MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON iiliiiii! I !i I; 1 ii t j i 1- 1! il 1 i 1 1 ^ 1 1 [ il ...,..ij„^,..y.j I K()AiTjlit-^g=;-i?r.?fi;-. IRO-U) ■I r ••/ ir<;ATTc l.U\RHl.£l J)0\VN_ L^TRFJ.-l MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON E. V. LUCAS By E. V. LUCAS More Wanderings in London Cloud and Silver The Vermilion Box The Hausfrau Rampant Landmarks Listener's Lure Mr. Ingleside Over Uemerton's Ix)iterer's Harvest One Day and Another Fireside and Sunshine Character and Comedy Old Lamps for New The Hambledon Men The Open Road The Friendly Town Her Infinite Variety — Good Company — The Gentlest Art The Second Post A Little of Everything Harvest Home Variety Lane The Best of Lamb The Life of Charles Lamb A Swan and Her Friends A Wanderer in Venice A Wanderer in Paris A Wanderer in London A Wanderer in Holland A Wanderer in Florence Highways and Byways in Sussex Anne's Terrible Good Nature The Slowcoach and The Pocket Edition of the Works of Charles Lamb: I. Miscellaneous Prose; II. Elia; iii. Children's Books; iv. Poems and Plays; v. and vi. Letters. ST. MARTIN S-IN-THE-FIELDS, TRAFALGAR SQUARE MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON BY E. V. LUCAS "You may depend upon it, all lives lived out of London are mistakes: more or less grievous — but mistakes." Sydney Smith WITH SIXTEEN DRAWINGS IN COLOUR BT H. M. LIVENS AND SEVENTEEN OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY Copyright, 1916, By George H. Doran Company PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PREFACE THIS book is a companion to A Wanderer in London, published in 1906, and supplements it. New editions, bringing that work to date, will, I hope, continue to appear. More Wanderings in London contains certain matter of interest omitted from the earlier book, such as descriptions of some minor museums, or touched there too lightly, and extends the range to Hampton Court. It also gives complete lists of the open-air statues of London and of those houses that are marked with tablets. Mr. Livens would have made, among other pic- tures not here, a drawing of the new Admiralty Arch, had not this been forbidden, during war time, by the authorities. The end papers are a portion of an ingenious poster designed by Mr. MacDonald Gill for the Metropolitan District Railway Company, by whose courtesy it is used here. I offer no apology for the digressive character of the pages that follow. London was made for digres- sion. April, 1916 E- ^' L. (vl CONTENTS CBAPTEB PAGE I. Bow Church and Sir Christopher Wren i II. The City's Pictures .... 28 III. A Medley of Churches . . • "• 53 IV. The Royal Mint and New Scotland Yard 68 V. The Statues of London : I. The City to . Charing Cross 80 VI. The Statues of London : II. Trafalgar Square and the Mall to Kensington 92 VII. Holland House and Sydney Smith . 105 VIII. The Statues of London : III. Waterloo Place and Leicester Square . .126 IX. John Hunter's Museum . . . 133 X. The Statues of London : IV. Westmin STER AND THE EMBANKMENT XL The Oval XII. The London Museum XIII. The Circus XIV. The Statues of London : V. Miscel laneous [vii] 139 149 163 174 185 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAQB X\\ Sermons in Stones ..... 196 X\'I. The Adelphi and James Barry . . 202 XVII. The Society of Arts' Tablets . .218 X\TII. The County Council's Tablets . 229 XIX. GouGH Square and St. Clement Danes 250 XX. Hampton Court 267 XXI. Lord's . . . . . . .281 XXII. The Zoo 294 XXIII. A Group of Londoners .... 303 [viii] PICTURES IN COLOUR BY H. M. LIVENS St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square Frontispiece St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, Fleet Street . St. Magnus the Martyr, from London Bridge The Temple Church, from Johnson's Buildings A Mansion in Park Lane, from Hyde Park Kensington Palace, from the Green Holland House, from Holland Walk The Horse Guards, from St. James's Park A Typical London Demolition Scene The Westminster Guildhall EusTON Station, Main Entrance . Berkeley Square, East Side . Dickens' House, Devonshire Terrace . The Inner Temple Hall, from the Corner of Crown Office Row, Where, at No. 2, Charles Lamb Was Born .... 246 Hampton Court, the Great Gateway . . 268 Richmond Bridge 278 [ix] FAQB 20 42 62 82 100 122 130 144 166 186 206 224 OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS PAaB The Dead Cavalier. W. S. Burton (Guildhall) . lo George Herbert at Bemerton. W. Dyce (Guild- hall) 28 Thomas Tomkins. Sir Joshua Reynolds (Guild- hall) 48 Study of a Lion. J. M. Swan (Guildhall) . . 74 Study of a Tiger. J. M. Swan (Guildhall) . . 74 Jesus is Condemned to Death (The Stations of the Cross, I). Eric Gill (Westminster Cathedral) . 88 William Hunter Lecturing on Anatomy. Zof- fany (Royal College of Physicians) . .110 The Sisters. Hoppner (The Tennant Gallery). From a photograph by the Medici Society . 136 A Cricket Match at Chertsey. George Morland (Surrey County Cricket Club Pavilion) . . 156 Miss Ridge. Reynolds (The Tennant Gallery). From a photograph by the Medici Society . 176 Relief (Christ Blessing Children). J. Flaxman (University College) ...... 192 Reproduced from the original in the Flaxman Gallery, University College, London, by per- mission of the University College Committee. [Xi] OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS PAoa Soliciting \'otes (from "The Election"). W. Ho- garth (Soane Museum) ..... 212 The Rake's Progress (Arrested for Debt). W. Ho- garth (Soane Museum) ..... 236 Andrea Odoni. Lotto (Hampton Court). From a photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co. . . 254 Princess Mary as Diana. Sir Peter Lely (Hamp- ton Court). From a photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co 270 The Holy Family with S. James. Correggio (Hampton Court). From a photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co 290 A Shepherd with a Pipe. Attributed to Glorgione (Hampton Court). From a photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co 316 [xH] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON CHAPTER I BOW CHURCH AND SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN St. Mary-le-Bow — An ancient crypt — The great Bell and the Dragon — Cockneys — London's lovely spires — Bridge viewpoints — The true white stone — Christopher Wren — Dr. Busby — An apocryphal poem — A voracious experi- mentalist — The Fire of London — Samuel Pepys as eye- witness — The Monument — The Moment and the Man — Wren's energy — His fifty-two London churches — A great life. I BEGAN my earlier wanderings in London at No. 1 London, or Apsley House. Bow Church, in Cheapside, is another good starting-point, since one is no true Cockney unless bom within sound of its bells. It has a further claim as a place of de- parture in that its crypt is among the earliest Lon- don buildings. Let us then begin these new wan- derings here. Bow Church, or, to give its true name, St. Mary- le-Bow, is the glory of Cheapside. although prob- MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON ably a plebiscite of children would award that hon- our to Mr. Bennett's giants. The second part of its name comes from the arches or bows on which the first church was built, still in perfect preserva- tion in the crypt; and the Court of Arches, our highest ecclesiastical tribunal, which in early days held its sittings here, derives its style from the same circumstance. This crypt, which is of perpetual interest to anti- quaries, offers the opportunity of shedding ten cen- turies in as many moments. One has but to leave the bustle of Cheapside, with its motor horns and modernity, and descend a few steps, and one is not only in perfect stillness but surrounded by massive masonry of immense age, eked out here and there by Roman tiles. Only half of the crypt is shown; the other half, sealed up, contains hundreds of cof- fins. On a shelf is a headstone of Wren's brought from All Hallows — very like Mr. Chesterton. Bow Church itself is just a spacious square room. Its special attractions are the crypt; the famous bell whose firm attitude of ignorance is so familiar to all children who have ever played that most thrill- ing of games "Oranges and Lemons" (" *I do not know,' says the great bell of Bow"); and the gold dragon on the top of the spire which to any one in Cheapside caring to look up tells where the wind is. Londoners once never looked up, but the activities [2] SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN of Count Zeppelin have given our necks a new lis- someness, and, at any rate after dark, we now look up with great frequency. According to the picture postcard which the Bow verger induced me to purchase, this dragon is two hundred and twenty-one feet, six inches, above the pavement. Furthermore, it is eight feet, ten inches, long, and the crosses under its wings represent the crest of the City. The great bell of Bow, according to a similar source of information which cost me an- other penny, weighs fifty-three hundred-weights and twenty-two pounds. It is not the bell that Whit- tington heard, — some say on Highgate Hill and others in Bunhill Fields, — but a successor. The Great Fire destroyed the ancient peal, but a new one of twelve now rings out merrily enough on practice nights. The postcard, turning from weights, enlarges upon the origin of the word "Cockney," in the following, to me unconvincing, terms: "People bom within the sound of Bow Bells are termed 'Cockneys,' — a term said to arise from a misshapen egg called by some country-folk a 'cock's egg,' and applied by them to townsfolk as being poorly de- veloped and misshapen. Another story is that a London boy hearing on a visit to the country a horse's neigh, asked what the noise was, and was told ; he then heard a cock crowing and said : 'That's a cock's neigh, then.' Thus the term was applied to [3] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON one who knew little of country life." Philology must do better than that. My dictionary derives it from tlie Latin word coquina^ a butcher, or coquino, to cook, and gives as second definition "an effemi- nate, ignorant and despicable citizen" — of, I sup- pose, any town. It is upon the burned church's bows or arches, in the crypt, that Sir Christopher Wren based the present building, after the Fire of London; and when all the fortunate conjunctions of history come to be enumerated, surely the one which provided that that great man should have been here, all ready with his plans, before the ashes were cold, must rank among the first. For without Wren what would the City be*? Leaving St. Paul's aside, the City is indebted to Wren for more than fifty churches, each with some peculiar charm. The sequence is exact: first the Plague; then the Fire, which cleansed the germ-ridden rookeries and made London healthy again; and then Sir Christopher Wren, who built the City anew. He built much besides the churches, but the churches are his peculiar glory and greatest monument. To know his churches intimately one must visit them; but to get in a moment some idea of what he did to make London beautiful as a whole, one must ascend this Bow Church spire, or the dome of St. Paul's, or the Monument, or, better still — for [4] SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN each of these eminences was designed by Wren him- self, and therefore they are too much in the piece, so to speak — better still, stand on one of the western Thames bridges on a fine clear afternoon when the sun is at one's back. All London's bridges are ex- cellent places from which to see London's spires; but Hungerford Bridge is perhaps the best, and Waterloo Bridge next, as they are central and the river towards the City has a curve. In this survey St. Paul's always dominates; but there are other spires that give the eye an equal or greater pleasure. From both these bridges, St. Bride's, with its gal- leries springing to heaven, is very notable, and also the octagonal open-work tower of St. Dunstan's-in- the-West; whereas from London Bridge it is the soaring solidity of St. Magnus the Martyr and the delicate flying spire of St. Dunstan's-in-the-East that most delight. All are Wren's save St. Dun- stan's-in-the-West, which is only of the last century. Standing thus, with all the fair prospect spread out, one realises the purpose and glory of Wren. Like the beneficent forester who plants for poster- ity, so did Wren build for us, or, if you like, plant for us, these gleaming spires being his lovely trees. One realises also that the only true building ma- terial for London is, as Wren knew, white stone — that stone which the hands of time and grime and weather so lovingly stroke. From Waterloo Bridge [5] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON one sees many white buildinpis old and new, and all are beautiful. A kindly light can indeed transform the most prosaic business blocks into very fortresses of old romance. There are nests of offices at the foot of Norfolk Street and Arundel Street, with a roll desk, a safe, and a tall hat in every room, which yet by virtue of this white stone can seem to be enchanted castles. Only of white stone should any London house be made. Wren knew this, and Gibbs, who built the noble church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, knew this, and Street of the Law Courts (as the extinguishers on his little fascinating turrets so prove to-day) knew this ; and their lead should have been followed. But we have allowed red brick to bedevil our city. Not only red brick, but painted stucco, and glased white brick which can never take the soot. If one wants to see the mistake of red brick crystallised, look at the Tower from the Tower Bridge and no- tice the error of the brick residence in the middle of it. But the Tower is not built of the true stone for London. The true stone is to be found in Wren's churches. The contrast may be observed also in Gower Street, University College all serene and seemly in white stone being now confronted by a discord- ant interloping University College Hospital in red brick; at Westminster, where that new Somerset [6] SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN House, the London County Council's palace, is adjacent to St. Thomas's Hospital, that kindergar- ten toy city, and opposite New Scotland Yard, which is all deplorable red and yellow. There are, of course, red brick buildings in London which are beautiful and appropriate — notably St. James's Pal- ace and Holland House and Kensington Palace and Gray's Inn. These, however, are notable excep- tions, and all are in the neighbourhood of trees. A good example of the red house which is hopelessly wrong is the Prudential office in Holborn. Something of Christopher Wren, as the father of our London, must be said here. Christopher Wren was born at East Knoyle, near Tisbury, Wiltshire, on October 2o, 1632, a son of the rector of that village, also named Christopher, The elder Christopher's father had been a London mercer; his brother, the architect's uncle, was Bishop in turn of Hereford, Norwich and Ely. The rector of East Knoyle had married Mary Cox of Fonthill Abbey (afterwards made famous by William Beck- ford, Lord Mayor of London), but she died when young Christopher was only a very small child. His elder sister Susan, however, cared for him until, when he was eleven, she married William Holden, the divine and mathematician, a fortunate choice of husband from the point of view of posterity, for Holden instructed the boy in his mystery, and with- [7] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON out mathematics an architect cannot be supreme. Holden, I may say here, lived to be a Prebendary and Canon of his brother-in-law's cathedral, St. Paul's; and he was buried there in 1698. So sym- metrical can life be when it likes. Christopher went to Westminster School, under the famous Dr. Busby, but whether he had any great share of that disciplinarian's birch, I do not know. Probably not, for he was a weak, undersized boy, and there is evidence that he was uniformly "good." His scholastic career was indeed remark- able, and before he was eighteen he was employed by two learned men to assist them: by Dr. Scar- burgh, to help in the preparation of some lectures on anatomy, and by William Oughtred, to translate into Latin a treatise on geometrical dialling. This shows that the boy had wasted very little time either at school or at home. At Wadham College, Oxford,^ he continued his researches; was elected a fellow of All Souls, that coveted honour; and in 1657, when only twenty-five, became Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College, London, and moved into rooms there which became a haunt of those men of science who subsequently organised themselves into the Royal Society. So far not a word of architecture! Wren may have given it a thought, but his early years, it is seen, were devoted to other branches of learning; [8] SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN and in these he was second only to his great con- temporary Sir Isaac Newton. Indeed, his contribu- tions to geometry alone were very remarkable, and it is probable that several inventions which, through his carelessness over such matters, passed into other hands, and for which other brains have the credit, were his. The famous lines in Biography for Be- ginners — "Sir Christopher Wren Went to dine with some men: He said 'If anyone calls, Say I'm designing St. Paul's' " — seem to be based on inaccurate knowledge of his character, for he was anything but convivial — he had no time. The founding of the Royal Society in 1660 gave him an opening for his manifold intellectual and experimental activities, and he read there a number of suggestive papers on scientific subjects which prove him to have been as extraordinary almost as a scientific pioneer as an architect, and remind one by their variety and vigour of the great voracious many-sided geniuses of the Renaissance, such as Da Vinci, Michael Angelo and Brunelleschi. A good idea of Wren's versatility may be obtained from a eulogy of him by Bishop Sprat in 1667. After describing a number of experiments, all of them [9] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON leading to valuable results, the Bishop continues: "He has invented many ways to make astronomical observations more accurate and easy . . . has made two telescopes to open with a joint like a sector, by which distances can be taken to half minutes . . . devices to telescopes for taking small distances and diameters to seconds, apertures to take in more or less light the better to fit glass to crepusculine observations; has added much to the theory of dioptrics, and to the manufacture of good glasses and of other forms than spherical ; has exactly meas- ured and delineated the spheres of the humours of the eye whose proportions were only guessed at before; he discovered a natural and easy theory of refraction, showing not only the common properties of glasses but the proportions by which the individ- ual rays cut the axis upon which the proportion of eyeglasses and apertures are demonstrably discov- ered; has essayed to make a true selenography by measure — the world having had nothing yet but pictures; has stated the moon's libration as far as his observations could carry him . . . has carefully pursued magnetical experiments. Among the prob- lems of navigation, demonstrated how a force upon an oblique plane would cause the motion of the plane against the first mover. He explained the geometrical mechanics of rowing, and the necessary elements for laying down the geometry of sailing, [lo] > c n > < > r 5 o G ? o s > SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN swimming, rowing, flying and the fabricks of ships. He invented a very curious and speedy way of etch- ing, and has started several things towards the emen- dation of waterworks ; was the first inventor of draw- ing pictures by microscopical glasses; amongst other things the keeping the motion of watches equal, in order for longitudes and astronomical uses. He was the first author of the noble anatomical experi- ment of injecting liquors into the veins of animals, now vulgarly known, but long since exhibited to meetings at Oxford. Hence arose many new experi- ments, and chiefly that of transfusing blood. ... I know very well that some of them he did only start and design, and that they have been since carried to perfection by the industry of others; yet it is rea- sonable that the original invention should be ascribed to the true author rather than the finishers. Nor do I fear that this will be thought too much which I have said concerning him; for there is a peculiar rev- erence due to so much excellence covered with so much modesty, and it is not flattery but honesty to give him his just praise who is so far from usurping the fame of other men that he endeavours with all care to conceal his own." It is not precisely known when Wren first con- sidered architecture seriously. But his father had gifts in that way; and a man who had taken all knowledge for his province and could draw with MORK WANDERINGS TN LONDON such accuracy must have meditated often on the ])roblems of building. In 1661 Wren had been ap- pointed to assist Sir John Denham (also and better known as the poet of "Cooper's Hill") as surveyor- general to His Majesty's Works; but it was not until his uncle, Bishop Wren, resolving to present Pembroke College, Cambridge, with a chapel, asked his nephew to contrive the matter, that he appears to have taken to designing. That chapel was begun in 1663. Wren also designed the Sheldonian The- atre at Oxford a little later; and these are his first works. We now reach a critical date both in the career of Wren and in the history of London: Sunday, September 2, 1666. For it was then, in the bake- house of one Farryner in Pudding Lane, in the small hours of the morning, that a fire began which, spread- ing and raging in a strong wind for six days, laid waste 436 acres of the City, demolishing in its ter- rible progress 89 churches, the City gates, the Guild- hall, hospitals, schools, libraries, 13,200 dwelling- houses and 430 streets. London, of course, was in those days largely built of wood, and the streets were very narrow and often overhanging; but even then it is difficult to realise a destruction on so gi- gantic a scale. At last, on September 7 or 8, 1666, it burnt itself out. Pie Corner at Smithfield and the Temple Church representing its western boundaries. [12] SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN It had its caprices en roiite^ for though Bow Church could not survive it, at the corner of Friday Street and Cheapside, close by, a house is still standing which was there during the conflagration and took no harm. This fire led to the full expression of the genius of Wren. The destruction which it brought about is so re- markable — was so notably the end of an architectural era — that I feel justified in going to the incomparable gossip of that period for pages more vivid than any that I could compose. Of the Great Plague, which preceded the Fire, Defoe, although he was not an eyewitness, is the historian. Of the Great Fire, Pepys gives us the best first-hand impressions. To Pepys Diary let us therefore turn. Pepys thought so little of it when it began that after noting the glare in the sky he went back to bed. But then the realisation came. ''Sept. ind. — So down, with my heart full of trouble, to the Lieuten- ant of the Tower, who tells me that it begun this -fc>^ morning in the King's baker's house in Pudding- lane, and that it hath burned down St. Magnus's Church and most part of Fish Street already. So I down to the water-side, and there got a boat, and through bridge, and there saw a lamentable fire. Everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river, or bringing them into lighters [■3] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON that lay off; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then run- ning into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs, by the waterside, to another. And, among other things, the poor pigeons, I perceive, were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconys, till they burned their wings, and fell down. Having staid, and in an hour's time seen the fire rage every way; and nobody, to my sight, en- deavouring to quench it, but to remove their goods, and leave all to the fire; and, having seen it get as far as the Steeleyard, and the wind mighty high, and driving it into the City; and everything, after so long a drought, proving combustible, even the very stones of churches; and, among other things, the poor steeple [St. Lawrence Poultney] by which pretty Mrs. lives, and whereof my old schoolfellow Elborough is parson, taken fire in the very top, and there burned till it fell down; I to White Hall, with a gentleman with me, who desired to go off from the Tower, to see the fire, in my boat; and there up to the King's closet in the Chapel, where people come about me, and I did give them an ac- count dismayed them all, and word was carried in to the King. "So I was called for, and did tell the King and Duke of York what I saw; and that, unless his Majesty did command houses to be pulled down, [14] SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN nothing could stop the fire. They seemed much troubled, and the King commanded me to go to my Lord Mayor from him, and command him to spare no houses, but to pull down before the fire in every way. The Duke of York bid me tell him, that if he would have any more soldiers, he shall; and so did my Lord Arlington afterwards, as a great secret. Here meeting with Captain Cocke, I in his coach, which he lent me, and Creed with me to Paul's; and there walked along Watling Street, as well as I could, every creature coming away loaden with goods to save, and, here and there, sick people carried away in beds. Extraordinary good goods carried in carts and on backs. "At last met my Lord Mayor in Canning Street like a man spent, with a handkerchief about his neck. To the King's message, he cried, like a faint- ing woman, 'Lord, what can I do? I am spent: people will not obey me. I have been pulling down houses; but the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it.' That he needed no more soldiers; and thatj for himself, he must go and refresh himself, having been up all night. So he left me, and I him, and walked home; seeing people all almost distracted, and no manner of means used to quench the fire. The houses, too, so very thick thereabouts, and full of matter for burning, as pitch and tar, in Thames [15] xMOKE