and as far as locality is concerned, with peculiar advantages of view and situation. Shrimps, too, are offered to us in little paper packets—shrimps appear to occupy a very prominent place in the Greenwich dietary of the humbler classes. We are not, however, inclined to trifle away our time or appetites upon these delicate crustaceæ, for we have nobler game in view.
We take our way by the Hospital Terrace where the old Pensioners are pacing up and down, not, I fear, engaged in lofty conversation about their former victories, but rather gossiping over petty Hospital grievances, and desirous of small change for the purchase of tobacco. Another day we will investigate the grievances of these gallant men—but to-day we have other business in hand. We are now approaching a narrow passage down which we will take our way—not by any means in scorn of a lordly temple consecrated to white-bait, which we pass upon our way, but because time out of mind we have been in the habit of consuming these subtle luxuries at an older, if not a more luxurious establishment.
We have reached our destination at last, and find that most of the rooms have been pre-occupied. In one apartment a Club of Odd Fellows is dining, and in another the Royal Academy Club; in another a party of gentlemen met to celebrate a victory before some Parliamentary Committee connected with the passing of some Private Bill; in another a knot of Literary men; in another a select circle of friends who have assembled to give a valedictory dinner to one of their number about to enter into the Holy State. I scarcely think there is an event of English life which is not in due season sanctified and illustrated by a Fish Dinner. A few weeks later and one of the rooms in this very Hotel will be occupied by the Ministers of the Crown, who, when the toils of the Parliamentary campaign are over, and when they are just about to imbrue their hands in the blood of the Innocents, meet over their white-bait, and no doubt chuckle enormously over the dangers they have escaped during the last few months. I wish I could speak with the same freedom of the smaller parties who visit Greenwich, equally for white-bait purposes, but who evidently partake of it in a more secluded way. What a world of pathos there is in the inscriptions cut with diamonds on the window-panes of the smaller rooms:
Jemima Ann and I
dined here
June 5, 1837. Philip Stubbs.
That is twenty-three years ago. Let us assume that J. A. was twenty years of age at the date of the white-bait dinner in question—that would make her forty-three. Did she become Mrs. Stubbs? I hope P. S. behaved handsomely. In that case there is probably another J. A., a beautiful young olive-branch prepared to take the place of the maternal tree. It may be that P. S. was unfaithful (in which case I should like to be behind him with a big stick), and the recollection of that very Greenwich dinner partaken of on the 5th June, 1837, may be the one green spot in the waste of memory. The nose of J. A. may now be red, and her temper soured, but at least, come what may, she has been blessed. Or—on the other hand, for why should I desert my own side in so base a manner?—Jemima-Ann may have been a jilt, and have very severely mishandled poor Philip, in which case I hope he has not been fool enough to condemn a hundred good women for the sake of one bad one, but has since frequently come down to Greenwich in the pleasant society of some Sophy, or Catharine, or Mary-Jane, and indoctrinated that young lady in the not disagreeable white-bait mystery. The windows contain many records of this description, all significant of the fact that the engravers considered their presence at the fishy caravanserai in question upon a particular day in the agreeable society of some young lady, who since that period has been—as I trust—the partner of their toils, worthy of very particular record. The duty of awarding the palm, or rather the flitch of bacon, in matters connubial has not devolved upon me. Had I been the judge upon so critical a point, I should have considered that if the candidates had brought forward satisfactory evidence to the effect that, after one year of marriage, Roderick had proposed to Amelia a little white-bait dinner at Greenwich, but under the express stipulation that they were not to be burdened with the presence of strangers, and that Amelia had instantly assented without any suggestion for adding to the members of the party,—without making any difficulties about “baby,”—but with some little anxiety about the bonnet which she was to wear upon the occasion, I have no hesitation in saying that the court over which I presided would have made the rule absolute for the delivery of the flitch at their usual place of residence—carriage paid.
The tide was nearly up as our little party entered the room destined for the celebration of the mysteries. As the season was not yet far advanced, and as certainly we have had no sun as yet of sufficient power to draw out the latent virtues of the Thames mud, the somewhat peculiar odour which Father Thames now habitually emits had not yet arrived at that more advanced stage when we characterise it by a phrase of greater intensity. Two little Jacks-in-the-water were plying their trade as usual with great perseverance, obviously under the impression, that by tucking up their rags above their little dirty knees, and groping about in the Thames mud, they were rendering back commercial value for the halfpence which they received. It is pleasant enough from the windows and balconies of these white-bait establishments to watch the little river steamers flashing by; and, as the western horizon reddens as the day draws to a close, and the great smoke of London ascends between the white-bait and the setting sun, what strange Turner-like atmospheric effects succeed each other with marvellous rapidity! Whilst waiting for the attendants to bring in the water-zootje, I have seen the river off Greenwich red as though coloured with some red pigment, and the smoky vapour over London now red, now black, as it was moved about by the currents of air; and the great dome of St. Paul’s, and the tops of the other monuments, looking as though they belonged to some city of the Genii. These Greenwich dinners have their poetry and senti-