol-
lowed him to and fro with the sash in her hand,

Post-Charse used by se
ee
looking on mutely as his packing proceeded. She
came out and stood, leaning at the wall, holding
this sash against her bosom, from which the heavy
net of crimson dropped like a large stain of blood.”’
In the Basement is a relic which deserves men-
tion here—the post-chaise which Wellington used
throughout the Peninsular War and at Waterloo
itself. The Iron Duke, even with this aid, must
indeed have been made of iron to go through those

184 THE LONDON MUSEUM

years of incessant fighting with no faltering in his
great abilities. Officers and men alike in his wars
were spared no more than himself: they showed a
physical endurance not surpassed even in Eliza-
beth’s day.

Another battle is represented among the cos-
tumes. Ina case on the same wall, but some way

down on the left of the entrance door—part of the

Seymour Lucas collection—is the uniform of an
officer of the Irish Dragoons, killed at the Battle of
Dettingen (1743). There is both reality and his-
tory there: Dettingen was the last battle at which
an English king (George II) took the field in person.

There is a more peaceful interest in the sedan
chairs, one of which stands on each side of the
room, a little way from the entrance. A sedan
chair explains itself: it was a box large enough for
one person, seated : the side, and sometimes the top,
opened, and it was carried by two porters or chair-
men, walking between shafts at either end, which
they held in their hands as a wheelbarrow’s handles
are held. The chair was introduced into England
in the reign of Charles I, and it died out in the first
half of the nineteenth century. Hackney coaches—
the forerunners of cabs—had very nearly the same
period of existence. The cabriolet (introduced in
1805 : a kind of gig with the door at the side—Mrs.
Raddle visited Mrs. Bardell in one), the hansom (pa-
tented by Joseph Hansom in 1835), the “‘ growler,”’
or four-wheeled cab, or “‘Clarence’’ (of which
the brougham is an adaptation : it was introduced
in the ’forties), and the omnibus (see p. 177), all

te ai Seis oanai

THE COSTUME GALLERY 185

combined to make the sedan chair obsolete. But
for two centuries it had shared with the hackney
coach the public traffic of London. Chairs were
cabs, so to speak: they could be hired at a recog-
nised uniform fare. The chairmen had no great
reputation for civility: but they had grievances
of their own, as a mock-advertisement of the eight-
eenth century shows: “I am a Chairman. You
know, sir, we come when we are called, and are
expected to carry all who require our assistance.
It is common for men of the most unwieldy corpu-
lence to crowd themselves into a chair, and de-
mand to be carried for a shilling as far as an airy
young lady, whom we scarcely feel upon our poles.
Sure, we ought to be paid, like all other mortals,
in proportion to our labours. Engines should be
fixed in proper places to weigh chairs as they weigh
waggons ; and those whom ease and plenty have
made unable to carry themselves, should give part
of their superfluities to those who carry them.”

In a case on the left hand, about half-way down
the room, is another touching exhibit: a velvet
coat that belonged to Oliver Goldsmith. It is one
of the many things in this Museum which brings
us very near to the human life of men long dead.
Goldsmith, vain, awkward, uncouth in society,
extravagant, not too strict in his habits, must have
had some quality more striking and appealing than
his genius (tender and delightful though that genius
was), to make him an intimate of the circle of
Johnson, and Reynolds, and the jealous Boswell.
In their company he wore this very coat, and

1&6 THE LONDON MUSEUM

“strutted about, bragging of his dress, and I be-
lieve (says Boswell) was seriously vain of it... .
“Come, come,’ said Garrick, ‘ talk no more of that.’
. . . Goldsmith was eagerly attempting to inter-
rupt him, when Garrick went on, laughing ironic-
ally, ‘Nay, you will always look like a gentleman ;
but I am talking of being well or ill dressed.’ ‘ Well,
let me tell you,’ said Goldsmith, ‘when my tailor
brought home my bloom-coloured coat, he said,
“Sir, I have a favour to beg of you. When any-
body asks you who made your clothes, be pleased
to mention John Filby, at the Harrow, in Water
Lane.”’’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, that was because
he knew the strange colour would attract crowds
to gaze at it, and thus they might hear of him,
and see how well he could make a coat even of so
absurd a colour’’’ (Boswell’s Life, 1769). The
breeches of the coat, according to Dr. Birkbeck
Hill, cost £1, 4s. 6d.: a “‘half-dress suit,’ made at
the same time, cost £12, 12s.; and Filby’s name has
lived even longer than his simple commercial re-
quest might have led him to hope. He was a good
friend to Goldsmith, who, perhaps, never paid
him for this coat of which he was so proud: for
Goldsmith died £2000 in debt. But as to that, let
his epitaph be the words of that noble man who
knew him so well and helped him so generously—
** Let not his failings be remembered ; he was a very
great man.”

Yet one more personal relic. In the case of gloves
in the middle of the room is one that belonged to
“the most gorgeous Lady Blessington,” a brilliant

THE COSTUME GALLERY 187

meteor of society in the first half of the nineteenth
century. She was an Irishwoman, whose beauty
and literary skill (and at first also her husband’s
wealth), made her one of the most prominent figures
in London from about 1815 to 1849, when she
died in Paris, a refugee from the debts her extra-
vagance had caused. She was a friend of Byron,
and her salon—in St. James’s Square, first of all,
and afterwards in Seamore Place—was frequented
by the most eminent people of the day.

There are a few other objects in this room, apart
from the succession of costumes and weapons,
which may be dealt with here. On the left-hand
wall, for example, is a coverlet of crimson velvet
used at George IV’s coronation. In the central case
near this is the blue Garter of the Order of the Garter,
already mentioned. There is on the left a fine case-
ful of beads and silk purses, of the kind that loving
young ladies were wont to make for their admirers
a hundred years ago; ina case in the middle of the
room, close by, are sad little bead animals and a toy
sceptre ornamented with glass beads, of an earlier
date, that children must have played with no less
lovingly. At the far end, on the left, beyond the
exit door, are three costumes which hardly fit in
with the series elsewhere in the room. One is the
Blue Coat dress already mentioned—virtually the
uniform of a London apprentice under the Tudors.
Another is the official costume of a Lord Mayor of
London. It is difficult to say how long this has been
the Mayor’s dress: for at least five centuries he has
been decked out in special robes. Finally, there is

188 THE LONDON MUSEUM

clerical garb of the eighteenth century, when,
though there were many good and holy men among
the clergy—John Wesley among them—there were
enough of a different character to make it almost
uncommon to find a kindly reference to them in the
literature of the day. The churches were formal
and yet domestic in appearance, with their huge pews
and three-decker pulpits; and the solemn black
robes and white bands suited them. The portrait
of an ideal clergyman of the eighteenth century is
lovingly drawn by Goldsmith in the Vicar of Wake-
field.

To come now to the main bulk of the costumes.
As has been said, they are not arranged entirely in
chronological order ; but if a short account is given
here of the chief changes from time to time, it will
be easy to recognise the various types of dress, the
differences in the details of which are mainly in
the richness and diversity of the decorations. In
fact, when we see a collection such as this, the im-
pression at first given is of sameness of cut but
difference of material. It is only when, say, a
seventeenth century costume is contrasted with one
of a whole century later that the sum of the small
alterations and developments is realised. Take such
a thing asa hat. The flat caps of the early Tudor
period were succeeded by a kind of “tall hat ’’—
a high-crowned, well-brimmed hat, in shape not at
all unlike the article of to-day. Under the Stuarts
the crown was gradually reduced in size and the
brim enlarged. When the brim became incon-
veniently wide (as it did in the Puritan fashion,

THE COSTUME GALLERY 189

though in this the crowns were also very large),
one part or flap was folded over or cocked up—the
typical cavalier fashion. Then another piece of
the broad edges was cocked up, and finally, in Queen
Anne’s reign, the remainder of the edge, the third
flap, was also cocked, and there was the cocked hat
complete, looking as if it could never have had any
connection with the steeple or high-crowned hat,
but in truth its direct descendant. That is an
instance of the way in which careful observance
of all intervening stages builds up a full story of
evolution—just as the story of the Stone Age was
built up, as has been pointed out already.

The earliest dress in the Gallery, apart from the
Tudor costumes already mentioned, is in the same
case as the Tudor garb—a lady’s dress of the seven-
teenth century. In the Seymour Lucas case on
the left, is a buff coat of about the same period,
and there are also some military dresses of the time.
Military dress, up to the Commonwealth, practically
meant any dress the wearer chose or could afford,
with weapons and perhaps a breastplate added.
The first attempt at uniformity on any large scale
was in 1645, when Fairfax dressed all his men in red
—the colour which was to remain the distinguishing
mark of the British Army till it was superseded by
the neat, efficient khaki of to-day. Armour was
given up in the reign of Queen Anne. But in the
case on the right of the entrance door will be seen
a small vestige of armour which lived on even later
—the gorget, the then meaningless survival of the
ancient neck-guard of the Middle Ages. (The

Igo THE LONDON MUSEUM

modern Life Guards’ breastplate is said by Mr.
Clinch in his English Costume, not to be a survival,
but to have been invented or revived in 1820 for
George IV’s coronation.)

Under the Stuarts, women’s dress lost, in one
way, the stiff, boarded-up appearance it had had in
the days of Elizabeth, when the farthingale made a
sort of square platform at the hips, and the upper
part of the body was encased in numerous stays.
The stays remained, though they became a little
less severe as the ruff gave way to the “fall” (a
kind of band over a white collar), and that in turn
to the magnificent lace collars so familiar in portraits
of the beauties of Charles II’s and William III’s
courts. The farthingale, on the other hand, was
eventually succeeded by something hardly less
artificial in the hoop, which varied in size from
reign to reign and even from year to year in a most
haphazard way. Large feathered hats, much the
same as men’s, were worn instead of the tall hat of
the Elizabethan age. :

Men’s costume changed even more. The “vest ”’
or close-fitting overcoat, which was worn in or soon
after Elizabeth’s reign—a garment perhaps not un-
like those ‘‘sweaters’”’ of to-day which are made
to button in front—the vest grew rapidly into the
coat with wide skirts, and trunk-hose and the quilted
coverings of the thigh developed into knee-breeches.
Wigs for men came into general use; and they
could be very expensive. £5 was paid for one by
a fine gentleman in 1663—as much as he usually
gave for a complete suit.

THE COSTUME GALLERY I9gt

Speaking generally, we might say that the seven-
teenth century wore habitually clothes (trousers
excepted) which can be recognised as direct ances-
tors of the clothes of to-day, not separated by so
great an apparent gap as there is between Tudor
costume and ours. Yet the Tudor dress was, as
has been said, but an earlier stage of the Stuart
dress. It was, in fact, the introduction of foreign
accessories—lace, fine buttons, and the like—which
gave the latter period its seeming originality.

Before considering the typical eighteenth century
costume, let us look at some special articles of dress
which in this gallery have a case to themselves.
They go back, in some instances, much earlier than
the period with which we are now chiefly concerned.

First of all there is a case of boots and shoes, in
the centre, near the door. Shoes and boots—the
correct historical order, as far as England is con-
cerned—begin in the Museum, as we have seen, in
Roman times (see p. 26). The Celts, apparently,
wore a kind of half boot, of hide or skin, all in one
piece, with a lace round it—a sort of mocassin,
perhaps. The Roman sandal, of course, was really
meant for a better climate than England’s, and it
did not continue in general use after Rome withdrew
from Britain, though the Saxons wore it to some
extent. The Saxon shoe was very much like the
Celtic, and there was no great change under the
Normans, at first. It was in the reigns of Henry I
and Stephen that the long pointed toes began to
appear (see illustration, p. 57); the very long-tced
shoes called Poleyns, or shoes @ la poulaine, were

192 THE LONDON MUSEUM

first worn in Richard II’s reign, one of the most
extravagant periods of English costume; the toes
were stuffed with wool or moss, and in the case of
very extreme patterns, the tips were curled back-
wards and fastened by a chain to the wearer’s knees.
Side-lacings were worn in the middle of the fifteenth
century.

About A.D. 1500 the fashion changed. Pointed
toes disappeared, and the foot-covering became very
blunt and sturdy, of the “ bear’s paw’’ shape. But
it was as yet not much more than a sole with a
covering for the toes. As it spread a little further
over the foot, it began to be slashed—cut to show
~ the coloured hose underneath.

From Elizabeth’s time onwards both upper and
sole grew more elaborate. Buckles were worn, and
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were
wonderfully rich and varied (the buckles in a case
near the shoes, however, seem to be knee-buckles
rather than shoe-buckles), High heels also came into
fashion, at first in the form of chopines, or detach-
able clogs. Clogs were in use for many generations
—they were an obvious necessity in the mud for
which London was celebrated. Jack-boots seem to
have grownout of the high-flapped military or travel-
ling boot ; there is an enormous one of the Common-
wealth period in a case on the left, and the mounted
soldier in the middleof theroom is wearing a fine pair.

The chief changes in the eighteenth century
were in the richness of the material for ladies’
shoes, and the height of the heels, and in the size

THE COSTUME GALLERY 193

of the flap and buckle on men’s shoes. About 1800,
to the annoyance of the buckle-makers, strings
began to be used, and thenceforward—with minor
improvements like patent leather and_ special
polishing materials—boots and shoes were much as
we know them to-day. The early nineteenth cen-
tury saw many pretty and elaborate shapes in
ladies’ boots—for instance, the fine little pair of
satin, which, if they had only fur round their tops,
might have been the very boots with which Ara-
bella Allen fascinated Mr. Winkle.

Gloves have a simpler history, because when a
glove was once invented, there was not much room
for improvement: almost the only change that
could be made was in the ornamentation of the
material. Gloves were worn in England at least
as early as Saxon days. It was, however, in the
Middle Ages that they began to be regarded as
something precious: they were richly adorned—
often with jewels, and had a distinct ceremonial
use—for instance, as a token of defiance, or a symbol
of office. As much as £5 was paid for a pair in the
fourteenth century—a much greater sum then than
now. London, by the way, owes a curious debt to
gloves. It used to be customary for bishops, on
their consecration, to present a pair to all who
came to the ceremonial dinner that followed the
event—a considerable expense. After the Great Fire,
however, Charles II abolished this custom—on con-
dition that all bishops to be thereafter consecrated
should give not less than £50 to the fund for re-

N

194 THE LONDON MUSEUM

building St. Paul’s—or else not be consecrated. In
sixteen years, fourteen bishops in all contHeas
£1150 in this way.

