The Uncommercial Traveller

  had never had to do with. They were always (he added) as we saw

  them. And of us visitors (I add) they knew nothing whatever,

  except that we were there.

  It was audacious in me, but I took another liberty with Pangloss.

  Prefacing it with the observation that, of course, I knew

  beforehand that there was not the faintest desire, anywhere, to

  hush up any part of this dreadful business, and that the Inquest

  was the fairest of all possible Inquests, I besought four things of

  Pangloss. Firstly, to observe that the Inquest WAS NOT HELD IN

  THAT PLACE, but at some distance off. Secondly, to look round upon

  those helpless spectres in their beds. Thirdly, to remember that

  the witnesses produced from among them before that Inquest, could

  not have been selected because they were the men who had the most

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  to tell it, but because they happened to be in a state admitting of

  their safe removal. Fourthly, to say whether the coroner and jury

  could have come there, to those pillows, and taken a little

  evidence? My official friend declined to commit himself to a

  reply.

  There was a sergeant, reading, in one of the fireside groups. As

  he was a man of very intelligent countenance, and as I have a great

  respect for non-commissioned officers as a class, I sat down on the

  nearest bed, to have some talk with him. (It was the bed of one of

  the grisliest of the poor skeletons, and he died soon afterwards.)

  'I was glad to see, in the evidence of an officer at the Inquest,

  sergeant, that he never saw men behave better on board ship than

  these men.'

  'They did behave very well, sir.'

  'I was glad to see, too, that every man had a hammock.' The

  sergeant gravely shook his head. 'There must be some mistake, sir.

  The men of my own mess had no hammocks. There were not hammocks

  enough on board, and the men of the two next messes laid hold of

  hammocks for themselves as soon as they got on board, and squeezed

  my men out, as I may say.'

  'Had the squeezed-out men none then?'

  'None, sir. As men died, their hammocks were used by other men,

  who wanted hammocks; but many men had none at all.'

  'Then you don't agree with the evidence on that point?'

  'Certainly not, sir. A man can't, when he knows to the contrary.'

  'Did any of the men sell their bedding for drink?'

  'There is some mistake on that point too, sir. Men were under the

  impression - I knew it for a fact at the time - that it was not

  allowed to take blankets or bedding on board, and so men who had

  things of that sort came to sell them purposely.'

  'Did any of the men sell their clothes for drink?'

  'They did, sir.' (I believe there never was a more truthful

  witness than the sergeant. He had no inclination to make out a

  case.)

  'Many?'

  'Some, sir' (considering the question). 'Soldier-like. They had

  been long marching in the rainy season, by bad roads - no roads at

  all, in short - and when they got to Calcutta, men turned to and

  drank, before taking a last look at it. Soldier-like.'

  'Do you see any men in this ward, for example, who sold clothes for

  drink at that time?'

  The sergeant's wan eye, happily just beginning to rekindle with

  health, travelled round the place and came back to me. 'Certainly,

  sir.'

  'The marching to Calcutta in the rainy season must have been

  severe?'

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  'It was very severe, sir.'

  'Yet what with the rest and the sea air, I should have thought that

  the men (even the men who got drunk) would have soon begun to

  recover on board ship?'

  'So they might; but the bad food told upon them, and when we got

  into a cold latitude, it began to tell more, and the men dropped.'

  'The sick had a general disinclination for food, I am told,

  sergeant?'

  'Have you seen the food, sir?'

  'Some of it.'

  'Have you seen the state of their mouths, sir?'

  If the sergeant, who was a man of a few orderly words, had spoken

  the amount of this volume, he could not have settled that question

  better. I believe the sick could as soon have eaten the ship, as

  the ship's provisions.

  I took the additional liberty with my friend Pangloss, when I had

  left the sergeant with good wishes, of asking Pangloss whether he

  had ever heard of biscuit getting drunk and bartering its

  nutritious qualities for putrefaction and vermin; of peas becoming

  hardened in liquor; of hammocks drinking themselves off the face of

  the earth; of lime-juice, vegetables, vinegar, cooking

  accommodation, water supply, and beer, all taking to drinking

  together and going to ruin? 'If not (I asked him), what did he say

  in defence of the officers condemned by the Coroner's jury, who, by

  signing the General Inspection report relative to the ship Great

  Tasmania, chartered for these troops, had deliberately asserted all

  that bad and poisonous dunghill refuse, to be good and wholesome

  food?' My official friend replied that it was a remarkable fact,

  that whereas some officers were only positively good, and other

  officers only comparatively better, those particular officers were

  superlatively the very best of all possible officers.

  My hand and my heart fail me, in writing my record of this journey.

