October 15th. I left Omega-street for the City before noon, after a hasty breakfast with my friend Horatio, who was somewhat under the dominion of his black dog this morning, and far from pleasant company. I was not to present myself to the worthy John Grewter, wholesale stationer, before the afternoon; but I had no particular reason for staying at home, and I had a fancy for strolling about the old City quarter in which Matthew Haygarth’s youth had been spent. I went to look at John-street, Clerkenwell, and dawdled about the immediate neighbourhood of Smithfield, thinking of the old fair-time, and of all the rioters and merry-makers, who now were so much or so little dust and ashes in City churchyards, until the great bell of St. Paul’s boomed three, and I felt that it might be a leisure time with Mr. Grewter.
I found the stationer’s shop as darksome and dreary as City shops usually are, but redolent of that subtle odour of wealth which has a mystical charm for the nostrils of the penniless one. Stacks of ledgers, mountains of account-books, filled the dimly-lighted warehouse. Some clerks were at work behind a glass partition, and already the gas flared high in the green-shaded lamps above the desk at which they worked. I wondered whether it was a pleasant way of life theirs, and whether one would come to feel an interest in the barter of day-books and ledgers if they were one’s daily bread. Alas for me! the only ledger I have ever known is the sainted patron of the northern racecourse. One young man came forward and asked my business, with a look that plainly told me that unless I wanted two or three gross of account-books I had no right to be there. I told him that I wished to see Mr. Grewter, and asked if that gentleman was to be seen.
The clerk said he did not know; but his tone implied that, in his opinion, I could not see Mr. Grewter.
“Perhaps you could go and ask,” I suggested.
“Well, yes. Is it old or young Mr. Grewter you want to see?”
“Old Mr. Grewter,” I replied.
“Very well, I’ll go and see. You’d better send in your card, though.”
I produced one of George Sheldon’s cards, which the clerk looked at. He gave a little start as if an adder had stung him.
“You’re not Mr. Sheldon?” he said.
“No; Mr. Sheldon is my employer.”
“What do you go about giving people Sheldon’s card for?” asked the clerk, with quite an aggrieved air. “I know Sheldon of Gray’s Inn.”
“Then I’m sure you’ve found him a very accommodating gentleman,” I replied, politely.
“Deuce take his accommodation! He nearly accommodated me into the Bankruptcy Court. And so you’re Sheldon’s clerk, and you want the governor. But you don’t mean to say that Grewter and Grewter are —”
This was said in an awe-stricken undertone. I hastened to reassure the stationer’s clerk.
“I don’t think Mr. Sheldon ever saw Mr. Grewter in his life,” I said.
After this the clerk condescended to retire into the unknown antres behind the shop, to deliver my message. I began to think that George Sheldon’s card was not the best possible letter of introduction.
The clerk returned presently, followed by a tall, white-bearded man, with a bent figure, and a pair of penetrating gray eyes — a very promising specimen of the octogenarian.
He asked me my business in a sharp suspicious way, that obliged me to state the nature of my errand without circumlocution. As I got farther away from the Rev. John Haygarth, intestate, I was less fettered by the necessity of secrecy. I informed my octogenarian that I was prosecuting a legal investigation connected with a late inhabitant of that street, and that I had taken the liberty to apply to him, in the hope that he might be able to afford me some information.
He looked at me all the time I spoke as if he thought I was going to entreat pecuniary relief — and I daresay I have something the air of a begging-letter writer. But when he found that I only wanted information, his hard gray eyes softened ever so little, and he asked me to walk into his parlour.
His parlour was scarcely less gruesome than his shop. The furniture looked as if its manufacture had been coeval with the time of the Meynells, and the ghastly glare of the gas seemed a kind of anachronism. After a few preliminary observations, which were not encouraged by Mr. Grewter’s manner, I inquired whether he had ever heard the name of Meynell.
“Yes,” he said; “there was a Meynell in this street when I was a young man — Christian Meynell, a carpet-maker by trade. The business is still carried on — and a very old business it is, for it was an old business in Meynell’s time; but Meynell died before I married, and his name is pretty well forgotten in Aldersgate-street by this time.”
“Had he no sons?” I asked.
“Well, yes; he had one son, Samuel, a kind of companion of mine. But he didn’t take to the business, and when his father died he let things go anyhow, as you may say. He was rather wild, and died two or three years after his father.” “Did he die unmarried?”
“Yes. There was some talk of his marrying a Miss Dobberly, whose father was a cabinet-maker in Jewin-street; but Samuel was too wild for the Dobberlys, who were steady-going people, and he went abroad, where he was taken with some kind of fever and died.”
“Was this son the only child?”
