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HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS
IN
LONDON
Crossing at Piccadilly Circus.
Highways and Byways
in London
BY MRS. E. T. COOK
WITH • ILLUSTRATIONS BY
HUGH THOMSON AND
F. L. GRIGGS
2, o n ) on
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
NEW YORK.: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1902
All rights reserved
Richard Clay and Sons, Limited,
london and bungay.
1.2,
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS I
CHAPTER II
THE RIVER .' 22
CHAPTER III
RAMBLES IN 1IIIC CITY 53
CHAPTER IV
st. Paul's vnd its prbcincts s i
CHAPTER V
IIIK TOWER IOO
viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER VI
PAGE
SOUTHWARK, OLD AND NEW 121
CHAPTER VII
THE INNS OF COURT 137
CHAPTER VIII
THE EAST AND THE WEST 162
CHAPTER IX
WESTMINSTER 187
CHAPTER X
KENSINGTON AND CHELSEA 2IO
CHAPTER XI
BLOOMSBURY 2 3&
CHAPTER XII
THEATRICAL AND FOREIGN LONDON . . 273
CONTENTS ix
CHAPTER XIII
PAl .1
LONDON SHOPS AND MARKETS 29S
CHAPTER XIV
THE GALLERIES, MUSEUMS, AM) COLLECTIONS 324
CHAPTER XV
HISTORIC HOUSES AND THEIR TENANTS 558
CHAPTER XVI
RUS IN URBE 385
CHAPTER XVII
I III. WAYS OK LONDONERS 414
CHAPTER XVIII
I III. STONES OF LONDON . . 447
INDEX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
CROSSING AT PICCADILLY CIRCUS Froiltisp
SANDWICH-BOARD MEN 6
I HE SHOEBJ VCK II
WHEN THE STRAND IS UP >6
WATERLOO BRIDGE 22
SIGHTSEERS 34
I UK "top" season 4°
AN UNDERGROUND STATION 53
■ l "I HFAIR 57
ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S, SMITHFIELD 66
i IGH1 INC, COCKS 85
ST. PAUL'S FROM IIIK RIVER 87
st. Michael's, paternoster royai 96
xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
A BEEFEATER io2
CRICKET IN THE STREET. THE LOST BALL 127
A COUNTY COURT r 3°
pepys and his wife 14°
Lincoln's inn 15 2
fetter lane 157
a railway bookstali 163
the city train 1 65
bank holiday 1 7 1
IN REGENT STREET l8o
PICCADILLY 182
SPESHUL ! 187
VICTORIA TOWER, WESTMINSTER 206
ANGLERS IN THE PARKS .II
KENSINGTON PALACE AND THE ROUND POND 214
EARL'S COURT 221
THE GERMAN BAND . . 239
THE PAVEMENT ARTIST 249
mudie's 267
THE "GODS" 28l
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii
PAGE
[ce-cream barrow 29i
the organ-grinder 293
\ sale at Christie's 298
the doc; fancier ! ! ! ... 304
IN THE CHARING cross ROAD 306
SATURDAY NIGHT SHOPPING 3U
AN AERATED BREAD SHOP 321
A SKETCH IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE 325
\i IMF, ROYAL ACADEMY 339
RECRUITING SERJEANTS BY THE NATIONA1 GALLERY .... 345
AT I ill. CLUB 359
WYCH STREET 365
CRICKET IN THE PARKS 385
i:nl I EN ROW v s ' I
i'l I EN ROW 391
nil. SERPENTINE, HYDE PARK 393
TEA IN KENSINGTON GARDENS 396
\ FOUNTAIN IN ST. IVMI.s's PARK
["HE REFORMER ; . . . 403
A JURY jl.)
xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
'bus driver 415
INSIDE 419
" BENK, BENK ! ! "' 42I
THE HANSOM 424
A DOORSTEP PARTY 428
HOP-SCOTCH 433
THE RETURN, BANK HOLIDAY 435
FLOWER GIRLS 438
THE MEN" IN BLUE 447
THE HORSE GUARDS 456
" I confess that I never think of London, which I love, without
thinking of that palace which David built for Bathsheba, sitting in
hearing of one hundred streams, — streams of thought, of intelligence, of
activity. One other thing about London impresses me beyond any other
sound I have ever heard, and that is the low, unceasing roar one hears
always in the air ; it is not a mere accident, like a tempest or a cataract,
but it is impressive, because it always indicates human will, and impulse,
and conscious movement ; and I confess that when I hear it I almost
feel as if I were listening to the roaring loom of time." — Loivell.
HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS
IN
LONDON
CHAPTER I
HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS
" London : that great sea whose ebb and flow
\i once is deaf and loud, and on the shore
Vomits ils wrecks, and still howls on for more,
Yet in its depths what treasures !" — Shelley
'■ ( Citizens of no mean city."
The history of London is — as was that of Rome in ancient
times -the history of the whole civilised world. For, the com-
paratively small area of earth on which our city is built has, for
the last thousand years at least, been all important in the story
of nations. Its chronicles arc already so vast that no ordinary
library could hope to contain all of them. And what will the
history of London he to the student, say, of the year 3000
a.d., when our present day politics, our feelings, our views,
have been "tolled round,'" once more, in " earth's diurnal force,"
and assume, at last, their lair and true proportions?
In " this northern island, sundered once from all the human
E 13
2 THE BEGINNINGS OF LONDON chap.
race," has for centuries been lit one of the torches that have
illumined humanity. Not even Imperial Rome shone with such
a lustre ; not even the Caesars in all their purple ruled over
such a mighty, such an all-embracing empire.
The history of this mighty empire is bound up with the
history of London. For, the history of London is that of
England ; it was the river, our " Father Thames " — her first
and most important highway, a " highway of the nations," — that
brought her from the beginning all her fame and all her glory.
Partly by geographical position, partly by ever-increasing
political freedom, and partly, no doubt, by the efforts of a
dominant race, that glory has, through the centuries, been
maintained and aggrandised.
And why, some may ask, is London what it is ? Why was
this spot specially chosen as the capital? Surrounded by
marshes in early Roman times, periodically inundated by its
tidal river, densely wooded beyond its marshes, it can hardly
have seemed, in the beginning, an ideal site. Why was not
Winchester — so important in Roman times, and, later, the
capital of Wessex -preferred ? Why were not Southampton or
Bristol — apparently equally well placed for trade — favoured?
We cannot tell. The site may have been chosen by Roman
London because it was the most convenient point for passing,
and guarding, the ferry or bridge over the Thames, and for
keeping up the direct communication between the more
northerly cities of Britain, and Rome. Or, the nearer proximity
to the large Continent, the better conditions for trade offered
by the wide estuary of the Thames, possibly account for
London's supremacy.
The early Roman city on this time honoured site, the poet-
ically named " Augusta," — that replaced the primitive British
village —flourished greatly in the early days of the Christian
era, and was large and populous ; though the Romans did not
consider it their capital, and never — we know not why — created
it a "municipium," like Fboracum (York), or Yerulamium. It
I THE CITY OF AUGUSTA 3
was founded sonic time after the visit of Julius Caesar to
Britain, i;.c. 54, and it occupied a good deal of the area of the
present Cit\\ extending, however, towards the east as far as the
Towxr, and bounded on the west by the present Newgate. The
old Roman fort stood above the Wallbrook. Here in old days
ran a stream of that name, long fouled, diverted, forgotten, and,
like the Fleet River, only now remembered by the name given
to its ancient haunt. The city of Augusta— or Londinium as
Tacitus calls it— has left us hardly a trace of its undoubted
splendour. In London, ever living, relics of the past are hard
to find. The lapse of centuries has deeply covered the old
Roman city level, and what Roman remains exist are generally
discovered, either in the muddy bed of the Thames, or at a
depth of some twelve to nineteen feet below the present street.
Of Roman London there is scarce a trace- a few meagre relics
in Museums, a few ancient roots of names still existing, an old
bath, traces of a crumbling wall, the fragment that we call
"London Stone," the locality of Leadenhall Market (undoubt-
edly an old " Forum "), and a portion of the old Roman Way of
"Watling Street' — the ancient highway from London to Dover
— running parallel with noisy Cannon Street.
All this seems, perhaps, little when we think of the undoubted
wealth and power of the old "Londinium," or "Augusta." But
it has always been the city's fate to have its Rast overgrown and
stilled by the enthralling energy and life of its Present. It is as
a hive that has never been emptied of its successive swarms.
This is. more or less, the fate of all towns that "live." The
Roman town was, of course, strongly walled, and the names of
its gates have descended to us in the present " Ludgate,"
"Moorgate," "Billingsgate," "Aid-ate." &c names very
familiar to us children of a later age — and now mainly
associated with the more prosaic stations on the Underground
Railway: Nevertheless, prosaic as they are, these stations
commemorate the old localities. Roman London was at no
time large in circumference, extending only from the Tower to
r. 2
4 SAXON AND NORMAN chap.
Aldgate on one side, from the Thames to London Wall on the
other. And when the Romans left, and the Saxons, after a
brief interval, took their place, the city still did not grow much
larger, nor did the blue-eyed and fair-haired invaders contribute
much to the decaying fortifications ; though it is said that King
Alfred — he whose " millenary " we have recently commemorated
— restored the walls and the city as a defence against the
ravages of the Danes. Saxon London, however, which in its
time flourished exceedingly, and existed for some 400 years, is,
so far as we are concerned, more dead even than Roman Lon-
don. Successive fire and ravage have obliterated all traces of
it. Norman London, which after the Conquest replaced Saxon
London, did not, apparently, differ greatly in externals from its
predecessor. The churches were now mainly built of stone,
but the picturesque houses were, as we know, despite successive
destroying fires, still constructed of wood. From Norman
London, we retain the " White Tower," — that picturesque
" keep " of London's ancient fortress —the crypt of Bow Church,
and that of St. John's, Clerkenwell, with part of the churches of
St. Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield, and St. Ethelburga,
Bishopsgate. Little escaped the many great fires that in early
times devastated the city.
As for the ancient highways of London, very possibly these
did not differ greatly in their course from our modern ones •
for the Anglo-Saxon race has always been very conservative in
rebuilding its new streets, regardless of symmetry or direct-
ness, on the lines of the destroyed ones. At any rate, we
know that the original church of St. Paul's— the first of three
built on this site, founded by Ethelbert about the year 610—
and that of Westminster- altered, rebuilt, and enlarged by
successive kings—must have early sanctified these spots, and
necessitated thoroughfares between the two. Nay, even in
Roman times, temples of Diana and Apollo are believed to have
adorned these historic sites. It is strange, indeed, that the
old, long-vanished Roman wall, pierced only by a few gates,
i ANCIENT HIGHWAYS 5
and the ancient street-plans laid down by the Roman road
surveyor, should still keep modern traffic more or less to the
old lines. A few new streets have recently been made from
north to south, but still the main traffic goes from east to west,
owing to the paucity of intersecting thoroughfares. The city
of London, as laid out in Roman times, remained, through
Saxon and Norman dominion, practically of the same extent
and plan as late as the time of Elizabeth, in whose reign there
were as many houses within the city walls as without them.
Roman influence is still dominant in modern London. The
large block of ground without carriage-way about Austin Friars
is a consequence of the old Roman wall having afforded no
passage. And possibly many of the narrow, jostling City streets
have in their day reflected the shade and sun of Roman
"insulas," each with its surrounding shops, just as, later, their
dimensions may have shrunk between the overhanging, high-
gabled houses of Tudor times, to widen again under the tall
Stuart palaces of the Restoration.
The high antiquity and conservatism of London are shown in
nothing more than in these narrow, crooked streets — streets so
different from those of any other big metropolis — streets that out-
American cousins, in all the superiority of their regular " block "
system, permit themselves to jeer at ! We know, however,
little for certain of the actual topography of London streets,
until the important publication of Ralph Aggas's map in 1563,
soon alter Elizabeth had begun to reign. This map of " Civitas
Londinium" is strange enough to look at in our own day. Its
main arteries are the same as ours : the ancient highway of the
Strand is still the Strand : those of " Chepe " and "Fleete" still
flourish: Oxford Street, then the " Oxford Road" and " The
Wave lo Oxbridge," ran between hedgerows and pastures, in
which, according to Aggas, grotesque beasts sported ; the
thoroughfare of the "Haj Market," —not yet, indeed, "a scene
of revelry by night," — curves between vast meadows, in one of
which ,t woman of gigantic size appears to be engaged in
I IK ".I I WAYS AND BYWAYS
CHAP.
spreading clothes to dry; Piccadilly, at what is now the " Circus,"
is merely called " The Waye to Redinge," and is innocently bor-
dered by trees. In these infantine beginnings of the now
J ■C/c.
Sandwich-board Men.
populous "West End," there are, indeed, occasional plots
occupied by " Mewes," but St. Martin's Church (then a small
chapel) stands literally "in the Fields," and St. Martin's Lane
is altogether rural. In a later map — one of the year 1610 — the
i PAST AM) PRESENT 7
main arteries are still the same ; but, though the town had
grown rapidly with the growth of commerce in Elizabeth's
reign, " London " and " Westminster " are still represented as
two small neighbouring towns surrounded by rural meadows ;
while "Totten-court " is a distant country village, Kensington
and " Marybone " are secluded hamlets, Clerkenwell and " St.
Gylles"are altogether divided from the parent city by fields,
and " Chelsey " is in the wilds.
It is strange that London fires— and London, in the middle
ages, was specially prolific in fires — have never altered the
course of the city's highways. Sir Christopher Wren wished,
indeed, after the Great Fire of 1666, to be allowed to alter
tin: plan of the desolated town and make it more sym-
metrically regular: with all due admiration of his genius, one
cannot, however, help feeling a certain thankfulness that destiny
averted his schemes, and that in the prosaic London of our
own day we can still trace the splendour, the romance of its
past. Thus, even in the grimy city "courts" we can still
imagine a Roman "impluvium," or the ancient gardens of
Plantagenet palaces ; in the blind alleys of " Little Britain," the
splendours of the merchants' mansions ; in the ugly lines of
mews and slums, the limits of the vanished Norman convent
closes. The boundaries are still there, though nearly all else
has gone. For, though Londoners are generally conservative
with regard to their chief sites and the lines of their streets,
they have, so far as their great buildings are concerned, always
been by nature iconoclastic. Not that we of the present day
need give ourselves any airs in this matter. Although, indeed,
for the last half-century the spirit of antiquarian veneration has
been abroad, yel the great majority of Londoners are hardly
affected by it, and the pulling down of ancient buildings con-
tinues almost as gaily as ever at the pies, '111 day. It may be
said that we pull down for utilitarian reasons ; well, SO did our
forefathers ; Londoners have always been practical. Religious
zeal may occasionally have served to whet their destructive
MEDIAEVAL ICONOCLASM
CHAT,
powers, but the results are pretty much the same. Perhaps
Henry VIII. — that Bluebeard head of the Church and State —
has, in his general dissolution of the monasteries and alienation
of their property, been the greatest iconoclast in English annals ;
yet even he must have been nearly equalled by the Lord Pro-
tector Cromwell, whose Puritanical train wrought so much
havoc among London's monuments of a later age. Reforms
and improvements, all through the world's history, have always
been cruelly destructive. For, while churches and palaces
were destroyed as relics of Popery, while works of art were
demolished, and frescoes whitewashed in reforming zeal, fresh
life was always sprouting, fresh energy ever filling up gaps, ever
obliterating the traces of the past, the relics of the older time.
Sir Walter Besant, in his picturesque and vivid sketch of
English history, has realised well for us the city's past life : —
" It is (he says of the Reformation) at first hard to understand how there
should have been, even among the baser sort, so little reverence for the
past, so little regard for art ; that these treasure-houses of precious marbles
and rare carvings should have been rifled and destroyed without raising so
much as a murmur : nay, that the very buildings themselves should have
been pulled down without a protest. ... It seems to us impossible that the
tombs of so many worthies should have been destroyed without the indig-
nation of all who knew the story of the past. . . . Vet ... it is un-
fortunately too true that there is not, at any time or with any people,
reverence for things venerable, old, and historical, save with a few. The
greater part are careless of the past, unable to see or feel anything but the
present. . . . The parish churches were filled with ruins, ... the past
was gone . . . The people lived among the ruins but regarded them not,
any more than the vigorous growth within the court of a roofless Norman
castle regards the donjon and the walls. They did not inquire into the
history of the ruins ; they did not want to preserve them ; they took away
the stones and sold them for new buildings."
Vet, though in London's history there were, as we have
seen, occasional great upheavals, such as the Reformation, the
hires, the Protectorate, it was more the rule of change that
went on unceasingly between whiles— change, such as we see
it to-day, the incessant beat of the waves on the shore— that
i THE OLD AGE AND THE NEW 9
has obliterated the former time. "The old order changeth,
giving place to new"; and strange indeed it is, when one
comes to think of it, that anything at all should be left to
show what has been. The monasteries, the priories, the
churches, that once occupied the greater portion of the city,
and filled it with the clanging of their bells, so that the city
was never quiet — these, of course, had mainly to go. The
Church had to make way for Commerce ; the Monasteries for
the Merchants. The London of the early Tudors was still
more or less that of Chaucer, and contained the same Friars,
1'ardoners, and Priests. The paramount importance of the
Church is shown by the old nursery legends that circle round
Bow bells ; and the picturesque figure of Whittington, the
future Lord Mayor, listening, in rags and dust, to the cheering
church bells that tell him to " turn again," is really the con-
necting link between the Old and the New Age.
A few of the great monastic foundations of London escaped
Henry VIII. 's acquisitive zeal, and have, as modern school-
boys have reason to know, been devoted to educational and
other charitable aims. It was, indeed, eminently suitable that
in the classic precincts of the ruined monastery of the "(in \
Friars" should arise a great school— the School of Christ's
Hospital (colloquially tinned the " Blue-Coat School ") — win re,
till but the other day, the "young barbarians" might be seen
at play behind their iron barriers, backed by the fine old
whitely-gleaming, buttressed hall that faces Newgate Street.
It was fitting, too, that the earl)- dwelling of the English
Carthusian monks the place where Prior Houghton, with all
the Staunchness ol his race, met death rather than cede to the
tyrant one jot of his ancient right should become not only a
great educational foundation, but also a shelter for the aged
and the poor. We know it as the " Charterhouse " 1 as a
picturesque, rambling building of sobered redbrick, built
around many court-yards, its principal entrance under an
archway that faces the quiet Charterhouse Square. Hie place
IO THE SURPRISES OF LONDON chap.
has a monastic atmosphere still ; to those, at least, who reve-
rently tread its closes and byways— byways hallowed yet more
by inevitable association with the sacred shade of Thomas
Newcome ; shadow of a shade, indeed ! fiction stronger, and
more enduring, than reality !
Yet the Charterhouse is, so to speak, an " insula " by itself
in London, a world of its own ; possessing an ancient sanctity
undisturbed by the neighbouring din of busy Smithfield, the
unending bustle of the great city. More essentially of Lon-
don is the curious unexpectedness of buildings, places, and
associations. What is so strange to the inexperienced
wanderer among London byways is the manner in which bits
of ancient garden, fragments of old, forgotten churchyards,
isolated towers of destroyed churches, deserted closes, courts
and slums of wild dirt and no less wild picturesqueness,
suddenly confront the pedestrian, recalling incongruous ideas,
and historical associations puzzling in their very wealth of
entangled detail. The " layers " left by succeeding eras are
thinly divided ; and the study of London's history is as
difficult to the neophyte as that of the successive " layers " of
the Roman Forum.
It is sometimes refreshing to note that, even in the City and
in our own utilitarian day, present beauty has not been altogether
lost sight of. There is in modern London, as a French
writer lately remarked, " no street without a church and a
tree " ; this is especially true of the City, where, even in
crowded Cheapside, the big plane-tree of Wood Street still
towers over its surrounding houses, hardly more than a stone's
throw from the shadow cast by the white steeple of St. Mary-
le-Bow, glimmering in ghostly grace above the busy street.
So busy indeed is the street, that hardly a pedestrian stays to
notice either church or tree ; yet is there a more beautiful
highway than this in all London ? It is satisfactory to reflect
—when one thinks of the accusation brought against us that
we are "a nation of shopkeepers " —on what this one big
IN THE CITY
1 1
plane-tree costs a year in mere lodging ! Wandering northward
from Cheapside down any of the crowded City lanes with
their romantic names, through the mazes of drays and waggons
—where porters shout over heavy bales, and pulleys hang from
upper "shoots"'— you may find, in a sudden turn, small oases
12
ST. GILES, CRIPPLEGATE
CHAP,
of quiet green churchyard gardens — for some unexplained
reason spared from the prevailing strenuosity of bricks and
mortar —where wayfarers rest on comfortable seats, provided by
metropolitan forethought, from daily toil. In these secluded
haunts are many spots that will amply reward the sketcher.
Specially charming in point of colour are the gardens of St.
Giles, Cripplegate ; these, though closed to the general public,
are overlooked and traversed by quiet alleys, affording most
welcome relief from the surrounding din of traffic. Here sun-
flowers and variegated creepers show out bravely in autumn
against the blackened mass of the tall adjoining warehouses,
whence a picturesque bastion of the old " London Wall " pro-
jects into the greenery, and the church of St. Giles, with its
dignified square tower, dominates the whole. The author of
The Hand of Ethelberta has, in that novel, paid graceful
homage to the church and its surroundings. The little bit of
vivid colour in the sunny churchyard (it is part rectory garden,
and is divided by a public path since 1878), affords a standing
rebuke to the unbelievers who say gaily that " nothing will
grow " in London. A delightful byway, indeed, is this parish
church of Cripplegate ! Its near neighbourhood shows, by
the way, hardly a trace of the disastrous fire it so lately
experienced. From the corner of the picturesque " Aerated
Bread Shop " —of all places — that abuts on to the church, a
delightful view of all this may be had. This ancient lath-and-
plaster building will, no doubt, in time be compelled to give
way to some abnormally hideous new construction, but at the
present day it is all that could be wished ; and, though so close
to the hum of the great city, so quiet withal, that the visitor
may, for the nonce, almost imagine himself in some sleepy
country village. And thus it is in many unvisited nooks in the
busy City. '"The world forgetting, by the world forgot," is
truer of these byways than of many more rural places. For the
eddies of a big river are always quieter than the main stream of
a small canal. In the world, yet not of it, are, too, these
i THE FALL OF THE MONASTERIES 13
strangely old-fashioned rectories, sandwiched in between tall,
overhanging city warehouses.
But the sprinkling of old churches, with their odd, abbrevi-
ated churchyards, that are still to be found amid the busy life
of the < ii\ of London, hardly does more than faintly recall that
picturesque and poetic time when the church and the convent
were pre-eminent. The great temporal power of the Church
in •London, that held sway during long centuries, is vanished,
forgotten, supplanted as if it had never been. Do the very names
of Blackfriars and Whitefriars suggest, for instance, to us, "the
latest seed of time," anything more than the shrieking of railway
terminuses, or the incessant din of printing machines? For,
while the memory of the " Grey Friars " and that of the
( larthusians is still honoured and kept green in the dignified
"foundations" of Christ's Hospital and of the Charterhouse,—
theord rs ol the " White " and " Black " Friars, of the Carmel-
and the stern Dominicans, have descended to baser and
more worldly uses. Destroyed at the Reformation, its riches
alienated, its glory departed, the splendid Abbey Church of the
Dominicans came to be used as a storehouse for the "pro-
perties " of pageants ; " strange fate," says Sir Walter Besant,
" for the house of the Dominicans, those austere ' upholders of
doctrine' ' For the dwelling of the "Carmelites," or "White
Friars," an Order of " Mendicants " these, another destiny
waited a destiny for long lying unfolded in the bosom of our
" wondrous mother-age." Mysterious irony ol Fate! that where
the Carmelite monks, in their Norman apse, prayed and
laboured ; where the Mendicant Friars wandered to and fro in
the echoing cloister, the thunder of the printing-press should have
made its home :
" There rolls the deep where grew the tn
( • earth, what changes hast thou seen !
There, where the long street roars, hath been
Tin- stillness "
— The "Daily Mail Young Man" that smart product ol a
H
THE NEW ORDER OE MENDICANTS
CHAP.
later age — has now his home in Carmelite Street; the "White-
friars' Club " is a press club ; the gigantic machines that print
the world's news shake the foundations of St. Bride's ; and the
shabby hangers-on of Fleet Street — though of a truth, poor
fellows, often near allied to mendicants — are yet, it is to be
feared, only involuntarily of an ascetic turn. The contrast — or
likeness — has served to awaken one of Carlyle's most thunderous
passages : "A Preaching Friar," — (he says), — "builds a pulpit,
which he calls a newspaper :
"Look well" (he continues), — -" thou seest everywhere a new Clergy of
the Mendicant Orders, some bare-footed, some almost bare-backed, fashion
itself into shape, and teach and preach, zealously enough, for copper alms
and the love of Cod."
Carlyle, apparently, nursed an old grudge against the press, —
for this is not the only occasion when he fulminates against the
new order of Mendicants. The theatres, also, that succeeded the
monasteries of Blackfriars were, here too, supplanted by the
Press ; under Printing-House-Square only lately, an extension
of the Times Office brought to light substantial remains.
But the Church was not the only mediaeval beautifier of
London ; as her temporal power and splendour waned, — the
splendour of the merchants grew and flourished. For the great
supplanter of the power of the Church was, as already hinted,
the power of the City Companies. These immense trades-unions
began to rise in the fourteenth century, when the old feudal
system gave way to the civic community ; — and they increased
greatly in strength after the dissolution of the Monasteries.
These companies incorporated each trade, and had supreme
powers over wages, hours of labour, output, &c. In the begin-
ning they were, like everything else, partly religious, each com-
pany or " guild " having its patron saint and its special place
of worship ; — the Merchant Taylors, for instance, being called
the "Guild of St. John";— the Grocers, the "Guild of St.
Anthony " ; while St. Martin protected the saddlers, and so on.
These guilds in time receiving Royal charters, became very rich
i THE CITY COMPANIES 15
and powerful, till the year 1363 there were already thirty-two
companies whose laws and regulations had been approved by
the king. If any transgressed these laws, they were brought
before the Mayor and Aldermen. We have still the Mayor and
Aldermen, but the city companies (whose principal function
was the apprenticing of youths to trades), have merely the
shadow of their former authority, and their business is now
mainly charitable, ceremonial, and culinary. Yet though their
powers are diminished, their splendid " halls " are still among
the most interesting " sights " of the City. Visits to these
massive and solid palaces, some of them of great splendour, and
rising like pearls among their often (it must be confessed) un-
savoury surroundings, give a good idea of the immense wealth
of those mediaeval merchant princes, and help the stranger to
realize the strength of that power that was able to resist the
attempts of kings to break its charter. Such sturdy independ-
ence, such insistence on her civic rights, has always been a
main element of London's greatness.
I have only touched at the mere abstract of London's
voluminous history, — only enumerated a poor few of her
Highways and Byways ; the subject, in truth, is too great to
exhaust even in a whole library of books. It is, indeed, the
principal drawback to the study of London that she is too vast
that the student is ever in danger of "not seeing the forest
for the trees.' Her byways are as the sands of the sea in
multitude : her history is the history of the world. It is,
perhaps, better that the stranger to the metropolis should take
in hand a small portion at a time,— and try to grasp that
thoroughly, than lose himself in an intricate maze of
buildings and associations. To read the history of London
aright, -to see ami feel in London stones all that can he seen
ami felt, requires not only untiring energy, hut also knowledge,
sympathy, intuition, patriotism, one and all combined. To
know London re. illy well, one should gain an intimate acquaint-
ance with her from day to day, not being contented with the
i6
A LONDON HIGHWAY
CHAP.
common and well-known ways, but ever penetrating into fresh
haunts. From all the great highways of London, from the
Strand, Fleet Street, Piccadilly, Holbom, Oxford Street, con-
Jr^cvt
// hen the Strand is up
venient excursions may be made into the surrounding neigh-
bourhood : which often, in different parts of London, is, so far
as inhabitants, appearance, manners and customs go, really
I THE RESOURCES OF LONDON 17
a complete and distinct city by itself. Does not " Little
Britain " differ widely from its neighbouring Clerkenwell ? Soho
as widely from its adjacent Bloomsbury ? and the immaculate
Mayfair from the more doubtful Bayswater? Who does not
ncall what Disraeli— that born aristocrat in his tastes — said of
the people who frequent the plebeian, though charming,
Regent's Park ?
"The Duke of St. James's," (he says),—" took his way to the Regent's
Park, a wild sequestered spot, whither he invariably repaired when he did
no) wish in be noticed; for the inhabitants of this pretty suburb are a
distinct race, and although their eyes are not unobserving, from their
inability to speak the language of London they are unable to communicate
their observations."
So far from being merely one town, London is really a
hundred townlets amalgamated. The visitor can there find
everything that he wants ; he must, however, know exactly
what it is that he wants to find. 1 )oes he desire to see pictures ?
many galleries of priceless works of art are within a stone's
throw, free, ready, waiting only to be seen ; does he
prefer realism and lilt'? the '"street markets" of Leather Lane
and of Cioodge Street are instinct with all possible types of
humanity; does he yearn for peaceful solitude, historic
association? the quiet nooks of the Temple invite him ; is it
solitary study that his soul craves? the immense library of the
British Museum offers him all its treasures ; does he merely
wish to perambulate vaguely ? even the prosaic Oxford Street
presents a very kaleidoscope of human life. Nevertheless, in
his perambulations, the wanderer should receive a word of
warning : let him beware of asking for local information (save
indeed, it he of a policeman), lor two reasons. Firstly,
because no born Londoner of the great middle class ever
knows, except l>v the merest accident, anything whatever about
his near neighbourhood ; and. secondly, because if he do get
an answer, he is morally certain to be misdirected. The
wanderer should always start on his expeditions with a distinct
1
18 THE VARIETY OF THE STREETS chap.
plan in his own mind of the special itinerary he wishes to
adopt, — be that itinerary Mr. Hare's, or any other man's, — and
he should never allow himself to be drawn off from it to
another tangent. Even this crowded highway of Oxford
Street, " stony-hearted stepmother," old gallows-road, passing
from Newgate Street to Tyburn Tree, and bearing so many
different names in its course, — beginning, as "Holbom," in
City stress and turmoil, intersecting the very centre of fashion at
the Marble Arch, and continuing as the " Uxbridge Road," to
High Street, Notting Hill, — passes through all sorts and con-
ditions of men and things. Tottenham Court Road, that glar-
ing, fatiguing thoroughfare, which through all its phases ever
" remains sordid, sunlight serving to reveal no fresh beauties
in it, nor gaslight to glorify it," begins in comparative honour
in New Oxford Street, to descend through bustle and racket
to the noisy taverns and purlieus of the Euston Road. That
sylvan village and manor of"Toten Court," where city folk
repaired in old days for " cakes and creame," seems far enough
away now ! Fenchurch Street, — or rather its continuation Aid-
gate Street, — as it merges into the long " Whitechapel Road,"
becomes more and more dreary; not even its soft-gliding,
cushioned tram-cars lending enchantment to the depressing
scene. Waterloo Road and Blackfriars Road, " over the water,"
as they trend southwards pass through strange and often
unsavoury purlieus. Every district has its special idiosyn-
crasies. Piccadilly and St. James's are always aristocratic.
Pall Mall has a severe and solid dignity ; while the Strand
and its continuation, the narrow and tortuous Fleet Street,
are instinct with ancient honour and literary association.
Yet, even here, if the visitor have not the "seeing eye" that
discerns the past through the present, he may "walk from
Dan to Beersheba and find all barren."
The great charm, however, of London lies in its unsuspected
courts and byways. From most of these big thoroughfares
you may be transported, with hardly more than a step, into
I SUdCKSTED ITINERARIES 19
picturesque nooks of sudden and almost startling silence, or,
rather, cessation from din. All who know and love London
will recall this. From busy Holborn to the aloofness of quiet
Staple Inn, with its still, collegiate air, what a change from
the turmoil of Fleet Street to the closes of little Clifford Inn,
with its old-world, forgotten air. From High Street, Kensing-
ton, too, that town with all the air of a smart suburb, how
many (harming excursions may not be made on Campden Hill
and in Holland Park — a neighbourhood full of artistic and
literary charm. In Westminster, what quiet, secluded nooks,
and green closes, abound for the sketcher, and how lovely are
the gardens of the (keen Park and St. James's Park, bordered
by the stately palaces of St. James's, and the picturesque
houses of Queen Anne's (late. And all along the river
embankment, from U'estminster to the Tower, are interesting
Str< ets and nooks full of historic and literary association. The
embankment, running, at first, parallel with the noisy Strand ;
reaching classic ground in the quiet Temple, by that garden
where the "red and white rose" first started their bloody
rivalry, becomes then muddy and uncared for before the
newspaper land of Whitefriars ; beyond, again, are blackened
wharves, which gradually degenerate into the terrible and
utterly indescribable fishiness of Billingsgate, and unpoetii
Thames Street! Then, the "Surrey side" of the river,-
Southwark and Chaucer's Inns, or what yet remains of them, —
would form several delightful excursions ; to say nothing of the
Tower, with its innumerable historic associations,— and, perhaps,
a visit to Greenwich in summer time. The old churches of
the City would, as I have hinted, take many days to explore
thoroughly; the Holborn and Strand Inns of Court and of
Chancery, especially the Temple and Staple Inn, should be
known and studied well : nothing can exceed the charm of
these quiet and secluded "haunts of ancient peace."
Space, however, is limited; I have now said enough to
give some idea, even to the uninitiated, of London's main
C 2
20
THE CULT OF LONDON
CHAP.
highways and byways, with their suggestions and associations.
Yet one word of caution I would add : London must be
approached with reverence ; her cult is a growth of years,
rather than a sudden acquisition. And the love of London
stones, once acquired, never leaves the devotee. Whether he
walk blissfully through Fleet Street with Johnson and Gold-
smith, linger by the Temple fountain with Charles Lamb or
Dickens, or traverse the glades of Kensington Gardens with
Addison and Steele, " where'er he tread is haunted, holy
ground." Here, on Tower Hill, once stood spikes supporting
ghastly heads of so-called " traitors " ; there, at Smithfield,
were burned numberless martyrs. Even the London mud has
its poetic associations. We may all tread the same road as
that once trodden by Rossetti and Keats ; strange road :
" Miring his outward steps who inly trode
The bright Castalian brink and Latinos' steep."
Yes, the love of London grows on the constant Londoner.
He will not be long happy away from the comforting hum of the
busy streets, from the mighty pulse of the machine. In absence
his heart will ever fondly turn to " streaming London's central
roar," to the spot where, more than anywhere else, he may
be at once the inheritor of all the ages.
How interesting would it be if one could only — by the aid of
some Mr. Wells's "Time Machine " —take a series of flying
leaps backward into the abysm of time ! Strange to imagine
the experience ! beauty, one reflects, might be gained at nearly
every step, at the expense, alas ! of sanitary conditions, know-
ledge, and utility. Let us, for a moment, imagine how the
thing would be. . . . First, in a few rapid revolutions of the
wheel, would disappear the hideous criss-cross of electric wires
overhead, the ugly tangle of suburban tram-lines, and the
greater part of the hideous modern growth of suburbs. . . .
Another whirl of the machine, and every sign of a railway
station would disappear, every repulsive engine shed and siding
I THE "TIME MACHINE" 21
vanish . . . while the dull present-day rumble of the
metropolis would give place to a more indescribably acute and
agonising medley of sound. . . . Again a little while, and
the hideous early Victorian buildings would disappear, making
way for white Stuart facades, or sober red-brick Dutch palaces.
. . . With yet a few more revolutions, the metropolis will
shrink into inconceivably small dimensions, and the atmosphere
of the city, losing its peculiar blue-grey mist, will gradually
brighten and clear— a radiance, unknown to us children of a
later day— diffusing itself over the glistening towers and domes,
no longer blackened, but gleaming, Venetian-like, in the Tudor
sunlight. . . . The aspect of the river too has changed ; no more
ugly steamers, but an array of princely barges deck its waters,
gay with the bright dresses of ladies and gallants. . . . Its solid
embankments have crumbled to picturesque overgrown mud
banks, its many bridges shrunk to one ; the little separate towns
of " London " and " Westminster " presenting now more the
appearance <>f rambling villages, adorned by some palaces and
churches. . . . Another turn of the machine, and lo ! the impos-
ing facades that adorned the Strand have in their turn given wax-
to picturesque rows and streets of overhanging gabled houses
with blackened cross-beams, their quaint projecting windows
almost meeting over the narrow streets . . . stony streets with
their crowds of noisy, jostling, foot-passengers. . . . Again a
Ion- pause . . . and now the scene changes to Roman London,
the ancient " Augusta,'' with its powerful walls, its slave ships
and pinnaces, its mailed warriors, ever in arms against the blue-
eyed Sa\on marauders. Then a final interval— and we see
the primitive British village, its mud huts erected by the kindly
shores of our " Father Thames," their smoke peacefully rising
heavenwards above the surrounding marshes and lorests.
Waterloo Bridge
m
CHAPTER II
THE RIVER
" Above the river in which the miserable perish and on which the
fortunate grow rich, runs the other tide whose flood leads on to fortune,
whose sources are in the sea empire, and which debouches in the lands of
the little island ; above the river of the painters and poets, winding through
the downs and meadows of the rarest of cultivated landscape out to the
reaches where the melancholy sea breeds its fogs and damp east winds, is
that of the merchant and politician, having its springs in the uttermost
parts of the earth, and pouring out its golden tribute on the lands whence
the other steals its drift and ooze." — W.J. Stillman.
" Above all rivers, thy river hath renowne. . . .
O ! towne of townes, patrone and not compare,
London, thou art the Flour of Cities all."— Dunbar.
No one, be he very Londoner indeed, has ever seen the
great city aright, or in the true spirit, if he have not made the
CH. ii rHE APPROACH TO LONDON 23
journey by river at least as far as from Chelsea to the Tower
Bridge. From even such a commonplace standpoint as the
essentially prosaic Charing Cross Railway Bridge some idea can
be gained of the misty glory of this highway of the Nations.
It is indeed, often one of these condemned approaches to
London that give the traveller the best idea of the vast and
multitudinous city. London railway approaches are often
abused, even anathematized, yet surely nowhere is the curious
picturesqueness of railways so proved as by the impressive
approach to Charing Cross Station, across the mighty river.
Here, at nightfall, all combines to aid the general effect; the
mysterious darkness, the twinkling lights of the Embankment,
reflected in the dancing waters, and cleansed by the white
moonlight. What approach such as this can Paris offer?
But, if the traveller be wise, he will soon seek to supplement
such initiatory views by pilgrimages on his own account, pil-
grimages und< rtaken in all reverence, up and down the stream.
I or, whatever Mr. Gladstone may have said of the omnibus as
a mode of seeing London, may be reiterated more forcibly as
regards the deck of a penny steamer. It is the fashion to call
London ugly ; Cobbett nicknamed it "the great wen"; Grant Allen
has railed it "a squalid village " ; and Mme. de Stael "a province
in brick." Yet. how full of dignity and beauty is the city through
which this wide, turbid river rolls ! — " the slow Thames," says a
French writer, "always grey as a remembered reflection of
wintry skies." Here, by day, hangs that veiling blue mist,
which is the combined product of London fog and soot, adding
all the indescribable charm of mystery to the scene ; and, as
twilight thaws on, the grand old buildings loom up, vaguely
dark, against the sky, their added blackness of soot giving a
suggestion as of solidity and antiquity; that poetic time of
twilight, "when," a- Mr. Whistler puts it.
" Tin- evening misl clothes the riverside with poetry, as with a veil, ami
the poor I milling- lo>e themselves in the dim sls>. and (In- tall chimn
24 OUR "FATHER THAMES" chap.
become campanili, and the warehouses are palaces in the night, and the
whole city hangs in the heavens, and fairyland is before us."
At night, the scene changes : the vast Embankment shines
with lamps all a-glitter, and behind them the myriad and deceit-
ful " lights of London " twinkle like a magician's enchanted
palace.
And it is altogether in the fitness of things that the river
should be both introduction and entrance gate, so to speak, of
modern London. For it is the river, it is our " Father
Thames," indeed, that has made London what it is. In our
childhood we used to learn in dull geography books, as insep-
arable addition to the name of any city, that it was " situated "
on such-and-such a river ; facts that we then saw little interest
in committing to memory, but, nevertheless vastly important ;
how important, we see from this city of London. For London
is, and was, primarily a seaport. In Sir Walter Besant's inter
esting pages may be read the story of the early settlers — Briton,
Roman, Saxon, Norman — who successively founded their
infant settlements on this marshy site, and had here their
primitive wharves, quays, and trading ships for hides, cattle, and
merchandise. It is the river, more than anything else, that re-
calls the past history of London. For London, ever increasing,
ever rebuilt, has buried most of her eventful past in an oblivion
far deeper than that of Herculaneum. Nothing destroys
antiquity like energy ; nothing blots out the old like the new.
London, ever rising, like the phoenix, from her own ashes, has
by the intense vitality of her " to-days " always obliterated her
" yesterdays." It is only in dead or sleeping towns that the
ashes of the past can be preserved in their integrity, and Lon-
don has ever been intensely alive. Yet, gazing on the silvery
flow of the river, we can imagine the Roman embankment, the
hanging gardens, that once stretched from St. Paul's to the
Tower; the Roman city, with its forums and basilicas, that
once crowned prosaic Ludgate Hill — Roman pinnace, Briton
coracle, Saxon ship, Tudor vessel— we can see them all in their
II
"PENNY STEAMERS" 25
t urn — crowned by the spectacle of Queen Elizabeth in her
gaily hung state barge, with her royal procession ; or, in more
mournful key, her body, on its death canopy- a barge " black
as a funeral scarf from stern to stem," on that sad occasion
whin
" The Queen did come by water to Whitehall.
The oars at every stroke did teares let fall."
If in the crowded day of London with the shouting of bargees,
the whistle of steam tugs, and the puffing of the smoke belching
trains overhead, indulgence in such dreams is well-nigh im-
possible, in the mysterious night, when the slow misty moon
of London climbs, it is easy, even from an alcove of Waterloo
Bridge, to indulge the fancies of
" That inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude."
The so-called' - penny steamers" of London, which run,
during the- summer months, at very cheap rates between Lon-
don Bridge and Chelsea, form the best way of seeing and
appreciating the vast city. For those who do not mind rather
ontact with "the masses'' braying accordions, jostling
fish porters, sticky little boys, and other inseparable adjuncts of
a crowd whose "coats are corduroy and hands are shrimpy "
this mode of becoming acquainted with London will be found
very satisfactory. The ways of the said steamers are often, it is
true, somewhat erratic ; yet if, on a warm June day, the stranger
down to the river in faith, his expectancy will generally be
rewarded. Up comes the pulling, creaky little tug, making the
tiny landing stage vibrate with the sudden shock of contact ;
tlvre is an immediate rush to embark, and, on a line day, you
are, at first, happy if you get standing room. ( 'ruikshank's
pictures, Dickens's sketches how suggestive of these is the
mode;, crowd oi faces that line the boat, laces on which the
eternal " struggle for life" has printed lines, as it may be, of
carking care, of blatant self-satisfaction, of crime and degra
26 TURNER AND CHELSEA chap.
dation. To quote William Blake, the poet-painter,— a Londoner,
too, of the Londoners :
" I wander through each chartered street
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe."
The fine, broad Chelsea reach of the river, looking up to-
wards Fulham from the Albert chain-bridge, is wonderfully
picturesque. Here, especially on autumn nights, may be seen
in all their splendour the brilliant sunsets that Turner loved to
paint, and that, propped up on his pillow, he turned his dying
eyes to see. The ancient and unassuming little riverside house
where Turner spent his last days is still standing ; but its tenure
is uncertain, and it may soon vanish. It stands (as No. 119) —
towards the western end of Cheyne Walk - the walk that begins
in the east so magnificently, and decreases, as regards its man-
sions, in size and splendour as it approaches the old historic
red-brick church of Chelsea. Yet, small as Turner's riverside
abode is, it is more celebrated than any of its neighbours, for
it was here that the greatest landscape painter of our time lived.
Here, along the shores of the river, flooded at eve " with waves
of dusky gold," the shabby old man with such wonderful gifts
used to wander in search of the skies and effects he loved ; here
he was hailed by cheeky street arabs, as " Puggy Booth" (the
legend of the neighbourhood being that he was a certain retired
and broken down old " Admiral Booth "). Here he sat on the
railed in house roof to see the sun rise over the river, and here,
when too weak to move, his landlady used to wheel his chair
towards the window that he might see the skies he so loved.
" The Sun is God," were almost his last words. Thus, he who
as a boy of Maiden Lane had spent his early years on the river
near London Bridge — by the Pool of London, with its wharves
and shipping — died, faithful to his early loves, in a small
Chelsea riverside cottage. The row of irregular riverside
ii RIVER MISTS AND SOOT 27
houses, of which Turner's cottage is one, becomes more palatial
lower down, across Oakley Street. In summer, what more
lovely than the view from these houses, over the shining
( 'helsea reach, towards the feathery greenness of distant Batter-
sea Park ? a view which, even beyond the park limits, not even
the too-conspicuous sky-signs or factory chimneys on the
further shore can altogether abolish or destroy. So many
things in London, ugly in themselves, are lent "a glory by their
being far" ; and even Messrs. Doulton's factory chimneys, seen
through the blue-grey river mist, have, like St. Pancras Station,
often the air of some gigantic fortress. This same blue-grey
mist of London, especially near the river, is rarely ever entirely
absent. Chemists may tell you that it is merely carbon, a pro
duct of the soot, but what does that matter? In its own place
and way it is beautiful. The heresy has before now hem
ventured, that London would not be half so picturesque if it
were cleaner ; and from the river this fact is driven home more
than ever to the lover of the beautiful. Blackened wharves,
that through the dimmed light take on all the air of " magic
casements," - great bridges, invisible till close at hand, tint
loom down suddenly on the passing steamer with the roar of
many (Vet, a rattle of many wheels, a rumble of many trains ;
vast ( 'haring-Cross vaguely seen overhead - immense, grandiose.
darkening all the stream ; the Venetian white tower of Si.
Magnus, gleaming all at once before blackened St. Paul's ; and,
most popular of all London views, the tall Clock Tower of the
Mouses of Parliament, with its long terraced wall, reflecting its
shining lines in the broad waters. As ivy and creepers adorn
a building, so does the respectable grime of ages clothe London
stones as with a garment of beauty.
The "respectable grime of ages" can hardly however be
said yet to cover the newest Picture Gallery <>l London.
glimmering ghostlike by the waterside. Sir Henry Tate's
magnificent and splendidly housed gift, which rises whitely,
like some Greek Temple of Victory, amid the dirty, ding)
28 THE TATE GALLERY chap.
wharves, and generally slummy surroundings of the debatable
ground that divides the river-frontages of Pimlico and West-
minster. The changes of Time are curious. Here, where
once stood Millbank Penitentiary, now rises a stately Palace
adorned by pillars, porticoes and statues; wherein are
enshrined some of the nation's most precious treasures, all
the master-pieces of the modern school of English Art. Sir
Henry Tate, a " merchant prince " of whom the country may
well be proud, was a large sugar refiner, and we owe this
imposing building, with a large part of its contents, to those
uninspiring wooden boxes, so familiar to us for so many years
back, labelled " Tate's Cube Sugar."
The interior of the Tate Gallery (its proper denomination
is, I believe, "the National Gallery of British Art,") is very
delightfully planned. A pretty fountain fills the central hall
of the gallery under the dome; an adornment as refreshing
as it is unexpected. For London, the home of riches, is
strangely niggardly with her fountains. Yet Rome, the city of
fountains, had to bring all her water for many miles, and over
endless aqueducts ! The immediate riverside surroundings of
the Tate Gallery are, as described, hardly grandiose ; yet the
timber-wharves and stone-cutters' sheds that here share the
muddy banks with the ubiquitous tribe of London " Mudlarks,"
are not without their picturesque " bits." Old boats sometimes
reach here their final uses ; and even portions of old derelicts,
like the " Te'me'raire," often find their way here at last. Witness
advertisements like the following :
Fires. — Logs of old oak and ship timber, from Old Navy ships broken
up, in suitable sizes, for sitting-room use, so famous for beautifully coloured
flames, can only be obtained from the ship breaking yard of Baltic
Wharf, Millbank, S.W.
It is, however, only the wharves and the mudlarks that are
visible from the river itself; for the quaint gates of these
timber-yards, opening on to the Grosvenor Road, and sur-
n THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT 29
mounted by their " signs " in the shape of ghostly white figure-
heads — the figure-heads of real ships— are only visible to those
who make their way along this mysterious region by land.
These colossal creatures, indeed, projecting often far into the
road, pull up the pedestrian with such alarming and human
suddenness that it would surely require, in the uninitiated, a
Strong mind and a good conscience to travel this way alone on
a dark night.
The keynote of London is ever its close juxtaposition of
splendour and misery, " velvet and rags." Therefore, after
skirting the shore of Millbank, it strikes the Londoner as
quite natural, and in the usual order ol things, that he should
suddenly and without any preface find his vessel gliding, in an
abrupt hush, underneath the terrace wall of the most well-
known and most be photographed edifice in London ; under the
high vertical wall, with its softly lapping waters, that guards the
terrace of the Houses of Parliament. Classic retreat, where
none but the specially bidden may enter! The great towers,
with the vast building they surmount, darken, for a moment,
all the stream by the intense shadow they cast, to mirror
themselves anew in charming proportion as we descend the
Stream and they recede.
Exactly opposite the Houses of Parliament are those
curious seven-times-repeated red brick projections of St.
Thomas's Hospital, which are so prominent an object from the
L'errace, that a fair American visitor, while taking her tea
there, is said to have once innocently inquired : "Are those
the mansions of your aristocracy?" Mr. Hare unkindly
suggests that their chief ornament, a "row of hideous urns
upon the parapet, seems waiting for the ashes of the patients
inside.''
A little higher, on the Surrey side, is the historic Lambeth
Palace, for nearly sewn hundred years the residence of the
Archbishops of < Canterbury :
■ Lambeth, envy ol each band and gown,"
30 LAMBETH PALACE chap.
says Pope truly. But the gifts of Fortune are, alas ! seldom
ungrudging ; and, sad thought ! by the time the poor Arch-
bishops have reached the zenith of fame and comfort in their
Lambeth paradise, their multifarious duties must effectually
prevent their ever having time thoroughly to enjoy their
"garden of peace." It is a lovely home, and commands
perfect views. Quite Venetian-like, when night's canopy has
fallen, do the lights of Westminster Palace appear from the
Lambeth shore ; the lighted Tower, which proclaims to all the
world the fact that Parliament is sitting, reflected like a solitary
full moon in the dark transparency of the waters. Lambeth
Palace is, indeed, a charming spot, both for its views up and
clown the river and for its associations. In all its squareness
of darkened red brick, it is very picturesque ; the gateway
with its Tudor arch, the chapel, and the so-called " Lollards'
Tower," are, besides being historically interesting, fine subjects
for an artist. At the gateway an ancient custom is observed :
"At this gate the dole immemorially given to the poor by the Arch-
bishops of Canterbury is constantly distributed. It consists of fifteen
quartern loaves, nine stone of beef, and five shillings' worth of half-pence,
divided into three equal portions, and distributed every Sunday, Tuesday,
and Thursday, among thirty poor parishioners of Lambeth ; the beef
being made into broth and served in pitchers."
In the Lollaids' Tower are some curious relics of the barbar-
ous tortures of the Middle Ages ; and in the guard-room, or
dining hall of the Palace, is a series of portraits of all the
Archbishops from Cranmer to Benson. The modern and
residential portion of the Palace, in the Tudor style, is con-
tained in the inner court ; it was rebuilt by Archbishop Howley
in 1820. Howley was the last Archbishop who lived here in
state and kept open house ; " the grand hospitalities of Lam-
beth have perished," as Douglas Jerrold said, " but its charities
live." The ancient portions of the palace have known many
vicissitudes of fortune ; Cranmer adorned his house, and loved
to beautify his garden ; Wat Tyler and his rebels plundered the
„ ST. MARY'S, LAMBETH 31
palace and beheaded Sudbury, its then archbishop : and Laud,
who had a hobby for stained glass, filled the chapel windows
with beautiful specimens, which were all subsequently smashed
by the Puritans. The palace, after having been used succes-
sively as a prison, a place of revel, and a garrison stronghold,
now enjoys all the serenity of old age and quiet fortunes ; its
solid red brick, which time darkens so prettily, looking ever
across the waters in calm dignity towards the taller stones of
\\ Vstminster, — the spiritual contrasted with the temporal.
The tower of the ancient church of St. Mary, Lambeth, close
by the Palace, is memorable as the shelter of Queen Mary of
Modena, James IP's unfortunate wife, on the dramatic occasion
of her flight from Whitehall with her infant son (the " Old "
Pretender), on a wild December night of 1688 :
•■ lhr party stole down the back stairs (of Whitehall), and embarked in
in open skiff. It was a miserable voyage. The night was bleak ; the
rain fell ; the wind roared : the water was rough : at length the boat reached
Lambeth; and the fugitives landed near an inn, where a coach and
horses were in waiting. Some time elapsed before the horses could be
harnessed. Mary, afraid that her face might be known, would not enter
the house. She remained with her child, cowering for shelter from the
storm undei the tower of Lambeth Church, and distracted by terror
whenever the ostler approached her with his lantern. Two of her women
ended her. one who gave suck to the Prince, and one whose office was to
rock the cradle ; but they could be of little use to their mistress ; for both
were foreigners who could hardly speak the English language, and who
shuddered at the rigour of the English climate. The only consolatory
■ ircumstance was that the little boy was well, and uttered not a single cry.
U length th 1 was ready. The fugitives reached Gravesend safely,
and embarked in the yacht which waited lor them." — A/acaufqy.
St. Mary's is tin- mother church of the manor and parish, and
its tower dates from [377 :
'• In this church is a curious 'Pedlar's Window,' with a romantic stor)
attached to it, When the 1 lunch was founded, it is said thai a pedlar Kit
an land to the parish, on condition that a picture of himself, his
pack and his dog, should be preserved in the church. This was accordingly
done : the pedlar was commemorated in the glass of the window, and the
32 THE VICTORIA EMBANKMENT chap.
value of the acre, at first 25. &d. , increased till in our clay it is worth ,£1000
a year. In 1884, some local iconoclasts actually removed the pedlar from
the window, to put up modern glass to the relatives of certain officials.
Popular indignation, however, has since reinstated the injured pedlar, with
his pack and dog, in their place."
But Lambeth, however charming and historic, is still " the
Surrey Side ", and the glories of the Albert Embankment pale
before those of the Victoria Embankment, one of the greatest
London improvements of the century. Of course it has its
critics,— of the order who cavil at the poor Romans for em-
hanking their devastating yellow Tiber. But it is the fashion
for us to abuse our London monuments, and to deride them
as the work of a " nation of shopkeepers." The Londoner
rarely approves of anything new or even modern. Of the Chelsea
Embankment, all that Mr. Hare says is that " it has robbed us of
the water stairs to the Botanic Garden, given by Sir Hans Sloane."
Does not even Mr. Ruskin fall foul of the innumerable straight
lines of the Palace of Westminster, and of its stately Clock
Tower, as testifying to the sad want of imagination shown by
the modern English architect? (But Mr. Ruskin must surely
that day have been in search for a windmill to tilt against, for
the abused " straight lines " do not prevent this being one of
the loveliest of London views.) And does not M. Taine pour
the vials of his wrath on to the great river Palace of Somerset
House, with its "blackened porticoes filled with soot"?
" Poor Greek architecture," he adds compassionately, " what is
it doing in such a climate?" Evidently the idea of the
artistic value of soot, to which I have already alluded, had
not occurred to him.
The noble Victoria Embankment now runs where of old, in
Elizabethan times, ran a glittering, almost Venetian, river-
frontage of palaces. And where the old palaces stood in Tudor
days, stand now enormous hotels — the palaces of our own day
— each newer hotel in its turn eclipsing the other in size,
magnificence, expense. The picturesque " Savoy," with its
ii THE EMBANKMENT HOTELS 33
river balconies, the stately " Cecil," with its wonderful ban-
queting halls, and, further from the river, the spacious
" M&ropole," the " Grand," the " Victoria." All these hotels
are so recent as to impress one fact upon us — the fact that
London has really only lately become a tourist haunt.
Statistics, indeed, show now that London attracts more visitors
than any other great European town. Twenty-five years ago,
it was as hard to find a good, clean, and thoroughly satisfactory
London hotel, as it was to get a cup of tea for less than six-
pence : <»r, indeed, a good one at all ! But times have changed.
Big hotels now, like flats, threaten to be overdone. We can
well imagine the disappointment of the foreign visitor to
London on discovering the names and uses of the fine build-
ing that adorn the river front between Westminster and Black-
friars. " What,'' he or she may ask, "is that imposing struc-
ture with Nuremberg-like green roofs, towering over the trees
of the Embankment Gardens?" "That, Sir or Madam,"
answers politely the lady guide (for it is of course a charming
and very certificated lady guide who "personally conducts"
the party), " is Whitehall Court, a building let out in high class
flats.'' "And what," continues the crushed tourist, "is that
turreted, buttressed, red-brick edifice? Probably some rich
nobleman's whim?' - "Those, Madam, are the new build-
ings of Scotland Yard, recently designed by Mr. Norman Shaw,
one of the most famous of our modern architects." "And
what arc those Venetian-like balconies, all hung with greenery
and flowers?" "They belong, Madam, to the Savoy and
il Hotels. At the Savoy you may get a very nice dinner
for a guinea; they have a wonderful chef; and in the enor-
mous dining hall of the Cecil, most of the great public banquets
arc given." "Truly, a nation of shopkeepers," the foreign
visitor will reecho sadly, as she dismisses her "lady guide"
There is, I maintain, no finer walk in the world than that
along the \ ictoria Embankment, from Blackfriars to Wesl
minster. You may walk it every day of the year, and every
D
Sightseers.
CH. ii SOMERSET HOUSE 35
day see some new, strange and beautiful effect of light, of
water, of cloud. In midsummer, when the long row of plane
trees offer a welcome shade and relief of greenery, and it is
pleasant to watch the slow barges pass and repass ; in autumn,
when red and saffron sunsets flood all the west with light ; in
midwinter, when, sometimes, great blocks of ice line the turbid
stream. One winter, not long past, when the Thames was all
but frozen over, it was a curious and interesting sight to watch
the crowd of sea-gulls, driven inshore by the intense cold,
making their temporary home on the ice, and fed all day with
raw meat and bread by thousands of sympathizing Londoners.
Some of the birds had almost become tame when their com-
pulsory visit came to an end.
The river, in old pre-embankment days, flowed at the foot of
the curious ancient stone archway called "York Stairs," that
stranded water-gate of old York House, which stands, lonely
and neglected, in a corner of the Embankment Gardens. It
has, however, survived, and that, in London, is always some-
thing. Its long buried, and now excavated, columns show the
ancient level of the river, and the height to which the present
Embankment has been raised. The Palace of York House, to
which it was the river-gate, has gone the way of all palaces ;
its ruins (as all ruins must ever be in London), are thickly
built over. Indeed, Somerset House is almost the only palace
left to tell of the ancient river-side glories, glories of which
I [errick wrote :
" I send, I send, here my supremesl ki>s
To thee, my silver-footed ramasis,
\.. more shall I re-iterate thy strand
Whereon so many goodly structures stand."
Even Somerset House is merely an old palace rebuilt, for the
present edifice is not much more than a century old. Build
ings in London tend to become utilitarian : and Royalty,
besides, has deserted the City for the West End. So tin-
ancient Palace of the Lord Protector Somerset, that Palace
D 2
36 "CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLE" chap.
that he destroyed so much to build, spent such vast sums on,
and yet never lived in, but had his head cut off instead ;
the Palace that used to be the residence of the wives
of the Stuart Kings, as described by Pepys, is now superseded
by the vast Inland Revenue Office, with its myriad suites,
corridors, chambers. Truly, a change typical of our busy and
practical era !
Somerset House occupies the site of the older palace, a site
almost equal in area to Russell Square. But the older palace,
as befitted the " Dower House " of the Queens of England
had gardens that extended along the river-shore. It was in
Old Somerset House that Charles II. 's poor neglected Queen,
Catherine of Braganza, used to sit all night playing at
" ombre," a game which she had herself imported from Por-
tugal ; and it was here, in 1685, that three of her household
were charged with decoying Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey into the
precincts of the palace, and there strangling him. The wide
courtyard of the interior has a bronze allegorical group by
Bacon, of George III. mixed up with "Father Thames."
Queen Charlotte, apparently rather resenting the ugliness of
the representation, said to the sculptor, " Why did you make
so frightful a figure ? " The artist was ready with his reply.
" Art," he said, bowing, " cannot always effect what is ever
within the reach of Nature —the union of beauty and majesty."
I myself must confess to some sympathy with Queen
Charlotte ; but the art of her day had ever a tendency to
efflorescent excrescence.
On the river's very brink, a little higher up than Somerset
House and its adjacent hotels, Cleopatra's Needle, that
"great rose-marble monolith," stands guarded by two bronze
sphinxes on a pediment of steps, backed by the Embank-
ment and the trees of its gardens. The monolith is here
in strange and novel surroundings. What ruins of empires
and dynasties has not this ancient Egyptian obelisk seen !
n HISTORY OF THE OBELISK 37
We poor human beings soon live out our little day, and
are gone :
" The Eternal Saki from the Bowl hath poured
Millions of bubbles like us, and will pour—
while this senseless block of stone lives for ever, regardless of
the tides of humanity that ebb and flow ceaselessly about its
feet. Has it not been a "silent witness" of the pageants of
the magnificent Pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty? Its
hieroglyphics record its erection by Thotmes III., before the
Temple of the Sun in On (Heliopolis), where it remained for
the first 1600 years of its existence, and (says Mr. Hare)
witnessed the slavery and imprisonment of the patriarch Joseph.
The obelisk has had a stronge and eventful history. Removed
to Alexandria shortly before the Christian era, it was never
erected there, but lay for years prone in the sand. Then.
in 1X20, Mahomet Ali presented it to the British nation;
with, however, no immediate result. For, the difficulties of
removal being great, no advantage was taken of the offer,
till, in 1877, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Erasmus Wilson gave the
necessary funds, amounting to ^10,000. A special cylinder
boat was made for the obelisk, but even with its removal its
adventures were' not ended, for, in the Bay of Biscay, the vessel
encountered a terrific storm, and the crew of the ship that
towed it, in peril of their lives, cut it adrift. For days it was
lost, till a passing steamer happened to sight the strange-looking
object and picked it up, earning salvage on it.
The granite is said to be slowly disintegrating and the
hieroglyphics therefore becoming less deeply scored, by the
action of the London smoke and mist the mist glorified
poetically by Mr. Andrew Lang in Ins " ballade of Cleopatra's
Needle";
" Ye gianl shades of Ra and Turn,
Ye ghostsof gods Egyptian,
It murmurs of our planet come
To exiles in the precincts wan
38 VIEW FROM CHARING-CROSS BRIDGE chap.
Where, fetish or Olympian,
To help or harm no more ye list,
Look down, if look ye may, and scan
This monument in London mist !
