Highways and Byways in London
by Emily Constance Baird Cook · English · Gutenberg #39875 · 932,817 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Highways and Byways in London
Author: Emily Constance Baird Cook
Illustrator: Frederick Landseer Maur Griggs
Hugh Thomson
Release date: June 3, 2012 [eBook #39875]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39875
Credits: Produced by Colin Bell, Christine P. Travers and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS IN LONDON ***
Produced by Colin Bell, Christine P. Travers and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS
IN
LONDON
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA . MADRAS
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO
DALLAS . SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
[Illustration: _Crossing at Piccadilly Circus._]
_HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS
IN
LONDON_
BY MRS. E. T. COOK
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
HUGH THOMSON AND
F. L. GRIGGS
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1920
_COPYRIGHT._
_First Edition_, 1902.
_Reprinted_, 1903, 1907, 1911, 1920.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 1
CHAPTER II
THE RIVER 22
CHAPTER III
RAMBLES IN THE CITY 53
CHAPTER IV
ST. PAUL'S AND ITS PRECINCTS 84
CHAPTER V
THE TOWER 100
CHAPTER VI
SOUTHWARK, OLD AND NEW 121
CHAPTER VII
THE INNS OF COURT 137
CHAPTER VIII
THE EAST AND THE WEST 162
CHAPTER IX
WESTMINSTER 187
CHAPTER X
KENSINGTON AND CHELSEA 210
CHAPTER XI
BLOOMSBURY 238
CHAPTER XII
THEATRICAL AND FOREIGN LONDON 273
CHAPTER XIII
LONDON SHOPS AND MARKETS 298
CHAPTER XIV
THE GALLERIES, MUSEUMS, AND COLLECTIONS 324
CHAPTER XV
HISTORIC HOUSES AND THEIR TENANTS 358
CHAPTER XVI
RUS IN URBE 385
CHAPTER XVII
THE WAYS OF LONDONERS 414
CHAPTER XVIII
THE STONES OF LONDON 447
INDEX 473
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
CROSSING AT PICCADILLY CIRCUS _Frontispiece_
SANDWICH-BOARD MEN 6
THE SHOEBLACK 11
WHEN THE STRAND IS UP 16
WATERLOO BRIDGE 22
SIGHTSEERS 34
THE "TOP" SEASON 40
AN UNDERGROUND STATION 53
CLOTHFAIR 57
ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S, SMITHFIELD 66
FIGHTING COCKS 85
ST. PAUL'S FROM THE RIVER 87
ST. MICHAEL'S, PATERNOSTER ROYAL 96
A BEEFEATER 102
CRICKET IN THE STREET. THE LOST BALL 127
A COUNTY COURT 130
PEPYS AND HIS WIFE 140
LINCOLN'S INN 152
FETTER LANE 157
A RAILWAY BOOKSTALL 163
THE CITY TRAIN 165
BANK HOLIDAY 171
IN REGENT STREET 180
PICCADILLY 182
SPESHUL! 187
VICTORIA TOWER, WESTMINSTER 206
ANGLERS IN THE PARKS 211
KENSINGTON PALACE AND THE ROUND POND 214
EARL'S COURT 221
THE GERMAN BAND 239
THE PAVEMENT ARTIST 249
MUDIE'S 267
THE "GODS" 281
ICE-CREAM BARROW 291
THE ORGAN-GRINDER 293
A SALE AT CHRISTIE'S 298
THE DOG FANCIER!!! 304
IN THE CHARING CROSS ROAD 306
SATURDAY NIGHT SHOPPING 313
AN AERATED BREAD SHOP 321
A SKETCH IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE 325
AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY 339
RECRUITING SERJEANTS BY THE NATIONAL GALLERY 345
AT THE CLUB 359
WYCH STREET 365
CRICKET IN THE PARKS 385
ROTTEN ROW 389
ROTTEN ROW 391
THE SERPENTINE, HYDE PARK 393
TEA IN KENSINGTON GARDENS 396
A FOUNTAIN IN ST. JAMES'S PARK 398
THE REFORMER 403
A JURY 414
'BUS DRIVER 415
INSIDE 419
"BENK, BENK!!" 421
THE HANSOM 424
A DOORSTEP PARTY 428
HOP-SCOTCH 433
THE RETURN, BANK HOLIDAY 435
FLOWER GIRLS 438
THE MEN IN BLUE 447
THE HORSE GUARDS 456
"I confess that I never think of London, which I love, without
thinking of that palace which David built for Bathsheba, sitting in
hearing of one hundred streams,--streams of thought, of intelligence,
of activity. One other thing about London impresses me beyond any
other sound I have ever heard, and that is the low, unceasing roar one
hears always in the air; it is not a mere accident, like a tempest or
a cataract, but it is impressive, because it always indicates human
will, and impulse, and conscious movement; and I confess that when I
hear it I almost feel as if I were listening to the roaring loom of
time."--_Lowell._
HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS
IN
LONDON
CHAPTER I
HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS
"London: that great sea whose ebb and flow
At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore
Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more,
Yet in its depths what treasures!"--_Shelley._
"Citizens of no mean city."
The history of London is--as was that of Rome in ancient times--the
history of the whole civilised world. For, the comparatively small
area of earth on which our city is built has, for the last thousand
years at least, been all-important in the story of nations. Its
chronicles are already so vast that no ordinary library could hope to
contain all of them. And what will the history of London be to the
student, say, of the year 3000 A.D., when our present day politics,
our feelings, our views, have been "rolled round," once more, in
"earth's diurnal force," and assume, at last, their fair and true
proportions?
In "this northern island, sundered once from all the human race," has
for centuries been lit one of the torches that have illumined
humanity. Not even Imperial Rome shone with such a lustre; not even
the Caesars in all their purple ruled over such a mighty, such an
all-embracing empire.
The history of this mighty empire is bound up with the history of
London. For, the history of London is that of England; it was the
river, our "Father Thames"--her first and most important highway, a
"highway of the nations,"--that brought her from the beginning all her
fame and all her glory. Partly by geographical position, partly by
ever-increasing political freedom, and partly, no doubt, by the
efforts of a dominant race, that glory has, through the centuries,
been maintained and aggrandised.
And why, some may ask, is London what it is? Why was this spot
specially chosen as the capital? Surrounded by marshes in early Roman
times, periodically inundated by its tidal river, densely wooded
beyond its marshes, it can hardly have seemed, in the beginning, an
ideal site. Why was not Winchester--so important in Roman times, and,
later, the capital of Wessex--preferred? Why were not Southampton or
Bristol--apparently equally well placed for trade--favoured? We cannot
tell. The site may have been chosen by Roman London because it was the
most convenient point for passing, and guarding, the ferry or bridge
over the Thames, and for keeping up the direct communication between
the more northerly cities of Britain, and Rome. Or, the nearer
proximity to the large Continent, the better conditions for trade
offered by the wide estuary of the Thames, possibly account for
London's supremacy.
The early Roman city on this time-honoured site, the poetically named
"Augusta,"--that replaced the primitive British village--flourished
greatly in the early days of the Christian era, and was large and
populous; though the Romans did not consider it their capital, and
never--we know not why--created it a "municipium," like Eboracum
(York), or Verulamium. It was founded some time after the visit of
Julius Caesar to Britain, B.C. 54, and it occupied a good deal of the
area of the present _City_, extending, however, towards the east as
far as the Tower, and bounded on the west by the present Newgate. The
old Roman fort stood above the Wallbrook. Here in old days ran a
stream of that name, long fouled, diverted, forgotten, and, like the
Fleet River, only now remembered by the name given to its ancient
haunt. The city of Augusta--or _Londinium_ as Tacitus calls it--has
left us hardly a trace of its undoubted splendour. In London, ever
living, relics of the past are hard to find. The lapse of centuries
has deeply covered the old Roman city level, and what Roman remains
exist are generally discovered, either in the muddy bed of the Thames,
or at a depth of some twelve to nineteen feet below the present
street. Of Roman London there is scarce a trace--a few meagre relics
in Museums, a few ancient roots of names still existing, an old bath,
traces of a crumbling wall, the fragment that we call "London Stone,"
the locality of Leadenhall Market (undoubtedly an old "Forum"), and a
portion of the old Roman Way of "Watling Street"--the ancient highway
from London to Dover--running parallel with noisy Cannon Street.
All this seems, perhaps, little when we think of the undoubted wealth
and power of the old "Londinium," or "Augusta." But it has always been
the city's fate to have its Past overgrown and stifled by the
enthralling energy and life of its Present. It is as a hive that has
never been emptied of its successive swarms. This is, more or less,
the fate of all towns that "live." The Roman town was, of course,
strongly walled, and the names of its gates have descended to us in
the present "Ludgate," "Moorgate," "Billingsgate," "Aldgate,"
&c.--names very familiar to us children of a later age--and now mainly
associated with the more prosaic stations on the Underground Railway!
Nevertheless, prosaic as they are, these stations commemorate the old
localities. Roman London was at no time large in circumference,
extending only from the Tower to Aldgate on one side, from the Thames
to London Wall on the other. And when the Romans left, and the Saxons,
after a brief interval, took their place, the city still did not grow
much larger, nor did the blue-eyed and fair-haired invaders contribute
much to the decaying fortifications; though it is said that King
Alfred--he whose "millenary" we have recently commemorated--restored
the walls and the city as a defence against the ravages of the Danes.
Saxon London, however, which in its time flourished exceedingly, and
existed for some 400 years, is, so far as we are concerned, more dead
even than Roman London. Successive fire and ravage have obliterated
all traces of it. Norman London, which after the Conquest replaced
Saxon London, did not, apparently, differ greatly in externals from
its predecessor. The churches were now mainly built of stone, but the
picturesque houses were, as we know, despite successive destroying
fires, still constructed of wood. From Norman London, we retain the
"White Tower,"--that picturesque "keep" of London's ancient
fortress--the crypt of Bow Church, and that of St. John's,
Clerkenwell, with part of the churches of St. Bartholomew the Great,
Smithfield, and St. Ethelburga, Bishopsgate. Little escaped the many
great fires that in early times devastated the city.
As for the ancient highways of London, very possibly these did not
differ greatly in their course from our modern ones; for the
Anglo-Saxon race has always been very conservative in rebuilding its
new streets, regardless of symmetry or directness, on the lines of the
destroyed ones. At any rate, we know that the original church of St.
Paul's--the first of three built on this site, founded by Ethelbert
about the year 610--and that of Westminster--altered, rebuilt, and
enlarged by successive kings--must have early sanctified these spots,
and necessitated thoroughfares between the two. Nay, even in Roman
times, temples of Diana and Apollo are believed to have adorned these
historic sites. It is strange, indeed, that the old, long-vanished
Roman wall, pierced only by a few gates, and the ancient street-plans
laid down by the Roman road surveyor, should still keep modern traffic
more or less to the old lines. A few new streets have recently been
made from north to south, but still the main traffic goes from east to
west, owing to the paucity of intersecting thoroughfares. The city of
London, as laid out in Roman times, remained, through Saxon and Norman
dominion, practically of the same extent and plan as late as the time
of Elizabeth, in whose reign there were as many houses within the city
walls as without them. Roman influence is still dominant in modern
London. The large block of ground without carriage-way about Austin
Friars is a consequence of the old Roman wall having afforded no
passage. And possibly many of the narrow, jostling City streets have
in their day reflected the shade and sun of Roman "insulas," each with
its surrounding shops, just as, later, their dimensions may have
shrunk between the overhanging, high-gabled houses of Tudor times, to
widen again under the tall Stuart palaces of the Restoration.
[Illustration: _Sandwich-board Men._]
The high antiquity and conservatism of London are shown in nothing
more than in these narrow, crooked streets--streets so different from
those of any other big metropolis--streets that our American cousins,
in all the superiority of their regular "block" system, permit
themselves to jeer at! We know, however, little for certain of the
actual topography of London streets, until the important publication
of Ralph Aggas's map in 1563, soon after Elizabeth had begun to reign.
This map of "Civitas Londinium" is strange enough to look at in our
own day. Its main arteries are the same as ours: the ancient highway
of the Strand is still the Strand; those of "Chepe" and "Fleete" still
flourish; Oxford Street, then the "Oxford Road" and "The Waye to
Uxbridge," ran between hedgerows and pastures, in which, according to
Aggas, grotesque beasts sported; the thoroughfare of the "Hay
Market,"--not yet, indeed, "a scene of revelry by night,"--curves
between vast meadows, in one of which a woman of gigantic size appears
to be engaged in spreading clothes to dry; Piccadilly, at what is now
the "Circus," is merely called "The Waye to Redinge," and is
innocently bordered by trees. In these infantine beginnings of the now
populous "West End," there are, indeed, occasional plots occupied by
"Mewes," but St. Martin's Church (then a small chapel) stands
literally "in the Fields," and St. Martin's Lane is altogether rural.
In a later map--one of the year 1610--the main arteries are still the
same; but, though the town had grown rapidly with the growth of
commerce in Elizabeth's reign, "London" and "Westminster" are still
represented as two small neighbouring towns surrounded by rural
meadows; while "Totten-court" is a distant country village, Kensington
and "Marybone" are secluded hamlets, Clerkenwell and "St. Gylles" are
altogether divided from the parent city by fields, and "Chelsey" is in
the wilds.
It is strange that London fires--and London, in the middle ages, was
specially prolific in fires--have never altered the course of the
city's highways. Sir Christopher Wren wished, indeed, after the Great
Fire of 1666, to be allowed to alter the plan of the desolated town
and make it more symmetrically regular: with all due admiration of his
genius, one cannot, however, help feeling a certain thankfulness that
destiny averted his schemes, and that in the prosaic London of our own
day we can still trace the splendour, the romance of its past. Thus,
even in the grimy city "courts" we can still imagine a Roman
"impluvium," or the ancient gardens of Plantagenet palaces; in the
blind alleys of "Little Britain," the splendours of the merchants'
mansions; in the ugly lines of mews and slums, the limits of the
vanished Norman convent closes. The boundaries are still there, though
nearly all else has gone. For, though Londoners are generally
conservative with regard to their chief sites and the lines of their
streets, they have, so far as their great buildings are concerned,
always been by nature iconoclastic. Not that we of the present day
need give ourselves any airs in this matter. Although, indeed, for the
last half-century the spirit of antiquarian veneration has been
abroad, yet the great majority of Londoners are hardly affected by it,
and the pulling down of ancient buildings continues almost as gaily as
ever at the present day. It may be said that we pull down for
utilitarian reasons; well, so did our forefathers; Londoners have
always been practical. Religious zeal may occasionally have served to
whet their destructive powers, but the results are pretty much the
same. Perhaps Henry VIII.--that Bluebeard head of the Church and
State--has, in his general dissolution of the monasteries and
alienation of their property, been the greatest iconoclast in English
annals; yet even he must have been nearly equalled by the Lord
Protector Cromwell, whose Puritanical train wrought so much havoc
among London's monuments of a later age. Reforms and improvements, all
through the world's history, have always been cruelly destructive.
For, while churches and palaces were destroyed as relics of Popery,
while works of art were demolished, and frescoes whitewashed in
reforming zeal, fresh life was always sprouting, fresh energy ever
filling up gaps, ever obliterating the traces of the past, the relics
of the older time. Sir Walter Besant, in his picturesque and vivid
sketch of English history, has realised well for us the city's past
life:--
"It is (he says of the Reformation) at first hard to
understand how there should have been, even among the baser
sort, so little reverence for the past, so little regard for
art; that these treasure-houses of precious marbles and rare
carvings should have been rifled and destroyed without
raising so much as a murmur; nay, that the very buildings
themselves should have been pulled down without a
protest.... It seems to us impossible that the tombs of so
many worthies should have been destroyed without the
indignation of all who knew the story of the past.... Yet
... it is unfortunately too true that there is not, at any
time or with any people, reverence for things venerable,
old, and historical, save with a few. The greater part are
careless of the past, unable to see or feel anything but the
present.... The parish churches were filled with ruins, ...
the past was gone.... The people lived among the ruins but
regarded them not, any more than the vigorous growth within
the court of a roofless Norman castle regards the donjon and
the walls. They did not inquire into the history of the
ruins; they did not want to preserve them; they took away
the stones and sold them for new buildings."
Yet, though in London's history there were, as we have seen,
occasional great upheavals, such as the Reformation, the Fires, the
Protectorate, it was more the rule of change that went on unceasingly
between whiles--change, such as we see it to-day, the incessant beat
of the waves on the shore--that has obliterated the former time. "The
old order changeth, giving place to new"; and strange indeed it is,
when one comes to think of it, that anything at all should be left to
show what has been. The monasteries, the priories, the churches, that
once occupied the greater portion of the city, and filled it with the
clanging of their bells, so that the city was never quiet--these, of
course, had mainly to go. The Church had to make way for Commerce; the
Monasteries for the Merchants. The London of the early Tudors was
still more or less that of Chaucer, and contained the same Friars,
Pardoners, and Priests. The paramount importance of the Church is
shown by the old nursery legends that circle round Bow bells; and the
picturesque figure of Whittington, the future Lord Mayor, listening,
in rags and dust, to the cheering church bells that tell him to "turn
again," is really the connecting link between the Old and the New Age.
A few of the great monastic foundations of London escaped Henry
VIII.'s acquisitive zeal, and have, as modern school-boys have reason
to know, been devoted to educational and other charitable aims. It
was, indeed, eminently suitable that in the classic precincts of the
ruined monastery of the "Grey Friars" should arise a great school--the
School of Christ's Hospital (colloquially termed the "Blue-Coat
School")--where, till but the other day, the "young barbarians" might
be seen at play behind their iron barriers, backed by the fine old
whitely-gleaming, buttressed hall that faces Newgate Street. It was
fitting, too, that the early dwelling of the English Carthusian
monks--the place where Prior Houghton, with all the staunchness of his
race, met death rather than cede to the tyrant one jot of his ancient
right--should become not only a great educational foundation, but also
a shelter for the aged and the poor. We know it as the "Charterhouse";
as a picturesque, rambling building of sobered red-brick, built around
many courtyards, its principal entrance under an archway that faces
the quiet Charterhouse Square. The place has a monastic atmosphere
still; to those, at least, who reverently tread its closes and
byways--byways hallowed yet more by inevitable association with the
sacred shade of Thomas Newcome; shadow of a shade, indeed! fiction
stronger, and more enduring, than reality!
Yet the Charterhouse is, so to speak, an "insula" by itself in London,
a world of its own; possessing an ancient sanctity undisturbed by the
neighbouring din of busy Smithfield, the unending bustle of the great
city. More essentially of London is the curious unexpectedness of
buildings, places, and associations. What is so strange to the
inexperienced wanderer among London byways is the manner in which bits
of ancient garden, fragments of old, forgotten churchyards, isolated
towers of destroyed churches, deserted closes, courts and slums of
wild dirt and no less wild picturesqueness, suddenly confront the
pedestrian, recalling incongruous ideas, and historical associations
puzzling in their very wealth of entangled detail. The "layers" left
by succeeding eras are thinly divided; and the study of London's
history is as difficult to the neophyte as that of the successive
"layers" of the Roman Forum.
[Illustration: _The Shoeblack._]
It is sometimes refreshing to note that, even in the City and in our
own utilitarian day, present beauty has not been altogether lost
sight of. There is in modern London, as a French writer lately
remarked, "no street without a church and a tree"; this is
especially true of the City, where, even in crowded Cheapside, the
big plane-tree of Wood Street still towers over its surrounding
houses, hardly more than a stone's throw from the shadow cast by the
white steeple of St. Mary-le-Bow, glimmering in ghostly grace above
the busy street. So busy indeed is the street, that hardly a
pedestrian stays to notice either church or tree; yet is there a
more beautiful highway than this in all London? It is satisfactory
to reflect--when one thinks of the accusation brought against us
that we are "a nation of shopkeepers"--on what this one big
plane-tree costs a year in mere lodging! Wandering northward from
Cheapside down any of the crowded City lanes with their romantic
names, through the mazes of drays and waggons--where porters shout
over heavy bales, and pulleys hang from upper "shoots"--you may
find, in a sudden turn, small oases of quiet green churchyard
gardens--for some unexplained reason spared from the prevailing
strenuosity of bricks and mortar--where wayfarers rest on
comfortable seats, provided by metropolitan forethought, from daily
toil. In these secluded haunts are many spots that will amply reward
the sketcher. Specially charming in point of colour are the gardens
of St. Giles, Cripplegate; these, though closed to the general
public, are overlooked and traversed by quiet alleys, affording most
welcome relief from the surrounding din of traffic. Here sunflowers
and variegated creepers show out bravely in autumn against the
blackened mass of the tall adjoining warehouses, whence a
picturesque bastion of the old "London Wall" projects into the
greenery, and the church of St. Giles, with its dignified square
tower, dominates the whole. The author of _The Hand of Ethelberta_
has, in that novel, paid graceful homage to the church and its
surroundings. The little bit of vivid colour in the sunny churchyard
(it is part rectory garden, and is divided by a public path since
1878), affords a standing rebuke to the unbelievers who say gaily
that "nothing will grow" in London. A delightful byway, indeed, is
this parish church of Cripplegate! Its near neighbourhood shows, by
the way, hardly a trace of the disastrous fire it so lately
experienced. From the corner of the picturesque "Aerated Bread
Shop"--of all places--that abuts on to the church, a delightful view
of all this may be had. This ancient lath-and-plaster building will,
no doubt, in time be compelled to give way to some abnormally
hideous new construction, but at the present day it is all that
could be wished; and, though so close to the hum of the great city,
so quiet withal, that the visitor may, for the nonce, almost imagine
himself in some sleepy country village. And thus it is in many
unvisited nooks in the busy City. "The world forgetting, by the
world forgot," is truer of these byways than of many more rural
places. For the eddies of a big river are always quieter than the
main stream of a small canal. In the world, yet not of it, are, too,
these strangely old-fashioned rectories, sandwiched in between
tall, overhanging city warehouses.
