Picture
Second
Rich Man’s Crumbs
In the year 1814, during the summer following my first taste of the “Poor Man’s Pudding,” a sea-voyage was recommended to me by my physician. The Battle of Waterloo having closed the long drama of Napoleon’s wars, many strangers were visiting Europe. I arrived in London at the time the victorious princes were there assembled enjoying the Arabian Nights’ hospitalities of a grateful and gorgeous aristocracy, and the courtliest of gentlemen and kings—George the Prince Regent.
I had declined all letters but one to my banker. I wandered about for the best reception an adventurous traveler can have—the reception I mean, which unsolicited chance and accident throw in his venturous way.
But I omit all else to recount one hour’s hap under the lead of a very friendly man, whose acquaintance I made in the open street of Cheapside. He wore a uniform, and was some sort of a civic subordinate; I forget exactly what. He was off duty that day. His discourse was chiefly of the noble charities of London. He took me to two or three, and made admiring mention of many more.
“But,” said he, as we turned into Cheapside again, “if you are at all curious about such things, let me take you—if it be not too late—to one of the most interesting of all—our Lord Mayor’s Charities, sir; nay, the charities not only of a Lord Mayor, but, I may truly say, in this one instance, of emperors, regents, and kings. You remember the event of yesterday?”
“That sad fire on the riverside, you mean, unhousing so many of the poor?”
“No. The grand Guildhall Banquet to the princes. Who can forget it? Sir, the dinner was served on nothing but solid silver and gold plate, worth at the least £200,000—that is, 1,000,000 of your dollars; while the mere expenditure of meats, wines, attendance and upholstery, etc., can not be footed under £25,000—120,000 dollars of your hard cash.”
“But, surely, my friend, you do not call that charity—feeding kings at that rate?”
“No. The feast came first—yesterday; and the charity after—today. How else would you have it, where princes are concerned? But I think we shall be quite in time—come; here we are at King Street, and down there is Guildhall. Will you go?”
“Gladly, my good friend. Take me where you will. I come but to roam and see.”
Avoiding the main entrance of the hall, which was barred, he took me through some private way, and we found ourselves in a rear blind-walled place in the open air. I looked round amazed. The spot was grimy as a backyard in the Five Points. It was packed with a mass of lean, famished, ferocious creatures, struggling and fighting for some mysterious precedency, and all holding soiled blue tickets in their hands.
“There is no other way,” said my guide; “we can only get in with the crowd. Will you try it? I hope you have not on your drawing-room suit? What do you say? It will be well worth your sight. So noble a charity does not often offer. The one following the annual banquet of Lord Mayor’s day—fine a charity as that certainly is—is not to be mentioned with what will be seen today. Is it, ay?”
As he spoke, a basement door in the distance was thrown open, and the squalid mass made a rush for the dark vault beyond.
I nodded to my guide, and sideways we joined in with the rest. Ere long we found our retreat cut off by the yelping crowd behind, and I could not but congratulate myself on having a civic, as well as civil guide; one, too, whose uniform made evident his authority.
It was just the same as if I were pressed by a mob of cannibals on some pagan beach. The beings round me roared with famine. For in this mighty London misery but maddens. In the country it softens. As I gazed on the meagre, murderous pack, I thought of the blue eye of the gentle wife of poor Coulter. Some sort of curved, glittering steel thing (not a sword; I know not what it was), before worn in his belt, was now flourished overhead by my guide, menacing the creatures to forbear offering the stranger violence.
As we drove, slow and wedge-like, into the gloomy vault, the howls of the mass reverberated. I seemed seething in the Pit with the Lost. On and on, through the dark and damp, and then up a stone stairway to a wide portal; when, diffusing, the pestiferous mob poured in bright day between painted walls and beneath a painted dome. I thought of the anarchic sack of Versailles.
A few moments more and I stood bewildered among the beggars in the famous Guildhall.
Where I stood—where the thronged rabble stood, less than twelve hours before sat His Imperial Majesty, Alexander of Russia; His Royal Majesty, Frederick William, King of Prussia; His Royal Highness, George, Prince Regent of England; His world-renowned Grace, the Duke of Wellington; with a mob of magnificoes, made up of conquering field marshals, earls, counts, and innumerable other nobles of mark.
The walls swept to and fro, like the foliage of a forest with blazonings of conquerors’ flags. Naught outside the hall was visible. No windows were within four-and-twenty feet of the floor. Cut off from all other sights, I was hemmed in by one splendid spectacle—splendid, I mean, everywhere, but as the eye fell toward the floor. That was foul as a hovel’s—as a kennel’s; the naked boards being strewed with the smaller and more wasteful fragments of the feast, while the two long parallel lines, up and down the hall, of now unrobed, shabby, dirty pine-tables were piled with less trampled wrecks. The dyed banners were in keeping with the last night’s kings: the floor suited the beggars of today. The banners looked upon the floor as from his balcony Dives upon Lazarus. A line of liveried men kept back with their staves the impatient jam of the mob, who, otherwise, might have instantaneously converted the Charity into a Pillage. Another body of gowned and gilded officials distributed the broken meats—the cold victuals and crumbs of kings. One after another the beggars held up their dirty blue tickets, and were served with the plundered wreck of a pheasant, or the rim of a pasty—like the detached crown of an old hat—the solids and meats stolen out.