" Behold, the hieroglyphs are dumb,
That once were read of him that ran
When seistron, cymbal, trump, and drum,
Wild music of the Bull began ;
When through the chanting priestly clan
Walk'd Ramses, and the high sun kiss'd
This stone, with blessing scored and ban —
This monument in London mist.
" The stone endures though gods be numb ;
Though human effort, plot, and plan
Be sifted, drifted, like the sum
Of sands in wastes Arabian.
What king may deem him more than man,
What priest says Faith can Time resist
While this endures to mark their span —
This monument in London mist ? " —
It has been objected that Cleopatra's needle ought to have
been placed somewhere else ; for instance, in the centre of the
Tilt Yard, opposite the Horse Guards. But it is, as I said,
typical of Londoners to find fault with their monuments ; and it
is difficult to agree with the writer who described it as in its
present position " adorning nothing, emphasising nothing, and
by nothing emphasised." M. Gabriel Mourey, for instance,
who, though a Frenchman, is also a lover of London, brings it
very charmingly into his " impression " of the scene from
Charing-Cross Bridge :
" I go every morning to Charing-Cross Bridge, to gaze on the ' magical
effects ' produced by fog and mist on the Thames. The buildings on the
shores have vanished ; there, where recently seethed an enormous conglo-
meration of roofs, chimneys, the perpetual encroachment of interminable
facades, all that insentient life of stones,— heaped to lodge human toil,
suffering, happiness, — seems to be now only a desert of far-reaching waters.
The river has immeasurably widened, has extended its shores to the
infinite. Such immensity is terrible. ... the atmosphere is heavy ; there
ii LORD TENNYSON f 39
is a conscious weight around, above, a weight that presses clown, penetrates
into ears and mouth, seems even to hang about the hair. We might, indeed,
be existing in a kind of nothingness, except for the perpetual passage of
trains— trains that shake the floor of the bridge, and jar our whole being
with metallic vibrations. . . .The wooden sheds of the landing-stage,
backed by the stone steps and parapet, — with, further on, the thin spire of
Cleopatra's Needle, an unimagined network of lines, — appear suddenly out
of nothingness ; it might be a fairy city rising all at once ; here arc-
revealed the gigantic buildings of the Savoy Hotel, and yonder, farther on,
those of Somerset House, as the fog gradually lifts; the whole effect is
suggestive of a negative under the chemical action of the developer. There
is, however, no distinctness ; the negative is a fogged one ; outlines are
only distinguished with difficulty ; and everything, in this strange and sad
monochrome, seems to acquire a vast and altogether fantastic size. The
sky, however, moves ; thick, ragged clouds unravel themselves, in colour
a dirty yellow fringed with white ; they might well be great folds of torn
curtains entangled in each other, curtains of dingy wadding, thickly lined,
ami edged with faint gold. But the light is too feeble to reflect itself, and
tlie water below continues to flow dully, as though weighed down with the
burden of that heavy sky ; the pleasure-steamers, indeed, seem to cleave it
with painful toil, to force a pathway, soon again closed; a pathway of
which scarcel) .1 trace remains, only a slow, sluggish undulation, soon lost
in the genera] distracting cohesion of all and everything."
It may be interesting here to recall Lord Tennyson's sonnet,
and the story told of it by bis son :
•■ When Cleopatra's Needle was brought to London, Stanley asked my
father to make some lines upon it ; to be engraven on the base. These
were put together by my father at once, and I made a note of them :
Cleopatrcis Needle.
" lbre, I that stood in ( )n beside the (low
1 'I i I'l Nile, three thousand years ago ! —
A Pharaoh, kingliest of his kingly race,
First shaped, and carved, and set me in my place.
A i 'a ..H of a punier dynasty
I hi ic e haled me toward the Mediterranean sea,
Whence youi own citizens, for their own renown.
Thro" strange seas drew me to your monster town.
I have seen the four great empires disappear !
I waswhen London was not ! I am In o '
4 o
WATERLOO BRIDGE
CHAP.
Waterloo Bridge, crossing the Thames at Somerset House, was
built by Rennie in 1817. Canova considered it "the noblest
bridge in the world, and worth a visit from the remotest corners
of the earth." It was at first intended to call it the " Strand "
Bridge; but it was eventually named "Waterloo," in honour of
the victory just won. Yet Waterloo Bridge is not without its
**$
The " Top" Season.
dismal associations. So many people, for instance, have com-
mitted suicide from it, that it has been called the "English Bridge
It suggests Hood's ballad of the "Unfortunate":
of Sighs."
" The bleak wind of March
Made her tremble ancl shiver :
Bat not the dark arch
Or the black flowinc; river."
II
MR. RUSKIN'S DIATRIBES 41
Waterloo Bridge has indeed been the last resource of many an
unhappy human moth - attracted by " the cruel lights of Lon-
don " — to whom
" When life hangs heavy, death remains the door
To endless rest beside the Stygian shore."
Dante Rossetti, who painted his terrible picture of the lost girl
found by her old lover on a London bridge at dawning, has
well realised the ineffable sadness of the wrecks made by this
whirlpool of London.
The Victoria Embankment, and indirectly also this splendid
Waterloo Bridge, have given cause for one of the most eloquent
diatribes of our greatest aesthetic critic. Mr. Ruskin, though
he cannot hut admire the vast curve of Waterloo Bridge, where
the Embankment road passes under it, "as vast, it alone, as
the Rialto at Venice, and scarcely less seemly in proportions,"
yet finds, in the wretched attempts at decoration on the
Embankment, and in the sad want of "human imagination"
of the English architect, windmills apt and ready to his lance.
Unlike the Rialto, the "Waterloo arch," he remarks plaintively,
" is nothing more than a gloomy and hollow heap of wedged
blocks of blind granite " :
" We have lately been busy," he says, "embanking, in the capital of the
country, the river which, of all its waters, the imagination of our ancestors
had made most sacred, and the bounty of nature most useful. Of all
architectural features of the metropolis, that embankment will be, in future,
the mosl conspicuous; and in its position and purpose it was the most
< ipabl ol noble adornment. For that adornment, nevertheless, the utmost
which oui modern poetical imagination has been able to invent, is a row
of gas-lamps. It has, indeed, farther suggested itself to our minds as
appropriate to gas lamps set beside a river, that the gas should come oul
of fishes 1 tails ; but we have not ingenuity enough to cast so muchasa
smelt or a sprat for ourselves; so we borrow the shape of a Neapolitan
marble, which has been the refuse of the plate and candlestick -Imps in
r) capital in Europe for the last fifty years. We east that badly, and
give lustre to the ill-cast fish with lacquer in imitation of bronze. < *n the
base ol their pedestals, toward the road, we put, for advertisement s sake,
42 VIEW FROM WATERLOO BRIDGE chap.
the initials of the casting firm ; and, for farther originality and Christianity's
sake, the caduceus of Mercury : and to adorn the front of the pedestals
towards the river, being now wholly at our wits' end, we can think of
nothing better than to borrow the door-knocker which— again for the last
fifty years— has disturbed and decorated two or three millionsof London street
doors ; and magnifying the marvellous device of it, a lion's head with a ring
in its mouth (still borrowed from the Greek), we complete the embankment
with a row of heads and rings, on a scale which enables them to produce,
at the distance at which only they can be seen, the exact effect of a row of
sentry-boxes."
Much, however, may be forgiven to Mr. Ruskin. On the
other hand, the view from Waterloo Bridge is thus described by
the late Mr. Samuel Butler :
" When. . . .1 think of Waterloo Bridge and the huge wide-opened
jaws of those two Behemoths, the Cannon Street and Charing Cross
railway stations, I am not sure that the prospect here is not even finer than
in Fleet Street. See how they belch forth puffing trains as the breath of
their nostrils, gorging and disgorging incessantly those human atoms whose
movement is the life of the city. How like it all is to some great bodily
mechanism. . . .And then. . . the ineffable St. Paul's. I was once on
Waterloo Bridge after a heavy thunderstorm in summer. A thick darkness
was upon the river and the buildings upon the north side, but just below, I
could see the water hurrying onward as in an abyss, dark, gloomy and
mysterious. On a level with the eye there was an absolute blank, but
above, the sky was clear, and out of the gloom the dome and towers of St.
Paul's rose up sharply, looking higher than they actually were, and as
though they rested upon space."
Mr. Astor's charming estate office, one of the prettiest
buildings in London, facing the Embankment, close to the
Temple Gardens, is yet another instance of that latter-day change
from palace to office, already mentioned. At Blackfriars, the
Victoria Embankment ends, and tall, many-storied warehouses
crowd down to the water's edge, in picturesque though dingy
medley, with, behind them, the blackened dome of St. Paul's,
attended by its sentinel spires, — St. Paul's, that has nearly all
the way stood out prominently in the distance, making this, by
universal consent, the finest view in all London. The noble
II
THAMES STREET AND BILLINGSGATE 43
effect of Wren's great work is indeed, apparent from all points ;
but it is the river and the wharves that, no doubt, form its
best and most fitting foreground. As we near London Bridge,
the dirt of the vast highway gains upon us ; but, it must be
confessed, its general picturesqueness is thereby immeasurably
increased. Dirt, after all, is always so near akin to picturesque-
ness. The mud banks and the mud become more constant, the
bustle and hum of the great city are everywhere evident.
Barges are moored under the tall warehouses ; workmen stand in
the storing-places above, hauling up the goods from the boats
with ropes and pulleys ; it is a scene of ceaseless activity, an
activity too, which increases as you descend the stream. On
the one side, the slums and warehouses of Upper Thames
Street : on the other, the yet slummier purlieus of busy, often
burned-down Tooley Street. Thames Street, like its adjoining
Billingsgate, is, I may remark, nearly always muddy, whatever
the time of year. On rainy days, it is like a Slough of
Despond. If by chance you wish to land at All Hallows or
London Bridge Piers, you must first climb endless wooden and
slippery steps, then wend your way carefully, past threatening
cranes, and along narrow alleys between high houses, alleys
blocked by heavy waggons, from which tremendous packages
ascend, by rope, to top stories ; alleys where there is barely room
for a solitary pedestrian to wedge himself past the obstruction.
Barrels of the delicious oyster, the obnoxious " cockle," the
humble " winkle " ; loud scents that suggest the immediate
neighbourhood of the ubiquitous "kipper"; these, mingled
with the shouts of fish-wives and porters, greet you near that
l'emplc of the fisheries, Billingsgate. The enormous Monu-
ment, which stands close by, may be said to be in the dirtiest,
dingiest portion of this dingy region. "Fish Street Hill" the
locality is called : and it certainly is no misnomer.
London Bridge must have been wonderfully picturesque in
old days : it seems to have looked then very much as the
Florentine " Ponte Vecchio " does now. with, outside, its quaint
44 LONDON BRIDGE chap.
overhanging timbered houses, balconies, roof-gardens, and,
inside, its narrow street of shops. The sixth picture in the
" Marriage a la Mode " series at the National Gallery gives us
an idea of what it was lite. The present bridge, opened in
1 83 1, at a cost of two millions, is the last of many on or near
this site. For there has been a bridge here of some kind ever
since we know anything of London ; no other bridge, indeed,
existed at all in old days. By old London Bridge Wat Tyler
entered with his rebels ; by it Jack Cade invaded the city
(though his head, for that matter, soon adorned its gate-house),
and here London was wont, with pageant and ceremonial, to
welcome her kings. The picturesque old stone bridge was
demolished in 1832 ; its narrow arches hindered traffic, and
gave undue help, besides, to that total freezing of the river
that occasionally happened, as the ancient "Frost Fairs" record,
in old days ; yet one cannot help regretting the necessity for its
removal. The present London Bridge, though said to be
" unrivalled in the world in the perfection of proportion and
the true greatness of simplicity," is, perhaps, more practical
than aesthetically beautiful. The tide ebbs strongly against its
massive piers ; the last roadway across the river, it is also the
boundary line for big ships and sailing boats ; below here the
river assumes more and more the look of a sea-port ; it
becomes " the Pool of London." From this bridge are to be
seen some of the finest London views. The lace-like structure
of the unique Tower Bridge, the most extraordinary monument
of the century, rising, between its huge watch-towers, like a
white wraith behind the more prosaic stone of London Bridge,
is here very telling. And, looking towards the City, the
brilliant tower of St. Magnus gleams with quite Venetian-like
brightness against the blackened medley of its background.
The Tower Bridge, on a first sight, is infinitely more
astonishing to the sightseer than any other London monument.
It has also a mediaeval look, as of some gigantic fortress of
the sixteenth century. With regard to the two great towers,
ii THE TOWER BRIDGE 45
flanked on either side by their graceful suspension chains,
" spanned high overhead as with a lintel, and holding apart the
great twin bascules, like a portcullis raised to give entry to a
castle, there is no denying that all this must loom as an
impressive watergate upon ships coming from overseas to the
Port of London." M. Gabriel Mourey thus descrides it:
" The Tower Bridge, the water-gate of the Capital, is a colossal symbol
of the British genius. Like that genius, the Bridge struck me as built on
lines of severe simplicity, harmonious, superbly balanced, without exaggera-
tion or emphasis ; sober architecture, yet with reasonable audacities, signifying
its end with that clearness which is the hall-mark of everything English.
1' wonderfully completes the seething landscape of quays and docks, and
the infernal activity of the greatest port in the world. No waters in the
world better reflect without deforming than the muddy waters of the
Thames ; never blue even under the blue skies of summer. Throw this
bridge across the Seine or the Loire, and it would spoil the view, like a
false nnir of colour. Hut here, on the contrary, its effect is prodigiously
imposing. Look at its two towers, how square and solid they are. Their
tips an- crowned by steeples, the roofs are pointed, the window-, straight,
with pointed arches. It looks like the gate to some strong tower oi the
middle ages. The combinations of lines composing the bridge call up the
idea of some heroic pasl time. They lift themselves above the river like
some massive effloresci nee of the past. But look again, and the impression
becomes more complex. Light and ait}-, like clear lace, an iron foot-bridge
joins the two towers, across the abyss. Another, lower down, on the level
of the banks, lifts up to let big ships pass as under a triumphal arch. And
all the audacity of the modern architects, which is to create the works of
the future, here bursts forth, suspended on the heavy foundations of the
past; with so much measure and proportion that nothing offends in the
medly of archaism and modernity. There are few countries able to carry
off such contrasts, but this country adjusts itself to them in perfection.
It is because no other people know how to unite with the same harmonious
the cull oi the past, the religion of tradition, to an unchecked love of
;n SS, in. I a lively and insatiable passion for the future."
The Tower Bridge, as compared with other great engineering
works of the kind, labours under the disadvantage of not being
seen properly from anywhere as a whole, taking in, that is,
both abutment towers with their pendant .suspension chains,
which add so much to the general effect. Nevertheless, even
4 6
THE POOL OF LONDON
CHAP.
viewed from close by, it is very telling, and dwarfs immeasur-
ably any other building near it ; see, for instance, how the
little Tower of London, that ancient and most historic fortress,
loses its size from its close juxtaposition to those supporting
towers! The "bascules," or drawbridges, are worked by
hydraulic power, and it is a curious and interesting sight to see
them raised to allow tall vessels to pass. Below the Tower
Bridge, the broad river seems to extend in a sea of
masts, the city to become a world of wharves and docks. To
quote, once more, an " impression " of M. Gabriel Mourey :
" Once past the London Tower Bridge, and its two enormous towers,
which rise like a triumphal arch with an air of calm victory at the entrance
to the great metropolis, the seaport aspect of London becomes very apparent.
The immense traffic on the river is evident from the constant passage of
steamers, no less than by their frequent calls at the wharves whose blackened
walls, deep in water, receive the riches of the entire world. A whole people
toil at the unloading of the enormous ships ; swarming on the barges, dark
figures, dimly outlined, moving rhythmically, fill in and give life to the
picture. In the far distance, behind the interminable lines of sheds and
warehouses, masts bound the horizon, masts like a bare forest in winter,
finely branched, exaggerated, aerial trees grown in all the climates of the
globe. Steam-tugs whistle, pant, and hurry ; ships with great red sails
descend the river towards the sea. An enormous steamer advances
majestically; she seems as tall as a five-storied house and her masts are
lost in the mist. The river suddenly widens, the thick smoke of the
atmosphere almost prevents one from seeing the other side ; it might almost
be an immense lake. Rain, steam, and speed ; — Turner's chef d'oeuvre
evoked before my eyes. The ever-changing sky is a continual wonder. A
while ago the sun, like a disc of melting cream, disappeared in yellowish
mists, scattering reflections like dirty snow. Now, through a clearing, he
appears like the altar glory of a Jesuit church ; raining waves of golden
light ; the surrounding cloud-flocks are in a moment tinged with brilliance.
And again, he is suddenly eclipsed : all returns to dulness and gloom : it
might be the sad dawn of a rainy day."
It is, above all, this vast and eternally busy "Pool of
London " that is, and ever has been, the key to her greatness,
her wealth, her power. Even the distant church bells of
London, clanging fitfully through the " swish " of the wavelets
II THE DOCKS AND WHARVES 47
and the eternal muffled roar of the City, recall to the true
Londoner the commercial spirit of his ancestors. Does not
the children's rhyme (there is ever deep reason in childish
rhymes) run thus?
" Oranges and Lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clement's ;
You owe me ten shillings,
Say the bells of St. Helen's ;
When will you pay me ?
Say the bells of Old Bailey ;
When I grow rich,
Say the bells of Shoreditch."
The bells, be it observed, are nothing if not business-like,
and seem to be more nearly concerned with our temporal than
with our spiritual welfare. But here everything tells of work,
of traffic, of the endless and indomitable " struggle-for-life "
that is so characteristic of the British race. Father Thames,
here, may well speak in Kingsley's words :
" Darker and darker the further I go ;
Baser and baser the richer I grow."
These dingy docks, these blackened wharves, represent, in
reality, the world's great treasure house. For to this vast port
of London comes all "the wealth of Ormus and of Ind," all
the riches of "a thousand islands rocked in an idle main," all
the luxuriant produce of new world farms, of Colonial ranches,
of tropical gardens. Here, if anywhere, may he realised lus
\ ision who saw
' The heavens till with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of tin- purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales."
Jewels such as a Queen of Sheba might have dreamed of, or
a Sindbad fabled, from "far Cathay" ; ivory and gold from the
mysterious East : spices, bark, and coral from many a land of
reef and palm : these with every commercial product ol the
globe, are daily poured into die ravenous and never-satisfied
4 8
THE DOCK WAREHOUSES
CHAP.
maw of London. This vast giant, enormous, helpless, is, like
the queen termite, all-devouring, and yet would starve of
actual food in few days if deprived of her ever-arriving cargoes.
For Colonial produce, as every one knows, is, despite the costs
of freight, far cheaper than that of our own country. The
" Feeding of London," indeed, should prove a very interesting
subject to those attracted by statistics.
; ' There are within the limits of the metropolis at least five million
human beings, each of whom has every day to be provided with food. The
difference between the plenty of one class and the pittance of another is, no
doubt, very marked ; but taking the rich and the poor together, ihe
quantity of food required is almost incredible. The necessity for large
imports suggests horrid possibilities for some future siege of London ! But
as the trade and port of London have made its wealth, so they have also
helped it to its present enormous dimensions ; for though the country, by
the railways, brings her share of London's sustenance, yet by far the
larger proportion of it conies through the docks. Thus, frozen and living meat
comes from the far colony of New Zealand, and also from the United States,
Canada, the River Plate, and Australia ; potatoes from Malta, Portugal,
and Holland ; tea from China and India ; early vegetables from Madeira
and the Canary Islands : spices from Ceylon ; wines from France, Portugal,
and Spain ; oranges from all parts of the tropical globe, far cheaper often
than our own home-grown fruits. The import of oranges, indeed, alone
reaches a total of 800 or 900 millions yearly ; that of raisins and currants
some 12,000 tons ; while other things are in proportion. The unloading
of the ships is done by casual helpers, called "dockers'' or "dock-
labourers," a rough class of workmen living in and around Wapping,
Rotherhithe, and Stepney. Their employment, though now paid at a fair
rate for " unskilled " labour, is necessarily heavy while it lasts, and uncer-
tain, causing often a hand-to-mouth existence, and leading to frequent
" strikes.'' — (Darlington's London and its Environ 1 !. )
The dock warehouses should be visited, if only to gain some
idea of the enormous wealth of London.
"These docks," says M. Taine, "are prodigious, overpowering ; each
of them is a vast port, and accommodates a multitude of three-masted
vessels. There are ships everywhere, ships upon ships in rows .... for
the most part they are leviathans, magnificent .... some of them hail
from all parts of the world ; this is the great trysting-place of the globe."
ii THE RIVER ENCHANTMENT 49
The shore population, about here, consists mostly of sailors
and fishermen ; " the Sailors' Town," the region east of the
Tower is specially called. The river scenes here are as pictur-
esque in their way as any in the world, a fact of which not only
Turner's pictures, but also Mr. Vicat Cole's " Pool of London,"
now in the Tate Gallery, may well remind us. Why, indeed,
should our artists all flock to Venice to paint? Have we not
also here golden sunsets, sails of Venetian red, tall masts,
dappled skies, all the picturesque litter and crowded life that
Turner so loved, suffused in an atmosphere of misty glory?— a
glory translated by all the glamour of history and sentiment
into
' The light that never was on land or sea,
The consecration and the poet's dream."
To the eyes of the boy Turner, the embryo artist, the child of
the City, all was beautiful and worthy to be painted— " black
barges, patched sails, and every possible condition of fog." To
him, even in mature life, "Thames' shore, with its stranded
barges, and glidings of red sail, was dearer than Lucerne lake
or Venetian lagoon." Its humanity appealed to him ; he, as
great a London-lover as Dickens, merely expressed this feeling
differently. Thus, Ruskin says of Turner's boyhood:
'That mysterious forest below London Bridge,— belter for the boy than
wood of pine or grove of myrtle. How he must have tormented the
watermen, beseeching them to let him crouch anywhere in the bows, quiet
as a log, so only that he might get floated down there among the ships,
and round and round the ships, and with the ships, and by the ships, and
under the ships, staring and clambering ;— these the only quite beautiful
things he can see in all tin- world, except the sky ; hut these, when the sun
' a "" ''" " sails, filling or falling, endlessly disordered by sway of tide ,uu\
stress of anchorage, beautiful unspeakably; which ships also are inhabited
by glorious creatures red-faced sailors, with pipes, appearing over the
gunwales, true knights, over their castle parapets,--the most angelic beings
in the whole eompass of London world."
The Thames and its wonderful glamour, its mingled beauty
and squalor beauty, in the misty distance— squalor, in tin'
1
50 DICKENS'S WATERSIDE SCENES chap.
more prosaic near view - suggests memories of Dickens, as it
does of Turner. Memories of that "great master of tears and
laughter" are, indeed, awakened by every bend of the stream.
The romance of the mighty river was all-powerful with him, as
with Turner ; for he, too, had known it in his early youth. To
him, also, even Thames mud afforded mysterious interest. Did
not the blacking factory, celebrated in the pathetic pages of
David Coppe?-field, where the miserable hours of his own
early youth were spent, stand at the waterside, in Blackfriars?
" My favourite lounging place," says David, " in the intervals,
was old London Bridge (this was before its demolition in 1832),
where I was wont to sit in one of the stone recesses, watching
the people going by, or to look over the balustrades at the sun
shining in the water, and lighting up the golden flame on the
top of the monument." The real David — poor little boy — may,
indeed, have occasionally played at being a London mudlark
himself, in off hours ; but this he does not tell us !
" Murdstone and Grinby's warehouse was at the water side. It was
down in Blackfriars. Modern improvements have altered the place ; but
it was the last house at the bottom of a narrow street, curving down hill to
the river, with some stairs at the end, where people took boat. It was a
crazy old house with a wharf of its own, abutting on the water when the
tide was in, and on the mud when the tide was out, and literally overrun
with rats."
The waterside scenes in The Old Curiosity Shop, including
the wharf where Mr. Quilp, the vicious dwarf, broke up his
ships, and where Mr. Sampson Brass so nearly broke his
shins, were rivalled in vividness, thirty years afterwards, by the
river chapters in Our Mutual Friend. In this later story,
special stress is laid on the river suicides, and the consequent
"dragging" for corpses, done by the watermen for salvage.
Dreadful task ! but not uncommon " down by Ratcliffe, and by
Rotherhithe, where accumulated scum of humanity seemed to
be washed from higher ground, like so much moral sewage, and
to be pausing until its own weight forced it over the bank and
ii THE DOME OF ST. PAUL'S 51
sunk it in the river." Near Rotherhithe— a dingy pier usually
infested by mudlarks— is "Jacob's Island," made notorious by
the scene in Oliver Twist. "It is surrounded," says Dickens,
" by a muddy ditch, six or eight feet deep, and fifteen or twenty
wide when the tide is in . . . known in these days as Folly
Ditch." By means of this ditch, the murderer Sikes tries to
escape from the infuriated crowd who clamour for his life, but
he fails in the attempt and perishes miserably.
Such is the splendour, such the misery, of the richest,
largest, most powerful city in the world ! And over all the
seething tides of the river and of humanity - the luxury and
wretchedness the "laughing, weeping, hurrying ever" of the
crowd, still the grey dome of St. Paul's dominates the scene,
still its "cross of gold shines over city and river," calm and
changeless above all tides and missions. Browning has su<j-
ted the poetry of the view from the dome:
" Over the ball of it,
I 'eering and prying,
I low I see all of it,
Life there outlying !
Roughness and smoothness,
Shine and defilement,
Grace and uncouthness,
One reconcilement."
Beyond the Tower Bridge, and beyond the docks and the East
Paid, the glitter of Greenwich comes in, striking yet another
note in the ever-changing key. This palace of Greenwich, set
like a jewel among its green hills and parks, was the favourite
royal abode of the Tudor Sovereigns. Here Elizabeth was
bom, and lived in state, and here her brother Edward, the boy-
king, died in the flower of his youth. The shining Observatory
crowns the hill of Greenwich Park a welcome oasis of
green after the "midnight mirk" of the East Paid through
which we have passed; and the fair frontage of the Palai
recalls to us the historic mood in which we began our wander-
1. 1
52 A RETROSPECT CH. n
ings. Beautiful now with a new beauty, a twentieth century
beauty — how lovely, in a different way, it must have been in
those distant ages, when the splendid gilt barges of the nobles,
with their gaily-painted awnings, were moored at their palatial
water gates ; when fair ladies sang to guitars as their craft
glided smoothly " under tower and balcony, by garden-wall and
gallery " ; when each citizen had his private wherry, when
loaded " tilt-boats," filled with merry passengers, plied up and
down between Greenwich and Westminster. As is the Oxford,
the Godstow Thames of to-day, the London Thames was then ;
" the stream of pleasure," no less than of wealth. Gazing,
through the gathering twilight, over towards the misty shadow
of vast St. Paul's, seen behind the gleaming tower of St.
Magnus, or towards the shimmering expanse of water under
the wharves of "London Pool," you can still be oblivious to
the present changes ; but presently you are rudely awakened
by the very unpleasant grating of the steamer against its flimsy
wooden quay ; and the dulcet strains of " the Last Ro-wse of
Summer," played to a somewhat wheezy accordion, reach your
ears in very un-Tudor and untoward fashion. Roman
London, Saxon London, Elizabethan London, all fade, like
Lamb's " dream-children," into the far-away past ; — giving place
to Victorian London, — as, jostled by a motley and not too
immaculate crowd, you scramble sadly across the rickety gang-
way to the very common-place and unpalatial shore below
London Bridge.
An Underground Station.
CHAPTER 111
RAMBLES IN THE CITY
" I have seen the West End, the parks, the fine squares ; but I love the
City far better. The City seems so much more in earnest ; its business,
its rush, ils roar, are such serious things, sights, sounds. The City is
getting its living, the West End but enjoying its pleasure. At the West
End you may be amused ; but in the City you are deeply excited." — C.
Bronte-. " Viliet/e."
'■ And who cries out on crowd and mart?
Who prates of stream and sea?
The summer in the City's heart
That is enough for me."
— Amy Levy: "A London Plan,- Tree."
The City is, by common consent, the most interesting and
vital part of the metropolis, —interesting, not only lor its
54 QUIET BACKWATERS chap.
past,— but for its present ; ever-living,— eternally renewed ;—
a never-ceasing, impetuous, Niagara of energy and power. It
is the pulse, — or rather the aorta, — of the tremendous machine
of London ; through its crowded veins rushes the life-blood of
commerce, of industry, of wealth, that feeds and stimulates
not only the town, but also the country and the nation.
Through its ancient and narrow highways, crowds of black-
coated human ants hurry, day by day, eager in pursuit of
money, of power, and of their daily bread.
And yet, curiously enough, it is close by these very crowded
thoroughfares of human life and energy, that the most se-
cluded haunts of peace may be found ; calm " backwaters," all
deserted and forgotten by the flowing stream that runs so
near them ; tiny spots of unsuspected greenery and ancient
stone, absolutely startling in their quiet proximity to the
surrounding din and whirl. Though the area of the " City,"
so-called, is but small, yet it abounds in such peaceful, un-
dreamed-of spots ; places where the painter may set up his
easel, or even the photographer his camera, without fear of
let or hindrance. Secluded bits' of ancient churchyard,
portions of long-forgotten convent garden, of old wall or
bastion, or of antique plane-tree grove ; it is such nooks as
these that, even more than in Kensington Gardens, suggest
Matthew Arnold's lovely lines :
" Calm soul of all things ! make il mine
To feel, above the city's jar,
That there abides a peace of thine
Man did not make and cannot mar."
To see and know the City with any proper appreciation of its
interests and beauties, would require many days of wandering
and leisured perambulation. In no part of London do things
and views come upon the pedestrian with more startling sud-
denness. Kmerging from some narrow and smoky alley,
where the house-roofs, perhaps, nearly meet overhead, he may
find himself, by some sharp turn of the ways, almost directly
Ill
ANTIQUARIAN ZEAL 55
under the enormous blackened dome of St. Paul's, — looking,
in such close proximity,— and especially if there happen to be
any fog about, — of positively incredible size. Or he may find
peaceful red-brick rectories, that suggest country villages,
adjoining, in all charity, noisy mills and warehouses ; or railways
and canals, which give forth smoke and steam with amiable im-
partiality, and intersect streets where fragments of old houses
yet linger in picturesque decay ; or, again, noisy tram-lines,
cutting through mediaeval squares, that, once upon a time, were
peaceful and residential. Yet, after all, it ill becomes us to
murmur at the tram-lines and the railways ; we ought rather to
be thankful that anything at all of the old time is left us.
For, in the City, where things are, and ever must be, chiefly
utilitarian, the survival of ancient relics is all the more to be
wondered at.
But the time of careless and rash destruction is past. The
antiquarian spirit is now fairly in our midst, and mediaeval re-
mains are preserved, sometimes even at no slight inconvenience.
And when the progress of the world, and of railways, requires
certain sites, even then the buildings on these, or their most
interesting portions, are, so far as possible, spared and pro-
te< I'd from further injury. Thus, when the site of "Sir Paul
Pindar's " beautiful old mansion in Bishopsgate Street was re-
quired for the enlargements of the Great Eastern Railway
Company, its elaborately-carved wooden front was transported
bodily to the South Kensington Museum, which it now adorns ;
and the church tower of the ancient "All Hallows Staining,"
surviving its demolished nave and choir, still stands, a curiously
isolated relic, in the green square of the Clothworkers' Hall ;
that company being hound over to keep it in order and repair.
Similarly, the pains and the great expense incurred in the
careful restoration of that old Holborn landmark, Staple Inn. a
score or so of years back, are well known. Ami "Crosby Hall."
anciently Crosby Place, that famous Elizabethan mansion
commemorated in Shakespeare's Richard HI., is now. after
5 6 ST. BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT CH. m
much danger and many vicissitudes, utilised for the purposes
of a restaurant, which, at least ensures the keeping of it in
proper and timely repair. Fifty, even thirty, years ago, ancient
monuments were more lightly valued, sometimes even rescued
with difficulty from the hands of the destroyer ; now, however,
the veneration for old landmarks is more widespread. Repairs
to old buildings are, to a certain extent, always necessary ; for
in London, more than anywhere, long neglect means inevitable
decay and destruction. And if in certain districts Philistines
may yet have their way, if the taste of the builder and restorer is
not always faultless, things have at any rate much improved
since early Victorian days.
Of the many delightful excursions to be made in and about
the City, perhaps that to the ancient priory church of St.
Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield, and the neighbouring pre-
cincts of the Charterhouse, ranks first. The church is a
Norman relic unique in London, a bit of mediaevalism, left
curiously stranded amid the desolation and destruction of
all its compeers. Though St. Bartholomew the Great is
easily reached from Newgate Street, being indeed but just
beyond the famous hospital of the same name, it is yet difficult
to find. Its diminutive and somewhat inadequate red-brick
tower is but just visible above the row of houses that divide it
from Smithfield, and the modest entrance to its precincts,
underneath a mere shop-archway, may easily be missed. The
church is, in fact, almost hidden by neighbouring houses.
While its main entrance faces Smithfield, the dark, mysterious,
densely-inhabited district called " Little Britain " crowds in
closely upon it on two sides, and the picturesque alley named
"Cloth Fair" abuts against it on another. It is, therefore,
difficult to get much of a view of it anywhere from outside ;
you may, indeed, get close to it, and yet lose your way to it.
The ancient priory church has only recently been disentangled
from the surrounding factories and buildings, .that in the lapse
of careless centuries had been suffered to invade it.
Cloth/air.
5 8 " TOM-ALL- ALONE'S" chap.
The entrance door from West Smithfield, though insignificant
in size, is vet deserving of notice ; for it is a pointed Early
English arch with dog-tooth ornamentation. Hence, a narrow
passage leads through a most quaint churchyard ; an old-time
burial-ground, a bit of rank and untended greenery, interspersed
with decaying and falling gravestones, and hemmed in by the
backs of the tottering Cloth Fair houses ; ancient lath-and-
plaster tenements, crumbling and dirty, their lower timbers
bulging, yet most picturesque in their decay. They all appear to
be let out in rooms to poor workers ; above, patched and ragged
articles of clothing are hanging out to dry, while on the ground
floor you may see a shoemaker hammering away at his last, or
a carpenter at his lathe, his light much intercepted by a big
adjacent gravestone, on which a black cat, emblem of witchery,
is sitting. The gravestones seem not at all to affect the cheer-
fulness of the population ; perhaps, indeed, as in the case of
Mr. Oram, the coffinmaker, these wax the more cheerful be-
cause of their gloomy surroundings. The whole scene, never-
theless, is most strangely weird, and reminds one of nothing
so much as of that ghoulish churchyard described by Dickens
as in " Tom-All-Alone's ; " with this exception, that Dickens only
saw the sad humanity of such places, and not their undoubted
picturesqueness.
Beyond this strange disused burial-ground the church is
entered. The history of its foundation is a romantic one.
The priory church, with its monastery and hospital, was the
direct outcome of a religious vow. In the twelfth century,
when the little Norman London of the day was the town of
monasteries and church bells likened by Sir Walter Besant to
the "He Sonnante" of Rabelais; in or about 1120, one of
King Henry I.'s courtiers, Rahere or Rayer (the spelling of
that time is uncertain), went on a pilgrimage to Rome. At
Rome he, as people still often do, fell ill of malarial fever, and,
as is less common, perhaps nowadays, vowed, if he recovered, to
build a hospital for the " recreacion of poure men." Rahere was,
in A MEDIAEVAL CONVERT 59
says the chronicler, " a pleasant-witted gentleman, and therefore
in his time called the King's minstrel." (Hence, no doubt, he
has been called also " the King's jester " ; though this appears
to be incorrect.) Lively and "pleasant-witted" people are, we
know, apt to take sudden conversion hardly ; and Rahere was
certainly as thorough in his dealings with the devil as was any
mediaeval saint. In his sickness he had a vision, and in that
vision he saw a great beast with four feet and two wings ; this
beast seized him and carried him to a high place whence he
could see " the bottomless pit " and all its horrors. From this
very disagreeable position he was delivered by the merciful St.
Bartholomew, who thereupon ordered him to go home and
build a church in his honour on a site that he should direct,
assuring him that he (the saint), would supply the necessary
funds. Returning home, Rahere gained the king's consent to
the work, which was forthwith begun, and assisted greatly by
miraculous agency ; such as bright light shining on the roof of
the rising edifice, wonderful cures worked there, and all such
supernatural revelations. When Rahere died, in the odour of
sanctity, and the first prior of his foundation, he left thirteen
canons attached to it ; which number his successor, Prior
Thomas, had raised in 11 74 to thirty-five. Thus the monas-
tery grew through successive priors, till it was one of the
largest religious houses in London. Its precincts and
accessories extended at one time as far as Aldersgate Street;
these however vanished with the dissolution of the monasteries
by Henry VI II., and all that remains to the present day is the
abbreviated priory church and a small part of a cloister. In
monastic times the nave of the edifice extended, indeed, the
whole length of the little churchyard, as tar as the dog-toothed
Smithtleld entrance gate; but of the ancient church nothing
now remains intact but the choir, with the first bay of the nave
and portions of the transepts. Yet the recent restorations
have been most successfully carried out, and the first view of
the interior is striking in its grand old Norman simplicity.
60 RESTORATION OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S chap.
The choir has a triforium and a clerestory, and terminates in
an apse, pierced by curious horseshoe arches ; behind runs a
circulating ambulatory dividing it from the adjoining " Lady
chapel." Worthy of notice is the finely-wrought modern iron
screen, the work of Mr. Starkie Gardner, that separates this
chapel from the apse. The church has been altered, added to,
or mutilated, from time to time ; and other styles of architec-
ture, such as Perpendicular, have occasionally been introduced ;
but yet the main effect of the interior is Norman. The
beautiful Norman apse, built over and obliterated in the 15th
century, has, by the talent of Mr. Aston Webb, been now re-
stored to its original design. Indeed, the whole edifice has in
recent times and by the efforts of late rectors and patrons, been
extricated from dirt, lumber and decay ; the work of restoration
beginning in 1864. The restorer has done his work most
faithfully, preserving all the old walls, and utilising the old
Norman stones used in previous re-buildings.
The high value of every inch of space, in this crowded colony
of workers, had in course of centuries caused many and various
irruptions into the sacred precincts. But some of the worst
encroachments may possibly have arisen in the beginning
more from the action of venal and careless officials and rectors,
than from outside greed. Thus, supposing that a parishioner
had, by some means or other, obtained a corner of the church
for the stowing of his lumber, and that he paid rent for it duly
to the churchwardens ; he being in time himself nominated
churchwarden, the rent would lapse, himself and his heirs
becoming eventually proprietors of the said corner. Thus it
is that abuses creep in. The state of St. Bartholomew-the-
Great, a half-century ago, must indeed have been grief, almost
despair to the antiquary. A fringe factory occupied the
" Lady-Chapel " and even projected into the apse ; a school
was held in the triforium ; and a blacksmith's forge filled one of
the transepts. The fringe factory cost no less than ^6,000 to
buy out ; the blacksmith whose forge had been inside the church
Ill
" BUYING OUT " INTRUDERS Ci
for 250 years, was removed for a sum of ,£2,000. In the
north transept you may still see the stone walls and arches
blackened with the smoke of the forge, and a curious white
patch, yet remaining on the pillared wall, testifies to the exact
spot where the blacksmith's tool-cupboard used to stand. The
feet of the horses can hardly be said to have improved the
Norman pillars. Pious legend is already busy with the history
of the reconstruction of the church, and I was assured that
in one case the compensation money did its recipient little
good ; for he immediately set himself, as the phrase goes, to
" swallow it." But, indeed, all that remained of the old church
was before 1864 so hemmed in on all sides by encroaching
houses, that the work of. "buying out" must have been one
of immense difficulty and patience. Some few of the tenants
have, it seems, proved very obdurate and grasping ; these,
however, are wisely left to deal with till the last. One window
in the now cleared and restored " Lady-Chapel " is still
blocked by a red-tiled, rambling building, a highly unnecessary
but most picturesque parasite which has at some period or
other attached itself limpet-like to the old church wall.
The old church is, like all London churches, dark, and it
requires a bright day to be thoroughly appreciated. Lady
sketchers are sometimes to be seen there, their easels set up in
secluded nooks. The church, however, is generally more or
less desolate, a curious little island of quiet after the surround-
ing din of the streets and alleys. Perhaps one or two
strangers, — Americans most likely, — men by preference, — may
be seen going over it ; but old city churches do not, as a rule,
attract crowds of visitors. Passers-!)}' can rarely direct you to
them, and even dwellers in the district can but seldom tell you
where they arc. For cockneys, even " superior " cockneys, arc
born and die in London without ever troubling themselves over
the existence of these ancient relics of the past. Yet, if the
natural beauties of St. Bartholomew arc -teat, greater still is
its historical interest. The vandalisms of the Reformation,
62 RAHERE'S TOMB chai\
and, later, of the Protectorate, have fortunately spared most of
its ancient monuments, and the tomb of Rahere, the founder
and earliest prior, shows its recumbent effigy still uninjured
under a vaulted canopy. The tomb is on the north side of
the choir, just inside the communion rails. Though the
canopy is admittedly the work of a fifteenth-century artist, the
effigy is said to belong to Rahere's own time. The founder
is represented in the robes of his Order (the Augustinian
Canons) ; his head has the monkish tonsure ; a monk is on each
side of him, and an angel is at his feet. The effigy, like
several other monuments in the church, has been darkened
all over, probably by the misplaced zeal of Cromwellian icono-
clasts, with sombre paint ; this coating, however, has been to
a great extent removed. (In some of the other tombs and
monuments the darkening is done with some thick black pig-
ment, impossible entirely to remove.) The Latin epitaph on
Rahere's tomb is simple :
" Hie jacet Raherus primus canonicus et primus prior hujus ecclesiae."
Some twenty years ago the tomb was opened, and Rahere's
skeleton disclosed, together with a part of a sandal, which
latter may be seen in a glass case among other relics in the
north transept.
Almost opposite the founder's tomb, looking down from the
south triforium, is Prior Bolton's picturesque window, built by
him evidently for the purpose of watching the revered monu-
ment. Prior Bolton, the most famous of Rahere's successors,
ruled the convent from 1506 to 1532; his window is a pro-
jecting oriel, and on a middle panel below is carved his well-
known "rebus," a "bolt" passing through a "tun"; this
rebus occurs also at other places in the church.
The splendid alabaster tomb of Sir Walter Mildmay, a
statesman of Queen Elizabeth's day, and founder of Emmanuel
College, Cambridge, should be noticed in the south ambula-
tory. The vandalism of former times had, curiously enough,
Ill
CURIOUS INSCRIPTIONS 63
not blackened this tomb, but endued its alabaster with an
upper coating of sham marble — now removed. The remainder
of the tombs and monuments will all repay inspection; and
some of the inscriptions are very quaint. For instance, in a
bay in the south ambulatory is a monument to a certain John
Whiting and his wife, with the verse (nearly defaced) from Sir
Henry Wotton :
" Shee first deceased, he for a little try'd
To live without her, lik'd it not and dy'd."
And in another place is the monument to Edward Cooke,
" philosopher and doctor," which is made of a kind of porous
marble that exudes water in damp weather, and has inscribed
(in it the following appropriate epitaph :
" Unsluice, ye briny floods. What ! can ye keep
Your eyes from teares, ami see the marble weep?
l'.urst out fur shame ; or if ye find noe vent
For teares, yet slay and see the stones relent."
Vet the marble was not altogether to be blamed. It is sad
to spoil a poetic illusion ; but it seems that in old days the
church was damp, so damp that the rector — if report is to be
believed— had to preach sometimes under an umbrella, and
the marble " wept " abundantly. Now, however, that the
building is repaired and properly warmed, the " stones relent "
no more.
St. Bartholomew has had, too. its quota of famous par-
ishioners. Milton, that constant though wandering Londoner,
lived close by at one time, in his "pretty garden-house " of
Aldersgate (that garden-house that was yet so dull that his
young wile ran away temporarily both from it and him !) ; and
the poel probably attended divine service in the church.
Hogarth, the painter, was baptised here, as the parish registers
tell. The congregation of the present day, however, conn-,
as is so often the case with old city churches, mainly from out-
side. The immediate neighbourhood is hardly church-going,
6 4 CLOTH FAIR chap.
being a collection of narrow alleys and mysterious courts.
And yet, in these dark purlieus of " Little Britain," house-room
is frightfully dear, and in the crumbling tenements of " Cloth
Fair," a poor room costs about 6s. per week. As to the popu-
lation, only fifteen years ago they were rough, rowdy, even
criminal in places ; now, however, the district is mainly
respectable, although overcrowded by workers — factory hands,
private manufacturers, widows who work in City offices and
who cling to the locality as being near and convenient. It is
very difficult for the authorities to obviate overcrowding in
certain central London districts. Little Britain, now devoted
to warehouses and tenement dwellings, was in old days filled
with book-shops ; indeed, the whole district used to be literary,
for Milton Street, near by, was the " Grub Street " of Pope's
obloquy in the Dunciad. In Little Britain are still good houses
to be seen here and there ; and Cloth Fair itself was once in-
habited by grandees and merchant princes. That dingy but
romantic alley still boasts an old lath-and-plaster house, that
once was the Earl of Warwick's ; its picturesque windows sur-
mount a humble tallow chandler's shop; but its towering
decrepitude still has dignity, and the Earl's arms still adorn
its front. It was good enough for an Earl in old days ;
now, however, his dog would hardly be allowed to sleep
in it !
When " Bartholomew Fair " was a great annual festivity, it
was in Cloth Fair that the famous " Court of Pie Powdre " used
to be held, that court which, during fair-time, corrected weights
and measures and granted licenses. It was called the " Court
of Pie Powdre " because " justice was done there as speedily as
dust can fall from the foot."
In mediaeval days, the open space of Smith field — now a
meat market — was, as every one knows, a shambles of another
sort. Here suffered that noble army of Marian martyrs, who
proudly for conscience' sake faced the flame ; here burned
those hideous fires that long blackened the English name.
in THE SMITHFIELD MARTYRS 65
The little row of houses facing Smithfield, — under which is
the archway and dog- toothed gate to the old church, already
mentioned, — is, so far as one can gather from an old print,
little altered since those cruel days when mayors, grandees,
and respectable citizens would sit and watch the tortures of
poor, faithful men and women. Especially at the beautiful
Anne Askew's burning, "the multitude and concourse," says
Foxe, " of the people was exceeding ; the place where they
stood being railed about to keep out the press. Upon the
bench under St. Bartholomew's Church sate Wriothesley,
chancellor of England, the old Duke of Norfolk," etc. etc. . .
Strange times, indeed ! when, (said Byron) :
"Christians did burn each other, quite persuaded
That all the Apostles would have done as they did."
At the Smithfield fires perished in all 277 persons, whose
only memorial is now an inscribed stone on the outer wall of
St. Bartholomew's Hospital, commemorating three of them in
these words :
" Within a few yards <>f this spot John Rogers, John Bradford, John
Philpot, servants of God, suffered death by lire for the faith of Christ, in
the years 1555, 1556, 1557."
Smithfield, or Smoothfield as it was first called, was even in
very early times a place of slaughter and execution ; here tin
Scotch patriot, Sir William Wallace, was done to death in 1305,
and here, in 1381, the rebel Wat Tyler was slain by Sir
William Walworth. Originally a tournament and tilt ground,
Smithfield was in those days a broad meadow-land fringed
with elms, beyond the old London walls. Miracle-plays,
public executions, tortures, fairs, and burnings appear to have
taken place here in indiscriminate alternation, until Smithfield
became, first, the great cattle fair of London, and, finally, the
modern meat-market. Its present charm, if any, must lie all
"in the eye of the seer:" for it is. in truth, a noisy, unattr.
tive spot, with hut little suggestion of ancienl romance about it.
1
66
ST. BARTHOLOMEWS HOSPITAL
CHAP.
St. Bartholomew's Hospital, of which the long front faces
the market-place, forms part of Rahere's original foundation.
Refounded by Henry VIII. after the dissolution of the monas-
teries, it is now almost the wealthiest, as well as the oldest,
hospital in London. It admits over 100,000 patients annually,
and its medical school is famous. Just within its Smithfield
gateway, which dates from the year 1702, and is adorned by
a statute of Henry VIII., is the church of St. Bartholomew
St. Bartholomew s, Smithfield.
the Less, originally built by Rahere just after his return
from Rome, but re-erected in 1823. The spacious court-yards
of the hospital, collegiate in size and cleanliness, and pleasantly
shaded by trees, afford pretty and pathetic sights. Here, on
fine days of spring and summer, a few convalescents, pale
and bandaged, may be seen sitting out and enjoying the fresh
air and sunshine, talking, reading, or simply engrossed in
watching a game of ball played by the students. Those boy-
or girl-patients who are well on the road to recovery, often
in CHARTERHOUSE SQUARE 67
tend or supervise still younger patients, the pretty white-capped
nurses occasionally lending a hand — it is a charming sight.
The last time that I passed by the Smithfield front of the
hospital, a poor tramp lay prone on the broad steps of the
patients' entrance, and a porter was sympathetically and
tenderly preparing to lift him inside ; it was a picture of the
(lood Samaritan.
But St. Bartholomew's precincts are not the only " haunts of
peace " in this noisy neighbourhood. Crossing the Metropolitan
Meat Market, and picking your way northward, through
innumerable ugly tram-lines, you presently reach the quiet and
restful Charterhouse Square, whence, through an archway, the
precincts of the ancient monastery are entered. Charterhouse
Square, once an enclosure of seventeenth-century palaces, is a
delightful old place even yet ; though its sober residential look
of time-darkened red brick is now but a blind, and it is rapidly
becoming a square of hotels and lodging houses. Such a fate
was, of course, inevitable in its case ; and yet it seems mourn-
ful. The spot where Rutland House, the ancient residence of
the Venetian ambassador, once stood, is only commemorated
now in the name of Rutland Place. The City palaces have
crumbled ; they have all been rebuilt in the far West ; and even
Mloomsbury has none left, except those which are devoted to
the modern Hat ! One of the prettiest houses now to be seen
in the present Charterhouse Square, — its front trellised over with
bright Virginian creeper, such a house as Miss Thackeray loved
to describe,— is nowa " home " fitted up bya big city warehouse
for the accommodation of its working girls. The square garden
is still nicely kept ; Janus-laced, it looks on to tin- world's noisy
mart on the one side, and, on the other, towards conventual
peace.
But you must not linger in Charterhouse Square ; time is
passing, and die archway leading to the ancient sanctuary
invites you. The guide-books tell you that this archway is in
the "1'erpendicular" style; that its projecting shelf above is
68 PRIOR HOUGHTON'S STAND chap.
supported by lions , this and much more ; but you do not
always feel in a mood to digest guide-books. They are so
aggressive in their information, and so distracting to one's own
thoughts ! For, how many associations does not this classic
abode recall ! You can easily imagine groups of tonsured,
cowled friars, standing here and there in the shadows of the
quadrangles ; one "grey friar" of a later time, with "the order
of the Bath on his breast," perhaps, most of all.
This Carthusian monastery, so powerful in mediaeval times,
and founded by Sir Walter Manny as early as 132 1, was
suppressed by the rapacity of Henry VIII, that brutal though
necessary reformer. The story of the dissolution is a cruel and
heartrending one. Prior Houghton, the last superior of the
monastery, protested against the king's spoliation of Church
lands ; he was promptly convicted of high treason, and, with
several of his monks, was " hanged, drawn, and quartered " at
Tyburn. They died gallantly, and in their deaths we revere
that true and sturdy spirit that still in our own day leads
England on to glory :
"If" (says Froude) " we would understand the true spirit of the time, we
musl regard Catholics and Protestants as gallant soldiers, whose deaths,
when they fall, art- not painful, but glorious; and whose devotion we are
equally able to admire, even where we cannot equally approve their cause.
Courage and self-sacrifice are beautiful alike in an enemy and in a friend.
And exult in that chivalry with which the Smithfield martyrs
bought England's freedom with their blood, so we will not refuse our
admiration to those other gallant men whose high forms, in the sunset
of the old faith, stand transfigured on the horizon, tinged with the light of
its d\ing glory."
Prior Houghton's bloody arm, severed from his murdered
corpse, was hung up over the gateway of his sanctuary, to awe
his remaining monks into obedience ; while his head was
exposed on London Bridge. Brutal, indeed, were our fore-
fathers of the Tudor time '.
The Charterhouse, alter the banishment and death of its
monks, passed through the hands of several of the king's
in A PENSIONER OF GREY FRIARS 69
favourites, and came eventually into those of the Duke of
Norfolk, who altered it considerably, making it less monastic
and more palatial in character. But a new era of usefulness
awaited the ancient convent ; better days for it were at hand.
For it was finally sold by the Norfolk family to one Thomas
Sutton, a rich and philanthropic Northumbrian coal-owner, who
converted it into a " Hospital " for eighty poor men, and a
school for forty poor boys. The school, so picturesque in
Thackeray's Newcomes, no longer exists here as in old days ;
in 1872, the modern craze for fresh air transferred it to new
premises at Godalming ; and the boys' vacated buildings were
sold to the Merchant Taylors' Company for their own school.
The almshouses for the poor brothers remain, however, just as
they were. Times change, and, though the aged bedesmen are
yet poor, it is doubtful whether all the boys who benefit from
the foundation, can still be called so. The school, like other
foundations of its kind, probably now benefits a higher class
than old Thomas Sutton intended.
Many noted men have been pupils of the Charterhouse;
Thackeray, especially, has immortalised his old school in his
touching description of "Founder's Day" ; when old Colonel
Newcome, in his turn both pupil and poor brother, sits humbly
among the aged pensioners, clad in his black gown :
"I chanced in I< >< >k up from my book towards the swarm of black-
coated pensioners: and amongst Ihem- -amongsl them — sate Thomas
Newcome. IIi> dear old head was bent down over his prayer-book ; there
was ii" mistaking him. He wore the black gown "I the pensioners "I th<
Hospital of Ore)- Friars. IIi> order of the Bath was mi his breast, li-
st 1 there among.M the 1 t brethren, uttering the responses to the psalm
... I heard no more of prayers, and psalms, and sermon, aftei that."
The whole of the Charterhouse breathes the old man's
spirit ; is perambulated by his frail L;host, the shadow ol a ( in \
briar. The letters, " LH." worked out in red on the bricks
in Washhouse Court, (part of the old monastery), though
supposed to show the initials of the martyred Prior Houghton,
7o
"FOUNDER'S DAY" chap.
are not so vivid to us as the little house in the same court,
pointed out as the place where Colonel Newcome died !
Ghosts there may be in the Charterhouse, but their identity
is not divulged. " Some people,'' the porter owns, under
pressure, "have been known to see strange things," though he
for his part has only come across rats, so far. Perhaps the
boys have " laid " them ! boys, it must be confessed, would
make short work of most ghosts. The boys, on the " Founder's
1 )ay " mentioned by Thackeray, used always to sing the Car-
thusian chorus in the old merchant's honour :
"Then blessed be the memory
Of good old Thomas Sutton,
Who gave us lodging, learning,
As well as beef and mutton."
5 >
The) sing it still, no doubt, equally heartily at Godalmin
yet, surely, some among them must yearn for the historic
associations of the old place. But, indeed, all the ancient
schools are going, or gone, from the City ; St. Paul's School is
moved to Hammersmith ; the picturesque Christ's Hospital is
just disintegrated ; its characteristic Lares and Penates are
removed to Horsham ; and the passengers along noisy Newgate
Street will no longer stay to enjoy the romps and the football
of the yellow-legged, blue-coated boys.
The brick courts of the Charterhouse have a solid and
collegiate air : its small Jacobean chapel, of which the groined
entrance alone dates from monastic times, contains a splendid
alabaster tomb of the Founder. Here is Thackeray's striking
description of a "Founder's Day" service:
'• The boys are already in their seats, with smug fresh faces, and shining
white collars; the old black-gowned pensioners are on their benches;
the chapel is lighted, and Founder's Tomb, with it-; grotesque carvings,
mo iters, heraldries, darkles and shines with the most wonderful shadows
and lights. There lie lies, Fundator Noster, in his ruff and gown, awaiting
the great Examination Day. . . Yonder sit forty cherry-cheeked boys,
thinking about home and holidays to-morrow. Yonder sit some three-
r->
in THE CHARTERHOUSE BUILDINGS 71
score old gentlemen of the hospital, listening to the prayers and the psalms.
You hear them coughing feebly in the twilight, — the old reverend blackgowns
... A plenty of candles lights up this chapel, and this scene of age and
youth, and early memories, and pompous death. How solemn the well-
remembered prayers are, here uttered again in the place where in childhood
we used to hear them ! How beautiful and decorous the rite ; how noble
the ancient words of the supplications which the priest utters, and to which
generations of fresh children, and troops of bygone seniors have cried
Amen I under those arches ! The service for Founder's Day is a special
one; one of the psalms selected being the thirty-seventh, and we hear —
' v. 23. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord : and he delighteth
in his way. 24. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down : for the
Lord upholdeth him with his hand. 25. I have been young, and now am old ;
yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread.' '
The Carthusians, as visitors to the monastery of the " Grande
Chartreuse " already know, lived almost entirely in small houses
of their own. These exist here no longer, but the ancient
1 trick cloister that extends along the playground belongs to
the old convent. The many rambling courts and low buildings
of the Charterhouse are, no doubt, puzzling on a first visit.
" There is," says Thackeray, "an old Hall, a beautiful specimen
of the architecture of James's time; an old Hall? many old
halls ; old staircases, old passages, old chambers decorated
with old portraits, walking in the midst of which, we walk as
it were in the early seventeenth century." The dining-hall,
which used to be the monastic guest-chamber, is used now by
the old bedesmen ; it is fine, with its dark panelling and its look
of comfortable solidity. This was the part of the old Charter-
house adapted for his own dwelling by the Duke of Norfolk ;
and the wide Elizabethan staircase, leading to the "Officers 1
Library," is almosl exactly as it was in his time. A curfew,
tolled every evening at eight or nine o'clock p.m., proclaims
the number of the poor brethren. It was with reference to
this custom that Thackeray wrote his infinitely touching de-
scription of the death of Thomas Newcome :
•• Ai the usual evening hour the chapel bell began to toll, and Thomas
Xewcome's hands outside the bed feebly bea) lime. And just as the last bell
72 ST. JOHN'S GATE, CLERKENWELL chap.
struck, a peculiar sweel smile shone over his face, and he lifted up his head
a little, and quickly said M.Aw/;,' and fell back. It was the word we
used at school, when names were called ; and lo, he, whose heart was as
thai of a little child, had answered to his name, and stood in the presence
of The Master."
But the Charterhouse has now come more or less to be a
'•show place" ; and, interesting as are visits to the show places
of London, I often think that a mere aimless ramble through
the streets of the City is more soothing and refreshing to the
average mind. Human nature is contradictory, delighting in
the unexpected ; also, so far as lasting impressions go, it is
incapable of thoroughly taking in much at one time. Every-
body knows that places where you are " shown round " are
fatiguing ; what you really enjoy is what you can find out for
your own poor self. In London streets, the unexpected is
always happening ; thus, through the hideous plate glass of a
bar parlour, you may catch glimpses of waving trees and grey
towers, and even the dreadful glare of London advertisement
hoardings does not "wholly abolish or destroy" the ancient
charm of the crowded, irregular City streets. A City of parallel
lines and squares, such as the Colonials love ! Perish the
thought ! Let them widen Southampton Row if they will,
remove Holywell Street and King Street if they list ; but let
us at any rate keep to our old and devious ways through the
heart of the City !
Just west of the Charterhouse, reached from Smithfield by
St. John Street, is another stranded islet of the past, St.
John's Gate, Clerkenwell. This is the only remaining relic of
the mediaeval Priory of St. John, the chief English seat of the
"Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem," founded in
Henry I.'s reign by a baron named Jordan Briset and Muriel
his wife. The early Priory was burnt by the rebels under Wat
Tyler, and, when rebuilt, the newer building was used in many
reigns as a resoit of royalty. After many vicissitudes, the
Order of St. John's Knights was suppressed by that arch-
in DR. JOHNSON IN ST. JOHN'S GATE 73
iconoclast Henry VIII. who, for the purpose, resorted to his
usual persuasive methods of beheading, hanging, and quartering.
Nevertheless, the Priory continued to be used as a Royal
residence by Henry's daughter, Mary. The fragment of the
old building that remains to us is its south gate, built by
Prior Docwra in 1504. It is a fine bit of perpendicular
architecture ; on the gateway's north side are the arms of
Docwra and of his Order, on the south side, those of France
and England. In the centre of the groined roof is the Lamb
bearing a flag, kneeling on the Gospels. The rest of the
Priory buildings have long vanished ; destroyed, for the most
part, by the ambitious Protector Somerset, by whose order
they were blown up for building materials for his fine new
Strand palace. The later history of the old Gate is mainly
journalistic ; demonstrating that typical change from the calm
of conventual seclusion to the thunder of printing-press
publicity, so common in central London. Dr. Johnson lived
hue in his early days of hack work in the old rooms above
the (late, working for Cave the printer, the founder of the
Gentleman's Magazine, at so much per sheet, and living
lure an inky, dirty, hermit like existence ; seeing no one, and
" eating his food behind a screen, being too shabby for publicity."
The chair he used is still treasured. (St. John's (late is a
familiar object to many who have not really seen it, owing to
its representation, in pale purple, on the outside cover of the
Gentleman's Magazine.) The -ate is now appropriately
occupied by the Order of St. John, a charitable institution
devoted to ambulance and hospital work. Part of the old
priory church may be seen in the fine Norman crypt of St.
[ohn's Church close by. People used to visit this crypt to see
the coffin (now buried), of " Scratching Fanny, the Cock Pane
Ghost": this was a fraud perpetrated by a girl and her father,
for gain. A plausible story was invented, and mam notable
people were duped by it : but by Dr. Johnson's investigations
the hoax was at length discovered.
74 "ANNO VICTORIAE" CHAP.
A ramble down Bishopsgate, in the inconsequent way already
suggested, will be found thoroughly enjoyable ; though it has,
of course, the defect of being exceptionally easy of accomplish
ment For this purpose, an omnibus to the Mansion House
will land you exactly where you want to be. I may add that
it is very important to choose a fine day for the excursion, a
day when those imposing golden letters on the Royal Exchange
—the "Anno Elizabethae " and "Anno Victoriae" — glitter
like so many suns above the unceasing whirlpool of human life
and energy below. Have you ever thought, as you looked on
those golden letters, how interesting they may prove to some
future antiquary ? Like the " M. Agrippa Cos Tertium
Fecit " on the Roman Pantheon, they tell, proudly, of the glory
of a great nation. It is noteworthy that the names of two
queens should here represent England's highest fame, and
commemorate thus, in close juxtaposition, the Elizabethan
and Victorian Age.
