Kitabı oku: «Here and There in London», sayfa 9
MARK-LANE
On a Monday morning, especially on the Eastern Counties lines, the trains running into town have an unusually large number of passengers. They consist generally of the jolly-looking fellows who, at the time of the cattle show, take the town by storm, and fill every omnibus and cab, and dining room, and place of public amusement, and then as suddenly retire as if they were a Tartar horde, dashing into some rich and luxurious capital, then vanishing with their booty, none know whither. However, penetrate into Mark-lane, you may see them every Monday and Friday, smelling very strong of tobacco smoke – for, although smoking is absurdly and strictly prohibited on railways, it is a known fact that people will smoke nevertheless – and with the air of men who are not troubled about trifles, and have their pockets well lined with cash. These are the merchants and millers and maltsters of Mark-lane. All England waits for their reports; their decisions affect the prices of grain at Chicago on one side, and far in the ports of the Black Sea on the other. Bread is the staff of life, and its traffic affects the weal or woe of empires. Prices low in Mark-lane, and in the garrets of London, in the cellars of Manchester, in the wynds of Edinburgh, there is joy. As we may suppose, the trade in grain is one of the most ancient in the world. There were corn merchants and millers long before Mark-lane was built. Originally the corn merchants of the metropolis assembled at a place called Bark’s Quay, where now the Custom-house stands. Then they moved into Whitechapel, somewhere near Aldgate Church, and then the Corn Exchange in Mark-lane was built. Originally there was but one exchange, that erected in 1749, which is private property, and the money for which was raised in eighty hundred-pound shares; each share at this time being worth £1,300. This, I believe, is the only metropolitan market for corn, grain, and seeds. The market days are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; hours, ten to three. Wheat is paid for in bills at one month, and other corn and grain in bills at two months. The Kentish hoymen, distinguishable by their sailors’ jackets, have stands free of expense, and pay less for metage and dues than others, and the Essex dealers enjoy some privileges; in both cases said to be in consideration of the men of Kent and Essex having continued to supply the city when it was ravaged by the plague. Old Mark-lane consists of an open Doric colonnade, within which the factors have their stands. It resembles the atrium, or place of audience in the Pompeian house, with its impluvium, the place in the centre in which the rain fell. In this market, managed by a committee and secretary, there was no foreign competition. At this time there are about seventy-two stands, and more than a hundred subscribers of five guineas each. I believe the stands are from thirty to forty pounds a year. Now at one time this place was quite a close borough. There were more factors than the place could hold, and when a stand was vacant it was given to some poor broken-down man, who would not be likely to interfere with the jolly business which the rest were carrying on. The excluded were very indignant. They planted themselves in Mark-lane. They did business in the street outside the Exchange. They were men of equal standing and respectability with any of the privileged; and after an immense amount of grumbling and growling, they did as most Englishmen would have done – went to Parliament, and got an Act to have a second Exchange erected side by side with the old one. This second erection was completed in 1826, and in the partition are now a couple of arches, which were placed there in order that, if at any time the old Exchange were amalgamated with the new – a consummation of which there seems no chance at present – the whole may be formed into one capacious market. The new Exchange has a central Grecian Doric portico, surmounted by imperial arms and agricultural emblems, the ends having corresponding pilasters. Here lightermen and granary-keepers have stands as well as corn merchants, factors, and millers. At the further end of this building there is a seed-market; nor is this all. Attached to the new Exchange is an hotel, in the upper room of which is an auction room for the sale of damaged cargoes; and on the other side – that is, above the old Exchange – is a subscription refreshment room, known as Jack’s, where most of the Norfolk flour is sold, a great deal of it being paid for in ready money, and then resold again downstairs, on the usual credit, the profit on such a transaction being the odd threepence or sixpence, which becomes a respectable sum if you buy or sell a thousand quarters. Up here are the millers or their agents in large quantities. “We are not,” said one to the writer, “the rogues the world takes us for. If we don’t sell good flour, the bakers can’t sell their bread.” Let us hope this is true; but in these days of universal rascaldom, when gold, no matter how dishonestly acquired, makes its possessor an object of respect, and not of scorn, what wonder is it that we believe that there are rogues in grain as well as in other trades? In the middle of the old Exchange you will see an immense number of foreigners; these are Greeks, living all together in the neighbourhood of Finsbury-square, who are gradually getting all the foreign trade – what are our English merchants about? – of the country into their hands. It is the Greeks, not the English, who buy up the corn shipped from the ports of the Black Sea, and pour it into the English market. Besides these Greeks, you will see captains of vessels in great numbers waiting to hear if their cargoes are sold, and where they are to be taken. A busy scene is Mark-lane, especially on a Monday. The malt tax in 1857 was £6,470,010, which represents an enormous amount of malt, of which a great part is sold in Mark-lane. In the year 1857 there were imported into the United Kingdom 3,473,957 quarters of wheat, 1,701,470 of barley, 1,710,299 of oats, 76,048 of rye, 159,899 of peas, 305,775 of beans, 1,150,783 of Indian corn, 188 of buck-wheat, and 2,763 of bere or bigg; and in the same year there were imported 2,184,176 cwts. of flour and meal. Then we must not forget the home produce, which is principally brought into London by ships, though a great deal of it comes up by rail. In London