“What a noble charity,” whispered my guide. “See that pasty now, snatched by that pale girl; I dare say the Emperor of Russia ate of that last night.”
“Very probably,” murmured I; “it looks as though some omnivorous emperor or other had had a finger in that pie.”
“And see yon pheasant too—there—that one—the boy in the torn shirt has it now—look! The Prince Regent might have dined off that.”
The two breasts were gouged ruthlessly out, exposing the bare bones, embellished with the untouched pinions and legs.
“Yes, who knows!” said my guide, “his Royal Highness the Prince Regent might have eaten of that identical pheasant.”
“I don’t doubt it,” murmured I, “he is said to be uncommonly fond of the breast. But where is Napoleon’s head in a charger? I should fancy that ought to have been the principal dish.”
“You are merry. Sir, even Cossacks are charitable here in Guildhall. Look! the famous Platoff, the Hetman himself—(he was here last night with the rest)—no doubt he thrust a lance into yon porkpie there. Look! the old shirtless man has it now. How he licks his chops over it, little thinking of or thanking the good, kind Cossack that left it him! Ah! another—a stouter has grabbed it. It falls; bless my soul!—the dish is quite empty—only a bit of the hacked crust.”
“The Cossacks, my friend, are said to be immoderately fond of fat,” observed I. “The Hetman was hardly so charitable as you thought.”
“A noble charity, upon the whole, for all that. See, even Gog and Magog yonder, at the other end of the hall fairly laugh out their delight at the scene.”
“But don’t you think, though,” hinted I, “that the sculptor, whoever he was, carved the laugh too much into a grin—a sort of sardonical grin?”
“Well, that’s as you take it, sir. But see—now I’d wager a guinea the Lord Mayor’s lady dipped her golden spoon into yonder golden-hued jelly. See, the jelly-eyed old body has slipped it, in one broad gulp, down his throat.”
“Peace to that jelly!” breathed I.
“What a generous, noble, magnanimous charity this is! unheard of in any country but England, which feeds her very beggars with golden-hued jellies.”
“But not three times every day, my friend. And do you really think that jellies are the best sort of relief you can furnish to beggars? Would not plain beef and bread, with something to do, and be paid for, be better?”
“But plain beef and bread were not eaten here. Emperors, and prince-regents, and kings, and field marshals don’t often dine on plain beef and bread. So the leavings are according. Tell me, can you expect that the crumbs of kings can be like the crumbs of squirrels?”
“You! I mean you! stand aside, or else be served and away! Here, take this pasty, and be thankful that you taste of the same dish with her Grace the Duchess of Devonshire. Graceless ragamuffin, do you hear?”
These words were bellowed at me through the din by a red-gowned official nigh the board.
“Surely he does not mean me,” said I to my guide; “he has not confounded me with the rest.”
“One is known by the company he keeps,” smiled my guide. “See! not only stands your hat awry and bunged on your head, but your coat is fouled and torn. Nay,” he cried to the red-gown, “this is an unfortunate friend: a simple spectator, I assure you.”
“Ah! is that you, old lad?” responded the red-gown, in familiar recognition of my guide—a personal friend as it seemed; “well, convey your friend out forthwith. Mind the grand crash; it will soon be coming; hark! now! away with him!”
Too late. The last dish had been seized. The yet unglutted mob raised a fierce yell, which wafted the banners like a strong gust, and filled the air with a reek as from sewers. They surged against the tables, broke through all barriers, and billowed over the hall—their bare tossed arms like the dashed ribs of a wreck. It seemed to me as if a sudden impotent fury of fell envy possessed them. That one half-hour’s peep at the mere remnants of the glories of the Banquets of Kings; the unsatisfying mouthfuls of disemboweled pasties, plundered pheasants, and half-sucked jellies, served to remind them of the intrinsic contempt of the alms. In this sudden mood, or whatever mysterious thing it was that now seized them, these Lazaruses seemed ready to spew up in repentant scorn the contumelious crumbs of Dives.
“This way, this way! stick like a bee to my back,” intensely whispered my guide. “My friend there has answered my beck, and thrown open yon private door for us two. Wedge—wedge in—quick, there goes your bunged hat—never stop for your coattail—hit that man—strike him down! hold! jam! now! wrench along for your life! ha! here we breathe freely; thank God! You faint. Ho!”
“Never mind. This fresh air revives me.”
I inhaled a few more breaths of it, and felt ready to proceed.
“And now conduct me, my good friend, by some front passage into Cheapside, forthwith. I must home.”
“Not by the sidewalk though. Look at your dress. I must get a hack for you.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” said I, ruefully eyeing my tatters, and then glancing in envy at the close-buttoned coat and flat cap of my guide, which defied all tumblings and tearings.
“There, now, sir,” said the honest fellow, as he put me into the hack, and tucked in me and my rags, “when you get back to your own country, you can say you have witnessed the greatest of all England’s noble charities. Of course, you will make reasonable allowances for the unavoidable jam. Goodbye. Mind, Jehu”—addressing the driver on the box—“this is a gentleman you carry. He is just from the Guildhall Charity, which accounts for his appearance. Go on now. London Tavern, Fleet Street, remember, is the place.”
“Now, Heaven in its kind mercy save me from the noble charities of London,” sighed I, as that night I lay bruised and battered on my bed; “and Heaven save me equally from the ‘Poor Man’s Pudding’ and the ‘Rich Man’s Crumbs.’ ”