The Victorian Age, however, with its bustle and movement,
is very much with us as we approach Bishopsgate along the
route of Holborn Viaduct. If you elect to travel on the top of
an omnibus, you will find that Newgate Street and Cheapside
show, in turn and on each side, a scintillating kaleidoscope of
light and colour. Rambles are all very well in their way ; but,
under some circumstances, Mr. Gladstone's dictum was a right
one ; the top of an omnibus is a wonderful point of view. So
we will go on a 'bus to the Mansion House, and ramble after-
wards, first comes St. Paul's, its imposing dome rising
majestically in ponderous blackness through its surrounding
greenery ; then the gloomy walls of grim Newgate prison ;
next, the pale, ghost-like spire of St. Mary-le-Bow, shining over
its blackened base and the many-coloured street vista below,
and, finally, the great civic buildings of the City proper, forming
in the sunlight, a sort of white-and-golden circle, a central
focusing point of colour and energy, whence diverge, like so
many wheel- spokes, all the great business thoroughfares. The
in THE ROYAL EXCHANGE 75
stranger, set down here for the first time, generally completely
loses his bearings, and even the practised Londoner sometimes
finds himself at a loss. (In a " London particular " he may
even find himself in a very Inferno.) But the cool inner court-
yard of the Royal Exchange, sought as a refuge, will speedily
restore his disordered faculties, and give him time to get out
his pocket-map. Here, let into the inner wall of the colonnade,
are modern paintings of scenes in the history of London by
eminent artists, among which the contrasted pictures of the
two great queens (respectively by Ernest Crofts and R. W.
Macbeth) carry out something of the feeling suggested by the
gold-lettered pediment. Elizabeth, on a spirited charger,
golden-haired and in picturesque sixteenth century dress, opens
Sir Thomas Gresham's earlier building ; Victoria, a slim girlish
figure, standing between the "great Duke"' and Prince Albert,
inaugurates the later.
Roundabout the "Exchange" precincts, several sensible,
sober, and practical-looking gentlemen sit, casually, on stone
chairs; Mr. Peabody is on one side, Sir Rowland Hill, the
penn) postage reformer, is on the other. So far as I have
:n, they are the only people in this crowded ant-heap who
have any leisure for sitting down ! Opposite the Royal Ex-
change, at No. 15 Cornhill, is a little shop of old time— Birch
and Birch— painted in green and red. It is a very unassuming
little confectioner's shop, and its tiny, abridged shop-front with
the narrow panes of glass has certainly an antique look. But
not unassuming are the civic banquets which this firm is often
called upon to supply. The churches in the narrow street of
Cornhill come upon the pedestrian, if, indeed, they come upon
him at all, as surprises. Of St. Michael's nothing can 1 e seen
from the street but its tower and richly-carved modern door-
way fixed between two plate-glass shop -fronts. The doorway
has projecting heads and a relief of St. Michael weighing souls ;
a business-like proceeding, I may remark, that well befits the
City, further on, comes St. Peter-upon-Cornhill, the body of
7 6 CITY CARETAKERS chap.
the church completely masked by shops, and only the tower to
be seen over the roofs from the further side of the street.
Most of these City churches are open at mid-day, and the
stranger is usually free to walk round and see what he will,
without let or hindrance, ignored by the sextoness or pew-
opener, who is generally a superior old lady in black silk,
attached to the church some thirty or forty years, and almost
as much a part of it as its furniture. Church caretakers' lives
must be healthier than one would imagine, for they seem, as a
race, given to longevity. Visitors are rarely encouraged in
London churches. The charwomen employed in scrubbing
tin- aisles seem to regard intruders as unnecessary nuisances.
" Church shut for to-day," one cried triumphantly when she-
saw me coming. It is interesting to note that, when Thackeray
edited the Cornhill Magasinc, his editorial window looked out
upon this church of St. Peter. Now, Bishopsgate Street turns
down out of Cornhill to the left, and spacious banks, built in
varying degrees of splendour, line the thoroughfare.
Close by, in Threadneedle Street, was the old " South Sea
House," noted for the famous " Bubble " of 1720, that ruined
so many thousands. E. M. Ward's picture of the wild excite-
ment caused by the " Bubble " in the neighbouring Change
Alky, is well known. In Bishopsgate Street, almost opposite
Crosby Hall, is the splendid " National and Provincial Bank,"
unique in sumptuousness, its large hall lined with polished
granite columns in the Byzantine-Romanesque style— a style,
one would think, more ecclesiastical than financial. If they had
dug this sort of place out of old Pompeii, what would the
antiquaries have called it ? No statues of Plutus or of
Mercury would have helped them to their finding ! Alas ! in
our foggy climate, we dare not indulge ourselves with sculptured
I es and Penates; and we must needs content ourselves
with those few square-toed, frock-coated celebrities whose
statues, of gigantic size, confront us at our chief partings of the
roads. They have, certainly, gathered funereal trappings galore
Ill
GREAT ST. IIKI.I.XS 77
in their time ; their grime and blackness deceive even the
wary London sparrows, who build their nests fearlessly about
the giants' heads and shoulders.
To return to Bishopsgate Street : Crosby Hall, the ancient
mediaeval palace and modern restaurant, to which I have before
alluded, is, though much repaired and repainted, still dignified ;
in the interior of the restaurant all details are carefully studied,
even to the antique china stands for glasses, and the old-
fashioned spotted cambric dresses of the serving-maids.
Close by Crosby Hall is the turning into Great St. Helen's ;
indeed, the long windows of the hall back on to the square of that
name. This curious old convent church, set in its little secluded
enclosure, has been called " the Westminster Abbey of the City."
It is certainly rich in historical tombs and monuments. Origin-
ally founded in the 13th century as the "Priory of St. Helen's
for Nuns of the Benedictine Order," its accessories have, like
those of St. Bartholomew the Great, been long removed and
built over, and its cloisters exist no more. Yet what remains
of it is full of interest. It is comparatively very unvisited. The
last time 1 was there, I noticed one depressed American,
"doing'' the tombs sadly. 1 felt for him, for though it was
only 3 o'clock on an October day, it was much too dark to
read or sec, and he had evidently lost himself among the
monuments. The sextoness, who was apparently engaged in
the careful brushing of her black silk dress in the vestry, was
much too superior to notice him. St. Helen's is a dark church
at any time ; on this occasion a " London particular " was also
impending, and even the gold letters on Sir Thomas Gresham's
massive tomb scarcely showed in the lading light. But it was
a picturesque scene, despite the sad lack of " glory on the walls."
The old knights and ladies, motionless on their narrow beds,
glimmered in ghostly fashion, silent witnesses of the flight of
the centuries. The quaint, stiff effigies, clad in ruff and
farthingale, while they have knelt there, how many generations,
in the turbulent world outside, have been born and died?
78 THE NUNS' GRATE chap.
Bancroft's unwieldy tomb is gone from its old place ; else you
might well have imagined the shade of the eccentric philan-
thropist stealing from it by night, pressing back its careful
hinges, and fumbling for the bread and wine that he had
ordered by will to be placed near by for his awakening. You
mistook, in the dim light, Sir John Spencer's kneeling heiress-
daughter for a guardian angel, and you were awed by the still,
calm medievalism of the altar-tomb of the Crosbys. . . . It was
all so vague and so misty that the mind really seemed to par-
ticipate in the general fog, and I remember gazing vaguely on
the words, " Julius Caesar," — inscribed, in enormous letters, on
a sumptuous altar-tomb, — feeling that I fervently sympathised
with the royal lady who, when shown the magic name, is said
to have remarked naively :
" But I always thought that Julius Caesar was buried in Rome ! "
It is surely very unfair for individuals to perpetrate post-
mortem puzzles of the kind ! For this " Julius Caesar," (who,
by-the way, gained his false honours by dropping his surname)
was merely a Judge and a Master of the Rolls of Elizabeth's
day, and, evidently, as shown by his tomb, designed by him-
self, what is called "a crank" also. When I had got over the
"Julius Caesar" deception, I sympathised duly with the large
family of "John Robinson, alderman," whose children form a
long kneeling procession behind him ; and still more did I
mourn for those unhappy nuns who, poor things, were
immured in the darkness behind "the Nuns' Grate," or
" hagioscope " ; their scant peepholes so unkindly devised that
they could only see the altar, and not the congregation ! These
" Black Nuns " of St. Helen's must, nevertheless, one thinks,
have been often but naughty, giggling school-girls, despite
their show of conventual discipline. Perhaps, as Chaucer
would have us believe, such discipline was but lax in England
in the middle ages. Be that as it may, we find, at one time,
no less authorities than the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's
admonishing them thus :
in ST. ETHELBURGA 79
■• Also we enjoyne you, that all daunsyng and reveling be utterly forborne
anion;; you, except at Christmasse, and other honest tymys of recreacyone,
among yourselfe usyd, in absence of seculars in alle wyse."
Of the two aisles that form the church, the "Nuns' Aisle " is
that to the left as you enter, and the steps to their destroyed
cloister (now blocked up) open out of it. The little garden
plot outside the church is neatly kept, and on my last visit I
noticed some gardeners putting in a plentiful supply of bulbs
for spring blooming. Doubtless, the " Black Nuns " enjoyed
among their other " recreacyones," a lovely and a well-ordered
(onvtnt garden outside their cloister; "cherry trees" are
specially mentioned in St. Helen's register ; and, as we know,
the London of that day grew many luscious fruits.
farther down Bishopsgate Street, is the tiny church of St.
Ethelburga, uninteresting as regards its interior, but one of lite
oldest existing churches in London, and certainly the smallest.
li escaped the ravages of the Great Fire, and history mentions
ii as early as 1366. I passed it three times without noticing
it. for its little spirelet rises but slightly above the roofs of the
intervening shops, and its tiny doorway, labelled itself like a
small shop, is easily overlooked between two projecting
windows. (The smallness of the place can be imagined from the
fact that, only a few doors from it, no one can be found to
direct you to it.) The verger lives in a very picturesque and
overhanging slum alley close by; though his abode suggests
Fagin, he is, nevertheless, an amiable and obliging gentleman.
Just east of Bishopsgate is Houndsditch (its somewhat un-
pleasantly suggestive name commemorating the ancient City
moat), with, mar by, the Jewish quarter of St. Mary Axe,
"Rag Fair," and Petticoat Lane (now Middlesex Street),
noted, like Brick Lane, Spitalfields, for its Sunday morning
markets. Why is the Jewish quarter so invariably concerned
with old clothes? As the rhyme says :
■• Jew - of St. Mar) V.' . of ji >bs a 1 wary
I I mi for old clothes they'd even axe Si. Mary."
ZO
BEVIS MARKS chap.
Close by Houndsditch is Bevis Marks (Bury's Marks),
now descended from its ancient glories ; it used to con-
tain the City mansion, " fair courts and garden plots," of
the Abbots of Bury St. Edmunds, but now principally recalls
Dickens's unsavoury characters, Miss Sally Brass and her
brother Sampson (in The Old Curiosity Shop). Here, once
again, Dickens gets thoroughly the strange, semi-human spirit
of London slums and by-ways ; it is in such places that his
genius attains its highest flights. That he was always, too,
very careful as regarded his details, is shown in a letter on
this subject to his friend Forster. He spent (he says), a whole
morning in Bevis Marks, selecting :
"the office window, with its threadbare green curtain all awry ; its sill
just above the two steps which lead from the side-walk to the office door,
and so close on the footway that the passenger who takes the wall brushes
the dim glass with his elbow."
It seems, however, almost too invidious to select special
rambles. For, the whole of this heart of the city, — except
only for certain well-defined " infernos " of modern industry
and ugliness, such as the great Liverpool-Street terminus, must
be deeply interesting to every Londoner and every Englishman.
Even in comparatively dull streets, lined with warehouses and
offices, there will always be some little oasis to rest and refresh
the wanderer. Suppose that, instead of going up Cornhill, you
take another wheel-spoke from the Mansion-House ; say
Lombard-Street, the home par excellence of the bankers.
This street is solid and stately, as you would expect ; the very
name has a moneyed ring about it ! The derivation of the
name, by-the-way, is curious ; it comes from Lombard bankers
who appear to have settled here at an early date ; the street
bore their name in the reign of Edward II. The square
tower, crowned by an octagonal spire, that rises on the north
side of Lombard Street, is that of the church of St. Edmund
the King and Martyr, in which was made poor Addison's not
too happy marriage with the Dowager Countess of Warwick and
in ANCIENT BYWAYS FROM CHEAPSIDE 81
Holland. Still continuing east, past Gracechurch Street, we
come to Fenchurch Street, a thoroughfare that runs parallel
with the busy mart of Eastcheap, famed in Shakespeare, and
possibly no less dirty and noisy than it was in Dame Quickly's
time. Out of Fenchurch Street opens Mincing Lane, a name
that commemorates the " minchens " or nuns of St. Helen's ;
that convent owned a great deal of property about here. The
Clothworkers' Hall, close by, is reached through an iron gate ;
its garden, or court, is formed by the ancient churchyard of All
I Iallows, Staining, a church destroyed, all but its tower, by the
Great Fire, and not rebuilt. The tower of All Hallows, a
stranded fragment of antiquity, forms the centre piece of the
garden court, where its effect is most curious and striking.
The narrow old streets that lead north out of Cheapside,
the " Chepe " of the middle ages, with their quaint old names,
afford many pleasant rambles. In Wood Street, the old
plane-tree, still standing, recalls Wordsworth's poem. Milk
Street leads by the old church of St. Mary Aldermanbury,
with the statue of Shakespeare in its little churchyard, to the
still visible bastions of London Wall, and along the street of
that name, to Cripple-gate. The church of St. Giles, Cripple-
gate, is interesting ; its churchyard, too, is a green and favoured
spot. A street of warehouses near it was burned down quite
recently with terrible loss, and the church itself was threatened,
but fortunately escaped ; but the streets, now rebuilt, look,
thanks to the ( 'ity's wonderful recuperative powers, as solid
and as flourishing as ever. The noisy thoroughfare of bore
Street, lined with warehouses and foundries, is built upon the
ancient line of wall, which also appears, black against sun-
flowers, asters, and greenery, in St. Giles's churchyard and
rectorj garden. This part of the City wall is probably of
Edward IY.'s time. Portions of the old Roman wall have
indeed been discovered here and there in the City j a large
fragment of it was, for instance, laid bare at the building of
the new departments of the General Post Office in 1891.
G
Nj LONDON WALL chap.
But the oldest fragments of wall existing near Cripplegate are,
though black, grimy, and mouldering, probably Norman or
Saxon. Roman relics that have been discovered in the City are
on view, some at the Guildhall, others in the British Museum ;
the most interesting of them all, however, is still in situ, being
the large fragment called "London Stone," built into St. Swithin's
Church opposite the Cannon Street Terminus ; supposed to
be a " milliarium," or milestone, and possibly, like the golden
milestone in the Roman Forum, " a central mark whence the
great Roman roads radiated all over England."
The street called " London Wall " testifies to the care of the
City for its ancient monuments. The ruins of the old fortifications
are carefully built up, embanked, and made picturesque by a
narrow strip of greenery that was once the churchyard of St.
Alphage over the way. They are railed in from injury, and a
memorial tablet is affixed. The dwellers in the district still, how-
ever, seem densely ignorant as to its meaning. I lately asked
several youthful inhabitants, engaged in the fascinating pavement
game of " hop-scotch," what they supposed the place was. They
could not answer. The School Board, if rumour speaks truly,
is surely doing well to include the history of London in its
curriculum.
The street of London Wall has the distinction of possessing
the very ugliest church in the metropolis, that of St. Alphage.
It has, indeed, the one merit of being so small as easily to
escape notice ; though hardly its ancient foundation, or the
interesting monument inside it to Lord Mayor Sir Rowland
Hayward's two wives and sixteen " happy children," redeem it
from utter dreariness.
But we must now desist from our rambles, though there is
yet much to see ; night is falling ; that mysterious night that
brings such strange contrast to the City streets ; the wild, fitful
fever of their long day is ended, and they are left to silence.
The busy throng of workers hurries homeward ; soon, in the
highways scarcely a belated footfall resounds, while in the
Ill
NIGHT IX THE CITY 83
byways, by clay so crowded, there reigns a calm as of the sea
at rest ; like the sea's, too, is that faint, unceasing tremor of
the great City, the City that never sleeps. To quote the poet o(
" Cockaigne " :
"Temples of Mammon are voiceless again —
Lonely policemen inherit Mark Lane —
Silent is Lothbury — quiet Cornhill — ■
Babel of Commerce, thine echoes are still.
" Westward the stream of humanity glides ;-
'Buses are proud of their dozen insides :
Put up thy shutters, grim Care, for to-day,
Mirth ami the lamplighter hurry this way."
G 2
CHAPTER IV
st. Paul's and its precincts
" A deep, low, mighty tone swung through the night. At first I knew
it not ; but it was uttered twelve times, and at the twelfth colossal hum
and trembling knell, I said, ' I lie in the shadow of St. Paul's.' . . . The
next clay I awoke, and saw the risen sun struggling through fog. Above
my head, above the housetops, co-elevate almost with the clouds, I saw a
solemn, orbed mass, dark-blue and dim — the Dome. While I looked,
my inner self moved ; my spirit shook its always-fettered wings half loose ;
I had a sudden feeling as if I, who had never yet truly lived, were at last
about to taste life : in that morning my soul grew as fast as Jonah's
gourd."— Charlotte Bronte: "Villette."
" See ! how shadowy,
Of some occult magician's rearing,
Or swung in space of heaven's grace
Dissolving, dimly reappearing,
Afloat upon ethereal tides
St. Paul's above the city rides. "—John Davidson.
St. Paul's is the central object of the City. As the typical
view of Rome must ever show, not any " purple Caesar's dome,"
but the violet, all-pervading cupola of St. Peter's, — so, also,
must the typical view of London ever show the faint, misty,
grey-blue dome of St. Paul's. And St. Paul's is more to us
than this. Even to dwellers in the West-End, inexperienced
in City life, that guardian spirit of the mother-church, brooding
silently over the far-off, dimly-imagined heart of the City, is a
vital part— a necessary factor — of London life. The mighty
smoke-begrimed cathedral, the monument of Wren's genius,
CH. IV
THE BUSTLE OF CHEAPSIDE
85
the abiding angel of the City, has it not a place in the inmost
affections of every Englishman worthy of the name whether,
near or far ? The shrines of other lands, of other nations,
may win his outspoken admiration ; St. Paul's has ever his
heart. For this, at least, is his inheritance, his very own.
frighting Cocks.
Blue-grey, veiled in mystery when viewed from a distance,
St. Paul's, seen from its immediate surroundings, has all the
wonder of a dramatic effect. Suddenly, from the glare and
bustle of Cheapside, from the tumult of the crowded highway,
a gigantic, blackened mass rises in startling completeness im-
mediately overhead, toweling with almost night-mare like rapidity
86 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN CH. iv
ever higher as we advance. Seen behind the tall white buildings
and shops of its so-called " churchyard," that hem it in, St.
Paul's makes an impression that is indescribably grand.
Especially in spring, when the first tender leaves of its sur-
rounding plane-trees interpose their young greenery in delicate
labyrinths between the dark, massive walls of the cathedral and
the ever hurrying life outside them, should St. Paul's be visited
for the first time.
There has from immemorial times been a church here ;
tradition even suggests a Roman temple on the site. But,
though the "spirit " has ever been constant, the " letter" (so to
speak), has often changed. At any rate Wren's masterpiece is
the third Christian church, dedicated to St. Paul, erected here
since early Saxon times. Though Wren's life work was not
rewarded, like Milton's, with " twenty pounds paid in instal-
ments, and a near approach to death on the gallows," yet he,
too, had but scant justice in his day. National benefits, even in
our own time, are often but ill rewarded. Thwarted, wretchedly
paid, suspected, and finally, at great age, and after forty-five
years' hard service, deposed from the post he had so long and
so ably filled ; the " Nestor " of his age, with a spirit worthy of
a more enlightened time, betook himself cheerfully to his old
study of philosophy, and only once in every year, we are told,
indulged his master-passion by having himself carried to St.
Paul's to naze in silence on his life-work.
The highest point of the city would, naturally, from very
early times be chosen as the sanctuary; and St. Paul's stands
grandly on the top of Ludgate Hill, its western portico almost
lacing the steep street of that name. That it does not do so
more exactly, is due to the haste of the people in rebuilding
their houses after the Great Fire; such haste occasioning the
reconstruction of the city more on the old lines, than on those
of Wren, for the great cathedral took some thirty-five years
to complete, and streets grow again more quickly than edifices
destined for tlie monuments of nations. And, before the new
57. Pants from the
88 THE GREAT EIRE, AND BEFORE IT chap.
church could be begun, the useless ruins of its predecessor had
to be removed. The Great Fire had calcined its stones and
undermined the safety of its walls. Such, indeed was the
devastation of this terrible holocaust, that even to this day, its
relics and debris may be traced in distinct thin layers, at certain
distances under the soil, all over the area of the City. The
ruin can hardly be imagined, even from Pepys's and Evelyn's
vivid diaries. Small wonder indeed, that it should be thought
by the credulous that the end of the world, the Last Judgment,
had truly come. Some, later, held that the " purification " of the
old church by fire had been the one thing needed after its
desecration in the Commonwealth times to a house of traffic
and merchandize, even sometimes to a stable. The church
had become a mere promenade ; " Paul's Walkers " had been
the names given to loungers in the sacred edifice ; gallants using
it as a place of pastime, beggars as a resting-place, and Inigo
Jones's beautiful portico at the west end being all built up with
squalid shops. The people were gradually awakening to a sense
of these enormities : had cleared out those unholy traffickers ;
—were, indeed, in process of restoring the church, — when, in
1666, the fire came to complete the purification. Then, when
the destruction of the city was complete, the common people
with one accord, pronounced it to be the work of the " Popish
faction," and not content with the mere verbal condemnation,
caused this accusation of incendiarism to be graven deeply on
Wren's commemorating monument, a calumny only removed
after the lapse of ages.
Old St. Paul's, the second church of that name on this site,
had been built in the Conqueror's time ; it was a large Gothic
building, a vista of noble arches, 700 feet long, with a tall
spire, which was subsequently struck by lightning and removed.
It had a twelve -bayed nave and a twelve-bayed choir, with a
fine wheel-window at the east end, and with two smaller satellites,
St. Faith and St. Gregory, — the one inside its very walls, — the
other built on to it outside. On being called upon to rebuild from
iv THE REBUILDING 89
the very foundations, Wren " resolved to reconcile as near as
possible the Gothic with a better manner of architecture ; " and,
without ever having seen St. Peter's, he produced what is really an
adaptation of that central Renaissance building of Christianity.
It is much smaller: St. Paul's could go easily inside St. Peter's ;
yet, in the position it occupies, hemmed in by streets and
houses, it looks deceptively much bigger. There is a pleasant
story told, that in the beginning of its building, Wren sent a
workman to fetch from the surrounding debris, a stone where-
with to mark out the centre of the dome ; and this happening
to be an old gravestone, inscribed " Resurgam," it was held to
be a happy omen. (The word " Resurgam," over the north
portico, with a phcenix, by Cibber, commemorates this story.)
Wren was very careful about the strength of his foundations ;
" I build for eternity," he said, with the true confidence of
genius.
More than two centuries have now elapsed since the first
opening of the new St. Paul's for service, and these two
centuries have established, as time alone can do, the fame
and the genius of Wren. Time here, as ever, has delivered
the final verdict. The great cathedral dominates the City,
harmonising, ennobling, purifying the serried mass of its
surroundings ; it is the coping-stone of London's greatness.
The verdict of later times has done justice to Wren's judg
ment, and many of his intentions regarding the details of the
edifice, thwarted in his lifetime by ignorant contemporaries, have
now been carried out. Thus, the organ has been moved from
its former place over the iron-wrought screen between choir and
nave, (where it marred the architectural effect of the edifice), to
the north-east arch of the choir, the position originally planned
for it by Wren ; the tall outside railing of the churchyard,
which. Wren said, dwarfed the base of tin- cathedral, lias bei n
removed ; the mosaics he asked for now incrust, in shining
glory, the central dome : and, if the grand " haldacchino " he
wanted has not been placed in the choir, there is, instead, a
9 o A CANOPY OF SOOT chap.
very sumptuous modern reredos. The balustrade that surmounts
the main building was not intended by Wren, but insisted on by
the Commissioners for the building ; and its erection caused
Wren to say, not, perhaps without sly intention: "I never
designed a balustrade ; but ladies think nothing we// without
an edging"
This, however, was long ago ; Wren sleeps in peace in his
cathedral crypt ; and there, on the top of Ludgate Hill, St.
Paul stands, blackening ever, year by year, yet gaining immea-
surably through that very blackness. It has been said, wittily,
that the great church has a special claim to its livery of smoke,
for the reason that a great part of the cost of its building was
defrayed by a tax on all coals brought into the port of London !
And this canopy of solemn black, out of which the dome,
lantern, and golden ball emerge at intervals, in silver and gold,
becomes it well.
" There cannot," wrote Hawthorne, "be anything else in its way so
good in the world as just this effect of St. Paul's in the very heart and
densest tumult of London. It is much better than staring white ; the
edifice would not be nearly so grand without this drapery of black."
The ancient monuments of St. Paul's were nearly altogether
destroyed with the old church ; Wren's cathedral was inaccessible
to any new monuments for some years, the first admitted to it
being that of John Howard the philanthropist in 1 790. This was
followed by many others, chiefly of great warriors, soldiers and
sailors ; although ecclesiastics also are numerous, and there is
a goodly company of painters.
" If Westminster Abbey," said ('. R. Leslie, " has its Poets' Corner, so has
St. Paul's itsPainfers' Corner. Sir Joshua Reynolds's statue, by Flaxman,
is here, and Reynolds himself lies buried here ; and Barry, and Opie, and
Lawrence are around him ; and, above all, the ashes of the great Van
Dyck are in the earth under the cathedral."
Turner now lies next to Reynolds. Yet, as a rule, the great
commemorated in St Paul's are of a different type to those of
Westminster, both churches are the mausoleums of heroes ;
iv MONUMENTAL EXUBERANCE 91
St. Paul's being, however, by common consent the resting-
place of the Militant, Westminster of the Pacific. The statue
of Dr. Johnson, under the dome, opposes that of Howard.
Though his dust rests in Westminster Abbey, the militant spirit
of the Sage well deserves commemoration in St. Paul's. His
representation, in the curious art of the time, as a half-clothed
muscular athlete, is appropriately supplemented by that of
Howard, bare-legged, with Roman toga and tunic. The coin-
cidence of Johnson holding a scroll, and Howard a prison key,
lias caused the two to be sometimes mistaken by visitors for
St. Peter and St. Paul ! But not all the monumental vagaries
are as innocuous as these. Westminster Abbey does not
alone suffer from the bad taste of the Renaissance ; a few of
the monuments of St. Paul's are alike trials to the eves as to
the faith. The naked warriors in sandals, receiving swords
from, or falling into the arms of, smart feminine " Victories, "-
htsus naturae with wings protruding from their shoulders,
are, indeed, sad instances of the too rampant eighteenth-
century exuberance of fancy. Of the monuments, for in-
stance, to Captains Burgess and Westcott, Allan Cunningham
remarks :
"The two naval officers (Westcott and Burgess), are naked, which
destroys historic probability ; it cannot lie a representation of what happened,
for no British warriors go naked into battle, or wear sandals or Asiatic
mantles. . . . When churchmen declared themselves satisfied, the ladies
thoughl they might venture to draw near, but the Sutter of fans and the
averting of laces was prodigious. That Victory, a modes! and well-draped
dame, should approach an undresl dying man, and crown him with laurel,
might be endured — hut, how a well-dressed young lady could think of
pi' ruling a sword to a naked gentleman went far beyond all their notions
of propriel) ."
Neither is the ugly group of the bishop of Calcutta. Ogre
like in size, apparently confirming two Indian dwarfs, at all
calculated to cm ite anj feeling but amusement.
The great cathedral has, nevertheless, also its monumental
treasures. Under the third arch on the north of tin- nave, is
92 TOMBS OF LEIGHTON AND GORDON chap.
the noble monument of the Duke of Wellington, by Alfred
Stevens; the aged Duke lying, "like a Scaliger of Verona,
deeply sleeping upon a lofty bronze sarcophagus." One thinks
of Tennyson's lines :
" Here in streaming London's central roar,
Let the sound of those he wrought for,
And the feet of those he fought for,
Echo round his bones for evermore."
And near to him, in the north aisle of the nave, under
the tattered banners of those old regiments that fell in the
Crimea, lies, on a pedestal of Greek cipollino, the recumbent
bronze effigy of that recent recruit to the ranks of dead painters,
Lord Leighton of Stretton. The monument, worthy of the
best traditions of art, is by Brock. The beautiful features of
the dead President are composed in a sublime peace ; he " is
not dead, but sleepeth " ; " yet it is visibly a sleep that shall
know no ending, till the last day break, and the last shadow
flee away." The long robe droops to the feet, the hands that
toiled unweariedly for beauty and for immortal art, now lie
motionless on the breast. The tattered flags that hang above,
have, here, too, their significance, — hanging over one, who in
the many-sidedness of his genius and his interests, was in his
time one of the pioneers of the Volunteer movement. The
Leonardo of his age has here a fitting memorial.
Near to Lord Leighton's fine tomb is that of General
Gordon, a bronze monument and effigy by Boehm. He " who
at all times, and everywhere, gave his strength to the weak,
his substance to the poor, his sympathy to the suffering, and
his heart to God " is fitly remembered in death. When I last
saw this monument, on the hero's breast lay a fresh bunch of
violets, on his either side were the symbolic palm-branches,
and at his feet a wreath of white flowers. Near by is the im-
posing bronze doorway, the "gate of the tomb," erected to
Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria's first Prime Minister. Of
IV
RICHMOND'S MOSAICS 93
the supporting angels on either side of the plinth, that on the
left, especially, is very impressive.
But the bell calls to service, and the rolling organ-tones
resound in the blue dome, where Richmond's mosaics glitter
like diamonds in the stray gleams of sunshine that glance
athwart the abyss. The mosaics, like all innovations in this
ungrateful city, have, of course, run the gauntlet of abuse, on
the ground of smallness and ineffectiveness ; yet the Monreale
mosaics, so admired at Palermo, are more or less on the
same scale, and are, also, at a considerable height. But it is
difficult for contemporaries to judge fairly, and Time, no doubt,
here as elsewhere, will kindly do the work of discrimination
for us.
In the crypt are the half-destroyed remains of monuments
from the older church, with Nelson's sarcophagus, Wren's
simple tomb, and many others. But, outside St. Paul's, the sun-
light still calls us, and, from the depths of the dim recesses and
aisles of the great cathedral, we regain now the brilliant summit
of Ludgate Hill, brilliant with the noonday spring sun. Now
the sounds of many-sided life invade the repose of death ; and
a noisy street-organ, playing near Queen Anne's statue, mingles
its note strangely with the cathedral's still pealing bells. The
pigeons, gay in colour, flit down from their homes in among the
blackened garlands, Corinthian capitals, and pediments ; it is a
strange and a motley scene. And, down at the bottom of the
great flight of steps that lead from the western portico, the
Twentieth-century visitor will now see a new landmark ; for
here, cut deeply into the pavement, is the record of the latest
great ceremonial function of St. Paul's: Queen Victoria's visit
here on the sixtieth anniversary of her reign. 1 [ere, on this very
spot, surrounded by Archbishops, priests, and people, the
royal and aged lady sat in her carriage, paying homage to .1
Heavenly Throne, and receiving, surely, ere. iter homage than
was ever before paid to an earthly one : —
94
A NEW LANDMARK
CHAP.
" On a lovely June morning, in the year 1897, a wondrous pageant moved
through the enchanted streets of London. Squadron by squadron, and
1 lattery by battery, a superb cavalry and artillery went by — the symbol of
the fighting strength of the United Kingdom. There went by also troops
of mounted men, more carelessly riding and more lightly equipped — those
who came from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa to give
a deeper meaning to the royal triumph ; and black-skinned soldiers and
yellow, and the fine representatives of the Indian warrior races. Generals
and statesmen went by, and a glittering cavalcade of English and Con-
tinental princes, and the whole procession was a preparation — for what ?
A carriage at last, containing a quiet-looking old lady, in dark and simple
attire ; and at every point where this carriage passed through seven miles
of London streets, in rich quarters and poor, a shock of strong emotion
shot through the spectators, on pavement and on balcony, at windows and
on housetops. They had seen the person in whom not only were vested
the ancient kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, but who was also
at once the symbol and the actual bond of union of the greatest and most
diversified of secular empires." 1
The inscription, cut, with Roman simplicity, into the broad
paving-stone, runs thus :
HERE QUEEN VICTORIA
RETURNED THANKS TO
ALMIGHTY GOD FOR THE
SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY
OF HER ACCESSION.
June 22, a. d. 1897.
By how many generations, — for how many centuries, — will
these w r ords, I wonder, be read, — the distant message of Time
from the buried Victorian Era ?
Beyond, Queen Anne's statue, in flowing curls and a
1 Imperium cl Libertas, by Bernard Holland.
iv THE PHCENIX-HEART OF LONDON 95
" sacque " robe, stands, with some dignity, facing busy Ludgate
Hill, and surrounded by a circular, prison-like grating. Down
towards noisy Fleet Street her gaze wanders ; down to where
the rumble of many wheels, the sound of many voices, make
a distant murmur like the stormy sea, broken, at intervals, by
a shriek from that most picturesque of railways, the iron
" Bridge of Steam," that, ever and anon, emits a puff of smoke
and a red spark into the general " fer men ting-vat," the ingulf-
ing vortex of life and energy below. For this is the roaring
Niagara of London, the loom of Time, that never ceases, that
ever fashions Order out of Disorder, ever, as by a magician's
wand, raises system out of chaos. Kings, and even thrones,
may " pass to rise no more;" but the busy phoenix-heart of
London, like the vestals' fire, must ceaselessly burn ; ever fed,
ever renewed, ever immortal, ever young.
"Lord Tennyson always delighted in the 'central roar' of London.
Whenever lie and I (says his son) " went to London, one of the first
things we did was to walk to the Strand and Fleet Street. ' Instead of the
stuccoed houses in the West End, this is the place where I should like to
live,' he would say. He was also fond of looking at London from the
bridges over the Thames, and of going into St. Paul's, and into the Abbey.
One day in 1S42 Fitzgerald records a visit to St. Paul's with him when he
said, ' Merely as an enclosed space in a huge city this is very fine," and
when they got out into the open, in the midst of the ' central roar," 'This
is the mind ; that is a mood of it.' ? ' — [Tennyson's Life, i. 183.)
Round about St. Paul's are many and labyrinthine lanes and
alleys, with no less labyrinthine associations. Some of these
alleys are, like Paternoster Row, or St. Paul's Churchyard, 1>\
day crowded aortas of human traffic ; others, by strange con-
trast, an- silent and still as the grave. London is, as we know,
full of unexpected nooks of quiet ; and none, in their way,
are more sudden and startling than those about St. Paul's.
Prom busy Paternoster Row, with its array of religions hook
shops of all denominations, — SO crowded, and yet so narrow,
that a man on one of its sidewalks can, l>v stretching, almost
grasp the hand of a man on the other (or could p. rhaps 'I" so,
St. MichaeCs-i Paternoster Royal.
CH. IV PATERNOSTER ROW, AND THE BRONTES 97
were it not so constantly blocked by multifarious traffic), — from
noisy Paternoster Row to the calm of "Amen Court," — the
quadrangle of canons' residences opening out of it, — what a
change ! Here, in Amen Court, entered by a pleasant, sober
red-brick gateway, Canon Liddon's last days were spent ; here
are quiet, old-fashioned houses looking, in summer, on to
green plots and refreshing shrubs. All this seclusion, and yet
the very heart of London ! Warwick Square, close by, is a
haven of another sort ; a stony square set round with tall
offices , roomy houses, perhaps formerly residential mansions,
with here and there an attractively carved antique porch, or
other relic of the past. It was under a house in this square,
in rebuilding, that various Roman remains were recently found.
In Paternoster Row, at the corner of " Chapter-house Court,"
was, in old days, the " Chapter " Coffee House, where the old
medical club of the " Wittenagemot " was held, and where,
later, Charlotte and Anne Bronte came on their first visit to
London, after the successful publication of Jane Eyre, to make
their real personalities known to their publishers, in 1848.
Two little lonely, strangely-dressed women they must have
seemed ! — their only friend the elderly waiter of the establish-
ment, who no doubt, took an interest in such unusual visitors.
Yet, what excitement must they not have felt in seeing, for the
first time, all that they had read and dreamed of for years !
One is reminded of the story of their brother Branwell, that
unhappy child of genius and temptation, who, at lonely
Haworth Parsonage, knew all " the map of London by heart "
without ever having been there, and who could direct any
chance stranger who happened, going Londonwards, to put up
at the remote Yorkshire inn.
" Panyer Alley," the last entry leading into Newgate Street,
commemorates the bakers' basket-makers, or " Panyers," of
the fourteenth century. Here, built into the wall of a modern
house and nearly obliterated, was, till (mite recently, a reliei oi
a boy sitting on a " panyer," with this curious inscription :
n
9 8 "PAUL'S CROSS" chap.
" When Ye have sought
The Citty Round
Vet still This is
The Highest G round
Avgvst the 27
1688.
Close by used to be tbe tavern called " Dolly's Chop-House, "
removed in 1883. The views obtained of the Cathedral, down
some of these narrow byways, are very striking :
" There is a passage leading from Paternoster Row to St. Paul's Church-
yard. It is a slit, through which the Cathedral is seen more grandly than
from any other point I can call to mind. It would make a fine dreamy
picture, as we saw it one moonlight night, with some belated creatures
resting against the walls in the foreground — mere spots set against the base
of Wren's mighty work, that, through the narrow opening, seemed to have
its cross set against the sky."
The famous open-air pulpit called " Paul's " or " Powle's "
Cross — noted for so many eloquent and impassioned
harangues from mediaeval divines, — for the proclamation of
kings, — for the denunciation of traitors, — used to stand at the
north-east corner of the churchyard. It was a canopied cross,
raised on stone steps ; a big elm marked its site until some
fifty years back. Open-air services, discontinued after the
demolition of " Paul's Cross," were attempted to be revived by
Wesley and Whitefield ; and, even in our own day, an open-air
pulpit is used, in summer, at Trinity Church, Marylebone Road,
and largely attended, as any one who passes by Portland Road
Station on Sunday afternoon may see for himself. Public
confession for crime was also made at " Paul's Cross," and
Jane Shore did penance here, as described by Sir Thomas
More. East of St. Paul's, where now a line of tall warehouses
rises, was, until 1884, St. Paul's School, founded in 1509 by
Dean Colet, friend of Erasmus, and now removed to new
red brick buildings at Hammersmith ; a tablet on one of the
warehouses marks its site. The old fashioned Deanery of
St. Paul's,— a homely building, not unlike a quiet country
iv WREN'S MONUMENT 99
rectory, with red tiled sloping roofs, and nearly hidden behind
high walls, — is in Dean's Court, just south of the cathedral.
Close by it is St. Paul's Choristers' School, built in 1874 by
1 Jean ( Ihurch.
Returning to the portico of the north transept, it is pleasant
to sit awhile in St Paul's Churchyard, where the doves coo and
the pigeons flutter. Or if you stand by the iron gate of the
enclosure, and raise your eyes to the blackened walls and
columns, you will see, above the north porch, an inscription
on a tablet, perpetuating the memory of the great builder, " in
four words which comprehend his merit and his fame : " " Si
monumentum requiris, circumspice." (If thou seekest his
monument, look around.) "The visitor," says Leigh Hunt,
" does look around, and the whole interior of the Cathedral
.... seems like a magnificent vault over his single body."
And, gazing, in this sense, on the great man's tomb, the
burning words of Ecclesiasticus suggest themselves, read by
the Bishop of Stepney at the unveiling of Lord Leighton's
monument :
" Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us. The
Lord hath wrought great glory by them through his greal power from the
beginning. . . . Leaders of the people by their counsels, and by their
knowledge of learning meet for the people, wise and eloquent in their
instructions. . . . All these were honoured in their generations, and were
the glory of their times. There be of them, that have left a name behind
them, that their praises might be reported. And some there he, which
have no memorial .... but .... their glory shall not be blotted out.
Their bodies are buried in peace ; but their name liveth l"i evermore."
II J
CHAPTER V
THE TOWER
Prince Edwzrd : " Did Julius Caesar build that place, my lord ?"
Buckingham : li He did, my gracious lord, begin that place ;
Which, since, succeeding ages have re-edified. . . ."
Richard of York : " What, will you go unto the Tower, my lord ? . . . .
.... I shall not sleep in quiet at the Tower."
Gloucester: "Why, what should you fear?"
Richard of York : " Many, my uncle Clarence' angry ghost :
My grandam told me he was murder'd there."
—King Richard III, Act Hi, Scene I.
" Death is here associated, not, as in Westminster Abbey and Saint
Paul's, with genius and virtue, with public veneration and imperishable
renown ; not with everything that is most endearing in social and domestic
charities; but with whatever is darkest in human nature and in human
destiny, with the savage triumph of implacable enemies, with the incon-
stancy, the ingratitude, the cowardice of friends, with all the miseries of
fallen greatness and of blighted fame." — Macaulay : ''•History of England.''
" Place of doom,
Of execution too, and tomb." — Scott.
What Londoner has not, from earliest childhood, been
acquainted with the Tower? In the Christmas holidays it
presented, as a " treat," rival attractions with Madame Tussaud's
and the " Zoo." When not presented under the too-inform-
ing care of over-zealous pastors and masters, — when not im-
bibed as too flagrant material for that fly-in-the-ointment, a
holiday task, — when not made, in a word, too suggestive of the
CH. v THE "PRETTY SOLDIERS" toi
unpleasant, but necessary paths of learning, — it offered great
fascinations to the youthful mind. The warders, in their
picturesque " Beefeater" dress, were ever an unfailing joy ; the
surprise, indeed, with which I first saw one of these mighty
beings descend from his pedestal, and deign to hold simple
conversation with ordinary mortals, is still fresh in my memory.
Then, the towers and dark passages, up which one could run
and clatter joyfully, with all the entrancing and horrid possi-
bility of meeting somebody's headless ghost ; the attractive
thumbscrew, model of the rack, and headsman's mask, all
so appealing to the innocent brutality of childhood ; the very
wooden and highly coloured " Queen Elizabeth ", riding in full
dress, with a page, to Tilbury Fort ; the stiff effigies of the
mail-clad soldiers, in rows inside the White Tower, — the live
soldiers drilling in the sun-lit square outside ; — the inspiring
music of the band, the roll of the drum, the flocks of wheeling
pigeons ; how charming it all was ! My first knowledge of Tower
history was derived from a Cockney nursemaid, who had, I
suspect, strong affinities with the before-mentioned " pretty
soldiers " (are not " pretty soldiers," by the-way, usually the first
words that London children learn to lisp?). Tragedies, 1
knew, were connected with that sun-lit square. Two beautiful
1. idus, I was told, had had their heads cut off here by their cruel
husband, a gentleman called " 'Enery the Eighth," (I naturally
thought of this '"Enery" as Bluebeard); "because they was
that skittish like, and fond of singin' and dancin' on Sundays,
which 'e for one never could abear ; and so 'e 'ad their 'eds orf,
and grass adn't never grown on the place sence." Which fact I
identified as true, at least for the time being ; though how far
grass can grow through paving-Stones, is always matter for
Speculation. And Mai)' Anne further went on to relate how
she "'ad a friend who knew a young woman who was a
OUSekeeper somewhere here, who 'ad seen 'oniUc things in the
way ofghostisses, and 'ad die screamin' '-iei tic s somethin 1 awful ;
quite reg'ler, too. alter it ! "
102
"TO POINT A MORAL AND ADORN A TALE" chap.
.1 Beefeatei
Yet I myself think that it is a pity to treat the classic Tower
on such familiar terms ! It should be approached with respect,
and not merely introduced as a juvenile appendix to Madame
v THE ROMAN TRADITION 103
Tussaud's ! The charm of the old fortress, as of its immediate
surroundings, is, in any case, only realised in maturer years.
This has always been the riverside stronghold of London.
Tradition, and poetic license, name, indeed, Julius Caesar as its
founder ; however that may be, the Romans probably had a
fort here, as Saxon Alfred after them. The White Tower, or
Keep, raised by William the Conqueror, is built upon a Roman
bastion ; and Roman relics have been dug up at intervals in its
near precincts. Nevertheless, the Roman tradition here is but
visionary ; the interest of the Tower is bound up with the
evolution of the English race. It is the most interesting
mediaeval monument that we possess, a still vivid piece of
English history ; a stranded islet of Time, left forgotten by the
raging tide of surrounding London.
In the Tower precincts, — if you are careful not to choose a
Monday or Saturday, which are free days, for your visit — you
may enjoy yourself in your own way and to your heart's con-
tent. The warders, — old soldiers, — are pleasant and unobtrusive
people, with manners of really wonderful urbanity, considering
the very mixed, and generally unwashed, character, of a large
portion of their public. The Tower, apart from the charm of
its lurid and romantic history, is a picturesque place. In
winter, it is somewhat exposed to the elements, and in summer,
owing to its proximity to the Temple of the Fisheries, it is,
perhaps a trifle odoriferous ; but on a fine spring or autumn
morning, — a spring morning uncursed by east wind, an autumn
morning undimmed byriver-mist, — you will realise all the beauty,
as well as the interest, of the place. Part of its attraction lies
in the fact that it is neither a ruin nor a fossil ; it is a living
place still, and serves for use as well as for show. In old
da\s by turn palace, state prison, inquisition, and "011I1
liette," it is now a barrack and government arsenal. Its
threatening ring of walled towers, witnesses of so many scenes
of blood and cruelty, re-echo now to the merry voices of little
Si hool Board boys, playing foot ball in the drained and levelled
104 THE TOWER VICTIMS chav.
moat below ; its paved courts and gravelled enclosures still ring
to the tramp of soldiers' feet, but soldiers of a newer and a more
humane era. In days when men suffered cheerfully for faith's
sake, when queens and princes passed naturally to the throne
through the blood of their nearest relations, when self-denial,
conscience, and uprightness of life were reckoned as crimes,
the Tower was the place of doom and death. Here, not only
political plotters and state prisoners, guilty of " high treason,"
were punished, but also children, young men and maidens,
playthings of an unkind fate, were condemned, unheard, to an
early death. Here, also, at the Restoration, perished, bravely
as they had lived, many of the sturdy and loyal followers of a
bad cause, who might say, with Macaulay's typical " Jacobite " :
" To my true king I offered, free from stain,
Courage and faith ; vain faith, and courage vain."
Later, the martyr annals of the Tower were in a measure
defiled by the introduction of real and noteworthy criminals,
and the imprisonment within its walls of such wretches as the
Gunpowder Plot conspirators, the imfamous murderers of Sir
Thomas Overbury, and the notorious Judge Jeffreys. But the
desecration of these is past ; the Tower has long ceased to be
a State Prison, and the halo of its earlier victims still is
paramount there. The very names of certain localities
recall their tragedies : " Bloody Tower," commemorating the
murder of the young princes, sons of Edward IV., whose
bones were found here under a staircase; Traitor's Gate, — the
gate of the doomed, — the grim disused archway, with a port-
cullis, looking towards, and in ancient times opening on to,
the river.
The Tower is full of lovely " bits " for the sketcher. The
succession of fine old gates that span the entrance-road, and
the ring of encircling towers called the " Inner Ward," though
necessarily restored in places, have still a fine air of antiquity ;
which air of antiquity the massive walls, narrow window-slits, and
v ST. PETEfc-lN-THE-CHAlNS 105
the close-growing mantle of ivy that, in places, adds a welcome
note of greenery, do much to maintain. The effect, at any
rate, is complete. In the Tower precincts you seem to be
really in mediaeval London. Just so, you imagine, in all
essentials, only still grassy and not quite so shut in by houses,
must " Tower Green " have looked on that terrible day so
dramatically described by Froude :
"A little before noon, on the 19th of May, Anne Boleyn, Queen of
England, was led down to the green where the young grass and the white
daisies of summer were freshly bursting in the sunshine. A little cannon
stood loaded on the battlements, the motionless cannoneer was ready with
smoking linstock at his side, and when the crawling hand upon the dial
of the great Tower clock touched the midday hour, that cannon would tell
to London that all was over."
On this same spot, so fatal to youth and beauty, two other
young women,— mere girls, indeed, — died ; poor silly Katherine
Howard, and, later, Lady Jane Grey, a child of eighteen, — the
"queen of nine days," a victim of others' offences, — who " went
toiler death without fear or pain." Neither age nor youth were,
indeed, spared in those cruel days : for the grey hairs of the
aged Countess of Salisbury, last of the Plantagenets, were here
also brought to the same block. This was the private
execution spot, reserved lor special victims and near relations,
in contrast to the public one on Great Tower Hill outside; the
exact place is enclosed, and marked by a square patch ol
darker stone. In the little adjoining chapel of St. Peter ad
Vincula — the Prisoners' Chapel, — aptly dedicate d to St. Peter-in
the Chains, -were buried all these poor dishonoured bodies;
Queen Anne Boleyn's, so short a time ago so loved, so
adulated, thrown carelessly into an old arrow-chest, and Sung
beneath the altar. This chapel, which is. by the way, a royal
chapel, and therefore under no bishop's jurisdiction,- is verj
much restored, but it has a few good monuments; and its list
Of victims, numbered on a brass tablet inside the door, is
sufficiently affecting : " in truth," says Macaulay :
106 MODERN DWELLERS IN THE TOWER chap.
" there is no sadder spot on earth than this little cemetery. Hither have
.mice] through successive ages, by the rude hands of gaolers, without
one mourner following, the bleeding relics of men who had been the
i aptains of armies, the leaders of parties, the oracles of senates, and the
ornaments of courts.
" No, I can't say I've ever seen any ghosts," said the affable
Warder who showed me the chapel : " though an American
family lately, they were so anxious to see Queen Anne Boleyn's
ghost, that they went and sat opposite the execution-spot, at all
hours, day-and-night ; but they must have got disappointed, for
I never heard that anything came of it. . . Being from
America," he added thoughtfully, " I suppose they felt they'd
like to see all there was to be seen. . . . No, ghosts don't
trouble us much ; we all live in the Towers and round about,
and the worst you can say of our lodgin's is that they're a bit
draughty-like, in winter and spring, having them slits of winders
all round. And then they don't allow you to paper the walls,
or stick up a picture nail, or anything to make the place look
a hit homely ! One does get a bit tired, too," he confessed,
" of them dark stone walls, and even of prisoners' inscriptions ;
but there it is, you mayn't so much as touch 'em, or even
cover 'em up. . . . However," he continued magnanimously,
'•' I own that we're lucky to live in the days we do ; our 'eds is
our own, at any rate ! "
Between Tower Green and the outer moat, on the western side
of the gravelled square, are the old-fashioned and comfortable-
looking dwelling houses of the Tower officials ; the residences
of the Governor, the doctor, the Chaplain, &c ; houses mainly
of darkened brick, — like the citadel itself, — fitted in between the
" lieauchamp" and the "Bell" towers. The greater part of
tin- fortress is, as we have seen, utilised as arsenal, barracks, or
private dwellings ; and thus, of its many towers, the " White
lower," (the "Keep" of the ancient castle), and the
" Beauchamp Tower," are the only ones now viewed by the
ral public; though other antiquities and places worthy of
v THE BEAUCHAMP TOWER 107
a visit may, on application to the Governor, be shown to those
"really interested." The Beauchamp Tower, though "re-
stored " in 1854 (when all its inscriptions were placed together
in one room), is still most interesting. Certainly, the draughts,
on a windy day, of that room, go far to suggest the justice of
my friend the warder's complaint. And the poor prisoners
of old days did not know the modern comfort of " slow-com-
bustion " stoves ! Poor creatures ! torn by the rack and tor-
ture, crushed by long, hopeless imprisonment, with no friend to
turn to in their need, they have left us, deeply cut into the
prison walls, their most pathetic complaint. Philosophy, on
the whole, seems here to have been of the most availing
comfort. Like Socrates, the wretched victims tried hard to be
stoical. " The most unhappie man in the world," runs one
inscription, " is he that is not pacient in adversitie. " Then, in
old Norman-French : " Tout vient apoient, quy peult attendre."
"A passage perillus maketh a port pleasant." It was here, in
the Beauchamp Tower, that the five 1 >udley brothers, sons of
the Duke of Northumberland, were imprisoned for their share
in the Lady Jane Grey rebellion ; here are their pictured
emblems and hieroglyphics ; also the word " Jane," supposed
to have been cut by her husband, Lord Guildford. To the
longer victims of the Tower, time must have passed hardly.
Was it agony of mind that guided the stroke, or did they find
it some solace in their anguish ? Poets, philosophers, men of
science, all the best and noblest in the land ; hours of solace
after torture, no doubt, were theirs, given by that good Angel
who,
" Brought the wise and great of ancient days
To cheer tile cell where Raleigh pined alone."
Had they books, journals, writing materials? Probably but
rarely. There was Raleigh, who spent such a large part of a
chequered life in prison here, dying here too at last, and writing
his " History " with admirable stoicism, in the face of death.
But Lady Jane Grey, imprisoned in the "Brick Tower," had,
108 THE WHITE TOWER chap.
we know, to inscribe her last message to her sister Katherine,
on the blank leaves of her Greek Testament. What vivid,
what painful interest would attach to a " Tower " diary, such
as Pepys's, in cipher, could one have been written by any of
these prisoners !
The wonderful collection of historic armour in the imposing
" White Tower " is, even to those who are not connoisseurs on
the subject, of great interest and beauty. It is true that there are
a great many very narrow and steep stone stairs to be climbed ;
but in the end you are duly rewarded for your trouble. The
ancient chapel of St. John, at the top of the winding stairway,
is most strikingly picturesque, and especially so on a sunny
day, when the light plays among the bare stone columns. This
" most perfect Norman chapel in England " is striking in its
unadorned severity of style ; and the stilted horseshoe arches
of its apse are somewhat like those of St. Bartholomew the
Great, at Smithfield. The chapel dates from the year 1078,
and has been the scene of many royal pageants and lyings-in-
state. The Banqueting Hall adjoins it ; here are to be seen,
among other curiosities, models of the rack and thumbscrew,
and the block used for the execution of old Lord Lovat, with
Lords Balmerino and Kilmarnock — the last Royalists executed
here — in 1745. The hall contains also much armour and
many weapons. Above is the " Council Chamber," where
King Richard II. abdicated his throne in favour of his cousin
Henry Bolingbroke.
" I think men must really have got bigger since these old
days," remarked a burly policeman, to whom I was communi-
cating my impressions : " Now, you wouldn't think it, but
there's only two suits of armour in the whole place that I could
even manage to get on me, that's old Henry VIII's, and his
brother-in-law what's beside 'im, Charles Brandon, Dook o'
Suffolk — you see 'em ? over there, in the middle. Not but
what they must have been strong too, of their size, to bear
all that there weight of steel on 'em. Id be sorry to do it
v THE REGALIA 109
myself, I know that. It's a wonder they didn't faint, and
their poor horses, too ! "
One of the most beautiful pieces of armour in the collection
is that made for Henry VIII. on his marriage with Katharine
of Arragon. It is of German manufacture, with deep and
heavy skirts, on the edge of which is a pierced border, with the
initials " H " and "K" entwined in a true-love knot. This
suit of armour is, further, adorned with elaborate designs,
probably from Hans Burgmair or one of his school, from the
lives of St. George and St. Barbara, patron saints of England
and of armourers. In Stuart times the suits of mail, and
armour generally, became less heavy ; and vizors and breast-
plates are often of open-work ; most picturesque of all, per-
haps, is the dress of the link bearers of Charles I.'s time. The
armour, and arms generally, are kept in a fine state of polish,
wonderful to see in a land of fog and river mist. "The
soldiers, you see, they have a turn at the spears and things
when they want a job ; but, of course, the armour, and such as
that, is left to two or three people's special business."
There is a certain barbaric splendour about the State
vessels and Coronation jewels, commonly called the " Regalia,"
kept in the " Record " or " Wakefield " Tower. These, like
the menagerie formerly exhibited here are separated (and quite
as necessarily) from the outer world by strong railings. This
shining treasure of gold-plate and precious stones recalls the
story of Colonel Blood's famous and nearly successful attempt
at robbery, in the time of Charles II., for which he was, some-
what inconsistently, rewarded by a landed estate and "cash
down." History is a sad series of injustices, and Colonel
Blood's crime was, for reasons of state possibly, suppressed.
Certain it is that the kin^s of England haw not always been
above stealing, or, at any rate, pledging their own treasure.
If the Tower looks a grim enough fortress now, it must have
seemed grimmer still in ancient times, when every murder and
cruelty — every crime that blackens the page of English history
no
THE "TRAITOR'S GATE" chap.
—took place within its gloomy walls. Surely, in old days, the
bloody reputation of the Tower may well have made those
shrink and tremble who passed under its doomed gateways !
By the " Traitor's Gate," that waterway now disused, but which
then opened directly on to the river highway, was brought that
living freight of illustrious persons destined here to surfer and
to die :
" That gate misnamed, through which before
Went Sidney, Russell, Raleigh, Cranmer, More."
So far, indeed, from being a " traitor's " way, all the valour
and chivalry of mediaeval England seem, at one time and another,
to have passed that dreadful gate. Here, the "Lieutenant"
or " Constable " of the Tower, " receipted " the arrival of the yet
living bodies of men and women, soon to be bleeding and dis-
membered corpses. . . . Such a "receipt," given for the
person of the condemned Duke of Monmouth, " the people's
darling," is still extant. The " Traitor's Gate " had, moreover,
an added horror ; for in its walls are certain loopholes, through
which the Lieutenant of the Tower could watch, unseen, the
prisoner's arrival from his trial at the House of Lord's, and
could ascertain, as he ascended the stone steps, whether the
fatal Axe of Office, carried in front of him, were reversed
or otherwise — reversal signifying death. Here, when Sir
Thomas More was being led back to prison with the reversed axe
carried before him, his beloved daughter Margaret burst
through the guarding soldiers and embraced him, beseeching
his blessing — a scene that melted even those stern guards to
teurs.
Brutal, indeed, were the age and the time. If Plantagenets,
Yorkists, and Lancastrians were frankly murderous, Tudors
and Stuarts had more refinement of cruelty, dignifying it,
more or less, under the name of law. The accession of each
fresh sovereign was the signal for arrests, life-long imprison-
ments, and executions. Favourites, now deposed from favour,
paid here the penalty for a few years of feverish greatness ;
v UNHAPPY PRISONERS in
here suffered not only men of unscrupulous self-seeking, but
also those whose chief fault was, like Caesar's, ambition, and
who were condemned to answer for it as grievously as Caesar.
Nor did past affliction teach present mercy. The Princess
Elizabeth narrowly herself escaped a tragic fate in early youth ;
yet her former imprisonment in the " Bell " Tower made her
scarcely less cruel, in the after-time, to her real or imaginary
enemies. Partly in self-defence, partly as a question of faith,
partly in revenge, both rivals, and also those suspected of
possible rivalry, were effectually suppressed. Even continua-
tion of the hated race of rivals seemed prohibited. Thus, Lady
Jane Grey's poor sister, Katherine, was imprisoned till her
death for the crime of secret marriage with the Earl of Hert-
ford ; Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, was executed for
having aspired to the hand of the Queen of Scots ; Lady
Arabella Stuart, James I.'s unhappy cousin, having married.
" with the love that laughs at privy councils," Sir William
Seymour, was caught while escaping with him through Calais
Roads, and languished here for four years, till her mind left
her, and she died. The elder D'Israeli tells the story :
" Whal passed in that dreadful imprisonment cannot perhaps be
recovered for authentic history ; but enough is known, that her mind grew
impaired, that she finally lost her reason; ami if the duration of hei
imprisonment (four years) was short, it was only terminated by her death.
^'>me loose effusions, often begun and never ended, written ami erased.
incoherenl and rational, yet remain in the fragments of her papers. In a
letter she proposed addressing to Viscounl Fenton, to implore for her his
Majesty's favour again, sin- says, 'Good my lend, consider the fault
cannol be uncommitted ; neither can an)- more he required of any earthly
creature bul confession and most humble submission.' In a paragraph she
had written, hut crossed .ail, it seems that a present ofherwork had I
refused by the king, and that she had no one about her whom she might
trust."
Of the few stories of escapes from the Tower, none is more
romantic than that of Lord Nithsdale, saved by his wife's
devotion, failing to obtain a pardon from King George I.
U2 THE TOWER LIONS chap.
she, in her love and despair, bethought herself of a desperate
plan. Under the pretence of a last visit, and with the conniv-
ance of a faithful servant, she managed to disguise her husband
as her Welsh maid, and got him past the Tower sentries into
safety ; the next morning he would have perished with Lord
Derwentwater, " the pride of the North," and the rest of the
Scotch Jacobites.
Yet the Tower, even in mediaeval times, was not all tragedy;
for here, from Henry III.'s era, a royal menagerie was kept, —
a menagerie of which the famous " lower Lions," that existed
here up to 1853, were the eventual outcome. (From the
Tower Lions comes originally the phrase, " to see the Lions,"
or the sights, of a place.) The beasts are still commemorated
in the Tower by the " Lions' Gate," — or principal entrance.
The Tower Moat, the broad ditch that encircled the building,
and added to its mediaeval impregnability, was drained in 1843,
and its banks are now planted, on the north-east, with a pleasant
shrubbery ; through which winds a foot-path with comfortable
seats and delightful views, much enjoyed and appreciated by
the very poor. Thus, the old age of the Tower, — Julius Caesar's
traditional fortress, and the scene of England's darkest national
crimes, — is, as often that of Man himself, full of benevolence
and serenity. Its brutal youth, its sanguinary middle life, are
alike far behind it ; and " that which should accompany old
age, as honour, love, and troops of friends," it may now
look to have. And the long roll of the Tower victims, lying,
many of them, in nameless graves, their very bones sometimes
uncoffined ; these have at any rate, by their death often achieved
an immortality greater than any they could ever have gained
by their lives. They were, in a sense, as was that old Roman,
Marcus Curtius, sacrifices to their country's gods ; for by such
throes as overthrew them, have all nations reached peace and
salvation. " I see," they might, like Sydney Carton, have
cried prophetically at the block,
v GREAT TOWER HILL 113
" I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and,
in their struggles to be truly free, in triumphs and defeats, through long
years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time . . .
gradually making expiation for itself."
Once outside the Tower precincts, all is changed, and you
are, again, in the bustle and the din of modern London.
