Tilbury

“ INTRODUCING A SYNDICATE ACROSS the way from Tilbury House, next door to the massive annex containing the offices of Tiny Tots, Sabbath Jottings, British Girlhood, the Boys’ Adventure Weekly and others of the more recently established of the Mammoth Publishing Company’s periodicals, there stands a ramshackle four-storied building of an almost majestic dinginess, which Lord Tilbury, but for certain regulations having to do with ancient lights, would have swallowed up years ago, as he had swallowed the rest of the street. ”

“ The SAGAMORE was still silent about Tilbury. Meantime, Sally had several times thrown out a feeler--that is, a hint that he would like to know. Aleck had ignored the hints. Sally now resolved to brace up and risk a frontal attack. So he squarely proposed to disguise himself and go to Tilbury's village and surreptitiously find out as to the prospects. Aleck put her foot on the dangerous project with energy and decision. She said:
"What can you be thinking of? You do keep my hands full! You have to be watched all the time, like a little child, to keep you from walking into the fire. ”

“ Sir Tilbury rolled his ponderous carcass to the billiard-room to snore on a sofa until supper-time, when there would be a well-furnished table for the sportsmen and more Champagne and Burgundy.
Bolingbroke was charmed with his hostess. That proud beauty, in its glorious prime of early womanhood, made him for the moment forgetful of his accomplished French wife, who was just then invalided at Bath, where he was to join her in a few days. It was not that he was unfaithful to his wife even in thought, but that his vanity hungered for new conquests. ”

“ On the opposite bank of the Thames is Tilbury Fort, the noted fortress that commands the navigation of the river and protects the entrance to London. It dates from Charles II.'s time, fright from De Ruyter's Dutch incursion up the Thames in 1667 having led the government to convert Henry VIII.'s blockhouse that stood there into a strong fortification. It was to Tilbury that Queen Elizabeth went when she defied the Spanish Armada. Leicester put a bridge of boats across the river to obstruct the passage, and gathered an army of eighteen thousand men on shore. ”

“ An ulster belonging to Tilbury supplied him with a dress, and by turning up the sleeves, and arranging his night-dress apron-wise over the front, he managed to give a fair idea of the kind of character he aimed to personate. He then ruffled up his hair, and brought as much of it as he was able down in the front for a fringe, surmounting it all with a handkerchief shaped to represent a cap. Finally, he smudged his face over with coal dust, and secured one of Mrs Hastings’s mops and a pail from the cupboard at the end of the corridor, and pronounced himself ready for the fray. ”

“ At Tilbury, it is probable, the great work of furnishing dock accommodation for the shipping using the Thames will be finally brought to an end. It is all but impossible to [Pg 332] imagine that the time will ever arrive when the Albert, and Victoria, and Tilbury, and East and West India Docks, will be too small for the demands of a trade almost inconceivably greater than that which passes through the Port of London now. ”

“ To Tilbury is now to fall the often forfeited glory of containing the largest docks in the world. The heavy traffic of the Thames is gradually being arrested at a lower portion of the river. “One thing hangs upon another,” remarks a recent writer, “and just as Tenterden Steeple is accountable for Goodwin Sands, so the Suez Canal is responsible for the Albert Dock, and for those that are being made [Pg 331] at Tilbury. ”

“ Tilbury, my companion," said Miss Charters. "Very well; in a moment."
Mrs. Tilbury passed patiently out to deliver the message. Beecher was delighted with the correctness and cold respectability of such a chaperon.
"Mr. Hargrave is a young dramatist," said Miss Charters, finishing the document. "He's coming to read some masterpiece to me. He wrote a one-act piece three years ago that was very clever, and now, of course, I can't risk refusing to hear him—he might have a work of genius at last. This is my fourth trial." She put the paper from her impatiently. "I'm sorry." ”

“ Among the numerous publications which had their being in Tilbury House was that popular weekly, Society Spice, a paper devoted to the exploitation of the shadier side of London life and edited by one whom the proprietor of the Mammoth had long looked on as the brightest and most promising of his young men—Percy Pilbeam, to wit, as enterprising a human ferret as ever wrote a Things-We-Want-to-Know-Don’t-You-Know paragraph. ”