The Museum’s collections of gloves contain some
very fine specimens. Lady Blessington’s has already
been mentioned. Close to it is a wonderful little
pair for a child, with delicate pictures stamped on
the flap. At the left end of the case is an even
greater treasure—a pair made of chicken skin. The
chief historian of gloves is not quite convinced that
gloves ever were made of this material (which was
chosen for its softness), so the rarity of such a pair
can be guessed. They are probably of the seven-
teenth century, in which “chicken gloves’’ are
occasionally alluded to.

_ Fans are almost part of the history of manners
rather than of costume. (They too, by the way,
are said to have been occasionally made of chicken
skin.) They have been used in various forms all
over the world for centuries. In England they were
most important and popular at the period when
manners were most elaborate and affected—the
eighteenth century. The mock suggestion of snuff-
box drill for men has already been mentioned. A
similar suggestion was made in regard to fans—the
woman’s weapon in the warfare of politeness, as
the snuff-box was the man’s. The Sfectator gives a
satirical account of a master of “‘ the Exercise of the
Fan, according to the most fashionable airs and
motions that are now practised at Court. The
ladies who carry fans under me are drawn up twice
a day in my great hall, where they are instructed

THE COSTUME GALLERY I95

in the use of their arms, and exercised by the fol-
lowing words of command :

Handle your Fans,

Unfurl your Fans,

Discharge your Fans,

Ground your Fans,

Recover your Fans,

Flutter your Fans.”’

Umbrellas were not regarded as necessities, in
spite of the English climate, till quite late in the
eighteenth century. They have, of course, been in
use in more southern climates since very ancient
times, but they were very slow in coming into
favour in England. They were known, in the form
of sunshades, in the seventeenth century, but were
little used. In the eighteenth century they were
used by women to protect them from rain, but not
by men, until Jonas Hanway, an eminent philan-
thropist, introduced the habit in the last half of
the century : crowds used to follow him, amazed at
the strange sight. The “ macaronis,”’ or fashionable
young men of 1770-80, however, seem to have used
umbrellas earlier than this, and were thought
ridiculous in consequence—more ridiculous, that is,
than even their other extravagances made them.
Canes, during this period, reached the highest form of
fashion and elegance, as the beautiful china cane-tops
in the Joicey collection showed. The “great ’”’ age
of the sunshade and parasol was the Victorian era.

Hats have already been mentioned. But it may
be added here that the headgear which was, above
all other articles of dress, the mark of the self-respect-

196 THE LONDON MUSEUM

ing Englishman in the nineteenth century, the tall
hat, created on its first appearance in London an
even greater sensation than Jonas Hanway’s um-
brella. John Hetherington first wore one, in 1797 ;
and he was prosecuted for causing a breach of the
peace thereby. An immense crowd gathered to see
the gleaming chimney-pot, and it was solemnly
alleged by the police that ladies fainted in terror —
at the sight. Why or how he invented the prepos-
terous hat, is not known; it can have been de-
veloped from nothing worn during his lifetime. It
may have been based upon the Elizabethan and
Puritan high-crowned hat; but that, as has been
said, had long ago turned into something quite
different.

There is a case of ladies’ hats here, too; but they
are for the most part of a rather later period. They
are the wonderful straw bonnets of the Regency
and Early Victorian ages—headgear which carica-
ture has perhaps too often made to seem ugly. It
is true that the Victorian age produced bonnets of
fearful and wonderful shapes which it would be
hard to call beautiful; but the broad “‘ coal-scuttle’’
had a charm of its own. The same period saw the
use of shawls, of which the Museum has some good
examples. It also revived hoops, by the name of
crinoline, which the early volumes of Punch de-
lighted to ridicule.

The weapons in this room represent the perfec-
tion of what might be called the duelling period.
Pistols were not invented till the last half of the
seventeenth century, but as soon as they became of

THE COSTUME GALLERY 'IQ7

convenient size, they were used for this form of
‘‘ private war.’’ The very long musket came from
Spain early in the seventeenth century, and was
soon followed by the device which made the spark-
striking apparatus part of the weapon; previously
it had been necessary to carry a fuse and light it
before the gun could be discharged. The new in-
vention made pistols possible. All the apparatus
of the wheel-lock pistol is shown here—the flints,
the powder tester, the ramrods, the little armoury
of gunsmith’s tools for mending and cleaning the
weapon.

The coaching pistols remind us of the insecurity
of the roads: even the streets of London itself were
hardly safe. The eighteenth century was the hey-
day of the highwayman, footpad, and pickpocket.

To return to costume more generally. Through-
out the reigns of Anne and the Georges it fluctuated :
now there was exaggeration in one respect, now in
another. It was perhaps in hair-dressing that the
exaggeration was most startling. ‘‘ There is not
so variable a thing in nature as a lady’s head-
dress,’ says Addison. In a case on the far left-
hand corner of the room, and in the dining-room
group at the end, are some of the most amazing
erections ever set on the human head in the name
of fashion. The ordinary wig was large enough,
and demanded plenty of attention: the “ pipes”’
by which it was curled have been mentioned (p.
109)—there are specimens here. But the maca-
ronis, male and female, of 1770-80, exceeded all
bounds. Huge erections of hair, based upon a

198 THE LONDON MUSEUM

foundation of tow, were built up for two or three
feet in height, and were covered with ornaments of
the wildest kind. These terrible ‘‘heads’”’ (“I will
bring new heads for my sisters,’’ writes a young
gentleman of London to his mother in the country),
with all the grease and dust they must have har-
boured, were expected, when once properly set up,
to last in good condition a fortnight or three weeks.

The hoops of a little earlier were hardly less ex-
aggerated. They were “blown up into a most
enormous concave,” and excited the ridicule of Mr.
Spectator: but he had the fairness to make a woman
answer that “‘the skirts of men’s fashionable coats
formed as large a circumference as our petticoats ;
as these are set out with whalebone, so are those
with wire.”’

Those are the extremes of eighteenth century
fashion: and extremes of fashion, not unknown in
even the twentieth century, are often rather absurd.
But when we look at the average dress of that period,
as it appears in many cases in this room, it must
be admitted that it was both stately and graceful.
The social life of the time, among all but the lowest
Classes, was full of display—not necessarily vulgar
display, by any means: people liked fine and
beautiful garments, and the habits of public inter-
course gave them the chance to show them. It has
been said that this was the age of the coffee-house :

.that implies that it was an age of social assemblies
and public parades. A satirist proposed to start a
newspaper which he was sure would be immensely
successful: it was to deal solely with “ plays and

THE COSTUME GALLERY 199
pantomines, masquerades, ridottos, concerts, the
smart comedians, Vauxhall, Ranelagh . . . auctions
of china, knick-knacks, and cockle-shells . . . parrots,
puppies, and monkeys, lost, stolen, or strayed.”
Everyone went to the fétes and promenades : every-
one had a favourite coffee-house : everyone wanted
to be in the fashion—except those unhappy persons
whose fate we shall see in the prison section of the
Basement. London under the Georges, in fact, had
a disease of gaiety—a grave intentness on leading a
life of cultured pleasure. Goldsmith pretended to
think it gloomy and monotonous, so serious was its
aspect. But there was variety even in its unifor-
mity of fashion. Addison writes as if London were
almost several cities: ‘‘The inhabitants of St.
James’s, notwithstanding they live under the same
laws and speak the same language, are distinct
people from those of Cheapside, who are likewise
removed from those of the Temple on the one side,
and those of Smithfield on the other, by several
climates and degrees in their way of thinking and
conversing together.” He himself tells us how
various the “‘ clubs ’’ were—the coffee-houses being
but clubs open to all who could pay for their re-
freshment :

‘There is no place of general resort wherein I
do not often make my appearance; sometimes I
am seen thrusting my head into a crowd of politi-
cians at Will’s, and listening with great attention
to the narratives that are made in those little
circular audiences. Sometimes I smoke a pipe at
Child’s, and whilst I seem attentive to nothing but

200 THE LONDON MUSEUM

the Postman [newspaper], overhear the conversation
of every table inthe room. I appear on Sunday
nights at St. James’s Coffee-house, and sometimes
join the little committee of politics in the inner
room, as one who comes there to hear and improve.
My face is likewise very well known at the Grecian,
the Cocoa-Tree, and in the theatres both of Drury
Lane and the Haymarket.”

“ Coffee, that makes the politician wise,
And see through all things with his half-shut eyes,”

was not the only drink at these resorts: chocolate
and tea and stronger fare could be and were obtained.

The fashionable man’s day was simple. He would
rise about nine, attend levées, or read, tilleleven. At
noon he would go to the coffee-houses, borne thither
in his own or a hired chair. He might have a turn
in the Park till two; then would come dinner at a
tavern—lasting, perhaps till six o’clock ; then to the
play, or to some entertainment, or to a reception,
and last of all to the coffee-houses again for cards
and conversation. The fine ladies’ day would be
much the same, except that they would spend as
much time over shopping as the men spent over
dinner. They would sally forth in their coaches or
chairs, “‘their hair plastered up with pomatum,
their faces patched to taste, their trains bundled up
in a heap behind, and rustling at every motion,”
and would spend hours over the mercers’ counters, or
talking scandal over a dish of tea, or running hither
and thither to see the latest piece of ‘‘ Chinese ”’ ware.

The poorer folk had their clubs too. The S#ec-

THE COSTUME GALLERY 201

tator gives a humorous account of one, from which
we may quote one or two rules: it was called the
Twopenny Club, that sum being the price of mem-
bership :

“JJ, Every member shall fill his pipe out of his
own box... .

“TV. If any member swears or curses, his neigh-
bour may give him a kick upon the shins. . . .

«VII. If any member brings his wife into the Club,
he shall pay for whatever she drinks or smokes. . . .

““X. None shall be admitted into the Club that is
of the same trade with any member of it.”’

The parks and pleasure-gardens will be dealt with
when we reach the views of them in the Basement.
Only one other institution need be mentioned here
—one of the coffee-houses which has provided the
London Museum with a valuable exhibit (see p. 51).
Don Saltero’s was one of the well-known coffee-
houses, but it was a museum as well, In it were, as
Steele said, “‘ten thousand gimcracks round the
room and on the ceiling.’’ It was opened in 1695
by one Salter, a barber who drew teeth and wrote
rhymes, and it was visited by many well-known
people. Sir Hans Sloane, founder of the British
Museum, who lived not far off, gave many objects
to the museum, but it seems to have contained a
good deal of rubbish as well. The house was in
Cheyne Walk, Chelsea.

Don Saltero’s, in fact, was by way of being the
London Museum of the day. (It is to the eighteenth
century, it should be remembered, that we owe the
greatest of all museums—the British Museum,

202 THE LONDON MUSEUM

opened in 1759); and now it is only a name in
another and better London Museum. So, too, the
coffee-houses and the fine dresses, and the “‘ heads,’
and the snuff-boxes and canes are all laid by and
ticketed and labelled; by the sum of them we
reckon up and praise or condemn the age in which
they were things of joy and beauty. But we live
by the thoughts and the deeds, good or evil, of the
men and women to whom they were real.

CHAPTER XII
THE THEATRICAL AND VICTORIAN ROOMS

THE Costume Room opens into a little lobby or
antechamber which contains the chief theatrical
relics of the Museum. It is an irony of fame and
fate that the very gifts which in a living actor
bring him, or the people he impersonates, into the
closest acquaintance with his audience, are the
qualities which death renders least credible.
Nothing is less easily made real than an account of
how a player acted on a certain occasion; even if
the very tones of his voice could be recalled—as
they can to-day by the gramophone—there is still
some individual quality which disappears with the
man himself. And when the character of acting
has changed so greatly as it has in England during
the last thirty or forty years, the old players, with
their gestures as it were frozen stiff in pictures and
statues, seem like something less than ghosts—
actors indeed, but of a fantastic stage in a strange
land. Almost, one might say, the tinsel pictures
here hung on the walls are symbols of the frailty
of theatrical fame.

But it is possible to learn a little of some of them.

Garrick, in particular, was the friend of great men,
203

204 ; THE LONDON MUSEUM

and like the incomparable Mrs. Siddons, frequented
the society of wits and teachers and writers in a
period when none too great respect was paid to
actors. Johnson, as usual, summed up with pro-
found good sense his chief service to the stage:
‘““ Here isa man who has advanced the dignity of
his profession ; Garrick has made a player a higher
character ;’’ and he paid him also that superb com-
pliment : ‘‘ His death eclipsed the gaiety of nations,
and impoverished the public stock of harmless
pleasure.’”’ Practically all who saw him—Walpole
is an exception of some importance—agree in
praising him lavishly. ‘In Lear Garrick’s very
stick acted.”’ ‘“‘ That young man never had his equal
as an actor, and he will never have a rival,’ was
Pope’s verdict, and Pope was not generous of
praise. ‘‘ An abridgment of all that was pleasant in
man,’ said Goldsmith, of whom Garrick wrote the
bitterly true mock epitaph :

“ Here lies Nolly Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll,
Who wrote like an angel and talked like poor Poll.”

It is said that he was vain and mean. He may
have been: but he was the close friend of men who
were neither, and when they have admitted his
faults, there is a great amount of solid and attrac-
tive character left. The truth perhaps is that
he had what would have been called, ten years or
so ago, the artistic temperament : which did not fit
in well with eighteenth century standards. Weare
able to know him as no other actor save Macready
is known: and it is evident that he was personally

THE THEATRICAL AND VICTORIAN ROOMS 205

interesting and remarkable, while, if it is ever pos-
sible to setup standardsof comparison insuch matters,
he was the greatest of English actors. Perhaps the
_best short description’ of his appearance is that by
Miss Hawkins: ‘I see him now ina dark blue coat,
the button-holes bound with gold, a small cocked
hat laced with gold, his waistcoat very open, and
his countenance never at rest, and, indeed, seldom
his person.”’