" Great Tower Hill," on the rising ground north of the Tower,
and close to Mark Lane Station, is hardly an idyllic spot, or
one at all suitable to meditation, being generally much invaded
by the shouts of draymen and the rumble of van- wheels. Close
by, in Trinity Square gardens, marked by a stone, is the spot
which for some centuries shared with "Tyburn " the honour,
or dishonour, of being the public execution-place ; but, while
Great Tower Hill was mostly the last bourne of political and
state prisoners, Tyburn (the present " Marble Arch ;; ), was
reserved for common murderers, robbers, and their like. Eng-
land, in those days, must have enjoyed rare galas in the way of
executions ! Of that old rogue, Lord Lovat, beheaded here in
1747, it is recorded, that just before the fatal axe fell, a scaffold-
ing, containing some thousand persons, set there to enjoy the
spectacle, collapsed, killing twelve of them ; a sight at which
the old man, even at that terrible moment, chuckled merrily,
" enjoying, no doubt, the downfall of so many Whigs."
Trinity Square has still a pleasant, old-fashioned air of
seclusion ; although all around and about it are grimy lanes and
warehouses, suggesting the close' proximity of wharves and
docks. Yet Trinity Square, like Charterhouse Square, is
no longer residential ; the look of " home," of comfortable
family life, about its sober brick houses, is merely a hollow
sham ; they are' mainly offices. Near by is the Royal Mint,
"where," so Mark Tapley informed his American friends, "the
Queen lives, to take care of all the money.'' At the end of the
big, noisy street called the Minories, leading from the Tower
to Aldgate, rises the tall, black, three-storied spire of St.
1
ii 4 TIIE MINORIES chap.
Botolph's Church, built by Dance in 1744, on an old site. This
church is hardly beautiful in itself ; yet its effect, as seen from
the Minories, is good. The jurisdiction of St. Botolph, always a
popular London saint, is now extended to the tiny Church of
Holy Trinity, in the Minories, a small yellowish building, some
what like St. Ethelburga in Bishopsgate Street, with the same
kind of abbreviated turret. When you have succeeded in
finding this church (which is difficult, as it is hidden down a
side street off the Minories, and, as usual in London, no single
inhabitant appears to know where it is), you then usually find it
locked, with a saddening notice to the effect that the keys are
in some equally unknown and distant region. Yet you must
not despair. Such drawbacks are inseparable from the pursuit
of historical antiquities in London. It seems, however, a pity
to have recently changed the identity of this small church,
thus rendering it still more difficult to find. Originally, it gave
its name to the whole district ; having belonged to an abbey of
" Minoresses," or nuns of the order of St. Clare ; the living,
and also the name, are amalgamated with that of St. Botolph,
Aldgate, which now possesses also its chief claim to fame. For,
though the little church still possesses some good monuments,
the relic formerly shown here, the dessicated head of a man,
said to be the Duke of Suffolk, father of Lady Jane Grey, is
now removed to the larger church. The decapitated head is
certainly sufficiently ghastly, with the neck still showing the
usual first stroke of the bungling executioner, and the loose
teeth, yellow skin, and mouth with " the curve of agony " to
which attention is usually drawn. The evidence for the head
being that of the Duke of Suffolk rests mainly on the fact that
the Church of " Holy Trinity " was the chapel of the Duke of
Suffolk's town-house, and the place whither his head would
naturally be brought after decapitation on Tower-hill.
At No. 9, Minories, over the shop of one John Owen,
nautical instrument-maker, is the figure of the " Little Midship-
man," described by 1 Hekens in Dombey and Son. But it is
v OLD CITY CHURCHES 115
difficult to walk in the Minories ; everywhere crates and cranes
seem to threaten you, and paper from printing offices bristles
from windows on to your devoted head This must
always have been a noisy quarter. In old days it was
famous for its gunsmiths, as witness Congreve's lines :
" The mulcibers who in the Minories sweat,
And massive bars on stubborn anvils beat —
You leave the Minories without regret, and turn your face
again Citywards. The church of All Hallows, Barking (so
called from the nuns of old Barking Abbey), is further west,
in Great Tower Street, close to the Tower precincts. It is
another church that escaped the Great Fire, and it contains
the graves of some of the Tower victims. It has also some
good monumental brasses, one especially, of fine Flemish
workmanship, in the pavement in the centre of the nave.
These old City churches are now most of them well served
and tended, the Sunday services in some of them being much
sought after. They are also probably kept in better repair
than in Dickens's time, when, overgrown, dirty, and isolated in
the midst of traffic and bustle, they struck the novelist only
with their weird desolation, — a desolation as of some sentient
and human thing. Thus vividly he described his feelings while
attending service in one of them :
"There is a pale heap of looks in the corner of my pew, and while the
organ, which is hoarse and sleepy, plays in such fashion that I can hear more
of the rusty working of the stops than of any music, I look at the books, which
are mostly bound in faded baize and stuff. They belonged, in 1754. to the
I )ow^ate family ; and who were they? Jane Comporl must have married
Young Dowgate, and come into the family that way : Young Dowgate was
courting Jane Comport when he gave her her prayer-book, and recorded
the presentation on the fly-leaf. If Jane were fond of Young Dowgate,
why did she die and leave the hook here? 1'eihaps at the rickety altar,
and before the damp commandments, she, Comport, had taken him,
Dowgate, in a Hush of youthful hope and joy, and perhaps it had not
turned out in the long run as greal a success as was expi cted.
"The opening of the service recalls my wandering thoughts .... I
1 2
n6 SEETHING LANE chap.
find that I have been taking a kind of invisible snuff .... I wink, sneeze
and cough .... snuff made of the decay of matting, wood, cloth, stone,
iron, earth and something else .... the decay of dead citizens ....
Dead citizens stick on the walls and lie pulverised on the sounding-board
over the clergyman's head, and, when a gust of air comes, tumble down
upon him."
And, further, with regard to the surrounding bustle and
merchandise in the busy streets :
" In the churches about Mark Lane there was a dry whiff of wheat ; and I
accidentally struck an airy sample of barley out of an aged hassock in one
of them. From Rood Lane to Tower Street, and thereabouts, there was
often a subtle flavour of wine,— sometimes of tea. One church, near
Mincing Lane, smelt like a druggist's drawer. Behind the Monument, the
service had a flavour of damaged oranges, which, a little farther down
towards the river, tempered into herrings, and gradually toned into a
cosmopolitan blast of fish. In one church, the exact counterpart of the
church in the Rake's Progress, where the hero is being married to the
horrible old lady, there was no specialty of atmosphere, until the organ shook
a perfume of hides all over us from some adjacent warehouse."
(The church depicted in Hogarth's Rake's Progress was,
however, the older church of St. Maryiebone, now rebuilt.)
The next turning on the right from Great Tower Street is
Seething Lane, leading to Hart Street, noted principally for
that ancient church of St. Olave that was one of the Great
Fire's few survivals. Its little churchyard opens on to the
muddy, narrow alley called Seething Lane, by a picturesque
gateway, grimly decorated with carven skulls ; tradition says
in the memory of the many plague victims buried here. In-
deed it is a grisly monument of the time when the plague-cart
rumbled in the streets, when a red cross marked the infected
houses, and when the stones echoed to the hoarse and terrible
cry, " Bring out your dead ! " Perhaps Seething Lane was less
muddy and slummy in Samuel Pepys's time ; for that authority
lived here, in a house "adjoining the Navy Office," where he
held the position of "Clerk of the Acts,"— and surely he was
nothing if not fussy. The locality, owing to the successive
v ST. OLAVE'S, HART STREET 117
distractions of Plague and Fire, cannot have been exactly
peaceful. In his "Diary" entry for January 30th, 1665-6,
Pepys says :
" It frighted me indeed to go through the church, more than I thought
it could have done, to see so many graves lie so high upon the churchyard
where people haw been buried of the Plague. I was much troubled at it,
and do not think to go through it again a good while."
The quaint names of old London churches are very attrac-
tive This St. Olave, or Olaf, was a favourite saint of ancient
London ; he was an eleventh-century Scandinavian king,
canonised because of his zealous propagation of Christianity
among his people. Three other London churches, in South-
ward Jewry, and Silver Street (the last two no longer existing),
were called after him. The immediate purlieus of St. Olave's,
Hart Street, are not exactly savoury, its proximity to the river
traffic and warehouses making it occasionally somewhat odo-
riferous as well as muddy ; it were better, therefore, to choose
a fine, dry day for this excursion. It is not always easy to get
inside the church ; on week-days, the street seems to be
more or less of a stagnant back-water ; and should your fate
compel you to find St. Olave's locked, you may stand and
knock all day, but nobody will heed you ; or, if the)' do
heed, will probably put you down as a wandering lunatic.
Nevertheless, St. Olave's should be visited ; for its monuments
are many and interesting. Samuel Pepys, as parishioner and
near neighbour, used to attend service here, with his pretty
wife; and Mrs. Pepys's bust, in white marble, erected by her
husband, stands on the north side of the chancel, above her
tablet and long epitaph. Poor Elizabeth Pepys! She was
only twenty-nine when she died, and that long, artificial Latin
screed seems all too long and laboured for her lovely and
poetic youth. Perhaps her husband, whose pew faces the
monument, liked during his long widowhood to gaze at that
charming memorial, and who knows? — to enjoy his fine Latin
composition. Pepys himself was buried here later : his own
„8 THE MONUMENT chap.
monument, however, only dates from 1883, when it was raised
by public subscription.
In St. Olave's church occurs that curious and often-quoted
epitaph of 1584, inscribed to "John Orgene and Ellyne,
his wife " :
" As I was, so be ye ;
As I am, you shall be ;
That I gave, that I have ;
That I spent, that 1 had ;
Thus I ende all my coste,
That I lefte, that I loste."
Wandering along Great Tower Street, — and Eastcheap, remi-
niscent of Falstaff and Dame Quickly, — we reach the ever-fishy
region of the Monument. The Monument is so tall that it is
difficult to see it ; indeed, I cannot tell exactly why the Monu-
ment seems always as difficult of discovery as the middle of a
maze ; you seem continually close upon it, and yet you hardly
ever reach it. No one can ever direct the pedestrian to it ; though
this, indeed, may not be the fault of the Monument, but
simply because the average Londoner never does know any-
thing about the immediate neighbourhood he inhabits. He
has even been known to live in the next street to the British
Museum for years, and then be ignorant that such an institu-
tion exists. Such superiority to external facts is, no doubt,
noble ; but it has its drawbacks. And sometimes the indi-
viduals questioned take refuge in a crushing silence. The last
time, indeed, that I myself visited the Monument, I inquired
politely of two fishy youths in turn of its whereabouts, and
received no answer. Possibly this was merely their courteous
way of informing me that they were really too busy to attend
to such trivialities. To return, however, to the deluding Monu-
ment : Dickens, it is true, in Martin Chuzzkwit makes Mr.
Tom Pinch and Miss Pecksniff find their way thither (Tom,
having lost his way, very naturally finds himself at the
Monument) :
v THE MAN IN THE MONUMENT 119
"The Man in the Monument was quite as mysterious a being to Tom as
the Man in the Moon. It immediately occurred to him that the lonely
creature who held himself aloof from all mankind in that pillar, like some
old hermit, was the very man of whom to ask his way. ... If Truth
didn't live in the base of the Monument, notwithstanding Pope's couplet
about the outside of it, where in London was she likely to be found ?
" Coming close below the pillar, it was a great encouragement to Tom
to find that the Man in the Monument had simple tastes ; that stony and
artificial as his residence was, he still preserved some rustic recollections ;
that he liked plants, hung up bird-cages, was not wholly cut off from fresh
groundsel, and kept young trees in tubs. The Man in the Monument was
sitting outside his own door, the Monument door; and was actually
yawning, as if there were no Monument to stop his mouth* and give him a
perpetual interest in his own existence .... Two people came to see the
Monument, a gentleman and lady; and the gentleman said, 'How much
a-piece ? '
" The Man in the Monument replied, ' A Tanner.'
" It seemed a low expression, compared with the Monument.
"The gentleman put a shilling into his hand, and the Man in the Monu-
ment opened a dark little door. When the gentleman and lady had passed
out of view, he shut it again, and came slowly back to his chair.
" He sat down and laughed.
" ' They don't know what a many steps there is ! ' he said. ' It's worth
twice the money to stop here. Oh, my eye ! '
"The Man in the Monument was a Cynic. . . ,"
The charge for the Monument is (I may remark en passant),
now changed from a " tanner "to the humble threepence. (Its
summit gallery is now closed in, because of the disagreeable
mania for committing suicide from it.) The original inscription
on its pedestal, now effaced, was a curious relic of religious
intolerance ; showing, by its absurd reference to the " horrid
plott " of "the Popish factio," the barbarous and primitive
state of popular feeling as late as 1681. Wherefore it was that,
as Pope said :
". . . . London's Column, pointing to the skies,
Like a tall bully, lilts it- head and lies."
One must not, however, forget that this attempt to attribute
the dire calamity to private malice must have been infinitely
120 A CONVENIENT DISPENSATION ch. v
comforting to the public mind, that ever, even in our own en-
lightened day, needs a scapegoat. In still older days, the
scapegoats took a more conveniently personal form, and were
usually, as we have seen, brought to the block on Great Tower
Hill : which was, of course, a much simpler mode of dealing
with them.
CHAPTER VI
SOUTHWARK, OLD AND NEW
" The Thames marks the sharp division between what Lord Beaconsfield
called ' the two nations. 1 On one side we have our nearest English
approach to architectural magnificence ; on the other there is a long
perspective of squalid buildings — smoke-begrimed, half-ruinous, and yet
not altogether unlovely." — Magazine of Art, January, 1SS4.
" Befel, that in that season, on a day
In Southwark at the Tabard as I lay,
Ready to wenden on my pilgrimage
To Canterbury with Jul devout courage,
At night was come into that hostelry
Well nine-and-twenty in a company
Of sundry folk, by adventure y-fall
In fellowship, and pilgrims were they all,
That toward Canterbury woulden ride.''
— Chancer: Canterbury Tales.
Near to the fishy and noisy purlieus of the " Monument,"
London Bridge crosses the river into Southwark.
London Bridge is the terminus for big ships ; from its parapet
is seen, as far as the misty Tower Bridge, a vast city of masts,
sails, and wharves. Big steamers often make this their starting
point for excursions, and sails of Venetian colour charm tin
eye. In cold winters the sea gulls, fixing hither in myriads from
the icy North Seas, come to the Londoner's call, sure of food
and welcome, filling grey sky and silvery river with an ever
changing constellation of white wings ; "a blaze of cornel
splendour." Wild birds, like children, know their friends
122 ST. MARY OVERY chap.
The sea-gull's wide, downward swoop, so powerful and so
graceful, may be watched here in January from early morn to
dusk ; the creatures, poised in serried ranks on the barges and
stone piers, are just as much at home here as on their own
northern pinnacles, and after long sojourn, they become so
tame that they will almost feed from the stranger's hand. It
is only, however, during the severe weather that the sea-gulls'
visit lasts ; with the first warm February days they are off again,
speeding down the river to their native haunts.
Close to the foot of London Bridge, on the Southwark side,
is the fine cruciform church of St. Saviour's, lately restored on
the lines of the ancient edifice. This church, which had formerly
been much mutilated by careless and tasteless " restorers," was
in long past times the Norman Priory of St. Mary Overy, and its
old nave, of which the fragments may yet be seen, was built
in 1106 by Clifford, Bishop of Winchester. A century later,
another Bishop built the choir and Lady Chapel, and altered
the character of the nave from Norman to Early English.
Then, at the Dissolution, St. Mary Overy was made into a
parish church by Henry VIII. , and since 1540, it has been
known as " St. Saviour's." The early Saxon dedication to
" St. Mary Overy " commemorates the romantic story of the
rich old ferryman's lovely daughter, of pre-Conquest times, who,
losing her lover by a fall from his horse, retired into a cloister
for life, devoting her paternal wealth to the founding of a
priory. The story is charming, but somewhat misty ; it sug-
gests, however, the advantages accruing to ferrymen when there
were no bridges on the Thames ! An ancient, nameless,
ghoul-like figure, in St. Saviour's Church, is still pointed out
as the old ferryman, father of the foundress ; but this is probably
traditional. Skeleton-like figures, not representing any one in
particular, were not infrequently placed about in mediaeval
cluii ches; in order, perhaps, to bring the congregation to a
sufficiently sober frame of mind, as well as to recall to them
their latter end.
vi ST. SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK 123
St. Saviour's, as it is now, is one of the most striking churches
in London ; its interior appeals at once to the eve and to the
imagination. The long aisles are restful and harmonious ; the
Marly-English architecture is severely pure ; the fine effect of
the beautifully-restored nave and transepts is not, as too often
in Westminster Abbey, spoiled by the introduction of ornate
tombs and sprawling angels. The church, restored by Blom-
field in 1890-96, is already a collegiate church, and is worthy
to become, as it probably will, the cathedral for South London.
Its level, as is the case with many ancient buildings, is now
considerably lower than the surrounding ground ; a fact testified
by the steps necessary to descend into its precincts from the
street, and by the very unpoetic railway, carried well above it
and its adjoining vegetable market (the Borough Market). For
this is a strangely busy and noisy spot to have sheltered for so
long this relic of the Middle Age.
The tombs in the church are mainly in the transepts, and are
nearly all of them interesting. The finely-restored "Lady
Chapel," behind the altar, contains the tomb of Lancelot
Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester, with a long Latin inscription
of 1626; a recumbent painted effigy, on a black-and-white
marble tomb. This Lady Chapel has tragic associations; it
was used in the time of " Bloody Mary " as the Consistorial
Court of Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester ; and here those
sturdy martyrs, Bishop Hooper and John Rogers, Vicar of
St. Sepulchre's, were condemned to be burnt (the popular
ic cling for Rogers being such as necessitated his removal b)
night secretly to Newgate).
The most famous grave in St. Saviour's is that of John
Cower, the fourteenth-century poet, and friend of Chaucer.
Ihre, near the east end of the north wall of the nave,
the effigy of the poet, painted, like that of Lancelot An-
drewes, a figure of striking beauty, lies on a sarcophagus
under a rich gabled canopy. Stow thus describes the monu-
ment :
124
GOWER'S TOMB chap.
" He lielh under a tomb of stone, with his image, also of stone, ovei
him : the hair of his head, auburn, long to his shoulders but curling up, and
a small forked beard ; on his head a chaplet like a coronet of four roses ; a
habit of purple, damasked down to his feet ; a collar of esses gold about
his neck ; under his head the likeness of three books which he compiled."
Gower was a rich man for a poet, and gave large sums in
his time for the rebuilding of the church ; hence was written
the following epigram :
"This church was rebuilt by John Gower, the rhymer,
Who in Richard's gay court was a fortunate climber ;
Should any one start, 'tis but right he should know it,
( >ur wight was a lawyer as well as a poet."
(lower's three chief works, on which his head rests, are his
Vox Ckimantis, Speculum Meditantis, and Confessio Amantis.
Many other curious tombs and epitaphs are in this church.
One, especially, of the latter, a tablet to a little girl of ten,
Susanna Barford, — a child the " Non such of the world for piety
and vertue in soe tender yeares," — tells how :
" Such grace the King of Kings bestow'd upon her
That now shee lives with him a maid of honour."
And in the north transept, there is a curious monument to
Dr. Lionel Lockyer, the pill inventor — a large bewigged,
reclining figure of Charles II.'s time — suffering, apparently,
despite his infallible nostrums, from terrible internal spasms.
Perhaps, however, these may bear some mystic reference to the
long accompanying epitaph about "undying Pills," showing
tint already in the seventeenth century advertisement could be
strong even in death ! Close to Lockyer's tomb are heaped
tip a number of strange wooden painted gargoyles or "bosses,"
preserved and brought here from the fallen-in fifteenth-century
roof of the nave, some of them bearing most weird devices.
One, conceived apparently in the Dantesque spirit, represents
a giant, or devil, "champing" a half-eaten sinner, — the lower
half of whom, dressed in gaudy colours, projects from the large
vi THE SINS OF "RESTORERS" 125
vermilion mouth, — in great enjoyment. Other " bosses " show
the curious painted ''rebuses" of the period, commemorating
a prior's name. 'The seventeenth-century monument to the
Austin family, also in this transept, is full of quaint imagery
and symbolism. The figures of its sleeping angels with
winnowing-forks, waiting on each side for the great final
harvest, are full of beauty.
; ' Ldmund Shakespear, player," and brother of the poet, —
Fletcher,— and Massinger, — are buried here; three stones in
the choir bear their names ; the exact place of their graves is
not known.
The church is now well-kept and carefully tended ; it is open
daily to the visitor, who may walk about it without lei or
hindrance. Like so many other London churches, it has in its
time suffered less from the depredations of the plunderer than
from those of the more dangerous " restorer." As usual, a
long period of neglect and decay was followed by iconoclastic
cleaning and setting in order. Generally, for a considerable
time after the Dissolution, the convent churches and others
were left to the tender mercies of the parishioners, who,
naturally, could not always afford to keep them in proper
condition ; then abuses crept in, thefts took place : and the
disused churches, as St. Paul's itself, were often degraded to
Stables, or used as storage for litter. Then, after long years,
the authorities, perhaps, came to the rescue, and, turning out
the encroaching and invading devils, let in other devils far
more wicked, in the shape oi so called "restorers." Wonder,
indeed, is it that so much is left to us! The "restorers."
usually began by whitewashing all the columns of dark
1'urbeck marble, blackening the effigies into one uniform tint,
and covering the discoloured carvings of the walls with stucco,
for the better reception of which they even (as may be seen at
St. Saviour's) whittled away bits of tine stone sculpture.
To wander down the " Borough " High Street that Holl-
and essentially modern district, -in search of Chaucer's famous
126 THE OLD SOUTHWARK INNS chap.
inns, is, alas ! more dispiriting than looking for traces of
Diclo among the ruins of Carthage. Here, one can neither
look for ghosts, nor feelings of the past ; all is hopelessly
covered up and hidden by ugly modern inns, more ugly
modern shops, palaces of modern plate-glass public-houses,
triumphs of early nineteenth-century ugliness in architecture.
What chance, among such, have the poor wandering ghosts of
a famous past ? And, since London Bridge, that natural
dividing-line of peoples, was passed, have not the very streets
changed in some subtle and unconscious manner, to a more
sordid character ; the shops to a more blatant kind, — even the
people to a different and lower type ? It may be partly fancy ;
yet, is not this often the effect produced by the " Surrey side " ?
The big thoroughfare called the Borough High Street, or more
simply, the " Borough " —(this part of Southwark has fairly
earned the right to be called the " Borough," having returned
two members to Parliament for 500 years), — this was the
great highway, even in Roman times, between the city and the
southern counties. East of the Borough, the long, narrow,
busy, dirty Tooley Street leads to Bermondsey ; this street is
famous for its " three tailors " of the political legend, accord-
ing to which they addressed the House of Commons as "We,
the People of England." Here, from mediaeval days, was the
only bridge ; here, therefore, were, naturally, stationed all the
mediaeval inns and hostelries. This way did the "Canterbury
Pilgrims " pass out of London ; here they would stop and
refresh themselves at the " Tabard," the "White Hart," and their
compeers. . . . What now remains of these ? The " Tabard,"
rebuilt in Charles IPs time, and for long the finest old house
of its kind in London, was burnt down in 1873 ; it now only
exists in its name, still flaunted bravely above a commonplace
modern inn. The " Queen's Head," the " White Hart," the
" King's Head," exist now only as hideous railway-yards or
equally hideous modern edifices ; the only remaining relic of
them all is the "George " Inn, where a solitary fragment, along
VI
THE "GEORGE" INN
127
block of ancient buildings, with picturesque, sloping, dormer
roofs, and balustraded wooden galleries, is yet, by the mercy of
the Great Northern Railway Company, spared to us, to tell
of its former glories. The present hosts of the " George," — two
ladies, — are pleasant, hospitable people, and their small, chirk,
panelled rooms are clean and
comfortable. They seem, how-
ever, to entertain a mild feel-
ing of boredom for the con-
stant accession of reverent
pilgrims who flock annually
to their shrine. "And it's only
for the last itw years,"' the
younger lady remarks, some-
what sadly, "only since the
last inn, the 'Queen's Head,'
you know was pulled down,
that so many people have
come. A great many Ameri-
cans . . . oh, I suppose they
come out of curiosity, like ;
one can't blame 'em. Do
people stay here in the sum-
mer ? Yes, a good few —
some business men, but mostly
artists and tourists ; it's just
curiosity. Then, it's, ' Would
you mind if 1 take a photo-
graph
or ' Have I
your
( ticket in the Street. The lost Ball.
leave to sit in the yard and sketch?' Do I let them do
it ? . . . oh, yes" (with a sigh), "it doesn't matter to me. 1
Suppose they may be going to put it in some book or some
article ; but it's nothing to me. . . 1 never lead the article !
If this lady be not a cynic, she at any rate embodies a great
<kal of the philosophy of life !
128 THE OLD BANKSIDE THEATRES chap.
What the other Inns were like, can be more or less seen
from this small portion of one. They have mostly vanished
with the march of progress of recent years, for fifty years ago
Dickens could still write :
" In the Borough there still remain some half-dozen old inns which have
preserved their external features unchanged. Great rambling queer old
plai ;s, with galleries and passages and staircases wide enough and antiquated
enough to furnish materials for a hundred ghost stories,"
At the old "White Hart," now destroyed, Dickens first intro-
duced to the world the immortal Sam Weller, as he appeared
cleaning the spinster aunt's boots after that sentimental lady's
elopement with the deceiving Mr. Jingle. These old inns, in
the heyday of their prime, were made still more famous by the
open-air theatrical representations that took place in their bal-
conied courtyards. Toil and trouble, the eternal struggle-for-
life, may be the portion of " the Surrey Side " to-day, but in
Shakespeare's time it was principally noted for its amusements
and its junketings. Now, the chief buildings of Southwark
and Walworth are gaols and asylums, and its best-known
localities are the omnibus terminuses, dignified mysteriously by
names of public-houses, — such as the " Elephant," &c. Even
the dramatic tastes of the people " over the water " are now
supposed to be primitive ; and " transpontine " is the adjective
applied to melodrama that is too crude for the superior taste
of northern London. Yet here, in Shakespeare's day, were all
the most fashionable theatres — theatres, too, frequented by all
the literary and dramatic lights of the day. Here stood that
small martello-tower-like theatre, the " Globe," the " round
wooden ' O ' : ' alluded to in Henry V., where Shakespeare
and his companions played ; here also were the " Rose," the
" Hope," and the " Swan." And below St. Saviour's, and its
neighbouring bishops' Palace and park, were the localities
known as " Bankside " and " Paris Garden," the former famous
for its bull and bear-baiting ("a rude and nasty pleasure,"
says Pepys), the latter for its theatre, and also for its somewhat
vi "WINCHESTER HOUSE" 129
doubtful reputation. There were, of course, a few plague-
spots, inseparable from places of public amusement ; but the
Southwark of Elizabeth's day was a centre of national jollity
and merry-making. Open gardens fringed the river-banks, by
which flowed a clear and yet unsullied Thames, and their
salubrious walks were the favourite resort of citizens. Certainly,
Shakespeare and his associates would hardly recognize South-
wark now : Messrs. Barclay and Perkins's famous brewery
now covers the site of the Globe Theatre ; the ancient gardens
have given place to wharves and warehouses ; the fashionable
promenade to railway lines and goods offices ; the green turfy
banks to streets and lanes of sticky Southwark mud. And
Southwark mud is surely of a quite peculiar stickiness ! The
big brewery, covering some twelve acres, is not exactly an
improvement on the landscape. It belonged, in 1758, to Mr.
Thrale, husband of the witty lady whom Johnson loved as a
daughter. And though some among us have, as Dr. Johnson
prophesied at the sale of the brewery in its early days, "grown
rich beyond the dreams of avarice," yet the source of riches is
seldom in itself beautifying.
Winchester House, the ancient palace of the bishops of Win-
chester, stood in Tudor days between St. Saviour's and the
river; "a very fair house, with a large wharf and a landing-
place." Here bishop Gardiner lived in great state, and here,
to please his patron the Duke of Norfolk, he arranged "little
banquets at which it was contrived that Henry VIII. should
meet the Duke's niece, Katherine Howard, then a 'lovely girl in
her teens.' ' Poor thing ! in a short year or two her head was
destined to fall, by the headsman's axe, within the precincts of
the gloomy Tower, on the river's opposite bank ! The extent
of the old palace is uncertain; its remains are now nearly all
destroyed, except an old window and arch, built up into the
surrounding warehouses. The name, however, of the " ( 'link,"
the prison used by the Bishops for the punishment of heretics,
still exists in the modern Clink Street. In the same way,
K
no
DICKENS AND THE MAKSIIALSEA
CHAP.
" Mint Street," Borough, recalls an ancient and forgotten mint,
established here by Henry VIII. for coinage ; and Lant Street
— but Lant Street recalls nothing so much as Dickens, and his
creation Mr. Bob Sawyer. Dickens lived in Lant Street him-
self as a boy, while his insolvent family were rusticating in
the neighbouring Marshal sea ; hence he knew it well ■
/l County Court.
"A bed and bedding" (he writes) " were sent over for me" (from the
Marshalsea), "and made up on the floor. The little window had a
pleasant prospect of a timber-yard ; and when I took possession of my new
abode, I thought it was a Paradise."
' The Crown Revenues," Dickens further adds (in describing
vi Till-: POOR OK TIIK IiOROl'CIl
131
the abode of Mr. Dob Sawyer), "are seldom collected in this
happy valley ; the rents are dubious, and the water commu-
nication is very frequently cut off."
If Southward contained many doubtful characters in Shake-
speare's time, it contains, as Mr. Charles Booth's book shows
us, some " black spots " of crime still ! The old Marshalsea
and the King's Bench Prisons must always have been a centre
of drifting and shiftless population. All parts of the " Borough "
do not enjoy a thoroughly good reputation ; bad sanitation,
overcrowding, all the worst sins of the much-abused " East
End," may here too be seen. " Is any one," asks a recent
writer, " ever young in the Borough ? Is not carking care their
birthright?" In crowded Southwark and Walworth, round the
" Elephant," — the mysterious " Elephant," to which all roads
lead, — "aflare, seething, roaring with multitudinous life," are
miserable human rabbit-warrens, where they even live ten in a
room. "Pore, sir," cries Mrs. Pullen (one of the submerged),
"pore ! why, the Mint, sir, the Mint, sir, is known for it ; you've
'erd on it your ways, ain't you?" Mrs. Pullen held up her
hands and laughed, as if she was really proud of " the Mint and
its poverty." But, though the Borough children— poor little
wastrels - are still wild, — Education, it seems, is slowly taming
them.
Those who are interested in the children of the poor,- and
who is not? — should read Mr. Charles Morley's sympathetic
"Studies in Hoard Schools," a considerable portion of which
refers 1.0 Walworth and the Borough. The redeeming of the
infant population of London is surely a noble work, and
nowhere are the parental methods of the Hoard Schools so well
set forth as in that delightful volume, real with the reality of
life, and, like life itself, something between laughter and tears.
bile has few mysteries for the borough child, whose garments
are strange and weird, whose voice "soon loses any infantine
sweetness it may possess. Some of the ragged mile-, of girls
of the Borough will even rap out an oath which would shock
K 2
132 "THE FARM HOUSE" chap.
your ears who live over the water. But they mean nothing. It
is like sailors' language, only sound and a little temper. Why,
even the chirrup of the Borough sparrow has a minatory ring
about it." Mr. Morley goes on to tell of a kindly institution
dubbed " the harm House " (strange name in such surround-
ings !), where, owing to Mr. G. R. Sims and the " Referee," six
or seven hundred hungry school-children are, like the sparrows
and sea-gulls, fed daily during the long winter :
11 The Farm House" (he says), "is a strange mansion to find in the
heart of the Marshalsea — just over the way is the site of the famous
prist in. The graveyard of St. George the Martyr is now a public garden, grim
enough, to be sure, with its black tombstones and soot-laden balsam poplars.
On one of the walls is placed a board on which is printed the legend : ' This
Stands on the site of the Marshalsea Prison described (or words to this
effect) in Charles Dickens's well-known novel, LitHe Dorr it? The
Farm House was once the town dwelling of the Earls of Winchester. It
has an ancient time-woin front, a court, mysterious chambers, old oak
panels upon which you can just make out some of the old Winchester
ladies and gentlemen ; a curious old staircase ; and I daresay a ghost or two
if one went into the matter. But for a long time past it has been a
common lodging-house. Beds in a haunted chamber may be had at
fourpence a night. Many a strange history could those white-washed walls
tell if they could speak, I dare say — of the good old days in Henry the
Eighth's time, and even of more recent years. Many a man who began life
with the hopefullest prospects has been glad to hide his head in the old
Farm House, down Marshalsea way, Borough."
"Misery," continues this writer, " is strangely prolific ; every
hovel, every court, every alley teems with children," " little
mothers " carrying heavy babies, like Miss Dorothy Tennant's
tender picture, A Load of Care. . . . that heavy, heavy baby,
weighing down that tiny, tiny nurse. . . . Nota Bene : There
always is a baby. By the time a little wool appears on the
head of number one, number two appears, and so on — well,
nearly ad infinitum. There is no doubt whatever that babies
are the bugbears of the Borough ratepayers."
The Board Schools in these districts teach, it appears, not
vi "LITTLE MOTHER" 133
only " the three R's," but also housewifery, house-cleaning,
cooking, and other most necessary accomplishments :
" Housewifery" (says Mr. Morley) "is the birthright of the children of
the poor .... Every mite of a girl down in the East or South .... is
a housewife by the time she is six .... Often enough when times are hard
and funds very low — when father is out o' work, and mother's bad in bed "'
— does the poor little mother set forth with scrubbing-brush in hand, and
clean the door-steps of the prosperous for twopence or threepence,
according to the size and number of the steps. She probably lights the
fire of a morning; it is her delight to go shopping to the remarkable
establishment where most of the necessities of life are to be obtained by
the farthing's-worth ; and with the mysteries of marketing she is very well
acquainted indeed. You should just see her in Bermondsey, the Walworth
Road, the Dials, the New Cut, or Whitechapel on a Sunday morning, when
these localities are alive with poor people buying their dinners. Road and
footpath are blocked with stalls and barrows, and flesh, fish, fowl and
vegetables are all jumbled together in confusion that is apparently inextric-
able. But little mother knows her way about, and whether it is red meal
or white meat, beef, mutton or rabbit, trust her for getting a bargain, for
keeping a sharp eye on weight and measure. A farden is a farden in
districts where a penny is a substantial coin of the realm."
The " Surrey Side " is noted for its hospitals, as well as its
prisons and its slums ; and of these " Guy's Hospital," on the
left of the Borough High Street, — an eighteenth-century founda-
tion, due to the wealth of a Lombard Street bookseller named
Thomas Guy, — is one of the most important. This Guy was
in his way a miser, and his savings were vastly increased by
dealings in South Sea stock, — showing that some good, at any
rate, was wrought by the terrible " Bubble " that ruined so
many thousands. Yet the hospital narrowly escaped losing
the rich man's bequest. He was on the point of marrying his
pretty maid, Sail)', when, his bride offending hint by officious
interference, he broke off the marriage, and endowed the
present hospital with his great wealth. A blackened brass
statue of the founder stands in the courtyard of the edifii
If Chaucer, with his ever memorable Canterbury Pilgrims,
did much to immortalise the Southwark of mediaeval times,
134 THE CHILD OF THE MARSHALSEA chap.
Dickens, the child of a later era, has done at least as much
for the South wark of his day. In the Borough High Street,
close to the site of the demolished Marshalsea Prison,
stands St. George's Church, chiefly remarkable for the fact
that Dickens has here placed the marriage of his heroine,
" Little Dorrit," the Child of the Marshalsea. This was
always a district of prisons ; the natural sequence, one would
think, of Southwark merry-making. Of the two Marshalsea
prisons established here at different times, the earlier, nearer
to London Bridge, was abolished in 1849; the later, so
graphically described by Dickens, was not pulled down till
1887, after having been let for forty years as a lodging for
tramps and vagabonds." Relics of it are now hard to find.
Dickens, who knew it well as a boy, thus describes (in the
preface to Little Dorrit) his search for it in later life :
" I found the outer front courtyard metamorphosed into a butter shop ;
and I then almost gave up every brick of the jail for lost. Wandering,
however, down a certain adjacent ' Angel Court, leading to Bermondsey,'
I came to Marshalsea Place, the houses in which I recognized, not only as
the great block of the former prison, but as preserving the rooms that arose
t. my mind's eye when I became Little Dorrit's biographer .... Whoever
goes into Marshalsea Place, turning out of Angel Court, leading to
Bermondsey, will find his feet on the very paving-stones of the extinct
Marshalsea jail ; will see its narrow yard to the right and to the left, very
little altered if at all, except that the walls were lowered when the place
got free ; will look upon the rooms in which the debtors lived ; will stand
among the crowding ghosts of many miserable years."
Dickens's boyish recollections of the ancient debtors prison
have, as was perhaps natural, sometimes more than a tinge of
bitterness ; here he passed to and fro during wretched childish
years, between the daily drudgery of covering blacking pots at
" Murdstone and Grinby's," down by Hungerford Stairs. More
wretched, indeed, far, than any modern Borough waif, was
this neglected and sensitive child of genius. The intense torture
of his degradation (as he thought it) was never wholly for-
gotten. In this connection he tells (in Forster's Life) a pathetic
vi DICKENS'S LONDON TYPES 135
little story. No boy at the blacking office, it seems, knew
where or how he lived ; and once, being taken ill there, and
helped towards home by a kindly fellow-worker, the child
Dickens said good-bye to his friend by Southwark Bridge :
" I was too proud" (he says) "to let him know about the prison ; and
after making several efforts to get rid of him, to all of which Bob Fagin in
his goodness was deaf, shook hands with him on the steps of a house near
Southwark-bridge on the Surrey side, making believe that I lived there.
As a finishing piece of reality in case of his looking back, I knocked at the
door, I recollect, and asked, when the woman opened it, if that was Mr.
Robert Fagin's house."
While the boy suffered thus acutely, his father lived on in a
Micawberish way at the Marshalsea, being merely of the amiable,
shiftless, idle genus that drags its family down. For the rest,
they did well enough at the Marshalsea : "The family," the son
wrote, " lived more comfortably in prison than they had done
for a long time out of it. They were waited on still by the
maid-of-all-work from Bayham Street, the orphan girl from
Chatham workhouse, from whose sharp little worldly, yet
also kindly, ways I took my first impressions of the " Mar-
chioness " in Hie Old Curiosity Shop.
Yet Destiny works in strange and devious ways, and all the
while, if he had only known it, the Fates were conspiring for
Charles Dickens's good. It was tin- father's misfortunes that
really taught the boy all he needed to learn. Here, amid the
unsavoury purlieus of the prison, he unconsciously studied all
the types and localities of which he was to make such wonderful
use in after-life. The Marshalsea and its ways; bant Street
and Bob Sawyer; "Tip," "of the prison prisonous, and of the
streets streety" ; Sam W'eller at the " White Hart ; " Nancy at
London Bridge Steps ; Sikes and folly Ditch ; with a hundred
others, — were, more or less, to be the outcome of that time.
The glamour of a romantic past, the spirit of Chaucer and
of Shakespeare, may still attach to Southwark ; the playhouses
and gaieties of Elizabeth's time may yet leave some faint record
'3 6
THE CITY'S CHRONICLER
CH. VI
there ; but it is, after all, by another of Fate's strange ironies,
the Child of the Marshalsea, the boy brought up in wretched-
ness and squalor, who has glorified by his genius the place, the
whole district, where he so suffered in early youth. Other and
greater men have told London's history in the past ; but
J >ickens, whose grave is still faithfully tended in Westminster
Abbey while those of the mightier dead are long forgotten,
Dickens, who cared everything for the lower, warmer phases of
humanity ; Dickens, to whom every grimy London stone was
dear, and every dirty cockney child a creature of infinite
possibilities ; Dickens, whose name will be ever dear to the
faithful Londoner ; is the modern chronicler of the great city.
CHAPTER VII
THE INNS OF COURT
"The perplexed and troublous valley of the shadow of the law." —
Dickens.
" those bricky towers,
The which on Thames' broad aged back doe ride,
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers,
There whilom wont the Templar knights to bide,
Till they decayed through pride." — Spenser.
Among the by-ways that open suddenly out of the highways
of London, are there any more attraetive than the Inns of
Court ? which, in an almost startling manner, bring into the
whirl of Holborn, and the din of Fleet Street, something of the
charm of an older and more peaceful world. No parts of
London are more delightful, and few call up more interesting
historic associations. Picturesque and charming old enclosures,
— full of that mysterious and intangible " romance of London "
that appealed so strongly to writers such as Lamb, Dickens,
and Nathaniel Hawthorne, — the Inns of Court have in their time
sheltered many great men. How strange and how unexpected,
in the very heart of busy London, are these quiet old-world quad
rangles, of calm, collegiate aspect, of infinite peace j a peace
that seems perhaps more intense in contrast with the outside,
just as the London "close" of greenery seems all the greener
for its being set amid the surrounding grime, shining " like a
star in blackest night." 1 [istoric houses, indeed, in every sense,
138 "THE'ORRORS" chap.
are these old Inns, with their worm-eaten wooden staircases,
worn into holes by the passage of countless feet ; their panelled
walls inscribed with many names ; their floors often crazy and
slanting as the decks of a ship in mid-ocean. Even the so-
called " laundresses " who act as caretakers and servants in
these establishments, seem as though they belonged to former
centuries, and were, in a manner, impervious to the flight of time.
Many have been the noted residents in the Inns ; the most noted,
perhaps, of those in the Temple are Fielding, Charles Lamb,
and the poet Cowper ; Dr. Johnson lived once in Staple Inn,
writing Rassehis there " in the evenings of a week," to
defray his mother's funeral expenses. Surely, if ghosts ever
walk, they must walk in these historic abodes. It was my lot
lately to search for rooms in one of the Inns (I will not invidi-
ously specify which). The rooms were romantic enough, at a
cursory glance ; further investigations revealed, I regret to say,
the fact that romance was depressingly dark, as well as unduly
favourable to rats, mice, and the unholy black- beetle ; to say
nothing of a general and indescribable musty smell.
"How long have these rooms been vacant?" I inquired,
with some faint show of cheerfulness, of the frowsy "laundress,"
a Dickensy lady with an appalling squint and a husky voice
suggestive of the bottle.
; ' W'y, not to say long, 'm. On'y a year come nex' Wensday.
Though not to deceive you 'm, the larst gempleman as lived
'ere, 'e give the place a bad name."
" What did he do?" I inquired, startled.
" W'y, 'e had the 'orrors dreadful ; 'e did away with 'isself ;
that's where it is " (with increased huskiness).
I looked tremblingly at the panelled walls, the blackened
ceiling, the faded carpet. Was it fancy, or did I see a darker
patch in the threadbare web, and the shadow of a dusky
Roman pointing from the ceiling (as in Dickens's murder of
Air. Tulkinghorn) threateningly at that darker stain ? " 'Orrors " !
I thought ; and no wonder ! Romance, rats, and old panelling
vii CHARLES LAMB 139
are, no doubt, beautiful in their way; but hardly suitable to
prosaic, everyday life.
It is, perhaps, in these old Inns, that, more than anywhere
else in London, the past is linked with the present. Much
the same did they look, their red brick perhaps a trifle less
charmingly darkened by time, in the days when fair ladies
and gallant gentlemen walked in their green plots, the ladies
in the quaint clinging dresses of the Georgian era, the
gentlemen in the gay lace ruffles and knee-breeches of that
picturesque period in dress. If London stones could speak,
what stories could they tell ! The old elm trees, planted by
Bacon (Lord Verulam) that shade so charmingly the cool
green sward of Gray's Inn, were comparatively youthful when
Mr. Pepys walked with his lady-wife in that historic enclosure
" to observe the fashions of the ladies, because of my wife
making some clothes." Time enough, surely, for the trees to
have developed a quite Wordsworthian seriousness ! There
were many rooks in these gardens ; but these have lately dis-
appeared, owing, thinks Mr. Hare, " to the erection of a cor-
rugated iron building near them some years ago " ! Possibly
Mr. Hare credits the rooks with an aesthetic feeling for beauty !
Charles Lamb, that "small, spare man in black," —who, with
his saddest of life-histories, his patient devotion and fortitude,
ill deserved Carlylc's crude vituperation, — was a great devotee
of the Inns, and especially of the Temple, his birth] date. It
was in Little Queen Street, off Holborn, that the early tragedy
happened that saddened all his life ; the murder of his mother
by the hand of his dearly-loved sister, in a lit of insanity.
After this terrible occurrence, the brother took his sister Mary
into his charge, never after to part from her, except only for
her occasional necessary periods of restraint in an asylum. In
Colebrook Row, Islington, where Lamb retired on his einain 1
pation from the India Office, was the last abode oi this
devoted couple; and here occurred the pathetic incident
recorded by a friend, that of the brother and sister walking
140 "TO OBSERVE THE FASHIONS OF THE LADIES " chap.
across the fields towards the safety of the neighbouring asylum,
hand-in-hand, like two children, and weeping bitterly.
The Temple, so beloved of Charles Lamb, is the most widely
J "•/>)• s ami his Wife.
known of all the Inns ; being the largest, and in some ways the
most attractive. Its garden-lawns slope gently and pleasantly
towards the river ; and its quaint, time-honoured, and beautiful
vii THE TEMPLE 141
old squares have the added charm of a long and romantic
history. For here once was the stronghold of the Knights
Templars, that powerful fraternity, so masterful in the pictur-
esque Middle Ages ; and, though the only substantial relic of
them that yet exists here is the old Temple Church, their
memory still lingers about these courts and gateways, adorned
with their arms. And Charles Lamb, — the real child of the
Temple, — has, though born at a later time, invested the place
with a double charm. Born in 1775, in Crown Office Row, his
father servant to a Bencher of the Inner Temple, the boy, from
his earliest years, breathed in the poetry and romance of his
surroundings. Has not his touching description of a childhood
spent here almost the dignity of a classic?
"I was horn" (he says), "and passed the first seven years of my life,
in the Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its fountain, its river, I
had almost said— for in those young years, what was this king of rivers to
me hut a stream that watered our pleasant places? — these are my oldest re-
collections . . . . What an antique air had the now almost effaced sun-dials,
with their moral inscriptions, seeming coevals with that Time which they
measured, and to take their revelations of its flight immediately from
heaven, holding correspondence with the fountain of light ! How would the
dark line steal imperceptibly on, watched by the eye of childhood, eager to
delect its movement, never calched, nice as an evanescent cloud, or the
first arrests of .sleep !
" Ah, yet doth beauty, like a dial hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived !"
In the Temple Gardens, which, mercifully enough, have n< \> 1
yet been threatened with being built over, the famous annual
flower-shows are held. To these gardens, where the K^d Cross
Knights walked at eve, where the gallants of Tudor and Stuart
times paraded their powder and ruffles, are now yearly brought
all the English flowers that skill can grow. In May and June, the
wide green expanse becomes a bower of roses ; in lateautumn
it is the chrysanthemums, the special flowers oi the Temple,
that have their turn. Chrysanthemums are London's own
flowers, and care little for soot ; as for the roses, the) are brought
i 4 2 "THE RED ROSE AND THE WHITE" chap.
hither in masses from the country, " to make a London holiday."
And, surely, never were seen such blooms as at these annual
rose-shows ! A Heliogabalus would indeed be in his glory.
Every year new flowers, new combinations of colour, of shape-
are invented ; and garden-lovers congregate, compare, and copy.
Roses will not now deign to grow in London soot and smoke ;
yet the Temple Gardens once were famed for their own roses,
and here, where now the flower-shows are held, once grew,
according to Shakespeare, in deadly rivalry, the fatal white and
red roses of York and Lancaster. He makes Warwick say, in
King Henry VJ :
" This brawl to-day,
Grown to this faction in the Temple Garden,
Shall send, between the red rose and the white,
A thousand souls to death and deadly night."
There are many sun-dials in the Temple Gardens, a fact
which seems to suggest that the average amount of sunshine
yearly registered in the City was considerably greater in the old
days, when, also, possibly, for belated roysterers too often
" The night was senescent,
And star-dials pointed to morn,
And the star-dials hinted of morn,"
as in Poe's mystic poem. That occasion, for instance, com-
memorated in the Quarterly Review for 1836, when, on some
festival held at the Inner Temple, less than seventy students
consumed among them thirty-six quarts of richly-flavoured
" sack," a potent beverage, only supposed to be " sipped " once
by each !
The mottoes on the Temple sun-dials are varied and curious.
" Pereunt et imputantur," is inscribed on one in Temple Lane ;
in Brick Court it is " Time and Tide tarry for no man " ; in
Essex Court, " Vestigia nulla retrorsum " ; and opposite Middle
Temple Hall, " Discite justitiam moniti."
The Middle Temple, divided from the Inner Temple by
Middle Temple Lane, is the more picturesque of the two Inns.
vii DICKENS AND "FOUNTAIN COURT" 143
Among its labyrinthine courts and closes, the most charming is
" Fountain Court/' well known to lovers of Dickens. The great
writer has caught the spirit of the place ; where in London,
indeed, has he not done so ? He is, par excellence, the
novelist of the city in all its aspects, human, topographical,
artistic, historical. In a few lines, with magic touch, he gives
you a lasting impression, lie makes Ruth Pinch come to meet
her brother in this court :
" There was a little plot between them, that Tom should always come
out (if the Temple by one way; and that was, past the Fountain.
Coming through Fountain Court, he was just to glance down the steps lead-
ing into Garden Court, and to look once all round him ; and if Ruth had
come to meet him, then he would see her ; . . . . coming briskly up, with
the best little laugh upon her face that ever played in opposition to the
fountain, and beat it all to nothing. . . . The Temple fountain might have
leaped up twenty feet to greet the spring of hopeful maidenhood, that in her
person stole on, sparkling, through the dry and dusty channels of the Law ;
the chirping sparrows, bred in Temple chinks and crannies, might have
held their peace to listen to imaginary skylarks, as so fresh a little creature
passed."
Then, when the lover, John Westlock, comes one day :
"Merrily the fountain leaped and danced, and merrily the smiling
dimples twinkled and expanded more and more, until they broke into a
laugh against the fountain's rim and vanished."
In this court, too, is Middle Temple I bill, a line Elizabethan
edifice of 1572, with a handsome oak ceiling, its windows
emblazoned with the armorial bearings of the Templar Knights.
This Hall was already in Tudor times famous for its feasts,
masques, revelries; here Shakespeare's Twelfth Night was
performed in 1601, before the queen and her splendid court ;
"the only locality remaining where a play of Shakespeare's was
listened to by his contemporaries'." Even in winter Fountain
Court is pretty, and its ivied trellises and arches arc well kept
and tended ; a lovely view, too, may be enjoyed from it. down
over the verdant grass slopes of "Garden Court " towards the
silvery river far below. Luck}-, one thinks, are those fortunate
i 4 4 MIDDLE-TEMPLE-LANE chap.
beings who have " chambers " in Garden Court ! poetically
named, and the reality still more charming than the name !
More ornate and less attractive, though delightfully placed, are
the modern buildings of "Temple Gardens."
Bits of old London, unchanged for centuries, crop up
continually in the Temple precincts, and recall the time when
this was a city of timbered houses of tortuous, overhanging,
insanitary alleys and lanes, easily burned, almost impossible
indeed to save when once threatened by fire. Small wonder,
indeed, that the great fire of 1666 destroyed so much of the
Temple ! Middle-Temple-Lane, narrow, crooked, dark, is one
of these relics of the past. Here are some picturesque old
houses of lath and plaster, with overhanging upper floors, and
shops beneath stuffed with law stationery and requirements ;
the houses somewhat crumbling and dilapidated, and " with
an air," like Krook's shop in Bleak House, "of being in a
legal neighbourhood, and of being, as it were a dirty hanger-on
and disowned relation of the law." Every now and then, about
the Temple, in odd and unexpected nooks and corners, you come
upon the arms of the Knights Templars ; in the Middle
Temple it is the Lamb bearing the banner of Innocence, and
the red cross, the original badge of the order ; in the Inner
Temple, — the winged Pegasus, — with the motto, " Volat ad astra
virtus." This winged horse has a curious history; for, when
the horse was originally chosen as an emblem, he had no
wings, but was ridden by two men at once to indicate the self-
chosen poverty of the brotherhood : in lapse of years the
figures of the men became worn and abraded, and when
restored were mistaken for wings !
Middle-Temple-Lane is entered from Fleet-Street, just
beyond the Temple-Bar Griffin and the imposing mass of the
New ( lothic Law-Courts, by a dull red-brick gateway, erected
by Wren in 1684 ; and the Inner Temple by an archway under a
hairdresser's shop, which shop is inscribed somewhat romantic-
ally as "the palace of Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey."
vii THE TEMPLE CHURCH 145
(As ;i matter of diet it was built in James I.'s time, and
belonged to Henry, Prince of Wales ; it subsequently became
" Nando's Coffee-House.") These picturesque, unassuming
archways bear the special arms of each Inn, and here, by the
winged horse, a wit once wrote the following " pasquinade : "
" As by the Templar's hold you go,
The horse and lamb displayed
In emblematic figures show
The merits of their trade.
" The clients may infer from thence
How jusl is their profession :
The lamb sets forth their innocence,
The horse their expedition."
But the main interest of the Temple lies in its ancient church,
St. Mary's, where in the Middle Ages the Knights Templars
worshipped in their strength, and where their effigies, stiff and
mailed and cross-legged, as befits returned crusaders, lie until
the judgment day. The soldier-monks are gone, their place
knows them no more ; yet, like their more peaceful brethren
and neighbours, the Carthusians, their spirit still inspires their
ancient haunts. The Temple Church, begun in 1185, was one
of the four round churches built in England in imitation of
the Round Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, after
the Templars' return from the first and second crusade-, ;
mercifully escaping the Great Fire, it has not entirely escaped
the hardly less dangerous ravages of the "restorer." Through
a fine Norman arch, under the western porch, the Round
Church of 1 [85 is entered. In architecture it is Norman, with
a leaning to the Transition style, and very rich in decoration.
Hence, through groups of Purbeck marble columns, you look
into the choir, a later addition of 1240, in the Early English
style, with lancet-headed windows and a groined roof. "These
two churches," says Mr. Hare, "built at a distance of only
fifty five years from each other form one of the most interesting
1
146 THE TEMPLARS' MONUMENTS chap.
examples we possess of the transition from Norman to Early
English architecture."
In the Round Church are nine monuments of Templars, of
the 1 2th and 13th centuries, sculptured out of freestone,
recumbent, with crossed legs, and in complete mail, except one,
who wears a monk's cowl. They are probably the " eight
images of armed knights " mentioned by Stow in 1598 : some
few are thought to be identified. Strange, unearthly objects !
relics of a bygone order and a vanished faith, — silent witnesses
of centuries' changes, — figures ghostly in the twilight of a
London winter's day : — effigies of warriors, faithful in the life
and unto the death that they knew, recalling Spenser's lines :
" And on his breast a bloudie cross he bore,
The deare remembrance of his dying Lord,
For whose sweet sake that glorious badge he wore,
And dead, as living, ever Him adored.
Upon his shield the like was ever scored,
For sovereign hope which in his help he had."
Records of the severity of the Order are not wanting. Here,
opening upon the stairs leading to the triforium, is the " peni-
tential cell " (of such painful abbreviation that the prisoner
could neither stand nor lie in it), with slits towards the church
so that mass might still be heard. Here the unhappy Walter
le Bacheler, Grand Preceptor of Ireland, — for disobedience to
the all-powerful Master, — was starved to death, and hence also,
most likely, culprits were dragged forth naked to be flogged
publicly before the altar. Priests, in the robust Middle Ages,
did not always err on the side of mercy or humanity !
The preacher at the Temple Church is still named " the
Master," as being the successor of the Masters of the Templars.
Hooker and Sherlock both held the office, and now Canon
Ainger is the most modern representative of the " Grand
Master," that dread mediaeval potentate. During the Protec-
torate, however, the order of succession must, one thinks, have
fallen into some contempt ; for the church became greatly
vii TEMPLE BYWAYS AND ASSOCIATIONS 147
dilapidated, and the painted ceilings (according to the usual
Puritan barbarism) were whitewashed, though the effigies them-
selves mercifully escaped destruction. Lawyers, also, used
formerly to receive their clients in the Round Church (as it
was their custom to do at the pillars in St. Paul's), occupying
their special posts like merchants on 'Change. And thus, that
thorough restoration of the church in 1839 — 42, which anti-
quaries so deplore, was no doubt very necessary.
Long might one linger over the Temple and its many
associations. Even the names of its mazy courts recall old
stories, as well as their sometime dwellers. Johnson's Buildings,
where the old Doctor lived at one time ; Brick Court, where
poor, improvident Goldsmith lived, and died, as he had lived,
in debt and difficulties : Inner-Temple-Lane, where Charles
Lamb lodged, and wrote : " The rooms are delicious, and
Hare's Court trees come in at the window, so that it's like
living in a garden." Garden Court (now rebuilt), where
Dickens's " Pip " lived ; " Lamb Court," with the shades of
Thackeray's Warrington, Pen, and Laura. Tanfield Court,
less pleasantly, recalls a murder, that of old Mrs. Duncomb,
killed by a Temple laundress : the murderess sitting, dressed
in scarlet, to Hogarth for her portrait, two days before her
execution. Then there is King's Bench Walk, where Sarah,
Duchess of Marlborough, came as client, and was so digusted
at finding her legal adviser absent : " I could not tell who she
was," said the servant, reporting the visit to her master, " for
she would not tell me her name, but she swore so dreadfully
that I am sure she must be a lady of quality."
But the Temple sundials are sternly marking the time, and
we must tear ourselves away from tin- historic precincts. The
day is waning, and all too soon Embankment and gardens,
river and sky, will have changed, by some mysterious alchemy,
to a "nocturne" of silver and gold. Let us hasten back into
the din of Meet Steel and the Strand.
Holywell Street, with its tempting book shops, is now a
i. z
i 4 8 A REGION THREATENED WITH DEMOLITION chap.
thing of the past ; and, for the constant Londoner, the bearings
of the Strand world have changed much of late. But Wych
Street still remains, and behind it is the archway into New
Inn, a quaint and forsaken place, resembling, not merely a
backwater, but a stagnant pool, really forgotten by the busy
tide of life around it. New Inn lies in that curious and de-
batable region between the Strand and the district of Clare-
market ; but it is so secluded that one might well live in
London all one's life and never know of it. There is a certain
not unpicturesque squalor about New Inn and its purlieus ; it
has, like so many of these places, a pathetic air as of having
seen better days. Possibly, New Inn sees only too well the
fate that awaits it, in the towering red-brick offices close by,
that once were old Clement's Inn ! "Will they 'talk of mad
Shallow yet ' in Clement's Inn ? Alas ! I fear that the dwellers
in the new mansions will read little of the old traditions of
the site"! "To New Inn," says Seymour (in his Summary
of London, 1735), "are pleasant walks and gardens;" and
still a few sickly patches of grass survive, as well as a saddened
greenhouse, relic of a happier time ! Yet the " dusty purlieus
of the Law " still, in spite of the builder, keep up, in a manner,
their gardening traditions. Even the massive new " Record
Office " does not disdain its little strip of garden, and makes
praiseworthy attempts to grow turf and ground-ivy borders, to
refresh the wanderer down Chancery Lane.
In and about Chancery Lane are several more of these small
Inns, both past and present. " Symond's Inn," so sympa-
thetically described by Dickens in Bleak House, as the lair
of Mr. Yholes, the grasping Chancery lawyer, is typical of
many of these rusty and decaying nests. Symond's Inn, in-
deed, no longer exists. " Chichester Rents," west of Chancery
Lane, marks its forgotten site; but the portrait, — slightly
caricatured, like all Dickens's sketches, — is very suggestive :
"The name of MR. YHOLES, preceded by the legend GROUND
FLOOR, is inscribed upon a doorpost in Symond's Inn, Chancery Lane : a
vii "BLEAK HOUSE" AND MR. VHOLES 149
little, pale, wall-eyed, woebegone inn, like a largo dust-bin of two com-
partments ami a sifter. It looks as if Symond were a sparing man in his
day, and constructed his inn of old building materials, which look kindly
to the dry rot and to dirt ami all things decaying and dismal, and ]
petuated Symond's memory with congenial shabbiness. Quartered in this
dingy hatchment commemorative of Symond, are the legal hearings oi
Mr. Vholes. . . . Mr. Vholes's office, in disposition retiring ami in
situation retired, is squeezed up in a corner, and blinks at a dead wall.
Three feet of knotty-floored dark passage bring the client to Mr. Vholes's
jet-black door, in an angle profoundly dark on the brightest midsummer
morning, and encumbered by a black bulkhead of cellarage staircase,
against which belated civilians generally strike their brows. Mr. Vholes's
chambers are on so small a scale, that one clerk can open the door without
getting off his stool ; while the other, who elbows him at the same desk,
has equal facilities for poking the fire. A smell as of unwholesome sheep,
blending with the smell of must and dust, is referable to the nightly (and
often daily) consumption of mutton fat in candles, and to the fretting of
parchment forms and skins in greasy drawers. The atmosphere is other-
wise stale and close. The place was last painted or whitewashed beyond
the memory of man, and the two chimneys smoke, and there is a loose
outer surface of soot everywhere, and the dull, cracked windows in their
heavy frames have but one piece of character in them, which is a determina-
tion to be always dirty, and always shut, unless coerced."'
Indeed, the whole region of the law, in its byways, and
smaller Inns, is altogether suggestive of Bleak House, Dickens,
a kind of Sam Weller himself in his knowledge of London,
knew all the Inns well, living in several of them, lie is a
faithful chronicler, with this reservation, that he has no eye for
the picturesque interest, hut is all eye for the human. Were
these places dirtier in Dickens's time? That can hardly he.
Why, one reflects, is there a kind of tradition in such things?
even as regards the eternal cats and the equally eternal
"laundresses"? (called so, presumably, because they m\
seem to wash !) Why are the window panes, apparently, never,
never, cleaned? Has never anyone come here with a love
of cleanliness for its own sake, or with a yearning for clean
windows, to these Inns ?
See, for instance, the corner of old Serjeants' Inn, where it
150 CLIFFORD'S INN chap.
joins Clifford's Inn ! It positively caricatures even Dickens.
Black, suggestively gruesome as a picture by Hogarth ; yet,
amid all its dirt, still picturesque ; everywhere neglect, rust,
grime ; windows suggestive of anything but light, broken and
stuffed with dirty paper ; no sign of life (it being Saturday
afternoon), but one old half-starved tabby cat, moved out of her
wonted apathy by hearing the welcome voice of the cats'-meat
boy in neighbouring Chancery Lane ! Is she the aged pen-
sioner of some departed inhabitant, and does she, perchance,
hope to steal, unperceived, some scrap from that unsavoury
basket ? As she slinks along the outer railings of the Clifford's
Inn enclosure, and across the irregular cobble-stones of the
court, one notices that what is by courtesy termed a "garden"
is merely a catwalk. It is a railed-in garden of desolation, its
turf long ago forgotten, its gravel-paths even obliterated, a dingy
strip of earth under a few mangy trees. Surely, nobody can
have entered that rusty gate for at least a hundred years ! It
might be the garden of the " Sleeping Beauty," or at least a
London edition of that lady. Poor, deserted closes ! bits of
vanishing London ! The tide of progress will remove you
altogether ere long, and build huge blocks of clean, if un-
romantic, "Chicago" edifices in your place. Yet, their dirt
and desolation notwithstanding, can we not almost find it in
our hearts to regret these London byways of a past age ?