But the sprinkling of old churches, with their odd, abbreviated
churchyards, that are still to be found amid the busy life of the City
of London, hardly does more than faintly recall that picturesque and
poetic time when the church and the convent were pre-eminent. The
great temporal power of the Church in London, that held sway during
long centuries, is vanished, forgotten, supplanted as if it had never
been. Do the very names of Blackfriars and Whitefriars suggest, for
instance, to us, "the latest seed of time," anything more than the
shrieking of railway terminuses, or the incessant din of printing
machines? For, while the memory of the "Grey Friars" and that of the
Carthusians is still honoured and kept green in the dignified
"foundations" of Christ's Hospital and of the Charterhouse,--the
orders of the "White" and "Black" Friars, of the Carmelites, and the
stern Dominicans, have descended to baser and more worldly uses.
Destroyed at the Reformation, its riches alienated, its glory
departed, the splendid Abbey Church of the Dominicans came to be used
as a storehouse for the "properties" of pageants; "strange fate," says
Sir Walter Besant, "for the house of the Dominicans, those austere
'upholders of doctrine.'" For the dwelling of the "Carmelites," or
"White Friars," an Order of "Mendicants" these,--another destiny
waited--a destiny for long lying unfolded in the bosom of our
"wondrous mother-age." Mysterious irony of Fate! that where the
Carmelite monks, in their Norman apse, prayed and laboured; where the
Mendicant Friars wandered to and fro in the echoing cloister, the
thunder of the printing-press should have made its home:
"There rolls the deep where grew the tree,
O earth, what changes hast thou seen!
There, where the long street roars, hath been
The stillness----"
--The "_Daily Mail_ Young Man"--that smart product of a later
age--has now his home in Carmelite Street; the "Whitefriars' Club" is
a press club; the gigantic machines that print the world's news shake
the foundations of St. Bride's; and the shabby hangers-on of Fleet
Street--though of a truth, poor fellows, often near allied to
mendicants--are yet, it is to be feared, only involuntarily of an
ascetic turn. The contrast--or likeness--has served to awaken one of
Carlyle's most thunderous passages: "A Preaching Friar,"--(he
says),--"builds a pulpit, which he calls a newspaper:
"Look well" (he continues),--"thou seest everywhere a new
Clergy of the Mendicant Orders, some bare-footed, some
almost bare-backed, fashion itself into shape, and teach and
preach, zealously enough, for copper alms and the love of
God."
Carlyle, apparently, nursed an old grudge against the press,--for this
is not the only occasion when he fulminates against the new order of
Mendicants. The theatres, also, that succeeded the monasteries of
Blackfriars were, here too, supplanted by the Press; under
Printing-House-Square only lately, an extension of the _Times_ Office
brought to light substantial remains.
But the Church was not the only mediaeval beautifier of London; as her
temporal power and splendour waned,--the splendour of the merchants
grew and flourished. For the great supplanter of the power of the
Church was, as already hinted, the power of the City Companies. These
immense trades-unions began to rise in the fourteenth century, when
the old feudal system gave way to the civic community;--and they
increased greatly in strength after the dissolution of the
Monasteries. These companies incorporated each trade, and had supreme
powers over wages, hours of labour, output, &c. In the beginning they
were, like everything else, partly religious, each company or "guild"
having its patron saint and its special place of worship;--the
Merchant Taylors, for instance, being called the "Guild of St.
John";--the Grocers, the "Guild of St. Anthony"; while St. Martin
protected the saddlers, and so on. These guilds in time receiving
Royal charters, became very rich and powerful, till the year 1363
there were already thirty-two companies whose laws and regulations had
been approved by the king. If any transgressed these laws, they were
brought before the Mayor and Aldermen. We have still the Mayor and
Aldermen, but the city companies (whose principal function was the
apprenticing of youths to trades), have merely the shadow of their
former authority, and their business is now mainly charitable,
ceremonial, and culinary. Yet though their powers are diminished,
their splendid "halls" are still among the most interesting "sights"
of the City. Visits to these massive and solid palaces, some of them
of great splendour, and rising like pearls among their often (it must
be confessed) unsavoury surroundings, give a good idea of the immense
wealth of those mediaeval merchant princes, and help the stranger to
realize the strength of that power that was able to resist the
attempts of kings to break its charter. Such sturdy independence, such
insistence on her civic rights, has always been a main element of
London's greatness.
[Illustration: _When the Strand is up._]
I have only touched at the mere abstract of London's voluminous
history,--only enumerated a poor few of her Highways and Byways; the
subject, in truth, is too great to exhaust even in a whole library
of books. It is, indeed, the principal drawback to the study of
London that she is too vast--that the student is ever in danger of
"not seeing the forest for the trees." Her byways are as the sands
of the sea in multitude; her history is the history of the world. It
is, perhaps, better that the stranger to the metropolis should take
in hand a small portion at a time,--and try to grasp that
thoroughly,--than lose himself in an intricate maze of buildings and
associations. To read the history of London aright,--to see and feel
in London stones all that can be seen and felt, requires not only
untiring energy, but also knowledge, sympathy, intuition,
patriotism, one and all combined. To know London really well, one
should gain an intimate acquaintance with her from day to day, not
being contented with the common and well-known ways, but ever
penetrating into fresh haunts. From all the great highways of
London, from the Strand, Fleet Street, Piccadilly, Holborn, Oxford
Street, convenient excursions may be made into the surrounding
neighbourhood; which often, in different parts of London, is, so far
as inhabitants, appearance, manners and customs go, really a
complete and distinct city by itself. Does not "Little Britain"
differ widely from its neighbouring Clerkenwell? Soho as widely from
its adjacent Bloomsbury? and the immaculate Mayfair from the more
doubtful Bayswater? Who does not recall what Disraeli--that born
aristocrat in his tastes--said of the people who frequent the
plebeian, though charming, Regent's Park?
"The Duke of St. James's," (he says),--"took his way to the
Regent's Park, a wild sequestered spot, whither he
invariably repaired when he did not wish to be noticed; for
the inhabitants of this pretty suburb are a distinct race,
and although their eyes are not unobserving, from their
inability to speak the language of London they are unable to
communicate their observations."
So far from being merely one town, London is really a hundred townlets
amalgamated. The visitor can there find everything that he wants; he
must, however, know exactly what it is that he wants to find. Does he
desire to see pictures? many galleries of priceless works of art are
within a stone's throw, free, ready, waiting only to be seen; does he
prefer realism and life? the "street markets" of Leather Lane and of
Goodge Street are instinct with all possible types of humanity; does
he yearn for peaceful solitude, historic association? the quiet nooks
of the Temple invite him; is it solitary study that his soul craves?
the immense library of the British Museum offers him all its
treasures; does he merely wish to perambulate vaguely? even the
prosaic Oxford Street presents a very kaleidoscope of human life.
Nevertheless, in his perambulations, the wanderer should receive a
word of warning: let him beware of asking for local information (save
indeed, it be of a policeman), for two reasons. Firstly, because no
born Londoner of the great middle class ever knows, except by the
merest accident, anything whatever about his near neighbourhood; and,
secondly, because if he do get an answer, he is morally certain to be
misdirected. The wanderer should always start on his expeditions with
a distinct plan in his own mind of the special itinerary he wishes to
adopt,--be that itinerary Mr. Hare's, or any other man's,--and he
should never allow himself to be drawn off from it to another tangent.
Even this crowded highway of Oxford Street, "stony-hearted
stepmother," old gallows-road, passing from Newgate Street to Tyburn
Tree, and bearing so many different names in its course,--beginning,
as "Holborn," in City stress and turmoil, intersecting the very centre
of fashion at the Marble Arch, and continuing as the "Uxbridge Road,"
to High Street, Notting Hill,--passes through all sorts and conditions
of men and things. Tottenham Court Road, that glaring, fatiguing
thoroughfare, which through all its phases ever "remains sordid,
sunlight serving to reveal no fresh beauties in it, nor gaslight to
glorify it," begins in comparative honour in New Oxford Street, to
descend through bustle and racket to the noisy taverns and purlieus of
the Euston Road. That sylvan village and manor of "Toten Court," where
city folk repaired in old days for "cakes and creame," seems far
enough away now! Fenchurch Street,--or rather its continuation Aldgate
Street,--as it merges into the long "Whitechapel Road," becomes more
and more dreary; not even its soft-gliding, cushioned tram-cars
lending enchantment to the depressing scene. Waterloo Road and
Blackfriars Road, "over the water," as they trend southwards pass
through strange and often unsavoury purlieus. Every district has its
special idiosyncrasies. Piccadilly and St. James's are always
aristocratic. Pall Mall has a severe and solid dignity; while the
Strand and its continuation, the narrow and tortuous Fleet Street, are
instinct with ancient honour and literary association. Yet, even here,
if the visitor have not the "seeing eye" that discerns the past
through the present, he may "walk from Dan to Beersheba and find all
barren."
The great charm, however, of London lies in its unsuspected courts
and byways. From most of these big thoroughfares you may be
transported, with hardly more than a step, into picturesque nooks
of sudden and almost startling silence, or, rather, cessation from
din. All who know and love London will recall this. From busy
Holborn to the aloofness of quiet Staple Inn, with its still,
collegiate air, what a change from the turmoil of Fleet Street to
the closes of little Clifford Inn, with its old-world, forgotten
air. From High Street, Kensington, too, that town with all the air
of a smart suburb, how many charming excursions may not be made on
Campden Hill and in Holland Park--a neighbourhood full of artistic
and literary charm. In Westminster, what quiet, secluded nooks, and
green closes, abound for the sketcher, and how lovely are the
gardens of the Green Park and St. James's Park, bordered by the
stately palaces of St. James's, and the picturesque houses of Queen
Anne's Gate. And all along the river embankment, from Westminster to
the Tower, are interesting streets and nooks full of historic and
literary association. The embankment, running, at first, parallel
with the noisy Strand; reaching classic ground in the quiet Temple,
by that garden where the "red and white rose" first started their
bloody rivalry, becomes then muddy and uncared for before the
newspaper land of Whitefriars; beyond, again, are blackened wharves,
which gradually degenerate into the terrible and utterly
indescribable fishiness of Billingsgate, and unpoetic Thames Street!
Then, the "Surrey side" of the river,--Southwark and Chaucer's Inns,
or what yet remains of them,--would form several delightful
excursions; to say nothing of the Tower, with its innumerable
historic associations,--and, perhaps, a visit to Greenwich in summer
time. The old churches of the City would, as I have hinted, take
many days to explore thoroughly; the Holborn and Strand Inns of
Court and of Chancery, especially the Temple and Staple Inn, should
be known and studied well; nothing can exceed the charm of these
quiet and secluded "haunts of ancient peace."
Space, however, is limited; I have now said enough to give some idea,
even to the uninitiated, of London's many highways and byways, with
their suggestions and associations. Yet one word of caution I would
add: London must be approached with reverence; her cult is a growth of
years, rather than a sudden acquisition. And the love of London
stones, once acquired, never leaves the devotee. Whether he walk
blissfully through Fleet Street with Johnson and Goldsmith, linger by
the Temple fountain with Charles Lamb or Dickens, or traverse the
glades of Kensington Gardens with Addison and Steele, "where'er he
tread is haunted, holy ground." Here, on Tower Hill, once stood spikes
supporting ghastly heads of so-called "traitors"; there, at
Smithfield, were burned numberless martyrs. Even the London mud has
its poetic associations. We may all tread the same road as that once
trodden by Rossetti and Keats; strange road:
"Miring his outward steps who inly trode
The bright Castalian brink and Latmos' steep."
Yes, the love of London grows on the constant Londoner. He will not be
long happy away from the comforting hum of the busy streets, from the
mighty pulse of the machine. In absence his heart will ever fondly
turn to "streaming London's central roar," to the spot where, more
than anywhere else, he may be at once the inheritor of all the ages.
How interesting would it be if one could only--by the aid of some Mr.
Wells's "Time Machine"--take a series of flying leaps backward into
the abysm of time! Strange to imagine the experience! Beauty, one
reflects, might be gained at nearly every step, at the expense, alas!
of sanitary conditions, knowledge, and utility. Let us, for a moment,
imagine how the thing would be.... First, in a few rapid revolutions
of the wheel, would disappear the hideous criss-cross of electric
wires overhead, the ugly tangle of suburban tram-lines, and the
greater part of the hideous modern growth of suburbs.... Another whirl
of the machine, and every sign of a railway station would disappear,
every repulsive engine shed and siding vanish ... while the dull
present-day rumble of the metropolis would give place to a more
indescribably acute and agonising medley of sound.... Again a little
while, and the hideous early Victorian buildings would disappear,
making way for white Stuart facades, or sober red-brick Dutch
palaces.... With yet a few more revolutions, the metropolis will
shrink into inconceivably small dimensions, and the atmosphere of the
city, losing its peculiar blue-grey mist, will gradually brighten and
clear--a radiance, unknown to us children of a later day--diffusing
itself over the glistening towers and domes, no longer blackened, but
gleaming, Venetian-like, in the Tudor sunlight.... The aspect of the
river too has changed; no more ugly steamers, but an array of princely
barges deck its waters, gay with the bright dresses of ladies and
gallants.... Its solid embankments have crumbled to picturesque
overgrown mud banks, its many bridges shrunk to one; the little
separate towns of "London" and "Westminster" presenting now more the
appearance of rambling villages, adorned by some palaces and
churches.... Another turn of the machine, and lo! the imposing facades
that adorned the Strand have in their turn given way to picturesque
rows and streets of overhanging gabled houses with blackened
cross-beams, their quaint projecting windows almost meeting over the
narrow streets ... stony streets with their crowds of noisy, jostling,
foot-passengers.... Again a long pause ... and now the scene changes
to Roman London, the ancient "Augusta," with its powerful walls, its
slave ships and pinnaces, its mailed warriors, ever in arms against
the blue-eyed Saxon marauders. Then--a final interval--and we see the
primitive British village, its mud huts erected by the kindly shores
of our "Father Thames," their smoke peacefully rising heavenwards
above the surrounding marshes and forests.
[Illustration: _Waterloo Bridge._]
CHAPTER II
THE RIVER
"Above the river in which the miserable perish and on which
the fortunate grow rich, runs the other tide whose flood
leads onto fortune, whose sources are in the sea empire, and
which debouches in the lands of the little island; above the
river of the painters and poets, winding through the downs
and meadows of the rarest of cultivated landscape out to the
reaches where the melancholy sea breeds its fogs and damp
east winds, is that of the merchant and politician, having
its springs in the uttermost parts of the earth, and pouring
out its golden tribute on the lands whence the other steals
its drift and ooze."--_W. J. Stillman._
"Above all rivers, thy river hath renowne....
O! towne of townes, patrone and not compare,
London, thou art the Flour of Cities all."--_Dunbar._
No one, be he very Londoner indeed, has ever seen the great city
aright, or in the true spirit, if he have not made the journey by
river at least as far as from Chelsea to the Tower Bridge. From even
such a commonplace standpoint as the essentially prosaic Charing Cross
Railway Bridge some idea can be gained of the misty glory of this
highway of the Nations. It is indeed, often one of these condemned
approaches to London that give the traveller the best idea of the vast
and multitudinous city. London railway approaches are often abused,
even anathematized, yet surely nowhere is the curious picturesqueness
of railways so proved as by the impressive approach to Charing Cross
Station, across the mighty river. Here, at nightfall, all combines to
aid the general effect; the mysterious darkness, the twinkling lights
of the Embankment, reflected in the dancing waters, and cleansed by
the white moonlight. What approach such as this can Paris offer? But,
if the traveller be wise, he will soon seek to supplement such
initiatory views by pilgrimages on his own account, pilgrimages
undertaken in all reverence, up and down the stream. For, whatever Mr.
Gladstone may have said of the omnibus as a mode of seeing London, may
be reiterated more forcibly as regards the deck of a penny steamer. It
is the fashion to call London ugly; Cobbett nicknamed it "the great
wen"; Grant Allen has called it "a squalid village"; and Mme. de Stael
"a province in brick." Yet, how full of dignity and beauty is the city
through which this wide, turbid river rolls!--"the slow Thames," says
a French writer, "always grey as a remembered reflection of wintry
skies." Here, by day, hangs that veiling blue mist, which is the
combined product of London fog and soot, adding all the indescribable
charm of mystery to the scene; and, as twilight draws on, the grand
old buildings loom up, vaguely dark, against the sky, their added
blackness of soot giving a suggestion as of solidity and antiquity;
that poetic time of twilight, "when," as Mr. Whistler puts it.
"The evening mist clothes the riverside with poetry, as with
a veil, and the poor buildings lose themselves in the dim
sky, and the tall chimneys become campanili, and the
warehouses are palaces in the night, and the whole city
hangs in the heavens, and fairyland is before us."
At night, the scene changes: the vast Embankment shines with lamps all
a-glitter, and behind them the myriad and deceitful "lights of London"
twinkle like a magician's enchanted palace.
And it is altogether in the fitness of things that the river should be
both introduction and entrance gate, so to speak, of modern London.
For it is the river, it is our "Father Thames," indeed, that has made
London what it is. In our childhood we used to learn in dull geography
books, as inseparable addition to the name of any city, that it was
"situated" on such-and-such a river; facts that we then saw little
interest in committing to memory, but, nevertheless vastly important;
how important, we see from this city of London. For London is, and
was, primarily a seaport. In Sir Walter Besant's interesting pages may
be read the story of the early settlers--Briton, Roman, Saxon,
Norman--who successively founded their infant settlements on this
marshy site, and had here their primitive wharves, quays, and trading
ships for hides, cattle, and merchandise. It is the river, more than
anything else, that recalls the past history of London. For London,
ever increasing, ever rebuilt, has buried most of her eventful past in
an oblivion far deeper than that of Herculaneum. Nothing destroys
antiquity like energy; nothing blots out the old like the new. London,
ever rising, like the phoenix, from her own ashes, has by the intense
vitality of her "to-days" always obliterated her "yesterdays." It is
only in dead or sleeping towns that the ashes of the past can be
preserved in their integrity, and London has ever been intensely
alive. Yet, gazing on the silvery flow of the river, we can imagine
the Roman embankment, the hanging gardens, that once stretched from
St. Paul's to the Tower; the Roman city, with its forums and
basilicas, that once crowned prosaic Ludgate Hill--Roman pinnace,
Briton coracle, Saxon ship, Tudor vessel--we can see them all in their
turn--crowned by the spectacle of Queen Elizabeth in her gaily-hung
state barge, with her royal procession; or, in more mournful key, her
body, on its death-canopy--a barge "black as a funeral scarf from
stern to stem," on that sad occasion when
"The Queen did come by water to Whitehall.
The oars at every stroke did teares let fall."
If in the crowded day of London--with the shouting of bargees, the
whistle of steam-tugs, and the puffing of the smoke-belching trains
overhead, indulgence in such dreams is well-nigh impossible,--in the
mysterious night, when the slow misty moon of London climbs, it is
easy, even from an alcove of Waterloo Bridge, to indulge the fancies
of
"That inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude."
The so-called "penny steamers" of London, which run, during the summer
months, at very cheap rates between London Bridge and Chelsea, form
the best way of seeing and appreciating the vast city. For those who
do not mind rather close contact with "the masses"--braying
accordions, jostling fish-porters, sticky little boys, and other
inseparable adjuncts of a crowd whose "coats are corduroy and hands
are shrimpy"--this mode of becoming acquainted with London will be
found very satisfactory. The ways of the said steamers are often, it
is true, somewhat erratic; yet if, on a warm June day, the stranger go
down to the river in faith, his expectancy will generally be rewarded.