“ As to the theory that they were places of Druidical worship, we may dismiss it as not deserving serious consideration.
At East Tilbury the entrance to the Danes' pit is from above, by narrow passages that widen and communicate with several apartments, all of regular forms. One of these pits consists of a shaft descending to chambers arranged like a sixfoiled flower. The shaft is 3 feet in diameter and 85 feet deep. ”

“ Traces of these tile-works are still discoverable in a field some three or four hundred yards on the London side of Tilbury.
[Wilson, in his Life of Defoe, vol. i. pp. 228. et seq., gives some interesting particulars of Defoe's share in these pantile works, and of his losses in connexion with them. Pantiles had been hitherto a Dutch manufacture, and brought in large quantities into England; the works at Tilbury were erected for the purpose of superseding the necessity for such importation, and providing a new channel for the employment of labour.—Ed.] ”

“ His ecclesiastical preferments were as numerous as the changes in his academical career. Among the livings which he held were Tilbury East, 1603, Great Parndon, 1606, Epping, 1607, Orsett and Toft in Cambridge, 1610. ”

“ Off we went on top speed, roaring through stations, where a glimpse might be had of wondering officials upon the platforms, for a special train was a novelty on the line. All ordinary traffic arrangements were held up until we had passed through, and we reached Tilbury in time which I doubt not constituted a record.
There at the docks was the great liner, delayed in her passage to the Far East by the will of my royally empowered companion. It was novel, and infinitely exciting.
"Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith?" ”

“ And now, having passed the Gardens at Rosherville, ingeniously constructed out of old chalk-pits, having seen Tilbury old and new, and having come to the end of this portion of our journey by water, it is time for us to land at Gravesend, where Hogarth and his merry companions put up at “Mrs. Bramble’s,” and, it is probable, took shrimps and tea. Gravesend, let it be said at once, is rapidly losing some of its most pleasant features. Coal-staithes and wharves have invaded the picturesque foreshore. ”

“ Orson, the brother of Valentine, was suckled by a she-bear, and was brought up by an eagle.--Valentine and Orson.
Tilburi ́na, the daughter of the governor of Tilbury Fort; in love with Whiskerandos. Her love-ravings are the crest unto the crest of burlesque tragedy (see act ii. 1) .--Sheridan, The Critic (1779) .
“An oyster may be crossed in love,” says the gentle Tilburina.--Sir W. Scott.
Tilbury Fort (The governor of) , father of Tilburīna; a plain, matter-of-fact man, with a gushing, romantic and love-struck daughter. In Mr. ”

“ To this, Mr. J. A. Sparvel-Bayly, of Billericay, wrote (1879, p. 58) :—
“In the little village of East Tilbury in Essex, situate on the banks of the Thames, and not far from Romford, is a house known as ‘Whalebone Cottage,’ in front of which is an arch composed of the jawbones of a huge whale. From their weather-worn appearance they may possibly have belonged to that alluded to by S. P.”
In reply to this, Mr. ”

“ I told Mills I wouldn’t; because it might get his father into a row. Mills says he’s dead certain to win. I say, shall you fellows go in?”
“I don’t mind,” said Tilbury, “as it’s not money. Any fellow sell me six stamps?”
“Yes, for sevenpence,” said Arthur. “I’m not going in, young Simson. My governor said to me the chances were some young blackleg or other would be on to me to shell out something for a swindle of the kind ”

“ The beautiful young man, Lord Luffton, now engaged her in conversation, and as Lady Tilchester and I left the hall both he and the Duke were escorting Miss Trumpet to the dais—no doubt to turn up the carpet and search for the traditional blood upon the steps.
"They are the most wonderful nation," Lady Tilchester said, as she linked her arm in mine. "Here is a girl looking as well bred as any of us—more so than most of us—probably beautifully educated, and accomplished, too, and whose father began as a common navvy or miner out in the West. ”

“ Get him away, and I'll stand you something handsome—upon my soul I will!"
"What do you call something handsome?" inquired Tillotson, whose pulse was not so feverish as his friend's.
"Get him safe to London and I'll stand a fiver," said Glover. "Now go. I'll stay here."
Mr. Tillotson, having got matters on a business footing, went, and, carelessly twisting his small moustache, slowly approached the schooner, on the deck of which was a small boy.
"Is Captain Gething aboard, old man?" inquired Mr. Tillotson, in a friendly voice.
"Down the cabin, I b'lieve," said Henry, jerking his thumb. ”