Perhaps Clifford's Inn may yet maintain some transmitted
gloom from the fact that here used to live the six attorneys of the
Marshalsea Court, " which rendered," says a chronicler, " this
little spot the fountain-head of more misery than any whole
county in England." A grimy archway, piercing the buildings
of Clifford's Inn, and adorned (?) by a ramshackle hanging lamp,
leads through another tiny courtyard to the adjoining Fleet
Street. In such crowded city byways, " businesses," and
things, and people, are often in the strangest juxtaposition. It
seems as if every possible trade and profession had made up its
mind to live, in deadly rivalry, within the same few cubic feet
vii STRANGE CONTRASTS 151
of mother earth. Here, for instance, a smart kitchen, well-
appointed, with shining pots and pans, looks straight into the
windows of a dirty law-stationer's ; there, a printing-press
rumbles, cheek-by-jowl with a Fleet Street tea-shop ; here a
theatre stage-door ogles, at a convenient distance, the in-
viting back entrance of a pawnshop (both of them discreetly
placed in a retiring side alley) ; and there, the much populated
" model " looks across, somewhat yearningly, to some cat-
ridden and rusty desolation, that has got, somehow or other,
" into Chancery," or some such equivalent for oblivion and
decay. And, between the Fleet Street entrance to Clifford's
Inn and Chancery Lane, rises, in strangest medley of all, the
blackened height of St. Dunstan's in-the-West, a rebuilding of
1 83 1, by J. Shaw, on an ancient site. Its tall tower is effective,
but the body of the church has a somewhat abbreviated air,
being tightly sandwiched in between the new buildings of" Law
Life Assurance " on one side, and the Dundee Advertiser, &rc,
on the other.
The two famous wooden giants on the old church of St.
Dunstan's, that used to strike the hours, are now removed to a
villa in Regent's Park.
Between Chancery Lane and Holborn, many important
rebuildings and extensions have been made of recent years :
imposing new edifices have been raised, and, in some places,
building, with the obliteration of old landmarks, is still going on,
so that those who knew it in old days would hardly now
recognise the locality. A new Record Office, palatial and
imposing, in the Tudor style, now extends from Chancery lane
across to Fetter Lane, covering what used to be Rolls Yard ;
and the old Rolls Chapel is now incorporated in the newer
building. In this massive structure, this tin proof fortress, are
kept all the documentary treasures of the kingdom, beginning
with the famous " Domesday Hook,'' df the Conqueror's time.
The Records and State Archives of England, so long neglected,
have at length found a suitable home.
152
LINCOLN'S INN
CHAP.
Lincoln's Inn, however, is less altered. The New Hall of the
Inn, built only in 1845, nevertheless wears a sober and respect-
Hill jL
Lincoln s Inn.
able look of antiquity ; and the new buildings are already less
garish. Perhaps, at first, in contrasting the new houses of
Lincoln's Jnn with the old, where they rise side by side, one is
vii A STORY OF CROMWELL 153
tempted for a moment to cry out against the modern taste in
variegated brick-work ; till on closer examination one finds it
to be a faithful copy of the older style, only not yet darkened
by age ! So true is it, as Millais lias said, that " Time is the
greatest of the old Masters." And the smoke of London ages
buildings quickly ; this is one of its advantages. The real innova-
tion in the newer style is in the windows; for, where narrow
lozenges pierced the wall, now are tall, imposing bay windows,
a wealth of glass before undreamed of. The great modern
cry is ever, " Let there be light ! " But then, we, in our day,
do not have to pay window tax.
The fine Gatehouse of Lincoln's Inn, that opens upon
Chancery Lane, has a delightful look of medievalism ; it is in
the Hampton Court style, and was built in 15 18 by Sir
Thomas Lowell, whose arms it bears, as well as the date of its
erection. Here, tradition says, " Ben Jonson, a poor brick-
layer, was found working on this gate with a Horace in one
hand and a trowel in the other, when some gentlemen, pitying
him, gave him money to leave ' so mean a calling ' and pursue
his studies."
Here in Lincoln's Inn are again quiet, picturesque courts ;
sundials with Latin mottoes ; calm enclosures of quiet amidst
the surrounding racket. At No. 24, "Old Buildings," is a
tablet recording the residence here of John Thurloe, Cromwell's
secretary. An interesting story is told of these chambers. The
Protector is said to have visited his secretary here one day,
and disclosed to him a plot for seizing the young princes, sons
of Charles I. The plans had been discussed, when Thurloe's
clerk was discovered, apparently asleep, in the room. Crom-
well was for killing him, but this Thurloe dissuaded him from
doing, and, passing a dagger repeatedlj over his lace, thought to
prove that he was really asleep. The clerk, however, had
merely been shamming, and he subsequently found means to
warn the princes of their danger. Such a dramatic story cer-
tainly deserves to be true !
154 "ALLEGORY" IN LINCOLN'S-INN-FIELDS chap.
Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, though perhaps hardly rural, is still the
largest and shadiest square in London. It had in old days a
bad reputation for thieves and footpads, for the pillory, and also,
more tragically, as a place of execution. Here the conspirators
in Mary Queen of Scots' cause were hanged and quartered ; and
here gallant Lord William Russell died for alleged treason,
'' his whole behaviour a triumph over death."
The tall substantial houses around Lincoln's-Inn-Fields bear
a look of bygone state, an ancient grandeur well described in
Bleak House. Here is an account of the mansion inhabited
by the astute Mr. Tulkinghorn, in this square :
" Here, in a large house, formerly a house of state, lives Mr. Tulking-
horn. It is let off in sets of chambers now ; and in those shrunken
fragments of its greatness, lawyers lie like maggots in nuts. But its roomy
staircases, passages, and antechambers still remain ; and even its painted
ceilings, where Allegory, in Roman helmet and celestial linen, sprawls
among balustrades and pillars, flowers, clouds, and big-legged boys, and
makes the head ache — as would seem to be Allegory's object always, more
or less. Here. . . . lives Mr. Tulkinghorn. . . . Like as he is to look at,
so is his apartment in the dusk of the afternoon. Rusty, out of date, with-
drawing from attention, able to afford it."
The house thus described by Dickens was that of his friend
Forster, and, no doubt, he knew it well. Very few private
houses exist, I imagine, in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields to-day : and
poor " Allegory " is now there for ever at a discount. The fine
mansions, with their paved forecourts and massive gate-posts,
have had their day, and have now ceased (for the larger world,
that is) to be. Yet it is an imposing square still, and, seen in
the sunshine of a May morning, is distinctly attractive.
Very attractive, too, is Staple Inn, so well known to
Londoners by its old gabled Holborn front. This, in some
ways the most charming of all the Inns, is kindly preserved to
us by the altruism of the Prudential Assurance Company,
whose property it is, and who at considerable expense have
repaired and saved from destruction this historical " bit " of
Old London. The picturesque gables of Staple Inn, its well-
vii STAPLE INN 155
known lath-and-plaster front, would, indeed, be sadly missed if"
they disappeared from the line of Holborn. Nothing so well
gives the idea of the London of the Tudors, of the early
Stuarts, as this time-honoured edifice. Staple Inn, though
generally supposed to be earlier, is really of the time of James I :
and its crumbling and insecure walls, during the recent (and
still continuing) building operations near it, have required
much " underpinning."
Entering under the archway of Staple Inn, we find ourselves
suddenly in a quiet old court set about with plane trees, and
in the middle a rustic seat placed, in countrified fashion, round
a tree trunk ; the old Hall of the Inn forming the background.
It is a charming spot enough, with a most collegiate and
secluded air ; an air so strange, indeed, in this neighbourhood
as to have struck many writers, among others Nathaniel
Hawthorne :
" I went astray" (he says) "in Holborn, through an arched entrance,
over which was ' Staple Inn ' .... but in a court opening inwards from
this was a surrounding seclusion of quiet dwelling houses, with beautiful green
shrubbery and grass-plots in the court, and a great man}- sunflowers in full
bloom. . . . There was. . . . not a quieter spot in England than this.
In all the hundreds of years since London was built, it has not been able to
sweep its roaring tide over that little island of quiet."
And Dickens thus writes of it :
" Behind the most ancient part of Holborn, where certain gabled houses
some centuries of age still stand looking out on the public way. ... is
a little nook composed of two irregular quadrangles, called Staple Inn. It
is one of those nooks, the turning into which out oi the clashing street
imparts to the relieved pedestrian the sensation of having put cotton in his
irs and velvet soles on his boots. It is one of those nooks where a few
smoky sparrows twitter in smoky trees, as though they called to one
another, ' Let us play at Country.'"
Dickens made this the abode of his kindly lawyer of
Edwin Drood (Mr. Grewgious). The chambers where that
gentleman is supposed to have dwelt are marked on a stone
above the doorway, with initials, and a date — 1747.
156 QUALITY COURT chap.
Beyond the first square, through another archway, a garden-
plot is reached, the garden of the Hall. Very picturesque is
this old Hall, long and low, with gaoled lanthorns, — one large,
one small, — and high timber roofs. The garden plot is bright
even in winter, with variegated laurels and a privet hedge ;
these, with the darkened red-brick of the old Hall, make a
charming picture. Opposite the garden-court extends the
new and very attractive modern building of 1843, on a raised
terrace : designed in early Jacobean style, and of a simple
dignity that does not quarrel with its surroundings. This line
of buildings is continued towards Chancery Lane by the new
"Government Patent Office," an admirable structure as yet
untouched by the mellowing London smoke." The buildings
of the " Birkbeck Bank " opposite, which, in their turn, tower
over the little Staple Inn Hall and garden, show, — in painful
contrast both to their unobjectionable Holborn front, and to
the fine simplicity of the Patent Office, — a very ornate medley
of terra-cotta and Doulton-ware ; a chaos of bluish -green pillars
and aggressive plaques and tiles, for which, indeed, some
covering of London soot is greatly to be wished. One might
almost think that one had got into Messrs. Spiers and Pond's
refreshment-rooms or a " Central-Railway-station " by mistake.
Disillusions, however, are frequent in this semi-chaotic region
of new and old buildings, and it must be confessed that the
back of the Patent Office (in " Quality Court ") is somewhat
disappointing after its front view ; it resembles, with its old,
blackened pillars, a disused dissenting chapel ; and Quality
Court itself seems, like so many of the purlieus of the smaller
Inns, mainly redolent of charwomen, cats, and orange-
peel. Nevertheless, even in dingy "Quality Court" there are
some respectable houses with quaint old doorways, as well as
some good iron-work in the upper balconies.
Some of the neighbouring courts are, however, far more
unsavoury. See, for instance, " Fleur-de-Lis " Court, off Fetter
Lane, a miserable, dilapidated flagged alley. The last time
VII
FLEUR-DE-LIS COURT, OFF FETTER LANE
'57
I visited this place, I found a few dirty children dancing to
a poor cripple's playing of a kind of spinet or portable
piano (some of the "music" of these peripatetic street-
Fetter I. am-.
players is of a weird kind). Fleur-de-Lis Court ! charmingly
named, but, like .ill courts with such romantic appellations,
particularly grimy and squalid. Further up, away from Fetter
I5 8 NEWTON HALL chap.
Lane, where the " court " or narrow alley becomes even more
wretchedly ruinous, is a barn-like place labelled "Newton
Hall." It seems at a first glance to be the very abomination
of desolation ; its rusty door padlocked, with an air, too, of never-
being-opened. Is there anything, I wondered at a first glance,
more dismal in all London ? Yet, on looking nearer, I seemed
to see something comparatively clean shining on the wall of
"Newton Hall," amid the surrounding grime. Can it be, —
yes, it is, —a label, — and apparently affixed there within the
memory of man : " Positivist Society." Surely, I reflected,
the Positivist Cause must be in a bad way, if the dilapidation
of the buildings be any guide to the state of the persuasion
itself! It is, however, unfair to judge the state of Positivism
from Fleur-de-Lis Court, for the whole neighbourhood has,
evidently, but a short span of life remaining, and the court and
its purlieus will soon be things of the past. Positivism is
already removing or removed ; and Newton Hall, till Fleur-de-
Lis Court is transmogrified in the march of progress into
offices or model-dwellings, will rust for some few years in
peace.
The neighbourhood in which the old Hall stands is full of
historic memories. As is ever the case in crowded Central
London, the past, the many pasts, are strangely involved and
blended, buried one beneath the other. Dryden and Otway are
said to have once lived — and quarrelled — on and near this site.
Then, in 1710, Sir Isaac Newton, the then President of the
Royal Society, induced that body to buy a house and garden
here from Dr. Barebones, a descendant of the " Praise-God-
Barebones " of Puritan times. Sir Christopher Wren concurred
in the purchase, and ,£1,450 was paid for the freehold. In
this house the Royal Society held their meetings till they
removed to Somerset House in 1782; and they built on its
garden the present " Newton Hall," — which hall, some say, is
really from the designs of Wren. In 1818, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, unhappy son of genius, gave his last public lectures
vii VANISHING LONDON 159
here; later, it was used as a chapel, and then the Positivist
Society made it their home. It is strange to reflect that the
chief reason advanced by Sir Isaac Newton to the Royal
Society for the purchase of this site, was that it was " in the
middle of the town and out of noise."
At the Holborn end of Fetter Lane there are still some fine
old gabled houses, which must soon vanish ; several little Inns
of Chancery, byways out of Holborn and the Strand, have
already been swept away : Thavies' Inn for instance, where
Dickens, surely by an intentional anachronism, places Mrs.
Jellyby's untidy home ; Lyon's Inn, near Wych Street, destroyed
in 1863 ; Old Furnival's Inn, on the opposite side of Holborn,
where Dickens lived when he was first married, has been re-
placed by the offices of the Prudential Assurance Company, the
saviours of Staple Inn, in intense red-brick. Lastly, Barnard's
Inn (originally Mackworth's Inn), a charming little Holborn Inn
on a tiny scale, with small courts, trees, a miniature hall and lan-
thorn, has been bought up by the Mercers' Company and is used
by them as a school. This Inn is therefore not now accessible
to the casual visitor ; its Holborn entrance may, indeed, easily be
missed ; " Mercers' School," in big gilt letters, adorns its narrow
doorway. What a delightful private residence, one thinks, for
some rich man, would such a little Inn as this have made !
Strange that no rich man has ever thought so ! the rich, like
sheep, flock ever towards the less interesting West End.
1 >iekens, as I have suggested, had little eye for the purely
picturesque; and of this little Inn, compared by Loftie to one
of De Hooghe's pictures, he merely says (in Great Expecta-
tions?) that it is "the dirtiest collection of shabby buildings
ever squeezed together in a rank corner as a < lub for torn cats !
So much, indeed, is Beauty in the eye of the seer ' Barnard's
Inn is also remarkable; for having been, in the last 1 entury, tin-
abode of the last of the alchemists.
A gateway on the north side of Holborn leads to< Cray's Inn,
the most northerly of the four big Inns of Court. Thegardens
160 GRAY'S INN GARDENS chap.
of Gray's Inn are green and spacious, and its courts and quad-
rangles have a sober solidity that is very attractive. This Inn
affords a welcome retreat from two of the noisiest and most
unpoetic thoroughfares in London, — Gray's Inn Road and
Theobald's Road.
Here is Hawthorne's description of Gray's Inn Gardens :
"Gray's Inn is a great quiet domain, quadrangle beyond quadrangle
close beside Holborn, and a large space of greensward enclosed within it.
It is very strange to find so much of ancient quietude right in the monster
City's very jaws, which yet the monster shall not eat up — right in its very
belly, indeed, which yet, in all these ages, it shall not digest and convert
into the same substance as the rest of its bustling streets. Nothing else in
London is so like the effect of a spell, as to pass under one of these arch-
ways, and find yourself transported from the jumble, rush, tumult, uproar, as
of an age of week-days condensed into the present hour, into what seems an
eternal Sabbath."
And Charles Lamb also said of them :
" These are the best gardens of any of the Inns of Court— my beloved
Temple not forgotten — have the gravest character, their aspect being alto-
gether reverend and law-breathing. Bacon has left the impress of his fool
upon their gravel walks."
bacon (Lord Verulam) planted here not only the spreading
elm-trees, but also a catalpa in the garden's north-east corner.
In Gray's Inn is also " Bacon's Mount," which answers to the
recommendation in the " Essay on Gardens " ; "A mount of
some pretty height, leaving the wall of the enclosure breast
high, to look abroad into the fields." Gray's Inn Walks were,
in Stuart times, very rural as well as very fashionable ; in 162 1
we find them mentioned by Howell as " the pleasantest place
about London, with the choicest society " ; and the Tatler and
Spectator alike confirm this statement.
But, alas ! Gray's Inn Walks are curtailed, and its gardens
deserted enough, at the present day ! No more does Fashion
walk there, unless it be the " fashion " of the Gray's Inn Road.
Many of the solid brick squares are fallen, like Mr, Tulking-
vii THE ROMANCE OF THE INNS 161
horn's haunt of "Allegory," into comparative decay; others,
perhaps, are still more or less substantial ; but the grime of many
unpainted years of occupation must, one thinks, be more or less
conducive to midnight gloom, or even to the before-mentioned
complaint of " the 'orrors ! " And yet, with all these draw-
backs, do not the suites of rooms in the Inn emanate a semi-
historic charm, a charm that the newer " ilats " can never, never
possess ? Even apart from mere history, places where people
have lived and experienced and suffered, always, I think, breathe
a certain humanity .... And I would rather, for my part, have
a dinner of herbs in Gray's Inn, in a low-roofed panelled
parlour, with windows open on to the green enclosure below,
than enjoy all the dainties of the clubs in a "Palace Mansions,"
with all the newest electric appliances .... I would rather hear
the dim echoes of the past in the rustle of the Gray's Inn elm-
trees, or the plash of the Temple Fountain, than boast of a
theatre agency next door, or live in a West End street of e\ i i
so desirable people. . . .1 would rather breathe the sweet and
solitary content of a City quadrangle, than the fevered and
stormy dissipation of Mayfair ... I would rather. . . .
But the day darkens, and reminds me that I have wandered
long enough in these City closes. Farewell, old Inns ! haunts
of ancient peace, goodnight ! You will, surely, not always
remain as you have been in the past. For some of you, that
all invading iconoclast, the builder, will alter and destroy old
landmarks ; for others, but few springs, maybe, will return to
awake and gladden you into green beauty of plane and elm.
Yet, even then, the memories of past glories will haunt the
sacred place, and fill it with "a diviner air " ; even then, will
surely never wholly be abolished or destroyed those traditions of
former < r reatness that
" — like the actions of the just,
Smell sweet, and blossom in i Ik- dust."
M
CHAPTER VIII
THE EAST AND THE WEST
" Behold how far the East is from the West !"
" A forest of houses, between which ebbs and flows a stream of human
faces, with all their varied passions — an awful rush of love, hunger, and
hate — for such is London." — Heine.
"To Newton and to Newton's Dog Diamond," says Carlyle,
" what a different pair of Universes ; while the painting on the
optical retina of both was, most likely, the same." "A distinct
Universe," adds Thackeray in the same spirit, " walks about
under your Hat, and under mine." This latter reflection occurs
to me often as I walk about London, and note all its many
" sorts and conditions " of men. There is here, especially, every-
thing in the "point of view." From the West to the East is a
wide difference ; yet, between the two, how many minor
differences?
London, indeed, is hardly like a single city ; it is rather like
many cities rolled into one. Here, more than anywhere else,
you realize that " it takes all sorts to make a world " ; for the in-
habitants vary quite as widely as do those of foreign countries.
It was Disraeli who said, with much cynical truth :
" The courts of two cities do not so differ from one another as the court
and the city in their peculiar ways of life and conversation. In short, the
inhabitants of St. James's, notwithstanding they live under the same laws,
and speak the same language, are a distinct people from those of
Cheapsidc."
I'll. VIII
CONTRASTING TYPES
l6 3
Between the people of the East, and those of the West, it is
not merely a question of clistanee ; for, as a matter of fact, the
two types are often closely interwoven. Thus, there is an
A Railway Bookstall.
"East in the West," where, not infrequently, slums and mean
stints lie in near juxtaposition to squares of lordly pleasure-
houses, and where recently erected "model dwellings" for
workmen flourish in the very hearts of the Grosvenor and
M 2
i6 4 CONVENTIONALITIES chap.
Cadogan Estates ; and there is a " West in the East," as
testified by the pleasant wide streets of comfortable roomy
houses that abound in the near suburbs of East and South
London. Yet, it may be broadly stated that every part of
London has manners peculiar to itself, as unvarying, in their
way, as were the laws of the Medes and Persians ; with, also, one
principal dividing-line, — that intangible line separating the East
End from the West End. Here are a few of the differences
between the two :
The West End has all the money and all the leisure ; the East
End monopolizes most of the labour, and nearly all of the dirt.
The West End numbers a few thousands of floating population ;
the East End, a million or so of pretty constant inhabitants.
Yet, by some strange association of ideas, it is to this small
" West End " that we allude when we speak of " all London," and
to which the daily papers refer when in August and September
they assure us that " there is absolutely no one left in town."
The manners and customs of each are dissimilar ; both indulge
in slang of a kind ; but, while the East End usually cuts off the
initial letter of its words, the West-End drops the final one.
The West End is shocked by the East, but then, the East End
is just as much shocked, for its part, by the West. If the
" lady " is full of righteous scorn for the " factory hand " who
spends her hard-won earnings on a feathered hat and a plush
cape, the slum-dweller is, on the other hand, quite equally
scandalized at the "lady's" brazen boldness in wearing a
decollete dress : " To think of 'er 'avin' the fice ter go hout
with them nyked showlders, 'ow 'orrid ! " the factory girl will say,
from out the street-door crowd at an evening "crush." Even
a veiled Turkish lady, from the secluded harem, could hardly
show more genuine feeling at the unpleasant spectacle. No, our
ways are not as their ways. Their conventionalities are quite
as strict, even stricter, than ours. Possibly to them, even our
speech sounds just as faulty as theirs to us; probably they
think us very ill-bred because we do not constantly reiterate
VIII
THE POINT op VIl'.W
[65
the words "Mrs. Smith," or " Mrs. Jones," when addressing
the said ladies; or cry immediately, "Granted, Miss, or Sir,"
in reply to " I beg your pardon ! " At any rate, we must, to
them, seem chilly and unresponsive. Then, the books we
read, if they understood them, would often greatly shock the
slum-dwellers ; the pictures we hang in our parlours would
horrify them. Servants do not come from the slums or
The City Train.
even from the lowest class ; yet I have myself, out of regard
for their feelings, had to "sky"' the most beautiful chefs-
ePcuuvre of Titian, and turn the photograph of a masterpiece
by Praxiteles with its face ignominiously to the wall. And it's
"'ntt you can go to that there National Gallery, 'm, and look
at them pictures of folkses without a rag on 'em, well, it heats
me, it do indeed!" After all, and once moie, the difference
is all in " the point of view ' "
1 66 ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS chap.
But, if the East and the West have their wide and radical
differences, between the two there are, as I said, many re-
curring types. And the constant Londoner, were he suddenly
to be brought, blindfolded, to some hitherto unknown spot in
the city or near suburbs, would soon know his whereabouts by
the look of the people he encountered. Thus, you may know
Bloomsbury by its Jews, as well as by a population remarkable
for general frowsiness, a look of " ingrained " dirt, and an
indescribable air of having seen better days ; Chelsea, by a
certain art-serged female, and long-haired male community
with an artistic, -and, yes, — perhaps a well-pleased and self-
satisfied air; the "City," by its black-coated business men;
Whitechapel, by its coster girls with fringes ; Somers Town
and Lisson Grove, by their odoriferous cats and cabbages ;
Mayfair, by its sleek carriage-horses, and also by the very
superior maids and butlers you meet in its silent streets. Or,
perhaps, by the straw that occasionally fills the quiet square
corners, sounding the sad note of Death. I have seen a slum
child dying of cancer in a crowded garret, — baked by the
August sun, — covered with flies, — in a noisy alley; but only
rich people's nerves require soothing at the last !
Miss Amy Levy has written a haunting little poem on this
subject :
" Straw in the street, where I pass to-day,
Dulls the sound of the wheels and feet.
'Tis for a failing life they lay
Straw in the street.
" Here, where the pulses of London beat,
Someone strives with the Presence Grey —
Ah, is it victory or defeat?
il The hurrying people go their way,
Pause and jostle and pass and greet ;
For life, for death, are they treading, say,
Straw in the street ? "
" London," says a French writer, "resembles, in its size and
luxury, Ancient Rome." But, if Ancient Rome, he adds,
via RICH AND POOR 167
weighed heavily upon its toiling slaves, " how heavily does not
our modern Rome weigh, also, upon the labouring class ! "
The hanging gardens of Park Lane are in as great, and greater
contrast to the Somers Town, I )rury Lane, and Deptford slums,
as were ever the Palaces of the Palatine to the slaves' quarters.
London is the best city in the world to be rich in, the worst to
be very poor in ; as it is the best city for happiness, the worst
for misery. It is the Temple of Midas, where everything, — from
a coffin to a hired guest, — from the entree to an " exclusive "
mansion to a peer's status, — can be bought with money.
Here, more than anywhere else, money is imperatively needed.
Even the poor hawkers who live in unspeakable slums, lined
with cats and cabbages, in Lisson Grove, might, if they lived
in the country, at least have clean cottages, gardens, and pure
air. With the same income on which you are poor in town,
you will be well-to-do, nay, rich in the country. House-rent, — ■
indirect taxation, — the vicinity of tempting shops, — and amuse-
ments take the surplus. The attractions of town must indeed be
great to the poor ; for, if their wages be higher, their life is
infinitely lower. Put it is the same in all classes. It is often
said that the rich, who own so many large and luxurious country
estates, houses, and gardens, are ill-advised to come up to town
and spend hot Mays and Junes in baking Belgravia or Mayfair ;
but, after all, they only share the tastes of the majority. Man
is a gregarious animal, and loves his kind. Similarly, if you
were to make a "house-to-house visitation" in some wretched
Lisson Grove or East End slum, and inquire diligently of every
inhabitant, whether they would prefer to "go back and live in
the lovely country," their answer, I am convinced, would be
firmly in the negative. East and West are alike in this.
Hut the key-note of the East End of London, apart from its big
thoroughfares, is not so much squalor or poverty, as desperate,
commonplace monotony, such as is described by Mrs. Hum-
phry Want in Sir George Tressady, " long lines of low
houses, — two storeys always, or two storeys and .1 basement. — all
1 68 COMPENSATIONS chap.
of the same yellowish brick, all begrimed by the same smoke,
every door-knocker of the same pattern, every window-blind
hung in the same way, and the same corner ' public ' on either
side, flaming in the hazy distance." The East End is very
conservative, and in its better houses there is a conservatism
even in the blinds, which are, almost invariably, of cheap red
rep or cloth, alternated by dirty " lace." With the poorest
tenants, of course, blinds are at a discount ; and grimy paper
fills the frequent holes in the panes.
Yet, it is a mistake to suppose, as is more or less the popular
theory, that the average East Ender's life is all unmitigated
gloom. Take, for instance, the life of the honest, hard-working
artisan and his family. He may live in " mean streets " ; but
use is everything ; and they are not " mean " to him. Possibly,
from his point of view, the two-pair back, the frowsy street, are
" a sight more homely and cosy " than rich people's area gates
and chilly grandeur. If the West End takes its pleasure by
driving in the Park, the East, on the other hand, finds its
relaxation on the tops of 'buses and trams, in walking about
the flaring, gas-jetted street, in looking into shop windows, or in
driving about in all the pride of a private, special coster's cart.
If the rich do not know how the poor live, the poor, on
the other hand, have but a hazy idea of how the rich live. If
you asked the average slum-dweller how the rich spend their
day, they would most likely say, "in drinking champagne and
driving in motor cars." Thus the classes mutually do each other
injustice. If the poor, for a while, could live the life of the rich,
they would vote it terribly slow ; Calverley was not so far out
when he suggested slyly that
" Unless they've souls that grovel,
Folks prefer in fact a hovel to your dreary marble halls."
The poor of the East End have their special plays, their
theatres, their "halls," their cheap popular amusements. And
they have other minor compensations. They " eat hearty "
vim THE STREET AS A PLAYGROUND 169
when they do eat ; they do not fall ill from dyspepsia or have
to go to Carlsbad ;. or if they do suffer from M. Taine's
favourite complaint, " the spleen " (which is unusual in a work-
ing man), they remedy it by a little harmless correction of their
wives. Or if a poor woman's child is ill, she does not suffer
for want of medical advice ; she bundles it up quickly in a
shawl, and runs with it to the nearest hospital, where, if the
authorities are somewhat curt, she at any rate gets plenty of
sympathy from all the other mothers in the big hospital wait-
ing-room. Even that large, shabby crowd that, on visiting-
days, await the opening of the hospital doors, so unutterably
pathetic to the looker-on, is not, perhaps, without its allevia-
tions. It is a mercy that we do not all like the same thing ;
and that, while the rich are exclusive, the poor will enjoy
society of almost any kind : " We shall 'ave to leave our
lodgin's, 'm, over them nice mews,'' a poor woman said to me
lately, in a mournful tone. "The landlord, he's takin' the
place down ; an' I shall miss the 'orses' feet at night,
somethin' shockin' ; they was seek company like." Here, surely,
is a case where one man's poison may be another man's
meat !
As for the children of the working classes, they, unless their
parents are lazy or given to drink, really have, often, a far
better time of it, so far as their own actual enjoyment is con-
cerned, than the more repressed children of the rich. The
pavement is their property, the streets are their world : the
beautiful, dazzling, magical, ever-changing streets, with their
myriad attractions, their boundless possibilities. Then, the
children of the poor are not brought up as useless luxuries.
but, from tinder years, are required to contribute their share of
help to the household ; and what the average child loves above all
things is to feel itself of use. Dirt andgrimeare of no account
whatever to the child; and old clothes are always tar more
comfortable than new to play about in. The " shades of the
prison-house " may close in. later, about the children ol the
i jo THE SUBMERGED chai\
poor, when they must go to service, to the factory, to the shop ;
but, in their early years, their life has its attractions.
Of course, however, with the families of the drunkard, the
shiftless, the lazy, the case becomes altogether different.
Drifting hopelessly from one slum to another, these soon help
to swell the sad ranks of the " submerged tenth " : poor
creatures whose misery shivers in fireless garrets and damp
cellars, whose empty stomachs call in vain for food ; and whose
only outlook is the workhouse, the " big villa " as they call it ;
an institution, however, that they will only enter from dire
necessity, regarding it, as a rule, with wholesome dislike and
disfavour.
There are many churches and chapels all over London, yet
the very poor rarely attend any of them. Indeed, very few
London working men's wives attend any religious service,
unless, that is, they happen to boast of a new hat or
bonnet. . . . They will, however, receive the " visitor " or
"tract-lady " with a sort of chilly grandeur ; and, though their
acquaintance with Holy Writ is generally slight, through all
life's troubles their favourite text is ever this : " It is easier for
a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man
to enter the Kingdom of Heaven." Thus, they are always,
so to speak, comforting themselves for the enforced payment
of the insurance of hard work and poor fare in this life by the
assurance of paid-up capital with interest, in the next ! Poor,
hard-worked mothers of the slums ! who would grudge you
that harmless and unfailing consolation ?
Nor is the " country,"— except in strictly limited quantities,
—such an unfailing consolation to the children of the poor,
as some would have us imagine. (That it is such a priceless
advantage to their health is, no doubt, partly owing to the
fact that it is generally associated with good and wholesome
food.) The children like the " real country " for a day or two ;
— afterwards, they are too often conscious of slight boredom.
At first, they delight in the fact that " it's so green all rarnd, —
VIII
Till-: •' REAL COUNTRY"
171
right to the sky, — with no roads, and no walls, — and no trespsin
boards,— and no pleecemen ;" but these joys have their limita-
Bank Holiday.
lions, and, after a fortnight's holiday, — even poor slum
ehildren are generally glad to get back home. Even in tender
172 THE WHITECHAPEL ROAD chap.
youth, — the country is a cult that requires some learning.
" The country is dreadful slow," — a little girl of the great city
once remarked with painful frankness, — "no swings, no rahnd-
abarts, no penny-ice men, no orgins, no shops, no nothink ;—
jest a great bare field only." Here, again, is the difference of
" the point of view ! "
Go into that glittering Armida-Palace, the busy Whitechapel
Road, and watch the scene at nightfall. The weather may be
cold or mirk ; the weather matters little ; the skies may be glum
and starless, but a galaxy of light, from innumerable gas jets
and shop fronts, floods the busy street. Here is, certainly, no
lack of life and amusement ; the crowd laughs, jostles, and
chatters, as if no such thing as care or struggle existed. It
is a motley crowd. Handsome dark-eyed Jewesses with
floppy hair and long gold earrings ; coster girls " on the
spree," dressed in their gaudy best ; staid couples doing
their weekly marketing ; here and there a happy family round a
stall, eating " winkles " composedly with the help of pins, or
demolishing saucerfuls of the savoury cockle ; vendors of
penny toys ; all these, combined with the voluble " patter " of
the lively shop-boys, make a veritable pandemonium. Shops
are full ; barrows of all kinds drive a brisk trade ;
velvet-cushioned trams ply up and down the big highway,
which extends, apparently almost into infinity, up the long
Mile End Road. (Tram-lines, in London, seem more or less
confined to the uninspiring North and East and their suburbs.)
Ugly and uninvigorating enough by day, the streets, by night,
invest themselves with mysterious glamour and brightness.
Like some murky theatre when the deceiving footlights are lit,
this, too, is a " stage illusion," and it is a wise one. For all
the East End does its shopping by gaslight ; now only it begins
to enjoy its day. Seen in such kaleidoscopic glare of light,
even the Whitechapel Road has its attractions. Yet through
it all one sometimes sees sad sights. Many public-houses dot
these thoroughfares, shining like meteors through the nocturnal
vni TOYNBEE HALL 173
mists ; and here and there, truth to tell, a bevy of red-faced
women may be seen through the plate-glass, whose unhappy
infants arc stationed in shabby perambulators outside ; their
eyes, by dint of vain straining towards their natural guardians,
painfully acquiring that squint that would seem to be the birth-
right of so many of the London poor.
In strange contrast with the din and bustle of Aldgate and
its network of wide streets, are the collegiate buildings of
Toynbee Hall, in Commercial Street, close by. This is a
curious little oasis in the wilderness, a most unexpected by-way
in busy, glaring Whitechapel. To Canon and Mrs. Barnett,
who have devoted their lives towards making Toynbee Hall
what it is, is due the chief honour for the successful working
of this Institution, primarily intended to bring " sweetness
and light " into the darkened, unlovely lives of the London
poor. The name of Arnold Toynbee, the young and en-
thusiastic Oxford man and reformer, has been immortalised
in this place, the first of the University Settlements in London.
Toynbee died young, of overwork and overpressure ; in a sense
a martyr to his cause ; yet the work of this latter-day apostle
has already had large results, and his creed has had many
followers. To him, dying in his youthful zeal, Tennyson's
lines seem specially appropriate :
" So many worlds, so much to do,
So little done, such things t'> l>e,
How know I whal had need of thee,
For thou wert strong as thou wert true?
" O hollow wraith of dying fame.
Fade wholly, while the soul exults,
And self-infolds the large results
< )l force thai would have forged a name."
In some ways, Toynbee Hall, and its successive, and kin-
dred institutions, seem like late revivals ol the monastic
system of the middle ages. Toynbee Hall is a hall in the
174 THE NEW GOSPEL chap.
academic sense, — and shelters successive batches of some
twenty residents, — young university men of strong convictions,
— who come here both to learn and to teach ; — to teach their
less fortunate brothers, — to learn how the poor live. At its
hospitable door the sick and suffering apply for help and
succour ; here charity, — charity, too, of the kind that " blesseth
him that gives and him that takes," — is freely given, — without
narrow restrictions of sectarianism or dogma — and it does
more than this.
For, — unlike the monastic system, - - Toynbee Hall is
specially devised to help the individual soul of the poor worker
in busy London to rise above its often base and mean sur-
roundings. The late Matthew Arnold, in his well-remembered
lecture at Toynbee Hall, — taught the possibility of " following
the gleam" even in the •'gloom" of the East-End, -and of
helping Nature, by the aid of books and of art, from sinking
under " long-lived pressure of obscure distress." Books and
art are great tonics. The ancient monasteries dissuaded, — if
anything, — knowledge, and aspiration generally, in the
" masses " : Toynbee Hall encourages and promotes it ; it is
thus a physician to the mind even more than to the body. It
raises the aims, improves the tastes, and widens the horizons
of its disciples ; it satisfies the cravings of the poor for better
things ; but it must first inculcate such cravings. Within its
walls the poor and struggling artisan may enjoy concerts,
lectures, pictures ; — may learn, too, from the best teachers, —
and profit by many of the advantages of university life. There
are not only lecture-rooms, but reception-rooms, — dining-
rooms, — a library ;^the latter a much-valued institution in the
neighbourhood. Many pleasant social gatherings are held here ;
—not only of working men, — but also of factory girls, — shop-
hands, — pupil-teachers, — who come here, — these latter, — to
cast off the " codes " and dry bones of learning, and acquire
a little of its warmer, fuller humanity.
Toynbee Hall is not the only place in East London where
viii THE UNCONQUERABLE HOPE 175
such works are carried on. Oxford House, Bethnal Green,—
and Mansfield House, Canning Town, — are, among others,—
institutions more or less of the kind ; and the Passmore
Edwards Institute, in Tavistock Place, has similar aims. But
to Toynbee Hall is due the introduction of yearly loan Exhi-
bitions of good pictures for the East End, — originated by
Canon Barnett, and still successfully carried on by his un-
wearying exertions.
The charms of poetic contrast are always great in London.
While standing in a dingy byway of some city church St.
Olave's, Hart Street, or St. Jude's, Whitechapel, — does not the
deep music of the organ, — resounding from inside the building,
—fill the listener with a strange feeling almost akin to tears?
Not even outside a country church is one so affected. Here
it seems to bring the calm of Eternity into the fitful fever of
the moment. The picturesqueness, alone, of religion, is so
great, that, to the determined agnostic London would surely
lose half its charm. And who could work among the London
poor without, at least, something of the feeling so beautifully
expressed in Matthew Arnold's well known lines?
" "Twas August, and the fierci sun overhead
Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green,
And tile pale weaver, through his windows seen
In Spitalfields, look'd thrice dispirited.
" I met a preacher there I knew, and said :
' III and o'erwork'd, how fare you in this scene?'-
' Bravely !' said he ; ' for T of late have been
Much cheer'd with thoughts of Christ, the living bread.'
"O human soul ! as long as thou canst so
Set up a mark of everlasting light,
Above the howling sciim-^ ebb and flow,
To cheer thee, and to righl thee if thou roam
Nol with losl toil thou labouresl through the night !
Thou mak'sl the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home."
Toynbee II. ill, of course, is of modern design ; but there
are still mam- good old-time houses in the Bast-end, now
176 THE EAST IN THE WEST CHAP.
deserted and left stranded by the tide of fashion. Of these is
Essex House, in the Mile-End-Road, (opposite Burdett-Road),
now no longer residential, but used by Mr. Ashbee as the
convenient location for his well-known " Guild and School of
Handicraft," Built partly by a pupil of Sir Christopher Wren,
with panelled rooms, oak staircase, and large garden, its
solid dignity is well suited to its new and living purpose. Mr.
Ashbee, — the founder and moving spirit of the Guild — was
himself a worker at Toynbee Hall, where, indeed, in a small
"Ruskin class " held in 1886-7, the school had its beginning.
So one thing grows out of another, and a sturdy plant sends
out its offshoots.
Thus Toynbee Hall, and kindred institutions, show the
West-end in the East ; now let us turn to the East-end in the
West. This is not so difficult to find ; " the poor," indeed,
"we have always with us," and in some of London's most
fashionable streets the saddest sights of all may be seen. Slums
of a sort are to be found near most of the fashionable West-
end squares ; and, even within the precincts of aristocratic
Mayfair, the expensive fish-shop in Bond-Street, — where,
during long summer days, enormous blocks of ice, tempting to
the eye, glitter like some Rajah's diamond, — entertains a
motley crew of poor folk on Saturday nights, when it makes
a practice of giving away its remaining stock. Bond Street is,
in a manner, the "Aldgate High Street" of the fashionable
world : here, at four o'clock or so in the afternoon, are to
be seen the "gilded youth," — the dandies of the day; — here
the smart world flock for afternoon tea ; and here fine ladies
walk even unattended, and satisfy, as eagerly as their White-
chapel sisters, their feminine cravings for shop-windows Who
was it who first said that no real woman could ever pass a hat-
shop ? The truth of this remark may here be attested. The
very smartest of motor-cars, — of horses, — of " turn-outs "
generally, — may be seen blocking the narrow Piccadilly en-
trance of this thoroughfare from which deviates as many
vin BACKMEWSY STREETS 177
mysterious byways as from Cheapside itself. Very much sought
after are all these tiny streets ; indeed, the tide of fashion has
been ever faithful to this special part of the metropolis. Did
not Swift once write to " Stella," of the neighbouring Bury
Street : " I have a first floor, a dining-room and bedroom, at
eight shillings a week, — and plaguey dear ! " ? But, — even con-
sidering the vast difference in money value since Swift's day,—
we have to pay a good deal more than that now for similar
accommodation in this quarter.
But, yet further West, between Bond Street and Hyde Park,
are Grosvenor and Berkeley Squares, the very focus of fashion,
in whose neighbourhood rents rise proportionately. Here,
too, are many unexpected and charming byways. Behind the
vestry in Mount Street, for instance, in the passage that leads
into the church in Farm Street, you might think yourself
thousands of miles away from Mayfair. This church in
Farm Street, —the Roman Catholic Church of the Immaculate
Conception, — is famous as a Jesuit centre ; here it was that
Henry Manning, afterwards Cardinal, was "received" on
Passion Sunday, 185 1.
Other byways there are, too, of a less attractive kind ; the
byways where dwell the "poor relations," so to speak, of the
Aristocracy and the "Smart Set"; the impoverished ladies
whose sense of propriety would lead them to dwell even in a
wheelbarrow, could that wheelbarrow only be drawn up on
the fashionable side of the street! They are "backmewsy"
little streets of saddening aspect, such as Dickens's typical
" Mi iws Street, Grosvenor Square," that contained the residence
of Mr. Tite Barnacle, with "squeezed houses." each with
" a ramshackle bowed front, little din-)- windows, and a little
dark area like a damp waistcoat pocket "... the house a
sort of bottle filled with a strong distillation of mews, so that
when the footman opened the door, he "seemed to take
the stopper out." Dickens's picture is still a portrait that
many will recognise ;
N
i 7 8 DICKENS'S SOCIAL SATIRES chap.
" .Mews Street, Grosvenor Square, was not absolutely Grosvenor Square
itself, but it was very near it. It was a hideous little street of dead wall,
stables, and dunghills, with lofts over coach-houses inhabited by coach-
men's families, who had a passion for drying clothes, and decorating their
window-sills with miniature turnpike-gates. The principal chimney-sweep
of that fashionable quarter lived at the blind end of Mews Street ; and the
same corner contained an establishment much frequented about early morn-
ing and twilight, for the purchase of wine-bottles and kitchen-stuff. Punch's
shows used to lean against the dead wall in Mews Street, while their pro-
prietors were dining elsewhere ; and the dogs of the neighbourhood made
appointments to meet in the same locality. Yet there were two or three
small airless houses at the entrance end of Mews Street, which went at
enormous rents on account of their being abject hangers-on to a fashionable
situation ; and whenever one of these fearful little coops was to be let
(which seldom happened, for they were in great request), the house
agent advertised it as a gentlemanly residence in the most aristocratic part
of town, inhabited solely by the elite of the beau nionde."
But to the millionaire's dwelling, located at that period
in Harley Street, Cavendish-Square, the novelist is hardly
more polite :
" Like unexceptionable society " (he says), " the opposing rows of houses
in Harley Street were very grim with one another. Indeed, the
mansions and their inhabitants were so much alike in that respect, that the
people were often to be found drawn up on opposite sides of dinner-tables,
in the shade of their own loftiness, staring at the other side of the way with
the dullness of the houses. Everybody knows how like the street the two
dinner-rows of people who take their stand by the street will be. The ex-
pressionless uniform twenty houses, all to be knocked and rung at in the
same form, all approachable by the same dull steps, all fended off by the
same pattern of railing, all with the same impracticable fire-escapes, the
same inconvenient fixtures in their heads, and everything without exception
to be taken at a high valuation — who has not dined with these ? The house
so drearily out of repair, the occasional bow-window, the stuccoed house,
the newly-fronted house, the corner house with nothing but angular rooms,
the house with the blinds always down, the house with the hatchment always
up, the house where the collector has called for one quarter of an Idea, and
found nobody at home — who has not dined with these?"
Dickens, on the whole, is kinder to his thieves' kitchens
and debtors' prisons, even to Fagin and his crew ; for he
viii "THE LADIES OF ST. JAMES'S" 179
allows them, at any rate, to boast occasionally of an " Idea."
But the "Smart Set," with the plutocrats and the Merdles,
has moved westward since the days of the Early-Victorian
novelists ; and " Harley Street, Cavendish Square," is now
mainly medical.
The smart ladies often seen shopping in Bond Street from
neat broughams and landaus, drawn by high-stepping horses,
are mainly people whose names figure largely in the so-called
" society " papers ; their goings and comings, be they aristo-
cratic or theatrical, are all, therefore, carefully noted by the
ubiquitous " lady reporter ; " terrible fate of the well known
or well born ! But it is an age of advertisement ; and who
shall say entirely on which side the fault lies? Where these
leaders of society shop now, other generations of fair dead
ladies, gone "with the snows of yesteryear," have in their turn
enjoyed the dear delights of lace, millinery, and jewels. Here
the "ladies of St. James's," in the eighteenth century, revelled
in their "lutestrings," " dimity s," "paduasoys" ; and, to flaunt
it over their less fortunate sisters, bought the very newest new
thing in turbans. Piccadilly, doubtless, looked a trifle
brighter and smarter in those days of less smoke, as befitted
the "court vnd of the town;" and the young "swells" ol
the day presented a braver array in their laces, nifties, and
knee-breeches. Then, as now, the Holbein-like (late of St.
James's Palace, dignified in sober red-brick, stood sentinel at
the bottom of St. James's Street, the street thus alluded to by
Sheridan :
" The Campus Muni us of St. James's Street,
Where the beaux' cavalry pace t" and fro,
Before they take the field in Rotten Row."
St. James's Street, with all its byways and purlieus, has
always been greatly in request for exclusive and smart clubs,
as well as for bachelors' lodgings of the luxurious kind. It
has also literary associations. St. James's Place, where
Addison lived, was also noted for the resideno of the old
\ 2
/« Regent Street.
ch. vin TIME'S TRANSFORMATION-SCENES 181
banker-poet Samuel Rogers ; this was his home for fifty-five
years, and here, at No. 22, he gave his famous " literary
breakfasts.'' Of old the most exclusive gathering in this
region was " Almack's," ruled by the famous Lady Jersey,
" the seventh heaven of the fashionable world." It is
situated in King Street, and is now " Willis's Rooms." St.
James's, as a rule, is " exclusive " enough still ; but the neigh-
bourhood has in other ways gone through many changes.
The great house built by Nash for the Regent, — Carlton House,
beyond Pall Mall, — has vanished like Aladdin's Palace, and
has left in its place only one big column, a flight of noble
steps, and a stately terrace of palatial mansions, — Carl ton-
House-Terrace, overlooking the Mall. This Phcenix-like spirit
of London, ever rising anew on its own ashes, was always dear
to Thackeray. Here is one of his inimitable passages on the
subject, thrown off at random :
"... .1 remember peeping through the colonnade at Carlton House,
and seeing the abode of the great Prince Regent. I can see yet the Guards
pacing before the gates of the place. The place? What place? The
palace exists no more than the palace of Nebuchadnezzar. It is but a name
now. Where be the sentries who used to salute as the Royal chariots
drove in and out ? " The chariots, with the kings inside, have driven to the
realms of Pluto : the tall ( iuards have marched into darkness, and the echoes
of their drums are rolling in Hades. Where the palace once stood, a hundred
little children are paddling up and down the steps to St. James's Park. A
score of grave gentlemen are taking their tea at the Athenaeum Club; as
many grisly warriors are garrisoning the United Service Club opposite.
Pall Mall is the great social Exchange of London now — the mart of news,
of politics, of scandal, of rumour — the English forum, so to speak, where
men discuss the last despatch from the Crimea, the last speech of Lord
Derby, the next move of Lord John. And. now and then, to a few anti-
quarians, whose thoughts are with the past rather than with the present, it isa
memorial ol old times and old people, and Pall Mall is our Palmyra.
Look! About this spot, Tom of Ten Thousand was killed by Konigs-
marck's gang. In thai red housi Gainsborough lived, and Culloden
Cumberland, George [II. 's uncle. Yonder is Sarah M irlb rough's palace,
just as ii stood when that termagant occupied it. Ai 25, Walter S
used to live; at the house, now No, 70. and occupied by the Society for
182
A RETROSPECT
CHAP.
the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, resided Mrs. Eleanor
Gwynn, comedian. How often has Queen Caroline's chair issued from
under yonder arch ! All the men of the Georges have passed up and down
the street. It has seen Walpole's chariot and Chatham's sedan ; and Fox,
Piccadilly.
Gibbon, Sheridan, on their way to Brookes's ; and stately William Pitt
stalking on the arm of Dundas ; and Hanger and Tom Sheridan reeling out
of Raggett's ; and Byron limping into Wattier's ; and Swift striding out of
Bury Street ; and Mr. Addison and Dick Steele, both perhaps a little the
viii PALL MALL 183
better for liquor ; and the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York clattering
over the pavement ; and Johnson counting the posts along the streets, after
dawdling before Dodsley's window ; and Horry Walpole hobbling into his
carriage, with a gimcrack just bought out at Christie's ; and George Scluvn
sauntering into White's." — Thackeray : Tlie Four Georges, p. 72.
Pall Mall, the street of palaces and palatial clubs par
excellence, is one of London's handsomest highways. It has
for three centuries been the Fleet Street of the well-to-do poets,
of the leisured literary world ; for what, indeed, could poverty
ever have in common with Pall Mall ? Defoe, in his day,
wrote thus of it :
" I am lodged in the street called Pall Mall, the ordinary residence of all
strangers, because of its vicinity to the Queen's Palace, the Park, the
Parliament House, the theatres, and the chocolate and coffee houses,
where the best company frequent. If you would know our manner of
living, 'tis thus : — We rise by nine, and those that frequent great men's
levees find entertainment at them till eleven, or, as at Holland, go to tea
tallies. About twelve, the beau-monde assembles in several coffee or
chocolate houses ; the best of which are the Cocoa Tree and White's
chocolate houses, St. James's, the Smyrna, Mr. Rochford's, and the
British coffee houses ; and all these so near one another thai in less than
one hour you see the company of them all."
This sounds, truly, a pleasant enough life ;— and its counter-
part of the present day is,— allowing for altered customs, — no
doubt equally pleasant. The taverns mentioned have given
place to spacious club-houses, all more or less modern ; and
the day has, in the last two centuries, come to begin earlier
and end later. Coffee-houses, in Defoe's time, were the
necessary ladders to rising fame talent ; thus, the boy Chatti r
ton, starving and unknown in cruel London, sought to alia)
his mother's anxiety by writing to her: "I am quite familiar
at the Chapter coffeehouse (St. Paul's), and know all the
geniuses there."
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Pall Mall was
a pretty suburban promenade, and its " sweel shady side,"
sung by the poets, was really no misnomer, as a row oi
184 THE POETRY OF ST. JAMES'S SQUARE chap.
elms fringed it, both north and south. And it is still an aristo-
cratic region, despite the " business" air that has of late invaded
it. Of the people you meet here, — elderly gentlemen with
nothing, perhaps, very remarkable about them, to outward
view ; — or smart young men, with well-polished boots and
hats, and faultless dress-coats, — it is safe to say that a fair
number will have distinguished themselves in one way or
another ; either in the working of their country's government,
or in the fighting of their country's battles But, here as
elsewhere, England is uncommunicative, and you may pass
angels unawares.
Just behind Pall Mall is the aristocratic St. James's Square —
already, alas ! invaded by the modern builder :
" She shall have all that's fine and fair,
And ride in a coach to take the air,
And have a house in St. James's Square," —
— runs the old ballad. Though St. James's Square now con-
tains a fair sprinkling of Government and other offices, — yet
its clientele is still somewhat ducal. Nevertheless, this Square,
too, recalls something of the seamy side of life. " What,"
says Lord Rosebery, referring to London's many associations,
" can be less imposing, or less interesting in themselves,—
than the railings of St. James's Square? Yet, you cannot
touch those railings — hideous as they are and dull as are the
houses that surround them — without thinking that Johnson and
Savage, hungry boys, starved by their kind mother, London,
who attracted men of letters to her, walked round that square
one summer night and swore they would die for their
country."
Yes, — this, in some way, seems "the best of all possible
worlds," — and London, in such surroundings, the best of all
possible cities to live in. Yet, here, too, the East is
still present in the West. Round the corner, as I gaze,
comes a pitiful group, — a tawdry woman, her voice raucous
vin THE SEAMY SIDE 185
and suggestive of gin, holding by the hand two children, a
boy and a girl, — all singing, or making believe to sing, in
chorus :
<( '
Ark ! ar ark, my sow] ! Angelic songs are swellin',
From Hearth's green fields — and Hoceant's way-be shore —
Ark, ar-ark,— "
Alas ! the notes are hardly suggestive of angelic visitants.
The chubby little boy is crying, the tears making streaky marks
down his dirty litde face. "I'm so cowld, so cowld, mammy,"
" 'Owld yer row !'' —admonishes his sister, in the intervals
of her husky accompaniment... The sodden voice of the mother
is so terrible that I am moved to give her a shilling to go away
and remove her poor suffering babies. . . . But, — at the angle of
Waterloo Place, — another phantom is stationed; a wretchedly
clothed creature, evidently on the look-out for a job. He
might himself be an incarnation of Famine. His cheeks are
hollow and cadaverous ; his eyes are dulled and hopeless ; he
shivers in the bleak raw December air ; — in the " best of all
possible worlds, — the richest of all possible cities " . . . . The
mere " cab-horse's charter" is not for such as he ! Ungrateful
country, that deals so ill with her children, giving them too
often " stones for bread ! "
" If suddenly," says Mr. Ruskin, "in themidstof the enjoymentsof the
palate and lightnesses of heart "I a London dinner-party, the walls oi the
chamber were parted, and through their gap the nearest human beings who
were famishing and in misery were borne into tin- midsl <>l die company
feasting and fancy-free — if, pale with sickness, horrible in destitution,
broken by despair, body by body, they were laid upon the soft carpet, one
beside the chair of every guest, would only the crumbs of the dainties be
cast to them — would only a passing glance, a passing thought lie vouchsafed
to them ? Vel the actual facts, the real relations of each Divesand Lazarus,
are not altered by tin- intervention of the house wall betw table ami
the sick-bed— by the few feel of ground (how few !) which are indeed all
that separate the merriment from the misery."
It is an effective contrast. lint, perhaps the most vivid
and pathetic sketch of the Submerged of the Great City is
1 86 "THE LOAFER" CH. vm
that of John Davidson's weird and haunting ballad : " The
Loafer " :
" I hang about the streets all day,
At night I hang about ;
I sleep a little when I may,
But rise betimes the morning's scout ;
For through the year I always hear
Afar, aloft, a ghostly shout.
" My clothes are worn to threads and loops ;
My skin shows here and there ;
About my face like seaweed droops
My tangled beard, my tangled hair ;
From cavernous and shaggy brows
My stony eyes untroubled stare.
" I move from eastern wretchedness
Through Fleet Street and the Strand ;
And as the pleasant people press
I touch them softly with my hand,
Perhaps to know that still I go
Alive about a living land.
" I know no handicraft, no art,
But I have conquered fate ;
For I have chosen the better part,
And neither hope, nor fear, nor hate.
With placid breath on pain and death.
My certain alms, alone I wait."
Speshul !
CHAPTER IX
WESl MINSTER
"The devout King destined to God that place, both for thai it was near
unto the famous and wealthy City of London, and also had a pleasant
situation amongst fruitful fields lying round about it, with the principal
river running hard by, bringing in from all parts of the world great variety
of wares and merchandise of all sorts to the city adjoining : but chief!) foi
the love of the Chief Apostle, whom he reverenced with a special and
singular affection." — Contemporary Life of Edward t I <r in
Harleian MS.
"Tin- world-famed Abbey by the westering Thames." Matthew
Arnold.
"Westminster Abbey," said Dean Stanley, "stands alone
amongst the- buildings of the world. There arc it ma) be,
some which surpass it in beauty or grandeur ; there arc others,
certainly, which surpass it in depth and sublimity ol
association ; but there is none which has been entwined by so
many continuous threads with the history of a whole nation.
The old Abbey of Westminster, is, indeed, in itself an
1 88 THE LEGEND OF THE ABBEY chap.
epitome of English history. Elsewhere in London, you must
dig aijd delve for it, study and reconstruct ; here, you have it
all together, a chain in a manner unbroken, from Edward the
Confessor to the latest of our Hanoverian Kings, crowned
here, so lately and so splendidly, in the place of his fathers.
The church has, in a manner, been founded many times ;
by tradition, by rebuilding, by frequent restoration and enlarge-
ment. The earliest church, or temple, on this ancient site is,
indeed, almost lost in the semi-fabulous mists of early history.
To all famous fanes, the after-years have a tendency to ascribe
legendary and miraculous beginnings ; thus, the magic haze
that surrounds the primitive church of the doubtful Saxon
King Lucius is hardly less than that covering the Temple of
Apollo, the Sun-god, said to exist here in Roman times. At
any rate, it is clear that on this favoured spot, once the little
sandy peninsula of " Thorney Island," was an early sanctuary
and settlement, both Roman and Briton. In King Sebert's
time the mists of antiquity lift, but still slightly. Sebert,
King of the East-Saxons, was, early in the seventh century,
the traditionary founder of a church here, dedicated to St.
Peter. According to the story, Sebert, just returned from a
Roman pilgrimage, was about to have his church consecrated
by the bishop, Mellitus ; when, one evening, a poor Saxon
fisher, Edric, who was watching his nets along the shore, saw,
on the opposite river bank, a gleaming light, and, approaching it
in his boat, found a venerable man who desired to be ferried
across the stream. There, the mysterious stranger landed,
and proceeded to the church, where, transfigured with light,
and attended by hosts of glittering angels, he consecrated it,
being, indeed, no other than St. Peter himself :
" Then all again is dark ;
And by the fisher's bark
The unknown passenger returning stands.
Saxon fisher I thou hast had with thee
The fisher from the Lake of Galilee —
ix THE TOMB OF KING SEBERT 189
" So saith he, blessing him with outspread hands ;
Then fades, but speaks the while :
At dawn thou to King Sebert shall relate
How his St. Peter 's Church in Thorney Isle,
Peter, his friend, with light did consecrate."'
The chronicle relates the story thus :
" Know, O Edric," said the stranger, while the fisherman's heart glowed
within him, " know that I am Peter. I have hallowed the church myself.
Tomorrow I charge thee that thou tell these things to the Bishop, who
will find a sign and token in the church of my hallowing. And for another
token, put forth again upon the river, cast thy nets, and thou shalt receive
so great a draught of fishes that there will be no doubt left in thy mind.
But give one-tenth to this my holy church."
The story continues that Bishop Mellitus, on hearing Edric's
miraculous tale, changed the name of the place from Thorney
Isle to West Minster.
The tomb of the first traditionary founder of St. Peter's
church of Westminster is still shown in the Abbey today, as it
has been shown ever since the time of its erection. Through
all the vicissitudes of the Abbey, its many alterations and
restorations, this early relic has always been treated carefully
and with respect. The King of the East-Saxons sleeps in
peace in the choir, with his wife Ethelgoda and his sister
Ricula, first of a long line of kings and potentates.
But if Sebert was the traditional founder of the Abbey,
Edward the Confessor was, unquestionably, its real founder.
And, for that matter, the legends that surround the mysterious
Sebert still linger, like a halo, round the Confessor's memory;
he who was, we are told, so saintly, that being one day al mass
in the ancient minster, he saw "the Saviour appear as a child,
bright and pure as a spirit." Truly, a picturesque age to live
in ! The rebuilding of the Confessor's church was. as in the
later time of Rahere, the outcome of a vision, and of a direct
message from the saint. Edward, said St. Peter, must
rebuild the ancient minster of Thorney. Edward rebuilt it.
i 9 o HENRY VII.'S CHAPEL chap.
laying the foundation stone in 1049, and naming it "the
Collegiate Church of St. Peter of Westminster." It was the
work of the King's life, and it was only consecrated eight
days before his death. Of the Confessor's chapel and
monastery all that now remains is the present " Chapel of the
Pyx," with portions of the Westminster School Buildings and
of the walls of the South Cloister. For Henry III., the
Abbey's second founder, who had " a rare taste for building "
pulled down, in 1245, most of his predecessor's work, and
made the splendid miracle-working shrine that contains the
relics of the royal saint. But it was Henry VII., in 1502,
who was the great builder and transformer of the Abbey.
To him we owe the fine perpendicular chapel called by his
name, "the most beautiful chapel in the world," the one
building that impresses, at first sight, every visitor to London.
Westminster Abbey, as we see it now, is probably in externals
much as Henry VII. left it, except for the addition of Wren's
two western towers, and " the fact that in the middle ages it
was a magnificent apex to a royal palace," surrounded " by a
train of subordinate offices and buildings, and with lands
extending to the present Oxford Street, Fleet Street, and
Vauxhall."
Yet, without any of its former palatial accessories, is not the
gray fret- work of Henry Vlltlrs chapel, as it breaks on the
delighted vision of the traveller down Whitehall, an ever-
renewed joy and wonder ? To Henry Tudor we owe the
union of the houses of York and Lancaster ; yet we remember
him far more by this, the chapel that he has given us for all
time. Truly, he too must have had " a rare taste in building ! "
" It is to the exaltation of the building art," says Mr. Ruskin,
in an eloquent passage, " that we owe :
— " those vaulted gates. . . . those window-labyrinths of twisted tracery
and starry light ; those misty masses of multitudinous pinnacle and diademed
tower ; the only witnesses, perhaps, that remain to us of the faith and fear
of nations. All else for which the builders sacrificed, has passed away —
ix THE TEMPLE OF FAME 191
all their living interests, and aims, and achievements. We know not for
what they laboured, and we see no evidence of their reward. Victory,
wealth, authority, happiness — all have departed, though bought by many a
hitter sacrifice. But of them, and their life and their toil upon the earth,
one reward, one evidence, is left to us in those gray heaps of dee^-wrought
Stone. They have taken with them to the grave their powers, their
honours, and their errors ; but they have left us their adoration.''