Up comes the puffing, creaky little tug, making the tiny landing stage
vibrate with the sudden shock of contact; there is an immediate rush
to embark, and, on a fine day, you are, at first, happy if you get
standing-room. Cruikshank's pictures, Dickens's sketches--how
suggestive of these is the motley crowd of faces that line the
boat,--faces on which the eternal "struggle for life" has printed
lines, as it may be, of carking care, of blatant self-satisfaction, of
crime and degradation. To quote William Blake, the poet-painter,--a
Londoner, too, of the Londoners:
"I wander through each chartered street
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe."
The fine, broad Chelsea reach of the river, looking up towards Fulham
from the Albert chain-bridge, is wonderfully picturesque. Here,
especially on autumn nights, may be seen in all their splendour the
brilliant sunsets that Turner loved to paint, and that, propped up on
his pillow, he turned his dying eyes to see. The ancient and
unassuming little riverside house where Turner spent his last days is
still standing; but its tenure is uncertain, and it may soon vanish.
It stands (as No. 119)--towards the western end of Cheyne Walk--the
walk that begins in the east so magnificently, and decreases, as
regards its mansions, in size and splendour as it approaches the old
historic red-brick church of Chelsea. Yet, small as Turner's riverside
abode is, it is more celebrated than any of its neighbours, for it was
here that the greatest landscape painter of our time lived. Here,
along the shores of the river, flooded at eve "with waves of dusky
gold," the shabby old man with such wonderful gifts used to wander in
search of the skies and effects he loved; here he was hailed by cheeky
street arabs, as "Puggy Booth" (the legend of the neighbourhood being
that he was a certain retired and broken-down old "Admiral Booth").
Here he sat on the railed-in house-roof to see the sun rise over the
river, and here, when too weak to move, his landlady used to wheel his
chair towards the window that he might see the skies he so loved. "The
Sun is God," were almost his last words. Thus, he who as a boy of
Maiden Lane had spent his early years on the river near London
Bridge--by the Pool of London, with its wharves and shipping--died,
faithful to his early loves, in a small Chelsea riverside cottage. The
row of irregular riverside houses, of which Turner's cottage is one,
becomes more palatial lower down, across Oakley Street. In summer,
what more lovely than the view from these houses, over the shining
Chelsea reach, towards the feathery greenness of distant Battersea
Park? a view which, even beyond the park limits, not even the
too-conspicuous sky-signs or factory chimneys on the further shore can
altogether abolish or destroy. So many things in London, ugly in
themselves, are lent "a glory by their being far"; and even Messrs.
Doulton's factory chimneys, seen through the blue-grey river mist,
have, like St. Pancras Station, often the air of some gigantic
fortress. This same blue-grey mist of London, especially near the
river, is rarely ever entirely absent. Chemists may tell you that it
is merely carbon, a product of the soot, but what does that matter? In
its own place and way it is beautiful. The heresy has before now been
ventured, that London would not be half so picturesque if it were
cleaner; and from the river this fact is driven home more than ever to
the lover of the beautiful. Blackened wharves, that through the dimmed
light take on all the air of "magic casements,"--great bridges,
invisible till close at hand, that loom down suddenly on the passing
steamer with the roar of many feet, a rattle of many wheels, a rumble
of many trains; vast Charing-Cross vaguely seen overhead--immense,
grandiose, darkening all the stream; the Venetian-white tower of St.
Magnus, gleaming all at once before blackened St. Paul's; and, most
popular of all London views, the tall Clock Tower of the Houses of
Parliament, with its long terraced wall, reflecting its shining lines
in the broad waters. As ivy and creepers adorn a building, so does the
respectable grime of ages clothe London stones as with a garment of
beauty.
The "respectable grime of ages" can hardly however be said yet to
cover the newest Picture Gallery of London, glimmering ghostlike by
the waterside, Sir Henry Tate's magnificent and splendidly housed
gift, which rises whitely, like some Greek Temple of Victory, amid the
dirty, dingy wharves, and generally slummy surroundings of the
debatable ground that divides the river-frontages of Pimlico and
Westminster. The changes of Time are curious. Here, where once stood
Millbank Penitentiary, now rises a stately Palace adorned by pillars,
porticoes and statues; wherein are enshrined some of the nation's most
precious treasures, all the master-pieces of the modern school of
English Art. Sir Henry Tate, a "merchant prince" of whom the country
may well be proud, was a large sugar refiner, and we owe this imposing
building, with a large part of its contents, to those uninspiring
wooden boxes, so familiar to us for so many years back, labelled
"Tate's Cube Sugar."
The interior of the Tate Gallery (its proper denomination is, I
believe, "the National Gallery of British Art,") is very delightfully
planned. A pretty fountain fills the central hall of the gallery under
the dome; an adornment as refreshing as it is unexpected. For London,
the home of riches, is strangely niggardly with her fountains. Yet
Rome, the city of fountains, had to bring all her water for many
miles, and over endless aqueducts! The immediate riverside
surroundings of the Tate Gallery are, as described, hardly grandiose;
yet the timber-wharves and stone-cutters' sheds that here share the
muddy banks with the ubiquitous tribe of London "Mudlarks," are not
without their picturesque "bits." Old boats sometimes reach here their
final uses; and even portions of old derelicts, like the "Temeraire,"
often find their way here at last. Witness advertisements like the
following:
FIRES.--Logs of old oak and ship timber, from Old Navy ships
broken up, in suitable sizes, for sitting-room use, so
famous for beautifully coloured flames, can only be obtained
from the ship breaking yard of ---- Baltic Wharf, Millbank,
S.W.
It is, however, only the wharves and the mudlarks that are visible
from the river itself; for the quaint gates of these timber-yards,
opening on to the Grosvenor Road, and surmounted by their "signs" in
the shape of ghostly white figure-heads--the figure-heads of real
ships--are only visible to those who make their way along this
mysterious region by land. These colossal creatures, indeed,
projecting often far into the road, pull up the pedestrian with such
alarming and human suddenness that it would surely require, in the
uninitiated, a strong mind and a good conscience to travel this way
alone on a dark night.
The keynote of London is ever its close juxtaposition of splendour and
misery, "velvet and rags." Therefore, after skirting the shore of
Millbank, it strikes the Londoner as quite natural, and in the usual
order of things, that he should suddenly and without any preface find
his vessel gliding, in an abrupt hush, underneath the terrace-wall of
the most well-known and most be-photographed edifice in London; under
the high vertical wall, with its softly lapping waters, that guards
the terrace of the Houses of Parliament. Classic retreat, where none
but the specially bidden may enter! The great towers, with the vast
building they surmount, darken, for a moment, all the stream by the
intense shadow they cast, to mirror themselves anew in charming
proportion as we descend the stream and they recede.
Exactly opposite the Houses of Parliament are those curious
seven-times-repeated red-brick projections of St. Thomas's Hospital,
which are so prominent an object from the Terrace, that a fair
American visitor, while taking her tea there, is said to have once
innocently inquired: "Are those the mansions of your aristocracy?" Mr.
Hare unkindly suggests that their chief ornament, a "row of hideous
urns upon the parapet, seems waiting for the ashes of the patients
inside."
A little higher, on the Surrey side, is the historic Lambeth Palace,
for nearly seven hundred years the residence of the Archbishops of
Canterbury:
"Lambeth, envy of each band and gown,"
says Pope truly. But the gifts of Fortune are, alas! seldom
ungrudging; and, sad thought! by the time the poor Archbishops have
reached the zenith of fame and comfort in their Lambeth paradise,
their multifarious duties must effectually prevent their ever having
time thoroughly to enjoy their "garden of peace." It is a lovely home,
and commands perfect views. Quite Venetian-like, when night's canopy
has fallen, do the lights of Westminster Palace appear from the
Lambeth shore; the lighted Tower, which proclaims to all the world the
fact that Parliament is sitting, reflected like a solitary full moon
in the dark transparency of the waters. Lambeth Palace is, indeed, a
charming spot, both for its views up and down the river and for its
associations. In all its squareness of darkened red brick, it is very
picturesque; the gateway with its Tudor arch, the chapel, and the
so-called "Lollards' Tower," are, besides being historically
interesting, fine subjects for an artist. At the gateway an ancient
custom is observed:
"At this gate the _dole_ immemorially given to the poor by
the Archbishops of Canterbury is constantly distributed. It
consists of fifteen quartern loaves, nine stone of beef, and
five shillings' worth of half-pence, divided into three
equal portions, and distributed every Sunday, Tuesday, and
Thursday, among thirty poor parishioners of Lambeth; the
beef being made into broth and served in pitchers."
In the Lollards' Tower are some curious relics of the barbarous
tortures of the Middle Ages; and in the guard-room, or dining hall of
the Palace, is a series of portraits of all the Archbishops from
Cranmer to Benson. The modern and residential portion of the Palace,
in the Tudor style, is contained in the inner court; it was rebuilt by
Archbishop Howley in 1820. Howley was the last Archbishop who lived
here in state and kept open house; "the grand hospitalities of Lambeth
have perished," as Douglas Jerrold said, "but its charities live." The
ancient portions of the palace have known many vicissitudes of
fortune; Cranmer adorned his house, and loved to beautify his garden;
Wat Tyler and his rebels plundered the palace and beheaded Sudbury,
its then archbishop: and Laud, who had a hobby for stained glass,
filled the chapel windows with beautiful specimens, which were all
subsequently smashed by the Puritans. The palace, after having been
used successively as a prison, a place of revel, and a garrison
stronghold, now enjoys all the serenity of old age and quiet fortunes;
its solid red brick, which time darkens so prettily, looking ever
across the waters in calm dignity towards the taller stones of
Westminster,--the spiritual contrasted with the temporal.
The tower of the ancient church of St. Mary, Lambeth, close by the
Palace, is memorable as the shelter of Queen Mary of Modena, James
II.'s unfortunate wife, on the dramatic occasion of her flight from
Whitehall with her infant son (the "Old" Pretender), on a wild
December night of 1688:
"The party stole down the back stairs (of Whitehall), and
embarked in an open skiff. It was a miserable voyage. The
night was bleak; the rain fell; the wind roared; the water
was rough; at length the boat reached Lambeth; and the
fugitives landed near an inn, where a coach and horses were
in waiting. Some time elapsed before the horses could be
harnessed. Mary, afraid that her face might be known, would
not enter the house. She remained with her child, cowering
for shelter from the storm under the tower of Lambeth
Church, and distracted by terror whenever the ostler
approached her with his lantern. Two of her women attended
her, one who gave suck to the Prince, and one whose office
was to rock the cradle; but they could be of little use to
their mistress; for both were foreigners who could hardly
speak the English language, and who shuddered at the rigour
of the English climate. The only consolatory circumstance
was that the little boy was well, and uttered not a single
cry. At length the coach was ready. The fugitives reached
Gravesend safely, and embarked in the yacht which waited for
them."--_Macaulay._
St. Mary's is the mother church of the manor and parish, and its tower
dates from 1377:
"In this church is a curious 'Pedlar's Window,' with a
romantic story attached to it. When the church was founded,
it is said that a pedlar left an acre of land to the parish,
on condition that a picture of himself, his pack and his
dog, should be preserved in the church. This was accordingly
done; the pedlar was commemorated in the glass of the
window, and the value of the acre, at first 2_s._ 8_d._,
increased till in our day it is worth L1000 a year. In 1884,
some local iconoclasts actually removed the pedlar from the
window, to put up modern glass to the relatives of certain
officials. Popular indignation, however, has since
reinstated the injured pedlar, with his pack and dog, in
their place."
But Lambeth, however charming and historic, is still "the Surrey
Side", and the glories of the Albert Embankment pale before those of
the Victoria Embankment, one of the greatest London improvements of
the century. Of course it has its critics,--of the order who cavil at
the poor Romans for embanking their devastating yellow Tiber. But it
is the fashion for us to abuse our London monuments, and to deride
them as the work of a "nation of shopkeepers." The Londoner rarely
approves of anything new or even modern. Of the Chelsea Embankment,
all that Mr. Hare says is that "it has robbed us of the water stairs
to the Botanic Garden, given by Sir Hans Sloane." Does not even Mr.
Ruskin fall foul of the innumerable straight lines of the Palace of
Westminster, and of its stately Clock Tower, as testifying to the sad
want of imagination shown by the modern English architect? (But Mr.
Ruskin must surely that day have been in search for a windmill to tilt
against, for the abused "straight lines" do not prevent this being one
of the loveliest of London views.) And does not M. Taine pour the
vials of his wrath on to the great river Palace of Somerset House,
with its "blackened porticoes filled with soot"? "Poor Greek
architecture," he adds compassionately, "what is it doing in such a
climate?" Evidently the idea of the artistic value of soot, to which I
have already alluded, had not occurred to him.
The noble Victoria Embankment now runs where of old, in Elizabethan
times, ran a glittering, almost Venetian, river-frontage of palaces.
And where the old palaces stood in Tudor days, stand now enormous
hotels--the palaces of our own day--each newer hotel in its turn
eclipsing the other in size, magnificence, expense. The picturesque
"Savoy," with its river balconies, the stately "Cecil," with its
wonderful banqueting halls, and, further from the river, the spacious
"Metropole," the "Grand," the "Victoria." All these hotels are so
recent as to impress one fact upon us--the fact that London has really
only lately become a tourist haunt. Statistics, indeed, show now that
London attracts more visitors than any other great European town.
Twenty-five years ago, it was as hard to find a good, clean, and
thoroughly satisfactory London hotel, as it was to get a cup of tea
for less than sixpence; or, indeed, a good one at all! But times have
changed. Big hotels now, like flats, threaten to be overdone. We can
well imagine the disappointment of the foreign visitor to London on
discovering the names and uses of the fine buildings that adorn the
river front between Westminster and Blackfriars. "What," he or she may
ask, "is that imposing structure with Nuremberg-like green roofs,
towering over the trees of the Embankment Gardens?" "That, Sir or
Madam," answers politely the lady guide (for it is of course a
charming and very certificated lady guide who "personally conducts"
the party), "is Whitehall Court, a building let out in high class
flats." "And what," continues the crushed tourist, "is that turreted,
buttressed, red-brick edifice? Probably some rich nobleman's whim?"
"Those, Madam, are the new buildings of Scotland Yard, recently
designed by Mr. Norman Shaw, one of the most famous of our modern
architects." "And what are those Venetian-like balconies, all hung
with greenery and flowers?" "They belong, Madam, to the Savoy and
Cecil Hotels. At the Savoy you may get a very nice dinner for a
guinea; they have a wonderful chef; and in the enormous dining-hall of
the Cecil, most of the great public banquets are given." "Truly, a
nation of shopkeepers," the foreign visitor will re-echo sadly, as she
dismisses her "lady guide."
[Illustration: _Sightseers._]
There is, I maintain, no finer walk in the world than that along the
Victoria Embankment, from Blackfriars to Westminster. You may walk it
every day of the year, and every day see some new, strange and
beautiful effect of light, of water, of cloud. In midsummer, when the
long row of plane trees offer a welcome shade and relief of greenery,
and it is pleasant to watch the slow barges pass and repass; in
autumn, when red and saffron sunsets flood all the west with light; in
midwinter, when, sometimes, great blocks of ice line the turbid
stream. One winter, not long past, when the Thames was all but frozen
over, it was a curious and interesting sight to watch the crowd of
sea-gulls, driven inshore by the intense cold, making their temporary
home on the ice, and fed all day with raw meat and bread by thousands
of sympathizing Londoners. Some of the birds had almost become tame
when their compulsory visit came to an end.
The river, in old pre-embankment days, flowed at the foot of the
curious ancient stone archway called "York Stairs," that stranded
water-gate of old York House, which stands, lonely and neglected, in a
corner of the Embankment Gardens. It has, however, survived, and that,
in London, is always something. Its long buried, and now excavated,
columns show the ancient level of the river, and the height to which
the present Embankment has been raised. The Palace of York House, to
which it was the river-gate, has gone the way of all palaces; its
ruins (as all ruins must ever be in London), are thickly built over.
Indeed, Somerset House is almost the only palace left to tell of the
ancient river-side glories, glories of which Herrick wrote:
"I send, I send, here my supremest kiss
To thee, my silver-footed Tamasis,
No more shall I re-iterate thy strand
Whereon so many goodly structures stand."
Even Somerset House is merely an old palace rebuilt, for the present
edifice is not much more than a century old. Buildings in London tend
to become utilitarian; and Royalty, besides, has deserted the City for
the West End. So the ancient Palace of the Lord Protector Somerset,
that Palace that he destroyed so much to build, spent such vast sums
on, and yet never lived in, but had his head cut off instead; the
Palace that used to be the residence of the wives of the Stuart Kings,
as described by Pepys, is now superseded by the vast Inland Revenue
Office, with its myriad suites, corridors, chambers. Truly, a change
typical of our busy and practical era!
Somerset House occupies the site of the older palace, a site almost
equal in area to Russell Square. But the older palace, as befitted the
"Dower House" of the Queens of England had gardens that extended along
the river-shore. It was in Old Somerset House that Charles II.'s poor
neglected Queen, Catherine of Braganza, used to sit all night playing
at "ombre," a game which she had herself imported from Portugal; and
it was here, in 1685, that three of her household were charged with
decoying Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey into the precincts of the palace, and
there strangling him. The wide courtyard of the interior has a bronze
allegorical group by _Bacon_, of George III. mixed up with "Father
Thames." Queen Charlotte, apparently rather resenting the ugliness of
the representation, said to the sculptor, "Why did you make so
frightful a figure?" The artist was ready with his reply. "Art," he
said, bowing, "cannot always effect what is ever within the reach of
Nature--the union of beauty and majesty." I myself must confess to
some sympathy with Queen Charlotte; but the art of her day had ever a
tendency to efflorescent excrescence.
On the river's very brink, a little higher up than Somerset House and
its adjacent hotels, Cleopatra's Needle, that "great rose-marble
monolith," stands guarded by two bronze sphinxes on a pediment of
steps, backed by the Embankment and the trees of its gardens. The
monolith is here in strange and novel surroundings. What ruins of
empires and dynasties has not this ancient Egyptian obelisk seen! We
poor human beings soon live out our little day, and are gone:
"The Eternal Saki from the Bowl hath poured
Millions of bubbles like us, and will pour----"
while this senseless block of stone lives for ever, regardless of the
tides of humanity that ebb and flow ceaselessly about its feet. Has it
not been a "silent witness" of the pageants of the magnificent
Pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty? Its hieroglyphics record its
erection by Thotmes III., before the Temple of the Sun in _On_
(Heliopolis), where it remained for the first 1600 years of its
existence, and (says Mr. Hare) witnessed the slavery and imprisonment
of the patriarch Joseph. The obelisk has had a strange and eventful
history. Removed to Alexandria shortly before the Christian era, it
was never erected there, but lay for years prone in the sand. Then, in
1820, Mahomet Ali presented it to the British nation; with, however,
no immediate result. For, the difficulties of removal being great, no
advantage was taken of the offer, till, in 1877, Mr. (afterwards Sir)
Erasmus Wilson gave the necessary funds, amounting to L10,000. A
special cylinder boat was made for the obelisk, but even with its
removal its adventures were not ended, for, in the Bay of Biscay, the
vessel encountered a terrific storm, and the crew of the ship that
towed it, in peril of their lives, cut it adrift. For days it was
lost, till a passing steamer happened to sight the strange-looking
object and picked it up, earning salvage on it.
The granite is said to be slowly disintegrating and the hieroglyphics
therefore becoming less deeply scored, by the action of the London
smoke and mist--the mist glorified poetically by Mr. Andrew Lang in
his "Ballade of Cleopatra's Needle";
"Ye giant shades of Ra and Tum,
Ye ghosts of gods Egyptian,
If murmurs of our planet come
To exiles in the precincts wan
Where, fetish or Olympian,
To help or harm no more ye list,
Look down, if look ye may, and scan
This monument in London mist!
"Behold, the hieroglyphs are dumb,
That once were read of him that ran
When seistron, cymbal, trump, and drum,
Wild music of the Bull began;
When through the chanting priestly clan
Walk'd Ramses, and the high sun kiss'd
This stone, with blessing scored and ban--
This monument in London mist.
"The stone endures though gods be numb;
Though human effort, plot, and plan
Be sifted, drifted, like the sum
Of sands in wastes Arabian.
What king may deem him more than man,
What priest says Faith can Time resist
While _this_ endures to mark their span--
This monument in London mist?"--
It has been objected that Cleopatra's needle ought to have been placed
somewhere else; for instance, in the centre of the Tilt Yard, opposite
the Horse Guards. But it is, as I said, typical of Londoners to find
fault with their monuments; and it is difficult to agree with the
writer who described it as in its present position "adorning nothing,
emphasising nothing, and by nothing emphasised." M. Gabriel Mourey,
for instance, who, though a Frenchman, is also a lover of London,
brings it very charmingly into his "impression" of the scene from
Charing-Cross Bridge:
"I go every morning to Charing-Cross Bridge, to gaze on the
'magical effects' produced by fog and mist on the Thames.