But to describe in full all the actors of whom
some relic or other is to be found here would be
impossible. Many of the names are familiar tradi-
tions: Jenny Lind, the “Swedish Nightingale,”’
whose character was as sweet as her voice; Phelps,
great in Shakespeare, and equally successful in a
comic part like Bottom and a tragic one like
Macbeth—Malvolio, perhaps, being his finest piece
of acting; Kean, the most wonderful Richard III
of the stage, whose fame was such that when he
acted the profitsof Drury Lane Theatre were doubled,
and in sixty-eight nights “the theatre cleared up-
wards of £20,000 ’’ : Kemble, one of the last of the
old declaiming, pompous actors: in his reign at
Covent Garden occurred the celebrated O.P. riots.
The theatre had been burnt down in 1808. In the
following year it was rebuilt, and was reopened in
September 18, with Kemble as Macbeth. But he
had increased the price of seats—the pit from 3s. 6d.
to 4s.and the boxes from 6s. to 7s. The moment he
appeared on the stage the audience drowned all
speech with hoots and groans and yells; nor could
Mrs. Siddons, even then still the greatest of actresses,

206 THE LONDON MUSEUM

but destined to retire from the stage three years
later, obtain a better hearing. The play was aban-
doned. The next night, and for three more nights,
the disturbances continued. On the fifth night
Kemble tried to make an explanation, but it was
not accepted. The audience believed that Kemble
had increased the prices mainly in order to pay
Madame Catalini, the foreign actress, the then
enormous salary of £150 for a “‘ week ’’ consisting of
two nights; Kemble said he merely wished to de-
fray the cost of rebuilding the theatre. He attempted
to soothe the audience first of all by. cancelling
Madame Catalini’s contract, and then by importing
pugilists into the pit—which resulted in unseemly
and serious fighting. Finally, Kemble had to yield ;
he restored the O.P. (old prices) and made a humble
apology to the audience.

The tinsel pictures are examples of a peculiar
‘art’? which even yet lingers on in London: they
are prints, coloured by hand, with tinsel stuck on
above the colour. They are homely, simple re-
minders of the idols of the stage—of actors and
actresses remembered for some special gesture, or
scene, or speech, which now, because it is separated
from both play and player,seems a mere “theatrical”
posture. Hardly less formal and unnatural are the
Staffordshire figures in the case on the right hand ;
and of all the fine realities and brave pomp of the
old stage, all that is left are a few “ properties ”
that once were instinct with mimic tragedy.

The history of the early theatres has already been
told (see p. 76). The robes worn by Sir Herbert

THE THEATRICAL AND VICTORIAN ROOMS 207

Tree as Cardinal Wolsey in Henry VIII bring us
down to the present day. But there is a long story
implied in the picture of Old Sadler’s Wells, on
the wall. It can only be told briefly. It is, in
little, a summary of the change in London’s habits
of amusement! between the Restoration and King
Edward VII’s reign. A certain Sadler, in the reign
of Charles II, built a ‘‘ music house ’’ (a one-storied
building of wood) in Clerkenwell. In 1683 he dis-
covered an old well, fed by a chalybeate spring ; and
as such springs were then the fashionable “‘ cure ”’
for most of society’s ailments, he laid out gardens to
make the place an attractive resort. The gardens
were in use for a century or more, though the water-
drinking fell out of fashion. Sadler’s Wells, in fact,
became a sort of Earl’s Court of the eighteenth
century : people took the air and refreshments in the
gardens, and saw performances of various kinds in
the music house. In the Basement is a print of an
“animal comedian ’’ of Sadler’s Wells—Spinacuti’s
wire-walking monkey, which appeared there in 1768.
Three years before that a new theatre had been set
up in the place of the Music Room, by the then
proprietor, Rosoman; parts of it stood till the
twentieth century. At this theatre many famous
performers appeared: the most notable were
Grimaldi, the great clown, whose life ended so
pathetically in want and disease; and Edmund Kean.
Sadler’s Wells became finally a theatre pure and

1 For many details here, and in the later accounts of similar places,
the author is greatly indebted to the standard work by Mr. Warwick
Wroth, Zhe London Pleasure Gardens of the Eighteenth Centz:77.

208 THE LONDON MUSEUM

simple, and reached its highest point of reputation
and excellence under Phelps, who for eighteen years
(1844-62) produced there Shakespeare’s and other
plays. Later it becamea music-hall, in the modern
sense of the term (which is not so far removed from
the scope of this ‘‘ music room ”’ in the eighteenth
century). Its position, now that Clerkenwell has
become a rather mean district of houses and ware-
houses, makes it an unsuitable site for either a great
theatre or pleasure gardens. So London changes
from century to century : fields and watering-places
in one generation are bricks and mortar the next,
and a grandfather may see squalor and overcrowding
where in his boyhood was gaiety and ease.

Cremorne Gardens, for which there is an admis-
sion ticket in the glass case, were also famous—in
the nineteenth century; but their fame became
notoriety after a very short time. They were in
Chelsea, at the other end of Chelsea Reach from
Ranelagh ; and the entertainments there tended
to become noisy and disreputable. Many balloon
ascents took place from the Gardens, which were
closed in 1877.

This theatrical lobby leads into the Victorian
Room, which is filled mainly with royal dresses of
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, about which
it is difficult to say much. There are, however,
other exhibits besides the costumes. On the right,
for instance, is the chair in which Queen Charlotte,
George III’s wife, died in 1818 at the poky little
palace at Kew; and here too is the cradle of Princess
Amelia, George III’s youngest daughter.

THE THEATRICAL AND VICTORIAN ROOMS 209

Between the door and the window, on the right,
is a collection of the famous dolls made by Queen
Victoria and Baroness Lehzen. They came to
the London Museum from Kensington Palace,
where the Princess, as she then was, dressed them
in her childhood. ‘“‘ Her Majesty was very much
devoted to dolls, and indeed played with them till
she was nearly fourteen years old. Her favourites
were small dolls—small wooden dolls, which she
could occupy herself with dressing, and who had a
house in which they could be placed. . . . The Queen
usually dressed the dolls from some costumes she
saw either in the theatre or private life.’’!_ The deli-
cacy of the stitching is very remarkable. But the
Queen’s hands (noted for their smallness and fine-
ness) were clever in many ways. There is in one of
the central cases a little book of sketches by her,
which are wonderfully well drawn. The riding-
whips in the same (central) case remind us that
these same hands were skilled with the reins also.
The Queen was an excellent horsewoman, and often
rode with the Prince Consort, as many popular
pictures of the day testify, among them one of the
tinsel pictures in the Lobby.

Other relics of Queen Victoria are the bonnet
which she wore at the opening of the Great Exhibi-
_tion of 1851 ; the Exhibition has already been men-
tioned (see p. 175) : here, too, are her first cap; her
throne cushion; the medicine chest of her father,
the Duke of Kent (in a case at the far left end of

1 Sir Henry Ponsonby, quoted by Mrs. F. Nevill Jackson in
Toys of Other Days.
OQ

210 THE LONDON MUSEUM

the room); the uniforms of her consort, Prince
Albert, and a set of beautiful chessmen, of painted
wood, that belonged to him. Opinions, perhaps,
will differ for many years to come as to the precise
character of the great Queen—as to her ability, her
foresight, her personality : but whatever be the final
verdict of history, it is certain that in her long reign
she impressed herself deeply upon the nation, and
set an example of dignity, goodness, and sympathy,
which went far to counteract the unpopularity of
George IV and William IV. She was, perhaps,
more than any monarch since Elizabeth, the uncon-
scious embodiment of the nation, so that at her
death it seemed as if something permanent in Eng-
lish life had been suddenly and unexpectedly re-
moved.

On the right hand of the room are memorials of
her eldest son. Here are wedding favours of the
Danish colours, worn to welcome the beautiful
Princess Alexandra, who was received in England
in 1863 with a warmth and affection that were not
lessened when many years later she was Queen-
Consort of King Edward VII. In the case in a
right-hand window is a watch-chain of Queen Alex-
andra’s hair, given by her to her husband. Here,
too, are boxes of the cake of many royal weddings ;
the gloves and muffler of King Edward ; the Royal
Victoria and Albert Orders, already mentioned is
P- 73).

One isolated object in this room, out of place
chronologically, but placed here because it is lent
by H.M. the King, suggests another chapter of

THE THEATRICAL AND VICTORIAN ROOMS 21ITI

naval history. It is a stick made of the timbers
of the Royal George, which, in 1780, sank in har-
bour, in calm weather, with Admiral Kempenfelt
and all the crew. . The navy, in spite of the war
with France in progress, had been shamefully neg-
lected once more ; and no less than seventeen chief
ships of the line were “ unseaworthy, rotten, and
unsafe.” The Royal George was one of the seven-
teen: she sank because “‘ some material part of her
frame gave way, which can only be accounted for
by the general state of the decay of her timbers.”’
The last case on the right hand contains passes
and cards of admission to various state functions,
and models of royal insignia. At the end of the
room are the gorgeous robes of royal ceremonies—
the Coronation of King George V and the investi-
ture of the Duke of Clarence (King George’s elder
brother, who died in 1892) asa Knight of the Garter.
That order has already been mentioned (see p. 73) ;
it may be added here that in addition to the Garter
the “‘ uniform ”’ consists of a golden chain of inter-
woven garters, with a pendant, called the George,
showing St. George defeating the dragon ; a mantle
of blue velvet; a hood of crimson velvet; a super-
tunica, or surcoat, of crimson velvet, lined with
white ; a plumed hat of black velvet ; a broad blue
ribbon worn across the breast from left to right ;
and a silver star with a garter and cross in the centre.
A coronation, it need hardly be said, is some-
thing more than an affair of brilliant robes, though
the spectacle in Westminster Abbey on such an
occasion is dazzlingly many-coloured. It is, perhaps,

212 THE LONDON MUSEUM

the most ancient continuous ceremony in the world ;
it has been held in the same place for eight centuries.
Every act in the long service is full of venerable
meaning, every piece of the regalia a symbol of some
attribute of awe and majesty. The orb is the sign of
supreme sovereign power ; the temporal sceptre, of
rule; the sword, of justice; the ampulla, or oil
vessel, of consecration to the high office of king.
Even the vestments used are said to have a partly
religious significance, and when at last the king
stands forth fully arrayed in the robes of corona-
tion, he has taken upon him, symbolically, in those
robes, a burden of precedents and duties, powers
and rights, vows and obediences, which has grown
up steadily and solemnly throughout the long
generations of intercourse between the people of
England and their hereditary kings. The golden
mantle joins King George and the citizens of London
to William the Conqueror; and William the Con-
queror, in his charter and his coronation, did but
recognise the immemorial foundation of his capital
city, and its claim to lead the nation.

CHAPTER XIII
THE BASEMENT

WE go back to the eighteenth century in the Base-
ment, for the most part. Here is the wealth of
prints and pictures of old London, and the relics
of its humbler life, as well as of its more decorous
buildings, and its parks and pleasure gardens.

The Basement is reached by taking the passage
on the left of the central hall, and turning to the
left. At the bottom of the stairs, in a corner which
is usually rather dark, is a fine lead tank or cistern,
dated 1787. Just to the left of the door, on the
wall, is a shopman’s bill of 1751: the first item is
“Superfine Hyson tea, {1 os. Od. a lb.”’ Nearly
opposite are three aged bicycles, one dated 1850,
all of an obsolete pattern. Those three exhibits
are prophetic, so to speak, of most of the contents
of the Basement. Weare to see fragments of build-
ings of an age which knew, perhaps, better than
any other the decencies of proportion for quiet
dwelling-places—the lead cistern, apart from the
charming design upon it, is beautifully propor-
tioned : it seems to be just the right size, somehow
—and that is the secret of proportion. We are to

see the tea gardens and pleasure grounds of the
213

214 _ THE LONDON MUSEUM

epoch which first learnt to enjoy tea fully; and we

are to see something of the life of the road in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Bicycles, as everyone knows, are comparatively
modern inventions. Velocipedes—a frame of wheels
very like a bicycle, but without treadles or chain,
driven by the feet upon the ground—appeared
during the Regency. The 1850 bicycle here shown

is probably one of the earliest specimens. The old

2)

high bicycle, or .“‘ spider,’’ was the most popular
type till the ‘eighties, when the “safety ’’ super-

Se eRe Rant

seded it; and the ‘nineties were the great era of

pneumatic-tyred safety bicycles, now themselves
slowly yielding to motor-cycles.

The passage turns to the leit, and at once the
Georgian toy-shop window appears. It is a won-

derful bow-front of the period of George III: its

solemn curve and the small panes give it an air of
dignified homeliness. In it are various enchanting
wares: toy clocks, toy furniture for a doli’s house
such as that shown upstairs, bobbins for lace and
bead work, a mouse-trap of the sixteenth century
worked by weights: samplers (of which we have
already spoken—see p. 90), a toy coach, perfect in
every detail, and a set of prints for children of the
Cries of London. Prints of this kind, often pub-
lished in books, were common from 1790 to 1830 ;
and all through the eighteenth century the cries
were one of the most remarkable things in London.
Almost every street-seller had a distinctive cry,
sometimes a long verse. The only one heard at all
fully nowadays is the old ‘‘ Lavender” cry of the

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THE BASEMENT _ 217

Mitcham sellers ; a busy butcher’s shop in a crowded
shopping street on a Saturday night, with its con-
tinual “‘ Buy, buy, buy!”’ is the nearest approach
to the din of Georgian London.

Farther on, on the right, are some of the shop
signs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
It was a favourite remark of the essayists that
London was crowded with all sorts of meaningless
signs—that a blue dragon might mean, say, a book-
seller’s in one street or a wine merchant’s in the
next. What the old hanging signs were like may be
seen still in Lombard Street, where the occupiers
of houses restored or remade the old signs in honour
of the Coronation of King Edward, and have re-
tained most of them since. The signs here shown,
however, have more meaning. A grocer is represen-
ted by what appears to be an Indian of some kind
(perhaps Pocahontas), probably typical of Indian
spices. Snuff and tobacco sellers used the figure
of a Scot, who was popularly supposed to be especi-
ally addicted to snuff.