But, apart from the beauty of its architecture, apart from the
associations and traditions of its early history, apart from its
honour as the place of coronations, the feeling that every true
Englishman has for the Abbey of Westminster must necessarily
be strong ; for it represents to him not only the essential
spirit of his mother-city ; it is also, in a sense, his national
Valhalla,
— "place of tombs,
Where lie the mighty bones of ancient men."
Here, in this "cathedral close of Westminster," is his true
fatherland. This, he may say, is his national Holy of Holies ;
the sacred spot :
" Wo meine Tralime wandeln gehn,
Wo meire Todten aufersteh'n."
Here he may feel all the reverence, all the love for his
country, that is ever the birthright of the true citizen. For,
not only kings, queens, and nobles, but also the great and
might)- in art, science, literature, are buried within this narrow
space. It is England's Temple of Fame, her crowing glory of
a life of honour and merit. The "immortal dead" are thus
in their death brought near to each one of ns, and become part
of our special family. They are our national inheritance.
Westminster Abbey is "the silent meeting place of the dead
of eight centuries," the "great temple of silence and recon-
ciliation where the enmities of twenty generations lie buried.''
Death is ever die great peacemaker. Round the mediaeval
shrine of Edward the Confessor, in its faded and rilled
splendour, lie, in .1 closely joined < ircle, the peaceful Tombs of
1 92 THE ETERNAL PEACE-MAKER chap.
the Kings ; sturdy Plantagenets, their warfare ended, the
features of their effigies composed in an eternal calm.
They sleep well, after life's fitful fever ! In Henry Vllth's
chapel, Mary and Elizabeth, sisters of bitter hate and strange
destiny, rest together in a contracted sepulchre, admitting of
none other occupant but they two. " The sisters are at one ;
the daughter of Catherine of Aragon and the daughter of Anne
Boleyn repose in peace at last." On their monument is the
striking inscription : an inscription placed there by James I. ;
" closing," said Dean Stanley, " the long war of the English
Reformation : " " Regno consortes et urna, hie obdormimus
Elizabetha et Maria sorores, in spe resurrectionis." And those
great statesmen of a later age, Pitt and Fox, their life-long
rivalry ended, rest in the north transept, dying in the same
year, and buried close together :
" Here — taming thought to human pride —
The mighty chiefs sleep side by side.
Drop upon Fox's grave the tear,
'Twill trickle to his rival's bier ;
O'er Pitt's the mournful requiem sound,
And Fox's shall the notes rebound.
The solemn echo seems to cry —
' Here let their discord with them die.' '
The figure of William Pitt, Lord Chatham, in parliamentary
robes, his arm outstretched as if speaking, rises high above the
surrounding monuments :
"High over those venerable graves," says Macaulay, "towers the
stately monument of Chatham, and from above, his effigy, graven by a
cunning hand, seems still, with eagle face and outstretched arm, to bid
England be of good cheer, and to hurl defiance at her foes."
In another splendid passage, Macaulay describes the later
burial of the son near the father :
" The grave of Pitt had been made near to the spot where his great father
lay, near also to the spot where his great rival was soon to lie. . . .
Wilberforce, who carried the banner before the hearse, described the awful
ix A HIGHWAY OF TOMBS 193
ceremony with deep feeling. As the coffin descended into the earth, he
said, the eagle face of Chatham from above seemed to look down with
Sternation into the dark house which was receiving all that remained of so
much power and glory."
"The silence of death," says Dean Stanley, "breathes here
the lesson which the tumult of life hardly suffered to be
heard."
As, then, the Appian Way was to the Romans, so is West
minster Abbey to us, our "Highway of Tombs." As the
stranger walks along the vast Nave and the Transepts, he
passes through a veritable City of the Dead, commemorated
here by every kind of monument, statue, bust, tablet, cenotaph,
tomb. Here are now no more the simple tombs and effigies
of the earliest time, no more the rich, imposing magnificence
of the mediaeval shrine.';, but a later efflorescence of sculpture
and ornament, an efflorescence differing ;ts widely from the
severity of former ages, as the laudatory epitaphs differ from
the simplicity and humility of the early inscriptions. Justice'
and Mercy, Neptune and Britannia, cherubs and clouds, .ire
generally very painfully in evidence, and in their vast size and
depressing ubiquity testify to the false taste of their day. Net
are the monuments always deserved. " Some day," said ( larlyle,
cynically, "there will be a terrible gaol-delivery in Wes(
minster Abbey ! " The worst of such theatrical sculpture is,
also, that it always takes up so much room ; we, in our day,
should often be glad of the space of one cloudlet, —of one
unnecessary virtue, — for- the modest perpetuation of a greal
man's memory. Who now recalls the merits of the forgotten
magnates of past ages? but Dickens's humble grave-stone is
ever freshly tended, bright with geranium or violet. Rtiskin's
small tablet and bas-relief must hang in a dark, unnoticed,
corner, and Tennyson's bust is relegated to a pillar of Poet's
Corner. And what is left, one may ask, of our National Val
halla, for the great names of a futun
The solemn dignity of the Confessor's Chapel, and
' 1
194 PICTURESQUENESS OF THE ABBEY chap.
Henry VHth's beautiful chapel behind it, have, after the crude
monuments of the Nave, all the calm of a secluded byway
after the clamour of a noisy street.
Westminster Abbey is full of beautiful pictures. On a
sunny day, especially, the play of light and shade on its pillars,
the fretted tracery of its interlaced arches, the fine harmony of
its proportions, the golden, mellowing, subdued light that
enters through its " rose " windows, the colour of its many
tombs and rich marbles, that, on a day of London winter, so
beautifully harmonises with the whole, may well tempt many
an artist. To gain the full glory of the long aisles in their
aerial perspective, the Abbey should be seen from the far end
of the Nave. Everywhere is beauty ; but perhaps one of the
most lovely " bits " in the church is that furnished by the three
canopied tombs of Henry Ill's family, — the tombs of Edmund
Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster, Countess Aveline, his wife, and
Aymer de Valence. These three tombs make a charming
picture from the Sacrarium, where they stand ; viewed, too,
from the aisle just beneath them, two of them tower up grandly,
to their full height ; the third, however, that of Aveline, is
hidden from the aisle by an ugly eighteenth-century monument.
(Truly, the eighteenth century has much to answer for !) The
lofty pinnacles of these tombs, the richness of their sculptured
foliage and crockets, and the calmness of their supported effigies,
are very impressive. Among other strikingly picturesque
views is that of the small chapel, or rather, doorway, of St.
Erasmus, dating from Richard IFs time, a low arch supported
by clustered pillars ; and also that of the splendid " Chantry of
Henry V," towering at the entrance to Henry VHth's Chapel,
above the royal circle of tombs on either side. Over the Arch
that canopies Henry's tomb, (an arch in the shape of the letter
" H,") is the iron bar with the king's shield, saddle and helmet,
the helmet which we would fain for poetry's sake, think to be
— " that casque that did affright the air at Agincourt,"
—but which was, probably, merely a tilting-helmet made for the
ix A TOUR OF THE CHAPELS 195
funeral. There is a sad humanity about these blackened
accoutrements of the dead, standing out against the golden
half-light of the dimly-seen chapel beyond, hanging so long in
their lofty position as to seem a part of the Abbey itself.
Have they not, before now, appealed to the imagination of
many a Westminster school-boy, sitting below in the choir, and
set him wondering about those old Plantagenets and Tudors,
who seem here so much more alive and human than in the
dull pages of a history book ?
The best tombs of the Abbey are only free and open to
inspection on Mondays and Tuesdays within certain hours;
on all other days, they are locked up, and people are only
" taken round " them at stated times and under supervision.
On Mondays and Tuesdays there is, mostly, a good assembly
of sightseers ; and, whether one ehoses a free day, full of
people, or whether one rather elects to be taken round on a
sixpenny da)' in custody, in either case one inevitably loses
much of the charm and feeling of the beautiful old church and
its associations. On free days, boys have a tendency to clatter
distractingly up and down the wooden steps that lead to the
Confessor's Chapel, with other diversions natural to the
juvenile mind ; on sixpenny days, you go in and out with the
crowd in a depressing "queue," while each chapel in turn is
unlocked and its monuments explained in a sad monotone.
No other arrangement, no doubt, is possible; yet, who could
penetrate to the soul of the Abbey under such conditions as
these? It is perhaps not unnatural that the vergers, who have
performed the office so often, should feel a certain satiety in
the process, and that they should wish to hurry the visitor
through the chapels as quickly and perfunctorily as may be j and
yet, how charming would it be to spend a long afternoon lure,
in study or enjoyment, undisturbed ! In an unwashed and
noisy crowd, a crowd which seems to imagine that the Tombs
of the Kings are a species of Waxworks, who can think, or
enjoy, or remember? Moreover, when one is, so to speak, "in
o J
iq6 " A SIXPENNY DAY " chap.
custody," one must always be very careful to do nothing which
may draw down on one's self the suspicion of the custodian. In
this connexion one is tempted to recall the story told of a
certain too-conscientious verger in one of our provincial
cathedrals. A devout visitor knelt down at an altar- tomb ; an
action for which the said verger promptly reprimanded him.
" I was only praying," murmured the visitor, rising abashed.
"Oh, that can't be allowed," said the verger; "we can't
let people pray about wherever they like ; that ivould
never do."
In Westminster Abbey they are hardly so particular; and yet,
something of this same sense of restriction the reverent visitor
to the ancient edifice also experiences. His spirit recoils from
locked entrance gates and tours of perfunctory inspection, and
yearns for but one hour of the "bliss of solitude," to invoke,
if not the shades of the mighty dead, at least something of the
feeling that clings round their memorial chapels. It is this
feeling that Froude has so well described : " Between us and
the old English," he says in an eloquent passage, " there lies a
gulf of mystery which the prose of the historian will never
adequately bridge. They cannot come to us, and our imagina-
tion can but feebly penetrate to them. Only among the aisles
of the cathedral, only as we gaze upon their silent figures
sleeping on their tombs, some faint conceptions float before us
of what these men were when they were alive ; and perhaps in
the sound of church bells, that peculiar creation of mediaeval
age, which falls upon the ear like the echo of a vanished world."
And now for the other side of the picture. I was once, on a
" sixpenny day," in the north aisle of Henry Vllth's chapel,
admiring the quaint cradle-tomb of that " royal rosebud " of
three days old, — Princess Sophia, — and pondering over that
strange curse of Stuarts and Tudors, when up came a couple,
'Arry and Arriet, of the usual cockney honey-mooning type.
They were evidently " doing " the London monuments in
style, and eschewed free days. The bride seemed tired and
IX FATE'S IRONIES 197
somewhat apathetic; she evidently had to be kept severely
up to the mark.
" Funny little nipper," said the young man peeping into
the cradle : " It's a won'erful big child for three days old,"
said the bride, with -some faint show of interest ; and, my !
how silly it is dressed ! only fancy, a cap like that there for
a byby ! " Then they turned to Queen Elizabeth's effigy : " I
don't like the looks of 'er," said the lady, with something
between a shudder and a giggle : " I come over jes' now so
faint," she continued, her pink colour fading : " it's 'ardly' 'elthy
in 'ere with all these corpses, is it? . . Wax-works is much
nicer ; they don't give yer the creeps so. Let's go and 'ave a
'bus ride, an' give the old Johnny the slip. I think we've 'ad
our sixpennorth." So they went, but alas ! they had left me
their desecration.
Strange, indeed, are Fate's ironies ! Queen Elizabeth and
her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, rest in the two side aisles of
Henry Vllth's chapel in stately tombs, much resembling one
another, erected, with praiseworthy impartiality, to his " dearest
mother" and his "dear sister," by King James I. In the
Stuart vault, close to the unhappy Queen of Scots, is buried
Lady Arabella Stuart, " childe of woe " ; that poor prisoner of
the Tower, separated from her loved and just-wedded husband
and kept by her cousin James I. in durance vile, till "her
reason left her," and she died. Even in death her disgrace
followed her, when, for fear of being thought too respectful to
one "dying out of royal favour," the authorities dared not
c\vn provide her poor body with an adequate coffin ! Poor
" Ladie Arbell ! " Of all the tragedies of English history,
none are sadder or more cruel thin hers, or reflect, more
vividly, the inhumanity of the time.
The interior of I lenrv Vllth's Chapel, in its darkened glory
of golden light, with its fretted roof, its "walls wrought into
universal ornament." its many statues and sculptures, and
contrasted dark oak choir stalls, with the banners of their
198 THE MAUSOLEUM OF THE TUDORS chap.
owners, the Knights of the Bath, hanging overhead, — is very
fine. In the centre of the chapel is the magnificent tomb of
Henry VII, the third founder of the Abbey, who, with much
of the feeling of the men who built the Pyramids, determined
this as the splendid mausoleum of his race. The monument,
enclosed by a screen, or "closure," of gilt copper, is by
Torregiano. Here, with Henry, is buried his wife, Elizabeth
of Yoik, in marriage with whom the king finally united the
York and Lancaster cause. Hither was brought in state, in
1502, the body of this last Queen of the House of York, dead at
twenty-seven, her waxen effigy, with dishevelled hair and Royal
robes, lying outside her coffin :
"The first stone of the splendid edifice founded by Henry VII, and
which was to contain all the glory of his race, had only been laid a month
when his wife, Elizabeth of York, died. She lies in its. first grave. More
wrote an elegy on the Queen, who died in giving birth to a child in the
Tower :—
" Adieu, sweetheart ! my little daughter late,
Thou shalt, sweet babe, such is thy destiny,
Thy mother never know ; for here I lie.
At Westminster, that costly work of yours,
Mine own dear lord, I now shall never see."
In front of the chantry of his grandparents, is the altar-tomb
of Edward VI., the boy-king of sixteen, " flower of the Tudor
name " ; a small portion of the frieze of his ancient monu-
ment, also by Torregiano, has survived Republican zeal, and
has been let into the more modern structure.
In one of the five small apsidal chapels at the eastern ex-
tremity of the Abbey is Dean Stanley's fine monument, a
recumbent figure, by Boehm. Here, in the " farthest east " of
the Abbey that they so loved and lived in, he and his wife,
Lady Augusta, " devoted servant of her Queen," rest until the
judgment day. The Duke of Buckingham's huge tomb, that
almost blocks another of these small chapels, is picturesque :
and near it, on the floor of the main building, is a blue slab
simply inscribed with the name of " Elizabeth Claypole."
ix TIIK TOMBS OF THE KINGS 199
Close to the great shrine of Henry and Elizabeth rests peace-
fully this favourite daughter of Oliver Cromwell, the only
member of her family suffered to remain in the Abbey after
the Restoration, when the mouldering bodies of her father and
his myrmidons were exhumed and hanged at Tyburn, showing
the furious brutality, unconquered even by death, of the
— " foolish people, unsounde and ever untreue."
The " great Temple of Silence and Reconciliation," that
had condoned so many even greater wrongs, has, lure alone,
failed to protect its dead.
Henry Vllth's Chapel is now mainly used for such functions
as the yearly convocation of the bishops, and for early bi weekly
services for the deanery and its precincts, c\:c. Its banners are
decaying, its stalls are no longer used by the " Knights of the
Bath " ; and the last banner placed here was that of the Duke
of Wellington, in 1804.
As Henry Vllth's Chapel is the mausoleum of the Tudors,
so is Edward the Confessor's Chapel that of the Plantagenets.
Here the whole space, indeed, is " paved with kings, queens, and
princes, who all wished to rest as near as possible to the miracle
working shrine." In the royal ring of tombs, the treasure, the
jewels, the gilt-bronze accessories, and, in some cases, the arms
and even the heads of the effigies have been raided at some
past time. The beautiful effigy of Eleanor of Castile, wife of
Edward I, that "queen of good memory "who accompanied
her lord to the Crusades, and in honour to whom nine monu-
mental crosses were erected in London, still, however, remains
intact. "The beautiful features of the dead queen are
expressed in the most serene quietude; her long hair waves
from beneath the circlel on her brow." Edward I, the greatest
of the Plantagenets, lies near on a bare altar-tomb of grey
marble ; a plain monument for so great and glorious a being.
On the north side are the words : "Scotorum Malleus " (the
Hammer of the Scots). At the head of Eleanor, his daughter-
in-law, lies Henry III, the "second founder " of the A.bb<
200 THE CORONATION CHAIRS chap.
"quiet Henry III, our English Nestor," who reigned fifty-six
years ; his effigy is of gilt brass. Katherine of Valois, widow of
Henry V, the ancestress of the Tudor line, rests under the altar of
her husband's chantry ; she it was whose mummified corpse
Pepys records that he kissed in 1668, "reflecting upon it that
I did kiss a queene." Queen Philippa of Hainault, her husband
Edward III, and the luckless Richard II, complete the royal
circle.
Just in front of the screen that stands at the foot of the
Confessor's shrine, are the Coronation Chairs. The most
battered and ancient of these is the old coronation chair of
Edward I, enclosing the famous " Prophetic Stone " or " Stone
of Destiny,'' of Scone ; concerning which the Scots believed, that
wherever it was carried the supreme power would go with it.
Edward I. brought it from Scotland in 1297, in token of the
complete subjugation of that country. Every English monarch
since then has been crowned in this chair, and Queen Victoria
used it at her Jubilee service. The second coronation chair,
(made for Queen Mary II, wife of William III), is only used
when kings and queens are crowned together : it was used
for Queen Adelaide in 1831 ; and lately for Queen Alexandra.
Opposite the wooden staircase that descends from the
Confessor's Chapel to the ambulatory below, a small doorway
leads to the Islip Chapel ; where on " free " days, the " Wax
Effigies " may be seen. This curious and ghoul-like collection
is the outcome of a custom dating from ancient times ; the
custom of carrying in funeral procession, first, the embalmed
body open on the bier, and subsequently, the wax effigy, or
portrait model, for the crowd to gaze at ; the effigy to rest
beside the tomb or monument. Remains of such effigies,
broken, mutilated and often unrecognisable, are extant even as
far back as Queen Philippa's time ; these ghastly fragments are
however, not on general view. Eleven wax figures still remain ;
dirty, but in a tolerable state of preservation ; they suggest a
very grimy and antiquated Chamber of Horrors. Presumably
ix THE WAX EFFIGIES 201
taken from life, or, in some cases, from a cast after death, they
arc invaluable as contemporary likenesses. Charles II, an
unpleasantly yellow, ogling creature in wig and feathered hat,
a ghoulish dandy with the well-known "drop" in his cheeks,
confronts us at the top of a narrow wooden stair. If it be
difficult to imagine his fascinations, — -those of his neighbour,
" La Belle Stuart," are a trifle more suggestive ; yet here the
lady is, surely, no longer very young; and we can hardly
connect her with the figure of "Britannia" on our pence, for
which it is said she consented to sit as model. Queen Anne's
effigy (she di.-d at fifty) is, possibly, flattering; or it may he a
more youthful portrait. Her sad, pale face, in her gorgeous
dress, suggest remembrances of her eighteen dead children,
buried in the Stuart Vault of Henry Vllth's chapel, about the
coffin of the Queen of Scots; "pressing in and around, with
their accumulated weight, the illustrious dust below." Strange
doom of the Stuart race ! Were these people merely human and
not royal, would not such afflictions win our sympathy ? We hear
of James II. 's faults— history is reticent about his eleven dead
children ; of "Good Queen Anne's" virtues,— hardly a word as
to her maternal grief. Poor, kindly, amiable queen ! as she
sits here in her tarnished grandeur, she seems, of a truth,
overpowered by the " load,"
— " wellnigh not to he borne,
( >f the too great orb 1 ii hei fate."
Mary II., a big woman, nearly six feet in height, towers over
her small husband, William III., who, nevertheless, stands on a
footstool beside her. Most witch likeofall is the effigy of Queen
Elizabeth, (a restoration of the < lhapter, in 1 760, of the original
figure carried at her funeral, which had by then fallen to pieci
The portrait is evidently from a cast taken after death, for it
suggests the wasting of disease, the anguish of suffering. The
Queen seems haunted and hag-ridden ; the wizened and weird
appearance of the figure is in horrid contrast with its ga) attire ;
the high-heeled, gold shoes with rosettes, stomacher covered
202 THE CLOISTERS chap.
with jewels, and huge ruff of the time. A strange experience,
indeed, is this " Islip Chapel " ; and one that leaves a lasting
impression !
The small chapels round the Confessor's shrine, separated
from it by the Ambulatories, are filled with interesting
mediaeval tombs, and some brasses of great beauty. In one of
them is the eighteenth-century monument of Lady Elizabeth
Nightingale, by Roubiliac, so popular among the Abbey
sightseers. This theatrical figure of the skeleton Death
hurling a dart at the dying lady, so affrighted, says tradition,
an intending robber, that he fled in terror, leaving his crowbar
behind. And I can never leave the Abbey without admiring
that lovely figure of the beggar girl holding a baby, in the
North Transept, that commemorates, among surrounding
politicians and soldiers, the charities of a certain Mrs.
Elizabeth ^'arren, dead in 1816.
How dazzlingly the sunlight of London gleams upon us, as
we leave the twilight of the Abbey ! We may quit it by the
small door of " Poet's Corner," that door where poor, ill-used,
foolish Queen Caroline beat in vain and undignified effort for
admittance to and participation in her cruel husband's coro-
nation ; dying, one short fortnight afterwards, "of a broken
heart." From Poet's Corner we enter upon a pleasant green
sward, diversified by the flying buttresses that, in grand black-
ness of London smoke, support the Chapter-House ; emerging,
presently, into the strange twentieth-century bustle and din of
Victoria-Street. Or, going out through the front entrance in
the North Transept, (" Solomon's Porch,") we come upon St.
Margaret's Church, that building which, beautiful in itself,
renders such service to the Abbey, by presenting it to the eye
in its true proportions. The ancient cloisters, part of which
date from the early conventual buildings here, (a Benedictine
house connected with the foundation of the first minster), may
be reached, either through a door from the South Aisle, or
through the neighbouring " Dean's Yard," a pleasant square of
ix THE JERUSALEM CHAMBER 203
old-fashioned houses, where from time immemorial the merry
Westminster boys have played. If the visitor be of an
antiquarian, or historical, turn of mind, he may now penetrate
to the old " Chapel of the Pyx," a remnant of the earliest
times, and the ancient treasure-house of England's Kings ; or
to the Chapter-House, an octagonal chamber, now restored
to its pristine beauty by judicious restoration. If, on the
contrary, he merely prefer to wander vaguely, every turn of the
cloisters will present to him a new and charming picture.
Especially in spring are these cloisters delightful, when the old
trees of the courts and closes put on their early green, an
innocent green that contrasts so poetically with the crumbling
grime of the ancient walls. It is the eternal contrast of Life
and of Death. In this favoured spot, the Canons' houses, the
old School of Westminster, and the ecclesiastical precincts
generally, are all entangled in a labyrinth of cloisters, difficult
to thread, save to the elect. School and church buildings,
cloisters, picturesque byways and back streets, seem all here
inextricably confused ; but this only renders the locality the
more attractive. Suddenly, you come upon a brass door, an-
nouncing, in spotless metal, " The Deanery." It is in a quiet
court, built up under the Abbey's very shadow ; and here,
facing you, is the famous "Jerusalem Chamber," a most
picturesque building outside, with ancient, crumbling, (happily
not "restored,") stones, and painted glass windows. Here,
as told in Shakespeare, King Henry IVth died :
King Henry. " Doth any name particular belong
Unto the lodging where I first did swoon ?"
Warwick : " 'Lis called Jerusalem, my noble lord."
King llnuy : " Laud be to God ! even there my life must end ;
It hath been prophesied t<> me many years
I should not die but in Jerusalem,
Which vainly I supposed the Holy Land:
But bear me to that chamber : there I'll lie ;
In that Jerusalem shall Harr) die."
Henry IVth, Act IV, So. 4.
204
DEAN'S YARD chap.
The Deanery is a low gabled building, with a charming
old-world air. Further on is a small enclosure called " Little
Cloisters;" a tiny secluded court where the clergy of the
Abbey live. Here is a curious tablet that records the death
of a poor sufferer " who through ye spotted veil of ye small-
pox rendered up his pure and unspotted soul." Reached
from Dean's Yard by a vaulted passage and an ancient gate,
is Little Dean's Yard, where is the classic gateway to West-
minster School.
The cloisters, like the Abbey itself, contain many monu-
ments and inscriptions. One in particular, " Jane Lister, dear
childe, 1688 " charmed Dean Stanley, as recalling, in its
simplicity, the early monuments of the catacombs.
The blackened, time-honoured houses of Dean's Yard are
now varied by some new private mansions. Part of the
square is now occupied by " Church House," a kind of large
ecclesiastical club and office. Its main portion, which ex-
tends far back into neighbouring streets and purlieus, is of
cheerful red brick.
The narrow streets of Westminster are curious and interest-
ing, if occasionally just a trifle " slummy." They are generally
old, tortuous, and picturesque ; but the old, as in other parts
of London, is gradually being displaced by the new. West-
minster is now much sought after as a residential neighbour-
hood ; building is increasing there, and rents are proportionately
rising. The houses are often much shadowed and built up
to, yet, here and there, charming views of the Abbey and its
precincts almost compensate for want of light. The too
ubiquitous " flats " and " mansions " are multiplying here as
elsewhere; but Cowley Street has still an old world charm,
and Queen Anne's Gate has its attractions. On the Whitehall
side, the late removal of the obstructing Parliament-Street, and
the rebuilding of Government offices, have made great
structural alterations.
Just outside the Abbey is "Broad Sanctuary," a name that
ix WESTMINSTER HALL 205
commemorates the ancient rights and powers of the Church in
protecting political victims and offenders from the law. " The
Sanctuary " in mediaeval times was a square Norman tower,
containing two cruciform chapels. Here did that poor Queen,
Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Edward IV., seek refuge twice in
her chequered and mournful life ; it was on her second flight
hither, in her widowhood, with all her children, that her
" young princes, her tender babes," were dragged away from
her to be murdered by their uncle Richard of Gloucester.
In all the structural alterations of Westminster, its old Hall,
built first by William Rufus, has always mercifully been spared.
It was rebuilt by Richard II, who, if only for the sake of such
a monument, deserved of England a better fate. This Hall,
which has witnessed more tragedies than any other London
building, is principally famous to us as the place of trial of
Charles Stuart, King of England, 1649. Here, with the Naseby
banners hanging over his devoted head, Charles showed all that
firmness and control that had been so conspicuously lacking in
his life. Macaulay describes it thus :
" The great hall of William Rufus, the hall which had resounded with
acclamations at the inauguration of thirty kings: the hall which had
witnessed the just sentence of Bacon and the just absolution of Somers ;
the hall where the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment awed and
melted a victorious party inflamed with just resentment; the hall whi
Charles had confronted the High Court of Justice with the placid courage
which has half redeemed his fame."'
On Barry's enormous Gothic Palace, the Houses of Parlia-
ment — Time, which docs so much both for the London build-
ings and lor the opinions of Londoners, -will no doubt deliver
a favourable verdict. Its florid richness of decoration, unsuit-
able, say art critics, to such a vast building, was in imitation of
Henry Yllth's miniature chapel opposite. Its galleries and
courts, almost as labyrinthine as the Westminster Hoist,
require a long experience to understand and unravel. That
Sir Charles Barry has worked Westminster Hall into Ins newer
Victoria 'fewer, Westminster.
,n. ix "THE MOTHER OF PARLIAMENTS" 207
palace, entitles him to our respect and gratitude. In Old
Palace Yard is that equestrian statue of Richard Coeur-de-Lion
that has won so much praise from the greatest of our art critics.
Old Palace Yard, too, has tragic associations. It was here that
the Gunpowder Plot conspirators suffered death, opposite the
windows of the house through which they had carried the gun-
powder into the cellars under the threatened House of Lords.
Here, also, Sir Walter Raleigh was executed in 16 18.
Where Barry's palace now stands, stood, from Anglo-Saxon
days till Henry Vlllth's time, the ancient palace of the English
Kings; and here, in their very palace, grew the germ of those
Houses of Parliament that gradually came to occupy the entire
area. The Star Chamber, the Painted Chamber, St. Stephen's
Chapel, were parts of the old building made familiar to us by
association and by history. The ancient palace was safe under the
shadow of its abbey and sanctuary, till Henry VII I, who defied both
abbey and sanctuary, actuated by Nabothdike desire of posses-
sion,moved his residence to Whitehall. The Whitehall palace is
gone as if it had never been ; but that of Westminster has risen
again from its ashes. This sacred spot was the place of our
national liberties; here arose the " Mother of Parliaments."
Not long ago, I was standing on Westminster Bridge in the
gathering twilight ; the misty glory of a fine winter's day. The
river edges were sprinkled with a thin crust of silvery frost, the
dulled red sun was going down in splendour behind a galaxy
of pink and golden clouds. Insensibly, as the light laded, and
the mist rose, I seemed to lose the forms of the modern buildings,
and to see, as though in a vision, the "Thorney Isle" of the
dim past. The huge "New Palace of Westminster," with its
towers, was for a moment blotted out. . . . There, in the
dreamy haze of sunset, I saw
— " the Minster's outlined m
Rise dim from the morass."
—That, surely, uas no longer the Terrace ol th< House "I
208 THE BREAKING OF A DREAM chap.
Commons, but a marshy bed of osiers and rushes ! The dark
shadow yonder, across the broad river, was it any more the grimy,
disused Lambeth landing-stage, or had it changed to the rude
primitive boats of the Saxon fisher-folk, " moored among the
bulrush stems " ? The clamour yonder, — was it the shouting of
drunken bargees, or merely the voices of simple peasants, busy
with their nets, singing the evening hymn?. . . . And was that a
barge being towed up stream, or was it not, rather, a boat cross-
ing to the nearer shore, with its unknown, saintly passenger ?
Then, suddenly, a blaze of light irradiating the gloom — is it the
miraculous glow from the consecrated Minster, or ... .
I start, for some one touches me gently on the shoulder. I
turn round, half expecting to see a Saxon hind in leather
jerkin and thonged sandals .... But a modern lamplighter
with tall pole pushes past me, and- ■
" Please, lydy, gimme suthin' jis' to keep the life in my
little byby," wails the voice of the professional beggar, break-
ing the spell, and disclosing an unhappy, shawled, and croupy
infant. " I ain't got a place ter sleep in this night. Gawd
knows I ain't, dear lydy."
The woman's appearance suggests the public-house, and I
realise all the sinfulness of encouraging croupy (and possibly
borrowed) babies to be out at unseasonable hours ; neverthe-
less, the simpler Anglo-Saxon mood prevails, and the woman
gets my sixpence. She departs with husky blessings . . . and
a chorus of coughs. " Ah, poor soul," I thought as I watched
the wretched creature disappear to the shadow of some yet
darker archway, '''would not you, and such as you, have found
better shrift in old days ? — There was the convent ; — there
the sanctuary ; there the gracious, unquestioning succour ;
there the majestic houses of the Father of Mankind and His
special servants. . . . And ever at the sacred gates sat Mercy,
pouring out relief from a never-failing store to the poor and
the suffering ; ever within the sacred aisles the voices of holy
men were pealing heavenwards in intercession for the sins of
ix IDEAL AND ACTUAL 209
mankind ; and such blessed influences were thought to exhale
around those mysterious precincts, that even the poor outcasts
of society, — the debtor, the felon, and the outlaw — gathered
round the walls as the sick men sought the shadow of the
apostles, and lay there sheltered from the avenging hand, till
their sins were washed from off their souls. . . ."
But the vision has fled — the present once more dominates.
. . . Now the lights begin, in serried rows and twinkling
patterns, to glow along the shores of the vast and deceptive
Armida-palace ; the " cruel lights of London," hiding so much
that is grim, sad, and terrible. . . . There, grey against a
background of rosy opal, the Houses of. Parliament rise from
the silvery river in misty grandeur. . . . Then, gradually the
"nocturne" changes its key ; the darkness deepens, and the
Westminster towers begin to loom up blackly against the lurid
sky. . . . big lien booms solemnly through the invading
mist. . . . For how many centuries, 1 wondered, has the
evening bell resounded over the marshes of Thorney ? Only
in the lapse of time it has somewhat changed its note. . . .
Convent bell,— church bell, —secular bell! It calls now no
longer to prayer and devotion, but to business, or, maybe,
pleasure ... as the blaze of light that now shines from its
tower Hashes forth the might of the Temporal power, not the
miraculous workings of the Eternal. . . . Yet, "the Lord
(iod of Israel, he slumbers not, nor sleeps." . . . How loudly
the strokes peal ! . . . One . . . two . . . three . . .
four. . . .
" Move on, please," sounds the voice of the burly policeman,
evidently suspecting my motives, and accrediting me with
suicidal intentions. "Can't stay 'ere all night, y'know."
So I "move on"; and Night, and the river-mist, bctv
them envelop, as with a pall, the enormous city.
CHAPTER X
KENSINGTON AND CHELSEA
" In old days. ... the hawthorn spread across the fields and market
gardens that lay between Kensington and the river. Lanes ran to Chelsea,
to Fulham, to North End, where Richardson once lived and wrote in his
garden-house. The mist of the great city hid the horizon and dulled the
sound of the advancing multitude ; but close at hand .... were country
corners untouched— blossoms instead of bricks in spring-time, summer shade
in summer." — Miss Thackeray, Old Kensington.
" There is not a step of the way, from .... Kensington Gore to . ...
Holland House, in which you are not greeted with the face of some
pleasant memory. Here, to ' mind's eyes ' . . . . stands a beauty, looking
out of a window ; there, a wit, talking with other wits at a garden gate ;
there, a poet on the green sward, glad to get out of the London smoke and
find himself among trees. Here come De Veres of the times of old;
Hollands and Davenants, of the Stuart and Cromwell times; Evelyn
peering about him soberly, and Samuel Pepys in a bustle. . . . Here, in
his carriage, is King William the Third, going from the Palace to open
Parliament. . . . and there, from out of Kensington Gardens, comes
bursting, as if the whole recorded polite world were in flower at one and
the same period, all the fashion of the gayest times of those sovereigns,
blooming with chintzes, full-blown with hoop-petticoats, towering top-
knots and toupees. . . . Who is to know of all this company, and not be
willing to meet it ? " — Leigh Hunt.
" Faith, and it's the old Court suburb that you spoke of, is it? Sure, an'
it's a mighty fine place for the quality." — Old Play.
The great highway of Knightsbridge, — on the southern side
of the Park, — leads, as everybody knows, from Hyde Park Corner
to Kensington. Kensington, as it is now, is an all-embracing
en. x
ALL-EMBRACING KENSINGTON
211
name, a generic term ; it comprises not only Old Kensington,
but both " West Kensington," a new and quickly increasing
district of tall flats and " Queen Anne " houses, as far removed
from London proper, for all practical purposes, as St. Albans ;
and " South Kensington," a dull and uninteresting quarter,
but close to all the big West-end museums and collections, and
where no self-respecting lady or gentleman of the professional
Anglers in the Parks.
or "middle classes " can really help living. He, or she, must,
nevertheless, beware lest they stray too far from the sacred
precincts. For, on the west, South Kensington degenerates
into Earl's Court; on the south, a belt of "mean streets"
divides it from equally select Chelsea (and, in London, the
difference of but one street may divide the green enclosui
the elect from the dusty Sahara of the vulgar) : while on the
east, its glories fade into the dull, unlovely streets of Pimlico,
i' :
212 THE KNIGIITSBRIDGE ROAD CHAP.
brighten into the red-brick of the Cadogan Estate, or solidify
into the gloomy pomp of Belgravia.
These, however, are but Kensington's later excrescences,
due to the enormous increase of London's population, and to
the consequent building craze of the last century. It was the
Great Exhibition of 185 1 that gave building, in this direction,
its great impetus. The original village of Kensington, the " Old
Court Suburb " of Leigh Hunt's anecdotes, lies in and about
the Kensington High Street, the Gardens, and the Palace. It
is pre-eminently of eighteenth century renown; Pepys hardly
mentions it ; its glory was after his day. It is reached from
London by the Knightsbridge Road, a thoroughfare that,
crowded as it is to-day by the world of fashion, was, only at
the end of the eighteenth century, so lonely as to be unsafe
from the ravages of thieves and footpads ; a road " along
which," Mr. Hare remarks plaintively, " London has been
moving out of town for the last twenty years, but has never
succeeded in getting into the country." So solitary, indeed,
was this road that, even at the close of the eighteenth century,
a bell used to be rung on Sunday evenings to summon the
people returning to London from Kensington Village, and to
allow them to set out together under mutual protection.
London is not, even now, well lit as compared with large
foreign cities ; in old days, however, the darkness was such as
to draw down the well-deserved strictures of Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu. Such was the insecurity of that courtly highway,
the Kensington or Knightsbridge Road, that it was the first
place to adopt, in 1694, oil lamps with glazed lights, in prefer-
ence to the older fashion of lanterns and wicks of cotton.
Some of London's finest mansions are now to be found in
this Knightsbridge Road. On the left, as you go towards
Kensington, are Kent House (Louisa, Lady Ashburton), once
lived in by the Duke of Kent, Queen Victoria's father ;
Stratheden House, and Alford House, — this last a fine modern
building of brick and terra-cotta, with high roofs. Beyond
x "OLD KENSINGTON" 213
Kensington Gore (so called from " Old Gore House," that once
occupied the site of the Albert Hall), is the attractive and
strangely rural-looking Lowther Lodge, now so cruelly dominated
by tall "mansions"; and further still, the vast "Albert Hall,"
a red Colosseum of music. This, in spring, is a delightful drive ;
indeed, London wears here such a semi-suburban air that it is
with almost the feeling of entering a new townlet that we
presently approach the charming "High Street" of Old
Kensington. Charming it is still, with still something of an old-
world air ; and yet, during the last fifty years or so, it has
terribly altered. In the old days, the days when " the shabby
tide of progress " had not yet spread to this quiet old suburb of
which Miss Thackeray wrote so lovingly; — had not yet engulfed
" one relic after another, carrying off many and many a land-
mark and memory," — there were "gardens, and trees, and great
walls along the high road that came from London, passing
through the old white turnpike. ... In those days the lanes
spread to Fulham, white- with blossom in spring, or golden
with the yellow London sunsets that blazed beyond the cabbage-
fields. . . . There were high brown walls along Kensington
Gardens, reaching to the Palace Gate : elms spread their shade
and birds chirruped, and children played behind them."
Yet, even for sweet I >olly Vanborough, Miss Thackeray
confesses, Old Kensington was already vanishing. Already
for her "the hawthorn bleeds as it is laid low and is trans-
formed year after year into iron railings and areas, for
particulars of which you are requested to apply to the railway
company, and to Mr. Taylor, the house-agent." How much,
alas, is left of it now ? True, Holland House, and Kensington
Palace, and Gardens, are Kit inviolate, bu1 Campden Hill is
adorned by the aspiring chimneys of waterworks, the peace of
quiet Kensington Square is invaded by model lodging-houses,
the underground railway denies the pleasant High Street, and
where of old the hawthorn bloomed, tall placards now advertise
"Very Desirable .Mansions to be Let on Exceptional Term.'-."
ch. x OLD AND NEW BEAUTIES 215
But Kensington has not changed in essentials. In those
old days it was already, as it is now, a great Roman Catholic
quarter, with convents and shops for the sale of sacred objects.
No great cathedral had as yet been built there ; no Newman as
yet looked steadfastly from his marble alcove over the noisy
Brompton Road ; the tendencies in that direction were, how-
ever, already paramount.
When a London suburb has once become crowded with
houses, what was once picturesque becomes speedily squalid
and sordid ; the pretty village street soon changes to a murky
alley, and the ivy-grown tavern converts itself into a mere
disreputable-looking public-house. Of this sad fact, Miss
Thackeray's pleasant lanes, running from Kensington to
Chelsea and Fulham, furnish at the present day abundant
proof. The charming village lanes that at the beginning of
last century filled Kensington and Chelsea, — the dairies such as
that where pretty Emma Pen fold dispensed curds and whey,
the cottages with damask rose-trees, — the tea-gardens, rural as
now those on Kew ( Jreen, — what is now their latter end ? Their
modern realisations — Sydney Street, Smith Street, Manor
Street— are not exactly attractive or savoury byways. No, it
requires palaces and big mansions to keep up the "rus-
in-urbe"; mere cottages cannot do il without degenerating
into drying-grounds, unspeakable back yards, or slums.
But, if the old beauty has gone from Kensington, another
beauty, of a different kind, awaits it. Of such beauty
the imposing dome of the "Brompton Oratory," seen
against a lurid sunset at the end of a vista in the Brompton
Road, is an effective instance. This church, so drama
Ideally placed in close proximity with the Anglican parish
church, is a very striking object in the landscape ; especially
striking, too, when the light "that London takes the da) to
be," has softened and blended its more salient architectural
features into one dimly glorified ma>s.
If Kensington is somewhat addicted to "cliques" And to
216 THACKERAY'S KENSINGTON ABODES CHAP.
social exclusiveness, it is, after all, only following out its ancient
traditions. For in older days it was always prim and conserva-
tive, governed by its own laws.
"There was" (says Miss Thackeray) "a Kensington world .... some-
what apart from the big uneasy world surging beyond the turnpike — a world
of neighbours bound together by the old winding streets and narrow corners
in a community of venerable elm trees and traditions that are almost levelled
away. -Mr. Awl, the bootmaker in High Street, exhibited peculiar walk-
ing-shoes long after high heels and kid brodekins had come into fashion in
the metropolis. The last time I was in his shop I saw a pair of the old-
fashioned, flat, sandalled shoes, directed to Miss Vieuxtemps, in Palace
Green. Tippets, poke-bonnets, even a sedan chair, still existed among us
lung after they had been discarded by more active minds."
It all suggests nothing so much as one of Mr. G. D. Leslie's
pictures. The poetic fancy of the writer of Old Kensington
is, indeed, conceived in much the same pleasant minor key as
the artist's — the author of School Revisited and kindred
idylls, — both evoking visions of girls in short waists, lank, frilled
skirts, and sandals, amid cool suburban walled gardens, grass
plots, and fountains.
Thackeray lived at three Kensington houses : — first, at that
known as " The Cottage " : — No. 13 (now No. 16), Young Street,
—from 1847 t0 1853 : secondly, at No. 36, Onslow Square, from
1853 to 1862 ; and thirdly, at No. 2, Palace Green, where he
died. The great writer's daughters, who must have been quite
little children when he first came here, no doubt knew and
loved well their home of so many years. From the daughter's
very vivid reminiscences, we get charming sketches of the life
and the different abodes of the family. The Nervcomes,
The Virginians, and the Four Georges were written in Onslow
Square, where, says Miss Thackeray, " I used to look up from
the avenue of old trees and see my father's head bending
over his work in the study window, which was over the
drawing-room." But Onslow Square is close to South
Kensington Station, and the Young Street house, which was
the earlier residence, was certainly in a prettier neighbourhood.
x LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS 217
Also, it has double-fronted bay windows, and enjoyed, more-
over, the honour of inspiring its tenant's magnum opus, for
here Thackeray wrote Vanity Fair, as well as Esmond and
Pendennis. Most of his work was done in a second-story
room, overlooking an open space of orchards and gardens.
A tablet now distinguishes the window where the novelist
worked, with the initials W. M. T. grouped in a monogram
between the dates of his residence here ; the names of the
three books of this period being inscribed in the border.
Artists, who in the early part of last century were still more
or less faithful to the northern suburbs, have, during the
last three or four decades flocked to Kensington and Chelsea.
Millais, Leighton, and others led the way ; and now fine
studios abound in all the newer and airy streets of red brick
houses. At No. 6, The Terrace, Campden Hill, poor John
Leech, who moved hither from Bloomsbury street afflictions,
died in 1864 from spasm of the heart, at the comparatively
early age of forty-seven. On Campden Hill, also, is " Holly
Lodge," Lord Macaulay's residence ; the place, too, where he
died, and where he " loved to entertain all his youthful nephews
and nieces." Campden Hill has still a certain charm, a charm
of gardens, terraces, and irregular houses ; it has, too, so many
winding ways, that it is easier to lose one's bearings here,
than almost anywhere in London.
Leigh Hunt, the gossiping chronicler of Kensington Court
scandals and celebrities, lived for eleven years, and more
successfully than elsewhere, in Kdwardes Square, a charming
enclosure, a little way back from the Kensington Road beyond
1 [igh Street, and opposite the grounds of 1 tolland House. I rere
the versatile writer, the ill-starred "Skimpole" of Dickens's
satire, lived with his numerous family, — now older than in the
Cheyne Row period of their existence, and, possibly, less
addicted to litter, and to borrowing the long sulk ring neigh
hours' tea-cups. Leigh Hunt's son, Thornton Hunt, thus
describes the Square at this time: —
218 ELIZABETH INCHBALD chap.
" Oar square, with its pretty houses and rustic enclosure, left with its
natural undulations, very slight, but sufficient to diminish the formal look,
its ivy-covered backs of houses on one side, and gardens and backs of houses
on the other, was a curiosity which, when I first saw it, I could not account
for on English principles, uniting as it did something decent, pleasant,
and cheap, with such ax&i-comme il faut anomalies — such aristocratic size
and verdure in the ground plot, with so plebeian a smallness in the tenements.
But it seems a Frenchman invented it."
Edwardes Square is, like Kensington Square, still pretty and
rural and attractive. At one end of it, and looking on to the
Kensington Road, is Earl's Terrace, a row of attractive, old-
fashioned houses, set back from the street, with little front
gardens. Here, not so very long ago, lived Walter Pater, con-
tinuing the literary associations of the neighbourhood ; a lover
of beauty, he, too, but very different from Leigh Hunt. In
Hunt's time, Mrs. Elizabeth Inchbald lived " as a boarder "
at No. 4 in this terrace. Her chief claim to fame is The
Simple Story, a work which few people now read, though
many have heard of it. She appears to have been a charming
and eccentric as well as a talented lady. Here is a diary
jotting of hers, quoted by Leigh Hunt: — "On the 29th of
June (Sunday) dined, drank tea, and supped with Mrs.
Whitfield. At dark, she and I and her son William walked
out, and I rapped at doors in New Street and King Street
and ran away." "This was in the year 1788," says Hunt,
" when she was five-and-thirty. But such people never grow
old. . . . Divine Elizabeth Inchbald, qualified to be the
companion of every moment of human life, grave or gay, from
a rap at the street door in a fit of mirth to the deepest phases
of sympathy."
Yes, The Simple Story must have been a real work of
genius, for no one, surely, but a genius, could afford so
absolutely to disregard les co>ivenances. Though, for that
matter, our feminine geniuses of to-day take themselves a trifle
more seriously. Imagine, for instance, our George Eliots of
the twentieth century, our presidents of writers' unions and
x LEIGH HUNT 219
clubs, going out late at night to ring people's doorbells and run
away ! Such " eternal childishness " really out-Skimpoles Skim-
pole. If Providence had seen fit to place the two in contempor-
ary residence in Edwardes Square, would not Mrs. Inchbald have
been a neighbour after Leigh Hunt's own heart ? The lady,
it is further recorded, died — at sixty-eight, too — of " tight- lacing."
Leigh Hunt's must have been an interesting personality, and
Dickens's caricature of him, intended or no, seems cruel. The
late Mr. George Smith, of the great publishing house, tells an
entertaining story of him. On one occasion, it appears, Mr.
Smith paid Leigh Hunt ,£200 in bank notes :
"Two days afterwards " (wrote Mr. Smith) " Leigh Hunt came in a
state of great agitation to tell me that his wife had burned them. He had
thrown the envelope with the banknotes carelessly down, and his wife had
thing it into the fire. Leigh Hunt's agitation while on his way to bring
this news had not prevented him from purchasing on the road a little
statuette of Psyche, which he carried, without any paper round it, in his
hand. I told him I thought something might be done in the matter. I
sent to the bankers and got the numbers of the notes, and then, in com-
pany with Leigh Hunt, went off to the Bank of England. I explained our
business, and we were shown into a room where three old gentlemen were
silling at tables. They kept us wailing some lime, and Leigh Hunt,
who had meantime been staring all round the room, at last got up, walked
up to one of the staid officials, and addressing him, said, in wondering
tones : 'And this is the Bank of England ! And do you sit here all day,
and never see the green woods and the trees and (lowers and the charming
country?' Then, in tones of remonstrance, he demanded : "Are you con-
tented with such a life ? ' All this time he was holding I lie little naked Psyche
in one hand, and with his long hair and Hashing eyes made a surprising
figure. I fancy I can still see the astonished faces of the three officials;
they would have made a most delightful picture. 1 said : ' Come aw
Mr. Hunt, these gentlemen are very busy.' 1 1 led in carrying Leigh
Hunt off, and, after entering into certain formalities, we were told thai the
value of the notes would be paid in twelve months. I gave Leigh Hunt the
money at once, and he Went away rejoii i"
Opposite the Palace Gardens, where "Kensington Court"
now stands, stood once Kensington House, .1 big Roman
Catholic boarding-house, surely a kind of early prototype oi
220 CAMPDEN HOUSE chap.
the modern " mansions." Here Louise de la Querouaille,
Duchess of Portsmouth, lived, and here Mrs. Inchbald died ;
later it was occupied by Jesuits, who have had for long a special
stronghold in this quarter. Then, at last, in 1S76, the older
house made way for Mr. Albert Grant's pretentious Italian
mansion of the same name, which cost ,£270,000, and only
existed seven years, having been pulled down in 1883. So
involved, and so difficult to decipher, is the history of London
buildings.
" Church House," so vividly described by Miss Thackeray
as Dolly Vanborough's home, stood close to the modern
Church Street. And close to Church Street is Campden
House, a modern restoration of the ancient building of that
name, which was burned down in 1862 ; the gateway of the old
mansion being now built up into the east wall of the garden.
Old Campden House dated from 161 2, and was principally
known as having been the residence of Queen Anne's charming
and precocious little son, the Duke of Gloucester, the poor child
who died at eleven, " from excessive dancing on his birthday,"
the last hope of the race dying out with him. Campden House
had been taken for the boy, so that he might be near his aunt,
Queen Mary, who was very fond of him, and had him carried
daily in infancy to see her at Kensington Palace.
Kensington Square, with its comfortable-looking houses of
sober red brick, and windows with white painted casements, has
a delightfully old-world aspect. Behind the houses are pleasant
gardens, as yet — but for how long? — left untouched by the tide
of progress. Thackeray, as well as his daughter, must have
known and loved this square well ; for here he imagined Lady
Castlewood, Beatrix, and Harry Esmond to dwell.
Earl's Court, — now mainly remarkable for the near neigh-
bourhood of " ( Hympia," — the " Great Wheel," — and an endless
colony of railway lines, — was, some fifty years ago, still "a
quaint old row of houses, their lattices stuffed with spring
flowers, facing a deep cool pond by the roadside," and em-
PURLIEUS OF KENSINGTON
221
bowered in orchards. Spots of welcome greenery there still
are in the wide area of West and South Kensington ; there is
Earts Court.
a big cemetery to be buried in, and the oval enclosure called
"the Boltons" is a pleasant place to live in. But, on the
whole, the purlieus of Kensington arc depressing. While West
222 RANELAGH AND VAUXHALL chap.
Kensington is mainly degraded " Queen Anne," interspersed
with railways, — South Kensington has one very general dis-
tinguishing mark. It is nearly always stuccoed, and usually also
porticoed. Its larger streets, in sun or shine, bear a gloomy
likeness to an array of family vaults, awaiting their occupants.
The early nineteenth century had, in truth, much to answer for
in the way of bricks, mortar, and stucco,— but principally stucco !
Occasionally there is some faint relief to the prevailing mode, and
here and there some of the smaller roads are brightened in spring
by a few acacias and hawthorns ; but in the larger streets there
is usually the same saddening uniformity, and, when once you
have left the vicinity of Kensington Square, you find nothing in
quite the same style until you reach Chelsea and Cheyne Walk.
Chelsea, too, was a very picturesque village in old days,—
when the " Old Chelsea Bun-House " was a favourite resort of
the Court,— when " Ranelagh " and " Vauxhall" flourished in
the neighbourhood, — and when the then fashionable race of
London's " jolly young watermen " for their annual badge
attracted, as the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race does now-
adays, crowds of spectators.
Ranelagh and Vauxhall ! what recollections do they not
suggest of Fielding, of Richardson, of Fanny Burney ! Both
these places of amusement flourished in the latter half of the
eighteenth century ; Vauxhall (earlier called " Spring Garden "),
was, so to speak, the " Earl's Court," the summer resort of the
day ; just as " Ranelagh," with its famous " Rotunda," was the
"Olympia," or winter one. Only, both the ancient pleasure
resorts rejoiced in being the centre of fashion, which can
hardly be said with truth of the modern ones. Also, from old
novelists the reader gathers that it was very dangerous for
young ladies to go unprotected to either place, in case of being
run away with by bold, bad young men of the " Lovelace "
type. Charming young ladies are, perhaps, more of " a drug
in the market " now ; and they are besides, as a rule, perfectly
well able to take care of themselves.
x CHELSEA 223
That managers of those days were not more ignorant than
their twentieth-century successors of the great art of advertising,
— the following extract (from Rogers's Table Talk) shows :
" The proprietors of Ranelagh and Vauxhall used to send decoy-ducks
among the ladies and gentlemen who were walking in the Mall, that is,
persons attired in the height of fashion, who every now and then would
exclaim in a very audible tone, ' What charming weather for Ranelagh,' or
1 for Vauxhall ! ' "
At any rate, old Vauxhall Gardens must have Deen a
charming place for flirtation, for " the windings and turnings in
little wildernesses (were) so intricate, that the most experienced
mothers often lost themselves in looking for their daughters. 1 '
Part of the site of old Ranelagh is now appropriated as the
gardens of Chelsea Hospital ; the site of Vauxhall (in South
Lambeth, on the Surrey side) is now covered by St. Peter's,
Vauxhall, and its adjacent streets.
Picturesque in old days, Chelsea is a picturesque place still,
and much beloved of painters, poets, and litterateurs ; — the
class of Bloomsbury, and yet with a vast difference. Here
it is the " mode " to be select and exclusive. The artistic
"cliques" of Tite Street and Cheyne Walk arc nothing if not
particular. To use the words of the modest prospectus issued
by a recent magazine, they " will not tolerate mediocrity. "
But then no one in Chelsea ever is, or at least allows himself,
to be " mediocre." Perhaps the fortunate inhabitants feel, as
do the denizens of the academic towns of Oxford and Cambridge,
the important weight of the traditions of their literary past.
The spirit of Carlyle, Leigh Hunt, Rossetti, George Eliot, yet
gives to Chelsea a literary atmosphere that it must at all hazards
keep up. A dinner-party in its augusl cliques is not to he
lightly undertaken ; you feel, as you enter, that this is indeed
a holy place.
Yet, already, the seclusion and selectness of Chelsea's
sacred circles are being threatened with invasion by the
Philistine. On "Hie other side of lite water," where a
224
THE CARLYLE HOUSE chap.
picturesque suspension-bridge, the Albert Bridge, throws its
graceful chain-curves across Chelsea Reach, — lies BatterseaPark,
surrounded on three sides by myriad red-brick flats of varying
cheapness, grown like mushrooms, and still growing. Here is
an infant community, a sort of " townier " Bedford Park, whose
inhabitants can boast, with some truth, that they are "near the
hum of the great city, and yet not of it." Flats are increasing
all over London and its immediate suburbs now to such an
extent that they are, indeed, in some danger of being overdone.
In Central London, the growth of flats is, perhaps, of little
consequence ; but in suburban or semi-suburban London, the
ubiquitous builder is the great bloodsucker of our day ; he
wanders perpetually, seeking, like the devil, what he may
devour ; and, on his debatable " Tom Tiddler's Ground,"
everlastingly " picking up gold and silver." But the builder
has done good work too in Chelsea ; for does not Cheyne
Walk, of picturesque and venerable aspect, with its well-
restored, red-brick, white-casemented houses, and fine old
ironwork, lend a dignity to the western end of the Chelsea
Embankment, to which, lower down, the spacious new red
mansions, of ornate yet good style, do no disgrace? And
modest Cheyne Row, containing the most famous dwelling in
all Chelsea, is built in quiet, unobjectionable style.
Carlyle's quiet-looking residence in Cheyne Row is, prac-
tically, a museum of the Soane kind, left exactly as when
lived in ; the only difference being that here the relics are
purely personal. This, a real " house of pilgrimage " to the
literary world, is, especially, the resort of cultured Americans,
who have even, it is said, had to be mildly dissuaded from
sitting on the Sage's chairs and trying on his head gear.
The " Carlyle House," — desecrated, indeed, to the scandal of
the neighbours, for an interregnum of unholy years by a horde
of lawless cats, — is now entirely restored to its pristine neatness
and order. It is difficult to imagine any place less museum-
like and more pleasantly homely than this silent, peaceful,
x THE HUMAN [NTEREST 225
darkly panelled abode, which seems, — baeked by its green
garden-close, — to be indeed a survival of the past, breathing
forth still the spirit of the departed seer.
It was thus that Carlyle wrote of the street and the house
some seventy years ago :
"The street is flag-pathed, sunk-storied, iron railed, all old-fashioned
and tightly done up ; looks out on a rank of sturdy old pollarded (that is,
beheaded) lime trees standing there like giants in tawtie wigs (for the new
houghs are still young) ; beyond this a high brick wall ; backwards a garden,
the si/e of our back one at Comely Bank, with tree-. &c, in bad culture :
beyond this, green haylields and tree avenues, once a bishop's pleasure
grounds, an unpicturesque yel rather cheerful outlook. The house itself is
eminent, antique, wainscoted to the very ceiling, and has been all new
painted and repaired ; broadish stair with massive balustrade (in the old
style), corniced and as thick as one's thigh ; floors thick as a rock, wood of
them here anci there worm-eaten, yet capable of cleanliness, and -till with
thrice the strength of a modern floor. . . . Chelsea is a singular
heterogeneous kind of spot, very dirty and contused in some places, quite
beautiful in others, abounding in antiquities and the traces of great men —
Sir Thomas More, Steele. Smollett. &c. ( >ur Row. which for the last three
doors or 50 is a Street, and none of the noblest, runs out upon a ' 1'arade"
(perhaps the}' call it), running along the shore of the river, a broad highway
with huge shady trees, boats lying 111 1. and a smell of shipping and
tan."
Houses where people have lived, and suffered, and experi-
enced, always — at least to those who know — seem to bear tin-
impress of their past owners' personality. Who has not gone
back, after long years, to an old dwelling-place, and been
haunted by ghosts of the past, lurking in every well known
corner and cranny? There is something of the feeling of
standing by a new-made grave,— the grave of what lias been,
and will never be again. Such feelings, in a minor di
does the Carlyle house suggest to those who have read and
interested themselves in the long drawn out tragedy of those
joint lives with which it was bound up. In Mrs. ( !arlyle's pretty
"china closet," for instance, you can almost see the slender
figure in neat black silk, deftly arranging and dusting : here, in
1 1
226 THE CARLYLES AND LEIGH HUNT chap.
the drawing-room beyond, is her work-table ; you can imagine
her, most thrifty of housewives, mending a hole in the carpet ;
there in the chimney-corner she lay on her sofa, silently suffer-
ing, while her prophet vociferated his thunders, and puffed
clouds of tobacco-smoke into the chimney. Upstairs, on
the top story, is the much-written-of "sound-proof" room,
which was really not "sound-proof" at all, though it was con-
structed with that object by Carlyle at a considerable expense.
Possibly, " the young lady next door " still plays on her piano ;
most likely the neighbours' fowls still crow loudly in the morn-
ings (for these minor evils of London are perennial), in full
security now and immunity.
A seated statue of Carlyle, by Boehm, — a real work of art,—
faces the river in the neighbouring Embankment Gardens,
close to the Albert Bridge. Weary, wrinkled, as Tithonus, the
old man gazes ever towards the unceasing tides of the river
and of humanity, his look troubled, but yet
"majestic in his sadness at the doubtful doom of human kind.''
In Upper (or "Little") Cheyne Row, close by the Carlyles,
lived for seven years, — the most embarrassed years in his
chequered career, — Leigh Hunt. (This was from 1833 to 1840,
before the Edwardes Square time.) Could one imagine a
greater contrast than these two Cheyne Row households ?
The Hunts were Bohemians of irrepressible type. Mrs.
Carlyle, being, too, in 1834 only at the very beginning of her
neat Chelsea housekeeping, and not yet "bug-bitten, bedusted,
and bedevilled," was, naturally, very severe on the subject of
the Hunts. To judge from the letters of " that clever lady,
a little too much given to insecticide'' (as Lord Bowen called
her), she had but the poorest opinion of her neighbour's wife's
" management " and borrowing ways. And here is Carlyle's
account of the Hunt menage :
" Hunt's house" (he says) " excels all you have ever read of — a poetical
Tinkerdom, without parallel even in literature. In his family room, where
x CHEYNE WALK 227
are a sickly large wife and a whole school of well-conditioned \\il<l
children, you will find half-a-dozen old rickety chairs gathered from half-a-
dozen different hucksterSj and all seeming engagedj and just pausing, in a
violent hornpipe. < >n these and around them, and over the dusty table
and ragged carpel lie all kinds ol litter books, papers, egg-shells,
and, last night when I was there, the torn heart of a half-quartern loaf. I lis
own room above stairs, into which alone 1 strive to enter, he keeps < leaner.
Ii has only two chairs, a bookcase, and a writing-table; yel the noble
Hunt receives you in his Tinkerdom in the spirit of a king, apologises for
nothing, places you in the best seat, takes a window-sill himself if there is no
other, and then, folding closer his loose-flowing ' muslin-cloud ' of a printed
nightgown, in which healways writes, commences the liveliesl dialogue on
philosophy and the prospects of man (who is to be beyond measure happy
yet) ; which again he will courteously terminate the moment you are bound
to go ; a most interesting, pitiable, lovable man, to be used kindly, but with
discretion."
In the neighbouring Cheyne Walk have, of course, lived
many notable people. Innumerable associations cling to this
picturesque row of time darkened red brick and white-case
merited houses, with the graceful wrought-iron railings and tall
gates that shut out their trim front-garden plots from the curious
Embankment. At No. 4, died George Eliot the novelist, in
1880, a short time after her marriage to Mr. Cross. She had
only recently settled into this charming London dwelling, and
her voluminous library had only just been arranged for her
with infinite care, "as nearly as possible in the same order
as at the Priory," when the sudden stroke of Heath fell.
