Loitering in Pleasant Paths. Marion Harland

      IN one week we had been twice to Westminster Abbey, once to the Tower; had seen St. Paul’s, Hyde Park, Tussaud’s Wax Works, Mr. Spurgeon, the New Houses of Parliament, Billingsgate, the Monument, Hyde Park, the British Museum, and more palaces than I can or care to remember. In all this time we had not a ray of sunshine, but neither had a drop of rain fallen. We began to leave umbrellas at home, and to be less susceptible in spirits to the glooming of the dusky canopy upborne by the chimneys. That one clear—for London—Sunday had made the curtain so nearly translucent as to assure us that behind the clouds the sun was still shining, and we took heart of grace for sight-seeing.

      But in the course of seven smoky-days we became slightly surfeited with “lions.” Weary, to employ a culinary figure, of heavy roast and boiled, we longed for the variety of spicy entrées—savory “little dishes” not to be found on the carte, and which were not served to the conventional sight-seer. One morning, when the children had gone to “the Zoo” with papa and The Invaluable, Prima—the sharer with me of the aforesaid whim—and myself left the hotel at ten o’clock to carry into effect a carefully-prepared programme. We had made a list of places where “everybody” did not go; which “Golden Guides” and “Weeks in London” omitted entirely, or slurred over with slighting mention; which local ciceroni knew not of, and couriers disdained, but each of which had for us peculiar association and attraction.

      Four-wheelers were respectable for unattended women, and cheaper than hansoms. But there was a tincture of adventure in making our tour in one of the latter, not taking into account the advantages of being able to see all in front of us, and the less “stuffy” odor of the interior. Sallying forth, with a pricking, yet delicious sense of questionableness that recalled our school-day pranks, we sought the nearest cab-stand and selected a clean-looking vehicle, drawn by a strong horse with promise of speed in body and legs. The driver was an elderly man in decent garb. The entire establishment seemed safe and reputable so far as the nature of our enterprise could partake of these characteristics. When seated, we gave an order with inward glee, but perfect gravity of demeanor.

      “Newgate Prison!”

      We had judged shrewdly respecting the qualities of our horse. It was exhilarating, even in the dull, dead atmosphere we could not breathe freely while on foot, to be whirled through the unknown streets, past delightless parks and dolefuller mansions in the West End, in and out of disjointed lanes that ran madly up to one turn and down to another, as if seeking a way out of the mesh of “squares” and “roads” and “rows,”—perceiving satisfiedly, as we did all the time, that we were leaving aristocratic and even respectable purlieus behind as speedily as if our desires, and not the invisible “cabby,” shaped our flight. We brought up with a jerk. Cabs—in the guidance of old or young men—have one manner of stopping; as if the “concern,” driver, horse and hansom, had meant to go on for ever, like Tennyson’s brook, and reversed the design suddenly upon reaching the address given them, perhaps, an hour ago. We jerked up now, in a narrow street shut in on both sides by black walls. The trap above our heads opened.

      “Newgate on the right, mem! Old Bailey on the left!”

      The little door shut with a snap. We leaned forward for a sight of the prison on the right. Contemptible in dimensions by comparison with the spacious edifice of our imaginations, it was in darksomeness and relentless expression, a stony melancholy that left hope out of the question, just what it should—and must—have been. The pall enwrapping the city was thickest just here, resting, like wide, evil wings upon the clustered roofs we could see over the high wall. The air was lifeless; the street strangely quiet. Besides ourselves we did not see a human being within the abhorrent precincts. The prison-front, facing the smaller “Old Bailey,” is three hundred feet long. In architecture it is English—bald and ugly as brick, mortar, and iron can make it. In three minutes we loathed the place.

      “You can go on!” I called to the pilot, pushing up the flap in the roof. “Drive to the church in which the condemned prisoners used to hear their last sermon.”

      “Yes, mem!” Now we detected a rich, full-bodied Scotch brogue in his speech. “Pairhaps ye wouldna’ moind knawing that by that gett—where ye’ll see the bairs—the puir wretches went on the verra same mornin’. Wha passed by that gett never cam’ back.”

      It was a dour-looking passage to a disgraceful death; a small door crossed by iron bars, and fastened with a rusty chain. It made us sick to think who had dragged their feet across the dirt-crusted threshold, and when.

      The cab jerked up again in half a minute, although we had rushed off at a smart trot that engaged to land us at least a mile off.

      “St. Sephulchre’s, mem!”

      I have alluded to the difficulty of determining the age of London buildings from the outward appearance. A year in the sooty moisture that bathes them for seven or eight months out of twelve, destroys all fairness of coloring, leaving them without other beauty than such as depends upon symmetrical proportions, graceful outlines and carving. The humidity eats into the pores of the stone as cosmetics impair the texture of a woman’s skin. But St. Sepulchre has a right to be blasé. It antedated the Great Fire of 1666, the noble porch escaping ruin from the flames as by a miracle. It is black, like everything else in the neighborhood, and, to our apprehension, not comely beyond the portico. The interior is as cheerless as the outside, cold and musty. Throughout, the church has the air of a battered crone with the sins of a fast youth upon her conscience. There are vaults beneath the floor, lettered memorial-stones in the aisle, tarnished brasses on the walls. Clammy sweats break out upon floor, walls, pews and altar in damp weather, and this day of our visit had begun to be damp. It was an unwholesome place even to be buried in. What we wanted to see was a flat stone on the southern side of the choir, reached in bright weather by such daring sunbeams as could make their way through a window, the glass of which was both painted and dirty. A brownish-gray stone, rough-grained, and so much defaced that imagination comes to the help of the eyes that strive to read it: “Captain John Smith—Sometime Governour of Virginia and Admirall of New-England.” He died in 1631, aged fifty-two. The Three Turks’ Heads are still discernible upon the escutcheon above the inscription. The rhyming epitaph begins with—

      “Here lyes One conquer^d that Hath conquer^d Kings.”

      We knew that much and failed to decipher the rest.

      Family traditions, tenderly transmitted through eight generations,