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Updated: May 16, 2025
My father took Mattia and me across London where there were beautiful houses, splendid streets with wide pavements, and carriages that shone like glass, drawn by magnificent horses and driven by big fat coachmen with powdered wigs. It was late when we got back to Red Lion Court, for the distance from the West End to Bethnal-Green is great. How pleased I was to see Capi again.
The driver seemed none too anxious to take us there. Mattia and I thought it was probably on account of the distance. We both knew what "Green" meant in English, and Bethnal-Green undoubtedly was the name of the park where my people lived. For a long time the cab rolled through the busy streets of London.
But, the family I have been best acquainted with, since the removal from this trying sphere of a Chinese circle at Brentford, reside in the densest part of Bethnal-green.
At Bethnal-Green is an old mansion, which, in the survey of 1703, was called Bethnal-Green-House, and which the inhabitants, with their usual love of traditionary lore, assign as the "Palace of the Blind Beggar." This house was erected in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, by John Kirby, citizen of London, and was, says Stow, "lofty like a castle."
He was a student of old county histories, and a searcher of old newspapers; and his studies in that line had made him familiar with many strange stories stories of field-labourers called away from the plough to be told they were the rightful owners of forty thousand a year; stories of old white-haired men starving to death in miserable garrets about Bethnal-green or Spitalfields, who could have claimed lands and riches immeasurable, had they known how to claim them; stories of half-crazy old women, who had wandered about the world with reticules of discoloured papers clamorously asserting their rights and wrongs unheeded and unbelieved, until they encountered sharp-witted lawyers who took up their claims, and carried them triumphantly into the ownership of illimitable wealth.
Larvae of all the silk-producing bombyces were preserved in their different stages, and can be seen in the Bethnal-green Museum.
Under the fostering hand of this "faire damosel" he soon recovered, and afterwards marrying her, she became the mother of "the comelye and prettye Bessee." Fearing lest his rank and person should be discovered by his enemies, he disguised himself in the habit of a beggar, and took up his abode at Bethnal-Green.
When we got to the street the clerk hailed a cab and told us to jump in. The strange looking vehicle, with the coachman sitting on a box at the back of a hood that covered us, I learned later was a hansom cab. Mattia and I were huddled in a corner with Capi between our legs. The clerk took up the rest of the seat. Mattia had heard him tell the coachman to drive us to Bethnal-Green.
Bethnal-Green was even more horrible in the daytime than it had been at night. Mattia and I hardly spoke a word. Now and again he pressed my hand. When we returned to the house my mother had not left her room. Through the open door I could see that she was leaning her head on the table. Thinking that she was sick I ran to her to kiss her, as I was unable to speak to her.
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