WANDERINGS IN LONDON Street; and warehouses of oyle, and wines, and brandy, and other things. . . . *'While at dinner, Mrs. Betelier come to enquire after Mr. Woolfe and Staines, who, it seems, are related to them, whose houses in Fish Street are all burned, and they in a sad condition. She would not stay in the fright. Soon as I dined, I and Moone away, and walked through the City, the streets full of nothing but people; and horses and carts loaden with goods, ready to run over one another, and re- moving goods from one burned house to another. They now removing out of Canning Street, which received goods in the morning, into Lumbard Street, and further: and, among others, I now saw my little goldsmith Stokes, receiving some friend's goods, whose house itself was burned the day after. "We parted at Paul's; he home, and I to Paul's Wharf, where I had appointed a boat to attend me, and took in Mr. Carcasse and his brother, whom I met in the street, and carried them below and above bridge too. And again to see the fire, which was now got further, both below and above, and no likelihood of stopping it. Met with the King and Duke of York in their barge, and with them to Queenhidie, and there called Sir Richard Browne to them. Their order was only to pull down houses apace, and so below bridge at the water-side; but [16] SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN [of] this little was or could be done, the fire com- ing upon them so fast. . . . "Having seen as much as I could now, I aw^ay to White Hall by appointment, and there walked to St. James's Park; and there met my wife, and Creed, and Wood, and his wife and walked to my boat; and there upon the water again, and to the fire up and down, it still encreasing, and the wind great. So near the fire as we could for smoke; and all over the Thames, with one's faces in the wind, you were almost burned with a shower of fire-drops. This is very true; so as houses were burned by these drops and flakes of fire, three or four, nay, five or six houses one from another. "When we could endure no more upon the water, we to a little alehouse on the Bankside, over against the Three Cranes, and there staid till it was dark almost, and saw the fire grow ; and, as it grew darker, appeared more and more; and in corners and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the City, in a most horrid, malicious, bloody flame, not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire. Barbary and her husband away before us. We staid till, it being darkish, we saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this to the other side of the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long: it made me weep to see it. The churches, houses, and all on fire, and flaming [17] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON at once; and a horrid noise the flames made, and the cracking of houses at their mine. . . . "Sept. ^th. — Up by break of day, to get away the remainder of my things; which I did by a lighter at the Irongate; and my hands so full, that it was the afternoon before we could get them all away. Sir W. Pen and I to the Tower Street, and there met the fire burning, three or four doors beyond Mr. Howell's, whose goods, poor man, his trayes, and dishes, shovells, etc., were flung all along Tower Street in the kennels, and people working therewith from one end to the other ; the fire coming on in that narrow street, on both sides, with infinite fury. Sir W. Batten not knowing how to remove his wine, did dig a pit in the garden, and laid it in there; and L took the opportunity of laying all the papers of my office that I could not otherwise dispose of. And in the evening Sir W. Pen and I did dig another, and put our wine in it; and I my parmazan cheese, as well as my wine and some other things. . . . "This night, Mrs. Turner, who, poor woman, was removing her goods all this day, good goods, into the garden, and knows not how to dispose of them, and her husband supped with my wife and me at night, in the office, upon a shoulder of mutton from the cook's without any napkin, or any thing, in a sad manner, but were merry. Only now and then, walking into the garden, saw how horribly the sky [18] SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN looks, all on a fire in the night, was enough to put us out of our wits; and, indeed, it was extremely dreadful, for it looks just as if it was at us, and the whole heaven on fire. I after supper walked in the dark down to Tower Street, and there saw it all on fire, at the Trinity House on that side, and the Dolphin Tavern on this side, which was very near us; and the fire with extraordinary vehemence. Now begins the practice of blowing up of houses in Tower Street, those next the Tower, which at first did frighten people more than any thing; but it stopped the fire where it was done, it bringing down the houses to the ground in the same places they stood, and then it was easy to quench what little fire was in it, though it kindled nothing almost. . . . ''S>ept. ^th. — Going to the fire, I find, by the blowing up of houses, and the great help given by the workmen out of the King's yards, sent up by Sir W. Pen, there is a good stop given to it, as well at Marke Lane End as ours; it having only burned the dyall of Barking Church, and part of the porch, and was there quenched. I up to the top of Bark- ing steef)le, and there saw the saddest sight of deso- lation that I ever saw; every where great fires, oyle- cellars, and brimstone, and other things burning. I became afraid to stay there long, and therefore down again as fast as I could, the fire being spread as far as I could see it; and to Sir W. Pen's, and [19] xMORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON there eat a piece of cold meat, having eaten nothing since Sunday, but the remains of Sunday's din- ner. . . . ''Sept. 6lh. — A sad sight to see how the river looks; no houses nor church near it, to the Temple, where it stopped. . . . Strange it is to see Cloth- workers' Hall on fire these three days and nights in one body of fiame, it being the cellar full of oyle. "SepL jtk. — Up by five o'clock; and, blessed be God I find all well; and by water to Pane's Wharfe. Walked thence, and saw all the towne burned, and a miserable sight of Paul's church, with all the roofs fallen, and the body of the quire fallen into St. Fayth's; Paul's school also, Ludgate, and Fleet Street. My father's house, and the church, and a good part of the Temple the like. . . ." I might here interpolate the remark that when a few years after the Fire it was decided to com- memorate it by the Monument, near Pudding Lane, on Fish Street Hill, it was Wren who designed that column. His original idea was to place a phoenix on the top. This he abandoned as being costly, not easily understood at such a height, and dangerous, owing to the wings in a gale. Then he thought he would like to set a figure of Charles II there, fifteen feet high; but the Merry Monarch declined the honour, and the present ball of flames was therefore decided upon. The King, however, is represented, [20] ST. DUNSTAN S-IN-THE-WEST, FLEET STREET SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN for he may be seen in bas-relief on the western side of the pediment, dressed as a Roman. His great thoyghtfulness for the unhappy burned-out citizens after the Fire, and his careful provisions for the safety of the new London, are recorded in the in- scription on the south side. So much for the demolition. Now for the re- building. The Fire was out on September 8th. On September I2th Wren laid before the King a plan for a new London. The plan was not adopted: it was too splendid; but Wren was appointed "sur- veyor-general and principal architect for rebuilding the city, its cathedral and its churches and other public structures." So far as the Cathedral and churches were concerned, all the salary that he asked was £300 a year. Wren's first consideration was St. Paul's, which he decided must be new in every particular. Concurrently with this mighty scheme he was able, such his industry and the lucid order of his mind, to think also of London's myriad other necessities. Of churches alone he built fifty-two, and although there is a family likeness between many of them, no two are similar; which, considering that they were designed contemporaneously and at some haste, is a remarkable achievement. His best among these lesser fanes are thought to be St. Stephen's, Wal brook, behind the Mansion House, with a bookshop now clinging to its walls, and Bow [21] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON Church in Cheapside. At St. Stephen's, let me re- mark, an organ recital is often given in the luncheon hour, and the admirer of Wren can thus, in what has been called his minor masterpiece, agreeably medi- tate upon the great man's gifts. Knowing nothing about ecclesiastical architecture myself, I borrow from the Dictionary of National Biography the admirable summary of Wren's city churc'h work. Having described Bow Church and St. Stephen's, the writer, Mr. F. C. Penrose, con- tinues: "Of the next period, St. Bride's is the most remarkable church. Internally a fine perspective is formed on each side by the arches of the nave, and externally its steeple is a beautiful and well-known object. In some repairs which it required in 1764, in order to facilitate the operation the height was re- duced by eight feet. The next period, 1680 to 1685, includes some very good churches. All Hallows, Thames Street, now destroyed, had a stately in- ternal arcade, and possessed what St. Peter's, Corn- hill, still retains, a very handsome carved oak screen. St. James's, Garlickhithe, had both a well-planned interior and a picturesque steeple, not improved by the cement having been stripped off the walls of the tower. The stone steeple of St. Mary Magdalene, recently taken down, though very simple, was one of Wren's most graceful campaniles. The elegant lead- covered spire of St. Martin's, Ludgate Hill, forms an [22] SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN admirable foreground object to the views of St. Paul's from the west. The front of this church is an example of quiet, well-proportioned treatment where no projection was allowable. The spire of St. Augustin's in Watling Street, though less elegant than St. Martin's, has something of the same value, contrasting with the dome of St. Paul's as seen from the east. St. James's, Westminster, may be cited as the most successful example of a church in which galleries form a fundamental part. Its congrega- tional capacity is remarkable, and the framing of the roof is a marvellous piece of economic and scien- tific construction. "In the next period, St. Mary Abchurch, exter- nally very plain, is full of merit within, especially the cupola and its pendentives and other details of the interior, including some excellent carvings by Gibbons. St. Andrew's, Holborn, exhibits a very fine interior, partaking to a considerable extent of the character of St. James's, Westminster. Of the churches built between 1690 and 1695, St. Michael Royal deserves mention for its beautiful campanile and for the carvings by Gibbons in the interior. The tower of St. Mary Somerset is still left stand- ing, after the demolition of the church, on the north side of Thames Street, and forms, with its crown of j)innacles, an extremely picturesque object. The fine steeple of St. Vedast, near the General Post [23] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON Office, is of this period. Its design is the most original of all Wren's campaniles. It owes nothing to sculpture or any ornate architectural treatment; but such is the skilful modulation of the masses and the contrasts of lig^ht and shade, combined with the expression of strength, that it requires no assistance from ornament to add to its beauty and importance. This fine object has the advantage of being well seen. The steeple of St. Dunstan's-in-the-East dates from 1700. It is built in the Gothic style, and in a form which follows the precedent of St. Giles's, Edinburgh, and St. Nicholas's, Newcastle- upon-Tyne. At this period of Wren's professional life, as evidenced by this work and the church of St. Mary Aldermary, built in 1711, as well as in his repairs of Westminster Abbey, he shows an appre- ciation of Gothic architecture which he evidently did not entertain so strongly in his earlier days. In the work at St. Dunstan's there is much true feeling for the style in which he was working. That the spire was constructed in a highly scientific manner does not need to be stated. "In the fine steeple of St. Magnus, built in 1705, he returned to his more recent style and produced one of his finest examples. Lastly, the old tower of St. Michael's, Cornhill, which had been left standing when he rebuilt the church fifty years earlier, was taken down in 1722 and reconstructed in bold and [24] SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN very effective Gothic from his designs. In all the above-mentioned beautiful campaniles, and indeed in Wren's works in general, surface ornament forms but a very subordinate part of their success; this is derived chiefly from the true elements of archi- tecture, balance of light and shade, evident strength and security of construction, accurate