  The spectacle of the soldiers in the hospital-beds of that

  Liverpool workhouse (a very good workhouse, indeed, be it

  understood), was so shocking and so shameful, that as an Englishman

  I blush to remember it. It would have been simply unbearable at

  the time, but for the consideration and pity with which they were

  soothed in their sufferings.

  No punishment that our inefficient laws provide, is worthy of the

  name when set against the guilt of this transaction. But, if the

  memory of it die out unavenged, and if it do not result in the

  inexorable dismissal and disgrace of those who are responsible for

  it, their escape will be infamous to the Government (no matter of

  what party) that so neglects its duty, and infamous to the nation

  that tamely suffers such intolerable wrong to be done in its name.

  CHAPTER IX - CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES

  If the confession that I have often travelled from this Covent

  Garden lodging of mine on Sundays, should give offence to those who

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  never travel on Sundays, they will be satisfied (I hope) by my

  adding that the journeys in question were made to churches.

  Not that I have any curiosity to hear powerful preachers. Time

  was, when I was dragged by the hair of my head, as one may say, to

  hear too many. On summer evenings, when every flower, and tree,

  and bird, might have better addressed my soft young heart, I have

  in my day been caught in the palm of a female hand by the crown,

  have been violently scrubbed from the neck to the roots of the hair

  as a pur
ification for the Temple, and have then been carried off

  highly charged with saponaceous electricity, to be steamed like a

  potato in the unventilated breath of the powerful Boanerges Boiler

  and his congregation, until what small mind I had, was quite

  steamed out of me. In which pitiable plight I have been haled out

  of the place of meeting, at the conclusion of the exercises, and

  catechised respecting Boanerges Boiler, his fifthly, his sixthly,

  and his seventhly, until I have regarded that reverend person in

  the light of a most dismal and oppressive Charade. Time was, when

  I was carried off to platform assemblages at which no human child,

  whether of wrath or grace, could possibly keep its eyes open, and

  when I felt the fatal sleep stealing, stealing over me, and when I

  gradually heard the orator in possession, spinning and humming like

  a great top, until he rolled, collapsed, and tumbled over, and I

  discovered to my burning shame and fear, that as to that last stage

  it was not he, but I. I have sat under Boanerges when he has

  specifically addressed himself to us - us, the infants - and at

  this present writing I hear his lumbering jocularity (which never

  amused us, though we basely pretended that it did), and I behold

  his big round face, and I look up the inside of his outstretched

  coat-sleeve as if it were a telescope with the stopper on, and I

  hate him with an unwholesome hatred for two hours. Through such

  means did it come to pass that I knew the powerful preacher from

  beginning to end, all over and all through, while I was very young,

  and that I left him behind at an early period of life. Peace be

  with him! More peace than he brought to me!

  Now, I have heard many preachers since that time - not powerful;

  merely Christian, unaffected, and reverential - and I have had many

  such preachers on my roll of friends. But, it was not to hear

  these, any more than the powerful class, that I made my Sunday

  journeys. They were journeys of curiosity to the numerous churches

  in the City of London. It came into my head one day, here had I

  been cultivating a familiarity with all the churches of Rome, and I

  knew nothing of the insides of the old churches of London! This

  befell on a Sunday morning. I began my expeditions that very same

  day, and they lasted me a year.

  I never wanted to know the names of the churches to which I went,

  and to this hour I am profoundly ignorant in that particular of at

  least nine-tenths of them. Indeed, saying that I know the church

  of old GOWER'S tomb (he lies in effigy with his head upon his

  books) to be the church of Saint Saviour's, Southwark; and the

  church of MILTON'S tomb to be the church of Cripplegate; and the

  church on Cornhill with the great golden keys to be the church of

  Saint Peter; I doubt if I could pass a competitive examination in

  any of the names. No question did I ever ask of living creature

  concerning these churches, and no answer to any antiquarian

  question on the subject that I ever put to books, shall harass the

  reader's soul. A full half of my pleasure in them arose out of

  their mystery; mysterious I found them; mysterious they shall

  remain for me.

  Where shall I begin my round of hidden and forgotten old churches

  in the City of London?

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  It is twenty minutes short of eleven on a Sunday morning, when I

  stroll down one of the many narrow hilly streets in the City that

  tend due south to the Thames. It is my first experiment, and I

  have come to the region of Whittington in an omnibus, and we have

  put down a fierce-eyed, spare old woman, whose slate-coloured gown

  smells of herbs, and who walked up Aldersgate-street to some chapel

  where she comforts herself with brimstone doctrine, I warrant. We

  have also put down a stouter and sweeter old lady, with a pretty

  large prayer-book in an unfolded pocket-handkerchief, who got out

  at a corner of a court near Stationers' Hall, and who I think must

  go to church there, because she is the widow of some deceased old

  Company's Beadle. The rest of our freight were mere chance

  pleasure-seekers and rural walkers, and went on to the Blackwall

  railway. So many bells are ringing, when I stand undecided at a

  street corner, that every sheep in the ecclesiastical fold might be

  a bell-wether. The discordance is fearful. My state of indecision

  is referable to, and about equally divisible among, four great

  churches, which are all within sight and sound, all within the

  space of a few square yards.