The buildings on the shores have vanished; there, where
recently seethed an enormous conglomeration of roofs,
chimneys, the perpetual encroachment of interminable
facades, all that insentient life of stones,--heaped to
lodge human toil, suffering, happiness,--seems to be now
only a desert of far-reaching waters. The river has
immeasurably widened, has extended its shores to the
infinite. Such immensity is terrible ... the atmosphere is
heavy; there is a conscious weight around, above, a weight
that presses down, penetrates into ears and mouth, seems
even to hang about the hair. We might, indeed, be existing
in a kind of nothingness, except for the perpetual passage
of trains--trains that shake the floor of the bridge, and
jar our whole being with metallic vibrations.... The wooden
sheds of the landing-stage, backed by the stone steps and
parapet,--with, further on, the thin spire of Cleopatra's
Needle, an unimagined network of lines,--appear suddenly out
of nothingness; it might be a fairy city rising all at once;
here are revealed the gigantic buildings of the Savoy Hotel,
and yonder, farther on, those of Somerset House, as the fog
gradually lifts; the whole effect is suggestive of a
negative under the chemical action of the developer. There
is, however, no distinctness; the negative is a fogged one;
outlines are only distinguished with difficulty; and
everything, in this strange and sad monochrome, seems to
acquire a vast and altogether fantastic size. The sky,
however, moves; thick, ragged clouds unravel themselves, in
colour a dirty yellow fringed with white; they might well be
great folds of torn curtains entangled in each other,
curtains of dingy wadding, thickly lined, and edged with
faint gold. But the light is too feeble to reflect itself,
and the water below continues to flow dully, as though
weighed down with the burden of that heavy sky; the
pleasure-steamers, indeed, seem to cleave it with painful
toil, to force a pathway, soon again closed; a pathway of
which scarcely a trace remains, only a slow, sluggish
undulation, soon lost in the general distracting cohesion of
all and everything."
It may be interesting here to recall Lord Tennyson's sonnet, and the
story told of it by his son:
"When Cleopatra's Needle was brought to London, Stanley
asked my father to make some lines upon it; to be engraven
on the base. These were put together by my father at once,
and I made a note of them:
_Cleopatra's Needle._
"Here, I that stood in On beside the flow
Of sacred Nile, three thousand years ago!--
A Pharaoh, kingliest of his kingly race,
First shaped, and carved, and set me in my place.
A Caesar of a punier dynasty
Thence haled me toward the Mediterranean sea,
Whence your own citizens, for their own renown,
Thro' strange seas drew me to your monster town.
I have seen the four great empires disappear!
I was when London was not! I am here!"
[Illustration: _The "Top" Season._]
Waterloo Bridge, crossing the Thames at Somerset House, was built by
Rennie in 1817. Canova considered it "the noblest bridge in the world,
and worth a visit from the remotest corners of the earth." It was at
first intended to call it the "Strand" Bridge; but it was eventually
named "Waterloo," in honour of the victory just won. Yet Waterloo
Bridge is not without its dismal associations. So many people, for
instance, have committed suicide from it, that it has been called the
"English Bridge of Sighs." It suggests Hood's ballad of the
"Unfortunate":
"The bleak wind of March
Made her tremble and shiver:
But not the dark arch
Or the black flowing river."
Waterloo Bridge has indeed been the last resource of many an unhappy
human moth--attracted by "the cruel lights of London"--to whom
"When life hangs heavy, death remains the door
To endless rest beside the Stygian shore."
Dante Rossetti, who painted his terrible picture of the lost girl
found by her old lover on a London bridge at dawning, has well
realised the ineffable sadness of the wrecks made by this whirlpool of
London.
The Victoria Embankment, and indirectly also this splendid Waterloo
Bridge, have given cause for one of the most eloquent diatribes of our
greatest aesthetic critic. Mr. Ruskin, though he cannot but admire the
vast curve of Waterloo Bridge, where the Embankment road passes under
it, "as vast, it alone, as the Rialto at Venice, and scarcely less
seemly in proportions," yet finds, in the wretched attempts at
decoration on the Embankment, and in the sad want of "human
imagination" of the English architect, windmills apt and ready to his
lance. Unlike the Rialto, the "Waterloo arch," he remarks plaintively,
"is nothing more than a gloomy and hollow heap of wedged blocks of
blind granite":
"We have lately been busy," he says, "embanking, in the
capital of the country, the river which, of all its waters,
the imagination of our ancestors had made most sacred, and
the bounty of nature most useful. Of all architectural
features of the metropolis, that embankment will be, in
future, the most conspicuous; and in its position and
purpose it was the most capable of noble adornment. For that
adornment, nevertheless, the utmost which our modern
poetical imagination has been able to invent, is a row of
gas-lamps. It has, indeed, farther suggested itself to our
minds as appropriate to gas-lamps set beside a river, that
the gas should come out of fishes' tails; but we have not
ingenuity enough to cast so much as a smelt or a sprat for
ourselves; so we borrow the shape of a Neapolitan marble,
which has been the refuse of the plate and candlestick shops
in every capital in Europe for the last fifty years. We cast
_that_ badly, and give lustre to the ill-cast fish with
lacquer in imitation of bronze. On the base of their
pedestals, toward the road, we put, for advertisement's
sake, the initials of the casting firm; and, for farther
originality and Christianity's sake, the caduceus of
Mercury: and to adorn the front of the pedestals towards the
river, being now wholly at our wits' end, we can think of
nothing better than to borrow the door-knocker which--again
for the last fifty years--has disturbed and decorated two or
three millions of London street doors; and magnifying the
marvellous device of it, a lion's head with a ring in its
mouth (still borrowed from the Greek), we complete the
embankment with a row of heads and rings, on a scale which
enables them to produce, at the distance at which only they
can be seen, the exact effect of a row of sentry-boxes."
Much, however, may be forgiven to Mr. Ruskin. On the other hand, the
view from Waterloo Bridge is thus described by the late Mr. Samuel
Butler:
"When ... I think of Waterloo Bridge and the huge
wide-opened jaws of those two Behemoths, the Cannon Street
and Charing Cross railway stations, I am not sure that the
prospect here is not even finer than in Fleet Street. See
how they belch forth puffing trains as the breath of their
nostrils, gorging and disgorging incessantly those human
atoms whose movement is the life of the city. How like it
all is to some great bodily mechanism.... And then ... the
ineffable St. Paul's. I was once on Waterloo Bridge after a
heavy thunderstorm in summer. A thick darkness was upon the
river and the buildings upon the north side, but just below,
I could see the water hurrying onward as in an abyss, dark,
gloomy and mysterious. On a level with the eye there was an
absolute blank, but above, the sky was clear, and out of the
gloom the dome and towers of St. Paul's rose up sharply,
looking higher than they actually were, and as though they
rested upon space."
Mr. Astor's charming estate office, one of the prettiest buildings in
London, facing the Embankment, close to the Temple Gardens, is yet
another instance of that latter-day change from palace to office,
already mentioned. At Blackfriars, the Victoria Embankment ends, and
tall, many-storied warehouses crowd down to the water's edge, in
picturesque though dingy medley, with, behind them, the blackened dome
of St. Paul's, attended by its sentinel spires,--St. Paul's, that has
nearly all the way stood out prominently in the distance, making this,
by universal consent, the finest view in all London. The noble effect
of Wren's great work is indeed, apparent from all points; but it is
the river and the wharves that, no doubt, form its best and most
fitting foreground. As we near London Bridge, the dirt of the vast
highway gains upon us; but, it must be confessed, its general
picturesqueness is thereby immeasurably increased. Dirt, after all, is
always so near akin to picturesqueness. The mud-banks and the mud
become more constant, the bustle and hum of the great city are
everywhere evident. Barges are moored under the tall warehouses;
workmen stand in the storing-places above, hauling up the goods from
the boats with ropes and pulleys; it is a scene of ceaseless activity,
an activity too, which increases as you descend the stream. On the one
side, the slums and warehouses of Upper Thames Street; on the other,
the yet slummier purlieus of busy, often-burned-down Tooley Street.
Thames Street, like its adjoining Billingsgate, is, I may remark,
nearly always muddy, whatever the time of year. On rainy days, it is
like a Slough of Despond. If by chance you wish to land at All Hallows
or London Bridge Piers, you must first climb endless wooden and
slippery steps, then wend your way carefully, past threatening cranes,
and along narrow alleys between high houses, alleys blocked by heavy
waggons, from which tremendous packages ascend, by rope, to top
stories; alleys where there is barely room for a solitary pedestrian
to wedge himself past the obstruction. Barrels of the delicious
oyster, the obnoxious "cockle," the humble "winkle"; loud scents that
suggest the immediate neighbourhood of the ubiquitous "kipper"; these,
mingled with the shouts of fish-wives and porters, greet you near that
Temple of the Fisheries, Billingsgate. The enormous Monument, which
stands close by, may be said to be in the dirtiest, dingiest portion
of this dingy region. "Fish Street Hill" the locality is called; and
it certainly is no misnomer.
London Bridge must have been wonderfully picturesque in old days; it
seems to have looked then very much as the Florentine "Ponte Vecchio"
does now, with, outside, its quaint overhanging timbered houses,
balconies, roof-gardens, and, inside, its narrow street of shops. The
sixth picture in the "Marriage a la Mode" series at the National
Gallery gives us an idea of what it was like. The present bridge,
opened in 1831, at a cost of two millions, is the last of many on or
near this site. For there has been a bridge here of some kind ever
since we know anything of London; no other bridge, indeed, existed at
all in old days. By old London Bridge Wat Tyler entered with his
rebels; by it Jack Cade invaded the city (though his head, for that
matter, soon adorned its gate-house), and here London was wont, with
pageant and ceremonial, to welcome her kings. The picturesque old
stone bridge was demolished in 1832; its narrow arches hindered
traffic, and gave undue help, besides, to that total freezing of the
river that occasionally happened, as the ancient "Frost Fairs" record,
in old days; yet one cannot help regretting the necessity for its
removal. The present London Bridge, though said to be "unrivalled in
the world in the perfection of proportion and the true greatness of
simplicity," is, perhaps, more practical than aesthetically beautiful.
The tide ebbs strongly against its massive piers; the last roadway
across the river, it is also the boundary line for big ships and
sailing boats; below here the river assumes more and more the look of
a sea-port; it becomes "the Pool of London." From this bridge are to
be seen some of the finest London views. The lace-like structure of
the unique Tower Bridge, the most extraordinary monument of the
century, rising, between its huge watch-towers, like a white wraith
behind the more prosaic stone of London Bridge, is here very telling.
And, looking towards the City, the brilliant tower of St. Magnus
gleams with quite Venetian-like brightness against the blackened
medley of its background.
The Tower Bridge, on a first sight, is infinitely more astonishing to
the sightseer than any other London monument. It has also a mediaeval
look, as of some gigantic fortress of the sixteenth century. With
regard to the two great towers, flanked on either side by their
graceful suspension chains, "spanned high overhead as with a lintel,
and holding apart the great twin bascules, like a portcullis raised to
give entry to a castle, there is no denying that all this must loom as
an impressive watergate upon ships coming from overseas to the Port of
London." M. Gabriel Mourey thus describes it:
"The Tower Bridge, the water-gate of the Capital, is a
colossal symbol of the British genius. Like that genius, the
Bridge struck me as built on lines of severe simplicity,
harmonious, superbly balanced, without exaggeration or
emphasis; sober architecture, yet with reasonable
audacities, signifying its end with that clearness which is
the hall-mark of everything English. It wonderfully
completes the seething landscape of quays and docks, and the
infernal activity of the greatest port in the world. No
waters in the world better reflect without deforming than
the muddy waters of the Thames; never blue even under the
blue skies of summer. Throw this bridge across the Seine or
the Loire, and it would spoil the view, like a false note of
colour. But here, on the contrary, its effect is
prodigiously imposing. Look at its two towers, how square
and solid they are. Their tips are crowned by steeples, the
roofs are pointed, the windows straight, with pointed
arches. It looks like the gate to some strong tower of the
middle ages. The combinations of lines composing the bridge
call up the idea of some heroic past time. They lift
themselves above the river like some massive efflorescence
of the past. But look again, and the impression becomes more
complex. Light and airy, like clear lace, an iron
foot-bridge joins the two towers, across the abyss. Another,
lower down, on the level of the banks, lifts up to let big
ships pass as under a triumphal arch. And all the audacity
of the modern architects, which is to create the works of
the future, here bursts forth, suspended on the heavy
foundations of the past; with so much measure and proportion
that nothing offends in the medly of archaism and modernity.
There are few countries able to carry off such contrasts.
But this country adjusts itself to them in perfection. It is
because no other people know how to unite with the same
harmonious force the cult of the past, the religion of
tradition, to an unchecked love of progress, and a lively
and insatiable passion for the future."
The Tower Bridge, as compared with other great engineering works of
the kind, labours under the disadvantage of not being seen properly
from anywhere as a whole, taking in, that is, both abutment towers
with their pendant suspension chains, which add so much to the general
effect. Nevertheless, even viewed from close by, it is very telling,
and dwarfs immeasurably any other building near it; see, for instance,
how the little Tower of London, that ancient and most historic
fortress, loses its size from its close juxtaposition to those
supporting towers! The "bascules," or drawbridges, are worked by
hydraulic power, and it is a curious and interesting sight to see them
raised to allow tall vessels to pass. Below the Tower Bridge, the
broad river seems to extend in a sea of masts, the city to become a
world of wharves and docks. To quote, once more, an "impression" of M.
Gabriel Mourey:
"Once past the London Tower Bridge, and its two enormous
towers, which rise like a triumphal arch with an air of calm
victory at the entrance to the great metropolis, the seaport
aspect of London becomes very apparent. The immense traffic
on the river is evident from the constant passage of
steamers, no less than by their frequent calls at the
wharves whose blackened walls, deep in water, receive the
riches of the entire world. A whole people toil at the
unloading of the enormous ships; swarming on the barges,
dark figures, dimly outlined, moving rhythmically, fill in
and give life to the picture. In the far distance, behind
the interminable lines of sheds and warehouses, masts bound
the horizon, masts like a bare forest in winter, finely
branched, exaggerated, aerial trees grown in all the
climates of the globe. Steam-tugs whistle, pant, and hurry;
ships with great red sails descend the river towards the
sea. An enormous steamer advances majestically; she seems as
tall as a five-storied house and her masts are lost in the
mist. The river suddenly widens, the thick smoke of the
atmosphere almost prevents one from seeing the other side;
it might almost be an immense lake. Rain, steam, and
speed;--Turner's chef d'oeuvre evoked before my eyes. The
ever-changing sky is a continual wonder. A while ago the
sun, like a disc of melting cream, disappeared in yellowish
mists, scattering reflections like dirty snow. Now, through
a clearing, he appears like the altar-glory of a Jesuit
church; raining waves of golden light; the surrounding
cloud-flocks are in a moment tinged with brilliance. And
again, he is suddenly eclipsed; all returns to dulness and
gloom: it might be the sad dawn of a rainy day."
It is, above all, this vast and eternally busy "Pool of London" that
is, and ever has been, the key to her greatness, her wealth, her
power. Even the distant church bells of London, clanging fitfully
through the "swish" of the wavelets and the eternal muffled roar of
the City, recall to the true Londoner the commercial spirit of his
ancestors. Does not the children's rhyme (there is ever deep reason in
childish rhymes) run thus?
"Oranges and Lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clement's;
You owe me ten shillings,
Say the bells of St. Helen's;
When will you pay me?
Say the bells of Old Bailey;
When I grow rich,
Say the bells of Shoreditch."
The bells, be it observed, are nothing if not business-like, and seem
to be more nearly concerned with our temporal than with our spiritual
welfare. But here everything tells of work, of traffic, of the endless
and indomitable "struggle-for-life" that is so characteristic of the
British race. Father Thames, here, may well speak in Kingsley's words:
"Darker and darker the further I go;
Baser and baser the richer I grow."
These dingy docks, these blackened wharves, represent, in reality, the
world's great treasure-house. For to this vast port of London comes
all "the wealth of Ormus and of Ind," all the riches of "a thousand
islands rocked in an idle main," all the luxuriant produce of
new-world farms, of Colonial ranches, of tropical gardens. Here, if
anywhere, may be realised his vision who saw
"The heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales."
Jewels such as a Queen of Sheba might have dreamed of, or a Sindbad
fabled, from "far Cathay"; ivory and gold from the mysterious East;
spices, bark, and coral from many a land of reef and palm; these, with
every commercial product of the globe, are daily poured into the
ravenous and never-satisfied maw of London. This vast giant,
enormous, helpless, is, like the queen termite, all-devouring, and yet
would starve of actual food in few days if deprived of her
ever-arriving cargoes. For Colonial produce, as every one knows, is,
despite the costs of freight, far cheaper than that of our own
country. The "Feeding of London," indeed, should prove a very
interesting subject to those attracted by statistics.
"There are within the limits of the metropolis at least five
million human beings, each of whom has every day to be
provided with food. The difference between the plenty of one
class and the pittance of another is, no doubt, very marked;
but taking the rich and the poor together, the quantity of
food required is almost incredible. The necessity for large
imports suggests horrid possibilities for some future siege
of London! But as the trade and port of London have made its
wealth, so they have also helped it to its present enormous
dimensions; for though the country, by the railways, brings
her share of London's sustenance, yet by far the larger
proportion of it comes through the docks. Thus, frozen and
living meat comes from the far colony of New Zealand, and
also from the United States, Canada, the River Plate, and
Australia; potatoes from Malta, Portugal, and Holland; tea
from China and India; early vegetables from Madeira and the
Canary Islands; spices from Ceylon; wines from France,
Portugal, and Spain; oranges from all parts of the tropical
globe, far cheaper often than our own home-grown fruits. The
import of oranges, indeed, alone reaches a total of 800 or
900 millions yearly; that of raisins and currants some
12,000 tons; while other things are in proportion. The
unloading of the ships is done by casual helpers, called
"dockers" or "dock-labourers," a rough class of workmen
living in and around Wapping, Rotherhithe, and Stepney.
Their employment, though now paid at a fair rate for
"unskilled" labour, is necessarily heavy while it lasts, and
uncertain, causing often a hand-to-mouth existence, and
leading to frequent "strikes."--(Darlington's _London and
its Environs_.)
The dock warehouses should be visited, if only to gain some idea of
the enormous wealth of London.
"These docks," says M. Taine, "are prodigious, overpowering;
each of them is a vast port, and accommodates a multitude of
three-masted vessels. There are ships everywhere, ships upon
ships in rows ... for the most part they are leviathans,
magnificent ... some of them hail from all parts of the
world; this is the great trysting-place of the globe."
The shore population, about here, consists mostly of sailors and
fishermen; "the Sailors' Town," the region east of the Tower is
specially called. The river scenes here are as picturesque in their
way as any in the world, a fact of which not only Turner's pictures,
but also Mr. Vicat Cole's "Pool of London," now in the Tate Gallery,
may well remind us. Why, indeed, should our artists all flock to
Venice to paint? Have we not also here golden sunsets, sails of
Venetian red, tall masts, dappled skies, all the picturesque litter
and crowded life that Turner so loved, suffused in an atmosphere of
misty glory?--a glory translated by all the glamour of history and
sentiment into
"The light that never was on land or sea,
The consecration and the poet's dream."
To the eyes of the boy Turner, the embryo artist, the child of the
City, all was beautiful and worthy to be painted--"black barges,
patched sails, and every possible condition of fog." To him, even in
mature life, "Thames' shore, with its stranded barges, and glidings of
red sail, was dearer than Lucerne lake or Venetian lagoon." Its
humanity appealed to him: he, as great a London lover as Dickens,
merely expressed this feeling differently. Thus, Ruskin says of
Turner's boyhood:
"That mysterious forest below London Bridge,--better for the
boy than wood of pine or grove of myrtle. How he must have
tormented the watermen, beseeching them to let him crouch
anywhere in the bows, quiet as a log, so only that he might
get floated down there among the ships, and round and round
the ships, and with the ships, and by the ships, and under
the ships, staring and clambering;--these the only quite
beautiful things he can see in all the world, except the
sky; but these, when the sun is on their sails, filling or
falling, endlessly disordered by sway of tide and stress of
anchorage, beautiful unspeakably; which ships also are
inhabited by glorious creatures--red-faced sailors, with
pipes, appearing over the gunwales, true knights, over their
castle parapets,--the most angelic beings in the whole
compass of London world."
The Thames and its wonderful glamour, its mingled beauty and
squalor--beauty, in the misty distance--squalor, in the more prosaic
near view--suggests memories of Dickens, as it does of Turner.
