BOOKS.
WHITTINGTON'S LONDON.*
THIS entertaining and instructive little book, which belongs to the capital series of biographies entitled "The New Plutarch," bears on its title-page the names of Messrs. Besant and Rice, to whom English novel-readers owe so large a debt ; but, un- fortunately, Mr. Rice has been compelled, by a long and severe illness, to refrain from all but absolutely necessary work, and Mr. Besant has therefore had to deal single-handed with the materials collected by himself and his friend. Though, how- ever, he has been compelled to undertake work in excess of that originally contemplated by him, it has been performed in no perfunctory manner ; indeed, nothing in these pages is more pleasantly noteworthy—we might almost say more amusingly noteworthy — than the abounding and buoyant enthu- siasm with which Mr. Besant celebrates the deeds of Whittington, and the glories of the great City with the history of which his name will be for ever associated. The book has, indeed, two heroes, Whittington and London ; and we are told even more about the latter than the former, partly, of course, because there is more to tell, but partly, we cannot help think- ing, because the record, stretching through centuries, of the trials and the triumphs of the millions of citizens who have passed on from generation to generation the great traditions of a great city, has in it something more of inspiration than the record of any single life, saturated as it may have been with the spirit of the past of London, or prophetic of the spirit of its future. There is something of almost passionate ardour in Mr. Besant's words, when he says :— " It is one of the characteristics of London that he who comes up to the City from the country speedily becomes penetrated with the magic of the golden pavement, and falls in love with the great City. And he who has once felt that love of London can never again be happy beyond the sound of Bow Bells, which can now be beard for twenty miles round and more. The greatness of the City, its history, its churchyards crowded with dead citizens, its associations, its ambitions, its pride, its hurrying crowds,—all these things affect the imagination and fill the heart. There is no place in all the world, and never has been, which so stirs the heart of her children with love and pride as the City of London ; not Paris even, nor Rome, nor Florence, nor Venice; there is no city in which the people have been more steadfastly purposed to maintain their rights and fight for their freedom."
How these rights were achieved, how they were maintained, and how the freedom which they brought was fought for, and transformed from a precariously-held prize into an assured and unassailable possession, is a story upon every detail of which Mr. Besant dwells with the interest of a lover. Before he can say a word about Whittington, he must give us the history of the City Charters,—snatched one by one from the fears or the needs of Kings, and maintained, when the fear had vanished or the need had been satisfied, by the sturdy bravery of men to whom civic patriotism was one of the cardinal virtues, and of whom it might be said, in the words of Macaulay, that they loved London "as a Roman * Sir Richard Whittington, Lord Mayor of London. By Walter Besant and James Rice. London : Marcus Ward and Co.
the Seven Hills, or an Athenian the City of the Violet Crown."
And yet in no other way could the life of the great city worthy- of the fourteenth century have been fully recorded ; for these- very struggles, by which the great City Charters, with their suc- cessive grants of precious privilege were got and kept, were the events which brought within the range of possibility such a career as that of Richard Whittington. The chapter relating to these matters is full of interest and instruction ; but the facts are too crowded for condensation, and too closely connected.