proportions of the parts, and the expression of the object of the structure. He shows also great reserve and does not fritter expense away." Besides St. Paul's and the fifty churches. Wren built the new Temple Bar, the Monument, and various city halls, hospitals, and so forth. He also found time to build the library at Trinity College, Cambridge, and the Chapel at Queen's College, Oxford, while he was continually repairing and enlarging older edifices. No life can ever have been fuller. He found time also to enter Parliament, sit- ting first for Plympton and then Windsor in 1685- 1688-9, and again for Weymouth in 1701 and after. He found time also to marry twice, once in 1669 and again in 1676. He had four children, one of whom died in infancy. Of the others, Christo- pher (1675-1747) wrote his life and also a work on numismatics; William lived until 1738, and Jane died, when only twenty-six, before her father. She was buried in St. Paul's crypt. Wren lived partly at Hampton Court, where he did much fine work [25] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON for William and Mary, and partly in St. James's Street, and it was in his London house that he died on February 25, 1723, aged ninety. He was buried in St. Paul's. I am personally no great lover of Wren's work, near by. But for his lavish hand in giving London ' all these exquisite minarets I cannot sufficiently admire and praise him. In 1881 a little book was published, entitled The Towers and Steeples designed by Sir Christopher Wren, by Mr. Andrew T. Taylor, and this shows in a nutshell what he did for London as a distant prospect, and what London has lost. How many of Wren's towers and spires and steeples now soar lightly over the roofs of the City, I have not estimated; but nine at any rate have been sacrificed to the great god utilitarianism: St. Antholin's and St. John Evangelist's, both in Wat- ling Street, All Hallows the Great in Thames Street, All Hallows in Broad Street, St. Benet's in Grace- church Street, St. Benedict's and St. Christopher's in Threadneedle Street, St. Dionis Backchurch in Fenchurch Street, St. Michael's in Crooked Lane, another St. Michael's in Oueenhithe, and St. Mil- dred's in the Poultry. All are gone; and none were re-erected elsewhere, as was Wren's Temple Bar in Theobald's Park, and as they might so fittingly have been when a suburb needed a new church. St. Antholin's was a particularly beautiful spire — [26] SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN Wren's only example of a spire pure and simple : 154 feet high, "it could," says Mr. Taylor, "very well have been allowed to remain, and indeed did remain for a short time after the church was pulled down; but the increased price which was thereby obtainable for the site finally outweighing less mercenary con- siderations, it shared the fate of the church." That was as recently as 1875. Personally I shall always think of the spire of St. Dunstan's-in-the-East with most affection. Wren had a great belief in the stability of this delicate structure. Somebody once hurried to tell him that a hurricane had injured all his steeples. "Not St. Dunstan's," he replied confidently. [27] CHAPTER II THE city's pictures The Guildhall Gallery — The Gassiot bequest — Modern pic- tures — William S. Burton and Pre-Raphaelism — A sin- cere life — William Dyce and Pre-Raphaelism — George Herbert at Bemerton — Henry VI's monologue — Earlier English pictures — Hazlitt — Reynolds's last portrait — Thomas Tomkins — The Fleet River — Lord Camden's reward for virtue — Old Drury Lane — Alderman Boydell — Old London — Samuel Richardson — Lord Nelson — J. M. Swan, R.A. — Lamb and Edward Burney — Various small pictures — Sir John Gilbert — Mr. Albert Goodwin — The Royal Exchange — Turtle soup. THE Guildhall has the only picture gallery which the City can boast; and it might be better. Indeed, one hardly dares to think what it would be like had not a certain Mr. Charles Gassiot, who died in 1902, bequeathed his collection to it; for the Civic Fathers make few independent claims either to connoisseurship or patronage of art, and most of the Guildhall exhibits have been gifts, either in single canvases or, as in the case of Mr. Gassiot, battalions. [28] -I c < ;c :;^»,] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON in a very poor way in England. Here also is a copy of the famous Reynolds portrait of Lord Heathfield in the National Gallery. On the last wall is an interesting painting by Abraham Pether of the burning of Drury Lane The- atre on February 24, 1809 — the disastrous conflagra- tion that led a year or two later to the composition of Rejected Addresses. The title says that the scene was viewed from Chelsea Bridge, but the topography of the picture is confusing. Abraham Pether (1756- 1812) was known as "Moonlight Pether," from his addiction to landscapes with a lunar light. Here he contrasts moon and fire. He left a son, Sebastian, who followed so closely in his father's footsteps that Bryan considers this picture to be his. We come now to another Scotch historical scene, this time one of the series commissioned by Alder- man Boydell and left by him to the City — the mur- der of King James of Scotland, in 1437, painted by Opie. John Boydell (1719-1804) was a print-seller who had an enormous influence on English art and practically brought about the English school of en- graving. Beginning with French prints after Hor- ace Vernet, he commissioned Woollett to engrave Richard Wilson's "Niobe" (now in the National Gallery), and made £2000 by it. He then passed on to other Wilsons, to Reynolds, and to Benjamin West, whose "Death of General Wolfe," engraved [42] >" MAGNl> IIIK MAKTVK, IKoM I.ONIKIN HKIllflE THE CITY'S PICTURES also by Woollett, brought in £15,000 profit. In 1790 Boydell became Lord Mayor. At this time he was beginning a new scheme, nothing less than a great series of prints illustrating Shakespeare; and here he had to find painters as well, Reynolds, Opie, Barry, Northcote, Fuseli, Romney, Stothard, West — all the best men were employed, up to thirty-three in number, together with two sculptors; and a hun- dred and seventy works were executed. But mean- while, the French Revolution interfering with Boy- dell's foreign trade, he came upon bad times. In despair he applied to Parliament for leave to dis- pose of his effects by lottery, a suggestion which to-day would no doubt bring the Nonconformist conscience down like an avalanche, but was then agreed to; and the result of the iniquity was a sum which enabled him to free himself from liabilities. He died in 1804. The group entitled "The Apotheosis of Shake- speare," by Banks, which Boydell had commissioned, was reserved by the British Institution, who bought his Shakespeare gallery, as a memorial to the public- spirited old print-seller; but something prevented the completion of the plan: the pictures were dis- tributed, the group of statuary is at Stratford-on- Avon, and Boydell is forgotten. The next picture, which has a blend of crudeness and ability, represents the Mansion House about [43] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON 1750 and is, to me, a very attractive thing. It has antiquarian value too. Note that in 1750 dogs were allowed to take a share in drawing small carts, as they still do on the Continent but no longer here. Above this old London view is a portrait of that worthy printer of genius, Samuel Richardson, who astonished and delighted his friends by creating Clarissa Harlowe and Pamela at a time of life when most printers have forgotten all about the secrets of the human heart and are tired of the very sight of the written word. The last picture on this wall is a portrait of Lord Nelson by Beechey, making him far too big a man. The heroic Admiral also has a florid monument in the great hall of the Guildhall. To the Corporation he gave the sword of Blanquet, commander of the defeated French fleet at the Battle of the Nile, "as a remembrance that Britannia still rules the waves, which that she may for ever do so is the fervent prayer of Horatio Nelson." Room II also has two cases. One contains ex- amples of the admirable etchings of London made from time to time by Mr. Joseph Pennell. The other case contains, on one side, fourteen drawings by the late J. M. Swan, R.A. When this great artist died, in 1910, a committee was formed to purchase specimens of his work for presentation to various galleries all over the United Kingdom, and [44] THE CITY'S PICTURES the Guildhall was not forgotten. It is probably no exaggeration to say that lions and tigers and the greater felidse generally were never so lovingly studied, or transferred to paper with more fidelity and mastery, in every mood, than by Swan. I re- produce two of the drawings in this book. One thing in the other half of this case I was very much pleased to see„ You remember how in Lamb's essay on "Valentine's Day" he writes of E. B. the artist? Let me quote the passage, not only be- cause it is appropriate, but because it is so charm- ing. "All Valentines are not foolish; and I shall not easily forget thine, my kind friend (if I may have leave to call you so) E. B. . E. B. lived opposite a young maiden whom he had often seen, unseen, from his parlour window in C e Street. She was all joyousness and innocence, and just of an age to enjoy receiving a Valentine, and just of a temper to bear the disappointment of missing one with good humour. E. B. is an artist of no common powers; in the fancy parts of designing, perhaps inferior to none; his name is known at the bottom of many a well-executed vignette in the way of his j)rofession, but no further; for E. B. is modest, and the world meets nobody half way. E. B. meditated how he could re{)ay this young maiden for many a favour which she had done him unknown; for when a kindly face greets us, though but passing by, and [45] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON never knows us again, nor we it, we should feel it as an obligation: and E. B. did. This good artist set himself at work to please the damsel. It was just before Valentine's day three years since. He wrought, unseen and unsuspected, a wondrous work. We need not say it was on the finest gilt paper with borders — full, not of common hearts and heartless allegory, but all the prettiest stories of love from Ovid, and older poets than Ovid (for E. B. is a scholar). There was Pyramus and Thisbe, and be sure Dido was not forgot, nor Hero and Leander, and swans more than sang in Cayster, with mottoes and fanciful devices, such as beseemed — a work, in short, of magic. Iris dipt the woof. "This on Valentine's eve he commended to the all-swallowing indiscriminate orifice (O ignoble trust!) of the common post; but the humble medium did its duty, and from his watchful stand the next morning he saw the cheerful messenger knock, and by-and-by the precious charge delivered. He saw, unseen, the happy girl unfold the Valentine, dance about, clap her hands, as one after one the pretty emblems unfolded themselves. She danced about, not with light love, or foolish expectations, for she had no lover; or, if she had, none she knew that could have created those bright images which de- lighted her. It was more like some fairy present; a God-send, as our familiarly pious ancestors termed [46] THE CITY'S PICTURES a benefit received where the benefactor was unknown. It would do her no harm. It would do her good for ever after. It is good to love the unknown. I only give this as a specimen of E. B. and his modest way of doing a concealed kindness." Now E. B. was Edward Francis Burney (1760- 1848), an illustrator and the cousin of Fanny Bur- ney, and in the glass case in Room II are several examples of his work, and one, No. 499, "Youth crowned with Roses," which shows just how per- fectly fitted he was to design a valentine. In the little passage between Rooms II and III are a few interesting pictures, largely from the Gas- siot collection. Here, on the left wall, are interest- ing examples of that fine colourist John Philip : par- ticularly No. 714, and an English landscape sketch by him, No. 716; a good Constable sketch. No. 651 ; three typical village school scenes by Thomas Web- ster; and a view of London Bridge under frost in 1795-6 by Daniel Turner, whom we shall see again in strength at the London Museum. Bryan calls him David Turner, but knows practically nothing of him. Lastly on this wall notice No. 728, a tender Mauve- ish little landscape by Mr. Spenlove-Spenlove. On the opposite wall are two Frithian works by Tissot, the French painter best known by his Biblical illus- trations. They tell their story. Between the two Tissots is another somewhat Frithian work by a [47] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON contemporary of Frith, the ill-fated Augustus Egg, Dickens's friend. Entering Room III, we find on the left another J. M. Swan, this time a lioness painted in oil (No. 895), a noble thing. No. 845 has sweetness and delicacy. No. 638 will remind some visitors of what they once esteemed, a form of art that does not wear well. Here also are two of Faed's simple Scotch domesticities. On the other side of the door is a fine Brangwyn, rich and riotous — too rich and riotous, I should guess, to be a true representation of even the gayest Lord Mayor's Show