Memories of that "great master of tears and laughter" are, indeed,
awakened by every bend of the stream. The romance of the mighty river
was all-powerful with him, as with Turner; for he, too, had known it
in his early youth. To him, also, even Thames mud afforded mysterious
interest. Did not the blacking factory, celebrated in the pathetic
pages of _David Copperfield_, where the miserable hours of his own
early youth were spent, stand at the waterside, in Blackfriars? "My
favourite lounging place," says David, "in the intervals, was old
London Bridge (this was before its demolition in 1832), where I was
wont to sit in one of the stone recesses, watching the people going
by, or to look over the balustrades at the sun shining in the water,
and lighting up the golden flame on the top of the monument." The real
David--poor little boy--may, indeed, have occasionally played at being
a London mudlark himself, in off-hours; but this he does not tell us!
"Murdstone and Grinby's warehouse was at the water side. It
was down in Blackfriars. Modern improvements have altered
the place; but it was the last house at the bottom of a
narrow street, curving down hill to the river, with some
stairs at the end, where people took boat. It was a crazy
old house with a wharf of its own, abutting on the water
when the tide was in, and on the mud when the tide was out,
and literally overrun with rats."
The waterside scenes in _The Old Curiosity Shop_, including the wharf
where Mr. Quilp, the vicious dwarf, broke up his ships, and where Mr.
Sampson Brass so nearly broke his shins, were rivalled in vividness,
thirty years afterwards, by the river chapters in _Our Mutual Friend_.
In this later story, special stress is laid on the river suicides, and
the consequent "dragging" for corpses, done by the watermen for
salvage. Dreadful task! but not uncommon "down by Ratcliffe, and by
Rotherhithe, where accumulated scum of humanity seemed to be washed
from higher ground, like so much moral sewage, and to be pausing until
its own weight forced it over the bank and sunk it in the river."
Near Rotherhithe--a dingy pier usually infested by mudlarks--is
"Jacob's Island," made notorious by the scene in _Oliver Twist_. "It
is surrounded," says Dickens, "by a muddy ditch, six or eight feet
deep, and fifteen or twenty wide when the tide is in ... known in
these days as Folly Ditch." By means of this ditch, the murderer Sikes
tries to escape from the infuriated crowd who clamour for his life,
but he fails in the attempt and perishes miserably.
Such is the splendour, such the misery, of the richest, largest, most
powerful city in the world! And over all the seething tides of the
river and of humanity--the luxury and wretchedness--the "laughing,
weeping, hurrying ever" of the crowd, still the grey dome of St.
Paul's dominates the scene, still its "cross of gold shines over city
and river," calm and changeless above all tides and passions. Browning
has suggested the poetry of the view from the dome:
"Over the ball of it,
Peering and prying,
How I see all of it,
Life there outlying!
Roughness and smoothness,
Shine and defilement,
Grace and uncouthness,
One reconcilement."
Beyond the Tower Bridge, and beyond the docks and the East End, the
glitter of Greenwich comes in, striking yet another note in the
ever-changing key. This palace of Greenwich, set like a jewel among
its green hills and parks, was the favourite royal abode of the Tudor
Sovereigns. Here Elizabeth was born, and lived in state, and here her
brother Edward, the boy-king, died in the flower of his youth. The
shining Observatory crowns the hill of Greenwich Park--a welcome oasis
of green after the "midnight mirk" of the East End through which we
have passed; and the fair frontage of the Palace recalls to us the
historic mood in which we began our wanderings. Beautiful now with a
new beauty, a twentieth century beauty--how lovely, in a different
way, it must have been in those distant ages, when the splendid gilt
barges of the nobles, with their gaily-painted awnings, were moored at
their palatial water gates; when fair ladies sang to guitars as their
craft glided smoothly "under tower and balcony, by garden-wall and
gallery"; when each citizen had his private wherry, when loaded
"tilt-boats," filled with merry passengers, plied up and down between
Greenwich and Westminster. As is the Oxford, the Godstow Thames of
to-day, the London Thames was then; "the stream of pleasure," no less
than of wealth. Gazing, through the gathering twilight, over towards
the misty shadow of vast St. Paul's, seen behind the gleaming tower of
St. Magnus, or towards the shimmering expanse of water under the
wharves of "London Pool," you can still be oblivious to the present
changes; but presently you are rudely awakened by the very unpleasant
grating of the steamer against its flimsy wooden quay; and the dulcet
strains of "the Last Ro-wse of Summer," played to a somewhat wheezy
accordion, reach your ears in very un-Tudor and un-toward fashion.
Roman London, Saxon London, Elizabethan London, all fade, like Lamb's
"dream-children," into the far-away past;--giving place to Victorian
London,--as, jostled by a motley and not too immaculate crowd, you
scramble sadly across the rickety gangway to the very common-place and
unpalatial shore below London Bridge.
[Illustration: _An Underground Station._]
CHAPTER III
RAMBLES IN THE CITY
"I have seen the West End, the parks, the fine squares; but
I love the City far better. The City seems so much more in
earnest; its business, its rush, its roar, are such serious
things, sights, sounds. The City is getting its living, the
West End but enjoying its pleasure. At the West End you may
be amused; but in the City you are deeply excited."--_C.
Bronte_: "_Villette._"
"And who cries out on crowd and mart?
Who prates of stream and sea?
The summer in the City's heart
That is enough for me."
--_Amy Levy_: "_A London Plane Tree._"
The City is, by common consent, the most interesting and vital part of
the metropolis,--interesting, not only for its past,--but for its
present; ever-living,--eternally renewed;--a never-ceasing, impetuous,
Niagara of energy and power. It is the pulse,--or rather the
aorta,--of the tremendous machine of London; through its crowded veins
rushes the life-blood of commerce, of industry, of wealth, that feeds
and stimulates not only the town, but also the country and the nation.
Through its ancient and narrow highways, crowds of black-coated human
ants hurry, day by day, eager in pursuit of money, of power, and of
their daily bread.
And yet, curiously enough, it is close by these very crowded
thoroughfares of human life and energy, that the most secluded haunts
of peace may be found; calm "backwaters," all deserted and forgotten
by the flowing stream that runs so near them; tiny spots of
unsuspected greenery and ancient stone, absolutely startling in their
quiet proximity to the surrounding din and whirl. Though the area of
the "City," so-called, is but small, yet it abounds in such peaceful,
undreamed-of spots; places where the painter may set up his easel, or
even the photographer his camera, without fear of let or hindrance.
Secluded bits of ancient churchyard, portions of long-forgotten
convent garden, of old wall or bastion, or of antique plane-tree
grove; it is such nooks as these that, even more than in Kensington
Gardens, suggest Matthew Arnold's lovely lines:
"Calm soul of all things! make it mine
To feel, above the city's jar,
That there abides a peace of thine
Man did not make and cannot mar."
To see and know the City with any proper appreciation of its interests
and beauties, would require many days of wandering and leisured
perambulation. In no part of London do things and views come upon the
pedestrian with more startling suddenness. Emerging from some narrow
and smoky alley, where the house-roofs, perhaps, nearly meet overhead,
he may find himself, by some sharp turn of the ways, almost directly
under the enormous blackened dome of St. Paul's,--looking, in such
close proximity,--and especially if there happen to be any fog
about,--of positively incredible size. Or he may find peaceful
red-brick rectories, that suggest country villages, adjoining, in all
charity, noisy mills and warehouses; or railways and canals, which
give forth smoke and steam with amiable impartiality, and intersect
streets where fragments of old houses yet linger in picturesque decay;
or, again, noisy tram-lines, cutting through mediaeval squares, that,
once upon a time, were peaceful and residential. Yet, after all, it
ill becomes us to murmur at the tram-lines and the railways; we ought
rather to be thankful that anything at all of the old time is left us.
For, in the City, where things are, and ever must be, chiefly
utilitarian, the survival of ancient relics is all the more to be
wondered at.
But the time of careless and rash destruction is past. The antiquarian
spirit is now fairly in our midst, and mediaeval remains are preserved,
sometimes even at no slight inconvenience. And when the progress of
the world, and of railways, requires certain sites, even then the
buildings on these, or their most interesting portions, are, so far as
possible, spared and protected from further injury. Thus, when the
site of "Sir Paul Pindar's" beautiful old mansion in Bishopsgate
Street was required for the enlargements of the Great Eastern Railway
Company, its elaborately-carved wooden front was transported bodily to
the South Kensington Museum, which it now adorns; and the church tower
of the ancient "All Hallows Staining," surviving its demolished nave
and choir, still stands, a curiously isolated relic, in the green
square of the Clothworkers' Hall; that company being bound over to
keep it in order and repair. Similarly, the pains and the great
expense incurred in the careful restoration of that old Holborn
landmark, Staple Inn, a score or so of years back, are well known. And
"Crosby Hall," anciently Crosby Place, that famous Elizabethan mansion
commemorated in Shakespeare's _Richard III._, is now, after much
danger and many vicissitudes, utilised for the purposes of a
restaurant, which, at least ensures the keeping of it in proper and
timely repair. Fifty, even thirty, years ago, ancient monuments were
more lightly valued, sometimes even rescued with difficulty from the
hands of the destroyer; now, however, the veneration for old landmarks
is more widespread. Repairs to old buildings are, to a certain extent,
always necessary; for in London, more than anywhere, long neglect
means inevitable decay and destruction. And if in certain districts
Philistines may yet have their way, if the taste of the builder and
restorer is not always faultless, things have at any rate much
improved since early Victorian days.
Of the many delightful excursions to be made in and about the City,
perhaps that to the ancient priory church of St. Bartholomew the
Great, Smithfield, and the neighbouring precincts of the Charterhouse,
ranks first. The church is a Norman relic unique in London, a bit of
mediaevalism, left curiously stranded amid the desolation and
destruction of all its compeers. Though St. Bartholomew the Great is
easily reached from Newgate Street, being indeed but just beyond the
famous hospital of the same name, it is yet difficult to find. Its
diminutive and somewhat inadequate red-brick tower is but just visible
above the row of houses that divide it from Smithfield, and the modest
entrance to its precincts, underneath a mere shop-archway, may easily
be missed. The church is, in fact, almost hidden by neighbouring
houses. While its main entrance faces Smithfield, the dark,
mysterious, densely-inhabited district called "Little Britain" crowds
in closely upon it on two sides, and the picturesque alley named
"Cloth Fair" abuts against it on another. It is, therefore, difficult
to get much of a view of it anywhere from outside; you may, indeed,
get close to it, and yet lose your way to it. The ancient priory
church has only recently been disentangled from the surrounding
factories and buildings, that in the lapse of careless centuries had
been suffered to invade it.
[Illustration: _Clothfair._]
The entrance door from West Smithfield, though insignificant in size,
is yet deserving of notice; for it is a pointed Early English arch
with dog-tooth ornamentation. Hence, a narrow passage leads through a
most quaint churchyard; an old-time burial-ground, a bit of rank and
untended greenery, interspersed with decaying and falling gravestones,
and hemmed in by the backs of the tottering Cloth Fair houses; ancient
lath-and-plaster tenements, crumbling and dirty, their lower timbers
bulging, yet most picturesque in their decay. They all appear to be
let out in rooms to poor workers; above, patched and ragged articles
of clothing are hanging out to dry, while on the ground floor you may
see a shoemaker hammering away at his last, or a carpenter at his
lathe, his light much intercepted by a big adjacent gravestone, on
which a black cat, emblem of witchery, is sitting. The gravestones
seem not at all to affect the cheerfulness of the population; perhaps,
indeed, as in the case of Mr. Oram, the coffinmaker, these wax the
more cheerful because of their gloomy surroundings. The whole scene,
nevertheless, is most strangely weird, and reminds one of nothing so
much as of that ghoulish churchyard described by Dickens as in
"Tom-All-Alone's;" with this exception, that Dickens only saw the sad
humanity of such places, and not their undoubted picturesqueness.
Beyond this strange disused burial-ground the church is entered. The
history of its foundation is a romantic one. The priory church, with
its monastery and hospital, was the direct outcome of a religious vow.
In the twelfth century, when the little Norman London of the day was
the town of monasteries and church bells likened by Sir Walter Besant
to the "Ile Sonnante" of Rabelais; in or about 1120, one of King Henry
I.'s courtiers, Rahere or Rayer (the spelling of that time is
uncertain), went on a pilgrimage to Rome. At Rome he, as people still
often do, fell ill of malarial fever, and, as is less common, perhaps
nowadays, vowed, if he recovered, to build a hospital for the
"recreacion of poure men." Rahere was, says the chronicler, "a
pleasant-witted gentleman, and therefore in his time called the King's
minstrel." (Hence, no doubt, he has been called also "the King's
jester"; though this appears to be incorrect.) Lively and
"pleasant-witted" people are, we know, apt to take sudden conversion
hardly; and Rahere was certainly as thorough in his dealings with the
devil as was any mediaeval saint. In his sickness he had a vision, and
in that vision he saw a great beast with four feet and two wings; this
beast seized him and carried him to a high place whence he could see
"the bottomless pit" and all its horrors. From this very disagreeable
position he was delivered by the merciful St. Bartholomew, who
thereupon ordered him to go home and build a church in his honour on a
site that he should direct, assuring him that he (the saint), would
supply the necessary funds. Returning home, Rahere gained the king's
consent to the work, which was forthwith begun, and assisted greatly
by miraculous agency; such as bright light shining on the roof of the
rising edifice, wonderful cures worked there, and all such
supernatural revelations. When Rahere died, in the odour of sanctity,
and the first prior of his foundation, he left thirteen canons
attached to it; which number his successor, Prior Thomas, had raised
in 1174 to thirty-five. Thus the monastery grew through successive
priors, till it was one of the largest religious houses in London. Its
precincts and accessories extended at one time as far as Aldersgate
Street; these however vanished with the dissolution of the monasteries
by Henry VIII., and all that remains to the present day is the
abbreviated priory church and a small part of a cloister. In monastic
times the nave of the edifice extended, indeed, the whole length of
the little churchyard, as far as the dog-toothed Smithfield entrance
gate; but of the ancient church nothing now remains intact but the
choir, with the first bay of the nave and portions of the transepts.
Yet the recent restorations have been most successfully carried out,
and the first view of the interior is striking in its grand old Norman
simplicity. The choir has a triforium and a clerestory, and
terminates in an apse, pierced by curious horseshoe arches; behind
runs a circulating ambulatory dividing it from the adjoining "Lady
chapel." Worthy of notice is the finely-wrought modern iron screen,
the work of Mr. Starkie Gardner, that separates this chapel from the
apse. The church has been altered, added to, or mutilated, from time
to time; and other styles of architecture, such as Perpendicular, have
occasionally been introduced; but yet the main effect of the interior
is Norman. The beautiful Norman apse, built over and obliterated in
the 15th century, has, by the talent of Mr. Aston Webb, been now
restored to its original design. Indeed, the whole edifice has in
recent times and by the efforts of late rectors and patrons, been
extricated from dirt, lumber and decay; the work of restoration
beginning in 1864. The restorer has done his work most faithfully,
preserving all the old walls, and utilising the old Norman stones used
in previous re-buildings.
The high value of every inch of space, in this crowded colony of
workers, had in course of centuries caused many and various irruptions
into the sacred precincts. But some of the worst encroachments may
possibly have arisen in the beginning more from the action of venal
and careless officials and rectors, than from outside greed. Thus,
supposing that a parishioner had, by some means or other, obtained a
corner of the church for the stowing of his lumber, and that he paid
rent for it duly to the churchwardens; he being in time himself
nominated churchwarden, the rent would lapse, himself and his heirs
becoming eventually proprietors of the said corner. Thus it is that
abuses creep in. The state of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, a
half-century ago, must indeed have been grief, almost despair to the
antiquary. A fringe factory occupied the "Lady-Chapel" and even
projected into the apse; a school was held in the triforium; and a
blacksmith's forge filled one of the transepts. The fringe factory
cost no less than L6,000 to buy out; the blacksmith whose forge had
been inside the church for 250 years, was removed for a sum of
L2,000. In the north transept you may still see the stone walls and
arches blackened with the smoke of the forge, and a curious white
patch, yet remaining on the pillared wall, testifies to the exact spot
where the blacksmith's tool-cupboard used to stand. The feet of the
horses can hardly be said to have improved the Norman pillars. Pious
legend is already busy with the history of the reconstruction of the
church, and I was assured that in one case the compensation money did
its recipient little good; for he immediately set himself, as the
phrase goes, to "swallow it." But, indeed, all that remained of the
old church was before 1864 so hemmed in on all sides by encroaching
houses, that the work of "buying out" must have been one of immense
difficulty and patience. Some few of the tenants have, it seems,
proved very obdurate and grasping; these, however, are wisely left to
deal with till the last. One window in the now cleared and restored
"Lady-Chapel" is still blocked by a red-tiled, rambling building, a
highly unnecessary but most picturesque parasite which has at some
period or other attached itself limpet-like to the old church wall.
The old church is, like all London churches, dark, and it requires a
bright day to be thoroughly appreciated. Lady sketchers are sometimes
to be seen there, their easels set up in secluded nooks. The church,
however, is generally more or less desolate, a curious little island
of quiet after the surrounding din of the streets and alleys. Perhaps
one or two strangers,--Americans most likely,--men by preference,--may
be seen going over it; but old city churches do not, as a rule,
attract crowds of visitors. Passers-by can rarely direct you to them,
and even dwellers in the district can but seldom tell you where they
are. For cockneys, even "superior" cockneys, are born and die in
London without ever troubling themselves over the existence of these
ancient relics of the past. Yet, if the natural beauties of St.
Bartholomew are great, greater still is its historical interest. The
vandalisms of the Reformation, and, later, of the Protectorate, have
fortunately spared most of its ancient monuments, and the tomb of
Rahere, the founder and earliest prior, shows its recumbent effigy
still uninjured under a vaulted canopy. The tomb is on the north side
of the choir, just inside the communion rails. Though the canopy is
admittedly the work of a fifteenth-century artist, the effigy is said
to belong to Rahere's own time. The founder is represented in the
robes of his Order (the Augustinian Canons); his head has the monkish
tonsure; a monk is on each side of him, and an angel is at his feet.
The effigy, like several other monuments in the church, has been
darkened all over, probably by the misplaced zeal of Cromwellian
iconoclasts, with sombre paint; this coating, however, has been to a
great extent removed. (In some of the other tombs and monuments the
darkening is done with some thick black pigment, impossible entirely
to remove.) The Latin epitaph on Rahere's tomb is simple:
"Hic jacet Raherus primus canonicus et primus prior hujus
ecclesiae."
Some twenty years ago the tomb was opened, and Rahere's skeleton
disclosed, together with a part of a sandal, which latter may be seen
in a glass case among other relics in the north transept.
Almost opposite the founder's tomb, looking down from the south
triforium, is Prior Bolton's picturesque window, built by him
evidently for the purpose of watching the revered monument. Prior
Bolton, the most famous of Rahere's successors, ruled the convent from
1506 to 1532; his window is a projecting oriel, and on a middle panel
below is carved his well-known "rebus," a "bolt" passing through a
"tun"; this rebus occurs also at other places in the church.
The splendid alabaster tomb of Sir Walter Mildmay, a statesman of
Queen Elizabeth's day, and founder of Emmanuel College, Cambridge,
should be noticed in the south ambulatory. The vandalism of former
times had, curiously enough, not blackened this tomb, but endued its
alabaster with an upper coating of sham marble--now removed. The
remainder of the tombs and monuments will all repay inspection; and
some of the inscriptions are very quaint. For instance, in a bay in
the south ambulatory is a monument to a certain John Whiting and his
wife, with the verse (nearly defaced) from Sir Henry Wotton:
"Shee first deceased, he for a little try'd
To live without her, lik'd it not and dy'd."
And in another place is the monument to Edward Cooke, "philosopher and
doctor," which is made of a kind of porous marble that exudes water in
damp weather, and has inscribed on it the following appropriate
epitaph:
"Unsluice, ye briny floods. What! can ye keep
Your eyes from teares, and see the marble weep?
Burst out for shame; or if ye find noe vent
For teares, yet stay and see the stones relent."
Yet the marble was not altogether to be blamed. It is sad to spoil a
poetic illusion; but it seems that in old days the church was damp, so
damp that the rector--if report is to be believed--had to preach
sometimes under an umbrella, and the marble "wept" abundantly. Now,
however, that the building is repaired and properly warmed, the
"stones relent" no more.
St. Bartholomew has had, too, its quota of famous parishioners.
Milton, that constant though wandering Londoner, lived close by at one
time, in his "pretty garden-house" of Aldersgate (that garden-house
that was yet so dull that his young wife ran away temporarily both
from it and him!); and the poet probably attended divine service in
the church. Hogarth, the painter, was baptised here, as the parish
registers tell. The congregation of the present day, however, comes,
as is so often the case with old city churches, mainly from outside.