At the end of this passage is the Duke of Welling-
ton’s carriage, already mentioned (p. 183) : and the
route then leads past the fine models of Old London,
including a picture of Baynard Castle as it was
before 1550. These also have been already de-
scribed (see pages 43, 60, 103, 113). They are suc-
ceeded by a corridor containing a number of prints
of Old London, chiefly of places with which the
earlier chapters of this book have dealt. The most
interesting is, perhaps, that of the opening of new
London Bridge (the present bridge) in 1831. Here,

218 THE LONDON MUSEUM

too, are some of the fine architectural remains of |

the Museum—two graceful plaster plaques, a stair-
baluster of 1725, an eighteenth century mantel-
piece, and the beautiful doorway from New Inn,
of the seventeenth century. New Inn, originally
one of the Inns of Court, like Sergeant’s Inn (p. 62)
and the Temple (p. 64), was on the east side of the
present Kingsway, north-east of Aldwych, and
the last of its buildings was demolished when that

great clearance was made. All these specimens

of domestic architecture reveal the same character-
istics as the leaden cistern—good proportions and
good workmanship. In the houses and streets
of the period ornament was not superfluous : beauty
was not an addition put, if funds permitted, on to
a useful thing—the useful thing was designed to be
beautiful, and to fit its surroundings beautifully.

There was no attempt at pride or pomp in these —

private houses : they were just the quiet dwellings
of orderly, serious people (serious, as has been said,
in their pleasures). They seem, perhaps, uniform
in design and treatment: so they are, except in
details ; but so was the life of the day, except in
details. They suited that life, and they adorned
it soberly—they did not shout aloud that they
wished to attract attention to their originality or
their costliness or their size.

Hereafter follows the Roman Boat Room (on the
right hand—the Basement is a labyrinth to which
the clue is ‘‘ keep to the right’’). The Roman and
the prehistoric boats, and most of the other objects
in this room have been described (pp. 13, 20, 23).

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BASEMENT

THE BASEMENT ; 221

In addition to these exhibits there is also a model
of Buckingham Palace front as it was till 1913.
That palace is now, and has been since about 1862,
one of the chief royal residences—the chief one
in London since Queen Victoria’s accession. It
stands, as everyone knows, at the west end of St.
James’s Park. It is on the site of the old Mulberry
Garden, planted by James I, who was desirous of
encouraging the silk industry (which flourished,
in one way, during his reign, as has been seen in
the fine needlework of the period). Evelyn said
of it in 1654 that the Garden was “the only place
of refreshment about the town for persons of the
best quality to be exceedingly cheated at.” It
contained a house, which was in the possession of
Lord Arlington under Charles II and James II.
In 1703-5 the then Duke of Buckingham bought it
or rebuilt the house, renaming it Buckingham House.
It was bought by George III in 1762 for £28,000 :
there is a picture of it on the right-hand wall of
the Jerningham Collection (see p. 223). Thence-
forth it was Buckingham Palace. In 1825 George
IV partly rebuilt and partly added to it. Other
changes were made in 1837 and 1850, when the east
front was added. This model of the Palace as it
was through the greater part of Queen Victoria’s
reign, and the whole of King Edward VII’s, hardly
gives an idea of its inadequate appearance. It was
of poor proportions, and almost always very dingy.
In 1913 the whole of the front was rebuilt, to be
more in accord with the Victoria Memorial facing it.

The Roman Boat Room leads into a smaller room

222 THE LONDON MUSEUM

or lobby. On the right hand is a very perfect
model of a mail coach of 1836. The coaching days
of England were as proud of themselves as the
motor age of the twentieth century: spanking
horses jingling along a fine road—the late eight-
eenth and early nineteenth centuries built greater
roads than Rome’s—the horn (a specimen is shown
here) ringing merrily, the special pistols for the guard
to deter highwaymen (which, apparently, he seldom
did), the comfortable inns with their rosy landlords,
roaring fires, neat chambermaids and wines, all the
_ bustle and glory and human nature that seems in-
evitably to belong in England to anything to do
with horses—those were “‘ the good old days.” It is
true that the coaches were stuffy inside, and cold
outside, the dangers from highwaymen very real,
the roads not always good—least of all in winter,
when snow or mud might stop the coach altogether,
miles from anywhere—the passengers perhaps can-
tankerous, the inn charges outrageous, and their
‘accommodation bad. But it has been settled by
popular history that coaches were romantic; and
romantic they were, if people like ourselves— _
fussy, cheerful, hasty, frightened—are romantic
in other clothes and other situations; if the life of
the past is such a fairy tale as we could make the
life of to-day, did we but wish it eagerly enough.

The best picture of the coaching days can, per-
haps, be obtained from Dickens’ works, especially
from that London encyclopedia, The Pickwick
Papers.

The other half of the romance of the road is re-

THE BASEMENT 223

flected on the walls of thisroom. Here are pictures
of Shillibeer’s omnibus and the steam carriages
already mentioned (see p. 178). Here, too, are
views of some *‘ Zoos”’ of early nineteenth century
London—Bullock’s (in Piccadilly, at the old Egyp-
tian Hall, nearly opposite the end of Bond Street,
and afterwards famous for Messrs. Maskelyne and
Cook’s entertainment: it was pulled down a few
years ago); Exeter Change (a disused exchange
hall on the north side of the Strand, afterwards
rebuilt as Exeter Hall, the site of many missionary
and religious meetings, now again rebuilt as a large
hotel—the Strand Palace); and the Surrey, in
Surrey Gardens, Walworth (1831-77), famous also
for its panoramas.

Opening out of this lobby is the long room contain-
ing the very complete Jerningham Collection of prints
illustrating the history of the London Parks. Besides
the prints it contains some cases of objects of
domestic interest: the Pall Mall set already men-
tioned (p. 129) : “‘ fellowship ’’ badges—the insignia
of trade unions, like the modern button-hole discs :
some trade cards, more elaborate and picturesque
than those in use now: park gate tickets, enabling
the holder to enter the royal parks before they were
made fully public: spectacles, snuffers, teeth, den-
tists’ tokens, weights, hour-glasses. The tally-sticks
in the second case on the left show an old and pri-
mitive method of reckoning : a stick was notched,
and split, and each party to an agreement took a
half of it. Cricket scores, by the way, were kept
on sticks notched similarly, in the days when the

224 THE LONDON MUSEUM

present Lord’s cricket ground was first opened,
in 1814: there is a view of this Marylebone ground
(the third and last headquarters of the M.C.C.)
on the walls here.

Another little object which might escape notice,
but is really typical of a whole generation, is in the
third case on the left—a folded game, called “‘ The
Mansion of Happiness.’’ It unfolds into a large
sheet of type and little coloured pictures, forming
the “board ’’ for a game played in much the same
way as the ‘‘race game.’’ According to the number
indicated by dice or a marked teetotum, the player
goes forward so many stages, and is rewarded or
penalised in various ways. It was a “‘ moral and
entertaining game,’’ meant to teach goodness by
way of play : the verses in the middle of the pictures
run :

“At this Amusement each will find
A Moral fit t’ improve the Mind ;
It gives to those their proper Due,
Who various Paths of Vice pursue :
And shews (while Vice Destruction brings)
That good from every Virtue springs.
Be Virtuous then, and forward press
To gain the Seat of Happiness.”

It was first published in 1800, and the author’s
name was George Fox. He produced other games
of the kind, one being called, without any disguise,
‘““The Reward of Virtue.’’ These gloomy diver-
sions were issued in some plenty between 1780 and
1830, when children’s amusements were all apt to
be rather heavily burdened with instructiveness.

THE BASEMENT 225

In the same case are proofs that a certain amount
of instructiveness was certainly needed. A game
like ‘‘ The Mansion of Happiness,” of 1792, in the
possession of the present writer, suggests artfully
that a teetotum might be used if dice were thought
immoral. Why dice should be considered immoral
in themselves the gambling relics in this case help
to prove. They are the dice and betting discs—
each standing for a certain sum—in use at two
famous London clubs where play was apt to run
high—White’s and Crockford’s. Gambling was cer-
tainly a vice of the Georgian era : immense sums were
lost at play by both menand women. At Almack’s,
a favourite resort in the ’seventies of the eighteenth
century, “the young men of the age,’’ says Wal-
pole, “‘lose five, ten, fifteen thousand pounds in an
evening.”’ Fox, Sheridan, Selwyn, the Regent
himself, all played heavily. Canning’s father-in-
law, General Scott, is said to have won £200,000 at
White’s, and Lord Robert Spencer is credited with
winning £100,000 at a sitting—after which he had
the sense never to play again. Equally harmful
were the public lotteries, abolished by law in 1826.
The State had even conducted lotteries, and some-
times put the profits to good use. In this case is
a proposal for a lottery for a diamond valued at
£30,000.

There are also in this room some fine early pianos,
and on the right-hand wall a case of keys and passes
for the royal parks, the roads through which were
then not open to general traffic. One pass is for
the King’s Road, Chelsea. It ran from London to

P

226 THE LONDON MUSEUM

Fulham, and so was the easiest royal road to Kew.
It was a private road of the King, and only those
possessed of a key or of a pass could use it. It was
doubtless the safest way across the Five Fields—
the open space which is now Pimlico and Belgravia,
and “ where the robbers lie in wait.”’ :

Turn now to the prints of parks and pleasure
gardens. Some of the first show the animal per-
formers at Sadler’s Wells, which have already been
mentioned (p. 207). Others show various early
balloon ascents. The Montgolfiers invented the
balloon in 1783. The first ascent made in England
was accomplished by Vincent Lunardi, “ Secretary
to the Neapolitan Ambassador, and the first aerial
Traveller in the English Atmosphere,’ on Sep-
tember 15, 1784: he ascended at the Artillery
Ground, Finsbury, and came to earth near Ware.
Another early flight of his was from the Adam and
Eve Grounds near Tottenham Court Road. His
portrait is here, and pictures of his ascents, as well
as of others: the subjects of George IIT were deeply
interested in this conquest, as it seemed, of the air,
which is not wholly subdued even by the subjects
of George V.

On the left-hand wall, also, is a portrait of Dr.
John Hill, an apothecary, botanist, writer of books
and pamphlets, who came into conflict with many
well-known men of the Georgianera. Healso wrote
a farce, which called forth a famous epigram—“ his
farces are physic, his physic a farce is.” He wasa
very able, but wholly unstable, man, whose talents
deserved a better fate and wider recognition.

THE BASEMENT 227

A little further on is a portrait of “‘ Bagnigge
Wells Beauties,’ with the enormous headdresses
already described (p. 197). These ‘“‘ Wells’’ were
another set of Clerkenwell springs, like Sadler’s
Wells, near a house said to have belonged to Nell
Gwynne. It was a favourite and fairly fashion-
able resort from 1759 to the end of the century,
though it is also spoken of slightingly as the plea-
sure ground of “cits’’—the City merchants and
their wivesand apprentices. The ‘“ Dog and Duck,”
shown in a print close by, was in the St. George’s
district, near Newington Butts. It was a very
ancient tavern, which began to trade in its natural
mineral waters early in the eighteenth century. It
was very respectable at first, and the waters were
seriously recommended by doctors. But late in
the century the gardens grew disreputable, and
when Bethlehem Hospital was moved from Moor-
fields in 1812-14, the tavern was pulled down,
and the great asylum erected on its site.

The Pantheon (still standing in Oxford Street,
and used as a wine merchant’s office) was built in
the eighteenth century as a concert hall, and many
masquerades like that shown in the print in this
room were held there. “The Battle of the Um-
brellas,’”’ on the end wall to the right, explains itself :
umbrellas were in 1784, as has been said (p. 195),
a strange novelty. Near by is another leaflet
** Printed on the ice, 1684’ (see p. 128).

But the pleasure gardens of the greatest celebrity
were Vauxhall and Ranelagh—rivals for many
years. Ranelagh (part of the Gardens of which,

228 THE LONDON MUSEUM

replanted, remain, to the east of Chelsea Hospital
grounds) was opened in 1742, the famous
Rotunda (a huge domed building, rather like the
Albert Hall or the British Museum Reading Room)
having been built in the grounds during the pre-
vious year. ‘‘ Everybody that loves eating, drink-
ing, staring or crowding is admitted for twelve-
pence ’’ (half a crown was charged later). It was,

as a rule, conducted in the most orderly manner,

and Dr. Johnson himself was affected by its charm :
‘When I first entered Ranelagh, it gave an expan-
sion and gay sensation to my mind, such as I never
experienced anywhere else.’ The amusements,
apart from the delight of mere promenading, were
chiefly concerts (at one of which Mozart appeared,
at the age of eight) and masquerades, which George
IV, as Prince of Wales, frequently attended.

The place was closed as a pleasure garden in
1805, and the Rotunda pulled down. The present
Ranelagh Club at Barn Elms has no connection with
it except in name.

Ranelagh was reached by road across the fields
from London; and often so great was the crowd
of visitors that Walpole speaks of being ‘“‘held
up’ on the road in his coach for over half an hour.
The journey to Vauxhall was made more romantic-
ally, by water, and travellers from Whitehall (the
boat fare was sixpence) or the Temple were usually
accompanied by players upon the French horn.
The approach from Vauxhall Stairs (not far from
the present Vauxhall Bridge) was mean—inten-
tionally, for after a shabby wicket gate and path,

THE BASEMENT 229

the visitor came suddenly into a blaze of glory, the
boxes, the trim walks and hedges, the orchestra, the
archways and colonnades making up ornamental
grounds which must have surpassed even Rane-
lagh in attractiveness. Ever since the Restoration
there had been gardens on the spot—New Spring
Gardens, whither Londoners resorted to pick the
pinks and hear the nightingales ; but the Vauxhall
of tradition and reputation was really inaugurated
in 1732, when Jonathan Tyers opened the relaid
and remodelled grounds. There were pictures by
Hogarth (who also designed the admission token)
and Hayman, sculptures by Roubillac, music com-
posed and conducted by Handel, and songs by all
the principal singers of the day. The only draw-
back seems to have been the dearness and scanti-
ness of the refreshments: it was said mockingly
that a Vauxhall carver could cover the whole
grounds—eleven or twelve acres—with slices from
a single ham. Towards the end of the eighteenth
century, when tight-rope performances and similar
entertainments began to be given, the place grew
rather less orderly and select—though it had always
attracted both citizens and “ persons of quality ”’ ;
but the gardens continued to be popular, till at last
—in 1859—the ground was sold for building pur-
poses, and the glades ceased to be either “ lovely ”’
or “tuneful,” as the print of a song, “‘ Farewell
to Vauxhall,’ on the left-hand wall of this room,
calls them.