“No; there were two daughters. The younger of them married; the elder went to live with her — and died unmarried, I’ve heard say.”
“Do you know whom the younger sister married?” I asked.
“No. She didn’t marry in London. She went into the country to visit some friends, and she married and settled down in those parts — wherever it might be — and I never heard of her coming back to London again. The carpet business was sold directly after Samuel Meynell’s death. The new people kept up the name for a good twenty years —‘Taylor, late Meynell, established 1693,’ that’s what was painted on the board above the window — but they’ve dropped the name of Meynell now. People forget old names, you see, and it’s no use keeping to them after they’re forgotten.”
Yes, the old names are forgotten, the old people fade off the face of the earth. The romance of Matthew Haygarth seemed to come to a lame and impotent conclusion in this dull record of dealers in carpeting.
“You can’t remember what part of England it was that Christian Meynell’s daughter went to when she married?”
“No. It wasn’t a matter I took much interest in. I don’t think I ever spoke to the young woman above three times in my life, though she lived in the same street, and though her brother and I often met each other at the Cat and Salutation, where there used to be a great deal of talk about the war and Napoleon Bonaparte in those days.”
“Have you any idea of the time at which she was married?” I inquired.
“Not as to the exact year. I know it was after I was married; for I remember my wife and I sitting at our window upstairs one summer Sunday evening, and seeing Samuel Meynell’s sister go by to church. I can remember it as well as if it was yesterday. She was dressed in a white gown and a green silk spencer. Yes — and I didn’t marry my first wife till 1814. But as to telling you exactly when Miss Meynell left Aldersgate-street, I can’t.”
These reminiscences of the past seemed to exercise rather a mollifying influence upon the old man’s mind, commonplace as they were. He ceased to look at me with sharp, suspicious glances, and he seemed anxious to afford me all the help he could. “Was Christian Meynell’s father called William?” I asked, after having paused to make some notes in my pocket-book.
“That I can’t tell you; though, if Christian Meynell was living to-day, he wouldn’t be ten years older than me. His father died when I was quite a boy; but there must be old books at the warehouse with his name in them, if they haven’t been destroyed.”
I determined to make inquiries at the carpet warehouse; but I had little hope of finding the books of nearly a century gone by. I tried another question.
“Do you know whether Christian Meynell was an only son, or the only son who attained manhood?” I asked.
My elderly friend shook his head.
“Christian Meynell never had any brothers that I heard of,” he said; “but the parish register will tell you all about that, supposing that his father before him lived all his life in Aldersgate-street, as I’ve every reason to believe he did.”
After this I asked a few questions about the neighbouring churches, thanked Mr. Grewter for his civility, and departed.
I went back to Omega-street, dined upon nothing particular, and devoted the rest of my evening to the scrawling of this journal, and a tender reverie, in which Charlotte Halliday was the central figure.
How bitter poverty and dependence have made Diana Paget! She used to be a nice girl too.
Oct. 16th. To-day’s work has been confined to the investigation of parish registers — a most wearisome business at the best. My labours were happily not without result. In the fine old church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, I found registries of the baptism of Oliver Meynell, son of William and Caroline Mary Meynell, 1768; and of the burial of the same Oliver in the following year. I found the record of the baptism of a daughter to the same William and Caroline Mary Meynell, and further on the burial of the said daughter, at five years of age. I also found the records of the baptism of Christian Meynell, son of the same William and Caroline Mary Meynell, in the year 1772, and of William Meynell’s decease in the year 1793. Later appeared the entry of the burial of Sarah, widow of Christian Meynell. Later still, the baptism of Samuel Meynell; then the baptism of Susan Meynell; and finally, that of Charlotte Meynell.
These were all the entries respecting the Meynell family to be found in the registry. There was no record of the burial of Caroline Mary, wife of William Meynell, nor of Christian Meynell, nor of Samuel Meynell, his son; and I knew that all these entries would be necessary to my astute Sheldon before his case would be complete. After my search of the registries, I went out into the churchyard to grope for the family vault of the Meynells, and found a grim square monument, enclosed by a railing that was almost eaten away by rust, and inscribed with the names and virtues of that departed house. The burial ground is interesting by reason of more distinguished company than the Meynells. John Milton, John Fox, author of the Martyrology, and John Speed, the chronologer, rest in this City churchyard.
In the hope of getting some clue to the missing data, I ventured to make a second call upon Mr. Grewter, whom I found rather inclined to be snappish, as considering the Meynell business unlikely to result in any profit to himself, and objecting on principle to take any trouble not likely to result in profit. I believe this is the mercantile manner of looking at things in a general way.
I asked him if he could tell me where Samuel Meynell was buried.
“I suppose he was buried in foreign parts,” replied the old gentleman, with considerable grumpiness, “since he died in foreign parts.”
