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- 6135
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- 2026-01-30T07:57:45.581Z
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- text
- 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 to-day. 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."
- title
- Chunk 2