Most of the other pictures here relate to the
London Parks rather than to the pleasure gardens ;

230 THE LONDON MUSEUM

and as they have, and have long had, a large share
in the life of Londoners, it is well to give a brief
account here of the two most famous. Hyde Park,
the largest of the Parks, was originally the manor
of Hyde, the property of the Abbey of Westminster.
At the dissolution of the monasteries it became
Crown property. Charles IT. walled it in, and in his
reign it became the fashionable promenade which it
still is. Like St. James’s Park, it was the scene of
many duels; and in it were celebrated many im-
portant events—George III’s jubilee, for instance,
and the peace of 1814, when, as a print here shows,
there were fireships on the Serpentine. The Great
Exhibition of 1851 was also held here, as has been
said (p. 175).

St. James’s Park, however, has the more interest-
ing associations. It was first enclosed by Henry
VIII ; Charles II laid it out anew, formed the lake,
and stocked it with waterfowl. He loved to walk
here, and this is a grief that befell him in the Park:

Lost, in St. James’s Park, Nov. 16, 1671 .. . a little
Spaniel dog of his Royal Highness; he will answer to
the name Towser, he is liver coloured and white spotted,
his legs speckled with liver colour and white, with long
hair growing upon his hind legs, long ears, and his under-
lip a little hanging; if any can give notice of him, they
shall have £5 for their pains.

_ That was not the only time the King lost one of the
pretty little spaniels named after him. The Park,
still in many ways the most individual and delight-
ful in London, was gay all through his reign, and was,
like Hyde Park, a fashionable promenade for long

THE BASEMENT 231

after. Here, too, were fought many duels (in spite
of prohibition): here were cockfights, commemo-
rated in Cockpit Alley and Birdcage Walk: here
the cavaliers played Pall Mall (p. 129) : here were the
cows whose milk old women sold on the spot till
a few years ago; here the Gunnings were mobbed
by a crowd of inquisitive Londoners, then, as ever,
full of ‘“‘ardour in running after sights and mon-
sters’’—not that those ladies, the most famous
beauties of the eighteenth century, could exactly
be called monsters. And here, too, in all ages,
the waterfowl have given pleasure to Londoners.
It is worth while to quote Evelyn’s description of
them as they were in 1665 : in most ways his words
would almost fit the Park of to-day. “I went to
St. James’s Park, where I saw various animals
and examined the throat of the onocrotalus, or peli-
can, a fowl between a stork and a swan; a melan-
choly water-fowl, brought from Astrachan by the
Russian Ambassador. . . . Here also was a small
water-fowl, not bigger than a moorhen, that went
almost quite erect, like the penguin of America ; it
would eat as much fish as its whole body weighed ; 1
never saw so unsatiable a devourer, yet the body
did not appear to swell the bigger. The Solan
geese here are also great devourers, and are said
soon to exhaust all the fish ina pond. Here wasa
curious sort of poultry, not much exceeding the
size of a tame pigeon, with legs so short as their
crops seemed to touch the earth; a milk-white
raven ; a stork, which was a rarity at this season
[February] seeing he was loose, and could fly loftily ;

232 THE LONDON MUSEUM

two Balearic cranes, one of which having had

one of his legs broken, and cut off above the knee,

had a wooden leg and thigh, with a joint so accu-

rately made that the creature could walk and use it

as well as if it had been natural; it was made by
a soldier. The park was at this time stored with ©
numerous flocks of several sorts of ordinary and
extraordinary wild fowl, breeding about the Decoy.
. . . There were also deer of several countries, white,
spotted like leopards ; antelopes, an elk, red deer,
roebucks, stags, Guinea goats, Arabian sheep, etc.
There were withy pots, or nests, for the wild fowl
to lay their eggs in, a little above the surface of the
water.’’ There were also, rather over a century later,
“the Queen’s Animals ’’—various creatures some-
what inconveniently presented to Queen Charlotte :
among them were elephants and a “ piebald ass ”’
—a zebra.

Many rejoicings have taken place in St.
James’s Park, as in Hyde Park. The most notable
commemorated here were over the Peace of 1748,
when six thousand rockets were fired at once, and
a set piece showed three suns of fire and twelve
fiery trees. In 1814, too, there were demonstrations
over another peace, and a Temple of Concord was
set up in the Green Park—rather prematurely, for
1815 saw Napoleon as active and menacing as ever.

The first home of the London Museum must
also be mentioned here. Kensington Palace was
built in the seventeenth century as a_ private
house, and sold to William III, who died there:
with it went the Gardens, which now are a park

THE BASEMENT 233

continuing Hyde Park. George I and Queen
Caroline, wife of George II, designed most of the
present arrangement of the Gardens. The Palace
is Crown property and has been used as a royal
residence until recent times: rooms in it are still
occupied, as at Hampton Court, by privileged
persons. Queen Victoria was born there, and held
her first council there in 1837 : and there, too, Queen
Mary was born.

The next section of the Basement, another small
room, is mainly filled with the large model of the
Tower already mentioned. At the door is the hand-
some pilaster of the high altar of the Sardinia
Chapel, the chapel attached to the Sardinian Em-
bassy on the west side of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. It
was demolished in 1910.

Here also is a fine collection of insurance plates,
such as may be seen on many old houses of the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries all over
England. These plates were not merely evidence of
the issue of an insurance policy by the company for
which they stand; they were also guides to the
firemen, who at that period were maintained by
the various insurance companies, each having its
own organisation. The “‘Sun’’ men would single
out a ‘‘Sun ”’ house for their work, the ‘‘ Phoenix ”’
men a ‘“‘ Phoenix,’’ andso on. The London Salvage
Corps, though it attends all fires impartially, is still
maintained (jointly) by the insurance companies,
who naturally desire to prevent more loss than can
be helped.

In the next room is the Stuart Parlour, already

234 THE LONDON MUSEUM

described (see p. 112, and Frontispiece). Here also
are other architectural remains, among them a
fine piece of panelling of the popular “ folded
linen’’ pattern. A small case shows us what
burial in the ground means to many such objects
as the Museum possesses: it contains shoes, pottery
and other things just as they were dug up, before
being cleaned. Close by are the Great Harry
timbers (see p. 102); a model of Isaak Walton’s
beautiful house, which formerly stood at the corner
of Fleet Street and Chancery Lane—here that de-
lightful angler carried on his business as a hosier —
from 1629 to 1643; a cast of the ceiling of Sir Paul
Pindar’s lovely mansion in Bishopsgate Street, the
front of which is reproduced at the Victoria and
Albert Museum—it must have been in some such
building as this that Sir Thomas Gresham, close by,
feasted Queen Elizabeth (see p. 98); and a model
of Hogarth House, Chiswick, which happily still
stands. In that house Hogarth painted those
terrible pictures of his brutal century. There he
played ninepins or petted his bullfinch Dick. There
Wilkes or Fielding smoked and talked with the
artist.

Most of the objects in the next room explain
themselves, and do not call for comment. The
Stuart rocking-horse is there (see p. 130). The
hand-painted ‘“‘ Chinese ’’ wallpaper and the huge
tea-canister take us back once more to the London
of Chinese fashions. In this room is the most notice-
able relic of Charles Dickens possessed as yet by the
Museum—a chair in which he once sat to be photo-

THE BASEMENT 235

graphed. Dickens, like Johnson, was not born
in London: but like Johnson also, he was a
true and great Londoner. It is a _ wonderful
thing, not always realised even by those who
write about London, that in spite of all the City’s
distractions and disadvantage, by far the greater
part of all that is best and noblest in English
literature. was actually produced in London ; while
of writers whose life and work was peculiarly
identified with London—like Chaucer, Shakespeare,
Jonson, Milton, Dryden, Addison, Steele, Johnson,
Fielding, Richardson, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Lamb,
Dickens, Thackeray, to name only a few—no
city in the world can show a longer or prouder
record.

The small room which follows contains more
architectural details, all excellently worthy of pre-
servation. In the windows are two _ interesting
contrasts in children’s costume—of 1837 and 1887—
in which the later period can hardly be said to have
the advantage. On the right is an ingenious bal-
cony, the central part of which, when a staple is
loosened, lets down in the form of a ladder, as a
fire-escape.

We come now to the grimmest part of the Museum
—remains of which London has no great reason to
feel proud, the prison relics. The very doorway
through which we enter this section is from a jail
—the Neptune Street prison for poor debtors. It
was also, according to Mr. G. R. Sims, known as
The Sly House, because many prisoners who entered
it were never seen to leave it: they had been taken

236 THE LONDON MUSEUM

away, by an underground passage, to the Docks,
and so to a convict ship, to be borne far away to
the convict stations of Australia. Through the door
is one of the cells, fitted with ghastly figures of
prisoners. Poor debtors—‘‘ whose only crime was
poverty,’’ and who, by being imprisoned, usually
lost all chance of earning a living to pay their debts
—were treated in the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries with an inhumanity which even the vilest
criminals could hardly deserve. On entry into jail,
the senior prisoners extorted from them whatever
money they had, by way of footing or “garnish ”’ :
if they had no money, their clothes were taken from
them. The food issued to them was insufficient to
maintain life, and even the money they were allowed
to collect by sitting in a cage in the prison walls
and rattling a money-box dolefully at passers-by,
with the cry of ‘‘ Pity the poor debtors,’’ did not
avail to ward off the most terrible privations.
Darkness, hunger, damp, cold, disease, despair—
that was the fate of the poor who got into
debt.

Dickens, in The Pickwick Papers, draws a terrible
picture of imprisonment for debt as it was under
the Regency. It was infinitely worse fifty years
earlier, before the noble labours of John Howard
(1726-90) and Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845) had done
much to change the condition of most of our
prisons.

But if the poor debtor was deep in misery, the real
criminal was still deeper. In the dark second cell,
on the walls, are grisly reminders of what torture

_ THE BASEMENT 237

meant—hand-crushers and an iron scourge, and a
scold’s bridle or a terrific gag for shrewish women.
Here too is an oak table with initials cut in its
worn surface—the initials of men to whom the
simplest of rational occupations almost meant
happiness.

Opening out of this cell is the room of Newgate
relics. That grim prison was pulled down in 1902,
and the present Central Criminal Court was opened
on the site three years later. The “‘ Old Bailey,”
as the prison was called, stood on the site of one of
the gates in London Wall, most of which were used
at different periods as prisons. The grim-looking
building, which many Londoners remember, was
erected in 1770, and from 1783 to 1868 executions
were held in public outside it : before 1783 they were
held at Tyburn (roughly, where the Marble Arch
is now—see p. 14). It was said that these public
spectacles acted as a terrible warning, and pre-
vented crime: but all the evidence goes to show.
that they had no preventive effect, while they were
unspeakably degrading and brutalising to the crowds
of men, women, and even children who gathered to
them as if toa festival. From 1868 to 1902 prisoners
were executed inside the jail: the straps used for
the last execution are on the right hand of the
entrance door.

It was customary for “‘last dying confessions ”’
of prisoners (death was long the penalty for even
trivial felonies) to be crudely printed and sold in
the streets on the day of execution. They were
doubtless seldom written by the prisoners, who

238 THE LONDON MUSEUM

often would be incapable of even such poor literary
work as this of 1833:

“ Come all young men of London town,

A warning take by me,

’Tis my awful doom to die,
Upon a fatal tree,

For a Burglary in Bartlett’s Buildings,
It’s true what I relate,

That’s brought me to grief and scorn
And to this wretched state.”

There are many of these dreadful broadsides in the
room: they give a terribly close picture of the
realities of crime.

Certain of the more famous criminals are re-
called more individually. There is on the left a
painting of the last scene in the life of Henry
Fauntleroy, a famous forger, whose exploits and
death are sufficiently described in the label on the
picture. In the left-hand window are likenesses of
Elizabeth Brownrigg, a vile creature who beat a
girl apprentice to death, and Simon, Lord Fraser
of Lovat, a more romantic offender—merely a
Jacobite conspirator who was beheaded on Tower
Hill in 1747: this is said to be the last beheading
in England. Ina case on the right is the rammer,
or drinking-goblet, of Dick Turpin, engraved with
his false name of Reader, and formerly kept for his
use at the ‘“‘ White Swan,” Whitechapel. The best
epitaph on Turpin would perhaps be the curt
opening of the Dictionary of National Biography’s
account of him—‘ Turpin, Richard (1706-39),
robber. ’”’ He was a vile housebreaker and

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THE BASEMENT 241

highwayman, with nothing romantic or heroic about
him—not even his ride to York, which never took
place in reality : some such ride may once have been
accomplished, but the story of it is older than
Turpin’s day. He was hanged for horse-stealing,
and “‘ confessed to one murder and several atrocious
robberies.’” Tom King, whose fetters are at the
other end of the room, was for a time his confederate,
and was accidentally shot by Turpin in Whitechapel,
in an attempt to get rid of a constable.

Joanna Southcott has hardly earned her place
in this gallery of criminals. This poor woman was
a domestic servant, who from 1792 onwards believed
herself able to prophesy—and some of her prophecies
certainly “‘came true.’’ She also claimed that she
was to be the mother of a second Messiah. She
had a considerable following, but except for the
mischief caused by hysterical false doctrines, she
did no great harm, and her personal character was
blameless. She died in 1814, in London, and is
little remembered now except by medical men, who
find in her case striking instances of the power of
mental aberration and delusion.