for intelligible detachment from each other, so the reader who wishes to understand how the foundations of municipal govern- ment in London were laid during the years which witnessed the incorporation of the great City Companies, must needs be referred to the book itself. A little more adaptable to the pur- poses of the critic, who naturally wishes to give his reader some hint of the quality of the work from which he himself has derived. so much pleasure, are the picturesque pages which present so many charming glimpses of the external features of the London which spread itself before the wondering eyes of little Dick Whitting- ton, when, by way of the narrow bridle-path which we now call Oxford Street, be entered its gate, and gazed for the first time on the abode of traffic in which he was to be a busy worker ; the great houses, in one of which he was to be acknowledged master ; the high places of civic government, where, in days to come, he was to sit crowned with glory and honour. We talk of the wonderful growth of the Metropolis, but we seldom east our eyes far enough backward to realise how wonderful that growth has been. The great wall which encircled Whittington's London, beginning at the Tower on the east, and ending at the- Fleet River and the Thames on the west, was little more than two miles long, and the space which it surrounded was smaller than the Hyde Park of to-day. Even within this narrow boun- dary, there were still green, open spaces ; but where the houses stood, they were closely packed, and the streets were narrow and winding. Even Mr. Besant cannot make his picture wholly attractive ; it has, indeed, details which are nothing less than repellent :— " There is no pavement in the streets, and they are not kept clean ; there is no lighting at night; there is no service of scavengers ; everybody throws his refuse where lie pleases,—in the streets, on the river-bank, in the City moat ; here it lies, and fills the air with
noisome stenches The London citizen sits ever in fear of plague, and knows uot yet that the only safeguard is to keep house and city and people clean. Death is still before his eyes ; in the prisons, hard by, the criminals perish daily of gaol-fever ; life, which. is uncertain at the best, and can never be anything but fleeting and transitory, seemed, and was, far more uncertain in the fourteenth century than the nineteenth."
And yet what London apprentice, full of life, hope, and ambi- tion, could spare a thought for what was, after all, a mere background to an endless pageant, all agleam with light and colour. Mr. Besant may well ask what are our City shows, to, those which glutted the eyes and the minds of Dick Whittington and his 'prentice companions. There was,— " For black broad. cloth, cloth of gold ; for black-silk hat, a fur cap, embroidered with gold and pearls ; fur-lined cloaks of scarlet, blue, and gold ; chains of gold ; gallant horses harnessed with gold embroidery ; troops of liverymen in the colours of their Companies ;. silken banners worked with arms, which to the eyes of those who looked on them were as legible as printed book is now ; and on occa- sions of simple, every-day life, the Mayor, the Sheriffs, and the Alder- men going about with their serjeants, clad in robes of office, magis- trates and judges to the open eye, with power to strike off the hand of him who dared resist their authority. Again, the merchants of the old time lived among their 'prentices and workmen ; their great state and splendour were things to be witnessed and envied of all. The clerk, now-a-days, cannot understand the glory of success, because he creeps home nightly to his suburban cottage at Camber- well, and never sees his master's gorgeous palace at Kensington, his galleries of pictures, his crowded balls, his sumptuous dinners. Formerly these things were done in the open, for all eyes to see ; and when the master entertained great lords, his 'prentices were there to see. As he was, so might they be."
Such was Whittington's London, his environment, of which,. as we have said, Mr. Besant has inevitably more to tell us than concerning Whittington himself. He has been rescued from the realm of legend, but he brings its atmosphere with him, and the outlines of his figure are still somewhat dim and shadowy. Still, though our knowledge is yet incomplete, what we have of it is—thanks to Mr. Besant and his predecessor, Dr. Lysons- fairly trustworthy ; and in this mythoklastic age, it is a matter for real thankfulness that we are not called upon to cast to the four winds of heaven all the delightful details of the story, dear to us in that Eden of childhood which no serpent of criticism can enter. We have, indeed, to discard the poor, friendless boy ;. or the tree Richard, as distinguished from the fabulous Dick, was ayounger sonof an old and honourable family, holding estates and bearing arms,—a family which could treat with Sir John Fitz-Warrin, the rich mercer, into whose service little Richard entered, upon terms of perfect equality. The theory that a gentleman is degraded by entering into trade is as modern as many other of our social sophistries. For the younger members -of such families as that of Whittington, there were no openings such as present themselves to-day. He might enter a great lord's house as page and dependent, he might become a student at one of the Inns of Court, or he might enter the Church, though the slight respect paid to ecclesiastics, most of whom were of humble origin, rendered this last an untempting voca- tion ; but, as Mr. Besant says, "Other professions there were none. The barbers were surgeons, and let blood ; there were no engineers, architects, bankers, or writers; there was no army, in which to hold a commission ; there was no standing navy ; there was no Civil Service, unless a post in the Royal Household might be called a Civil Service ; there was only one way possible -outside service, the Church, or the Law, by which a lad could earn his livelihood, which was by practising some honourable -trade or mystery in a great city."