alone the consumption of wheat in the shape of flour and otherwise may be estimated at upwards of 1,600,000 quarters a year. But Mark-lane is not, like Smithfield, a market for London alone. On the contrary, it is attended by buyers from all parts of the country. The cargoes in the river sold at Mark-lane may be landed at Leith, or Glasgow, or Liverpool, or even in the distant ports of Cork, or Belfast, or Dublin. Well may there be a bustle in Mark-lane. At eleven the market commences, and at the various stands preparations are made for the business of the day by untying and placing on the stands little bags containing samples of every conceivable species of grain eatable by man or beast. At the end of the day the floor is covered with the samples which the buyer, after rubbing over in his hands and inspecting, has thrown down. The sweepings are afterwards gathered up and sold, and realise, I believe, a very handsome sum in the course of the year. At half-past two a beadle rings a bell, and no more are permitted to enter the Exchange. Those that are there hastily finish their business, tie up their samples, swallow a chop, rush off to their respective termini, and in two or three hours are perhaps more than a hundred miles away. Mark-lane for the rest of the week is a dull, dirty lane, with but few passengers, and very dark and dull indeed.
Yet Mark-lane has its romances. Look around you; not a man perhaps but can tell you of enormous profits and enormous losses. The trade carried on here is of so speculative a character that but few realise money by it after all. Come to this stand. It was calculated the other day that the firm carrying on business here were losing at the rate of a thousand pounds per hour. Hear this factor: “I once bought some Windsor beans at an early hour in the morning at 32s. a quarter, and sold them the same day at 64s.” Yet our informant has been compelled to settle with his creditors. You may point to me a man who has not been reduced to this, but he is a rara avis, and he can tell you how, perhaps, another day or another hour would have made him a bankrupt. The rule is a crisis and a crash; not a disgraceful one – for the unlucky ones, many of them, manage to pay twenty shillings in the pound eventually – but a crisis and a temporary suspension. In some cases where a man has been in trade many years, and has accumulated a handsome fortune, one unlucky speculation scatters it all, and compels him – old, and destitute of the energy of youth – to begin business again. This is hard, but it cannot be helped. Men who have been on the Exchange long can tell you funny stories of how they came at seven in the morning and cleared handsome sums of money before they went home to breakfast, and broke all the laws against regrating and forestalling which the thoughtful stupidity of our ancestors had devised – in order that bread, the staff of life, might not be high in price – on a most royal scale. We do not hear of such things now, nor do the mobs of London now break into the Quaker Chapels to see if the flour is hidden there – an amiable weakness to which the mob was much given towards the end of the last century, when wheat was at famine prices, and the loaf was cheap at two and tenpence. We are fallen upon better days, upon days of free trade, when the English artisan, in order that bread may be cheap, has his emissaries and agents scouring all parts of the old world and the new.
PREACHING AT ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL
In that celebrated chapter in which Gibbon explains the rise and progress on natural grounds of the Christian religion, it has always seemed to us that he has not done justice to the immense influence which the institution of the pulpit must originally have possessed. Had he gone no further than the pages of his New Testament, the distinguished historian would have found many an instance of oratorical success. He would have read how Herod quailed before the rude orator who in the desert drew multitudes to hear him as he proclaimed the advent of the Messiah, and warned a generation of vipers to flee from the wrath to come; he would have read how, whilst the Teacher spake as never man spake, the common people heard him gladly; how Felix trembled in his pride and power, and how the polished intellect of Athens listened, and admired, and believed, while Paul preached of an unknown God. It is true that in a subsequent chapter Gibbon does not altogether ignore the pulpit, and admits the sacred orators possessed some advantages over the advocate or the tribune. “The arguments and rhetoric of the latter,” he writes, “were instantly opposed with equal arms by skilful and resolute antagonists, and the cause of truth and reason might derive an accidental support from the conflict of hostile passions. The bishop, or some distinguished presbyter to whom he cautiously delegated the powers of preaching, harangued without the danger of interruption or reply a submissive multitude whose minds had been prepared and subdued by the awful ceremonies of religion. Such was the strict subordination of the Roman Catholic Church, that the same concerted sounds might issue at once from a hundred pulpits of Italy or Egypt, if they were tuned by the master hand of the Roman or Alexandrian bishop.” But much more than this may be said. Wonderful is the power of oratory. Gibbon may have under-rated it, for we know that he never could summon up the requisite courage to make a speech in Parliament; but nevertheless rare power is his, who can speak what will touch the hearts, and form the opinion, and mould the lives of men. The more unlettered be the age, the more triumphant will be this power; and when the theme is the stupendous one of religion – when in it, according to the belief of preacher and hearer, eternal interests are involved – woe that shall never pass away – joy that shall never die – when, moreover, this living appeal is put in the place of dead form or dreary routine, what wonder is it that before it should fade away the pagan faith of Greece or Rome? The pulpit and Christianity are identical. In times of reformation and revival, the pulpit has ever been a power. When spiritual darkness has come down upon the land – when the oracles have been dumb – when the sacred fire on the altar has ceased to burn, the pulpit has been a form, a perquisite, a sham, rather than a message of peace and glad tidings to the weary and heavy laden.