Jack Sheppard, like Turpin, has been glorified
by an eminent novelist: it was as an antidote to
such works as Harrison Ainsworth’s that Thackeray
wrote his terrible novel Catherine. There isa sketch
of Sheppard drawn from life by Sir James Thornhill,
with the much more flattering print that was sub-
sequently issued. Jack Sheppard was the son of
a respectable Spitalfields carpenter, and began his
criminal career after running away from a master

Q

242 THE LONDON MUSEUM

who ill-used him. He devoted himself to burglary
from a very early period of his life, and was so in-
genious in his methods of escaping from prison
that he seldom was long confined. He once got
out of Newgate in spite of his being loaded with
irons which were locked to a staple in the ground :
he procured somehow a crooked nail, picked the
lock, climbed the chimney, entered other rooms,
including the chapel, opened four doors with a spike
from the chapel door, reached the roof, and thence,
by means of a blanket which he had dragged with
him, let himself down to the garret of a neighbour-
ing house, and so into the street. All this time he
was wearing fetters.

He even made desperate plans to escape after
being condemned to death; he hoped to cut his
bonds in the cart which carried him to the execution
place at Tyburn, and so leap into the crowd: he
had won a certain popularity, and he expected to
be helped in such a case. But he was too closely
watched, and was duly hanged—as deservedly, if
hanging was a suitable penalty for robbery, as any
criminal in England.

He had peculiarly small hands and limbs, as
Thornhill’s sketch shows ; and he was thus enabled
to free himself from fetters which would have secured
more largely built men.

Other relics in this room are part of a set of
‘“‘chains,’’ or an iron framework, for hanging in
chains (the body of the criminal was left to decay
in this awful position : Jerry Abershaw, from whose

THE BASEMENT 243

skeleton this specimen was taken, was a notorious
highwayman); a basin from the condemned cell ;
a handcuff with a screw, to fasten an idle apprentice
to his chair (a punishment which seems almost
amusing after the other penalties suggested here) ;
a tall hat of the old police uniform, so common in
the early pages of Punch; watchmen’s rattles—
the watchmen were the very inefficient street patrol
of the eighteenth century (an old watchhouse still
stands in Giltspur Street, near Newgate): staves
and warrants and badges of special constables,
sworn at times of disturbance, as in 1848, or for
particular great occasions like the 1887 Jubilee:
the magistrate’s chair from Wellclose Prison;
and an alarm gong, handcuffs, fetters, keys, from
Newgate.

Prisons are a necessity, and there is room for many
reasonable differences of opinion as to how they
should be managed, and with what ideals. But
there can be nothing but thankfulness that the bad
old times are gone for good, when death was a
spectacle, and disease so deeply rooted in the awful
jails that judges were guarded against jail-fever
by bunches of aromatic herbs, and John Howard
himself died of the fever—in Russia, it is
true; but England was no safer. When Newgate
Prison was pulled down, it is said, there was still
in its very fabric enough malignant infection to set
up curious feverish colds in the households in
Amen Court close by, where the Canons of St.
Paul’s live. And disease was not the only enemy.

244 THE LONDON MUSEUM

Even as late as 1850 the prison doctor was wont
to carry a life-preserver (one is shown in the left-
hand window case), in case of attack by his patients.
The system not merely kept criminals, it made
them.

Outside this room we come once more to gentler
things—pictures of Old London, tradesmen’s note-
headings and accounts, graceful tablets, and decora-
tions from street walls and vanished houses; and
thus at last we return to the main hall of the Museum,
passing, in the last corridor, pictures of eminent
Victorian Londoners by the well-known caricaturist,
i opi (heshe Ward).

So we have reached the last stage, for the present,
of this fine Museum. Outside Lancaster House, in
Stable Yard, policemen will be keeping cabs and
carriages out of the royal precincts of the old Tudor
place of St. James’s. Within that palace live
functionaries whose offices go back infinitely far in
the history of England and even of Europe. In
the Green Park, a few yards away, given to London
by her most dissolute king, the quiet sheep are
feeding within a stone’s throw of noisy Piccadilly.
The monument of a great Queen gleams in the
Mall in front of her grandson’s palace ; at the other
end of the broad way stand up the thin wires that
speak through the ether to the King’s Armadas on
many seas ; and past the trees of St. James’s Park,
under which, in the sandpit, to-morrow’s Londoners
are playing, rise the towers of the most ancient and
honourable of Parliaments, and the most venerable

THE BASEMENT 245

of all churches. In London the past is always
present, the future always close. The galleries of
the London Museum tell the story of centuries ;
but every street of London is built upon the cen-
turies, and speaks with their voice, if we could but
hear it. The Museum interprets for us their speech,
lights up their life, gives resonance and pomp and
inspiration to their language that is not dead, but
only sleepeth. He is a bad Londoner who has not
learnt that mother tongue.

Does it seem, to men weary of to-day’s turmoil,
that we Londoners have forgotten our inheritance ?
Perhaps it does; and yet the company of our dead
will not be dishonoured by those who have joined
it in this twentieth century after Christ. Londoners
are as ready as ever to serve their country in war
and in peace; most of all, perhaps, in peace, where
the test of life is harder than the test of death. Go
to the little cloister behind the Post Office, and see
how gaily they meet that last adversary. Go to
Bethnal Green, and see with what courage they
face the enemy who is always with us. The men
whose dumb hopes and lost sorrows we view in
Lancaster House, in the little stones and odds and
ends of a museum, thought no more than men to-
day of their own heroism, realised no more than men
to-day their own unformulated ideals, remembered
no more than men to-day that past that now seems
unforgettable. If we knew more, if our faith were
stronger, doubtless London would be more radiant
in the eye of heaven. But even if we live only in
the things of now, we still are in a city not built

246 THE LONDON MUSEUM

with hands, heirs to a kingdom that has no name
and no boundaries; for we are lords of our own
hopes, and we build London willy-nilly, as our
fathers built it—citizens, they and we and those
to come, of no mean city.

INDEX

ABBEY, E. A., 180; collection
of costumes, 180 sqq.

— Mrs. E. A., 180

Abershaw, Jerry, 242

“Adam and Eve, The,’”’ 226

Addison, 79, 163, 164; quoted,
162, 197, 199-200. See also
Spectator, The

Agincourt, 55

Ainsworth, W. Harrison, 131,

241
Albemarle, Lord, 119
Albert, Prince, his uniforms,
210
— Memorial, 175
Aldersgate Street, 31
Aldgate, 56
Aldwych, 218; Danes at, 38,
6

Wieeindra, Queen, 210; loan
exhibits, 73

Alfred the Great, ‘‘ restores ”’
London, 35; at Athelney,
37; his jewel, 36-7

Allectus, 19, 22, 29

Almack’s, 225

“ Alsatia’’ (Whitefriars), 103

Altar, Roman, 27

Amelia, Princess, 208

Amen Court, 243

Amphora, Roman, 18, 24

Ampulla, 55-6

‘* Angel gold,” 124

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, quoted,

38
‘* Animal comedians,”’ 151, 207,
226

2

=

Anne, Queen, 78-9, 179; period
of, see chapters VIII and IX

Apprentices, 72; riots, 95-7;
in trained bands, 122; cos-
tume, 187

Archers, English, 48-52, 54,
8

7
Archery practice, 54, 95, 123
Arlington, Lord, 221
Armada, the Spanish, 181
Armour, medieval, 48-52 ;
later, 189-190
Army uniform, 189-190
Art Workers’ Guild, 86
Artillery Ground, 226
Arts and Crafts Society, 86
Augulus, Bishop, 29
Augusta, Colonia (London), 30
Augustine, St., 35
Axes, flint, 1, 7,8; bronze, 12 ;
medieval, 51; toy, 39

BabGE, of Bedlam Beadle, 73
— Doggett’s, 75

Bagnigge Wells, 227

Balance. See Steelyard

Balloons, 226

Balmes, 115

Bank of England, 40, 177°

Bankside, 103, 181

Banqueting Hall, Whitehall,

J hes
Barber’s bowl, 127, 141
Barbican, 31

Bardell, Mrs., 184
Barking, 136; fortat, 9
Barrie, Sir J. M., quoted, 85

47

248 THE LONDON MUSEUM

Barry, Sir C., viii
“ Bastard sword,” 48-51
Bath, order of the, 73
Battersea, finds at, 10

— enamels, 146-7
Battle-axes, medieval, 51
Baulmes, 115
Baynard Castle, 60, 104, 217
Bazalgette, Sir J., 171
Beadle, Bethlehem Hospital,

1374

“Bedlam.” See Bethlehem
Hospital

Belgravia, 167, 226

“* Belinda,’ 160

Bell, Celtic, 34-6

Bellarmine, Cardinal, 93-4

“ Bellarmines,’’ 93-4, I11

“* Benevolence ’’ to Charles I,
I16

Benoist, 136

Bermondsey, 144

Bethlehem Hospital, 62, 73-4,
155, 227

Bible chain, 88

Bicycles, 213-4

Birdcage Walk, 231

Bishops of London, 29, 35

Bishopsgate, 73, 99

— Street, 98
Blackfriars, 60, 104
— Bridge, 30, 104, 128, 166-7

Blackwall, 103

Blake, Admiral, 136

Bleeding, 127

Blessington, Lady, 186-7, 194

** Blue-Coat School.’ See
Christ’s Hospital

‘* Blue Coat ’’ (school costume),
74-5) 187

Boadicea, 19, 27-9

Boat, prehistoric, 12-3, 218;
Roman, 20-3

Bobbins, 214

Boleyn, Anne, 170

Bone skates, 127

Bonnets, 196, 209

Books, 90. See also Printing

Boots, 110, 191-3. See also
Shoes, Clogs
Bos primigenius, 4
Bos priscus, 4
Bosses, architectural, 59
Boswell, 185-6
Bottger, 139
Bottle, Roman glass, 18
Bow (and arrow), 9, 144. See
also undey Archers, Archery,
Crossbow
— porcelain, 140, 153-4, 159
Bracer, archer’s, 95
Brandon (executioner), 118
Brentford, ford at, 20, 23
Bridewell Palace, 104-5
Bristol, 109
British Museum, 18, 201-2
Broad Street, 167
Bromley, 103
Bronze, first use of, 9
Broseley pipes, 109
Brougham, 184
Brownrigg, Elizabeth, 238
Buckingham House, 221
— Palace, vii, 221
Buckles (shoe and knee), 192-3
Bullock’s Museum, 223
Burbage, 181
Byron, 187

CaBS, 185

Cade, Jack, 52-3, 61

Cesar, Julius, 12, 16-7, 20, 23

Camps, Celtic, 16; Roman, 16

Camulodunum, 28

Candles and candlesticks, 69-71

Canes, 147, 195

Cannon Street, 29

Canoe, dug-out, 12-3

Canterbury Tales, The, 55-6,
68

Canute, 37, 46

Caps, 188-9; flat Tudor, 95,
97. See also Headgear

Carausius, 19, 22-3

Carlton House, 168-9

Carmelites, 60

INDEX

Caroline, Queen, 233

Castlemaine, Lady, 94

Catalini, Madame, 206

Catherine, 241

Caudle cups, 142

Cave-bears, 4

Cave-lions, 4

Caxton, 55

Celts in London, 10-4, 16-7,
18-9, 23, 24, 25, 29, 32,
See

Central Criminal Court, 237

Chained Bibles, 88

Chain-mail, 51, 87

Chains, hanging in, 242-3

Chairmen, 185

Chalybeate springs, 167, 207-8,
227

Chapes, 51

Charing Cross, 113

— — Road, 167

Charles I, bust of, 119; ex-
actions, 116-7; execution,
II4 117-8; plate melted
for, 67-8; relations with
the City, x, 116-8, 123, 171

Gharics: TLE, (94, £32, 193,
230 sqqg.; extravagance, 126,
136-7 ; in St. James’s Park,
129-30; portraits of, 142;
restoration, 122; touching
for the evil, 124

Charlotte, Queen, 208, 232

Charms, 90

Charters of London, 45-6, 54

Chatham, naval disaster at,
136-7

Chaucer, 55-0; quoted, 55, 68

Cheapside, 63, 79-80, 96, 98;
model of, 104

Chelchith, 36

Chelsea, 36, 59, 167, 201, 208,

225
Chelsea porcelain, 140, 148 sqq.
““ Chelsea-Derby,” 152
Chess, chessmen, 90
Chest, Stuart, 107
Cheyne Walk, 201

249

‘‘ Chicken"gloves,’”’ 194

Children’s costume, 234

Child’s Coffee-house, 199-200

China. See Porcelain

Chinese productions, 153, 155

Chivalry, age of, 48-52

Christianity in London, early,
29-39, 35, 40, 42-3

Christ’s Hospital, 59, 74-5, 173

Chronicle of England, The, 48

Cistern, lead, 213

“City Road,”
Thames, 128

Clarence, Duke of, 211

“‘Clarence”’ (carriage), 184

Claudius Cesar, 19

Clerical costume, 18th century,
188

Clerkenwell, 144, 167, 207-8,
227

Clockmakers’ Company, 158

Clocks, 143, 156-8, 160

Clogs, 59

Cloisonné work, 37

Clubs (staves), ’prentices’, 95-7

Coaches, coaching, 222

Coats, men’s, 190, 198

Cockfighting, 54, 231

Cockpit Alley, 231

Coffee, use of, 78-9

Coffee-houses, 51, 78-9, 159,
198 sqq.