on the sunniest November 9th ever known. Still, artists will be artists, and the wish is father to the thought. Here also is another William Collins (No. 644) and a very typical Leader (No. 334). On the next wall are nice pictures by Mr. and Mrs. Adrian Stokes and a slashing flower piece by Fantin-Latour, which is, however, poor in composi- tion (No. 881). On the next wall we find the same artist at his more distinguished, in No. 882 : "White Roses." Here also are more echoes from old Acad- emies — in the Frederick Goodall, the T. S. Cooper and the G. D. Leslie : three fallen idols, I fear. No. 287 is an interesting little London scene: "Interior of the Debtors' Prison, Whitecross Street." Rather should it be called the courtyard of the prison. [48] THOMAS TOMKINS AFTER THE PICTURE BY SIR JOSHLA REVNOLIS IN THE GUILDHALL THE CITY'S PICTURES Ladies and gentlemen in financial straits are seen walking about and conversing, exactly as in Dickens. Imprisonment for debt being abolished, the building was closed in 1870. It has since been pulled down. On the last wall are two little Landseers: No. 691, representing Lord Alexander Russell as a boy taking his first leap on his pony "Emerald," and the other (No. 690) illustrating the fable of "The Travelled- Monkey." Here also is an excellent example of the art of Sir J. Seymour Lucas, and here is another Brangwyn, which is not, however, the equal of No. 861. The little room dedicated to the virile energy of Sir John Gilbert is a monument to his variety. Born in 1817, he wasted a certain amount of time as an estate agent's clerk in Walbrook, close to the Man- sion House, and was then permitted to make draw- ing, which he had always practised, his profession. For many years he was the most prolific draughtsman in England, and the most vigorous, his chef d'ceuvre being, I suppose, his edition of Staunton's Shake- speare, which had over eight hundred woodcuts. For a while he was connected with Punchy but the editor brought about his retirement by the remark that he did not want a Rubens. Finding on The Illustrated London News more congenial work, he was its strong man for years. He was knighted in 1872 as Presi- dent of the Old Water Colour Society. After 1885 [49] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON he sold nothing, but reserved all his work to be be- queathed to various galleries; and we here see the Guildhall's share. For the most part it is the his- torical side of his art that is represented, but what could be more delicate than Nos. 544 and 547, both drawings of unhappy Belgium*? As a contrast to Sir John Gilbert's breezy power and abundance, we have in this room a little collec- tion of the delicate whispering art of Mr. Albert Goodwin, who paints nature only when she is at her shyest and most pensive, and whose special gift it is to transform England into fairyland. The Guildhall is the City's only picture gallery; but the historical cartoons in the Royal Exchange are well worth seeing. The Royal Exchange has a somewhat forbidding appearance to the ordinary wanderer in London, who, finding himself within the mysteries of that unknown world the City, is fearful of entering buildings obviously sacred to commerce. But, at any rate when not the arena of speculators, the Royal Exchange is open to all, the greater part of it being a courtyard and place of meeting and of transit, with an arcade all around where office boys eat their dinners. Shabby cocked-hatted beadles guard the doors, but, except possibly in business hours, they bar no one's way. For many years it has been an honoured privilege with private citizens or City companies to give a [50] THE CITY'S PICTURES decorative fresco for the Royal Exchange walls, all of course celebrating some event in London's or Eng- land's history. Among these works may be seen one, by Mr. Brangwyn, allegorising Modern Commerce; one, by Mr. Gow, representing Nelson descending the steps of the harbour to join the "Victory"; a third, of William II building the Tower, by which is meant surveying that task from the back of a horse; Alfred the Great repairing the walls of Lon- don in the same vicarious way; John sealing Magna Charta; Elizabeth at Gresham College; Charles I at the Guildhall demanding the City's members; and so forth. This Royal Exchange, which is the third, dates only from 1844, when Queen Victoria opened it in person, nearly three years after her Royal Consort had laid the first stone. The first Royal Exchange, founded by Sir Thomas Gresham, had been opened by Queen Elizabeth some three centuries before. The Great Fire accounted for it almost exactly a hundred years after its foundation stone had been laid in 1566, but failed to injure old Gresham's statue. The second Royal Exchange also fell a vic- tim to fire, in 1838, and again Sir Thomas came out unscathed. His charmed effigy graces the present building, and will not, I hope, again be put to any salamandrine test. In the Guildhall museum is a collection of Roman [51] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON remains found by the builders when excavating for the Royal Exchange of this day. To many persons the Royal Exchange is known principally as the building near which is Birch's fiimous soup and sandwich house in Cornhill. An evil hour must, I suppose, strike, when it will be decreed that the resolute archaism of this admirable lunching place must give way to a more modern spaciousness ; but may that be long distant ! In the room upstairs the best turtle soup in the world is dispensed, the ritual ordaining that with it you drink Madeira and afterwards, during the season, you eat an oyster patty. That it is the best turtle soup needs no further fortifying statement when I add that it is the house of Birch which provides the City of London's feasts. The original Birch was one Lucas Birch (an un- pleasant collocation of words to me), whose son and successor, Samuel Birch (1757-1841), not only was an admirable pastrycook but was also a public- spirited man, Sheriff and Lord Mayor, and a suc- cessful dramatist. It was Birch who, at first un- supported on the Common Council, urged the es- tablishment of volunteer regiments at the outbreak of the French Revolution, and eventually carrying his point, was the first Lieutenant-Colonel of the 1st Regiment of the Loyal London Volunteers. [52] CHAPTER III .A MEDLEY OF CHURCHES New taxi-driver and old cabby — The Corporation at wor- ship — Grinling Gibbons — St. Lawrence, Jewry — St. Magnus the Martyr — The odour of sanctity — Old Lon- don Bridge — St. Giles's, Cripplegate — St. Giles's-in-the- Fields — A nest of singing birds — St. James's, Piccadilly — St. Etheldreda's — Hatton Garden — The Westminster Cathedral — The Scotch chapel — Mr. Gill's "Stations of the Cross" — Mr. J. F. Bentley — Lincoln's Inn Chapel — St. Alban's, Holborn, and a modern Saint — Treasurers' windows — The Temple Church — A Great Man. IN this chapter I have brought together some notes, not wholly at random, upon a variety of London churches, old and new, which seem to me typical. These churches being situated both east and west, any one proposing to visit them in the order in which they occur in these pages will be doing a cab driver a very good turn. And why not*? The new cab driver, as an accessory of machinery, may be, it is true, a far less sociable being than that old cab driver the ally of the horse, yet he is a good fellow too. For a certain gruff rigidity one must blame [53] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON the cranks he has to pull, the wheel he has to turn, and, above all, the meter which registers his fare. His happy-go-lucky predecessor ("Drive you to Highgate*?" said a hansom-cabby to me once, late one night in Shaftesbury Avenue, "Why, I'd drive you to America if you liked") — his happy-go-lucky predecessor, having no automatic tally, was in con- stant need of those gifts which discern the humane potentialities of a passenger and of those arts, either of ingratiation or menace, which can extract an extra sixpence. The new driver, the chauffeur, has no hopes. If he gets something added, he has, in one of the worst possible of worlds, received no more than his due; if he fails to be given it, it is just his usual luck, and the sooner he moves on to find another fare the better. That is the difference between the an- cient Jehu and the modern Shover; but beneath the taxi-driver's saturnine apathy beats, it is possible, the usual heart. Having seen the Corporation's pictures, let us see where the City Fathers worship. The church is close by: St. Lawrence, Jewry; and here, in a great pew with a civic throne in it, the Lord Mayor and his sheriffs sit in state, just under a window representing the Judgment of Solomon, while the rest of the Cor- poration, each carrying a bouquet, sit behind them. This happens every Michaelmas day, and after their preacher h^s discharged hi§ homily at them, the gor- [54J A MEDLEY OF CHURCHES geous company retire to decide the question who shall be Lord Mayor next year. One cannot imagine a more comfortable temple, for it is Wren at his (may I say*?) most cosy — the proportions being very attractive, and the coloured windows gay, and the atmosphere domestic rather than ecclesiastic. Many of Wren's churches, from St. Paul's down- wards, are monuments also to the genius of his friend Grinling Gibbons, the wood carver, and St. Law- rence, Jewry, stands by no means low on the list. This busy craftsman of fine taste was only in part English, being born at Rotterdam, in 1648, of, I believe, a Dutch mother. His father, however, was good Yorkshire. It is not known when the youthful Grinling came to London, but he was at Deptford in 1671, for it was there that Evelyn the diarist found him making a wonderful wooden version of Tinto- retto's "Crucifixion," and not only took Sir Christo- pher Wren and Pepys to see it, but had the touT de force shown to His Majesty Charles II, who would have bought it had not the Queen, to whose bed- room it was carried, been luke-warm on the matter. Later, however, the King bought a similar version of Tintoretto's "Stoning of St. Stephen" and Gibbons's career was established. From this time he never, as we say, looked back, but at once started to decorate St. Paul's, the stalls there being his. He also worked [55] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON at the Royal palaces, and no nobleman's place was complete without its Grinling Gibbons panelling, cornice or other device. Gibbons remained a Londoner to the end, living in Bond Street, where he died in 1720, and he was buried in St. Paul's, Covent Garden. As a man he was described by Evelyn as "very civil, sober, and discreet in his discourse," which, as we shall learn at the Adelphi, not all artists have been. For his fine free way with wood, England, and especially Lon- don, owes him much. The particular glory of St. Lawrence, Jewry, is the Grinling Gibbons woodwork (but, on the strength of an engraving of Kneller's portrait of him, in the vestry, he is here shorn of the final "g," and known as Grinlin). His pulpit stairs have three delicate balusters to each step and a railing of the richest and hardest mahogany I ever saw. "True Spanish mahogany," says the venerable sexton; "not Honduras." His two doors at the entrance end of the church are exceedingly fine, the wood being box beneath its dark stain. Each is surmounted by an angel. The pews of St. Lawrence, Jewry, are select enough; but at St. Magnus the Martyr, whither we may now repair, just by the Monument, they are still higher and more private. Each is, in fact, an Englishman's castle; and within their walls the [56] A MEDLEY OF CHURCHES eternal verities may either be pondered in profound and secure seclusion, or, if it should so chance, safely shelved in sleep. No city church has darker wood, a deeper reserve, a broader aisle, or a richer bouquet of the odour of sanctity, in which kid gloves play so prominent a part, than this St. Magnus. How many Anglican temples one has, after a long conti- nental habit of church-haunting, to enter before the shock — or not perhaps so much shock as a nasal frustration — caused by the absence of incense ceases, I cannot say; but I have not myself yet reached the necessary number. St. Magnus the Martyr has the poor tinted glass that too often satisfies a City congregation, but which perhaps suits the Palladian window scheme better than rich pictorial subjects. It also has a famous organ — the first in England to use the Venetian swell — on which recitals are given in the luncheon hour once a week or oftener. The church is typically Wren's, and how fine the spire is, Mr. Livens's pic- ture shows. To me one of the most interesting things about St. Magnus the Martyr is the fact that old London Bridge sprang away from the north bank of the river close to it, and the arches under the church tower were opened up in order to take the pavement of the bridge-approach through them and thus widen the road. They serve now merely as an outer lobby [57] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON to the church; but in those earlier days before our new and utterly prosaic London Bridge, which is some 180 to 200 feet farther west, was built, how they must have echoed to con- stant footfalls! When last at St. Lawrence, Jewry, I walked to St. Giles's, Cripplegate, by way of Aldermanbury and Fore Street, just diverting a few steps in London Wall to see the remains of the old Roman rampart in the garden opposite St. Al phage. St. Giles's, Cripplegate, is famous as the burial-place of Milton, whose statue stands outside, and to whose memory a bust is to be seen within. It is not, of course, the St. Giles's which serves as the antithesis of the well- nourished aristocratic St. James's. That St. Giles's — or St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, which is its full mis- nomer — is just off the Charing Cross Road, and is, I always think, the coldest and most forbidding fane in London, all lonely among its tombs, in a squalid district with the backs of dingy houses around it. But desolate though it be, this St. Giles's stands in very sacred ground too, and, as it chances, very poetical ground. No Milton is here ; but here is a friend of Milton's, one of the sweetest and most distinguished of the minor English choir. Do you remember the lines on the death of Charles I, who was beheaded not so very far away*? — one needs merely to walk down the [58] A MEDLEY OF CHURCHES Charing Cross Road, across Trafalgar Square and a little way along Whitehall, to see the actual spot: "He nothing common did or mean Upon that memorable scene, But with his keener eye The axe's edge did try; Nor called the gods with vulgar spite To vindicate his helpless right, But bowed his comely head Down, as upon a bed." And you know those lines on a garden, with the exquisite stanzas: "Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness : The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find; Yet it creates, transcending these. Far other worlds, and other seas. Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green shade. Here at the fountain's sliding foot. Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, Casting the body's vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide: There, like a bird, it sits and sings. Then whets and combs its silver wings, And, till prepared for longer flight. Waves in its plumes the various light." [59] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON Well, the author of those poems, Andrew Marvell, was buried here. We are only at the beginning of St. Giles's Golden Treasury. That sturdy Elizabethan translator of Homer, George Chapman, is among its dead. Noth- ing would naturally be much farther from one's thoughts, as one wanders here, than Keats's famous sonnet; yet it is only too pertinent. And you remember that beautiful and impressive lyric which has these lines in it? "The glories of our blood and state Are shadows, not substantial things ; There is no armour against fate ; Death lays his icy hand on kings: Scepter and crown Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crooked scythe and spade. . . . The garlands wither on your brow, Then boast no more your mighty deeds ; Upon Death's purple altar now. See, where the victor-victim bleeds: Your heads must come To the cold tomb. Only the actions of the just Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust." Well, it was in a cold tomb here, in 1666, that James Shirley was laid. [60] A MEDLEY OF CHURCHES And you know that poet (the elder brother of holy Mr. Herbert of Bemerton, whom we saw medi- tating in his garden, in Dyce's picture at the Guild- hall) one of whose poems made use of the metre and some of the grave music of In Memoriam two cen- turies before In Memoriam was written — Lord Her- bert of Cherbury. It was he who, in the argument as to whether love endured beyond the tomb, thus nobly answered in the affirmative : "Nor here on earth then, or above, Our good affection can impair. For where God doth admit the fair Think you that He excludeth love? These eyes again then eyes shall see, And hands again these hands enfold, And all chaste pleasures can be told Shall with us everlasting be." Well, Lord Herbert of Cherbury was buried here too. Having seen St. Giles's, now so forlorn for all its sacred dust, let us ste St. James's, which is one of the most successful of London's red brick buildings, in it serene retirement in a quiet bay off Piccadilly. Here again we find Wren and Cribbons in {partner- ship, for Wren built the church and Ciibbons carved the font and the foliage over the altar. Wren was [6i] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON very proud of the interior, which he planned to hold two thousand persons and yet to have neither second walls nor buttresses. He also dispensed with a lantern, which, now that the windows are full of coloured glass, would be a great boon, for the church is very dark. St. James's may be in the centre of fashion and tone, but it has nothing quite of the quality of George Chapman, James Shirley and Andrew Marvell. But Walton's associate, cheerful Master Cotton, lies here; and Tom D'Urfey, the very free humorist whose "Pills" which "purged" Jacobean and Augustan "Melancholy" might now get him or his publishers into the police courts; and Gillray the cartoonist; while Old Q., the disreputable, who, in life, scan- dalized our ancestors at the other end of Piccadilly, now reposes in a vault beneath the communion table, at this end. To say, as a writer in The Times does, that St. Etheldreda's, in Ely Place, is a Sainte Chapelle, is to give a wrong impression; but it is a very grace- ful building with a beautiful east window through which London's light permeates very sweetly. Be- low is a crypt chapel, which, on the last afternoon that I was there, was thronged by a company of little boys with whom two or three acolytes were doing their best, but whose native unruliness would have taxed the patience even of St. Anthony himself. [62] THK TEMI'l-K CIM1« II, IKOM JoHNSON'S BUILDINGS A MEDLEY OF CHURCHES St. Etheldreda's is all that remains of the ancient palace of the bishops of Ely, afterwards converted by Sir Christopher Hatton, the favourite of Queen Elizabeth, into a mansion for himself. Hence Hat- ton Garden. The bishops again came into residence here in the reign of Charles I, one of them being Sir Christopher Wren's uncle, Matthew Wren, who died here. In 1775 the property was cut up for building purposes. So much for the smallest Roman Catholic church in London; now for the largest. How many times a London Re-revisited and London Re-re-revisited must be written before the Westminster Cathedral is completed, and all that vast area of brick- work covered with marble, who shall say? But the day is yet far distant. Gradually and patiently, and with beautiful thoroughness, the labour is always proceeding, and already the Lady Chapel's lower mosaics are finished, and much of the choir has been made sumptuous, and the tombs of Cardinal Man- ning and Cardinal Vaughan have lovely settings. Above all, the chapel of St. Andrew and the Scotch Saints is perfected, like a jewel in a rosary. In a foreign city this distinguished little sanctuary would be the resort of every traveller, but few Londoners know anything about it or expect English artists and artificers to toil to such ends. The aluminum grille alone is a joy; and the little mosaic landscapes of [63] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON Scottish and Continental strongholds of the Faith, Amalii and Constantinople (so ever-present in this cathedral), St. Andrew's and Milan, must fascinate every eye. The chapel is a monument to Scotland's fidelity, and around the cool walls runs a screed in honour of her warriors and martyrs for the Cross. Coolness is perhaps the dominant note — an almost inhuman frigidity of design and execution. Only a few of the "Stations of the Cross" from the chisel of Mr. Eric Gill are in position as I write (April, 1916). The archaic simplicity and severity of these reliefs are not to every taste; but no one can deny the sculptor's sincerity, and in a church an ounce of sincerity outweighs pounds of more facile, gifts. To my eyes Number V, in which "Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus to carry the Cross," is movingly beautiful, but I select for reproduction the first, in which Jesus is condemned to death. Note the easy grace of the boy kneeling to Pilate with the fatal ewer. Mr. Anning Bell's mosaic tympanum over the great doors is now complete and may be seen from the street. I could wish the background had not been white, but London's fogs and grime will see to that. Only the very young are likely to live long enough to see this cathedral finished; its architect, John Francis Bentley, died when it was only a shell. He [64] A MEDLEY OF CHURCHES received the commission in 1894, when he was fifty- five, Cardinal Vaughan, who now lies here, having selected him and fixed certain conditions, chief of which were that speed was important, that expense should be kept down, and that the nave should be vast and give an uninterrupted view of the high altar. The preference for Byzantine style being ex- pressed, Bentley visited various Italian cities, in- cluding, of course, Ravenna, but was unable, owing to the plague there, to get to Constantinople itself. The foundation stone was laid in 1895, and in 1898 Bentley had a paralytic stroke and gradually sank. While on the theme of chapels to saints let me mention St. Alban's, Holborn, famous as the fifty years' scene of the ministrations of the late Arthur Henry Stanton (1839-1912), known to his adoring parishioners and in Heaven as "Father" or "Dad." St. Alban's, Holborn, is not too easy to find, but one should make the endeavour; for it was here that this life-long rebel and comforter said his good things and performed his good deeds, and a shrine in his honour, now in course of completion there, is per- haps the ornatest memorial in London, if not in England. It would not, I fancy, wholly please the Saint himself, but since it is the product of much human love — the commodity which he most valued — he would accept it smilingly. Father Stanton was, I suppose, the most Romanist [65] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON priest not in the Church of Rome, and as such was a thorn in the side of his own Church. But such was the sincerity of him, and the power of him, and beautiful helpfulness of him, that in spite of various storms consequent upon his Confessional and his Mariolatry, he remained in orders, and even lived to be offered a stall in St. Paul's. "If we love Christ, we should love His mother," he would say. Once being told that it was not "wise" to use incense and processional lights, he instantly replied, with his exquisite disarming wit, that only two sets of people were called "wise" in the Gospels — the Wise Men from the East, who offered incense, and the Wise Virgins, who carried processional lights! It is as a friend of the poor — as a disseminator of joy in mean streets — in short, as "Father" Stanton — that he lived and will live. Few pastors can have had such influence. Of the many humorous stories of his experiences in this parish, which he told with wonderful effect and immense enjoyment, this is a good example: — One of his Sunday boys called at the clergy house on a certain occasion when Father Stanton had given word that he was too tired to see any more that day. "The housekeeper told the boy," said Father Stanton, "that I was tired, and could not see him, and I heard him say, 'That's a nice message to send a boy in the parish. You tell him I want; to see him spiritual.' So, of course, I [66] A MEDLEY OF CHURCHES put on my biretta and came downstairs. When I got down the stairs the boy said: 'Father, that's a nice message to send to a pore boy in the parish — to go away because you are tired. I want to see you private. I don't want to see you out in this 'all, where everybody can 'ear our business. Mayn't we talk somewhere quiet*?' So I said, 'Come into the dining-room,' and took him there, prepared for fear- ful revelations and spiritual difficulties, naturally! And then he said, 'Father, you ain't got such a thing as a pair of trousers, 'ave yer*?' So I said, 'Yes, old chap, I have; and I have got them on I' " If we are to speak of a London Sainte Chapelle, it seems to me that the Temple church is the real claim- ant to that honour — not that it has any of the slen- der grace of that exquisite stone and glass casket, but there is something in the clean strong beauty of the Temple pillars and vaulting of grey polished marble that always reminds me of the lovely Paris sanc- tuary. And it has the impressive dignity of its bronze Knight Templars too, nine of them lying in their well-earned perpetual repose on the circular floor. There are no Templars in Sainte Chapelle. The round and unique portion of the Temple church was built in 1185. The choir was added in 1240. Both have been restored, and are now almost too spick and span for such age to be credible. In some ways, London has no more beautiful building. [67] CHAPTER TV THE ROYAL MINT AND NEW SCOTLAND YARD Minting and good looks — Human machinery — Money-mak- ing — An Italian philosopher — "Aladdin" and "The Tin- der Box" — Ingots and furnaces — The master thief — Law versus lawlessness — Morbid relics — Criminal investiga- tion — The deadly finger-prints — The detective's powder — The burglar and the bottle — The importance of gloves — London street names — Colonel Panton — Hugh Audley. A