“O, he died abroad, did he? Can you tell me where?”
“No, sir, I can’t,” replied Mr. Grewter, with increasing grumpiness; “I didn’t trouble myself about other people’s affairs then, and I don’t trouble myself about them now, and I don’t particularly care to be troubled about them by strangers.”
I made the meekest possible apology for my intrusion, but the outraged Grewter was not appeased.
“Your best apology will be not doing it again,” he replied. “Those that know my habits know that I take half an hour’s nap after dinner. My constitution requires it, or I shouldn’t take it. If I didn’t happen to have a strange warehouseman on my premises, you wouldn’t have been allowed to disturb me two afternoons running.”
Finding Mr. Grewter unappeasable, I left him, and went to seek a more placable spirit in the shape of Anthony Sparsfield, carver and gilder, of Barbican.
I found the establishment of Sparsfield and Son, carvers and gilders. It was a low dark shop, in the window of which were exhibited two or three handsomely carved frames, very much the worse for flies, and one oil-painting, of a mysterious and Rembrandtish character. The old-established air that pervaded almost all the shops in this neighbourhood was peculiarly apparent in the Sparsfield establishment.
In the shop I found a mild-faced man of about forty engaged in conversation with a customer. I waited patiently while the customer finished a minute description of the kind of frame he wanted made for a set of proof engravings after Landseer; and when the customer had departed, I asked the mild-faced man if I could see Mr. Sparsfield.
“I am Mr. Sparsfield,” he replied politely.
“Not Mr. Anthony Sparsfield?”
“Yes, my name is Anthony.”
“I was given to understand that Mr. Anthony Sparsfield was a much older person.”
“O, I suppose you mean my father,” replied the mild-faced man. “My father is advanced in years, and does very little in the business nowadays; not but what his head is as clear as ever it was, and there are some of our old customers like to see him when they give an order.”
This sounded hopeful. I told Mr. Sparsfield the younger that I was not a customer, and then proceeded to state the nature of my business. I found him as courteous as Mr. Grewter had been disobliging.
“Me and father are old-fashioned people,” he said; “and we’re not above living over our place of business, which most of the Barbican tradespeople are nowadays. The old gentleman is taking tea in the parlour upstairs at this present moment, and if you don’t mind stepping up to him, I’m sure he’ll be proud to give you any information he can. He likes talking of old times.”
This was the sort of oldest inhabitant I wanted to meet with — a very different kind of individual from Mr. Grewter, who doled out every answer to my questions as grudgingly as if it had been a five-pound note.
I was conducted to a snug little sitting-room on the first-floor, where there was a cheerful fire and a comfortable odour of tea and toast. I was invited to take a cup of tea; and as I perceived that my acceptance of the invitation would be accounted a kind of favour, I said yes. The tea was very weak, and very warm, and very sweet; but Mr. Sparsfield and his son sipped it with as great an air of enjoyment as if it had been the most inspiring of beverages.
Mr. Sparsfield the elder was more or less rheumatic and asthmatic, but a cheerful old man withal, and quite ready to prate of old times, when Barbican and Aldersgate-street were pleasanter places than they are to-day, or had seemed so to this elderly citizen.
“Meynell!” he exclaimed; “I knew Sam Meynell as well as I knew my own brother, and I knew old Christian Meynell almost as well as I knew my own father. There was more sociability in those days, you see, sir. The world seems to have grown too full to leave any room for friendship. It’s all push and struggle, and struggle and push, as you may say; and a man will make you a frame for five-and-twenty shillings that will look more imposing like than what I could turn out for five pound, Only the gold-leaf will all drop off after a twelvemonth’s wear; and that’s the way of the world nowadays. There’s a deal of gilding, and things are made to look uncommon bright; but the gold all drops off ’em before long.”
After allowing the old man to moralise to his heart’s content, I brought him back politely to the subject in which I was interested.
“Samuel Meynell was as good a fellow as ever breathed,” he said; “but he was too fond of the tavern. There were some very nice taverns round about Aldersgate-street in those days; and you see, sir, the times were stirring times, and folks liked to get together and talk over the day’s news, with a pipe of tobacco and a glass of their favourite liquor, all in a sociable way. Poor Sam Meynell took a little too much of his favourite liquor; and when the young woman that he had been keeping company with — Miss Dobberly of Jewin-street — jilted him and married a wholesale butcher in Newgate Market, who was old enough to be her father, Sam took to drinking, and neglected his business. One day he came to me and said, ‘I’ve sold the business, Tony,’— for it was Sam and Tony with us, you see, sir — ‘and I’m off to France.’ This was soon after the battle of Waterloo; and many folks had a fancy for going over to France now............