The immediate neighbourhood is hardly church-going, being a
collection of narrow alleys and mysterious courts. And yet, in these
dark purlieus of "Little Britain," house-room is frightfully dear, and
in the crumbling tenements of "Cloth Fair," a poor room costs about
6_s._ per week. As to the population, only fifteen years ago they were
rough, rowdy, even criminal in places; now, however, the district is
mainly respectable, although overcrowded by workers--factory hands,
private manufacturers, widows who work in City offices and who cling
to the locality as being near and convenient. It is very difficult for
the authorities to obviate overcrowding in certain central London
districts. Little Britain, now devoted to warehouses and tenement
dwellings, was in old days filled with book-shops; indeed, the whole
district used to be literary, for Milton Street, near by, was the
"Grub Street" of Pope's obloquy in the _Dunciad_. In Little Britain
are still good houses to be seen here and there; and Cloth Fair itself
was once inhabited by grandees and merchant princes. That dingy but
romantic alley still boasts an old lath-and-plaster house, that once
was the Earl of Warwick's; its picturesque windows surmount a humble
tallow chandler's shop; but its towering decrepitude still has
dignity, and the Earl's arms still adorn its front. It was good enough
for an Earl in old days; now, however, his dog would hardly be allowed
to sleep in it!
When "Bartholomew Fair" was a great annual festivity, it was in Cloth
Fair that the famous "Court of Pie Powdre" used to be held, that court
which, during fair-time, corrected weights and measures and granted
licenses. It was called the "Court of Pie Powdre" because "justice was
done there as speedily as dust can fall from the foot."
In mediaeval days, the open space of Smithfield--now a meat
market--was, as every one knows, a shambles of another sort. Here
suffered that noble army of Marian martyrs, who proudly for
conscience' sake faced the flame; here burned those hideous fires that
long blackened the English name. The little row of houses facing
Smithfield,--under which is the archway and dog-toothed gate to the
old church, already mentioned,--is, so far as one can gather from an
old print, little altered since those cruel days when mayors,
grandees, and respectable citizens would sit and watch the tortures of
poor, faithful men and women. Especially at the beautiful Anne Askew's
burning, "the multitude and concourse," says Foxe, "of the people was
exceeding; the place where they stood being railed about to keep out
the press. Upon the bench under St. Bartholomew's Church sate
Wriothesley, chancellor of England, the old Duke of Norfolk," etc.
etc.... Strange times, indeed! when, (said Byron):
"Christians did burn each other, quite persuaded
That all the Apostles would have done as they did."
At the Smithfield fires perished in all 277 persons, whose only
memorial is now an inscribed stone on the outer wall of St.
Bartholomew's Hospital, commemorating three of them in these words:
"Within a few yards of this spot John Rogers, John Bradford,
John Philpot, servants of God, suffered death by fire for
the faith of Christ, in the years 1555, 1556, 1557."
Smithfield, or Smoothfield as it was first called, was even in very
early times a place of slaughter and execution; here the Scotch
patriot, Sir William Wallace, was done to death in 1305, and here, in
1381, the rebel Wat Tyler was slain by Sir William Walworth.
Originally a tournament and tilt ground, Smithfield was in those days
a broad meadow-land fringed with elms, beyond the old London walls.
Miracle-plays, public executions, tortures, fairs, and burnings appear
to have taken place here in indiscriminate alternation, until
Smithfield became, first, the great cattle-fair of London, and,
finally, the modern meat-market. Its present charm, if any, must be
all "in the eye of the seer;" for it is, in truth, a noisy,
unattractive spot, with but little suggestion of ancient romance about
it.
[Illustration: _St. Bartholomew's, Smithfield._]
St. Bartholomew's Hospital, of which the long front faces the
market-place, forms part of Rahere's original foundation. Refounded by
Henry VIII. after the dissolution of the monasteries, it is now almost
the wealthiest, as well as the oldest, hospital in London. It admits
over 100,000 patients annually, and its medical school is famous. Just
within its Smithfield gateway, which dates from the year 1702, and is
adorned by a statute of Henry VIII., is the church of St. Bartholomew
the Less, originally built by Rahere just after his return from Rome,
but re-erected in 1823. The spacious courtyards of the hospital,
collegiate in size and cleanliness, and pleasantly shaded by trees,
afford pretty and pathetic sights. Here, on fine days of spring and
summer, a few convalescents, pale and bandaged, may be seen sitting
out and enjoying the fresh air and sunshine, talking, reading, or
simply engrossed in watching a game of ball played by the students.
Those boy- or girl-patients who are well on the road to recovery,
often tend or supervise still younger patients, the pretty
white-capped nurses occasionally lending a hand--it is a charming
sight. The last time that I passed by the Smithfield front of the
hospital, a poor tramp lay prone on the broad steps of the patients'
entrance, and a porter was sympathetically and tenderly preparing to
lift him inside; it was a picture of the Good Samaritan.
But St. Bartholomew's precincts are not the only "haunts of peace" in
this noisy neighbourhood. Crossing the Metropolitan Meat Market, and
picking your way northward, through innumerable ugly tram-lines, you
presently reach the quiet and restful Charterhouse Square, whence,
through an archway, the precincts of the ancient monastery are
entered. Charterhouse Square, once an enclosure of seventeenth-century
palaces, is a delightful old place even yet; though its sober
residential look of time-darkened red brick is now but a blind, and it
is rapidly becoming a square of hotels and lodging-houses. Such a fate
was, of course, inevitable in its case; and yet it seems mournful. The
spot where Rutland House, the ancient residence of the Venetian
ambassador, once stood, is only commemorated now in the name of
Rutland Place. The City palaces have crumbled; they have all been
rebuilt in the far West; and even Bloomsbury has none left, except
those which are devoted to the modern flat! One of the prettiest
houses now to be seen in the present Charterhouse Square,--its front
trellised over with bright Virginian creeper, such a house as Miss
Thackeray loved to describe,--is now a "home" fitted up by a big city
warehouse for the accommodation of its working girls. The square
garden is still nicely kept; Janus-faced, it looks on to the world's
noisy mart on the one side, and, on the other, towards conventual
peace.
But you must not linger in Charterhouse Square; time is passing, and
the archway leading to the ancient sanctuary invites you. The
guide-books tell you that this archway is in the "Perpendicular"
style; that its projecting shelf above is supported by lions; this
and much more; but you do not always feel in a mood to digest
guide-books. They are so aggressive in their information, and so
distracting to one's own thoughts! For, how many associations does not
this classic abode recall! You can easily imagine groups of tonsured,
cowled friars, standing here and there in the shadows of the
quadrangles; one "grey friar" of a later time, with "the order of the
Bath on his breast," perhaps, most of all.
This Carthusian monastery, so powerful in mediaeval times, and founded
by Sir Walter Manny as early as 1321, was suppressed by the rapacity
of Henry VIII., that brutal though necessary reformer. The story of
the dissolution is a cruel and heartrending one. Prior Houghton, the
last superior of the monastery, protested against the king's
spoliation of Church lands; he was promptly convicted of high treason,
and, with several of his monks, was "hanged, drawn, and quartered" at
Tyburn. They died gallantly, and in their deaths we revere that true
and sturdy spirit that still in our own day leads England on to glory:
"If" (says Froude) "we would understand the true spirit of
the time, we must regard Catholics and Protestants as
gallant soldiers, whose deaths, when they fall, are not
painful, but glorious; and whose devotion we are equally
able to admire, even where we cannot equally approve their
cause. Courage and self-sacrifice are beautiful alike in an
enemy and in a friend. And while we exult in that chivalry
with which the Smithfield martyrs bought England's freedom
with their blood, so we will not refuse our admiration to
those other gallant men whose high forms, in the sunset of
the old faith, stand transfigured on the horizon, tinged
with the light of its dying glory."
Prior Houghton's bloody arm, severed from his murdered corpse, was
hung up over the gateway of his sanctuary, to awe his remaining monks
into obedience; while his head was exposed on London Bridge. Brutal,
indeed, were our forefathers of the Tudor time!
The Charterhouse, after the banishment and death of its monks, passed
through the hands of several of the king's favourites, and came
eventually into those of the Duke of Norfolk, who altered it
considerably, making it less monastic and more palatial in character.
But a new era of usefulness awaited the ancient convent; better days
for it were at hand. For it was finally sold by the Norfolk family to
one Thomas Sutton, a rich and philanthropic Northumbrian coal-owner,
who converted it into a "Hospital" for eighty poor men, and a school
for forty poor boys. The school, so picturesque in Thackeray's
_Newcomes_, no longer exists here as in old days; in 1872, the modern
craze for fresh air transferred it to new premises at Godalming; and
the boys' vacated buildings were sold to the Merchant Taylors' Company
for their own school. The almshouses for the poor brothers remain,
however, just as they were. Times change, and, though the aged
bedesmen are yet poor, it is doubtful whether all the boys who benefit
from the foundation, can still be called so. The school, like other
foundations of its kind, probably now benefits a higher class than old
Thomas Sutton intended.
Many noted men have been pupils of the Charterhouse; Thackeray,
especially, has immortalised his old school in his touching
description of "Founder's Day"; when old Colonel Newcome, in his turn
both pupil and poor brother, sits humbly among the aged pensioners,
clad in his black gown:
"I chanced to look up from my book towards the swarm of
black-coated pensioners: and amongst them--amongst
them--sate Thomas Newcome. His dear old head was bent down
over his prayer-book; there was no mistaking him. He wore
the black gown of the pensioners of the Hospital of Grey
Friars. His order of the Bath was on his breast. He stood
there amongst the poor brethren, uttering the responses to
the psalm.... I heard no more of prayers, and psalms, and
sermon, after that."
The whole of the Charterhouse breathes the old man's spirit; is
perambulated by his frail ghost, the shadow of a Grey Friar. The
letters, "I.H." worked out in red on the bricks in Washhouse Court,
(part of the old monastery), though supposed to show the initials of
the martyred Prior Houghton, are not so vivid to us as the little
house in the same court, pointed out as the place where Colonel
Newcome died!
Ghosts there may be in the Charterhouse, but their identity is not
divulged. "Some people," the porter owns, under pressure, "have been
known to see strange things," though he for his part has only come
across rats, so far. Perhaps the boys have "laid" them! boys, it must
be confessed, would make short work of most ghosts. The boys, on the
"Founder's Day" mentioned by Thackeray, used always to sing the
Carthusian chorus in the old merchant's honour:
"Then blessed be the memory
Of good old Thomas Sutton,
Who gave us lodging, learning,
As well as beef and mutton."
They sing it still, no doubt, equally heartily at Godalming; yet,
surely, some among them must yearn for the historic associations of
the old place. But, indeed, all the ancient schools are going, or
gone, from the City; St. Paul's School is moved to Hammersmith; the
picturesque Christ's Hospital is just disintegrated; its
characteristic Lares and Penates are removed to Horsham; and the
passengers along noisy Newgate Street will no longer stay to enjoy the
romps and the foot-ball of the yellow-legged, blue-coated boys.
The brick courts of the Charterhouse have a solid and collegiate air;
its small Jacobean chapel, of which the groined entrance alone dates
from monastic times, contains a splendid alabaster tomb of the
Founder. Here is Thackeray's striking description of a "Founder's Day"
service:
"The boys are already in their seats, with smug fresh faces,
and shining white collars; the old black-gowned pensioners
are on their benches; the chapel is lighted, and Founder's
Tomb, with its grotesque carvings, monsters, heraldries,
darkles and shines with the most wonderful shadows and
lights. There he lies, Foundator Noster, in his ruff and
gown, awaiting the great Examination Day.... Yonder sit
forty cherry-cheeked boys, thinking about home and holidays
to-morrow. Yonder sit some three-score old gentlemen of the
hospital, listening to the prayers and the psalms. You hear
them coughing feebly in the twilight,--the old reverend
blackgowns.... A plenty of candles lights up this chapel,
and this scene of age and youth, and early memories, and
pompous death. How solemn the well-remembered prayers are,
here uttered again in the place where in childhood we used
to hear them! How beautiful and decorous the rite; how noble
the ancient words of the supplications which the priest
utters, and to which generations of fresh children, and
troops of bygone seniors have cried Amen! under those
arches! The service for Founder's Day is a special one; one
of the psalms selected being the thirty-seventh, and we
hear--'v. 23. The steps of a good man are ordered by the
Lord: and he delighteth in his way. 24. Though he fall, he
shall not be utterly cast down: for the Lord upholdeth him
with his hand. 25. I have been young, and now am old; yet
have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging
their bread."
The Carthusians, as visitors to the monastery of the "Grande
Chartreuse" already know, lived almost entirely in small houses of
their own. These exist here no longer, but the ancient brick cloister
that extends along the playground belongs to the old convent. The many
rambling courts and low buildings of the Charterhouse are, no doubt,
puzzling on a first visit. "There is," says Thackeray, "an old Hall, a
beautiful specimen of the architecture of James's time; an old Hall?
many old halls; old staircases, old passages, old chambers decorated
with old portraits, walking in the midst of which, we walk as it were
in the early seventeenth century." The dining-hall, which used to be
the monastic guest-chamber, is used now by the old bedesmen; it is
fine, with its dark panelling and its look of comfortable solidity.
This was the part of the old Charterhouse adapted for his own dwelling
by the Duke of Norfolk; and the wide Elizabethan staircase, leading to
the "Officers' Library," is almost exactly as it was in his time. A
curfew, tolled every evening at eight or nine o'clock p.m., proclaims
the number of the poor brethren. It was with reference to this custom
that Thackeray wrote his infinitely touching description of the death
of Thomas Newcome:
"At the usual evening hour the chapel bell began to toll,
and Thomas Newcome's hands outside the bed feebly beat time.
And just as the last bell struck, a peculiar sweet smile
shone over his face, and he lifted up his head a little, and
quickly said '_Adsum_,' and fell back. It was the word we
used at school, when names were called; and lo, he, whose
heart was as that of a little child, had answered to his
name, and stood in the presence of The Master."
But the Charterhouse has now come more or less to be a "show place";
and, interesting as are visits to the show places of London, I often
think that a mere aimless ramble through the streets of the City is
more soothing and refreshing to the average mind. Human nature is
contradictory, delighting in the unexpected; also, so far as lasting
impressions go, it is incapable of thoroughly taking in much at one
time. Everybody knows that places where you are "shown round" are
fatiguing; what you really enjoy is what you can find out for your own
poor self. In London streets, the unexpected is always happening;
thus, through the hideous plate glass of a bar parlour, you may catch
glimpses of waving trees and grey towers, and even the dreadful glare
of London advertisement hoardings does not "wholly abolish or destroy"
the ancient charm of the crowded, irregular City streets. A City of
parallel lines and squares, such as the Colonials love! Perish the
thought! Let them widen Southampton Row if they will, remove Holywell
Street and King Street if they list; but let us at any rate keep to
our old and devious ways through the heart of the City!
Just west of the Charterhouse, reached from Smithfield by St. John
Street, is another stranded islet of the past, St. John's Gate,
Clerkenwell. This is the only remaining relic of the mediaeval Priory
of St. John, the chief English seat of the "Knights Hospitallers of
St. John of Jerusalem," founded in Henry I.'s reign by a baron named
Jordan Briset and Muriel his wife. The early Priory was burnt by the
rebels under Wat Tyler, and, when rebuilt, the newer building was used
in many reigns as a resort of royalty. After many vicissitudes, the
Order of St. John's Knights was suppressed by that archiconoclast
Henry VIII. who, for the purpose, resorted to his usual persuasive
methods of beheading, hanging, and quartering. Nevertheless, the
Priory continued to be used as a Royal residence by Henry's daughter,
Mary. The fragment of the old building that remains to us is its south
gate, built by Prior Docwra in 1504. It is a fine bit of perpendicular
architecture; on the gateway's north side are the arms of Docwra and
of his Order, on the south side, those of France and England. In the
centre of the groined roof is the Lamb bearing a flag, kneeling on the
Gospels. The rest of the Priory buildings have long vanished;
destroyed, for the most part, by the ambitious Protector Somerset, by
whose order they were blown up for building materials for his fine new
Strand palace. The later history of the old Gate is mainly
journalistic; demonstrating that typical change from the calm of
conventual seclusion to the thunder of printing-press publicity, so
common in central London. Dr. Johnson lived here in his early days of
hack work in the old rooms above the Gate, working for Cave the
printer, the founder of the _Gentleman's Magazine_, at so much per
sheet, and living here an inky, dirty, hermit-like existence; seeing
no one, and "eating his food behind a screen, being too shabby for
publicity." The chair he used is still treasured. (St. John's Gate is
a familiar object to many who have not really seen it, owing to its
representation, in pale purple, on the outside cover of the
_Gentleman's Magazine_.) The gate is now appropriately occupied by the
Order of St. John, a charitable institution devoted to ambulance and
hospital work. Part of the old priory church may be seen in the fine
Norman crypt of St. John's Church close by. People used to visit this
crypt to see the coffin (now buried), of "Scratching Fanny, the Cock
Lane Ghost": this was a fraud perpetrated by a girl and her father,
for gain. A plausible story was invented, and many notable people were
duped by it; but by Dr. Johnson's investigations the hoax was at
length discovered.
A ramble down Bishopsgate, in the inconsequent way already suggested,
will be found thoroughly enjoyable; though it has, of course, the
defect of being exceptionally easy of accomplishment. For this
purpose, an omnibus to the Mansion House will land you exactly where
you want to be. I may add that it is very important to choose a fine
day for the excursion, a day when those imposing golden letters on the
Royal Exchange--the "Anno Elizabethae" and "Anno Victoriae"--glitter
like so many suns above the unceasing whirlpool of human life and
energy below. Have you ever thought, as you looked on those golden
letters, how interesting they may prove to some future antiquary? Like
the "M. Agrippa Cos Tertium Fecit" on the Roman Pantheon, they tell,
proudly, of the glory of a great nation. It is noteworthy that the
names of two queens should here represent England's highest fame, and
commemorate thus, in close juxtaposition, the Elizabethan and
Victorian Age.
The Victorian Age, however, with its bustle and movement, is very much
with us as we approach Bishopsgate along the route of Holborn Viaduct.
If you elect to travel on the top of an omnibus, you will find that
Newgate Street and Cheapside show, in turn and on each side, a
scintillating kaleidoscope of light and colour. Rambles are all very
well in their way; but, under some circumstances, Mr. Gladstone's
dictum was a right one; the top of an omnibus is a wonderful point of
view. So we will go on a 'bus to the Mansion House, and ramble
afterwards. First comes St. Paul's, its imposing dome rising
majestically in ponderous blackness through its surrounding greenery;
then the gloomy walls of grim Newgate prison; next, the pale,
ghost-like spire of St. Mary-le-Bow, shining over its blackened base
and the many-coloured street vista below, and, finally, the great
civic buildings of the City proper, forming in the sunlight, a sort of
white-and-golden circle, a central focusing point of colour and
energy, whence diverge, like so many wheel-spokes, all the great
business thoroughfares. The stranger, set down here for the first
time, generally completely loses his bearings, and even the practised
Londoner sometimes finds himself at a loss. (In a "London particular"
he may even find himself in a very Inferno.) But the cool inner
courtyard of the Royal Exchange, sought as a refuge, will speedily
restore his disordered faculties, and give him time to get out his
pocket-map. Here, let into the inner wall of the colonnade, are modern
paintings of scenes in the history of London by eminent artists, among
which the contrasted pictures of the two great queens (respectively by
Ernest Crofts and R. W. Macbeth) carry out something of the feeling
suggested by the gold-lettered pediment. Elizabeth, on a spirited
charger, golden-haired and in picturesque sixteenth century dress,
opens Sir Thomas Gresham's earlier building; Victoria, a slim girlish
figure, standing between the "great Duke" and Prince Albert,
inaugurates the later.
Round about the "Exchange" precincts, several sensible, sober, and
practical-looking gentlemen sit, casually, on stone chairs; Mr.
Peabody is on one side, Sir Rowland Hill, the penny postage reformer,
is on the other. So far as I have seen, they are the only people in
this crowded ant-heap who have any leisure for sitting down! Opposite
the Royal Exchange, at No. 15 Cornhill, is a little shop of old
time--Birch and Birch--painted in green and red. It is a very
unassuming little confectioner's shop, and its tiny, abridged
shop-front with the narrow panes of glass has certainly an antique
look. But not unassuming are the civic banquets which this firm is
often called upon to supply. The churches in the narrow street of
Cornhill come upon the pedestrian, if, indeed, they come upon him at
all, as surprises. Of St. Michael's nothing can be seen from the
street but its tower and richly-carved modern doorway fixed between
two plate-glass shop-fronts. The doorway has projecting heads and a
relief of St. Michael weighing souls; a business-like proceeding, I
may remark, that well befits the City. Further on, comes St.