VISIT to the Royal Mint is interesting if only to see the Royal Minters, who are a fine set of men with a greater proportion of handsome heads among them than in any other assembly that I re- member. Why the transmutation of metal into little discs, the love of which is said to be the root of all evil, should tend to good looks, I have no notion; but there it is. Can it be because these men have to do with money only when it is fresh and clean, be- fore it has set to work*? Not so long since I was led through the Royal Mint by the Deputy Master himself, who did what was possible, above the din of minting, to instruct [68] THE ROYAL MINT me in its mysteries; but I recollect little save two crystal facts. One was that the men had not only fine heads, and for the most part fine hair and moustaches, but a fine frank bearing; and the other, that there are machines in this place which are practically human. The linotype had hitherto seemed to me, who have seen little in this way, the most drastically capable of all metal intelligences; but I don't know that it is really in advance of the gently reasonable creatures here that turn out hun- dreds of threepenny pieces a minute, and are equally willing to turn out shillings, half-crowns and sovereigns; while there is a strange sprawling mon- ster also here whose life is spent in counting pennies into bags, and who can safely be left to do this with perfect accuracy all day long; which is more than any accountant, however chartered, could be. Some things I suppose the hand of man will always [perform best, and indeed to my great surprise I learned of one only the other day when I was pass- ing through that astonishing home of industry and thoroughness, Guinness's Brewery in Dublin, and coming to a vast hall of coopers, who were sawing, planing and hammering, was told that, so far at any rate as this great Irish firm is concerned, manual labour on barrels is considered to be more satisfac- tory than machinery, although machinery exists for the purpose. I confess to being very glad to hear it. [69] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON But how the Royal Mint managed to supply Eng- land with sufficient coins before machinery came in, I cannot imagine. There are astonishing contrasts in the machines, too; for while one of them will brutally and noisily bite thick strips of bronze as though they were biscuits, another in almost com- plete silence is weighing coins with the utmost deli- cacy, some score to the minute, and discarding into separate compartments any that are the faintest trifle too light or too heavy, and not a soul near it to interfere. A visit to the Royal Mint is so like a dip into the Arabian Nights that any one may be pardoned for bringing away only hazy impressions. For, to begin with, there is the strange incredible purpose of the place — to make money. Every one wants to make money; every one, that is, except the Italian waiter whom I met a little while since, — as it chanced, also in Dublin, — and who, when I asked him if he would not like to be rich, replied, "No, I don't want." "Why?' I inquired. "Because," he said, "I die if I get too much money." With the exception of this philosopher, all of us want to make money; and here, at top speed and with a superb carelessness, money is being made — actually made — in vast sums, for ever. We are in the very presence of the miracle. You not only see it being made, but hear it — a terrific uproar, the discord that [70] THE ROYAL MINT is such music to Mammon's ear. You see the whole thing exactly as in the stories, not only the Eastern "Aladdin," but the European "Tinder Box," where the soldier passed from the room filled with coppers to the room filled with silver, and from the room filled with silver to the room filled with gold. The only thing that you do not see at the Mint is the room filled with paper notes; but that is no loss. Who wants paper? Metal is the stuff. So far as my memory serves me, we entered first a room packed with ingots. Have you ever seen an ingot? There is something in the very word that brings romance about you. Ingots and doub- loons and pieces of eight. Well, here are ingots: great lumps of silver and bronze, piled on trestles to be wheeled into the furnace room. And then the furnace room, with its glowing fires and its cauldrons of boiling metal and its handsome, brawny fire-worshippers. Here everything is hot and liable to splutter, and the men must protect not only their eyes but their hands, so that every one has vast gloves. To anybody thinking of taking up minting as a home pastime I would say that the first thing to do with metal from which coins are to be made is to turn it into bars. These bars begin at, say, two feet six long and barely one inch thick, and a series of machines then take them into their maws and so deal with them that by the time they are finished MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON with they are some yards long and of the thickness of whatever coin they propose to be. It is then that they are fed into the machine which stamps out the discs corresponding to the circumference of the de- sired coins; and then these discs are gently but firmly crushed between the two dies appertaining to those coins. Nothing could be simpler — now. Yet only by immense thought and engineering in the past has this simplicity come about. But I suppose that in a century's time minting will be simpler still. I read in Wheatley and Cunningham's London Past and Present^ which no student of the City can neglect, that in 1798 a bold fellow named Turnbull entered the Mint with a loaded pistol and came out with 2804 guineas. It would puzzle him to do it now. Even with a letter from the Deputy Mas- ter in one's hand, one is scrutinised with painfully minute suspicion by the policeman at the lodge. Having seen where money is made honourably, and with a speed and efficiency that fill the mind with confidence as to England's solvency, I was per- mitted to visit another Government institution, a large part of whose activities is concerned in track- ing down and securing those ingenious persons who make it dishonestly — I mean New Scotland Yard. I have said that at the Mint every one is handsome. At Scotland Yard every one is big and robust and very courteous; while the atmosphere of the place [72] THE ROYAL MINT is discretion absolute. I have always thought the police the best of men, but one must go to Scotland Yard for the very flower of their physical amplitude and ingratiating gravity. Nor, as one passes along the countless corridors, each filled with offices where the machinery of law versus breakers of the law is at work, does one get the suggestion that there is any conscious feeling of virtue within, as against vice outside. The attitude is dispassionate. It comes to this, that there are in the world certain persons who, from this motive or that, like to commit felonies and burglaries, even murder; they are there^ outside. There are also other persons, less numerous or less romantic, whose business is to catch them; they are here', inside. Ethics need not come into it at all. The general impression gathered in New Scotland Yard is one of bland humaneness and sympathetic understand- ing, based on something horribly like iron. The Black Museum, which I principally wished to visit, is no longer to be seen. The need for more space has led to its, I hope only temporary, dis- mantlement. Only a few cases in a dark passage remain to indicate its sco[)c, but these are filled with sinister human interest. One of them is wholly de- voted to those bank-notes which you or I would confidingly accept and innocently pass on, but which to the expert eye reveal such damning discrepancies. [73] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON For the perfect forgery apparently does not exist; always there is some oversight. In the other cases are historic weapons by whose agency this or that famous murder was committed. But, as I say, for the time being, the Black Museum does not exist, nor, very properly, is writing about it encouraged. Moreover, one can see such relics, although not in such quantity, elsewhere. That which one cannot see elsewhere is the finger- print department, where the system of identification of criminals by the agency of these tell-tale marks, which was brought to perfection by the present Chief of the Police, Sir Edward Henry, is carried on. Here are wonders indeed; and here I was privileged to receive a thousand answers to as many questions; and what is more delightful than that? Of the theory of finger-prints I knew vaguely a little. I knew that Sir Francis Galton had investigated the subject with his usual thoroughness and patience, and had come to the conclusion that there are not two sets of finger-prints alike in the world. On this assumption (which, never having been contraverted, may be called a fact) the great finger-print depart- ment here, with its hundreds of thousands of records, — which are added to every day, — was reared. What I did not know was the means by which, within two or three minutes, the officials, after receiving a new set of finger-prints, — for every convicted crim- [74] STUDY OF A LION blUDY OF A TIGER AFTER THE DRAWINGS BV J. M. SWAN IN THE GUILDHALL THE ROYAL MINT inal is compelled to make his mark in this way, — can ascertain whether or not their possessor has been convicted before. For of course names would be of no service : old criminals are always changing those. The system of classification which makes this rapid- ity possible was explained to me. Another thing that I did not know, even after a fairly assiduous career as a reader of detective stories, from Gaboriau to Mr. Chesterton, — that is to say, from realism to fantasy, — is that the traces left even by the most casual touch of the fingers can persist so long. I was, for example, shown a cash box which a criminal had handled a full year before the record of the impression of his touch on it was taken, and it was still incontrovertible evidence. The finger-print serves two purposes. It estab- lishes the previous record of an old offender, and it helps to bring home the crime to suspected men who are guilty. The difference between the two sets of prints is that the old offender has to make his at the police station, in ink, as a matter of routine; whereas the suspected man, who often does not know that he is suspected, makes his unconsciously, usually on a letter handed to him by the detective and then taken back again and quickly powdered. I myself saw how effective this was, for while talking to the Chief of the department I lightly touched a piece of paper and then watched the surface of it being [75] MOKE WANDERINGS IN LONDON powdered and brushed until there the damning rec- ord stood out, plain to the eye, with every papillar)' ridge testifying against me. Wise thieves of course wear gloves; but there seems to be an almost inevitable loophole in every scheme of precaution that the lawless take. One burglar, for example, who, carefully gloved, had completed his raid, packed up the swag and got securely away, made one little slip; and in criminal investigation it is the little slips that tell. The detectives arrived and powdered everything that was likely to have been touched, but there were no results. They were in despair until a wine-glass was found that had had champagne in it; but here again there was no clue: the burglar had worn his gloves to drink. When, however, they at last found the bottle and powdered that, finger-marks came out, for he had been forced to remove his gloves to draw the cork. By these marks was he captured. I have seen the bottle. To would-be thieves or murderers I say, therefore, never leave off your gloves. I came away impressed not only by the complete- ness of the net that surrounds every criminal who has once been caught, but conscious also of what an enormously amusing and exciting enterprise it would be to pit one's wits against those of this massive building. And what, may very naturally be asked, have the [76] THE ROYAL MINT London police to do with Scotland? Why Scotland Yard? Well, there is a reason for its name, as for those of most other London streets and squares and courts. The Scotland Yard which this present headquarters succeeded — between Whitehall and Northumberland Avenue — had been the favourite lodging of the Kings of Scotland and their ambas- sadors. While on this subject, I may say that inquiry into these names usually yields interesting results. Thus, Panton Street, off the Haymarket, owes its name to the famous Stuart gambler and gallant, Thomas Panton, a Colonel in Charles IPs army, and an "absolute artist" at every game "either upon the square or foul." One night's hazard bring- ing him in a sufficient fortune to provide £1500 a year, he retired from the tables, married a wife, bought land in Herefordshire and that part of Lon- don on which Panton Street stands, and, when in 1685 he died, his bones were laid in the Abbey. Cheyne Walk takes its name from Viscount Cheyne, Lord of the Manor of Chelsea in the seven- teenth centur)\ Charges Street was called after Sir Walter Clarges, nephew of General Monk. King's Cross was so called because a statue of George IV was erected there in 1836. After serving [77] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON as a butt for the wits for nine years, it was taken down and broken up. All the Half-Moon Streets are so called because of a Half-Moon tavern in them. The various Hart Streets probably derive from a similar circumstance. The various Duke Streets may be traced to the ducal owners of their neighbourhood. Thus Duke Street, Buckingham Street, Strand, was named from the il- lustrious George Villiers, or "Steenie," who was stabbed at Portsmouth — as all readers of Twenty Years After know. Duke Street, Portland Square, was named after Williajn, Duke of Portland. The various King Streets derive of course from kings — but from different ones; and the various George Streets from different Georges too: I, II, III and IV. Our own George may perhaps give his name also to a street, but only with his full style — George V. The Gray of Gray's Inn was Lord Gray, in the fifteenth century. Staple Inn was named from the fact that the merchants of the Staple had their hostel there. Lincoln's Inn was built on land belonging to the Earls of Lincoln. Stratton Street takes its name from John Berkeley, afterwards Baron Berkeley of Stratton, the hero of Stratton Fight, in 1660, on the Royalist side. The Audley Streets are named after the owner of [78] THE ROYAL MINT the property on which they stand, Hugh Audley, the Stuart money-lender, who, possessing in 1605 £200, died in 1662 worth £400,000, a sum which represented then far more than it does now. And this in spite of a loss of £100,000 through the civil wars I Audley was a man of implacable shrewdness who, in the interests of his profession, made a great outward show of piety ; keeping on his table, among all the horrid machinery of cent per cent, a book of devotion ostentatiously displayed. A guide to worldly success was subsequently compiled, with him as its hero. I mention only these name derivations, more or less at random, just to illustrate the richness of the subject. One of the million and one books to be written on London would certainly trace to their source as many street names as possible. But some would present great difficulties. How would one expect at this late day to penetrate to the original inwardness of Paradise Street and Nightingale Square and The Vale and Tranquil Passage"? [79] CHAPTER V THE STATUES OF LONDON I. THE CITY TO CHARING CROSS London and Paris — Sir Hugh Myddelton — The Royal Ex- change — The City's highest ground — A new position for Queen Anne — Elizabeth Fry — The Smithfield Martyrs — Christ's Hospital — Early City worthies — Two mysteri- out obelisks — Cheap Oueen Bess — The Griffin and Tem- ple Bar — A white elephant — Charing Cross and Queen Eleanor — King Charles on horseback — An astute brazier — Le Sceur. LONDON has been accused of taking her me- morial, or marmoreal, duties, at any rate by comparison with Paris, too lightly; and after a visit to the public statues which exist by the thousand in the French capital, one realises the truth of the criticism. A list of great Englishmen who have, at any rate, no open-air monument in London would be more surprising than a list of those who are thus remembered; but apart altogether from the fact that the English mind does not tend much to this kind of celebration and that the French mind [80] THE STATUES OF LONDON does, there is a further reason for our poverty of statues and the Paris profusion, in the circumstance that the open air of London and the open air of Paris are so very different. One makes for darkness and the other for light. Hence a marble statue in London soon becomes a dreary and dingy thing, whereas in Paris it continues to dazzle. In this and some following chapters I have at- tempted a complete list of the open-air statues and memorials that London has erected, at any rate in the more accessible parts. There may be some omis- sions, but not many. Lender cover, of course, the memorials are countless : in the Abbey, in St. Paul's, in the National Portrait Gallery, in the Guildhall, and in churches everywhere. But of these I say nothing here. My list is for the pious pilgrim in the streets. It is based upon notes contributed to the East London Advertiser in 1903-4, and to Notes and Queries in 1908, by Mr. John T. Page, who kindly permits me to make use of them. Mr. Page begins with the Martyrs' Memorial at Stratford, in honour of the Protestants burned in the reign of Oucen Mary. But I think that our most easterly statue may be that of John Wesley (1703-1791) in the City Road, erected on the centenary of his death by the "Children of Method- ism," in front of the City Road Chapel ; while this is a convenient place to mention the statue of Sir [81] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON Hugh Myddelton (1565-1613) on Islington Green, close to the reservoir to which he guided the waters of the New River, which the City of London still ex- clusively drinks, in 1613. Sir Hugh was a Welsh- man of great tenacity of purpose, persevering indeed with his role of Aquarius, in the face of opposition, until he had ruined himself. He then called in the assistance of James I, whose idea of help was to take half the New River shares, thirty-six in number, while the other half were sold to "adventurers." All that Sir Hugh got from it was an annuity of £100, to be paid also to his heirs. Latterly an adventurer's share was worth six figures. By the Royal Exchange are three statues. At the S.E. corner is Sir Rowland Hill (1795-1879), who founded uniform penny postage; at the N.E. corner is George Peabody (1795-1869), the Ameri- can philanthropist and erector of industrial dwell- ings; and in front is the Duke of Wellington, this being the City's memorial of the great man. King William Street has a statue of the monarch, William IV, who gave it his name. In Bread Street, Cheapside, where Milton was born, is a bust of Milton. At the west end of Cheapside is a statue of Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850), statesman, looking, in profile, very like Charles Lamb. In Panyer Alley, which is the first narrow passage [82] A MANSION IN PARK LANE, FROM HYDE I'ARK THE STATUES OF LONDON between Paternoster Row and Newgate Street, is a quaint piece of sculpture preserved under glass, with a quainter inscription. The figure is of a naked boy seated on a basket or pannier. Hence Panyer Alley. He has a bunch of grapes in his hand. The inscription runs thus: "When ye have sought the city round Yet still is this the highest ground. August the 27 1628." Whether the statement is true, I cannot say. Messrs. Wheatley and Cunningham (who give the date as August 26th) make no comment. Mr. Page believes the highest point to be about Leadenhall Market. In Postmen's Park, at St. Botolph's, Aldersgate, is a statue of a grave bearded man in a long robe, beneath the words "The utmost for the highest." This is George Frederick Watts, the artist, who in- augurated the Roll of Honour that is preserved here. In St. Mary's churchyard, Aldermanbury, is a memorial to John Heminge and Henry Condell, friends of Shakespeare, who brought out the first collective edition of his works. A bust of the poet surmounts it.^ ^ Other recent Shakespearean memorials are the tablet to Burbage at Shoreditch and the reclining figure of Shake- speare himself, in alabaster, in Southwark Cathedral, be- hind which the verger holds with much triumph a lighted taper, thus irradiating the poet with a gentle lambency. [83] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON Another adjacent literary memorial is the statue of Milton in front of St. Giles's, Cripplegate, in Fore Street, the poet having been buried in this church. Opposite St. Paul's, which is, of course, a very treasure house of marble effigies and memorials, is a statue of Queen Anne. This was originally erected in 1712, but was so much at the mercy of any urchin with a defacing tendency (and all have it) that the first figure had to be removed and the present one set up in 1886. Queen Victoria is said to have been humorously annoyed when the exchange was made. "You'll be doing that to me some day," she re- marked. The earlier statue was rescued from the rubbish heap by the late Augustus Hare, author of Walks in London^ and moved to his grounds at Hast- ings, where probably it still is. The statue of Elizabeth Fry being indoors, it does not rightly come into this list; but as it is new, I mention it. It stands, larger than life, in the up- stairs hall of the new Old Bailey, which is built on the site of Newgate, the scene of her ministrations to the prisoners — the representation chosen by the sculptor being that of Gibson's well-known portrait, in which the philanthropic Quakeress (who could also be something of a dictator) is seen placid and beneficent in her grey silk and bonnet. A bas-relief illustrating her work in the prison is on each side of the pediment. [843 THE STATUES OF LONDON At Smithfield, in an arch of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, is a memorial to the Martyrs burned in the great square there, in 1555, 1556 and 1557, and particularly to John Rogers, John Bradford and John Philpot; and I might have noted above that not only is Milton buried in St. Giles's, Cripplegate, but John Foxe too, who wrote the martyrs' golden book. But the real memorial of the Smithheld Martyrs is in the church associated with them in St. John Street, not very distant, where all the sixty- six "Servants of God" are commemorated within, and many of them by statues and medallions on the outside walls. There are also bas-relief representa- tions of the terrible scenes. In fact, this church, which is quite modern, might be called an edition of Foxe in stone. To gain it one merely has to cross the Smithfield market through one of the avenues of carcases, in which flesh is almost less noticeable than the forests of steel hooks, and so into John Street. Memories of Edward FitzGerald may all unexpect- edly arise as one proceeds into Clerkenwell, for more than one street is named after Woodbridge, and there is a Sekforde Street too. Clerkenwell is now a city of small Early Victorian houses and the strong- hold of watchmakers and carpenters. Once it was fashionable, and the garden of Northampton Square, close to the Martyrs' church, was the garden of [85] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON Northampton House, the London mansion of the Compton family. In Newgate Street, behind St. Bartholomew's Hospital, are new buildings belonging partly to the Hospital and partly to the Post Office, on an historic site where a statue or so might very reasonably have been placed. But not even a graven word did any one think it worth while to inscribe, saying that here, until very recently, stood Christ's Hospital, the Blue Coat School, among whose scholars were Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Lamb. Four London worthies are to be seen on the build- ings at the corners of the bridge which carries Hol- born over Farringdon Street. These are Henry Fitz Aylwin (1189-1212), London's first Mayor; Sir Thomas Gresham (1519-1579), who founded the Royal Exchange; Sir William Walworth (d. 1385), who killed Watt Tyler at Smithfield in 1381 ; and our friend Sir Hugh Myddelton. The four com- monplace statues on the Viaduct itself represent Art, Science, Agriculture and Commerce. At Holborn Circus is an equestrian statue of Al- bert the Good, the Prince Consort. The bas-reliefs illustrate typical scenes in the life of the Prince. In one he lays the foundation stone of the present Royal Exchange; in the other the Great Exhibition of 1851, of which he was the parent, is celebrated. Now, turning down St. Andrew's Street to Lud- [86] THE STATUES OF LONDON gate Circus, we find there two obelisks on which it is probable that not one out of every thousand of the ceaseless throng crossing here all day long could pass an examination. That on the southern island com- memorates the notorious John Wilkes, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1775, and the other, Alderman Robert Waithman, M.P., a notable City Father, whose great shawl shop was close by. Outside St. Dunstan's-in- the- West, in Fleet Street, is a statue of Good Oueen Bess, removed from a niche on Lud Gate when, in 1829, old St. Dunstan's was pulled down and the two figures on the clock carried to St. Dunstan's House, Regent Park, where the blind soldiers now are. This statue of the Virgin Queen being then put up to auction fetched £16. 10s., and was presented to the new church. Such are the vicissitudes of monarchs in exile I Other royal statues known to have occupied London sites have been less fortunate. Thus, there was once a statue of Charles II in Soho Square. The last heard of it was that it had been moved to the grounds of the late Frederick Goodall, the R.A,, at Harrow Weald. A statue of the Duke of Cumberland in Cavendish Square was taken down to be repaired in 1868 and never heard of again. The statue of George IV at King's Cross was, as I have said in the preceding chapter, brokrn u[) after nine years. The Griffin in the centre of the road by the Law [87] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON Courts marks the site of Temple Bar, which may now be seen, in its re-erected condition, in Theobald's Park. On the sides of the memorial are life-size statues of Oueen Victoria and of Kin