“ Why to get to the Thames that bird'd have to go up the Stratford-on-Avon to Kingswood cut, down the Warwick an' Birmingham to Budbrooke—with a trifle o' twenty-one locks at Hatton to be worked or walked round; cross by the Warwick an' Napton—another twenty-two locks; an' all the way down the Oxford Canal, which from Napton is fifty miles good."
"She'd be an old bird before she got there, at our pace," Tilda agreed. "But, o' course, Mr. Bossom, if we want to get to Stratford quick, an' you don't, you'll make the pace what you like an' never mind us." ”

“ It manufactures nothing specially. It has no great horse fair, or cattle fair, or even pig market of special notoriety. Every Saturday farmers and graziers and buyers of corn and sheep do congregate in a sleepy fashion about the streets, but Dillsborough has no character of its own, even as a market town. Its chief glory is its parish church, which is ancient and inconvenient, having not as yet received any of those modern improvements which have of late become common throughout England; but its parish church, though remarkable, is hardly celebrated. ”

“ Typartitus, riding to the meadow, cried out: “Where art thou, Stilfrid? Neither cross nor sign shall help thee, people shall tell a new tale of us.” Stilfrid, on hearing this, gave thanks to S. Wenceslas, and said: ‘Give me the yellow pennon, that colour is the firmness of every noble man.” Typartitus cried out wrathfully and caracoled haughtily upon his horse. Stilfrid delayed not to charge him, and soon cut short his curvetting, casting him far behind his horse, so that shield and helmet flew up high above the horse, and ere he reached the ground his soul departed from him. ”

“ That a man with a family should cling to a house in which he has once established himself is intelligible. The butcher who supplied Dillsborough, or the baker, or the ironmonger, though he might not drive what is called a roaring trade, nevertheless found himself probably able to live, and might well hesitate before he would encounter the dangers of a more energetic locality. But how it came to pass that he first got himself to Dillsborough, or his father, or his grandfather before him, has always been a mystery to me. ”

“ Tildy listened to the adventure with breathless admiration. No man had ever tried to follow her. She was safe abroad at any hour of the twenty-four. What bliss it must have been to have had a man follow one and black one’s eye for love!
Among the customers at Bogle’s was a young man named Seeders, who worked in a laundry office. Mr. Seeders was thin and had light hair, and appeared to have been recently rough-dried and starched. He was too diffident to aspire to Aileen’s notice; so he usually sat at one of Tildy’s tables, where he devoted himself to silence and boiled weakfish. ”

“ He has the manner of an awkward school-boy.
"You are taking away every one's character, as usual, I suppose, Babykins," he chuckled. "What will Mrs. Gurrage think of it all, I wonder?"
Lady Tilchester interrupted further conversation by carrying me off to see the garden. She is the most fascinating personality I have yet met. There is something like the sun's rays about her—you feel warmed and comforted when she is near. She looks so great and noble, and above all common things, one cannot help wondering why she married Lord Tilchester, who is quite ordinary. When she talks, every one listens. ”

“ It would seem that Tirrell suspected her design, for in a short time he came with a carriage to bring her back. The husband used every effort but force to get her to go home. The following letter is the last communication Mr B. received from this unfortunate woman:
Boston, Oct. 1845.
James—I have just received your letter that you wrote so long ago. You want to know all, of course. I left New Bedford and went to Concord, N. H. and from there to Niagara Falls and Vermont State, and back to New York, and now I am in Boston. They have got Albert; they caught him in New Bedford ”

“ CHAPTER III. Returning from my Breton journey, I reached my mother's house in York Street on the 23rd of July, 1839, and on the 26th of the same month left London with her to visit my married sister in her new home at Penrith, where Mr. Tilley had established himself as Post Office surveyor of the northern district. His home was a pretty house situated between the town and the well-known beacon on the hill to the north of it. ”

“ Tilden was a dear old bachelor who lived in a fine old mansion in Gramercy Park. Though 60 years old he seemed in the prime of his manhood; a genial and overflowing scholar; a trained and earnest doctrinaire; a public-spirited, patriotic citizen, well known and highly esteemed, who had made fame and fortune at the bar and had always been interested in public affairs. He was a dreamer with a genius for business, a philosopher yet an organizer. ”