When I think I deserve particularly well of myself, and have earned the right to enjoy a
little treat, I stroll from Covent-garden into the City of London, after business-hours
there, on a Saturday, or - better yet - on a Sunday, and roam about its deserted nooks and
corners. It is necessary to the full enjoyment of these journeys that they should be made
in summer-time, for then the retired spots that I love to haunt, are at their idlest and
dullest. A gentle fall of rain is not objectionable, and a warm mist sets off my favourite
retreats to decided advantage.
Among these, City Churchyards hold a high place. Such strange churchyards hide in the
City of London; churchyards sometimes so entirely detached from churches, always so
pressed upon by houses; so small, so rank, so silent, so forgotten, except by the few
people who ever look down into them from their smoky windows. As I stand peeping in
through the iron gates and rails, I can peel the rusty metal off, like bark from an old tree.
The illegible tombstones are all lop-sided, the grave-mounds lost their shape in the rains
of a hundred years ago, the Lombardy Poplar or Plane-Tree that was once a drysalter's
daughter and several common-councilmen, has withered like those worthies, and its
departed leaves are dust beneath it. Contagion of slow ruin overhangs the place. The
discoloured tiled roofs of the environing buildings stand so awry, that they can hardly be
proof against any stress of weather. Old crazy stacks of chimneys seem to look down as
they overhang, dubiously calculating how far they will have to fall. In an angle of the
walls, what was once the tool-house of the grave-digger rots away, encrusted with
toadstools. Pipes and spouts for carrying off the rain from the encompassing gables,
broken or feloniously cut for old lead long ago, now let the rain drip and splash as it list,
upon the weedy earth. Sometimes there is a rusty pump somewhere near, and, as I look in
at the rails and meditate, I hear it working under an unknown hand with a creaking
protest: as though the departed in the churchyard urged, 'Let us lie here in peace; don't
suck us up and drink us!'
One of my best beloved churchyards, I call the churchyard of Saint Ghastly Grim;
touching what men in general call it, I have no information. It lies at the heart of the City,
and the Blackwall Railway shrieks at it daily. It is a small small churchyard, with a
ferocious, strong, spiked iron gate, like a jail. This gate is ornamented with skulls and
cross-bones, larger than the life, wrought in stone; but it likewise came into the mind of
Saint Ghastly Grim, that to stick iron spikes a-top of the stone skulls, as though they were
impaled, would be a pleasant device. Therefore the skulls grin aloft horribly, thrust
through and through with iron spears. Hence, there is attraction of repulsion for me in
Saint Ghastly Grim, and, having often contemplated it in the daylight and the dark, I once
felt drawn towards it in a thunderstorm at midnight. 'Why not?' I said, in self-excuse. 'I
have been to see the Colosseum by the light of the moon; is it worse to go to see Saint
Ghastly Grim by the light of the lightning?' I repaired to the Saint in a hackney cab, and
found the skulls most effective, having the air of a public execution, and seeming, as the
lightning flashed, to wink and grin with the pain of the spikes. Having no other person to
whom to impart my satisfaction, I communicated it to the driver. So far from being