If, however, we are thus compelled to give up the poor, half- starved scullion, driven to despair by the bard words and harder blows of the cruel cook, we are allowed to hold, as at least not disproven, the pretty legend of the prophetic chime of Bow Bells; and still better, our dear old friend the cat is still left to us, as unimaginative possession. Of course, a little manipulation has been necessary to make the anciently wrought fancies fit in with the newly discovered facts ; but this was to be expected, and Mr. Besant handles the fancies as Tsaak Walton handled the worms, -" tenderly, as if he loved them." When Dick sat at the foot of Highgate ILll and listened to the bells of Bow, he was not running away in despair, but simply enjoying an hour of rest and meditation. The message of the chime, with its pleasant burden, "Whittington, Lord Mayor of London," was not a startling prophecy of undreamed-of possibilities, but simply the audible and natural echo of the aspirations of hopeful and ambitions boyhood. This, at any rate, is Mr. Besant's reading of the story ; and, as it is the most romantic rendering that can be allowed us, we accept it with such gratitude as is at our -command, and try very hard to think it as good as the old legend. Further, our complaisance will not carry us. For the feline quadruped who is presented to us as an historical hypothesis, supported by woodcuts, monuments, and the like, we confess we can feel none of the enthusiasm inspired by the cat of the nursery pantheon. The animal is no longer Whit- tington's familiar, his only friend, upon whose warm coat fell its young master's parting tears, but simply an article of mer- chandise, like a bale of cloth, bought cheap, that it may be sold dear in some country where mice are plentiful and cats are scarce. History, like the law of gravitation, is unsparing, and knows no remorse.
The details of Whittington's public life are scanty, and even the account of his three mayoralties is provokingly devoid of realisable incident ; but one story of the princely liberality of the man has been preserved from oblivion. During the last of his three terms of mayoral dignity, Whittington entertained Henry of Agincourt and his queen, and we read :—
"The magnificence of this banquet astonished both the King and his bride ; probably there was not in all England and France together another man who could have provided such a banquet. For, although there were great nobles, with a vast territory and many thousands of vassals, there was not certainly, outside the City of London, any one who could command the rich and splendid things which were ready to the hand of a great merchant. Even the fires were fed with cedar and perfumed wood. When Catherine spoke of it, the Mayor proposed to feed the flames with something still more costly and valuable; and, in fact, he threw into the fire the King's own bonds to the amount of 60,000. Among the bonds were some to the amount of 10,000 marks, due to the Mercers' Company ; one of 1,500 marks, due to the Chamber of Loudon; one of 2,000 marks belonging to the Grocers ; and all Whittington's private loans and advances. It is probable that in burning these bonds the Mayor acted by previous agreement of the City ; but if not—if he took on himself the loans doe to the Companies—he made a most splendid and princely gift. The sum of 260,000 advanced by one man would, even in these days, be con- sidered enormous ; in those days, it can be hardly reckoned as less than a million and a quarter of our present money. Did the Patriotic Fund, the contribution of a whole nation, amount to more ?"
Comparisons are odious, but it may freely be admitted that this was a gift of altogether unique splendour. What makes the story better worth telling, is the fact that it is thoroughly harmonious with the entire Whittingtoniau tradition. His was
a nature cast in a large mould, and though the relics of him have one by one been swept away, his name is for ever associated with the London that he loved. She has not been grateful to him ; she has not commemorated him as she has commemorated many of her lesser worthies ; but to the stranger who walks her streets in search of some statue or some inscription to perpetuate the fame of Richard Whittington, it may well be said,—Si ?nasal/tot/Ina quaeris, circumspiee.
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