Daniel Maclise, the early- Victorian painter, a meteor of ait,
and the wonder of his own age, had lived in this same house
before. Cecil Law-son, that young painter of such gn.it
promise, who died so early, lived at No. 15; and No. t6, 01
"Queen's House," is bound up with the memory ol" that bril-
liant and wayward genius, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who lived
here after his wife's tragic death, and gathered round him his
famous miscellany of strange beasts and curious creatures.
"Queen's House," unaltered in essentials, has still a
picturesque and old world air that agrees well with its long
228 "QUEEN'S HOUSE" chap.
history. Its mellowed bricks of sober red have a pleasant solidity.
It used to be called "Tudor House," owing to its early tradi-
tional associations with Queens Katherine Parr and Elizabeth ;
for the ancient " Manor House " of Chelsea, built by Henry
VIII, occupied, with its gardens, the site of this and the
adjoining houses ; from No. 18 Cheyne Walk eastward as far
as Oakley street. Of the many celebrated people who have lived
there, Sir Hans Sloane was the latest ; — the old house was pulled
down after his death. The basements and gardens of the houses
in Cheyne Walk still show traces of this palace of Henry VIII.
The present " Queen's House " is said to have been built by
Wren, the Royal Architect, for the neglected Queen Catherine
of Braganza ; and some say that the initials, "C. R.", in twisted
iron on the gate and railings, commemorate her tenancy.
However that may be, we may take it that Thackeray, in
Esmond, describes it as the home of the old " Dowager of
Chelsey;" and here, again, we note the curious fact that the
fictional interest is at least as strong as the real.
Inside, the house is delightful ; all the rooms and passages are
ilv wainscoted, and the balustrade of the spiral staircase is
of " finest hand-wrought iron." When Rossetti entered on its
occupation, Chelsea was still, though literary, comparatively
unfashionable; (for in those days the two persuasions did not
as yet go hand in-hand). The poet-painter began a joint
tenancy here with Swinburne, George Meredith, and his
brother, William Rossetti ; of these Swinburne was the most
constant, and he wrote many of his best-known poems here.
But of Mr. Meredith's would-be-tenancy the following story is
told, on the novelist's own authority : —
'• Mr. Meredith had, rather irresponsibly, agreed to occupy a couple of
rooms in Queen's House. . . . One morning therefore, shortly after Rossetti
moved in, — Mr. Meredith, who was living in Mayfair, drove over to Chelsea
to inspect his new apartments. ' It was,' says the unhappy co-tenant,
•past noon. Rossetti had not yet risen, though it was an exquisite day.
On the breakfast table, on a huge dish, rested five thick slabs ol bacon,
upon which five rigid eggs had slowly bled to death ! Presently Rossetti
x ROSSETTI'S MENAGERIE 229
appeared in his dressing-gown with slippers down at heel, and devoured the
dainty repast like an ogre.' This decided Mr. Meredith. He did not
even trouble to look at his rooms, but sent in a quarter's rent that afternoon,
and remained in Mayfair, where eggs and bacon were, presumably, more
appetizingly served."
Rossetti's studio was at the back of the old house ; but
what the painter enjoyed most was the garden, an acre in
extent in his time, with an avenue of limes opening out on to
a broad grass plot; — part, no doubt, of the ancient "Manor
House " garden :
" In this garden were kept " (say.-. Mr. Marillier) " most of the animals for
which Rossetti had such a curious and indiscriminate affection. How
many of them there may have been at anyone time docs not .seem to be
stated ; but as one died or disappeared, another would be got to replace it.
or Rossetti would see some particularly outlandish specimen at Jamrach's
ami bear it home in triumph to add to the collection. Wire cages were
erected for their accommodation, but these were not always prooi against
escape, especially in the case of the burrowing animals, which had an
annoying way of appearing in the neighbours' gardens. Mr. \Y. M. Rossetti
has given from memory a tolerably long list of creatures which at one lime
or another figured in the menagerie at Cheyne Walk. They included a
Pomeranian pappy, an Irish deerhound, a barn-owl named Jessie, another
owl named Hobby, rabbits, dormice, hedgehogs, two successive wombats, a
Canadian marmot or woodchuck, an ordinary marmot, kangaroos and
wallabies, a deer, two or more armadillos, a white mouse with her brood, a
raccoon, squirrels, a mole, peacocks, wood-owls, Virginian owls, homed
owls, a jackdaw, a raven, parakeets, a talking parrot, chameleons, grey
lizards, Japanese salamanders, anil a laughing jackass. Besides these there
was a certain famous bull, a zebu, which cost Rossetti /J20 (he borrowed il
from his brother), and which manifested such animosity in confim mi nl
it had to be disposed of at once. The strident voices ol the peacocks were
so little appreciated in die neighbourhood that Lord Cadogan cau
raph to be inserted in all his leases thciv.i ftei forbidding these birds to
be kept/'
The house, as I said, is very little changed, though Mr.
Haweis, its recent occupant, added a statue "i Mercury, poised
on the ball at its gable apex, and its brickwork is said \>\ Mr.
Marillier to have " had an older, more natural look m Rossetti's
230 ROSSETTI AND THE VESTRYMAN chap.
day." And " in front the unembanked river, and . . . the
boating bustle and longshore litter of the old days added
picturesqueness to the view, which in all essentials was the
same as the aged Turner had looked out upon from his little
house not very far away." Ghosts, — of Katherine Parr and
others, — have, not unnaturally, been accredited to "Queen's
House." But they do not appear to have survived Rossetti's
tenancy ; for Mr. Haweis, who lived and entertained here
for 14 years, was not disturbed by them, " even though he
unearthed the entrance of a mysterious subterranean passage,
which was believed to have communicated with the Lord High
Admiral's House;"- a sort of semi-royal cryptoporticus of
intrigue ! Mr. Haweis also discovered the antique Watergate
of the former stately mansion — leading to the stone steps
where in old days barges were moored, — the shelving river
banks extending in those days far nearer than now. The
great thickness of the walls of Queen's House may, indeed, be
partly accounted for by the necessity for protection against
floods ; Mr. Haweis, who sacrilegiously cut a window to light
the spiral staircase, had to pierce three feet of solid brickwork.
Here is a funny story, retailed by Mr. Marillier, of Rossetti
and the advancing Age of Progress :
" The only bridge along the reach " (he says) " was old Chelsea Bridge,
concerning which Mr. George Meredith tells me a pleasant story. One day
there called upon Mr. Rossetti a pompous individual of the vestryman class,
with a paper to which he requested his signature. 'We are getting up a
petition,' he said, ' to replace the old wooden bridge by a handsome new-
iron one, with gilt decorations, and I am sure that you as an artist,
Mr. Rossetti, will lend us the weight of your name for so desirable an object.
Rossetti's language, on occasion, could be more forcible than polite, and his
unvarnished reception of the vestryman's proposal caused that rash but well-
meaning person to retire with extreme precipitation."
Of all his many pets, Rossetti was perhaps especially
devoted to his wombats. To one of these he addressed the
lines :
x FRANK BUCKLAND 231
" O how the family affections combat
Within this breast, and each hour flings a bomb at
My burning soul ! Neither from owl nor from bat
Can peace be gained until I clasp my wombat."
At the same time, it must be confessed, the poet regretted
his pet's inveterate tendencies toward "drain architecture.
Rossetti's domestic proclivities must, one thinks, have
rendered him a terror to his neighbours ! Indeed, the only
London inhabitant, — if we except the celebrated " Lady of the
Cats" in the desecrated Carlyle House, — who can be said to
have at all emulated him in that line, was Frank Buckland the
great naturalist, who, in his house, No. 34, Albany Street,
Regent's Park, kept "a museum and a menagerie in one."
" His house was full of crawling, creeping, barking, flying,
swimming, and squeaking things.'' When he was at church
one Sunday, " Dick, the rat," he relates, "stole away two five-
pound notes from my drawers.'' Among other creatures Mr.
Buckland kept, like Rossetti, a laughing jackass, who "would
never laugh," and " who was only provoked to a titter by the
consumption of a toothsome mouse"; this pet escaped from
its cage one day and was found asleep on the bed of a gentle-
man near the Hampstead Road. But .Mr. buckland could at
any rate' excuse his vagaries on scientific grounds, foi he was
trying to acclimatize foreign animals suitable for food in this
country.
The fleeting tide of fashion is now at its height in Chelsea :
the historic old houses of Cheyne Walk are let at enormous
rents, and, year by year, tall, prosaic redbrick edifices spring
up like mushrooms all round them. A few old "bits" of
Chelsea still remain unaltered, butver) lew. The old church,
and the rectory, the home of the Kingsleys, with its charming
old walled garden, are still delightful ; the embankmenl housi
Standing ba< k behind their gardens and ironwork, are line in
their dignified, time hallowed red-brick; Paradisi Row, that
picturesque oasis of old dwellings that breaks the ugliness of
232 PARADISE ROW chap.
the modern Queen's Road West, yet bears witness to the
charm of old Chelsea. In humble Paradise Row, (now
part of Queen's Road West, and converted to laundries and
other uses ;) — in Paradise Row, with its quaint tiled roofs,
dormer windows, and high white gate-posts, many well-known
people have lived ; it was even connected, more or less, with
royalty, for in 1692 it was the dwelling place of the first Duke
of St. Albans, Nell Gwynne's son. Chelsea has always been
associated with the Stuarts. When it was but a picturesque
riverside village,- — fishermen's huts diversified by a few old
palaces, — divided yet by space of green fields from the storm
and stress of the greater London, — they brought it wealth
and fashion, and caused its gardens to spread in fragrant
greenery down to the water's edge. The Chelsea of the
Restoration had the patronage of the aristocracy, as well as that
of the Royal favourites ; here the King's Mistresses flaunted their
randeur, their extravagance, their impecuniosity before the
world. It was in comparatively humble Paradise-Row that the
notorious Duchesse de Mazarin lived in her later and bankrupt
; here she entertained royally, and was, besides, in
arrears with the Parish Rates. At No. 2 in Paradise- Row
lived that Lord Robartes, Earl of Radnor, who, like the
" Vicar of Bray," "trimmed" so judiciously through the
Jacobite wars. This house (No. 2.), was, by the way, said by
Pepys to be " the prettiest contrived house he ever saw in his
life."
King's Road, Chelsea, — now shabby and mediocre enough,
but once the " Merry Monarch's" own private drive, and said
to have been made by him as an easy access to his favourites'
suburban resorts, — leads, finally, to Fulham, and to the old
house called Sandford Manor, traditionally ascribed to 'Nell
Gwynne's tenancy. This ancient mansion, now divided into
two residences, is still unharmed, though, owing to its too
close proximity to the Gas Works, it is now unhappily
threatened with demolition. London, as we know, has ever
&
x CHELSEA OLD CHI K< 1 1 233
been more utilitarian than antiquarian ; and perhaps the old
house owes its escape so far to the fact that " it has been used
successively as farmhouse, pottery, cloth manufactory, and
patent cask factory." — (Mr. Reginald Blunt, An Historical
Ha nd- Book to Chelsea.) Nevertheless, its pilastered door-
way exists yet, and, internally, it still boasts its square wain-
scoted hall and old staircase, much as they were when
King Charles, as the story goes, rode his pony up the stair
for a freak The old walnut trees, said to have been planted
by Nell Gwynne herself, are gone ; but an antiquated mulberry-
tree still defies the railway in front of it, and the awful Gas
Works behind it — a very Scylla and Charybdis of encroaching
modernity ! A delightful old house, and yet, surely, all its
historical glamour and romance would hardly enable even an
enthusiast to take up his abode there.
The old Church of Chelsea, otherwise St. Luke's, — whose
tower of darkened red-brick lends such picturesque effect to
the liattersea reach beyond the Albert-Bridge, — is, both for
its antiquity and its monuments, one of the most interesting
churches in London. Its interior, never having been
"restored," has a very old world look; and it still retains,
as when it was built, all the simplicity of the remote village
church. Henry Kingsley, whose boyhood was spent in the
delightful old Chelsea rectorv, fittingly commemorates his
father's church in his best-known story, "The Hillyars and the
Burtons.' - " Four hundred years of memory," he makes I
Burton say, "are crowded into that old church, and the great
flood of change beats round the walls, and shakes the door in
vain, but never enters. The dead stand thick together there,
as if to make a brave resistance to the moving world outside,
which jars upon their slumber. It is a church of the dead."
hem Stanley greatly loved this chinch; he used to call it
'•one of the chapters of his abbey." Mere. sir Thomas M
worshipped in the days of his power, and here, in the chapel
that he built is his monument. More lived himself near by,
234 THE PHYSICK GARDEN chap.
in a now vanished mansion called i; Beaufort House," where, in
his " fair garden," he received his friend Erasmus, and also,
his king — Henry walking with his arm lovingly placed about
his favourite's neck— that neck he was so soon to dissever. In
Chelsea Church are the famous " chained books," Sir Hans
Sloane's gift ; the Bible, the Homilies, and Foxe's Book of
Martyrs ; enormous volumes heavily bound in leather with
strong clasps, chained, underneath a bookcase, to a quaint
lectern, where they may be read. This strange custom recalls
the monkish days, when printed books were so rare and costly.
The names of the guardian spirits of Chelsea, such as Lady
Jane Cheyne and Sir Hans Sloane,— respectively lady and lord
of the manor, after whom so many streets, squares, and courts
have been christened, — recur here too on elaborate monuments
and sarcophagi. Both were great benefactors to their parish
church. Sir Hans Sloane's daughter was afterwards Lady
Cadogan, and hence it was that the property came into the
possession of the Cadogan family.
Sir Hans Sloane is further commemorated in Chelsea by his
gift to the Apothecaries' Company of the " Physick Garden,"
sometimes also called the " Botanic Garden." This pleasant
green spot, barred by high railings, and intersected by many
paths, used to contain, and contains this day, so far as may be,
" all the herbs of Materia ATedica which can grow in the open air,
for the instruction of medical students." The old gardens have
bravely withstood the vandals and iconoclasts of modern
Chelsea, as well as the attacks of builders, seeking what
they may devour ; but the growth of bricks and mortar round
about them has but ill suited the delicate plants, which, it is to
be feared, grow now but feebly for the most part. It is long
since the days of the Stuarts,— days when the gardens of Chelsea
could still grow roses. Nevertheless, the " Physick Garden "
is still delightful for purposes quite other than those for which
it was first made ; and, fortunately, the terms of the bequest
render its alienation difficult and unlikely. Perhaps, in the
x CHELSEA EMBANKMEN1 235
happy future, who knows ? the garden may be opened altogether
to the Chelsea public. Of its original cedar trees, planted by
Sir Mans Sloane in 1683, but one now remains, and this is very
decrepit; in its decrepitude it is, however, still quite as pic-
turesque as it could ever have been in its prime. The river, in
pre-Embankment days, flowed close by the Physick Garden,
the modern roadway and parade being land embanked and
reclaimed from the river. The Watergate to Sir Ilans's garden
has, in consequence, disappeared ; but his statue, erected in
1 733, still stands, bewigged and robed, chipped and stained.
on its pedestal by the historic cedar tree.
Close by was the site of Chelsea berry, and it was near here
that the Old Swan Tavern, with its attractive wooden balconies
projecting over the river, and an entrance from Queen's Road,
used to stand. This was the famous tavern, house of call for
barges, and resort of so man) 1 distinguished pleasure parties,
that used to serve as goal for the annual race, — prototype of the
modern Oxford and Cambridge race, — that was rowed by the
young Thames watermen for the prizes of the "Doggett"
badge and the coat full of pockets and guineas. The tavern was
destroyed in 1873 to make room for the new Embankment,
which has so completely changed the aspect of all this part
of the river. To quote a writer in the Art Journal 'for 1881 :—
"No doubt the Embankment at Chelsea was needed; no doubt the
broad margin of mud which used to fringe old Cheyne Walk was very un-
healthy in summer-time; yet no our who cares tor what is quaint and
picturesque, and who clings to relics oi the old days of which we shall soon
have no traces left, can recall the river strand at Chelsea, with its wharfs
and its watei stairs, it barges and its altogether indescribable hut most
picturesque aspect, and not feel as In- Looks at the trim even wall ol the
Embankment, and the broad monotonous pavement above it. even it he
does not say in words. ■ < )h, the difference tome!"
On the site of th< ancient tavern is now built "Old Swan
House," a modern-antique mansion designed in a charming
style l>v Mr. Norman Shaw. A lew pac< - westward 1
236 CHELSEA HOSPITAL chap.
Old Swan House, the modern red-brick Tite Street, full of
artists' studios and of the elect, runs up towards Queen's
Road. Tite Street is. so far as its externals go, somewhat dark
and shut in by its tall houses ; but it more than atones for any
outside dulness by the excessive light and learning of its
interiors. "The White House," near the lower end of the
street on the right, was built for Mr. Whistler. Further up the
street — also on the right — is " Gough House," a fine old
mansion of Charles II's time, now most happily adapted to
the needs of the Victoria Hospital for Sick Children.
Close to the site of the old " Rotunda " of Ranelagh, is the
famous " Royal Military Hospital," usually called " Chelsea
Hospital, and made familiar to all the world outside London
by Herkomer's great pictures, " The Last Muster " and
" Chelsea Pensioners." It was John Evelyn who first gained
Charles IFs consent to the erection of a Royal Hospital for
veteran soldiers on this site, — though local tradition, apparently
without any reason at all, persists in attributing its foundation to
Nell Gwynne, who, with all her frailties, was ever the people's
darling, and especially a Chelsea darling. The Hospital
building —an open quadrangle with wings,- -was designed by
Wren. In colour as well as form, it is solid and reposeful — a
noble example of Wren's style and taste. The gardens, open
to the public during the day, have something of the calm
regularity of old Dutch palaces. But then Chelsea, in building
as in horticulture, had always a tendency to the neat Dutch
formalism of William and Mary.
A little north of Chelsea Hospital, between the modern Union
Street and Westbourne Street, stood, in the days of the Georges,
the " Old Original Chelsea Bun-House," that was for so long the
resort of eighteenth-century fashion. Hither used to drive
George I. and his consort, Caroline of Anspach ; George III.
and Queen Charlotte also came here in person to fetch their
buns home, which, of course, set the fashion. The old
house had a picturesque colonnade ; but in 1839 new pro-
x THE PAST AND THE FUTURE 237
prietors rebuilt it ; which rash proceeding, however, killed the
custom.
Since Stuart and early Hanoverian days, times have changed
for Chelsea and Kensington; they are now, — as more distant
Hammersmith and Fulham are rapidly becoming, and as
Putney and Dulwich soon threaten to be, — integral parts of the
"monster London," that, like a great irresistible flood, in
spreading absorbs all the peaceful little pools that lie in its
path. The squalor and the gloom, as well as the splendour
and the riches of the great city, are now their heritage. Never
more will the waves lap peacefully at Chelsea along the river's
shelving shores ; never again will the streets and squares of
old Kensington regain their former seclusion and calm.
Instead, a modern, and, let us hope, a yearly more beautiful
city will spread, gradually and certainly, over all the available
area. Chelsea and Kensington in the past have had many
glories ; who can say what splendid fortune may yet be theirs?
And we who lament the inevitable changes of time, must
remember that they are still living cities, hallowed by their
past, interesting by their present, but whose greater and more
enduring magnificence is yet to come.
CHAPTER XI
BLOOMSBURY
" Some love the Chelsea river gales,
And the slow barges' ruddy sails,
And these I'll woo when glamour fails
In Bloomsbury.
" Enough for me in yonder square
To see the perky sparrows pair,
Or long laburnum gild the air
In Bloomsbury.
" Enough for me in midnight skies
T< i see the moons of London rise,
And weave their silver fantasies
In Bloomsbury.
" Oh, mine in snows and summer heats,
These good old Tory brick-built streets !
My eye is pleased with all it meets
In Bloomsbury."
The peculiar and somewhat old-world charm of Bloomsbury
is, like that of Chelsea, only made known to her devotees.
To the visitor to London, no less than to the fashionable
dweller in the West-End, it is a grimy, sordid, squalid region,
where slums abound, where " no nice people live," and where
mere "going out to dinner " necessitates either the paying of a
half-crown cab fare, or the sacrifice of an hour in the bone-shaking
omnibus. Hence arises the custom of saying that " Blooms-
bury is so far away.'' Of course, the distance or proximity of
I II. XI
l\ BLOOMSBURY
*39
any part of London depends on what one chooses lor the centre ;
but, taking either Oxford Circus or Charing-Cross —surely
natural enough centres as the diverging point, Bloomsbury
is more central than any residential part of the metropolis.
n
^U\P
■
The Germ, in /
But even at the play poor Bloomsbury is maligned ; and this,
too, notwithstanding the fact that it is the chosen abode <*( so
many of the theatrical profession. "They call the place
where I live, Bloomsbury," says Mr. rodman, the old
hand bookseller of Liberty Hall, "though why Bloomsbury, 1
240
"A HOME FROM HOME" CHAP.
don't know ; for there ain't so much bloomin' as there is
buryin'," (this, by the way, is a two-edged libel, for Bloomsbury
being on high ground is notoriously healthy). And then the
same gentleman goes on to remark, " they call my 'ouse a
ramblin' one, though why it ain't rambled away to some nicer
place, I can't think." We get, from the same play, a further
impression that the Bloomsburians live mainly on a dish
called "Smoked 'Addick." Perhaps the dramatist was led to
this conclusion from the very pervading smell of fried fish that
fills certain " unlovely streets " of cookshops or boarding-
houses ; where, however, in my experience the 'addick aroma
has always yielded the palm to that of " sheeps'-trotters "
or " stewed eels." Be this as it may, the old solidly built
squares and houses of Bloomsbury have a dignity of their
own. Some of the streets have, it is true, " come down in
the world ; " nevertheless, in their decay they retain a mournful
look of having known better days,— a look that even their
tenement rooms, -their broken windows, half-stuffed with paper,
— their shock-headed dirty inmates, — cannot altogether abolish
or destroy. Dickens, who always saw the human side of every-
thing, has often noticed the peculiar pathos of some of these
old, world-forgotten houses. In his inimitable Sketches by Boz
he gives a graphic account of the gradual decay of a house
"over the water." Here, the process is somewhat similar.
First, it changes from a private dwelling-house to a "select
boarding-house " ; then, it becomes a friendly, social affair, a
" Home from Home " ; then, its area steps become dirtier, its
cook sits on them, shelling peas, and exchanging jokes with
the milkman ; it blossoms out in gaudy paint, like a decorator's
shop ; cracked flowerpots, of odd shapes and sizes, adorn its
windows ; and it descends, by slow degrees, yet further in the
scale of " gentility," till finally it becomes a mere tenement
house, its juvenile population going in and out with jugs of
beer, its area railings hung round with pewter milk-pots, and
its door ornamented with a row of half-broken bell-chains for
xi THE BEGINNINGS OF BLOOMSBURY 241
the different occupants. And, if you should chance, too
hurriedly, to ring one of these in search of a special inhabitant,
ten to one a cross, dirty-faced female will appear, grumbling :
" Can't yer see as (Ms'ere is Mrs. Smith's bell ? — Two pair back
— ye've rung the wrong 'un ! "
The Bloomsbury houses are pathetic, however, not so much
from age, as because their glory has departed, — because they
have had their daw and ceased to be ; for, in the matter of actual
age, few of them date back farther than the end of the eighteenth
century. Queen Square, indeed, which is far prior to any oi
its neighbouring squares, was laid out in the reign of Queen
Anne, in whose honour it was named, and whose statue still
adorns it. It is a curiously shaped square, for, though enclosed,
no houses were built at the northern end"; this arrangement
was made for the sake of the fine view of the hills of Highgate
and Hampstead, that the square then commanded. Strange
transformation ! 'I he Bloomsbury that we know was then all
fields ; the houses of Queen Square being, so to speak, the
last sentinels of the London of that day ! Rocques' map of
1746 gives no houses beyond the northern end of Southampton
Row. Between Great Russell Street and the present Euston
Road, was then open country, — called, first, the " Long Fields,"
— then "Southampton Fields," or "Lamb's Conduit Fields."
Earlier, they were famous for their peaches and their snipes ;
but in about 1S00 they were mainly waste ground, where brawling
and disorderly sports took place, and where superstition
asserted that, two brothers having fought there about a lady,
tin- footsteps they made in their death struggle would never
ain grow grass or herb! "The Brothers' Steps," the pi. 1 '
was called, or, "The field of the forty Footsteps." The
present ( lordon Square is said to be built upon the exact
spot. The place hid, however, always been rife with si
stition ; lor here, on Midsummer-Day, in the 17th century,
young women would come looking fur a plantain-leaf, to
put under their pillows, so that the) should dream ol tl
R
242 OLD BEDFORD HOUSE chap.
future husbands. From these fields could be seen, in 1746 and
far later, but two or three nobles' mansions, enclosed in their
gardens, — such as " Bedford House," pulled down to build
Bedford Square, — " Baltimore House," long since built into
Russell Square, — and " Montague House," now rebuilt as the
British Museum ; — with the old " Whitefield's Tabernacle "
appearing through the trees towards the gardens of the ancient
manor of " Toten Court," which gave its romantic name to
the essentially unromantic Tottenham Court Road. (The ugly
" Adam and Eve " public-house, at the junction of Euston Road
and Tottenham Court Road, now occupies the place both of
the old tavern of that name, and the older manor-house.)
The name " Bloomsbury " is, however, of more remote date ;
it is, like most London appellations, a " corruption," and comes
from " Blemundsbury," the manor of the De Blemontes, or
Blemunds, in the reign of Henry III. Later, the manor of
Bloomsbury came, together with that of the neighbouring St.
Giles, into the possession of the Earls of Southampton, till in
1668 it passed with Lady Rachel, — daughter of Thomas
Wriothesley, last Earl, by her marriage with Lord William
Russell, — into the family of the Dukes of Bedford, the present
owners. Lord William Russell, — who was beheaded, without a
fair trial, in Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1683, for supposed con-
nection with the famous Rye House Plot, — lived in Bedford
House (formerly Southampton House), on the northern side of
Bloomsbury, originally Southampton, Square. (The house
occupied the whole north side of the square until pulled down
in 1802, after the illustrious Russells had lived there for more
than 200 years.) This was the house admired by Evelyn, in an
entry in his diary of February 9, 1665 : " Dined at my Lord
Treasurer's, the Earle of Southampton, in Blomesbury, where
he was building a noble square or piazza, a little towne ; some
noble rooms, a pretty cedar chappell, a naked garden to the north,
but good aire ". It was at first intended that Lord William
Russell should suffer in Bloomsbury Square, opposite his own
xi BLOOMSBURY SQUARE 243
residence ; but this was apparently opposed by the King as too
indecent. . . . Poor, heroic Lady Rachel Russell ! She lived
here in retirement till her death, at the age of 86, in the reign
of George I. She had, indeed, like Polycrates, given her
treasured " ring ", and could fear no more from fate. The great
landlords of London may get their " unearned increment " easily
enough now, yet they had to pay the penalty of greatness in the
past !
Bloomsbury Square, though now rapidly becoming simply a
square of offices and business premises generally, was, in the
time of Charles I, the most fashionable and most admired Square
in London. Pope, later, alludes to it in the following couplet :
" In Palace yard, at nine, you'll find me there
At ten, for certain, sir, in Bloomsbury Square — "
Here, in less ancient days, lived the great judge, Lord Mansfield,
whose house was burned during the Gordon Riots, in 1780 ; the
mob threw his pictures, valuable books, and manuscripts, out of
the windows and made a bonfire of them, while he and his wife
escaped for their lives by the back of the building. Sir Hans
Sloane, the founder of the British Museum, lived at one time in
this square; also, Sir Richard Steele, who, giving here a grand
entertainment during financial distresses, was waited on by
bailiffs disguised as lacqueys ; and, finally, Isaac d'Israeli, the
father of Lord Beaconsfield : who wrote his Curiosities of Litera-
ture at No. 6. "His only amusement," says his son, who, as
an infant, used to toddle round the square with his nursemaid,
"was to ramble about the booksellers' shops," still so frequent
in this vicinity. About r76o the square was still so countri
fied that the Duchess of liedford tised to send out cards to her
guests, inviting them to Bedford House to "take tea and walk
in the fields " ; while their coachmen "were regaled with the
perfume of the flowerbeds of the gardens in Greal Russell
Street." Within the enclosure is now a bronze statue of Charles
James Fox, by Westmacott.
Is J
244 BLOOMSBURY SQUARES AND GARDENS chap.
These old London squares, with their tall plane trees, their
luxuriant and well-ordered garden enclosures, convey a delight-
ful sense, even now, of leisure and repose. No one in
Bloomsbury, Tavistock, or Russell Squares would imagine that
behind those green masses of foliage, — beyond the blue mist into
which they melt so picturesquely, — lies that great " cauldron " or
" fermenting vat," as Carlyle would say, of busy London. Yet
it is there, but a stone's throw, indeed, away. In the squares
the birds twitter and chirp ; vistas of entwined branches, leafy
glades, hide the glaring continuity of the streets and houses ;
you might think yourself in some suburban haunt of peace.
Even the rumble of the wheels in neighbouring Southampton Row
and Holborn seems, in Russell Square in summer, like a soothing
tune " to rock a child asleep." You feel in the world, yet not of
it; close to the " mighty pulse of the machine," yet in your garden
enclosed, and at rest. . . . And in the back gardens of the
houses themselves (for some of the old mansions yet have
gardens, entered occasionally from side streets by mysterious
Jekyll and Hyde doorways) it is the same. I know a " back-
yard " that still boasts its mulberry tree, bursting its fat green
buds gaily in the spring ; and another that can flaunt, when
" soft April wakes," its hedge of fragrant lilac. The " daughters
of the varying year" deign to notice us even in Bloomsbury,
though they may not, perhaps, condescend to stay with us
quite so long. (But then we do not ourselves, as a rule, pay
such long visits in London as in the country.) Still, the crocus
" breaks like fire" at our feet in the spring ; the graceful bells
of the foxglove usher us pleasantly into the autumn ; and in
London, imprisoned in brick, who shall say how we love our
" prison flower ? "
The literary associations of Bloomsbury are yet another
feature of its charm. Though Russell Square and its surround-
ings generally are being gradually rebuilt and improved, yet
in some places you can still see the actual old houses standing
that, in the century's early years, were the homes of celebrated
xi RUSSELL SQUARE 245
men. Thus, No. 65 in Russell Square was the abode of Sir
Thomas Lawrence, the painter, .and lure he received the
distinguished sitters, the eminent men and fair ladies who have
made his name famous. Here, for instance, at this common-
place house door, while the Russian general Platoff was having
his portrait painted inside, were posted his attendant Cossacks,
" mounted" says an eye-witness, "on their small white horses,
with their long spears grounded," standing as sentinels at the
door of the great painter. Lawrence died here in 1830, and
the house is not in essentials altered since his day. At No. 5
in the square lived, from 1856 to 1862, Frederick Denison
Maurice, the V Christian Socialist," and here he held his famous
"prophetic breakfasts." At No. 56 Alary Russell Mitford
stayed in 1836. The house near by — No. 66 — is a curious
survival of the days when Bloomsbury was a centre of fashion.
Its enormous size, its palatial reception rooms, its tall corridors,
now deserted and solitary except for a few colossal statues in
niches, all suggest the glare of light, the sound of music, the
rustle of fine dresses that filled it in old days. Hawthorne
and Dickens suggested that old houses felt and suffered ; the
same idea intrudes itself upon us here. The rusted iron arches
that used in the old days to support lamps,- now darkened,
still hang here and there in Bloomsbury streets : and, in some
cases the actual iron torch-extinguishers that were used when
sedan chairs were in fashion, remain to tell their story of ancient
grandeur. Nothing is in its way more' plaintive than an old and
desolate house of this kind : its glory departed, its decorations
falling to decay, its " garden " a wilderness of walls, roofs, and
broken bottles, its rooms, even, perchance, in course ni being
broken up into solicitors' or other offices. Bloomsbury Square,
indeed — the square nearest to Eiolborn has, in this w
entirely merged into offices, the residents being p illy
ousted. Hut Russell Square, despite the new Russell Hotel
that rises palatially along its north-eastern block, and despite
the huge Pitman's School of Shorthand at its south eastern
246 "VANITY FAIR"
CHAP.
corner, is still almost entirely residential. None of its modern
innovations can altogether abolish or destroy the spirit and
feeling of Thackeray that it breathes. Here lived old Osborne,
the purse-proud banker ; there is going on old Sedley's sale ;
I can see the packing-cases, the " loafers " and the vans at this
moment ; and here, by these very prosaic green square railings,
is Amelia, sad and black garbed, looking with tear-filled eyes
for her boy George. Now that she comes into the light, I
see that she is only a nurse from one of the Great Ormond
Street or Queen Square hospitals, or, perhaps, a "Salvation
Army " lassie ; but for the moment she was Amelia, poke-bonnet
and all, to the life. Even the historic square railings are just
the same as when Thackeray drew them, and Amelia beside
them, in ch. 50 of Vanity Fair. The numerous pupils of
Pitman's Shorthand Institute now flock, unprotected, down
Southampton Row, where little Amelia and her kind, in the early
years of the century, walked, followed by " Black Sambo," with
an enormous cane. Little Amelia, whose simple strolls in the
square were guarded by the beadle ; and before whose door,
when asleep, *' the watchman sang the hours." The big houses
— their fireplaces and ceilings often decorated by Adam, their
"powder-closets," curious relics of Queen Anne's time, still
existing, in many cases, behind the drawing-rooms — yet flaunt
their enormous kitchens, laundries, and basements, fitted with
endless bedrooms and offices for butlers and retainers, such
as old Mr. Sedley's "Black Sambo" and his tribe. They are
out of date in this region now, but the Bedford estate will not
remodel them entirely so long as their outer walls are solid ;
and that these mansions existed long before the modern jerry-
building days, their firm walls give abundant proof.
But change is at work everywhere in this region. Flats ascend-
ing to a terrific height are erected in every direction ; of these
" Bedford Court," with its foreign-looking inner glazed court-
yard is the most outwardly picturesque. It does not seem long
since the " gates and bars " went ; and soon, no doubt, a new
xi SUMMER TOURISTS 247
Electric Railway will continue its tunnels and stations along
Southampton Row from Holborn.to King's Cross.
The principal reason, of course, for the modern unfashion-
ableness of Bloomsbury is to be found in its inhabitants ; it
is, practically, a city of cheap boarding-houses. It will be
interesting to see how the big new Russell Hotel in Russell-
Square will affect these. Though boarding-houses are vetoed in
the big squares, they abound everywhere else. They are
chiefly frequented by Americans and Germans, who, through
the late summer and autumn, throng the streets, generally
discoverable by their red " Baedekers," no less than by their
speech. It is, in fact, in July or August, more common, just
here, to hear German spoken than English. London, it lias
been ascertained, attracts now a greater number of tourists than
any other place in the world, and these tourists mostly lodge
in Bloomsbury. The theatrical world, also, lives largely about
here — it is so convenient for the theatres ; but it prefers, for its
part, private lodgings, or flats. Yet, even with all this yearly
influx from other nations, Bloomsbury is wonderfully little known
to the world of shops or of fashion. Oxford Circus is only
distant ten minutes from the Russell Hotel, yet "where is
Russell Square ? " is no uncommon question, even in a shop as
big as Peter Robinson's. "Where is Russell Square ?" is,
indeed, an almost classical question ; for it was made in so
august a place as the House of Commons, by so omniscienl
a being as Mr. Croker. It is crushing — but so it is. You
might as well, in the world's eyes, live at Fulham or Kenning-
ton Bark. "Why do you live so far away?" is a question
constantly asked of the Bloomsbury resident by people from
distant Battersea or Campden Hill, whom it would In- useless
to try to undeceive. "The very absence of any knowledj
this locality," said a noted wit, "is accounted a mark of high
breeding." Among those who have spoken despitefull;
Bloomsbury is Mr. Gladstone. Sir Algernon Wesl records a
conversation about l'ani//i, and his "sad, ill days before his
248 A BLOOMSBURY STREET CORNER chap.
death," "which Mr. Gladstone attributed greatly to the fact of
his living in Bloomsbury Square." But, with all respect to
Mr. Gladstone, it may be submitted that Panizzi would have
died anywhere, while, on the other hand, he could not have
lived anywhere except in his beloved Museum-land. Blooms-
bury, too, is Whig territory, and it was too bad of Mr. Glad-
stone to identify it with the Inferno.
Its social glory may have passed away from Bloomsbury,
but pathetic little scenes from a lower strata of life daily enact
themselves here before our eyes. For the poor we have,
indeed, always with us. Here, for instance, to a certain humble
street corner, has come for many years an old blind man
who sells collar-studs. He arrives punctually every morning,
led along carefully by his wife. Once arrived, his mode of
procedure is always the same.
He first goes to an iron railing attached to an uninviting
blind wall, and proceeds, with a key, to extract thence a
rickety wooden seat, padlocked on to the railing. This he
takes to his accustomed spot, an old hoarding of ancient date,
where he is allowed by sufferance of the authorities ; when
the hoarding is removed, the old man will lose his means of
living unless he find another haunt. His wife helps him across
the road, and leaves him to sit patiently all day, east wind,
wet, or shine, selling studs. At five o'clock she again appears
to fetch him home to tea. Once I witnessed a little domestic
drama between the two. It arose thus. The old man had
been talking one day to another woman, — a decrepit old waif
she was, — and, when the wife returned, the poor old husband
had to expiate his flirtation sorely. His wife " let him have it"
all the way over the return crossing, undeterred by passing
'buses, or cabmens' jeers, from "speaking her mind"; and
she was still hard at it, to judge from her thin shoulders and
her gesticulations, as they passed out of sight together into the
foggy night.
" Pavement artists," too, select the near neighbourhood of the
XI
PAVEMENT ARTISTS
249
squares as their favoured haunt. These " open air pastellists,"
as they have been ealled, are a curious, unshaven, dilapidated
race, with an indeseribable " come-down-in-theworld " look
about them ; and their lot seems hardly an enviable one.
Their "plant," it is true, is not large; a few coloured chalks
and a soft duster form all their necessary stock-in-trade.
The Pavement Artist.
Gifted often with a lair amount of technical ability, the)
the passerby to wonder, whether, given happier circumstances
and a less vivid acquaintance with the liar of the publii
they might not now be exhibiting their efforts on tin
walls of the Royal Academy. Not that the Royal Academy
pictures themselves would, for that matter, if they could be
painted on the pavement, draw soman) coppers as the lurid
250 NATURE AND ART chap.
representations of railway accidents, or the scenes of domestic
bliss, or the " Mother's Grave " (the public love sentiment and
pathos), or even the innocent mackerel or salmon, " as like as
like," that form the repertoire of the pavement artist. His
wares, to catch pennies, have to be highly coloured, if nothing
else. His trials are many ; dust and rain efface his pictures,
drunken navvies fall foul of him, cramp attacks his legs, and
east wind benumbs his fingers, till, poor wretch, no wonder
that he repairs, with his hardly won money, to the nearest
public-house, — the poor man's refuge. He is, on.the other hand,
not obliged to rise early or to work after dark, and it is said
that occasionally his takings average as much as 4/6 per day,
although an amateur who recently tried his hand at the
business only gained ^\d, a violent headache, and nearly a
sunstroke. There is, it is true, a new and degenerate kind of
Pavement Artist, who, instead of painstakingly bedaubing the
same " pitch " day after day, brings out with him a series of
highly-coloured oil-pictures on cardboard ; the public, however,
have already discovered him to be a hollow fraud. There is
also said to be in existence one young lady pavement artist, in
sailor hat and neat get-up (though where her present " pitch "
may be I know not), who labels herself proudly " the only
one in England."
That Londoners are great lovers of the picturesque may be
seen from the admiring crowd that surround the pavement
artist ; they prefer Nature, however, brought " home " to them
in crude and garish colours. Yet, as likely as not, when the
shabby pastellist has put away chalks and duster for the day,
and betaken himself to his nightly refuge in Soho or Hatton
Garden, the sky behind him will robe itself in intense hues of
orange, purple, and crimson that baffle imitation, and before
which even pavement-art fades into insignificance. For the
sunset-skies of London are a marvel. All through the vary-
ing year they are beautiful, but in September and October
they are at their best. The sun either sinks, a bold red disc,
xi CHRISTINA ROSSETTI 251
behind the black houses and still blacker plane trees, or it
clothes its retreat with bright purple and madder clouds,
against which, with their golden background, the tree branches
show dark like prison-bars. Was it, perhaps, on these sunset-
skies that Christina Rossetti gazed when she wrote her most
inspired poems ? And was it from the small window of her
gloomy little house in Torrington Square, " the small upper
back bedroom whose only outlook," her biographer says, " was
to the tall dingy walls of adjacent houses ; " was it from here
that, — looking with rapt gaze over to the neighbouring stables
and mews, — she saw, in fancy, the angel choirs of which she
wrote ?
". . . . Multitudes — multitudes — stood up in bliss,
Made equal to the angels, glorious, fair ;
With harps, palms, wedding-garments, kiss of peace,
And crowned and haloed hair."
Indeed it is not unlikely that she did see them, for the true
poet's mind sees what it brings, to the exclusion of all meaner
things. There is a pretty story told, in this connection, of
William Blake, the poor, half-crazed poet-painter of Fountain
Court. "What," he said, "it will be questioned " (of me)
"when the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire some
what like a guinea? Oh! no, no! I see an innumerable
company of the heavenly host, crying ' Holy, holy, holy, is the
Lord God Almighty ! ' I question not my corporeal eye any more
than I would question a window concerning a sight. I look
through it, and not with it." And thus it was with Miss
Rossetti. She, the patient, noble, suffering woman,— suffering,
latterly, from a long and painful illness,— lay, day after day
silent and uncomplaining, in that dismal little London house
where she had spent nineteen years of her lite, her soul evei
beating its prison-bars. Nearby in the neighbouring Woburn
Square, is Christ Church, where Miss Rossetti during her life
was a constant attendant, and whose incumbent, the Rev. J. J.
Glendinning Nash, was her close friend. Here her impressive
252 THE ROSSETTI FAMILY chap.
funeral service (where her own poems were sung) took place
on January 2nd 1895. The whole of this part of London is
bound up with the lives of the talented Rossetti family.
Christina, her mother, and aunts, lived at No 30 Torrington
Square — and before that at 5 Endsieigh Gardens ; W. M.
Rossetti, the younger brother and literary critic, lived near-by,
close to Regent's Park ; and Dante Rossetti, the chief of this
family of poets, was, as we know, a thorough Londoner,
and never even visited Italy at all. One of the most curious
things about London is the way in which, despite its gloom, it
inspires and stimulates the poet's thought, " moulding the secret
gold." Else why is it that so many beautiful things are
produced there ? Even Mr. Austin Dobson's Muse, he com-
plains, "pouts" when abroad, though "she is not shy on
London stones ! " The many-hued beauties of the country do
not affect us as do the grey London stones and streets, eloquent
with association and history.
If the Rossetti family are deeply connected with Bloomsbury
streets and squares, — William Morris, the poet of The Earthly
Paradise, the Socialist, designer, prophet of the House
Beautiful, is hardly less so. It was in unromantic Bloomsbury
that his ideas of beauty were mainly nourished ; Oxford Street,
Upton, and Kelmscott came later. Bloomsbury, whose drawing
and painting schools are immortalised in Thackeray's novels
(vide ' Gandish's," in The Newcomes,), has always been more or
less a focus of art teaching. Bohemian in old days, it is
mildly Bohemian still, as any one who frequents the art-schools
of the neighbourhood will testify. When Morris first left
Oxford, in 1S56, he and Burne-Jones took rooms together in
Upper Gordon Street, Bloomsbury, as being a convenient
locality for the study of art. Here they fell in with other
kindred spirits, such as Holman Hunt and Rossetti. " Topsy "
(Morris) "and I lived together," Burne Jones wrote in 1856,
" in the quaintest room in all London, hung with brasses of old
knights and drawings of Albert Uiirer." In the following year
xi " RED LION MARY
2 53
(1857) they removed to 17 Red Lion Square, a house already
consecrated to the earl)- pioneers of-the Pre-Raphaelite Brother
hood :
"It was a first-floor set of ihree rooms ; the large room in front looked
north, and its window had been heightened up to the ceiling to adapt it for
use as a studio : behind it was a bedroom, and behind that another small
bedroom or powdering closet. Till the spring of 1859 this was their London
residence and working place, and it is round Red Lion Square that much
of the mythology of Morris's earlier life clusters. From the incidents
which occurred or were invented there, a sort of book of the Hundred
Merry Tales gradually was formed, of which Morris was the central
figure."— {Life of IV. Morris, by j . U\ Mackail.)
"A great many of these stories are connected with the maid
of the house, who became famous under the name of ' Red
Lion Mary.' She was very plain, but a person of great
character and unfailing good humour. . . . One of the tales
told of her shows her imperturbable good nature. Rossetti
one day, on her entering the room, strode up to her, and in
deep resonant tones, with fearful meaning in his voice, de-
claimed the lines :
" ' Shall the hide of a fierce lion
I'm- stretched on a couch <>1 wood
For a daughter's foot to lie on.
Stained with a father's M I ' '
"Whereupon the girl, quite unawed by the horrible pro-
position, replied with baffling complacency, ' It shall ifyoulike,
sir"!"
From the tact of the Red Lion Square rooms being un-
furnished cam< practically the beginnings of Morris's work
as a decorator and manufacturer. lie set to work to provide
it with " intensely mediaeval furniture," designed by himself,
ami painted in panels afterwards by Rossetti and Burne rones.
There were tables, chairs, and a large settle; "chairs."
Rossetti, " such as Barbarossa might have sat in." It i> pleasant
lo think of Morris and Rossetti walking arm in arm on
254 WILLIAM MORRIS chap.
summer evenings, wending their way through quaint alleys up to
the Red Lion Square lodgings, deep in earnest conversation ;
young, intensely busy and hopeful— still more intensely full of
" the joy of life." They spent their holidays at the not far distant
Zoological Gardens, where Morris, who was fond of birds,
would observe and imitate the habits of eagles :
" He would imitate an eagle with considerable skill and humour,
climbing on to a chair, and, after a sullen pause, coming down with a soft
heavy flop ; and for some time an owl was one of the tenants of Red Lion
Square, in spite of a standing feud between it and Rosselti."
Morris had several Bloomsbury abodes. Later, when he
married, and the Red Lion Square household broke up, he
and his wife went into lodgings at 41, Great Ormond Street;
and again, some five or six years later, they took an old house,
26 Queen Square, (now pulled down to make room for a
hospital), a house which, with its yard and outbuildings behind,
had room and to spare for his family, and also for workshops
to accommodate his increasing trade as a decorative manu-
facturer. It is sad that London houses where Morris lived
should bear no trace of his beautifying hand ; for externally, it
must be confessed, such of his Bloomsbury dwellings as re-
main extant are commonplace. Red Lion Square, a curiously
antiquated enclosure near Holborn, approached by paved
diverging alleys at the eastern corners, and with a pathetic look
of having known better days (it is now mostly offices and
business flats), contains but few dwelling-houses. No. 17 still
stands, but the only thing about it that seems to suggest the
Morris tradition is its plain green door ; and it differs from
its neighbours merely by its middle first-floor window being
" heightened up to the ceiling " as already described. Neither
is 41, Great Ormond Street — one of the smaller houses in that
dignified old street — in any way remarkable, except for its rather
dilapidated look. It seems a pity, by the way, that tablets do
not more frequently indicate the houses where great people
xi QUEEN SQUARE AND ITS HOSPITALS 255
have lived; the dullest of London streets would gain infinitely
in interest were this the rule, instead of merely the exception.
Queen Square, though its old houses have mostly been
rebuilt as large hospitals, and only a few of them remain,
still has a charming old world look. Great Ormond Street,
with its tall old mansions of time-darkened red brick, their
quaint overhanging porch roofs, and their often elaborate iron-
work, runs into it at one end ; while the other — curious anomaly
at this date ! — is still a deadlock of enclosed gardens, with no
thoroughfare into dull Guilford street beyond. This,— and it
is a fact that of itself speaks well for the health of the district,
— is a region of hospitals ; hence the occasional whiff of ether
or scent of iodine from bandaged " out-patients " that greets
the traveller by omnibus up Southampton Row. The high
ground on which Bloomsbury is built (for it is a gradual
ascent all the way from the river to Russell Square) render it,
its fogs and soot notwithstanding, — and despite the old tradition
that the victims of the plague were mainly buried here, — far
more bracing then the more fashionable West End. It has,
certainly, its quota of fogs, or " London particulars " as Sam
Weller called them ; but so have other parts of London. In
and about Great Ormond Street and Queen Square are many
hospitals ; large, airy, and splendidly managed institutions, such,
for instance, as the well-known Great Ormond Street Hospital for
Sick Children, (abused as " hideous " by Mr. Hare, principally
because "two interesting houses, Nos. 48 and 49,'' of real
Queen Anne architecture', were destroyed in 1S82 to enlarge
it); the National Hospital for Epilepsj and Paralysis, under
the great Dr. Ferrier ; and the tall newly-built Alexandra
Hospital for children. In Powis Place, close to Queen Square,
Lord Macaula\ lived in early manhood with his family. The
house is now joined to the Homoeopathic Hospital.
In (heat Ormond Street, also, on the northern side, is the
"Working Men's College," the history of which is so deeply
associated with Ruskin, Rossetti, Madox Brown, and their
256 "THE WORKING MEN'S COLLEGE" chap.
friends. Started first by F. D. Maurice at 31, Red Lion
Square, (where Rossetti and Ruskin subsequently volunteered
to hold classes, Rossetti " teaching mechanics to draw each
other," and Ruskin instructing them in the more rudimentary
art of copying leaves, flowers, &c, according to the ''strictest
school of Ruskinianism ;) — it was subsequently moved to its
present site. In the lives of this gifted community of artists
and teachers, the Working Men's College played no small part,
and showed how deeply these young men were actuated, not
only by the love of art, but also by the feeling of universal
brotherhood advocated later by Morris in the social Utopia he
propounded in one of his best known works. The story of the
College may be read in many books and biographies. The
kind of thing it practised, being rare in those days, attracted
strangers and philanthropic aristocrats, who came to look on
and to wonder. Irreverent stories, indeed, are told of the
classes there by mild scoffers, — such as W. B. Scott, for instance,
— who describes Mr. Ruskin's class, as follows :
" We drove into Red Lion Square, and here I found. . . . every one
trying to put on small pieces of paper, imitations by pen and ink of pieces
of rough stick crusted with dry lichens ! .... I came away feeling that
such pretence of education was in a high degree criminal — it was intellectual
murder ! "
For Mr. Scott, who was, as he says, " the representative of
the Government schools," some allowance must be made ; but
Dante Rossetti himself, though he held a " life "-class, also
saw the comic side. " You think," he said to Mr. Scott :
" You think I have turned humanitarian, perhaps, but you should see my
class for the model ! None <>f your Freehand Drawing- Books used. The
British mind is brought to hear on the British mugat once, and with results
that would astonish you."
On the actual value of these things, opinions, as we see, may
differ ; but who can doubt the indirect good that resulted from
the effort, both to teachers and to taught ?
The Passmore Edwards Settlement, in Tavistock Place, goes
xi THE PASSMORE EDWARDS SETTLEMENT 257
perhaps, far to realise some of the ideas of Morris's Utopia.
To begin with, it is a thing of beauty. Its newness is not
aggressive, and its long red-brick building, adorned by quaint
porches and backed by refreshing green plane-trees, is a
pleasing object as viewed from the essentially unromantic and
grimy street into which it opens. Its architecture is a credit
to the two young men who designed it. Though the build-
ing, I believe, at first excited some adverse comment in
Bloomsbury circles, yet there can be no doubt of its success as
a whole. Its style, simple yet decorative, gains on the beholder.
While, externally, it forms a little " isle of quiet breathing "
in Bloomsbury streets, its proportions and general construction
are, internally, no less charming. The big lecture hull with its
white arched roof, its many windows, the beautifully-propor-
tioned drawing-room with its lovely colouring of green and
red, the well-stocked library, the gymnasium, the sewing rooms.
the cooking-school, are all arranged and decorated in the
Morris style, and according to Morris's ideas .... Mis.
Humphry Ward, as every one knows, is the inspiring spirit of
the Settlement, and Mr. Tatton is her warden and prophet.
The present building, for which the funds were principally
provided by Mr. I'assmore Edwards of the Echo, is the
outcome of Mrs. Ward's earlier " settlement " in Gordon Square.
It was built in 1897 on the site of a curious old house called "The
Grove," which stood apart in its own grounds ; a house wh<
Herschel lived and where he first weighed the world ; where,
also, report says, that George IV kept one of his numerous
"ladies." The Settlement, which is of tin- Toynbee Hall type,
is unsectarian, and therefore looked coldly on by many church
people; though, by the admitted good it works, ii has overcomi
many prejudices. Among the most novel, and assuredly tin-
most excellent, of its works is the Cripples' School which is
conducted within its walls. It is a pathetic sight to see the
vehicle — half omnibus and half ambulance carrying th
poor little pupils to and from the Settlement. Also, it
258 CHARLES DARWIN chap.
ministers to the highest pleasures of the people ; and it is
far more difficult to teach enjoyment than to teach learning.
Gymnasiums, cooking, and social gatherings for all classes alike
pave, at any rate, the way to still larger " departures " and
Ruskinian possibilities in the way of " preaching to the rich
and dining with the poor." The pretty drawing-room of the
Settlement looks, with its bay window, on to a charming
green garden once backed by Dickens's old house, — Tavistock
House, — now demolished.
Literary memories attach even to Gower Street ; that long,
prosaic, interminable thoroughfare.
Here, at No. no (then No. 12, Upper Gower Street, and
now utilized with neighbouring houses as Shoolbred's offices),
lived, in 1839, Charles Darwin; it was described by his
son as "a small, commonplace London house, with a dining
room in front, and a small room behind, in which they lived
for quietness." Though Darwin sometimes grumbled, as
men will, over the necessity of living in " dirty odious London,"
he also appreciated its peculiar charm, as the following extract
will testify :
"We are living a life of extreme quietness. What you describe as so
secluded a spot is, I will answer for it, quite dissipated compared with
Gower Street. We have given up all parties, for they agree with neither
of us ; and if one is quiet in London there is nothing like it for quiet-
ness. . . . There is a grandeur about its smoky fogs, and the dull, distant
sounds of cabs and coaches ; in fact, you may perceive I am becoming a
thorough-paced cockney,. and I glory in the thought that I shall be here for
the next six months."
In T835, too, as Mr. Frith recalls in his amusing
Reminiscences, he himself was a boy, just introduced to his
first drawing academy, immortalized as " Gandish's " in the
Newcomes ; that of Mr. Henry Sass, which still stands, a corner
house at No. 6 Charlotte Street, the Holborn continuation of
Gower Street. At the side entrance, under the classic bust of
Minerva, — which, yellowed and antique in more senses than one,
xi "GANDISH'S" 259
" to this day looks down on the passer-by ; "— under this door-
way came not only Frith, hut Millais, and other well-known
Academicians. Edward Lear, of much Nonsense Book fame,
and much undeserved neglect as a landscape-painter, "a man of
varied and great accomplishments," was also one of Sass's pupils.
Millais, when a boy attending Sass's school, lived with his
parentsat83, Gower Street (the studio was built out behind). Mr.
Holman Hunt thus describes the Millais menage at the time :
" It (the studio) was comfortably furnished with artistic objects tastefully
arranged The son put his hand on his father's shoulder and the
other on his mother's chair, and said : 'They both help me, I can tell you.
He's capital ! and does a lot of useful things. Look whal a good head he
has. I have painted several of the old doctors from him. By making a
little alteration and putting a beard on him he does splendidly, and he sits
for hands and draperies, too; and as for mamma, she finds me all I wanl
in the way of dresses, and makes them up for me. She reads to me, too.
at times, and finds out whatever I want to know at the British Museum
library. She's very clever, I can tell you,' ami he stooped down and rubbi d
his curly head against her forehead, and then patted the 'old daddy,' as he
called him, on the back."
It was close to Sass's old school, and opposite his benign
Minerva, that I once saw, myself, one bitter May Day of nipping
"north-easter," the real old " Jack-in the-Green " described by
Dickens and illustrated by Cruickshank : the " May Da) sweeps"
of the Sketches by Boz ; "my lord," "my lady," "clowns,"
"green," and all. Very wretched and miserable looked these
belated illustrators of an ancient custom, as they danced and
piped through the' wind and sleet that usually, by some strange
perversity, usher in the fust of Maw The Cockney children
who storm the doorsteps, clamorously demanding Ma) Da)
tribute, and crying their shrilly monotonous song:
" Fusl er Ma ay,
1 )a\\ 11 er da i\ .
It's only once a yee ar "
are usually suggestive of a cold, eh, erless morn.
At the present day, many members of the legal profession
260 THE IRVINGITE CHURCH chap.
still inhabit Bloomsbury, recalling the old clays when, from its
residents, it was dubbed "Judge-Land." Its proximity to
Fleet Street renders it equally beloved by writers ; its nearness
to the Strand endears it to " the profession " and the music-
hall artistes, who frequent the flats near Tottenham Court Road ;
but the bulk of the residential population is Jewish. Blooms-
bury has, however, not only been the chosen abode of judges,
journalists, and Jews, but it is also the home of many sects and
religious communities, some important, and some, if report be
true, mustering but few adherents. There is a by-way off Lamb's
Conduit Street (which is a thoroughfare at the back of Great Or-
mond Street, containing, like it, some quaint old houses, as well
as some interesting curiosity-shops) ; in this by-way is a tiny
building, pathetic in its minuteness, and chiefly discernible from
its projecting gas-lamp, labelled " Church of Humanity." Of this
church, a wit is said to have unkindly remarked, with reference
to the size of its congregation, that it contained " three persons,
but no God." Unitarians muster largely round the Blooms-
bury squares ; and the Irvingites, or, as they call themselves,
members of " the Catholic and Apostolic Church," have their
principal place of worship, — a fine building erected for them in
1853, — in Gordon Square. Its door is — rare indeed in London !
— always open, enabling the visitor to enter and admire the long
cloister that leads to the church, and the decorated interior
with its triforium, wheel-window, and side-chapel. The prayer-
books lying in the pews seem much the same as those used by
the English Church, the chief difference being that in them the
word ''saint" is always rendered as "angel." This beautiful
church and its strange creed result from the doctrines pro-
pounded by Edward Irving, the Annandale prophet and seer,
the preacher of "the gift of tongues," who was himself
ordained the first " angel " or minister of his sect.' (This
Edward Irving was the first lover of Jane Welsh Carlyle, — the
man of whom she said, that if she had married him, " there
would have been no gift of tongues ! ")
xi CARLYLE AND DICKENS 261
Whitefield's Tabernacle, that early home of Dissent, — where,
in 1824, Edward Irving delivered his famous missionary oration
of three-and-a-half hours, — stands near by in Tottenham Court
Road. Erected first by the preacher George Whitefield in 1756,
and called then " Whitefield's Soul Trap,"-- it has been many
times rebuilt, — and is now just re-opened as an imposing red
brick and ornate edifice, on its original site. Notwithstand-
ing its deplorable newness, it perpetuates the memory of
Whitefield, Toplady, and John Wesley ; and it was here, by a
curious coincidence, that two ministers preached their own
funeral sermons !
With Carlyle too, although his chosen home was in far-
away Chelsea, Bloomsbury has associations. At No. 6
Woburn buildings, - in a dingy little paved by-way close to
New St. Pancras Church, Euston Road, — Carlyle lodged for
a short time in 1831 — when . trying to get his Sartt>r
Resaiius taken by a publisher. In these lodgings ("a very
beautiful sitting room, quiet and airy" he describes it), Edward
Irving, his friend, had also stayed. And 5 Ampton Street,
Mecklenburgh Square, was another London lodging of
Carlyle's- -frequented before the Chelsea days began in 1834.
But, of the man)' literary men who have lived in and around
Bloomsbury, none is more associated with the locality than
Charles Dickens. Tavistock House lias been recentl) pulled
down; it was an unassuming, ugly, semidetached dwelling
with a heavy portico, one of three houses all now destroyed,
railed off from the eastern side of Tavistock Square, and
entered from it through an iron gateway. This was the
novelist's home for ten years, from [850 to [860. He. and
his famous New Year's theatricals, are still a recollection of the
older residents in the neighbourhood. The annual plays oi
Tavistock House, performed "in a theatre erected in the
garden," and written and Stage managed under the colla
boration of Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens, are now
matter of history. Bleak House was I iest work written
262 RUSKIN'S BIRTHPLACE chap.
here. The house after Dickens's time became a Jews' college,
and the pupils " recreated " in the novelist's theatre-garden. It
is now a sad scene of desolation. Memories of Bloomsbury
haunt many of Dickens's works, but none are better or more
lifelike in their way than his early sketches of the immortal
Mrs. Tibbs — type of her class — and her select boarding house
in Great Coram Street, in " that partially explored tract of
country which lies between the British Museum and a remote
village called Somers Town." Mrs. Tibbs's advertisement to
the effect that " six individuals would meet with all the comforts
of a cheerful musical home in a select private family, residing
within ten minutes' walk of everywhere," is still not uncom-
monly met with.
But the literary memories of Bloomsbury are like the
sands of the sea for multitude. They may be found even in
the dingy streets running east of Tavistock Square, leading
north towards the tram-lines and general squalor of King's
Cross. At No. 26 Marchmont Street, the youthful Shelley
and the still more youthful Mary Godwin, afterwards Shelley's
second wife, lived in 181 5, before Harriet's death and their
own legal marriage ; and here their first baby was born and
died. " Shelley and Clara go out about a cradle," Mary's diary
records, a few days after the infant's birth. Here Mary read
Corinne and Rinaldini, and mourned over her little dead child,
" a span-long dead baby, and in the lodgings in Marchmont
Street an empty cradle." Possibly Marchmont Street then
was not quite so shimmy as it is now; but this young couple,
treading " the bright Castalian brink and Latmos' steep,"
were probably just as unconscious of London mud as of
any disorder, actual or moral, in their establishment.
At 54, Hunter Street, a street just east of Marchmont
Street, and now exhibiting, in all its phases, the gradual decay
described by Dickens, John Ruskin was born in 1819; and
here, as he describes in Prceterita, he used, at the age of four,
to enjoy from his nursery window " the view of a marvellous
xi BOARDING-HOUSES 263
iron post, out of which the water-carts were filled through beauti-
ful little trap-doors, by pipes like boa constrictors," a myst<
which, he says, he was never weary of contemplating. If any
such little observant boy should happen to live there now, he-
would have something further to contemplate, to wit, the frequent
green omnibuses, for this is now the much travelled omnibus
route between the stations of King's Cross and Victoria.