How comes it to pass that in these days the pulpit of the Establishment has failed to be this? Mr. Christmas, a clergyman of the Established Church, in a volume recently published, seeks to answer this question. To use his own language, “the author had long felt that through some cause or other the Church had not secured that hold on the attention of the multitude without which her ministration could be but partially effective.” Why, even in these few lines we see a reason of the failure which Mr. Christmas mourns. Clergymen live in a world of their own, and will not look at facts as worldly men are compelled to do. Now, as a matter of fact, the Church of England is not the church, but merely a section of the church; and yet you cannot go into an episcopalian place of worship but you hear what the church says – what the church holds – what the church commands – when common sense tells every one that the speaker is merely referring to the Establishment in England, and that even if he were appealing to the custom and tradition of that body of believers which, in all countries and ages, constitutes the church, the inquiry is of little consequence after all – the appeal, in reality, being to the Bible, and the Bible alone, which, in the well-worn language of Chillingworth, is the religion of Protestants. Thus is it so much preaching in the Church of England fails to reach and attract the masses. The ministers will deal in fictions – will exclaim, “Hear the church” – will wander away from topics of human interest into questions with which the educated (and still more the uneducated) mind has no sympathy. The middle-class public go to hear – for it is the genteel thing to go to church – but they sit silent, passive, exhausted by the long preliminary service, wearied, and unmoved. What wonder is it that the more independent and manly – the men who do not fear Mrs. Grundy – who are not afraid of conventionalisms, either stop at home, or leave the Establishment for the more living service of dissent? Mr. Christmas observes: – “Few will venture to say that the style of preaching most valued among nonconformists is inferior to that heard from the pulpits of the Establishment.” The reason is not far to seek: dissent has no ancient prestige to plead; dissent has no rich endowment to fall back on; dissent lives on and is strong in spite of the cold shade of aristocracy, or of the sneer of the bigot or the fool; dissent depends upon the pulpit. If that be weak and cold, and dull and dim, dissent melts like snow beneath the warm breath of the south. Dissent reminds us more than the Establishment of the earlier period of Christianity, of the Carpenter’s Son who had not where to lay his head; whose apostles were fishermen, and whose kingdom, to use His own emphatic declaration, “was not of this world.” The public mind is shocked and estranged when it hears the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as he did the other day, defending a recent ecclesiastical appointment, on the plea that the fortunate individual was a man of blameless life, of high family, and great wealth. “Mr. A. B.,” says Mr. Christmas, “must be a clergyman, and Mr. A. B. has not the gift of utterance. Well, he will be able to read his sermons, and the rest of his brethren do the like. It is no detriment to a man’s prospects that the church is half empty when he preaches. ‘He is a very learned man – or a very well connected man – or a very good man – or an excellent parish priest: it is a pity he is not more successful in the pulpit; but then, really, preaching is the smallest part of a clergyman’s duty.’” Such is the way in which such a subject is treated within the pale of the Establishment.
But the Sunday Evening Service at St. Paul’s Cathedral is an answer to all this. Let us see! On a cold winter evening, underneath its magnificent dome, are seated some three thousand well-dressed people. On the first occasion of holding evening service, the scene was rather indecorous for Sunday evening. A large number of those who had been unable to obtain admission to the service were lingering about the south door, and as the carriages of the Lord Mayor and other civic dignitaries were leaving with their occupants, the assembled crowd gave vent to their feelings by unmistakable groans of displeasure, as if they considered themselves to have been unfairly excluded. But this is over – the thing has become a fact. The audience has toned down to the level English standard of propriety. The sublime service, in spite of its length and monotony, has been listened to with a patience almost devout; and the choir, “200 trebles and altos, 150 tenors, and 150 basses,” the largest and most complete choir that was ever yet organised, has done its part to heighten the rapture and piety of the night. A clergyman now ascends the pulpit to preach. He is a popular clergyman – the crowd to-night is larger than it has ever yet been – active, learned, industrious, charitable, devout. He is the Rev. Canon Dale, rector of St. Pancras. Yet what is his theme? The Church – the Mother of us all – the divinely appointed means of man’s recovery from the power and the consequence of sin. Is not this a fatal blunder? What man wants is, not the Church, but the message it proclaims – the voice itself, not the messenger – the good tidings of great joy, not the human instruments by which they are revealed to man.