Peter-upon-Cornhill, the body of the church completely masked by
shops, and only the tower to be seen over the roofs from the further
side of the street. Most of these City churches are open at mid-day,
and the stranger is usually free to walk round and see what he will,
without let or hindrance, ignored by the sextoness or pew-opener, who
is generally a superior old lady in black silk, attached to the church
some thirty or forty years, and almost as much a part of it as its
furniture. Church caretakers' lives must be healthier than one would
imagine, for they seem, as a race, given to longevity. Visitors are
rarely encouraged in London churches. The charwomen employed in
scrubbing the aisles seem to regard intruders as unnecessary
nuisances. "Church shut for to-day," one cried triumphantly when she
saw me coming. It is interesting to note that, when Thackeray edited
the _Cornhill Magazine_, his editorial window looked out upon this
church of St. Peter. Now, Bishopsgate Street turns down out of
Cornhill to the left, and spacious banks, built in varying degrees of
splendour, line the thoroughfare.
Close by, in Threadneedle Street, was the old "South Sea House," noted
for the famous "Bubble" of 1720, that ruined so many thousands. E. M.
Ward's picture of the wild excitement caused by the "Bubble" in the
neighbouring Change Alley, is well known. In Bishopsgate Street,
almost opposite Crosby Hall, is the splendid "National and Provincial
Bank," unique in sumptuousness, its large hall lined with polished
granite columns in the Byzantine-Romanesque style--a style, one would
think, more ecclesiastical than financial. If they had dug this sort
of place out of old Pompeii, what would the antiquaries have called
it? No statues of Plutus or of Mercury would have helped them to their
finding! Alas! in our foggy climate, we dare not indulge ourselves
with sculptured Lares and Penates; and we must needs content ourselves
with those few square-toed, frock-coated celebrities whose statues, of
gigantic size, confront us at our chief partings of the roads. They
have, certainly, gathered funereal trappings galore in their time;
their grime and blackness deceive even the wary London sparrows, who
build their nests fearlessly about the giants' heads and shoulders.
To return to Bishopsgate Street: Crosby Hall, the ancient mediaeval
palace and modern restaurant, to which I have before alluded, is,
though much repaired and repainted, still dignified; in the interior
of the restaurant all details are carefully studied, even to the
antique china stands for glasses, and the old-fashioned spotted
cambric dresses of the serving-maids.
Close by Crosby Hall is the turning into Great St. Helen's; indeed,
the long windows of the hall back on to the square of that name. This
curious old convent church, set in its little secluded enclosure, has
been called "the Westminster Abbey of the City." It is certainly rich
in historical tombs and monuments. Originally founded in the 13th
century as the "Priory of St. Helen's for Nuns of the Benedictine
Order," its accessories have, like those of St. Bartholomew the Great,
been long removed and built over, and its cloisters exist no more. Yet
what remains of it is full of interest. It is comparatively very
unvisited. The last time I was there, I noticed one depressed
American, "doing" the tombs sadly. I felt for him, for though it was
only 3 o'clock on an October day, it was much too dark to read or see,
and he had evidently lost himself among the monuments. The sextoness,
who was apparently engaged in the careful brushing of her black silk
dress in the vestry, was much too superior to notice him. St. Helen's
is a dark church at any time; on this occasion a "London particular"
was also impending, and even the gold letters on Sir Thomas Gresham's
massive tomb scarcely showed in the fading light. But it was a
picturesque scene, despite the sad lack of "glory on the walls." The
old knights and ladies, motionless on their narrow beds, glimmered in
ghostly fashion, silent witnesses of the flight of the centuries. The
quaint, stiff effigies, clad in ruff and farthingale,--while they have
knelt there, how many generations, in the turbulent world outside,
have been born and died? Bancroft's unwieldy tomb is gone from its
old place; else you might well have imagined the shade of the
eccentric philanthropist stealing from it by night, pressing back its
careful hinges, and fumbling for the bread and wine that he had
ordered by will to be placed near by for his awakening. You mistook,
in the dim light, Sir John Spencer's kneeling heiress-daughter for a
guardian angel, and you were awed by the still, calm mediaevalism of
the altar-tomb of the Crosbys.... It was all so vague and so misty
that the mind really seemed to participate in the general fog, and I
remember gazing vaguely on the words, "Julius Caesar,"--inscribed, in
enormous letters, on a sumptuous altar-tomb,--feeling that I fervently
sympathised with the royal lady who, when shown the magic name, is
said to have remarked naively:
"But I always thought that Julius Caesar was buried in Rome!"
It is surely very unfair for individuals to perpetrate post-mortem
puzzles of the kind! For this "Julius Caesar," (who, by-the-way,
gained his false honours by dropping his surname) was merely a Judge
and a Master of the Rolls of Elizabeth's day, and, evidently, as shown
by his tomb, designed by himself, what is called "a crank" also. When
I had got over the "Julius Caesar" deception, I sympathised duly with
the large family of "John Robinson, alderman," whose children form a
long kneeling procession behind him; and still more did I mourn for
those unhappy nuns who, poor things, were immured in the darkness
behind "the Nuns' Grate," or "hagioscope"; their scant peepholes so
unkindly devised that they could only see the altar, and not the
congregation! These "Black Nuns" of St. Helen's must, nevertheless,
one thinks, have been often but naughty, giggling school-girls,
despite their show of conventual discipline. Perhaps, as Chaucer would
have us believe, such discipline was but lax in England in the middle
ages. Be that as it may, we find, at one time, no less authorities
than the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's admonishing them thus:
"Also we enjoyne you, that all daunsyng and reveling be
utterly forborne among you, except at Christmasse, and other
honest tymys of recreacyone, among yourselfe usyd, in
absence of seculars in alle wyse."
Of the two aisles that form the church, the "Nuns' Aisle" is that to
the left as you enter, and the steps to their destroyed cloister (now
blocked up) open out of it. The little garden plot outside the church
is neatly kept, and on my last visit I noticed some gardeners putting
in a plentiful supply of bulbs for spring blooming. Doubtless, the
"Black Nuns" enjoyed among their other "recreacyones," a lovely and a
well-ordered convent garden outside their cloister; "cherry trees" are
specially mentioned in St. Helen's register; and, as we know, the
London of that day grew many luscious fruits.
Farther down Bishopsgate Street, is the tiny church of St. Ethelburga,
uninteresting as regards its interior, but one of the oldest existing
churches in London, and certainly the smallest. It escaped the ravages
of the Great Fire, and history mentions it as early as 1366. I passed
it three times without noticing it, for its little spirelet rises but
slightly above the roofs of the intervening shops, and its tiny
doorway, labelled itself like a small shop, is easily overlooked
between two projecting windows. (The smallness of the place can be
imagined from the fact that, only a few doors from it, no one can be
found to direct you to it.) The verger lives in a very picturesque and
overhanging slum-alley close by; though his abode suggests Fagin, he
is, nevertheless, an amiable and obliging gentleman.
Just east of Bishopsgate is Houndsditch (its somewhat unpleasantly
suggestive name commemorating the ancient City moat), with, near by,
the Jewish quarter of St. Mary Axe, "Rag Fair," and Petticoat Lane
(now Middlesex Street), noted, like Brick Lane, Spitalfields, for its
Sunday morning markets. Why is the Jewish quarter so invariably
concerned with old clothes? As the rhyme says:
"Jews of St. Mary Axe, of jobs so wary
That for old clothes they'd even axe St. Mary."
Close by Houndsditch is Bevis Marks (Bury's Marks), now descended from
its ancient glories; it used to contain the City mansion, "fair courts
and garden plots," of the Abbots of Bury St. Edmunds, but now
principally recalls Dickens's unsavoury characters, Miss Sally Brass
and her brother Sampson (in _The Old Curiosity Shop_). Here, once
again, Dickens gets thoroughly the strange, semi-human spirit of
London slums and by-ways; it is in such places that his genius attains
its highest flights. That he was always, too, very careful as regarded
his details, is shown in a letter on this subject to his friend
Forster. He spent (he says), a whole morning in Bevis Marks,
selecting:
"the office window, with its threadbare green curtain all
awry; its sill just above the two steps which lead from the
side-walk to the office door, and so close on the footway
that the passenger who takes the wall brushes the dim glass
with his elbow."
It seems, however, almost too invidious to select special rambles.
For, the whole of this heart of the city,--except only for certain
well-defined "infernos" of modern industry and ugliness, such as the
great Liverpool-Street terminus, must be deeply interesting to every
Londoner and every Englishman. Even in comparatively dull streets,
lined with warehouses and offices, there will always be some little
oasis to rest and refresh the wanderer. Suppose that, instead of going
up Cornhill, you take another wheel-spoke from the Mansion-House; say
Lombard-Street, the home _par excellence_ of the bankers. This street
is solid and stately, as you would expect; the very name has a moneyed
ring about it! The derivation of the name, by-the-way, is curious; it
comes from Lombard bankers who appear to have settled here at an early
date; the street bore their name in the reign of Edward II. The square
tower, crowned by an octagonal spire, that rises on the north side of
Lombard Street, is that of the church of St. Edmund the King and
Martyr, in which was made poor Addison's not too happy marriage with
the Dowager Countess of Warwick and Holland. Still continuing east,
past Gracechurch Street, we come to Fenchurch Street, a thoroughfare
that runs parallel with the busy mart of Eastcheap, famed in
Shakespeare, and possibly no less dirty and noisy than it was in Dame
Quickly's time. Out of Fenchurch Street opens Mincing Lane, a name
that commemorates the "minchens" or nuns of St. Helen's; that convent
owned a great deal of property about here. The Clothworkers' Hall,
close by, is reached through an iron gate; its garden, or court, is
formed by the ancient churchyard of All Hallows, Staining, a church
destroyed, all but its tower, by the Great Fire, and not rebuilt. The
tower of All Hallows, a stranded fragment of antiquity, forms the
centre piece of the garden court, where its effect is most curious and
striking.
The narrow old streets that lead north out of Cheapside, the "Chepe"
of the middle ages, with their quaint old names, afford many pleasant
rambles. In Wood Street, the old plane-tree, still standing, recalls
Wordsworth's poem. Milk Street leads by the old church of St. Mary
Aldermanbury, with the statue of Shakespeare in its little churchyard,
to the still visible bastions of London Wall, and along the street of
that name, to Cripplegate. The church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, is
interesting; its churchyard, too, is a green and favoured spot. A
street of warehouses near it was burned down quite recently with
terrible loss, and the church itself was threatened, but fortunately
escaped; but the streets, now rebuilt, look, thanks to the City's
wonderful recuperative powers, as solid and as flourishing as ever.
The noisy thoroughfare of Fore Street, lined with warehouses and
foundries, is built upon the ancient line of wall, which also appears,
black against sunflowers, asters, and greenery, in St. Giles's
churchyard and rectory garden. This part of the City wall is probably
of Edward IV.'s time. Portions of the old Roman wall have indeed been
discovered here and there in the City; a large fragment of it was, for
instance, laid bare at the building of the new departments of the
General Post Office in 1891. But the oldest fragments of wall
existing near Cripplegate are, though black, grimy, and mouldering,
probably Norman or Saxon. Roman relics that have been discovered in
the City are on view, some at the Guildhall, others in the British
Museum; the most interesting of them all, however, is still _in situ_,
being the large fragment called "London Stone," built into St.
Swithin's Church opposite the Cannon Street Terminus; supposed to be a
"milliarium," or milestone, and possibly, like the golden milestone in
the Roman Forum, "a central mark whence the great Roman roads radiated
all over England."
The street called "London Wall" testifies to the care of the City for
its ancient monuments. The ruins of the old fortifications are
carefully built up, embanked, and made picturesque by a narrow strip
of greenery that was once the churchyard of St. Alphage over the way.
They are railed in from injury, and a memorial tablet is affixed. The
dwellers in the district still, however, seem densely ignorant as to
its meaning. I lately asked several youthful inhabitants, engaged in
the fascinating pavement game of "hop-scotch," what they supposed the
place was. They could not answer. The School Board, if rumour speaks
truly, is surely doing well to include the history of London in its
curriculum.
The street of London Wall has the distinction of possessing the very
ugliest church in the metropolis, that of St. Alphage. It has, indeed,
the one merit of being so small as easily to escape notice; though
hardly its ancient foundation, or the interesting monument inside it
to Lord Mayor Sir Rowland Hayward's two wives and sixteen "happy
children," redeem it from utter dreariness.
But we must now desist from our rambles, though there is yet much to
see; night is falling; that mysterious night that brings such strange
contrast to the City streets; the wild, fitful fever of their long day
is ended, and they are left to silence. The busy throng of workers
hurries homeward; soon, in the highways scarcely a belated footfall
resounds, while in the byways, by day so crowded, there reigns a calm
as of the sea at rest; like the sea's, too, is that faint, unceasing
tremor of the great City, the City that never sleeps. To quote the
poet of "Cockaigne":
"Temples of Mammon are voiceless again--
Lonely policemen inherit Mark Lane--
Silent is Lothbury--quiet Cornhill--
Babel of Commerce, thine echoes are still.
"Westward the stream of humanity glides;--
'Buses are proud of their dozen insides;
Put up thy shutters, grim Care, for to-day,
Mirth and the lamplighter hurry this way."
CHAPTER IV
ST. PAUL'S AND ITS PRECINCTS
"A deep, low, mighty tone swung through the night. At first
I knew it not; but it was uttered twelve times, and at the
twelfth colossal hum and trembling knell, I said, 'I lie in
the shadow of St. Paul's.' ... The next day I awoke, and saw
the risen sun struggling through fog. Above my head, above
the housetops, co-elevate almost with the clouds, I saw a
solemn, orbed mass, dark-blue and dim--the DOME. While I
looked, my inner self moved; my spirit shook its
always-fettered wings half loose; I had a sudden feeling as
if I, who had never yet truly lived, were at last about to
taste life: in that morning my soul grew as fast as Jonah's
gourd."--_Charlotte Bronte_: "_Villette._"
"See! how shadowy,
Of some occult magician's rearing,
Or swung in space of heaven's grace
Dissolving, dimly reappearing,
Afloat upon ethereal tides
St. Paul's above the city rides."--_John Davidson._
St. Paul's is the central object of the City. As the typical view of
Rome must ever show, not any "purple Caesar's dome," but the violet,
all-pervading cupola of St. Peter's,--so, also, must the typical view
of London ever show the faint, misty, grey-blue dome of St. Paul's.
And St. Paul's is more to us than this. Even to dwellers in the
West-End, inexperienced in City life, that guardian spirit of the
mother-church, brooding silently over the far-off, dimly-imagined
heart of the City, is a vital part--a necessary factor--of London
life. The mighty smoke-begrimed cathedral, the monument of Wren's
genius, the abiding angel of the City, has it not a place in the
inmost affections of every Englishman worthy of the name whether near
or far? The shrines of other lands, of other nations, may win his
outspoken admiration; St. Paul's has ever his heart. For this, at
least, is his inheritance, his very own.
[Illustration: _Fighting Cocks._]
Blue-grey, veiled in mystery when viewed from a distance, St. Paul's,
seen from its immediate surroundings, has all the wonder of a dramatic
effect. Suddenly, from the glare and bustle of Cheapside, from the
tumult of the crowded highway, a gigantic, blackened mass rises in
startling completeness immediately overhead, towering with almost
night-mare like rapidity ever higher as we advance. Seen behind the
tall white buildings and shops of its so-called "churchyard," that hem
it in, St. Paul's makes an impression that is indescribably grand.
Especially in spring, when the first tender leaves of its surrounding
plane-trees interpose their young greenery in delicate labyrinths
between the dark, massive walls of the cathedral and the ever hurrying
life outside them, should St. Paul's be visited for the first time.
There has from immemorial times been a church here; tradition even
suggests a Roman temple on the site. But, though the "spirit" has ever
been constant, the "letter" (so to speak), has often changed. At any
rate Wren's masterpiece is the third Christian church, dedicated to
St. Paul, erected here since early Saxon times. Though Wren's
life-work was not rewarded, like Milton's, with "twenty pounds paid in
instalments, and a near approach to death on the gallows," yet he,
too, had but scant justice in his day. National benefits, even in our
own time, are often but ill rewarded. Thwarted, wretchedly paid,
suspected, and finally, at great age, and after forty-five years' hard
service, deposed from the post he had so long and so ably filled; the
"Nestor" of his age, with a spirit worthy of a more enlightened time,
betook himself cheerfully to his old study of philosophy, and only
once in every year, we are told, indulged his master-passion by having
himself carried to St. Paul's to gaze in silence on his life-work.
[Illustration: _St. Paul's from the River._]
The highest point of the city would, naturally, from very early times
be chosen as the sanctuary; and St. Paul's stands grandly on the top
of Ludgate Hill, its western portico almost facing the steep street of
that name. That it does not do so more exactly, is due to the haste of
the people in rebuilding their houses after the Great Fire; such haste
occasioning the reconstruction of the city more on the old lines, than
on those of Wren. For the great cathedral took some thirty-five years
to complete, and streets grow again more quickly than edifices
destined for the monuments of nations. And, before the new church
could be begun, the useless ruins of its predecessor had to be
removed. The Great Fire had calcined its stones and undermined the
safety of its walls. Such, indeed was the devastation of this terrible
holocaust, that even to this day, its relics and debris may be traced
in distinct thin layers, at certain distances under the soil, all over
the area of the City. The ruin can hardly be imagined, even from
Pepys's and Evelyn's vivid diaries. Small wonder indeed, that it
should be thought by the credulous that the end of the world, the Last
Judgment, had truly come. Some, later, held that the "purification" of
the old church by fire had been the one thing needed after its
desecration in the Commonwealth times to a house of traffic and
merchandize, even sometimes to a stable. The church had become a mere
promenade; "Paul's Walkers" had been the names given to loungers in
the sacred edifice; gallants using it as a place of pastime, beggars
as a resting-place, and Inigo Jones's beautiful portico at the west
end being all built up with squalid shops. The people were gradually
awakening to a sense of these enormities: had cleared out those unholy
traffickers;--were, indeed, in process of restoring the church,--when,
in 1666, the fire came to complete the purification. Then, when the
destruction of the city was complete, the common people with one
accord, pronounced it to be the work of the "Popish faction," and not
content with the mere verbal condemnation, caused this accusation of
incendiarism to be graven deeply on Wren's commemorating monument, a
calumny only removed after the lapse of ages.
Old St. Paul's, the second church of that name on this site, had been
built in the Conqueror's time; it was a large Gothic building, a vista
of noble arches, 700 feet long, with a tall spire, which was
subsequently struck by lightning and removed. It had a twelve-bayed
nave and a twelve-bayed choir, with a fine wheel-window at the east
end, and with two smaller satellites, St. Faith and St. Gregory,--the
one inside its very walls,--the other built on to it outside. On being
called upon to rebuild from the very foundations, Wren "resolved to
reconcile as near as possible the Gothic with a better manner of
architecture;" and, without ever having seen St. Peter's, he produced
what is really an adaptation of that central Renaissance building of
Christianity. It is much smaller: St. Paul's could go easily inside
St. Peter's; yet, in the position it occupies, hemmed in by streets
and houses, it looks deceptively much bigger. There is a pleasant
story told, that in the beginning of its building, Wren sent a workman
to fetch from the surrounding debris, a stone wherewith to mark out
the centre of the dome; and this happening to be an old gravestone,
inscribed "Resurgam," it was held to be a happy omen. (The word
"Resurgam," over the north portico, with a phoenix, by Cibber,
commemorates this story.) Wren was very careful about the strength of
his foundations; "I build for eternity," he said, with the true
confidence of genius.
More than two centuries have now elapsed since the first opening of
the new St. Paul's for service, and these two centuries have
established, as time alone can do, the fame and the genius of Wren.
Time here, as ever, has delivered the final verdict. The great
cathedral dominates the City, harmonising, ennobling, purifying the
serried mass of its surroundings; it is the coping-stone of London's
greatness. The verdict of later times has done justice to Wren's
judgment, and many of his intentions regarding the details of the
edifice, thwarted in his lifetime by ignorant contemporaries, have now
been carried out. Thus, the organ has been moved from its former place
over the iron-wrought screen between choir and nave, (where it marred
the architectural effect of the edifice), to the north-east arch of
the choir, the position originally planned for it by Wren; the tall
outside railing of the churchyard, which, Wren said, dwarfed the base
of the cathedral, has been removed; the mosaics he asked for now
incrust, in shining glory, the central dome; and, if the grand
"baldacchino" he wanted has not been placed in the choir, there is,
instead, a very sumptuous modern reredos. The balustrade that
surmounts the main building was not intended by Wren, but insisted on
by the Commissioners for the building; and its erection caused Wren to
say, not, perhaps, without sly intention: "I never designed a
balustrade; but _ladies think nothing well without an edging_."