Coffee-pots, 78-9

Coif, Sergeants of the, 62

Coins (see also Currency), 19,
22, 23, 30, IIo

Colchester, 28

Coleridge, 75

Colet, John, 63

Collingwood, Lord, 77

Colonia Augusta (London), 30

Combs, 40, 87, 110

Commons, House of, frescoes,

on frozen

7
“Commune ”’ of London, 46
Companies, the City, 51, 67,
71-2, 83, 162
Conduits, in Cheapside, 104

250

Constables, special, 243; in
plague time, 101-2; with
cressets, 132

Constantine, I9, 30

Constantius Chlorus, 22

““Copperplate handwriting,”
173

Corbels, 112

Cornhill, 96

Coronations, in London, 46, 54,
100, 124-5, 135, 179, 211-2,
217

Costrel, 56

Costume (outside chapter X1I.),
apprentices’, 95,97; Tudor,
95,97; Stuart, 108, 112

Counters (gaming), 225

County Hall, 20

Covent Garden, 144, 164

— Garden Theatre, 76-7,
205-6

Cradle, fifteenth century, 87

Crannogs, 7

Crawfurd, Lord, 61

Crayford, battle of, 35

Cregy, 55

Cremorne Gardens, 208

Cressets, 71, 132

Cricket, 223-4

“Cries of London, The,” 214-

217
Cripplegate, 28
Crockford’s, 225
Cromwell, Oliver, relics of,
118-119; character, 118;

death-mask, 118; portraits,
t18; welcomed in London,
I20, 170; sea-power of, 136
— Richard, documents of, 119

Crosby Hall, 59, 61

Cross, in Cheapside, 104

Crossbow, 52, 144

Crosses, mortuary, 59

Crowther, John, 153

Crutched Friars, 88

Crystal Palace, the, 175

Cups, fuddling, 110; gilt, 75;
loving, 67, 111; silver, 66-7;

THE LONDON MUSEUM

silver-gilt, 135; skull, 38;
Tudor, 90
Currency bars, 10-11

Curtain Theatre, 77
““ DaANcING Lesson, The,” 149-

52
Danes in London, 37-40
Debtors’ prisons, 236
Dez Matres, 24
Defoe, 131-2, 164
Delft ware, 88, 89, 140-1, 172-3
See also Lambeth Delft
Deptford, 100, 102
Derby, 109
Dettingen, 184
Dexios, memorial tablet, 25
Dice, 225
Dickens, quoted, 173, 184, 193,
222, 234-5, 236; relics of,
174
Diocletian, 22
“ Dog and Duck, The,” 227
Doggett, Thomas, 75
Doggett’s coat and badge, 75
Dolls, 160-2 ; Queen Victoria’s,
209
Doll’s House, 160-2
Dominicans, 59-60
Doublet, Tudor, 95, 97
Drake, 100, 102
Dresden porcelain, 140
Drury Lane Theatre,
76-7, 144, 205
Duels, 230, 231
Duesbury, William, 152-4-
““Dug-out’”’ canoe, 12-3, 218
Duke’s Theatre, The, 76
Dutch at Chatham, 136-7
— East India merchants, 140
— tiles, 135 ~
Dwight, John (maker of Ful-
ham ware), 137, 139, 141-2,
172

viii,

EALING, 166
Earthworks. See Camps
East Saxons, 32

INDEX 251

Edmund Ironside, 46
Edward the Confessor, 43-4,
45, 123
— I, 54, t04
Te, Il, 545 61
at iy 54
aire VE 74; 1905
— VII, 179, 210
Egyptian Hall, 223
Eiffel Tower, 94
Eleanor, Queen, 104, 113
Elizabeth, Queen, 89, 90, 181,
210
Enamel, Battersea, 146; cloi-
sonné (cell), 37; Limoges, 42
English Costume, 190
Escapement (of a watch), 157
Essex, 32, 43
Ethelbert, 35, 42
Evelyn, John, 135; quoted, 74,
124, 128-9, 136, 231-2
“ Evil, the King’s,” 123-4
Ewer, bronze, 59
Exchange, the Royal, 97-9,
I05, 162, 170
Executions, at Newgate, 237;
at Tower Hill, too-1; at
Tyburn, 237
-Exeter, 109
— Change, 223
— Hall, 223
Exhibition, the Great (of 1851),
175, 209, 230

FarrFax, General, 119, 189

Fairy-tales, 150-1

Falconer, Thomas, 63

“ Falls,” 190

Fans, 194-5

Farthingale, 190

Farthings, 110

Fellowship badge, 223

Fermor, Mrs. Arabella, 160

Fielding, 234

Filby, John, 186

Finsbury, 226

Fire, the Great, 43, 80, 99,
132-5, 171, 193

Firearms, 196-7

Fire-escape, balcony, 235

Fitzmary, Simon, 62

Flask (ampulla), 55-6

Fleet (river), 14, 104, 105, 167;
model of mouth, 104. See
also Holbourne river

— Street, 60, 62, 98
Flemings, potters at Norwich,

93

Flesh-hooks, 55
Flint and steel, 70-1
Flute, Roman, 25
Football, 54
Footpads, 179
Forks, 68-9
Fox, Rev. George, 224
France (Celtic), 17
Franciscans, 60
Freeport, Sir Andrew, 162
Frost Fairs, 61, 127-9
Froude, quoted, 71-2
Fry, Elizabeth, 236

— Thomas, 153
Fulham, 38, 226

— pottery. See Dwight, John
Fuller, John, 98
Funeral pomp, 174
Fusee (of a watch), 157

GAMBLING, 225
Games, moral, 224-5; out-
door, 54,129; withcounters,
39-40
Gardening, 110
Garibaldi, 15
Garraway’s Coffee-house, 159
Garrick, 186, 203-5
Garter, Order of the, 73, 187,
211
Gas, introduction of, 71
Gauntlet, archer’s, 87
George I, 179, 233
— II, 179, 184
— III, 179, 221, 230
Ea IV, 66, 75, 179, 221, 225,
228; festivities on accession
to Regency, 168-9

252

George V, 179; coronation robe,
ix, 211-2; loan exhibits by,
87, 210-1

— St., Guild of, 123
German merchants in London,

99 ;
— porcelain, 140
— stone ware, 142
Gibbs (architect), 164
Giltspur Street, 132
Gipcier, gipsire, 51, 87-8
Girdle chains, 90
Glass, Roman, 17-8, 25;
Venetian, 88-9; English,
88-9, 90; Restoration, 127,

135

Glastonbury, lake-dwellings, 7

Glaze (on botteny); 44, 59, 142

Globe Theatre, 76

Gloves, 193-4; of Lady Bles-
sington, 186-7; Stuart, 108;
Tudor, 90

Gog and Magog, 99

Golden Hind, The, 100

Goldsmith, Oliver, 188, 204;
his coat, 185-6

Goldsmiths’ shops, 79-80

Gomme, Sir L., quoted, 30, 102-3

Gorgets, 189

Gouyn, Charles, 148

Graham, George, 158

Grasshopper, weathercock of
Exchange, 99

Gray’s Inn Lane, 5

Great Harry, The, timbers of,
102-3, 234

Green Park, 14, 232

Gresham, Sir T., 89, 97-9, 105,

239
Grey, Lady Jane, 171
“ Greybeards’”’ (jugs), 93-4
Greyfriars, 59-60, 74
Grimaldi, 207
‘* Group ‘within a boscage,”’
149-52
Guild of St. George, the, 123
Guildhall, the, 98, 170-1
— Museum, 38, 42, 158

THE LONDON MUSEUM

Gun, Stuart, 108
Gundulf, 43

Gunnings, the, 231
Gurney, Goldsworthy, 178
Gwynne, Nell, 165, 227

HACKNEY coaches, 185
Hadrian, head of,
coin of, 19
Hair-dressing (see also Wigs),
197-8, 227
Hallstatt period, 10-1
Hamme, J. A. van, 140-1
Hammersmith Bridge, 174
Hampstead, 95, 167
Hand-crushers, 237
Handcuffs, 243
Handel, 229
Hansom, Joseph, 184
Hanway, Jonas, 195, 196
Boseouls Rt. Hon. L., viii,
oO
Harpoon, palzolithic, 4
Hastings, Warren, 170
Hats, 188-9, 195-6;
189; tall, 196
Hawkins, Miss, quoted, 205
Haymarket theatres, 76—7
Headgear, 188-9, 190, 195-6
Heath, John, 154
Hele, Peter, 156-7
Helmet-makers, 51
Helmets, 51; fire, 132
Hengist, 35
Henlein, Peter, 156-7
Henry III, 43, 61
— VII, 123
— VIII, 105, 113, 230
Hertford, Marquis of, 169
Hetherington, John, 196
Heyleyn, Edward, 153
Highgate, 14, 167
Highwaymen, 197, 223
Hill, Dr. Birkbeck, quoted, 186
— ’ John, 226
His Majesty’s Theatre, 76-7
Hogarth, William, 147-8, 229,
234

18-9 ;

cocked,

INDEX

Hogarth House, 234
Holborn, 103, 132, 167; monas-

teries i in, 59-60

— Bars, 100

— Hill, 167

— Viaduct, 59, 167, 178
Holbourne (river), 14
Honourable Artillery Company,

the, 123

Hoops, 198
Horseshoes, Roman, 27
“ Horseless carriages,”

223

Howard, John, 236, 243
Hoxton, 95, 103, 115
Hunt, Leigh, 75

Hyena, 5

Hyde, manor of, 230

— Park, 175, 230

— -— Corner, 164, 166

178,

IBERIANS, 12, 16

Ilford, 166

India-rubber dolls, first made,
162

Ingots, copper, 10

Inns, London, 56

Insurance plates, 233

Irish Dragoons’ uniform, 185

Islington, 95, 103, 125

Italian statuary, 108

Italians in London,

D7

88-9,

“ Jack” (flag), 136
Jack-boots, 110
‘ Jacks,” leather, 94, 110
Jackson, Mrs. Neville, 161
Jail-fever, 243
James I, 109, 111, 113-4, 117,
179, 221
— II, at Great Fire, 132;
at Whitehall, 114, 143;
touching for the evil, 124;
patron of art, 135-6; re-
stores Navy, 136-7
Janssen, 115

253
Janssen, Stephen (enameller),
146

Jerningham Ba oe peak
221, 223 sq

Joicey, Mr. t: tes , gifts by, 146,
180

Johnson, Dr.,
204, 228

Jones, Inigo, 113

Journal of the Plague Year,
131-2

the,

I13, 163, 185-6,

Jousts, at Westminster, 88,
100
Jugs, ‘‘ puzzle,” 110-1. See also

4 Jacks, ”” Pottery, Glass

KEAN, 205, 207

Keep (of Tower), 43-4

Keeper of London Museum,
viii, xiv

Kelt (axes), 12

Kelts (race). See Celts

Kemble (actor), 205-6

Kempenfelt, 211

Kennington, 167

Kensington Gardens, 232-3

— Palace, 209, 232-3; home

of Museum, viii

Kent, Duke ‘of, his medicine
chest, 209

Kew Palace, 208

King, Tom, 241

ua King’s Evil, the,’ 123-4

King’s Road, Chelsea, 225-6

Kingsway, 167, 218

Knights, methods of fighting,
48-52

Knives, 51, 87, 100, 125

Konal (Dane), 38

LACE, I91, 214

Laffitte, Jacques, 177

Lake-dwellings, 7

Laking, Sir G., viii, xiv

Lamb, Charles, 75; his hand-
writing, 173

Lambe, William, 98, 125

Lambeth, 36, 73

254

Lambeth Delft, 139, 140-1
Lambhithe, 36
Lamb’s Conduit Street, 125
Lamps. See Lights
Lancaster House, history, vii—
viii
Leadenhall Market, 14, 31
Leather barrels, 94
— jacks, 94
— trunk, 125
Lehzen, Baroness, 209
Letters, 126-7
Lever, Sir W., viii
Life Guards’ breastplate, 190
Life-preserver, 244
Lights and lighting, lamps,
23-4, 69-71, 109-10, 112
Limoges enamel, 42
Lind, Jenny, 205
Lobated pommel (of sword),
40-1
Taran Street, a
London (name of), 1
— Bridge, 28, 31, ee 128,
166, 170, 217; history, and
model of, 60-1, 103, II4;
Nonsuch House on, 94
— County Council, 86
— Museum, foundation of,
vili; plan of arrangement, x
— Stone, 29, 53
— topography : Pre-Roman,
14-5; Roman, 30-1 ; Saxon
and Norman, 46-7; medize-
val, 63-4; Tudor, 103-5;
Stuart, 144
London Pleasure Gardens, 207
Longchamps, William, 46
Lord Mayor’s Show, too
Lord’s cricket ground, 224
Lotteries, 225
Lovat, Lord Fraser of, 238
Lower Regent Street, 168
Lucas, Seymour, 180; collec-
tion of costumes, 180 sqq.
Ludgate Circus, 14
— Hill, 60
Lunardi, Vincent, 226

THE LONDON

MUSEUM

M.C.C., 224

““ Macaronis,”’
Macready, 204
Mammoths, 4, 9
“Mansion of Happiness, The,”

195, 197-8, 227

Marble Arch, 14, 166

‘‘Marching Watch,” the, 122-3

Mary I, Queen, 100:

— Queen (consort of Wil-
liam ITI), hair of, 125
— Queen, 233

Matches, 70

Matilda, Empress, 46

May Day, Evil, 95-7

Mayfair, 144, 167

Mayor, Lord, 53-4, 62-3, 115,
I21, 122; costume of, 187

Maypole in Cornhill, the, 96

Maximian, 22

Mazer, 125-6

Medway, Dutch fleet in, 136

Merchants, London, wealth
and munificence of, 61-3,
97-8, 125

Merchant Taylors’
135

Metropolitan ware, 112

Middle Saxons, 38

Middlesex, 38

Military costume, 189-190

Milton, John, 120

Mirror, Stuart, 108

Mithras (worship), 17-9

Modish, Lady Betty, 151

Monasteries, London, 59-Go.
See also under names of
various monastic orders

Money-boxes, 59

Monk, General, 119

Montgolfier, 226

Monument, the, 132

Moore, Mr. H. C., quoted, 178

Moorfields, 73

Moorgate, 63

More, Thomas, 170

Mortars, 25, 126

Mortlake, finds at, 34

Company,

INDEX

Motor omnibuses, 17
Mouse-trap, 214
Mulberry Garden, 221
Musket, invention of, 144
Myddelton, Sir Hugh, 125

NAporeEon I, 166, 182, 232
— II, visit to London,

174

National Gallery, 168
Needles, 110
Needlework, Stuart, 108
Nelson, 77, 174
Neptune Street prison, 235
‘“New Bridge,’ 166-7
New Bridge Street, 166—7
“ New Canton,” 153