But this service shows the strength of the church in the metropolis. The reply to this, we fear, is unsatisfactory. The present able Bishop of London is endeavouring to procure a union of the City churches. The answers to the inquiries of the bishop made by the clergy present some curious features. The Rev. J. Charlesworth, rector of the joint parishes of St. Mildred, Bread-street, and St. Margaret Moses, replies in answer to the bishop’s interrogatories that the largest attendance at any of his church services is ten, that his net income is £220 a year, and that the population is 258. The Rev. J. Minchin, rector of the joint parishes of St. Mildred, Poultry, and St. Mary, Colechurch, reports that the largest attendance at his service is 30, his net income £280, and the population 600. The Rev. Thomas Darling, rector of St. Michael Paternoster Royal and St. Martin’s Vintry, reports that his largest attendance is 25, his net income £240, population 430. The Rev. Dr. Kynaston, high master of St. Paul’s School, reports that the attendance at the church of the joint parishes of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey and St. Nicholas Olave, of which he is rector, is 30, his income £263, with a house in good repair, population 592. The Rev. Charles Mackenzie, rector of the joint parishes of St. Benet, Gracechurch, and St. Leonard, Eastcheap, states the attendance at 48, net income £287, population 300. The Rev. Dr. Stebbing, rector of St. Mary Somerset and St. Mary Woolchurch Haw, reports that his largest attendance is 40, net income £250, population unknown. The Rev. Thomas Jones, rector of Allhallows, Lombard-street, reports that his largest attendance is 50, his net income £396, population 456. The Rev. F. J. Stainforth, incumbent of Allhallows Staining, reports that his largest attendance is 50, net income £800, population 500. Many more of the same sort might be given from the official returns, and in some cases there is an attendance of 100 or 150 persons where the income of the incumbent is upwards of £1,000 a year.
One reason of this wretched state of things we have hinted at. The removal of the city population, we may be told, is another: but the population in the neighbourhood of these places is sufficient to fill them were the population given to church-going. With all due deference, we would fain ask the clergy if they do not fail to attract the public, owing to their themes and manner of treating them? Some preachers always manage to bring in the Old Testament dispensation. The preacher is dwelling among the priests and Levites: perpetually he tells you what the Jews did and did not; how they were a stiff-necked people; how they went after strange gods; how their nation was blotted out, and their temple razed to the ground, and their very name became a reproach. Man needs not the Hebrew learning, but the Christian faith; not the voice that thundered from Sinai, but the accents of mercy that were heard on Calvary in that awful hour when the earth trembled, when the grave gave up its dead, when the veil of the Temple was rent in twain, and the Son of Man died upon the cross. The preacher of the class we have referred to almost seems to think otherwise: he ignores the present, and lives only in the past. He is worse than a lawyer with his precedents. His dialect is obsolete, and a stumbling-block to active, earnest, intelligent living men, whether rich or poor. He is like a man with corks, who is afraid to cut them off, and strike out boldly for himself. He cannot ask you for a penny for a new church without showing how liberally the Jews supported the public worship of their day. He is great in Deuteronomy and Leviticus. He seems as if he could have no faith in Christianity unless he could lock it up with Old Testament texts. “I fear,” writes Erasmus, in his “Age of Religious Revolution,” “two things – that the study of Hebrew will promote Judaism, and that the study of philology will revive Paganism.” Really we sometimes are inclined to believe that the first fear has been realised. Many a preacher reminds us of Bishop Corbett’s “Distracted Puritan,” when he says —
“In the blessed tongue of Canaan
I placed my chiefest pleasure,
’Till I prick’d my foot with a Hebrew root,
And it bled beyond all measure.”
We can well imagine many a preacher thus speaking, and feel disposed to wish that such might prick their feet with Hebrew roots till they wholly discontinue their references to extinct forms of worship, and apply the truth that Christ came to preach to man’s present position – to the hopes and fears – to the struggles and duties – to the passions and vanities of to-day. There is progress everywhere. Why should preaching be the exception? If, as is admitted, the eloquence of the bar or senate has declined, may we not naturally conclude that in that of the pulpit there has been a falling off as well, especially when we remember how much the press has supplemented the latter? Verily, the clergy, whether in or out of the Establishment, must exert themselves. The nation demands that the enormous wealth and patronage possessed by the latter be devoted to something more than refined enjoyment or epicurean ease. It is not churches we want, but parsons. An orator can preach anywhere, as well from an old tub as from a pulpit, costly and consecrated, and curiously wrought.