This, however, was long ago; Wren sleeps in peace in his cathedral
crypt; and there, on the top of Ludgate Hill, St. Paul's stands,
blackening ever, year by year, yet gaining immeasurably through that
very blackness. It has been said, wittily, that the great church has a
special claim to its livery of smoke, for the reason that a great part
of the cost of its building was defrayed by a tax on all coals brought
into the port of London! And this canopy of solemn black, out of which
the dome, lantern, and golden ball emerge at intervals, in silver and
gold, becomes it well.
"There cannot," wrote Hawthorne, "be anything else in its
way so good in the world as just this effect of St. Paul's
in the very heart and densest tumult of London. It is much
better than staring white; the edifice would not be nearly
so grand without this drapery of black."
The ancient monuments of St. Paul's were nearly altogether destroyed
with the old church; Wren's cathedral was inaccessible to any new
monuments for some years, the first admitted to it being that of John
Howard the philanthropist in 1790. This was followed by many others,
chiefly of great warriors, soldiers and sailors; although
ecclesiastics also are numerous, and there is a goodly company of
painters.
"If Westminster Abbey," said C. R. Leslie, "has its _Poets'
Corner_, so has St. Paul's its _Painters' Corner_. Sir
Joshua Reynolds's statue, by Flaxman, is here, and Reynolds
himself lies buried here; and Barry, and Opie, and Lawrence
are around him; and, above all, the ashes of the great Van
Dyck are in the earth under the cathedral."
Turner now lies next to Reynolds. Yet, as a rule, the great
commemorated in St. Paul's are of a different type to those of
Westminster. Both churches are the mausoleums of heroes; St. Paul's
being, however, by common consent the resting-place of the Militant,
Westminster of the Pacific. The statue of Dr. Johnson, under the dome,
opposes that of Howard. Though his dust rests in Westminster Abbey,
the militant spirit of the Sage well deserves commemoration in St.
Paul's. His representation, in the curious art of the time, as a
half-clothed muscular athlete, is appropriately supplemented by that
of Howard, bare-legged, with Roman toga and tunic. The coincidence of
Johnson holding a scroll, and Howard a prison key, has caused the two
to be sometimes mistaken by visitors for St. Peter and St. Paul! But
not all the monumental vagaries are as innocuous as these. Westminster
Abbey does not alone suffer from the bad taste of the Renaissance; a
few of the monuments of St. Paul's are alike trials to the eyes as to
the faith. The naked warriors in sandals, receiving swords from, or
falling into the arms of, smart feminine "Victories,"--_lusus naturae_
with wings protruding from their shoulders,--are, indeed, sad
instances of the too rampant eighteenth-century exuberance of fancy.
Of the monuments, for instance, to Captains Burgess and Westcott,
Allan Cunningham remarks:
"The two naval officers (Westcott and Burgess), are naked,
which destroys historic probability; it cannot be a
representation of what happened, for no British warriors go
naked into battle, or wear sandals or Asiatic mantles....
When churchmen declared themselves satisfied, the ladies
thought they might venture to draw near, but the flutter of
fans and the averting of faces was prodigious. That Victory,
a modest and well-draped dame, should approach an undrest
dying man, and crown him with laurel, might be endured--but,
how a well-dressed young lady could think of presenting a
sword to a naked gentleman went far beyond all their notions
of propriety."
Neither is the ugly group of the Bishop of Calcutta, ogre-like in
size, apparently confirming two Indian dwarfs, at all calculated to
excite any feeling but amusement.
The great cathedral has, nevertheless, also its monumental treasures.
Under the third arch on the north of the nave, is the noble monument
of the Duke of Wellington, by Alfred Stevens; the aged Duke lying,
"like a Scaliger of Verona, deeply sleeping upon a lofty bronze
sarcophagus." One thinks of Tennyson's lines:
"Here in streaming London's central roar,
Let the sound of those he wrought for,
And the feet of those he fought for,
Echo round his bones for evermore."
And near to him, in the north aisle of the nave, under the tattered
banners of those old regiments that fell in the Crimea, lies, on a
pedestal of Greek cipollino, the recumbent bronze effigy of that
recent recruit to the ranks of dead painters, Lord Leighton of
Stretton. The monument, worthy of the best traditions of art, is by
Brock. The beautiful features of the dead President are composed in a
sublime peace; he "is not dead, but sleepeth"; "yet it is visibly a
sleep that shall know no ending, till the last day break, and the last
shadow flee away." The long robe droops to the feet, the hands that
toiled unweariedly for beauty and for immortal art, now lie motionless
on the breast. The tattered flags that hang above, have, here, too,
their significance,--hanging over one, who in the many-sidedness of
his genius and his interests, was in his time one of the pioneers of
the Volunteer movement. The Leonardo of his age has here a fitting
memorial.
Near to Lord Leighton's fine tomb is that of General Gordon, a bronze
monument and effigy by Boehm. He "who at all times, and everywhere,
gave his strength to the weak, his substance to the poor, his sympathy
to the suffering, and his heart to God" is fitly remembered in death.
When I last saw this monument, on the hero's breast lay a fresh bunch
of violets, on his either side were the symbolic palm branches, and at
his feet a wreath of white flowers. Near by is the imposing bronze
doorway, the "gate of the tomb," erected to Lord Melbourne, Queen
Victoria's first Prime Minister. Of the supporting angels on either
side of the plinth, that on the left, especially, is very impressive.
But the bell calls to service, and the rolling organ-tones resound in
the blue dome, where Richmond's mosaics glitter like diamonds in the
stray gleams of sunshine that glance athwart the abyss. The mosaics,
like all innovations in this ungrateful city, have, of course, run the
gauntlet of abuse, on the ground of smallness and ineffectiveness; yet
the Monreale mosaics, so admired at Palermo, are more or less on the
same scale, and are, also, at a considerable height. But it is
difficult for contemporaries to judge fairly, and Time, no doubt, here
as elsewhere, will kindly do the work of discrimination for us.
In the crypt are the half-destroyed remains of monuments from the
older church, with Nelson's sarcophagus, Wren's simple tomb, and many
others. But, outside St. Paul's, the sunlight still calls us, and,
from the depths of the dim recesses and aisles of the great cathedral,
we regain now the brilliant summit of Ludgate Hill, brilliant with the
noonday spring sun. Now the sounds of many-sided life invade the
repose of death; and a noisy street-organ, playing near Queen Anne's
statue, mingles its note strangely with the cathedral's still pealing
bells. The pigeons, gay in colour, flit down from their homes in among
the blackened garlands, Corinthian capitals, and pediments; it is a
strange and a motley scene. And, down at the bottom of the great
flight of steps that lead from the western portico, the
Twentieth-century visitor will now see a new landmark; for here, cut
deeply into the pavement, is the record of the latest great ceremonial
function of St. Paul's: Queen Victoria's visit here on the sixtieth
anniversary of her reign. Here, on this very spot, surrounded by
Archbishops, priests, and people, the royal and aged lady sat in her
carriage, paying homage to a Heavenly Throne, and receiving, surely,
greater homage than was ever before paid to an earthly one:--
"On a lovely June morning, in the year 1897, a wondrous
pageant moved through the enchanted streets of London.
Squadron by squadron, and battery by battery, a superb
cavalry and artillery went by--the symbol of the fighting
strength of the United Kingdom. There went by also troops of
mounted men, more carelessly riding and more lightly
equipped--those who came from Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, and South Africa to give a deeper meaning to the
royal triumph; and black-skinned soldiers and yellow, and
the fine representatives of the Indian warrior races.
Generals and statesmen went by, and a glittering cavalcade
of English and Continental princes, and the whole procession
was a preparation--for what? A carriage at last, containing
a quiet-looking old lady, in dark and simple attire; and at
every point where this carriage passed through seven miles
of London streets, in rich quarters and poor, a shock of
strong emotion shot through the spectators, on pavement and
on balcony, at windows and on housetops. They had seen the
person in whom not only were vested the ancient kingdoms of
England, Scotland, and Ireland, but who was also at once the
symbol and the actual bond of union of the greatest and most
diversified of secular empires."[1]
[Footnote 1: _Imperium et Libertas_, by Bernard Holland.]
The inscription, cut, with Roman simplicity, into the broad
paving-stone, runs thus:
HERE QUEEN VICTORIA
RETURNED THANKS TO
ALMIGHTY GOD FOR THE
SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY
OF HER ACCESSION.
JUNE 22, A.D. 1897.
By how many generations,--for how many centuries,--will these words, I
wonder, be read,--the distant message of Time from the buried
Victorian Era?
Beyond, Queen Anne's statue, in flowing curls and a "sacque" robe,
stands, with some dignity, facing busy Ludgate Hill, and surrounded by
a circular, prison-like grating. Down towards noisy Fleet Street her
gaze wanders; down to where the rumble of many wheels, the sound of
many voices, make a distant murmur like the stormy sea, broken, at
intervals, by a shriek from that most picturesque of railways, the
iron "Bridge of Steam," that, ever and anon, emits a puff of smoke and
a red spark into the general "fermenting-vat," the ingulfing vortex of
life and energy below. For this is the roaring Niagara of London, the
loom of Time, that never ceases, that ever fashions Order out of
Disorder, ever, as by a magician's wand, raises system out of chaos.
Kings, and even thrones, may "pass to rise no more;" but the busy
phoenix-heart of London, like the vestals' fire, must ceaselessly
burn; ever fed, ever renewed, ever immortal, ever young.
"Lord Tennyson always delighted in the 'central roar' of
London. Whenever he and I (says his son) "went to London,
one of the first things we did was to walk to the Strand and
Fleet Street. 'Instead of the stuccoed houses in the West
End, this is the place where I should like to live,' he
would say." He was also fond of looking at London from the
bridges over the Thames, and of going into St. Paul's, and
into the Abbey. One day in 1842 Fitzgerald records a visit
to St. Paul's with him when he said, 'Merely as an enclosed
space in a huge city this is very fine,' and when they got
out into the open, in the midst of the 'central roar,' 'This
is the mind; that is a mood of it.'"--(_Tennyson's Life_, i.
183.)
[Illustration: _St. Michael's, Paternoster Royal._]
Round about St. Paul's are many and labyrinthine lanes and alleys,
with no less labyrinthine associations. Some of these alleys are, like
Paternoster Row, or St. Paul's Churchyard, by day crowded aortas of
human traffic; others, by strange contrast, are silent and still as
the grave. London is, as we know, full of unexpected nooks of quiet;
and none, in their way, are more sudden and startling than those about
St. Paul's. From busy Paternoster Row, with its array of religious
book-shops of all denominations,--so crowded, and yet so narrow, that
a man on one of its sidewalks can, by stretching, almost grasp the
hand of a man on the other (or could perhaps do so, were it not so
constantly blocked by multifarious traffic),--from noisy Paternoster
Row to the calm of "Amen Court,"--the quadrangle of canons' residences
opening out of it,--what a change! Here, in Amen Court, entered by a
pleasant, sober red-brick gateway, Canon Liddon's last days were
spent; here are quiet, old-fashioned houses looking, in summer, on to
green plots and refreshing shrubs. All this seclusion, and yet the
very heart of London! Warwick Square, close by, is a haven of another
sort; a stony square set round with tall offices; roomy houses,
perhaps formerly residential mansions, with here and there an
attractively carved antique porch, or other relic of the past. It was
under a house in this square, in rebuilding, that various Roman
remains were recently found. In Paternoster Row, at the corner of
"Chapter-house Court," was, in old days, the "Chapter" Coffee House,
where the old medical club of the "Wittenagemot" was held, and where,
later, Charlotte and Anne Bronte came on their first visit to London,
after the successful publication of _Jane Eyre_, to make their real
personalities known to their publishers, in 1848. Two little lonely,
strangely-dressed women they must have seemed!--their only friend the
elderly waiter of the establishment, who no doubt, took an interest in
such unusual visitors. Yet, what excitement must they not have felt in
seeing, for the first time, all that they had read and dreamed of for
years! One is reminded of the story of their brother Branwell, that
unhappy child of genius and temptation, who, at lonely Haworth
Parsonage, knew all "the map of London by heart" without ever having
been there, and who could direct any chance stranger who happened,
going Londonwards, to put up at the remote Yorkshire inn.
"Panyer Alley," the last entry leading into Newgate Street,
commemorates the bakers' basket-makers, or "Panyers," of the
fourteenth century. Here, built into the wall of a modern house and
nearly obliterated, was, till quite recently, a relief of a boy
sitting on a "panyer," with this curious inscription:
"When Ye have sought
The Citty Round
Yet still This is
The Highest Ground
Avgvst the 27
1688."
Close by used to be the tavern called "Dolly's Chop-House," removed in
1883. The views obtained of the Cathedral, down some of these narrow
byways, are very striking:
"There is a passage leading from Paternoster Row to St.
Paul's Churchyard. It is a slit, through which the Cathedral
is seen more grandly than from any other point I can call to
mind. It would make a fine dreamy picture, as we saw it one
moonlight night, with some belated creatures resting against
the walls in the foreground--mere spots set against the base
of Wren's mighty work, that, through the narrow opening,
seemed to have its cross set against the sky."
The famous open-air pulpit called "Paul's" or "Powle's" Cross--noted
for so many eloquent and impassioned harangues from mediaeval
divines,--for the proclamation of kings,--for the denunciation of
traitors,--used to stand at the north-east corner of the churchyard.
It was a canopied cross, raised on stone steps; a big elm marked its
site until some fifty years back. Open-air services, discontinued
after the demolition of "Paul's Cross," were attempted to be revived
by Wesley and Whitefield; and, even in our own day, an open-air pulpit
is used, in summer, at Trinity Church, Marylebone Road, and largely
attended, as any one who passes by Portland Road Station on Sunday
afternoon may see for himself. Public confession for crime was also
made at "Paul's Cross," and Jane Shore did penance here, as described
by Sir Thomas More. East of St. Paul's, where now a line of tall
warehouses rises, was, until 1884, St. Paul's School, founded in 1509
by Dean Colet, friend of Erasmus, and now removed to new red brick
buildings at Hammersmith; a tablet on one of the warehouses marks its
site. The old fashioned Deanery of St. Paul's,--a homely building, not
unlike a quiet country rectory, with red tiled sloping roofs, and
nearly hidden behind high walls,--is in Dean's Court, just south of
the cathedral. Close by it is St. Paul's Choristers' School, built in
1874 by Dean Church.
Returning to the portico of the north transept, it is pleasant to sit
awhile in St Paul's Churchyard, where the doves coo and the pigeons
flutter. Or if you stand by the iron gate of the enclosure, and raise
your eyes to the blackened walls and columns, you will see, above the
north porch, an inscription on a tablet, perpetuating the memory of
the great builder, "in four words which comprehend his merit and his
fame:" "Si monumentum requiris, circumspice." (If thou seekest his
monument, look around.) "The visitor," says Leigh Hunt, "does look
around, and the whole interior of the Cathedral ... seems like a
magnificent vault over his single body." And, gazing, in this sense,
on the great man's tomb, the burning words of Ecclesiasticus suggest
themselves, read by the Bishop of Stepney at the unveiling of Lord
Leighton's monument:
"Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat
us. The Lord hath wrought great glory by them through his
great power from the beginning.... Leaders of the people by
their counsels, and by their knowledge of learning meet for
the people, wise and eloquent in their instructions.... All
these were honoured in their generations, and were the glory
of their times. There be of them, that have left a name
behind them, that their praises might be reported. And some
there lie, which have no memorial ... but ... their glory
shall not be blotted out. Their bodies are buried in peace;
but their name liveth for evermore."
CHAPTER V
THE TOWER
_Prince Edward_: "Did Julius Caesar build that place, my lord?"
_Buckingham_: "He did, my gracious lord, begin that place;
Which, since, succeeding ages have re-edified...."
_Richard of York_: "What, will you go unto the Tower, my lord?...
... I shall not sleep in quiet at the Tower."
_Gloucester_: "Why, what should you fear?"
_Richard of York_: "Marry, my uncle Clarence' angry ghost:
My grandam told me he was murder'd there."
--_King Richard III., Act iii, Scene 1._
"Death is here associated, not, as in Westminster Abbey and
Saint Paul's, with genius and virtue, with public veneration
and imperishable renown; not with everything that is most
endearing in social and domestic charities; but with
whatever is darkest in human nature and in human destiny,
with the savage triumph of implacable enemies, with the
inconstancy, the ingratitude, the cowardice of friends, with
all the miseries of fallen greatness and of blighted
fame."--_Macaulay_: "_History of England._"
"Place of doom,
Of execution too, and tomb."--_Scott._
What Londoner has not, from earliest childhood, been acquainted with
the Tower? In the Christmas holidays it presented, as a "treat," rival
attractions with Madame Tussaud's and the "Zoo." When not presented
under the too-informing care of over-zealous pastors and
masters,--when not imbibed as too flagrant material for that
fly-in-the-ointment, a holiday task,--when not made, in a word, too
suggestive of the unpleasant, but necessary paths of learning,--it
offered great fascinations to the youthful mind. The warders, in their
picturesque "Beefeater" dress, were ever an unfailing joy; the
surprise, indeed, with which I first saw one of these mighty beings
descend from his pedestal, and deign to hold simple conversation with
ordinary mortals, is still fresh in my memory. Then, the towers and
dark passages, up which one could run and clatter joyfully, with all
the entrancing and horrid possibility of meeting somebody's headless
ghost; the attractive thumbscrew, model of the rack, and headsman's
mask, all so appealing to the innocent brutality of childhood; the
very wooden and highly coloured "Queen Elizabeth", riding in full
dress, with a page, to Tilbury Fort; the stiff effigies of the
mail-clad soldiers, in rows inside the White Tower,--the live soldiers
drilling in the sun-lit square outside;--the inspiring music of the
band, the roll of the drum, the flocks of wheeling pigeons; how
charming it all was! My first knowledge of Tower history was derived
from a Cockney nursemaid, who had, I suspect, strong affinities with
the before-mentioned "pretty soldiers" (are not "pretty soldiers,"
by-the-way, usually the first words that London children learn to
lisp?). Tragedies, I knew, were connected with that sun-lit square.
Two beautiful ladies, I was told, had had their heads cut off here by
their cruel husband, a gentleman called "'Enery the Eighth," (I
naturally thought of this "'Enery" as Bluebeard); "because they was
that skittish like, and fond of singin' and dancin' on Sundays, which
'e for one never could abear; and so 'e 'ad their 'eds orf, and grass
adn't never grown on the place sence." Which fact I identified as
true, at least for the time being; though how far grass can grow
through paving-stones, is always matter for speculation. And Mary-Anne
further went on to relate how she "'ad a friend who knew a young woman
who was a 'ousekeeper somewhere here, who 'ad seen 'orrible things in
the way of ghostisses, and 'ad the screamin' 'sterrics somethin'
awful;--quite reg'ler, too,--after it!"
[Illustration: _A Beefeater._]
Yet I myself think that it is a pity to treat the classic Tower on
such familiar terms! It should be approached with respect, and not
merely introduced as a juvenile appendix to Madame Tussaud's! The
charm of the old fortress, as of its immediate surroundings, is, in
any case, only realised in maturer years. This has always been the
riverside stronghold of London. Tradition, and poetic license, name,
indeed, Julius Caesar as its founder; however that may be, the Romans
probably had a fort here, as Saxon Alfred after them. The White Tower,
or Keep, raised by William the Conqueror, is built upon a Roman
bastion; and Roman relics have been dug up at intervals in its near
precincts. Nevertheless, the Roman tradition here is but visionary;
the interest of the Tower is bound up with the evolution of the
English race. It is the most interesting mediaeval monument that we
possess, a still vivid piece of English history; a stranded islet of
Time, left forgotten by the raging tide of surrounding London.
In the Tower precincts,--if you are careful not to choose a Monday or
Saturday, which are free days, for your visit--you may enjoy yourself
in your own way and to your heart's content. The warders,--old
soldiers,--are pleasant and unobtrusive people, with manners of really
wonderful urbanity, considering the very mixed, and generally
unwashed, character, of a large portion of their public. The Tower,
apart from the charm of its lurid and romantic history, is a
picturesque place. In winter, it is somewhat exposed to the elements,
and in summer, owing to its proximity to the Temple of the Fisheries,
it is perhaps a trifle odoriferous; but on a fine spring or autumn
morning,--a spring morning uncursed by east wind, an autumn morning
undimmed by river-mist,--you will realise all the beauty, as well as
the interest, of the place. Part of its attraction lies in the fact
that it is neither a ruin nor a fossil; it is a living place still,
and serves for use as well as for show. In old days by turn palace,
state prison, inquisition, and "oubliette," it is now a barrack and
government arsenal. Its threatening ring of walled towers, witnesses
of so many scenes of blood and cruelty, re-echo now to the merry
voices of little School-Board boys, playing foot-ball in the drained
and levelled moat below; its paved courts and gravelled enclosures
still ring to the tramp of soldiers' feet, but soldiers of a newer and
a more humane era. In
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