— Inn, 218

— Oxford Street, 167

— River Company, 125

— Spring Gardens, 229
Newbury, 117
Newgate (gate), 63

— prison, relics, 236 sqq.
Newgate Street, 28, 60, 132
Newington Butts, 144, 227
Newspapers, the first, 125
Newsum, Bartholomew, 158
Nonsuch, chest, 94

— House, 94

— Palace, 94
Norman, Dr. Philip, 102
Normans in London, 41-6
Northumberland, Earl of, ror

O.P. RIOTS, 205-6

Old Bailey, the, 237

Old St. Paul's, 131

Omnés, 177

Omnibuses, history of, 175-8,
184-5

Ommnibuses and Cabs, 178

Orders—Bath, 73; Garter, 73,
211; Royal Victorian, 73;
Victoria and Albert, 73

Oxford, 67-8
— Street, 167

255

Pack, pedlar’s, go-2
Pack-horse road, 92 -
Paddington, 166, 177
Pall Mall (game), 129, 223,
231
— (street), 71, 168
Panelling, 112, 234
Pantheon, the, 227
Parasols, 195
Parks, London, 223 sqq.
Paulinus, Suetonius, 28
Paxton, Sir J., 175
Pedlar’s pack, 90-2
Pelican, The, 102
Peninsular War, 183-4
Penmanship at Christ’s Hos-
pital, 173
Pentonville, 167
Pepys, Samuel, 74, 137; quoted,
83, 129, 132, 136
Perrault, 150
Persian porcelain, 142
Pett, shipbuilder, 136-7
Pewter, 90, 127
Phelps, Samuel, 205, 208
Philip of Spain, 100
Philpot, John, 63
Phoenix Fire Office, 233
Pianos, 225
Piccadilly, 103, 144, 223
— Circus, 3
Pickpockets, 197
Pickwick Papers, The, 223
Pile-dwellings, 7
Pilgrims, pilgrimages, 55-6
Pimlico, 167, 226
Pindar, Sir Paul, his house, 234
Pins, Roman, 25, 26-7; Tudor,
90
Pipes, 109, 126, 127
‘* Pipes ’’ (wig-curlers), 197
Pistols, 196-7
Pitt-Rivers, General, 41
Plague, the Great, 80, 130-2 ;
other outbreaks, ro1—2
— regulations, 101-2
Planché, Andrew, 154
Plate, gold and silver, 66-8

256

Plate-armour, 51-2

Platters, ‘89

Plautius, Aulus, 28

Plume, Sir, 151

Pocahontas, 217

“ Pocket-pistols,” 172

Pole-axes, 51

Poleyns, 191

Pommel of sword,
40-1

Ponsonby, Sir H., 209

Pope, Alexander, his ‘‘ grotto,”
163-4; quoted, 79, 151, 160,
204

Poplar, 103

Porcelain, manufactured in
England, 146-7; method
of production, 139, 172;
Chinese origin, 140; Persian,

lobated,

142
Past Office, General, 28, 59
Posts, postal service, 126-7
Pottery, prehistoric, 5, 9;
Norman, 42—5; Roman, 17-8,
23-4; Tudor, 93-4; Stuart,
112; importance of, 42-5;
beginnings of English in-
dustry, 137 sqq.
Poultney, Sir J., 62-3
Powder tester, 197
*Prentices. See Apprentices
Prickets, 70-1
Printing, invention of, 48, 55;
‘ specimens of later, 88, 124-5
Prior, Matthew, 164
Prioress, Chaucer’s, 68
Prisons, 96, 105, 235 sqq.
Prison relics, 235 sqq.
Puritans, 104, 113
Purses, 187

QUEEN Victoria Street, 60
Queen’s Library, The, vii

RACE-MIGRATIONS, 41
Raddle, Mrs., 184
“‘ Rake’s Progress, The,’ 147

THE LONDON

MUSEUM

Raleigh, Sir W., 109

Ramrods, 197

Ranelagh Club, 228

— Gardens, 153, 167, 199,

227-8

Rapier, Tudor, 95

Rathbone Place, 111

Reliquary, 42

Restitutus (Bishop), 29

““ Reward of Virtue, The,” 224

Reynolds, Sir J., 185

Richard Coeur de Lion, 46

— II, 169-70, 192

Richmond, 95

Roads, packhorse, 92; Roman,
16, 29

Rocking-horse, Stuart, 130

Roman boat, 218

Rosoman, 207

Rotherhithe, 36, 167

Rotunda, the, at Ranelagh,
228

Roubillac, 151, 165, 229

Royal George, The, 210-1

Royal United Service Institu-
tion, 113

Rowlandson, Thomas, 147-8

Ruffles, 97

Ruffs, 190

Rupert, Prince, portrait of, 76

Rushholder, t09

Ruskin, quoted, 84

SADLER’S Wells, 207-8, 226
Saex, 34
St. Andrew Undershaft, 96, 114
St. Bartholomew’s Hospital,
28, 63, 115
St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, 120
St. James’s, 121, 144
— — Coffee-house, 200
— — Palace, vii, 129
— — Park, 14, 129-130, 221,
230 sqq.
St. Laurence Poultney, 63
St. Martin’s - in - the - Fields,
164-5
St. Patrick’s Cross, 136

INDEX

St. Paul’s Cathedral, first built,
35, 42-3; rebuilt, 42-3;
steeple struck by lightning,
103-4; model of, 103-4;
rebuilt, 135, 193-4

Churchyard, 38
— — School, 63

St. Swithin’s Church, 53

Salade (helmet), 51

Salter (‘‘ Don Saltero’’), 201

Saltero’s, Don, 51, 201-2

Salting, Mrs., 146, 149

Salvage Corps, the London, 233

Samian ware, 17-8

Samplers, 90, 125, 214

Sandals, Roman, 23, 26

Sardinia Chapel, 233

Saxon pirates, 22, 33 sqq.

Sceptre, toy, 187

Scissors, 87

Scold’s bridle, 237

Scotchman, shop sign, 115

Scott, General, 225

Scramasax, 34

Scrivener’s tools, 109-10

Scrofula, 123

Seals, 72-3

Sebert, 43

Sedan chairs, 184-5

Selwyn, George, 225

Sergeant’s Inn, 62, 218

Sergeants of the Coif, 62

Serpentine, 14, 230

Seven Bishops, 170

Shaftesbury Avenue, 167

Shakespeare, 19, 76, 102, 161

Sheaths, 51

Shepherd, Jack, 241

Sheridan, R. B., 225

Sheriffs, duties of, 54

Shillibeer, 177-8, 223

Ships, model of, 136-7

Shoes, 191-3; medieval, 59;
Tudor, 90. See also Sandals

Shop front, Georgian, 214-7

Shoreditch, 95

Siddons, Mrs., 204, 205-6

Signs, shop, 112, 115, 217, 219

257

Silk industry in London, 221

Sims, Mr. G. R., 235

Skates, skating, 127-9

Skull-cup, Danish, 38

Slip (paste on pottery), 44,
Tica,

Sloane, Sir Hans, 201

Sly House, The, 235

Smoking. See Tobacco

Snow Hill, 167

Snuff, 217

Snuff-boxes, 147, 156, 158-9,
194

Snuffers, 69-70, 223

Somerset House, 98

Southcott, Joanna, 241

Southwark, 31, 39, 63-4, 103,
132, 181

“ Southwark Fair,’”’ 147

Spa Fields, 167

Spain, Philip of, too

Spaniels, King Charles, 129,
230

Spectator, The, 79, 194-5, 198,
200~1

Spells, 110-111

Spencer, Lord R., 225

Spinacuti’s monkey, 207

Spoons, 77-8, 107; Roman,

27; Stuart and Common-
wealth, 107; Restoration,
125

Sprimont, Nicholas, 148-9
Spurgeon, C. W., 172
Spurs, Norman, 41 ; medizval,
ce o1; 29

Spy, 244
Stable Yard, vii
Stabler, Mr. Harold, 86

Staff, pilgrim’s, 56; appren-
tice’s, 95-7

Stafford House. See Lancaster
House

Staffordshire pottery, 112, 172—
173, 206 ;

Staple Inn, roo

Steele, Sir R., 79, 164, 201

Steelyard, The (place), 99
R

258

Steelyard, Gresham’s, 89, 97,
99, 107
— standard, 99
Stephen, King, 46
Stepney Green, 166
“ Steyne, Lord,’ 169
Stow, John, 114-5
— quoted, 60, 62-3, 97-8, 101,
103, 104, 107
Strand, the, 99, 103
— Palace Hotel, 223
Stuart parlour, 112, 233
Sun Fire Office, 233
Sundial, 125
Sunshades, 195
Surbiton, 103
Surrey Gardens, 223
Survey of London, Stow’s, 114
Sutherland, Dukes of, vili, 15
Swift, 164
Swords, Celtic, 12 ; Saxon, 34;
lobated, 40-1; medieval,
48-51; Stuart, 110
Sydenham, 175

TABARD Inn, 56
Tacitus, 29
Talbot Inn, 56
Tally-sticks, 223-4
Tangye, Sir R., 116
— Collection, 116 sqq.
Tatler, The, 79
Tea, 213-4
Templars, Knights, 64
Temple, the, 64, 218
ae Bar, 54) 98
Thackeray, 169, 182-3, 241
Thames, 6, 9, 14, 20-2, 30,
345 38-9, 61, 75, 117, 127-9,
136
— bridges over. See under
names of individual bridges
— Embankment, 167, 171
— Street, 56
— Tunnel, 175
Theatres, London, 76-7, 102,
181, 203 sqq.
Thomson, James, 164

THE LONDON MUSEUM

Thornhill, Sir James, 241-2

Threadneedle Street, 40, 98

Thrift-boxes, 59

Tiberius Cesar, 19

Tiger, sabre-toothed, 4, 9

Tinsel pictures, 206

Tobacco, use of, 109, 127, 158—
159; -box, 125

Tokens, 123-4

Toll-houses, 164, 166

Tompion, Thomas, 135, 158

Top, 110

Torches, 71

Tottenham Court Road, 226

Touch-pieces, 123-4

‘“‘ Touching for the Evil,” 123-
124

Tower of London, 30, 53; first
built, 43; model of, 43-4,
103, 233

Toys, 40-1, 214. See also under
Games, Dolls, Top

Toys of Other Days, quoted,
161, 209

Toy-shop, Georgian, 214-7

Trade cards, 223

Trafalgar Square, 167

Trained bands, 117, 122-3

Tree, Sir Herbert, 206-7

Trunk, leathern, 125

Turpin, Dick, 238-41

Tyburn (Tybourne), river, 14,
6

3
— ‘ Tree,’ 14, 236
Tyers, Jonathan, 229
Tygs, 111
Tyler, Wat, 52-3, 61
Typhus, outbreak of, lo1—2

UMBRELLAS, 195, 227

**Unaker,”’ 153

Uniforms, military, 189—90

Urns. See Amphora, Wine jar
— cinerary, 25

Vanity Fair, 169, 182-3
Vauxhall Bridge, 228

INDEX

Vauxhall Gardens, 69, 151,153,
199, 227-9
— Stairs, 228
Velocipedes, 214
Venetian glass-workers, 88, 89
Venus dish, 141
Vests, men’s, 190
Vicar of Wakefield, The, 188
Victoria, Queen, 19, 73, 179,
210, 221, 233 ; her costumes,
209; dolls, 209; at Great
Exhibition, 175; opinion of
Stafford House, vii; opens
new Royal Exchange, 99;
riding-whip, 209; sketches
by, 174, 209; Staffordshire
figure of, 172; writing-
case, I7I
_— and Albert Order, 73, 210
— Memorial, 221
— Street, 167
Victorian Order, Royal, 73
Victory, H.M.S.,77 —
Virginia, 115
“Vue optique,” 174-5

Walbrook, 14, 18, 56
Wall, London, 19, 27-9, 31,
60, 237
Walpole, Horace, 163, 225, 228
Walthamstow lake-dwelling, 7
Walton, Isaak, his house, 234
Walworth (Lord Mayor), 53
Wandsworth, 38
Ward, Leslie, 244
Ware, 125
Warming-pan, 112
_ Warrant, for execution, 100-1
Watches, 143, 156-8
Watchhouse, 243
Watchmen, 243
Waterfowl in St. James’s Park,
129-30, 230-2

Watering-pot, 110
Waterloo Bridge, 10, 167

— uniform, 181-3
Watling Street, 29
Wax-reliefs, 135

259
Weapons, 196-7
Wedgwood, 141
Weights, 223; Roman, 25;

Stuart, 107. See also Steel-
yard

Wellclose Prison, 243

Wellington, Duke of, 174, 182 ;
his carriage, 183-4, 217

Wells, Lord, 61

— Cathedral, 156

Wesley, John, 188

Wessex, 37 ©

Westbourne (river), 14

Westminster, 167; import-
ance of, 46-7, 122, 144;
jousts at, 88, 100; finds at,

89
— Abbey, 104, 158,170, 211,
212; building of, 42-3
— Bridge, 10, 164, 167
— Hall, 169-70
Wheat, 25-6
White, Sir Thomas, 98
— Tower, The, 43-4
Whitechapel, 118
— bell-foundry, 126
Whitefriars, 60, 103, 105
Whitehall, 118, 121
— Palace, 113-14
White's, 225
Whitmore, Sir G., 115, 116
Whittington, Richard, 63
Wigs, 190-1, 197-8
Wig-curlers (“‘ pipes ’’), 109
Wilkes, John, 163, 234
Wiuil, The, 85
William the Conqueror, 212;
builds Tower, 43; gives
charter to London, 45-6;
coronation, 46
— Rufus, 169
LO eta 7.
— IV, 179; opens London
Bridge, 170
Will’s Coffee-house, 199
Wills, John, 63
Wimborne Minster, 88, 156
Winchester, 37, 109

Re

Wine-bottles, 141

‘Wine-cooler, 75

Wine jar (amphora), 18,24 <5
Witchcraft, 110-11

ie Woolwich, 103, 136

Worcester, Earl of, 62

Wren, Sir Christopher, 135,
I7I

Wrotham wate, 112

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Gate Be

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York, Duke of (son
IIT), Vili :
“ Yorkshire Stingo, T

ZECH, Jacob, 157

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