  As I stand at the street corner, I don't see as many as four people

  at once going to church, though I see as many as four churches with

  their steeples clamouring for people. I choose my church, and go

  up the flight of steps to the great entrance in the tower. A

  mouldy tower within, and like a neglected washhouse. A rope comes

  through the beamed roof, and a man in the corner pulls it and

  clashes the bell - a whity-brown man, whose clothes were once black

  - a man with flue on him, and cobweb. He stares at me, wondering

  how I come there, and I stare at him, wondering how he comes there.

  Through a screen of wood and glass, I peep into the dim church.

  About twenty people are discernible, waiting to begin. Christening

  would seem to have faded out of this church long ago, for the font

  has the dust of desuetude thick upon it, and its wooden cover

  (shaped like an old-fashioned tureen-cover) looks as if it wouldn't

  come off, upon requirement. I perceive the altar to be rickety and

  the Commandments damp. Entering after this survey, I jostle the

  clergyman in his canonicals, who is entering too from a dark lane

  behind a pew of state with curtains, where nobody sits. The pew is

  ornamented with four blue wands, once carried by four somebodys, I

  suppose, before somebody else, but which there is nobody now to

  hold or receive honour from. I open the door of a family pew, and

  shut myself in; if I could occupy twenty family pews at once I

  might have them. The clerk, a brisk young man (how does HE come

  here?), glances at me knowingly, as who should say, 'You have done

  it now; you must stop.' Organ plays. Organ-loft is in a small

  gallery across the church; gallery congregation, two girls. I

  wonder within myself what will happen when we are required to sing.

  There is a pale heap of books in the corner of my pew, and while

  the organ, which is hoarse and sleepy, plays in such fashion that I

  can hear more of the rusty working of the stops than of any music,

  I look at the books, which are mostly bound in faded baize and

  stuff. They belonged in 1754, to the Dowgate family; and who were

  they? Jane Comport must have married Young Dowgate, and come into

  the family that way; Young Dowgate was courting Jane Comport when

  he gave her her prayer-book, and recorded the presentation in the

  fly-leaf; if Jane were fond of Young Dowgate, why did she die and

  leave the book here? Perhaps at the rickety altar, and before the

 
damp Commandments, she, Comport, had taken him, Dowgate, in a flush

  of youthful hope and joy, and perhaps it had not turned out in the

  long run as great a success as was expected?

  The opening of the service recalls my wandering thoughts. I then

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  find, to my astonishment, that I have been, and still am, taking a

  strong kind of invisible snuff, up my nose, into my eyes, and down

  my throat. I wink, sneeze, and cough. The clerk sneezes; the

  clergyman winks; the unseen organist sneezes and coughs (and

  probably winks); all our little party wink, sneeze, and cough. The

  snuff seems to be made of the decay of matting, wood, cloth, stone,

  iron, earth, and something else. Is the something else, the decay

  of dead citizens in the vaults below? As sure as Death it is! Not

  only in the cold, damp February day, do we cough and sneeze dead

  citizens, all through the service, but dead citizens have got into

  the very bellows of the organ, and half choked the same. We stamp

  our feet to warm them, and dead citizens arise in heavy clouds.

  Dead citizens stick upon the walls, and lie pulverised on the

  sounding-board over the clergyman's head, and, when a gust of air

  comes, tumble down upon him.

  In this first experience I was so nauseated by too much snuff, made

  of the Dowgate family, the Comport branch, and other families and

  branches, that I gave but little heed to our dull manner of ambling

  through the service; to the brisk clerk's manner of encouraging us

  to try a note or two at psalm time; to the gallery-congregation's

  manner of enjoying a shrill duet, without a notion of time or tune;

  to the whity-brown man's manner of shutting the minister into the

  pulpit, and being very particular with the lock of the door, as if

  he were a dangerous animal. But, I tried again next Sunday, and

  soon accustomed myself to the dead citizens when I found that I

  could not possibly get on without them among the City churches.

  Another Sunday.

  After being again rung for by conflicting bells, like a leg of

  mutton or a laced hat a hundred years ago, I make selection of a

  church oddly put away in a corner among a number of lanes - a

  smaller church than the last, and an ugly: of about the date of

  Queen Anne. As a congregation, we are fourteen strong: not