Hunter Street runs into Brunswick Square, where, at No. 32,
the Punch artist John Leech lived for ten years, and suffered
many afflictions at the hands of persistent organ-grinders, who,
if they did not really shorten his life, at any rate aggravated
the illness of which he died. London is conservative in its
habits, and organ-grinders, trooping in from their neighbouring
home of Hatton Garden — even occasionally a low type of
nigger minstrels — still haunt this spot, as they do all places, for
that matter, where boarding-houses congregate. The regular
attendance of what is termed a " piano-organ " always denotes a
boarding-house; the louder its screech the better, for the boarder
seems fond of noise. His mode of life is peculiar and unique.
He will sit on the balcony smoking, or eat his dinner with
his friends almost in public; it is all the same to him. Such
sign-manuals betray the "select boarding establishment" al-
most as much as does the row of five ornate cracked glazed pi »ts,
yellow and blue alternately, that adorn its lower windows ; in-
to quote Dickens : "the meat-safe looking blinds in the parlour
windows, blue and gold curtains in the drawing-room, and
spring roller blinds all the way up." Adjoining Brunswick
Square on the west is Great Coram Street, where (at No. 13),
Thackeray lived when first married, and wrote his Paris Sketch
Book. This district has been altered lately by tall ugly workmen's
flats; but Great and Little Coram Street .still perpetuate the
memory of old Captain Thomas Coram, the benevolent sea
captain, and originator of the well known Foundling Hospital
close by in Guilford Street. This picturesque and important
institution is a kind of show place on Sundays, to which many
264 THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL chap.
visitors are taken. The chapel services, with the raised tiers
of boys and girls singing in trained choir on each side of the
big organ presented by Handel, not only please alike the eye
and ear, but have the indescribable charm of pathos. As Mrs.
Meagles in Dickens's novel {Little Dorrit) well expresses it :
"Oh dear, dear" (she sobbed), "when I saw all those children ranged
tier above tier, and appealing from the father none of them has ever known
on earth, to the great Father of us all in Heaven, I thought, does any
wretched mother ever come here, and look among those young faces, wonder-
ing which is the poor child she brought into this forlorn world, never through
its life to know her love, her kiss, her face, her voice, even her name ! "
Blake's poem pictures the scene :
" Oh, what a multitude they seemed, these flowers of London town !
Seated in companies they sit, with radiance all their own ;
The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,
Hundreds of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands."
In the early days of the hospital, first established in Hatton
Garden in 1 740, the admission of unwanted children was more
or less indiscriminate, and the mortality among them — packed
for transit from the country in some cases " five infants in a
basket " —enormous. Now it is only a " foundling " hospital in
that it receives illegitimate children, who must not be more
than a year old, and whose mothers must personally apply and
state their case. The " tokens " left with the babies in the
early days of the institution as means of future identification, are
preserved in the hospital. Some of them are very curious :
" Coins of an ancient date. ... a playing card — the ace of hearts—
with a dolorous piece of verse written upon it ; a ring with two hearts
in garnets, broken in half, and then tied together ; three or four padlocks,
intended, we suppose, as emblems of security ; a nut, an ivory fish, an
anchor, a gold locket, a lottery ticket. Sometimes a piece of brass, either
in the shape of a heart or a crescent moon, was used as a distinguishing
mark, generally engraved with some little verse or legend. Thus one has
these words upon it, 'In amore hsec sunt vitia'; another has this bit of
doggerel : —
" You have my heart ;
Though we must part."
xi PICTURESQUE BLOOMSBURY 265
By admission, after the service, to the long dining-hall, the
visitors are allowed to see the children's temporal, as well as
their spiritual, wants well attended to. Hogarth's March to
Finchley, a picture which he practically presented to the
hospital, hangs in its picture gallery, and testifies to the painter's
interest in the institution. The hospital's playing-grounds look
into Lamb's Conduit Street, where often through the railings
passers-by stand and gaze at the children in their quaint
uniform, the boys in red and brown, playing on one side of the
gravelled enclosure ; the girls, in brown frocks with white caps,
tuckers, and aprons, on the other. In Mecklenburgh Square,
which adjoins the hospital on the east, — the most curiously
secluded square, surely, in all London, — lived George Augustus
Sala, the well-known journalist, whose house was a perfect
museum of curiosities and works of art. "Highly respectable
but not at all fashionable," is the cruel sentence pronounced
both upon this square and its neighbour Brunswick Square.
The broken-nosed statue of the girl with a pitcher, that stands
opposite the big iron gates of the Foundling Hospital (at the
opening of Lamb's Conduit Street), shows how much less
reverently inclined the youth of London are to art, than the
Florentine.
This, on a day of atmospheric charm, a day haloed by blue
depths of mist, is, to the chastened eye of the constant
Londoner, one of Bloomsbury's prettiest spots, but others
there are as charming ; for instance, the view from Tavistock
Square, of the tower of New St. Pancras Church, that tower
imitated from the Athenian "Tower of the Winds," white
against a blue sky; or, more mysteriouSj the greal towers of St.
Pancras Station, as tiny loom up blackly, like some mediaeval
fortress, against a lurid twilight.
Lamb's Conduit Street has many interesting curio shops :
Hindoo idols, yellow dragons, and the like, glar< in quite
human fashion at the passer Uy from behind the grimy shop
panes; and books and curios, combined, form the main
266 SECOND-HAND BOOK SHOPS chap.
stock-in-trade of the four quaint diverging alleys of the neigh-
bouring Red Lion Square, already mentioned. It is a great
mistake, however, to imagine that because a shop is dirty and
tumble-down, its wares will necessarily be cheap. Though
Bloomsbury shops may be slightly cheaper than those of Soho
and Wardour Street, yet here, too, the engaging and generally
picturesque old dealer has, in the case of old china, a keen eye
to business ; and as regards old books, that apparent disinclina-
tion to sell which is so general among second-hand book-
sellers, as to suggest that it is not without its magnetic charm
for the buyer. Some old gentlemen seem, indeed, to utilize most
of the available light of a London winter's day at the outside
counters of these dusty second-hand book emporiums. So
long do they browse, shivering and blue-nosed, in ragged " com-
forters " and very inadequate great-coats, that one is tempted
to believe the story of the old scholar who read the whole of a
long-sought classic in a winter's stolen hours at the counter.
Seldom, in these days, do the " twopenny " or " fourpenny "
boxes, that used to yield such prizes, now repay the book-hunter.
Old school books, old guide books, and old sermons, " the
snows of yester-year," now mainly fill them. And, indeed,
with such a mine of fiction as Mudie's close by, where kind
gentlemen recommend appropriate reading to timorous old
ladies, or, better still, with such privileges as may be obtained
in the neighbouring Reading Room of the British Museum,
practically " for the mere asking," it is a strange taste to prefer
to stand and shiver at a dingy book-counter. Once inside the
sacred portals of the Reading Room (the stranger having satis-
fied the Cerberus at the wicket gate that he or she is "over
twenty-one," a point on which there is not generally, as regards
the Reading Room clientele, much doubt), a warm atmosphere,
a comfortable seat, and a luxurious leather desk await
the jaded wayfarer ; with, further, polite attendants in the
innermost circle to assist, if necessary, his researches; and,
should he be hungry, a further possibility of a cheap lunch
XI
AT THE LIBRARY
267
of sausage and mashed potato flanked by zoological and
geological buns in the refreshment room, a locality now
*yfc
Mudie's.
somewhat unkindly sandwiched between ('.nek heroes and
Egyptian gods.
268 MUSEUM HABITUES . chap.
But such mundane things as sausages are, primarily, far from
the thoughts of the devotee of learning. Entering first the vast
Dome of Knowledge, — where, as in St. Paul's, the blue mist and
fog of London seem to hang, and where, underfoot, floor-cloth
deadens all sound, — a certain solemnity impresses the visitor, a
sense, almost, of being in another world. As, indeed, in some
respects he is ; for the denizens of the British Museum Read-
ing Room are, mainly, a race apart and to themselves. They
and their ways, " their tricks and their manners," form an
interesting study. Day after day, each one has his — or her —
special place in the long diverging galleries that, like spokes
of a wheel, emerge from the central sun of wisdom and electric
light under the dome. Nobody, it is true, may reserve seats ;
yet often custom, seconded by public feeling (and that conser-
vatism which is the birthright of every Londoner), reserves
them none the less. The girls and women are largely of the
art.-serged, fuzzy-headed type, occasionally also dowdy and
sallow, with that dust-ingrained complexion so peculiar to
Bloomsbury ; the men are generally, if young, badly tailored
and long-haired ; and, if old, irascible, snuffy and umvashed.
Was it perchance of any of these that Thomas Carlyle was
thinking when he wrote the following characteristic diatribe? —
"There arc several persons in a state of imbecility who come to read in
the British Museum. I have been informed that there are several in that
state who are sent there by their friends to pass away their time. I
remember there was one gentleman who used lo blow his nose very loudly
every half-hour. I inquired who he was, and I was informed that he was a
mad person sent there by his friends ; he made extracts out of books, and
puddled away his time there."
Woe betide the novice whose evil star leads him to one of
these gentlemen's special haunts ! Of course there are a few
smart visitors and a modicum of mere " fribblers " (some years
ago, indeed, so many damsels repaired to the reading-room to
skim recent novels, that a rule was passed forbidding the issue
of any recent work of fiction), but the dowdy, plodding type
xi OLD MONTAGUE HOUSE 269
forms the vast majority. In many cases the toilers are simply
slaves sent by some absentee literary taskmaster to ferret out
knotty points, or to look up references. Sometimes they are
clergymen in search of detail for sermons ; sometimes they are
learned Casaubons or untiring Jellybys working on their own
account. ... A kind Government provides pens, ink, often
tracing paper, and any amount of civility and trouble, free.
It has been said unkindly by West-Enders, jealous of such
liberality, that Bloomsbury alone should be taxed for the British
Museum ; such an injustice, however, has not, so far, been
perpetrated ! —
That the British Museum is gradually absorbing all the
houses near it, and enlarging its boundaries into a large square,
is evident. The whole eastern side of Bedford Square, and
part of the western side of Russell Square, will soon be amal-
gamated into the vast building. The little lions, those orna-
ments on the old outer railings, about whose disappearance
such an outcry was raised some years back, have been adapted
to the internal use of the Museum, and higher, stronger, more
important railings substituted on the outside in their place.
The large pediment of the portico, imitated — at how long an
interval! — from the Greek model, is, like the statues in the
squares, filled with nesting birds, and is generally also white
with the pigeons' plumage. And, where this enormous building
now stands, was originally Old Montague House, the "stately
and ample ancient palace," adorned by Verrio and built in the
"French pavilion" way, when, practically, all the rest of
Bloomsbury was open country. Where the big galleries now
extend were corridors adorned by fresco paintings : and where
the halls now given up to statues and treasures stand, W(
rooms full of light, music, and dancing.
lint I am wandering from the present. Vet, in the early
winter twilight of the British Museum galleries, it is eas) foi
vagrant fancies, unbidden, to arise. The vast dim galleries
raise, indeed, -hosts and visions of a brilliant past, and confer
2 7o MUSEUM FANCIES chap.
almost humanity on their marble tenants, gigantic figures
shining through the gloom. The Greek gods of the heroic age,
—the creatures "moulded in colossal calm,"— we can almost
imagine the minds who inspired, the workmen who wrought,
the sculptors who fashioned, the temples that contained them.
The stream of life still flows around the feet of these immortal
ones, who in their calm smiling seem to scorn the poor
passions of humanity ; in their immortality, to rise above the
feeble ebb and flow of human life. As Aurora they remain
ever youthful, while we poor mortals, like Tithonus, adore their
eternal youth and beauty, and ourselves grow old. Here, in
the dim vestibule, is just such a Grecian Urn as that which
Keats apostrophized, with its lovers whose undying youth and
unsatisfied longing he envied . . . "Ars longa, vita brevis,"
indeed ! We go, but they shall endure, — to see •" new men, new
faces, other minds " ; to have, perchance, new labels written for
them by future Dryasdusts ; to be invested with fresh attributes
by a newer school of ambitious critics. Many of them have
seen cities rise and fall ; they have survived ruin, siege, burial,
neglect ; and now at last they have come here to the same dead
level of monotony :
' Deemed they of this, those worshippers,
When, in some mythic chain of verse
'Which man shall not again rehearse,
The faces of thy ministers
Yearned pale with bitter ecstasy ?
" Greece, Egypt, Rome— did any god,
Before whose feet men knelt unshod,
Deem that in this unblest abode
Another scarce more unknown god
Should house with him " —
If these dead stones could feel, would they not lament their
departed glory ? The heroic figure of Mausolus, who, on the
pinnacle of his temple, once drove his marble car, the cynosure
of all eyes and the wonder of the world, outlined against the
xi VISIONS OF THE PAST 271
blue Aegean sky and sea, and the white-walled city ; the
gigantic bas-reliefs of the Parthenon, whose very existence here
is the "shibboleth" of aesthetic criticism, that once adorned
the ancient Athenian temple, brilliantly violet and golden
against the faint blue line of the bay and hills of Salamis ; the
famous " Harpy Tomb," torn from its sunny Lycian height,
and now glimmering dimly through London fog, guarded by
a vigilant policeman, — what former beauties of surrounding
nature do they not suggest or recall ! We forget, in gazing,
the nineteenth-century prose of Bloomsbury, the monotony
of its gloomy streets; we forget that we ourselves are "the
latest seed of time," the 'last word" of the human race, dwell-
ing, amid all the dull luxury of civilisation, in the greatest and
richest city of the world. And, leaving the gallery by way of
the vast and unique Assyrian collection of sculptures, passing
through the two colossal human-headed bulls that guard its
entrance, creatures whose excavation from the buried city of
Nineveh forms one of the most romantic of modern dis-
coveries; passing out into the misty sunshine and the living
doves before the pediment, we recall again Rossetti's wonderful
lines, with their final suggestion of a future lost and r<
discovered London — rediscovered under the dust and oblivion
of future ages :
•■ Ami as I turned, my sense half shut
Si ill saw the crowds of kerb ami nil
Go past as marshalled to the strul
Of ranks in gypsum quaintly cut.
It seemed in <>n< iame pageantry
They followed forms which had been ersl ;
To pass, till on my sight should burs!
That future of the best or worst
When some may question which was iii st,
Of London or ol Nineveh.
" For as that Bull-god on,-,' did stand
And watched the burial clouds of sand,
Till these at last without a hand
272 LONDON OR NINEVEH? ch. xi
Rose o'er his eyes, another land,
And blinded him with destiny : —
So may he stand again : till now,
In ships of unknown sail and prow,
Some tribe of the Australian plough
Bear him afar — a relic now
Of London, not of Nineveh ! "
CHAPTER XII
THEATRICAL AND FOREIGN LONDON
— "All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players. . . ." — Shakespeare.
" O gleaming lamps of London, thai gem the ( lity's crown,
What fortunes lie within you, O lights of London Town ! "
G. A'. Sims, Ballads of Babylon.
As I was travelling, one day in winter, by the familiar ami
homely 'bus whose "hue is green and gold"; not however,
the "St. John's Wood" 'bus, but that humbler and more
business-like one which runs between Victoria and King's Cross,
I observed, as we ascended Long Acre, a young woman get in
at Bow Street, followed by a "lady friend " at Drury Lane.
They were hot, untidy, and, as to their attire, muddy, be bugl< d,
and be-plushed ; also, one of them carried a large .>\m\ equally
be-bugled baby. After their first salutations, they panted for
a few minutes, out of breath ; then : —
" I've got it, duckie," cried the How Street charmer, a young
woman witli a big black fringe, and the owner of the overdressed
and pasty-faced baby.
" What have you got, dearie?" inquired her friend, who
wore a dirty blouse that had once been yellow, under a heavy
plush fur-trimmed cape (the month was Novembei >. The 'bus
sat expectant.
" 'E's made me a thief!" (The 'bus, to a man. or rather,
woman, started.) " I told im as I'd give 'im no
i
274 THE "PROFESSION" chap.
did ; I was bound to go back an' back, till 'e give me somethin'.
An' now, sweetie, I'm one er the forty thieves, at a quid a
week, and find nothin'. Ain't that somethin' ? "
A light broke in upon the wondering 'bus, and all the
auditors peacefully resumed their papers or their reflections.
Of course, it was the Drury Lane pantomime ! It was stupid
of us not to have guessed it before, for the " dearie," "duckie "
and " sweetie " ought to have suggested it at once ! Also, the
dresses of the two interlocutors, which, now that I looked at them
again, seemed to have on the beholder that peculiar effect of
combined smartness and disorder that, for some reason or
the other, distinguishes the " pro ; " the " pro," — that is, — of
the lower ranks of the theatrical profession.
The profession (as it is expressively and somewhat exclu-
sively called by its devotees) embraces, of course, as many
" sorts and conditions of men " as the equally large profession
of newspaper writers. While it still remains a cruel fact that
any one picked up " drunk and incapable " in a London
street is usually described in next day's Police News as
either a journalist or an actress, there can yet be no doubt
that the Bohemianism of the past, so far as the higher class of
the theatrical world is concerned, is going out of fashion. With
few exceptions, it is only among the lower ranks of " pros," or in
music-halls, that it largely exists. These exceptions are,
usually, to be found among those who have suddenly risen
from obscurity on the theatrical firmament, to shine as bright
" stars " for some brief period. Nowhere is success so sudden,
so overwhelming, so blinding as it is in this vast city of
London ; and nowhere, alas ! is that success so soon over,
forgotten, eclipsed. The deity of one season is forsaken in the
next ; the Ruler-of-the-Universe must perforce return to his hovel,
and, to say truth, he generally takes the change badly. London
has a short memory. But the medal has its pleasanter reverse
side. For, per contra, the young woman who has for years,
maybe, blushed unseen in Camberwell, wasted her sweetness
xii FORTUNE'S Will II
275
on seaside " fit-ups," and lorded it in third-rate provincial
companies, may, suddenly, by some unexpected turn of
Fortune's wheel, find herself elevated to the highest salaries in
the profession. From a penurious lodging in the slums,— a
daily " third return " from (lower Street, she may rise, almost
in the twinkling of an eye, to ^40 a week, a flat in Mayfair,
and a daintily-clipped poodle !
It is, of course, the fame of such sudden successes that
suffices to " turn the heads " of ignorant neophytes, who are but
too apt to forget the common maxim, that " the many fail, the
one succeeds." Thus it is that the stage has been for years
flooded with girls of all classes, all eager for distinction, and
all, alas! desiring "the palm without the dust!" Rising
actresses have, as a rule, but one ambition — to act in London,
to charm London audiences. Better, some think, a three-
line part at the Lyceum than a "juvenile lead " at Leamington ;
better twenty weeks of the Criterion than a cycle of the
Counties ; better a curtain-raiser in the Havmarkct than
Shakespeare's Rosalind at Darlington or Preston. Hence the
cruel and heart-rending " struggle-for-life " among young
actresses in this big city of London ; hence the weeks of slow-
starvation in Bloomsbury lodgings or Soho garrets, waiting for
work that never comes. It is, indeed, for them, the "dust
without the palm. - ' Disappointed hopes, shattered ambitions,
tragic suicides, — what stories could some of those bloomsbury
garrets tell !
'• ' I cruel lamps <>f London, if tears your light could drown,
Your victims' eyes would weep them, < > lights of London Town."
Theatrical managers are callous ; the) can, indeed, hardly be
otherwise, for the stage, like journalism, is scared) "a< haritable
institution " ; and the supply of stage applicants is far greater
than the demand. When a new play is to be produced at a
theatre, see how its waiting rooms and grimy Stain
daily crowded with young men and women, all eag< ). all well-
1 2
276 CLOTHES DEALERS chap.
dressed, and all anxiously trying to conceal their often desperate
need of money. For they must always be well-dressed ; no
self-respecting manager will ever think twice of a shabby or
dowdy young woman ; and dress is difficult to procure on a
starvation diet.
In certain quarters of the Strand and of Soho, " ladies " are
to be found who act as superior " old clothes " dealers, buying,
at cheap rates, the fine dresses of society butterflies from the
maids of these latter, and retailing them again at enhanced
prices to the poor neophytes in the theatrical profession. The
custom, no doubt, is advantageous to all parties concerned ; to
the fine lady, who must not be seen more than three or four
times in the same gown ; to the maid, to whom the said gowns
are " perquisites " ; and, lastly, to the poor girl who must,
coute que coute, procure her brocades, her gold lace and tinsel
for her provincial tours. (London managers usually provide
the ladies' dresses themselves ; the men of the company, on
the other hand, must provide their own.)
Though actors and actresses live, nowadays, in all parts of
London, yet, perhaps, they most incline to Bloomsbury and
Soho, which classic region they have, indeed, haunted for
centuries. In old Tudor and Shakesperean times Shoreditch
and Bankside were the favoured spots, just as, later on, Covent
Garden with its " Piazza," its Opera-houses, and its general air
of Bohemianism, became the chosen locality. The histrionic
art is no longer solely associated with Covent Garden and
Bohemianism ; indeed, the stars of the profession now belong,
rather, to the smartest " set " in society ; they often inhabit
Mayfair, — and all doors, even those of royalty, — are open to
them. But, just as the " rank and file" of the profession still
haunt the classic neighbourhood of the " Garden," so the large
bulk of actors and actresses are still to be found in the adjacent
and convenient districts of Soho and Bloomsbury. In Blooms-
bury, especially, are yearly rising innumerable red-brick flats,
abodes largely tenanted by the theatrical profession. Their
xii PANTOMIME CHILDREN 277
surroundings tell of them; " by their fruits ye shall know them."
Hair-dressing shops, florists' shops, cheap jewellery shops, all
these betray the tastes of the profession, and all these abound
in the neighbourhood.
The pantomimes, owing to the enormous number of people
they employ, as well as to the great fillip they give to certain
trades and occupations, play no inconsiderable part in the vast
web of London life. That the Pantomime, as a yearly pageant,
has so much increased in glory of recent times, is due mainly
to the efforts of the late Sir Augustus Harris, who may, indeed,
be said to have reached the high-water-mark of splendour in the
Christmas show. Many hundreds of girls and women, often
married and supporting families, are employed in the vast
choruses of the Drury-Lane Theatre, — " the Lane " as it is called
in local parlance ; many hundreds of men, scene-shifters, car-
penters, mechanics, and the like, are required for the produc-
tion of its stupendous effects. Pantomime-land is, indeed, to
those who know it, a country and a life in itself. Prom autumn
to spring its rigors last; from October to March its workers
labour. A few weeks before Christmas, the annual fever is
at its height. Not only grown people, but children too,
are pressed into the service; hence, no doubt, the pretty
"steps" daily practised, throughout the year, by Cockney girl
children before street-organs. Yet, the class whence these
children are drawn is generally a more or less superior one;
superior, at any rate, to that which one would naturally imagine.
Once, in walking down Museum Street, 1 chanced to get just
behind three nice little girls and their mother. It was a foggy,
murky evening, and they were ,\ idently taking the direct route for
Drury Pine. They were pretty children, red-cloaked, rosj
cheeked, and neatly shod, and they dipped along demurely,
holding each other's hands; their mother, neat also, if a little
threadbare, walking behind them, keeping a careful and appn
ing eye on her little flock.
" Yes, they're all engaged lor the winter at the ' Pane.' " she
278 A PANTOMIME TYRO chap.
told me, in response to my sympathetic inquiry. " And it's a great
help to me, it is, indeed ; for my husband's ill, and he doesn't
ever expect to get much better. . . . They're in the ' Flower
Ballet ' ; the eldest, Lina, she's a Pansy ; and the two younger
ones, they're both Daisies. . . . Quite a short scene ; they're
off in twenty minutes. . . . Interfere with their schooling?
nothing to speak of, and they enjoy it. Yes, I take 'em there,
and fetch 'em back, twice every day ; I can make shift to leave
my husband for that time. . . . and I don't like 'em to run the
streets alone. . . . But here we are. ..." a sudden lifting of
the fog, a sudden glare of light, and then the Pansy, the Daisies,
and their maternal attendant, were swallowed by the big jaws of
the devouring " Lane."
A lady who went on the pantomime stage, by special favour, for
one night only, for the sake of the experience, has entertainingly
related her adventures. Decked for the evening in a gay
cavalier's hat, a velvet cloak, gorgeous trappings, and " tights,"
she got through her allotted part very creditably, though with no
little nervousness. The tights specially distressed her, and she
was hardly consoled by the wardrobe-mistress's kind assurance,
that the cloak was " so very ample ! " What struck her prin-
cipally, in the whole thing, was the good humour and high
spirits of the ladies of the chorus and ballet, who all of them
joked and laughed incessantly, called each other by pet names,
and seemed, like children, to know no care or trouble in the
world. For the moment they enjoyed, or appeared to enjoy,
the whole thing, and yet some of these very girls were, she knew,
poor married women whose lives were filled with domestic cares.
These regular winter engagements must, indeed, have been
welcome, for their earnings averaged from 25X. to 30s. a week for
six evening performances, with extra pay for the daily matinees.
The pantomime is, however, hardly good to count on as a
living, being, after all, but intermittent ; the rank-and-file of the
people engaged in the pantomime business have therefore often
other avocations, and are not all full-blown "pros" with ambitions
xn STAGE REHEARSALS 279
and yearnings. Not for such as these are the cruel disappoint-
ments, the insulting slights, the heart-rending procrastinations
that break the spirit of so many young men and maidens in
the " profession." If some of these could, indeed, know all
that was in store for them, would they so gaily have embraced
the theatrical career? It is a pity that they cannot be first
disillusioned by a year's apprenticeship ; yet even that might be
of no avail, for when once they have experienced the magic
glamour of the footlights, there is, indeed, little hope: of
return. Yet, to the outsider, who has never felt this glamour,
there seems to be but little attraction about even a London
stage rehearsal. The theatre is usually dark, and always dirty ;
the actors, especially those in secondary parts, seem but little
impressed or interested ; dressed, too, in their ordinary clothes,
they look foolish, and their fine sentiments seem out of place.
Even the protagonists are a trifle chilly ; when Juliet or her
next-of-kin unromantically munches sandwiches, seated on a
dusty box in the wings ; when Romeo, or his more modnn
prototype, uses language more convincing than elegant ; and
when both are addressed with almost painful familiarity by
the dirty " call-boy," the glamour of the whole thing is apt, so far
as the spectator is concerned, to be somewhat dispelled.
Then, the manager is peremptory ; the unhappy author quivers
with emotion — and generally also with cold — in the stalls; people
have a decided tendency to lose their tempers, and the
onlooker is reduced to wonder dumbly,— -whether things can
possibly "pull themselves together" for the imminent "first
night," — and how in tin' world the dingy, draughty theatre can
conceivably transform itself into the home of glory, wealth, and
light that the favoured audience of tin- "premiere" know.
These things are certainly an experience.
"Good society," says M. Taine (in his Notes on England),
"does not go t<> the theatres, with the exception of die two
opera houses, which are the exotic and hot-house plants "I
luxury, and in which the prices of admission are enormous, and
28o "FIRST NIGHTS" chap.
evening dress is imperative. As to the others, the audience is
recruited from among the lower middle class." This, although
it contains a small element of truth, is, nevertheless, a manifest
exaggeration. For smart society is a great supporter of the drama,
and even royalty, whose attendance in the theatre is always an-
nounced beforehand by the supply of white silk programmes in
the royal box, occasionally vouchsafes its presence. Especially
is there always a great furore over the procuring of " first night "
seats at the best London theatres. So far, indeed, as the
audience of the stalls is concerned, the " first-nighters " are,
more or less, always the same people ; influential magnates,
editors, aristocratic "patrons of the drama," and a certain
proportion of smart London people, those of whom it has
come to be known that they make a point of attending every
'• first night " of any distinction. Sometimes invitations are
issued ; sometimes, it is a case of making early applica-
tion. The entree to certain first-nights is a kind of social
distinction. Often a supper party is given after the perform-
ance, on the cleared stage ; at such gatherings a spirit of
geniality prevails, and smart society does obeisance generally
to the bright particular stars of the drama. With the
more plebeian pit and gallery it is otherwise. These un-
reservedly express their feelings, and, after first representa-
tions, voice the sentiments of the multitude. These, if the
curtain be at all belated in rising, raise the house by din
and hubbub ; the noise that they make, indeed, is apt to
scare the uninitiated ; it resembles a revolution on a small
scale. The pit and gallery are very intent on getting their money's
worth ; for they always pay for their seats, and pay, not only in
coin of the realm, but in sad and weary hours of waiting in
the cold, drizzled street. Who has not noticed, on days of
bright spring weather and dreary autumn alike, a long crowd
of patient men and women waiting uncomplainingly in a long
file till the theatre doors should open and admit them ? At
the Lyceum, the file, — and this not only on first nights,— extends
XII
THE GALLERY
281
far round the corner into the Strand. At the Haymarket Theatre,
or the newer Her Majesty's, — it reaches far up towards Picca-
,9Jf
The "Gods:
dilly Circus. Sometimi - .1 few among the patient crowd have
provided themselves with campstools ; sometimes, too, kindly
managers or thoughtful ladies like Miss Ellen ferrysendoul five
282 THE MATINEE HAT
CHAP.
o'clock tea to the suffering humanity nearest to the theatre doors ;
and, certainly, the " cup that cheers " must prove exceptionally
cheering when one has waited for it in the chilly street ever
since 9 a.m. ! For very important first-night performances,
nine, or at latest 10 a.m. is essential if the playgoer would
make at all sure of the front row. It is a long day's picnic ; yet
the crowd remains ever amiable and stoical. One may,
indeed, learn not a little of philosophy and bonhomie from
that motley crew, who, — whether they be ladies from the suburbs,
calmly eating sandwiches,— superior artisans taking " a day off,"
— city clerks, — shop-girls, — or dressmakers' apprentices come to
study the prevailing modes, — are all uniformly cheerful. From
hour to hour homely jest and rough witticism enliven the day's
tedium, and testify to the unfailing good temper and love of
fair play of London crowds.
The pit is a sacred institution of London. We may, if we
choose, sympathise with the long hours of waiting pit-door
crowds, but woe betide him who would thoughtlessly attempt
to do away with the system. One manager, indeed, did
recently attempt this ; but a riot nearly supervening, he had
perforce to take refuge in a judicious compromise. The
Londoner is ever conservative in his tastes as well as in his
politics. Ladies are allowed to wear their headgear in the
pit ; and the large erections they sometimes don testify more to
their vanity than to their philanthropy. One sometimes hears
a faint protest against such exaggerated types of millinery : " I
'ope I sha'n't 'ave to sit be'ind that 'at," a depressed pittite has
been heard to murmur when entering the theatre just after a
" lydy " with one of these alarming concoctions.
Where are the tastes of " the people " with regard to plays ? It
is difficult to generalize. The gallery love melodrama ; they
also like a good deal of moral sentiment, which they will often
loudly approve ; - to the extent, sometimes, of even offering
advice on the situation to the actors. This is why the
Message from Mars, a morality taken straight from Dickens,
xii POPULAR TASTES 283
went so directly home to "the great heart of the British
people." M. Taine complains that the English have no
national comedy ; that all their comedies are adapted from the
French ; " is it," he asks, " because of English reserve ? " But,
though the pit and gallery are generally serious, they are yet
not serious enough for Ibsen ; " I consider that there piece
blasphemious," a disgusted artisan once said to me of the
Master-Builder ; "that 'ere shillin' I spent on it was clean
thrown away ; 1 went out arter the fust act." The majority of
young men and maidens love comic opera, which seems, indeed,
to be one of the paying " lines " in the London of to-dav.
Music-halls flourish ; it is an eloquent sign of the times that
the large and ornate " Palace Theatre," — opened, with such a
flourish of trumpets, a few years ago as the "New English
Opera House," and known far and wide by its flashes of
brilliant search-light, — should now have descended to a "variety"
show. The great middle-class supports Shakespeare and the
"legitimate" drama : shop-girls, and dressmakers' apprentices,
like the " society " plays of the St. James's and kindred theatres,
because they offer some opportunity for seeing the ways of
that "high-life" from which they are themselves excluded.
Millinery and costume are most important factors in the
modern theatre; I know of many well-to-do girls who never
think of buying their season's hats and gowns till they have
first seen them on Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Mis. Tree, or Miss
AYinifrcd Emery. And The Price of Pe'ace, a feeble, but
immensely successful Drury Lane melodrama, owed its success
to the fact that it brought before the eyes of the proletariat, in
a variety of well constructed scenes, all the select haunts and
fashions of the great world : Tea on the Terrace : a Wedding
in Westminster Abbey : a Debate in the House of Commons ;
a Hall in Park Line. &C, &C. Such pieces arc, of course, not
the only favourites ; good comedies arc very popular, and
English people, despite M. Taine, still like to laugh. Yet, take
it all round, "Good Society," with, preferably, a judicious
284 THE STAGE DOOR chap.
admixture of melodrama and sentiment, is the really paying
thing with the pit and gallery.
If the murky London daylight in the theatre shows a mourn-
ful change from its nocturnal glories, even sadder is the contrast
between the splendid entrance hall, or lobby, blazingwith welcome
lights, and the dark, grimy, and generally wretched " stage-door,"
which opens, mostly, into some gloomy back-street, and seems,
to the uninitiated at least, to have no connection at all with the
theatre. Here, the manners of the stage acolytes are altogether
to match with the outward show, and there would appear to exist
some traditional and transmitted dislike to soap-and-water.
Strange stories some of these stage doors could tell ! The stage
door of the " Adelphi," for instance, where poor William Terriss
was brutally murdered by the criminal lunatic whom he had be-
friended, — does it not still give to its old locality a suggestion of
blood and tears ? Are not the vicissitudes, too, of theatres as
striking and as dramatic in their way as those of other historic
houses ? Now they are great and well-known ; then disaster
overtakes them, and their very names, for years, are forgotten, — ■
till at last they go the way of old bricks and mortar. In their
final dirt and disgrace they hardly recall the scenes of their former
triumphs. One might, indeed, become superstitious when one
sees how Fortune seems to befriend certain theatres, and as per-
sistently to frown on others. As for some old playhouses, —
their day once over, their place knows them no more. . . .
The old Prince of Wales's Theatre, for instance, in Tottenham
Street, so famous in the early triumphs of the Bancrofts and
Kendals, — who recalls it in its present ruin and discomfiture?
The Salvation Army has lately taken pity on it ; but apparently
its hour has now come, and with its adjacent tenement-houses
in Pitt Street, where its green-rooms were, it lies at the
mercy of fate and the hammer.
The London theatres are nearly all of them in crowded
situations, and often so devious and unexpected are the ways
by which they are reached that if the city were at some distant
xii PICCADILLY 285
age dug out from oblivion like that of Pompeii, the results
might be even more puzzling to the antiquary. The stalls,
for instance, of the Criterion Theatre are deep underground,
reached by myriad carpeted stairs ; even the upper circles are-
well below the street. And what a strange and indecipherable
" crypto-porticus " would the "Twopenny Tube " prove to some
future Middleton of the ages ? In central parts, London,
indeed, seems a city built in several superimposed layers ;
layers, too, not successive, but coeval.
The life of London, always intense, burns at its highest
pressure in and near Piccadilly Circus, and a restless activity
reigns here all through the long hours of day and night.
For this is, so to speak, one of the main doorways of the
immense ant-heap ; like ants, too, people seem to swarm inces-
santly, to go and come, in inconsequent but feverishly active
sequence. Here is a blaze of light, a perpetual throng of
"London's gondola," the hansom-cab, a confused medley of
many sounds, that ceases not, but fades only after midnight :
when the "heart of London," that never sleeps, subsides in
the early hours of the morning into a dulled and general hum.
At Piccadilly, the foreign element from Leicester Square
and Soho meets the native one. The French, Italian, and
German tongues are, indeed, frequently heard all over London ;
but in the neighbourhood of Leicester Square, the visitor
really might, especially on a sunny fogless day, imagine himself
in Paris or Berlin. The shops have foreign nanus ; " Blanchis-
serieFine" alternates with "Deutsche Droguenhandlung " or
"Vino Scelto " ; French waiters and Italian cooks stand,
white-capped and white aproned, smilingly at tin doors of then
respective restaurants ; cheap and fair hostelries lor wandering
foreigners, with beds as low in price as two shillings per night,
rise towering on every side. It is said that the French colony,
in particular, of Leicester Square and Soho owes its origin to the
early French refugees who, at various stormy periods, h.
sought shelter here from the internal dissensions of their own
286 THE ETHICS OF HAIR-DRESSING chap.
country. It has been said that, as far north as Seven Dials,
the organ-grinders still find the " Marseillaise " the most
lucrative tune to play ; and this may well be so, though I
myself have generally found, at least among the rising genera-
tion, the latest music-hall song or dance to be in the ascendant.
There is another subject I would fain touch on here, at the
risk even of irrelevance ; it refers to the Soho style of coiffure.
That there is a special fashion in ladies' hair-dressing peculiar
to every district in London, is a fact which every passing visitor
must soon recognize ; thus, while in Clerkenwell model-
lodging-houses it is generally (except for one short hour or two
on Sundays), — Hinde's curlers, — in Seven Dials it is mostly of
the " touzled " order, and in the West End of the classic " New
Greek style." Here, in Leicester Square, it has a partly-French,
partly-theatrical air, being generally parted in the middle, and
brought, in smooth, dark, exaggerated Early Victorian loops,
well over the ears. But details are more important than people
imagine. "Nothing," says M. Gabriel Mourey, "so reveals a
woman's psychology as her way of doing her hair." And the
observant Frenchman goes on to draw certain quaint inferences
from the English girl's style of coiffure, and her neatly braided
tresses, careless of such aids to beauty as stray curls or " meches
folles ; " a severe style that, according to this writer, "forms a rude
contrast to the spiritual charm of her face, her Burne-Jonesian
refinement of feature." . . As to the manner of hair-dressing
betraying the personality, " nothing," he adds paradoxically,
" could be more true of the typical Englishwoman, who never of
her own free will, allows you to see a fraction of her real self, but
draws into her shell of reserve with the same jealous reclusive-
ness that makes her bind her hair in such dull, tight, regular
uniformity."
M. Mourey is certainly more polite to us than was M. Taine,
who said unkindly that Englishwomen had big feet, as large as
those of watermen, "and gait and boots in keeping"; also,
that " it is impossible to train one's self to endure their long
xii CHEAP RESTAURANTS 287
projecting teeth ; " the effect, he supposes, of a carnivorous
diet! "The point of view," again, not merely Anglophobia !
The red-whiskered Englishman dressed in blatant checks ; —
his long-toothed gaunt spouse, — how long will these ridiculous
fictions haunt the French mind ? But even M. Taine would
have been happy in Soho. Here, even the Englishwoman is
less aggressively English ; indeed, she blends, in indescribable
medley, the qualities both of the Belle of New York and of the
Parisian boulevards ! Soho, however, is remarkable for other
things than mere hairdressing. For the gastronomic talent
that the French so naturally possess causes this whole district,
including the neighbouring Covent Garden, to be noted, not
only for many second-class "eating houses," but also for good
and moderately priced places to dine. The vast reform in this
respect that has taken place of late years all over London
probably owes not a little to these early pioneers in the art.
With the multiplication of cheap and good restaurants has
grown in equal ratio the importation of Swiss and Italian
waiters. These, every year, emigrate from their romantic
valleys to our foggy shores, and work out their three, four, or
five years in an alien land, partly for the sake of better wages,
partly for that of learning the English language — an accomplish
ment without which no foreign waiter is now considered fully
equipped. With unsparing thrift, they save the greater part oi
their wages; and they acquire the languag* as quickly as they
can ; with these two possessions they return to their own
country, where they may either at once demand a higher salary,
— or, if already well-to-do, buy a small holding and "settle
down." When they fust arrive in London, they are generally
very young men, who come in faith and hope to the rumoured
"golden land " of England, leaving their lovely native valley and
tluir romantic homesteads with no less 1 ourage and resolution
than, in mediaeval times, would have drawn them forth, at a
mercenary's wage, to the bloody held of war. The late Mr. J. A.
Symonds, whose sympathies with, and knowledge of, the Swi
288 SWISS WAITERS chap.
Italian waiter are well known, has, he tells us, often wondered
why the Alpine peasant goes through such cruel and comfortless
expatriation. " The answer," he says, " is very simple :
" He wants to make money, and has the most resolute intention, after
making it, to settle down at home and live the pleasant life of his fore-
fathers in the mountains. In olden days he would have fought on any and
every battlefield of Europe to get cash. But European history has turned
over a new leaf. ' Tempora niutantur et nos mutamur in illis,' and the
Swiss make more by Fremdenindusirie than they could do by foreign
military service in this age."
Landing in London with a small and hardly-saved pittance
in their pockets, these lads usually live, as cheaply as may be,
in and about Soho and Covent Garden, until such time as they
can obtain employment. Switzerland, and especially Canton
Ticino, furnishes a large part of the London waiters ; yet all Italy,
too, contributes her share. Even from one of the lonely hill-
towns of the Apennines, three elegant youths, faultlessly attired,
— servants of the inn, but whom I had imagined from their
superior manners to be resident aristocrats, — once begged me to
take them into my service, as footmen, cooks, knife-and-boot-boys,
anything ; " anything, madame, just to get a footing in England."
Though the desirability of these as servants in private houses
might, perhaps, be doubtful, — yet it is certain that in restaurants
or hotels, - in quickness and in reliability, — the Swiss or Italian
waiter far excels the English one. He rarely loses his temper.
I have seen one waiting, single-handed, upon at least fifty im-
patient diners, and contenting every one. We can teach them
very little. Yet they like to learn of us all they can. " I have
learned a few things in England," the son and waiter in a little
Swiss inn once said to me ; a pleasant, rosy-cheeked youth, just
over twenty, recently returned from a two years' service in London
to the parental hostelry in a lonely, narrow valley. " Yes, I
have learned something very fine." And he drew my attention to
the quaint white-washed walls of the inn, made hideous by
Japanese fans and cheap paper rosettes, &c.
xii THE "WANDERLUST" 289
"You are English?" he went on, with a pleased smile ; "ah,
then, you know my place in London, Scott's?"
(By "Scott's," he designated, as it turned out, the oyster bar
at the top of the Haymarket, which locality he apparently con-
sidered to represent the sum and total of " smart " London life.)
"Ah, 1 shall do this place up in fine style," he said, looking
contemptuously round him at the modest but picturesque
paternal inn. " Why, you will hardly know it again next year !
I shall have the sallc-a-manger pypered — (he had learned the
cockney dialect well), " pypered with bunches of fruit, flowers,
monkeys — all in the English manner — ah ! you will see ! I
shall wake them all up ! "
And the " salle-a-manger," with its old black panelled walls,
was so much prettier as it was !
To be a waiter, however, even an " oyster -bar " waiter, is a
superior position to that of a mere porter ; and to be porters,
"boots," hotel drudges of any and every description, "just to
get a footing," is the primary aim of these sturdy aliens. Not
only money and future advantage, but also what is known as
the " Wanderlust," is, perhaps, yet another factor in the impulse
that drives them from their homes. However this maybe,
rarely do they stay in the land of their bondage beyond the
allotted time; still more rarely do they "colonize" in our
sense of the word: but have ever before them, through all
their struggles and hardships, the thought of the peaceful
mountain home and honest competency that shall be theirs in
middle age. . . Poor lads! when I see you, worn and shabby,
waiting, perhaps, in that long, pitiful black line of seedy appli-
cants, now hopeful, now despairing of engagement, outside the
big London restaurants, I confess to a tightness in my throat.
thinking how, like < lalverlej 's little Savoyard of I [atti m < larden :
'■ Far from England, in the sunny
South, where Anio leaps in foam,
Then wasl bred, till lack of mom
Drew lh.ee from thy vine-clad hi n
290 THE BROTHERS GATTI chap.
Surely the traveller who returns, yearly, from his pleasant
tour in Alpine valleys, might always, here in foggy London,
yield to the motive that prompts him, after a well-served dinner,
to "give to the poor devil " an extra sixpence, reflecting, mean-
while, that he is thereby hastening the happy, far-off time when
that " poor devil," enriched by years of painful toil and honest
endeavour, may return to his valley, his home, his boyhood's
love perhaps, and his own little patch of tillage.
The great monument of the " Fremden-Industrie " in
London, as well as the focus and centre of the Swiss-Italian
immigrants, is, of course, the establishment known as " Gatti's."
Everyone knows the "Adelaide Gallery," and the palatial,
velvet-cushioned restaurant that fronts the Strand. What were
the beginnings of this great business ? The brothers Agostino
and Stefano Gatti, chocolate-makers, ice-cream princes,
theatrical managers, — who has not heard of them from time
immemorial ? — has not their fame, in melodrama no less than in
meringues, been almost a household word? In 1868, already
they were naturalized as Englishmen ; yet Mr. Agostino Gatti,
native of Ticino, was none the less elected as a representative
to the supreme Swiss Federal Assembly. The two brothers
began modestly, in a small way ; they managed everything
themselves ; standing, daily, shirt-sleeved, at their desk at
receipt of custom, they were familiar figures of the past. They
succeeded on the principle of Dickens's honest grocer, Mr.
Barton, who made it his boast that " he was never above his
business, and he hoped his business would never be above
him ! " The " Maison Gatti," the brothers' private house,
stands in dignified Bedford Square ; and the firm of Gatti, the
heads of which are still to be seen in their shops, has doubtless
amassed a large fortune. That fortune was well deserved ;
for the Gattis were among the pioneers in the reforming of
restaurants.
"There is no more curious sight in London," writes the chronicler of
the Gattis, " than the Adelaide Gallery between five and seven o'clock in
XII
THE ICE-CREAM TRADE
201
the evening. From the door which opens into the street which runs by
the graveyard of St. .Martin's Church, to the handsome frontage which
opens into the Strand, every table is occupie 1 by a remarkable assemblage
of men, women, and children. The husband brings his wife, the mother
/, ,•-, ream Bat
Wrings her children, the lover Wrings his sweetheart, and the Church, the
stage, the press each send- its representatives. Tragedies and comedies
have been enacted ovei those marble-topped tables which, if the) were
related, would make the fortune ofa thousand playwrights."
The icecream track', however, with which the brothei i
292 THE ITALIAN COLONY chap.
largely identified themselves, is carried on, on inferior lines,
to-day in Hatton Garden, Little Saffron Hill, and Clerkenwell.
Here is the poorer Italian colony ; organ-grinders, ice-cream-
barrow-men, " hokey-pokey " sellers, and their like. Here,
among a population of more or less honest toilers, congregate
the waifs and strays of civilisation, people who, owing perhaps
to their peripatetic and uncertain trade, could hardly help
being loafers, even were they not mainly Neapolitans to boot :
a difficult word, which has been corrupted by the low English
in the vicinity, into first " Nappleton " and then simply
" Appleton." City improvements have, however, ousted the
chief Neapolitan colony from Great and Little Saffron Hills ;
and Eyre Street Hill, with its adjacent slums and alleys, is
now their peculiar haunt. In the worst byways, and after
dark, this is said to be a dangerous quarter to visit,
Neapolitans being always proverbially ready with the knife. . .
Nevertheless, on fine spring days, it is not unpicturesque ;
the gay dresses of the women, the groups of handsome,
dark-eyed youths, and the merry, brightly-clad children,
lending almost an Italian charm to the scene. And the
charming, curly-haired boys — the pretty and pathetic Savoyard,
with his beloved monkey in a red coat — who does not know
them ? The men have other resources, as well as ice-creams
and street-organs. Some of them hire themselves out as
artists'-models to the big studios, a business which is well paid,
and to which the picturesque Italian beauty well lends itself.
Some, more skilled, are perhaps modellers of stucco images,
which are hawked about the streets by others ; some are
knife-grinders, who go about with a wheel, and make, it is
said, the best earnings of all. In the summer these poor
exotics from the land of the sun manage to live, no doubt,
pretty tolerably ; in the winter, surely not even the chestnut-
roasting apparatus that they hawk from street to street can
suffice to keep them warm ! They generally live in human
rabbit warrens, under the patronage of a "padrone," a sort
XII
STURDY ALIENS
J 93
of modified and amiable slave-dealer, who imports them from
their native land, and pockets, as price, a share of their earn-
'flic Organ-grinder.
ings. They live poorly and frugally; and thos< ol us who
know the long street ol Portici, will not, in the fouler air oi
294 EYRE STREET HILL chap.
London, expect much from their homes in the way of cleanli-
ness. Yet the Italian women who, with their " men " and
their babies, accompany the street organs, are generally trim
and smiling, and, so far as foot-gear and general neatness of
appearance is concerned — are immeasurably the superiors of
their English slum-sisters.
The Italian woman seems, indeed, — in London, at any rate,
— always vastly superior to the Italian man. She is religious ;
she goes, as a rule, regularly to her " Chiesa Cattolica." She
is cleaner, smarter, pleasanter ; she does most of the work ;
she often does the principal part of the organ-pushing — ■
while her loafing partner slouches along by her side, yearning,
doubtless, for his " polenta " and his midday siesta. She
helps — indeed, her entire family, down to the babies, help — in
the matutinal manufacture of the mysterious " hokey-pokey,"
whence, in the early morning hours, her " court " is a perfect
babel of chatter and noise, and Eyre Street Hill becomes a
strange sight for the inexperienced Londonner. Not only
Neapolitans, but Sicilians, Tuscans, Venetians, are represented ;
indeed, the dialects and the slang used are so unlike, that the
different circles of this Italian colony often themselves fail to
understand one another. In the evenings, and generally on
their doorsteps, the men play " mora," and gamble ; while the
women, for their part, patch clothes, chatter, and gesticulate
in true native fashion. Later, the lord of creation, leaving his
lady at home, goes off to the " Club Vesuvio " or to the " Club
Garibaldi," where dancing goes on to a tune struck up by a
fiddler, and the lowest type of London girls, befeathered,
shawled, and dishevelled in true East-End fashion, dance with
dirty and brigand-like Italian men. It is a strange life, and
stranger still is the manner in which various types and nation-
alities have thus for generations "squatted down" in special
districts of the metropolis, and filled them with their traditions,
their atmosphere, their personality.
Many other colonies are to be seen in London ; it is the
xii THE ORIENTALS 295
most polyglot of cities. For those interested in such matters,
nothing would give a better idea of the many-sided life of the
metropolis than to take a long Sunday walk through its various
districts. To quote the words of a recent writer :
"Sunday is, above all days, the clay for such excursions, because 1
are none of the distractions of every-day life, or the bustle of business
affairs. It is on Sunday you can see how polyglot London is, how the
gregarious foreigners, herding together, occupy whole districts, living their
own life, following the manners and customs of their own country, enjoying
their own forms of religion, amusement, and business."
The Yiddish colony of Whitechapel, the Jewish Ghetto;
the Asiatic colony in Poplar and the Dock neighbourhood
generally ; these and others display all the picturesqueness,
the local colour, the kaleidoscopic life that many travellers go
to distant lands to experience. In London, all peoples, and
all classes, have their traditional strongholds, which are known
and labelled. Thus, Bayswater, where the "high life"
among the Asiatic colonists makes its home, is generally
spoken of by foreigners as " Asia Minor." Here live the
rich and cultured Orientals, those who have come over for
pleasure, business, trade, or education ; as for their poorer
brethren, tiny live out in Poplar, Shadwell, or anywhere in
the near vicinity of the East India Docks.
These Asiatics of the East End are a strange and motle)
crew; brought in by every steamer, every heavily-cargoed
ship from the East, every trader "dropping down with costly
bales." On the largest ships, say those of the P. and ' I
Company, vessels of some 7,000 tons, there will be perhaps
some 120 Orientals on board, and, with such contingents
continually arriving, there is, naturally, in the East End, a
large foreign, though ever-shifting, population. Curious are
the corruptions of Indian words one hears, and strange ind
are the sights and sounds among Malays, Chinese, and
Indians. The famous opium dens of the East End, turned
to such dramatic account not only in Dickens's Edwin
296 OPIUM DENS chap.
Drood, but also, at a later day, in the Sherlock Holmes
sequence of stones, are now much restricted in their horrors
by police supervision. They used to be devils' haunts, famed
for robbery and vice — traps set to catch the unwary Asiatic ; but
missionary work, combined with the clearances made by the East
London Railway, has effected great improvement in the opium
den of to-day. In the words of the writer before-mentioned :
" It looks like a private house, and no noise is permitted, for it is
necessary to keep it as private as possible to prevent police interference. For
they are invariably gambling dens also, and the Asiatic who goes to gamble
still burns his joss-stick before the idol set up inside, in order to propitiate
his deity and get good luck. Though repellant in appearance, there is a
certain picturesqueness about the interior of these places. The shrine
stands just inside the door, and there is a pungent odour from the ever-
burning incense, while vases of artificial flowers, mingling among such
queer votive offerings as biscuits and cups of tea, give it a strange appear-
ance. The Canton matting, which is largely used in the rooms, gives a
little local colour, and the personnel of the place is of a decided polyglot
order. You may possibly see one or two men lying about sleeping off
the results of their opium debauch : but gambling seems to be the main
feature."
Nevertheless, even in these " reformed " dens, the home-
coming sailor, or the imprudent Lascar, may find himself
tempted to his undoing and " cleaned out" of all his hard-won
earnings. Or he may possibly be " knifed," and, if the
criminal escape, in this region of obscure and unknown "by-
ways," even the experienced police may be hard set to find
him. It is, indeed, a true "Vanity Fair," this East End of
London, for poor Christian and Faithful, fresh from the sea
and all its dangers.
The Yiddish colony is also a city by itself. The Jews who
foregather in Whitechapel are mostly of Polish, Russian, or
German extraction, and their talk, to unused ears, sounds
like a strange German lingo, unpleasantly whined through the
nose. Indeed, it closely resembles German ; the word
" Yiddish " itself being but a corruption of the German
"Jiidisch," or Jewish. These people, whose "interpreters"
xii A " HIRING-FAIR :
297
figure largely at nearly every police-court brawl in Whitechapel,
Shoreditch, and Spitalfields, may be said to be a law and a dis
pensation to themselves. They crowd, in their numbers, into
dirty tenement houses, in yet dirtier starts; streets in which
they barter, buy and sell with all the instinct and all the
indomitable energy of their race. Here are the tailors'
sweating dens, so often deplored by philanthropic " com-
missions *' ; here human toil is reduced, for the benefit of tin
"middleman," to its lowest possible price. The so-called
"Jewish slave-market," to the existence of which attention has
been called in the Press, is a strange and unpleasing custom.
Here the Jewish " slave-owner " is, more or less, in the place
of the Italian "padrone"' already referred to, in that he
imports human material, and "farms out " human labour :
"Any one who devotes a Sunday or two to visiting the open-air markets
in the Jewish quarter, will have noticed on the fringe of the markets groups
of men, sometimes with women and children. If you are under the convoy
of a Jewish acquaintance who ' knows the ropes." he will tell you that it is a
'hiring fair.' But it has a suspiciously close approximation to a slave
market."
Leases of human labour, sold, at starvation wages for the
victims, to the highest bidder, are not unnatural to a slum
Yiddish population whose whole life is spent in barter. The
Jewish colony in the East End now numbers some ^5.000
souls :
"Only recently Lord Rothschild described it as a 'new Poland,' and
said that it was the business of the nation ' first to humanise it and then
Anglicise it.' It certainl) wants humanising."
The cosmopolitanism of London tends to draw to it the
Sweepings, as well as the choice spirits, -the worst, as well as
the best, — of all other nations and climes. " Hell LS a city much
like London," said the poet Shelle) : and he spoke truth.
Views, religious and otherwise, differ largely as to what Hell
maybe; one opinion, however, max be safely hazarded ; that
it will at any rate be cosmopolitan.
$Tpl<7»ulJY
A Sale (it Christie's.
CHAPTER XIII
LONDON SHOPS AND MARKETS
"The busy Mart of London."
" Gay shops, stately palaces, bustle and breeze,
The whirring of wheels, and the murmur of trees ;
By night or by day, whether noisy or stilly,
Whatever my mood is, I love Piccadilly. " —
Locker-Lampsoni London Lyrics.
I am confident that if a million of women of all classes
could by any possibility be placed in a Palace of Truth, and
interrogated straitly as to what they liked best in all London, the
vast majority of them would answer, " The Shops." Indeed,
you may easily, and without any undue inquisitiveness, find
ch. xni SHOPS AND SHOP-GAZERS 299
this out for yourself by simply taking (in May for choice) a
morning or afternoon walk down Oxford Street or Regenl
Street. Every shop of note will have its quota of would-be
buyers, trembling on the brink of irrevocable purchase ; its
treble, nay, quadruple row of admiring females, who appear to
find this by far the most attractive mode of getting through
the day. I would go further, and say that as regards the more
persevering among them, it is difficult to imagine that they
ever have any other occupation at all.
The shops of London have wonderfully improved in quite
recent years ; not perhaps, so much in actual quality, as in
arrangement and taste. Labels with "dropsical figures" of
shillings and perfectly invisible pence have, as in I Hckens's
time, still their charm for us ; but other things have changed.
Everything could, to those who " knew," always he bought best
in London; but everything was not always displayed to the
best advantage. To dress a shop-front well was in old days
hardly considered a British trait. But "nous avons chan
tout cela." Now, even the Paris boulevard, that Paradise of
good Americans, has, except perhaps in the matter of trees and
wide streets, little to teach us. "The wealth of Ormus and of
Ind" that the shops of Regent Street and Bond Street display,
their gold embroideries and wonderfully woven silks, tending
to make a kleptomaniac out of the very elect, — these it would
he hard indeed to beat. Not Solomon in all his glory was
arrayed like one of these.
Even the critical American cousin is now beginning to
forsake Paris, and to find out the real superiority of London
shops. See how he — she, I mean helps, in her numbers, to
swell the shop-gazing crowds in Oxford Circus. Tramping
from Bloomsbury boarding houses, — or, more aristocratic, from
Northumberland Avenue hotels,— the Americans have dis-
covered, and are in a lair way to dominate, London ; the
London, that is, of July and August.
"The English," said a celebrated Frenchman once unkindly.
300 A SHOPPING LIST chap.
"are a nation of shopkeepers." However that may be, it is
certain that we are nothing if not business-like. Evidently,
the love of bargaining is inherent in the soul of the average
British female who comes up from the suburbs for a day's
shopping. She has a long, neatly-written list of her wants
and necessities, generally pinned to some part of her person,
a list with startling variations of subject, thus : " Baby's food-
warmer, Tom's cricket-bat, lay-figure for Sylvia, beetle-trap for
the kitchen, Efne's long Suede gloves, registry office for new
cook, dentist, evening wrap, chiffon boa, something neat in the
blouse line for Mamie, Aunt Maria's birthday." Poor woman !
That " something neat in the blouse line " takes her nearly
forty minutes in the finding ; and " Aunt Maria's birthday "
walks sadly into the hour for lunch, already attenuated.
Several shops, alas ! have been ransacked vainly, and the horrid
" Sign 'ere, Miss ! " that so cruelly stigmatizes, in certain cheap
shops, the recalcitrant buyer, has more than once mortified the
poor lady's sensitive ears. " Mamie," who is assisting at the
martyrdom, gets quite cross over Aunt Maria ; she succeeds,
however, in detaching herself from her inconvenient parent, and
appears, for her part, to be preferring the claims of a protege of
her own, a personage who is very particular, apparently, about
his special brand of ties. Finally, Aunt Maria's natal day is
checked off by the purchase of an aggressive china pug, large
as life, with staring eyes, which, for some occult reason, is
supposed to be " the very thing " for that lady.
What are the special qualities that constitute "a good
shopper " ? They would appear to be as follows : endurance,
patience, strength, coolness, self-control, amiability, mental
arithmetic, and, lastly, an eye to a bargain. All these cardinal
virtues are, for the average shopper, considered as generally
necessary to salvation : but yet there are other qualifications.
For instance, the intense delight that most women (and a few
men) feel in obtaining an article at is. 1 1 \d., that has once
been marked with the magic 3^. 6ld., is of distinct value in
xni POPULAR " I, INKS" 301
this connection. How many women have delightedly bought
a thing that is not of the slightest value to themselves or to
any one else, simply because it is thus reduced in price !
Hence the supreme advantage of sales— but that is another
story.
Caveat Emptor! It is the object of the seller merely to
sell ; and in his behalf it may be urged, that there is no
gauging the absurd vagaries of the public taste. I may add,
with reference to ''Aunt Maria's'' china pug, that some shops
(arguing, no doubt, from the oddly imitative ways of shopp<
and their docile, sin ep-like way of following one another's lead (,
have taken to the inauguration of strange fashions. Lately a
well-known West End emporium started that blue rat with pink
eyes, wearing a yellow riband, tied in an enormous bow round
its neck. It was an aesthetic, Burne-Jonesian cat ; indeed, it
was hardly like a cat at all; but, nevertheless, it sat in rows
in that shop-window, and the line (I believe such things are
called "lines") "took," and forthwith no home was complete
without a cat. Then some enterprising Tottenham Court
Road firm evolved the idea that a life sized negro, dressed in
the latest fashion, and sprawling in a cane chair with a
cigarette, was the "very thing" lor the vestibule. Personal])'.
I should have preferred the chair empty, so that om could h
sat in it one's self: the negro, however, enjoyed wide popularity.
Then a little, muzzled, foolishdooking china puppy became the
Regent Street rage, .111. 1 was forthwith attached as an ornament
to every suburban house door. Whose is the great mind
who set these fashions, before whom every householder hows;-'
It would be interesting to know.
There is great opportunity for the ever-interesting stui
human nature, in observing the ways of shops and shopp
The really able shopman or saleswoman can make you buy
just anything he or she wishes ; it is a mi l
in artistic persuasion. Indeed I have often almost wept with
sheer pain to mi some gra< elul, I. try like she; 1 o host n
3Q2 BEHIND THE SCENES chap.
mainly, be it remarked, for her figure), throw some elegant
wrap on to her slim shoulders, and turning to a fat, middle-
aged matron, say smilingly, "Just the very thing for you,
ma'am ! " And the deluded matron will buy the wrap, not
even suspecting the pitiful ludicrousness of the situation.
Truly, few people have a sense of humour. A friend of mine,
who delights in new experiences, and enjoys seeing into the
" highways and byways " of London life, once prevailed on a
fashionable West End milliner, with whom she was well
acquainted, to let her play the part of saleswoman for just one
day. The results were afflicting to all concerned. The poor
postulant nearly died of fatigue ; every one's tempers were
strained to the utmost ; and several excellent customers were
turned away. It was Kate Nickleby, Madam Mantalini, and
Miss Knag, over again ; especially Miss Knag. I learnt
that, even before the arrival of the customers, a good day's
work had to be " put in," in the decking and re-arranging of
the shop-window. Every single hat and bonnet had to be
taken from the stand, and carefully dusted, brushed, smartened
up and replaced. And woe to the saleswoman who failed to effect
a sale, more especially if that saleswoman happened to be
unfortunate for two or three times in succession ! My friend, after
her sad experience of customers' ways, vowed ever to make it
a point of religion to spend no more than ten minutes in the
choosing of a hat, and always to etid by buying it.
Nevertheless, so far as the big, well-managed shops are
concerned, the employe's are not really deserving of pity ;
they have good food and lodging, with comparatively short
hours, and the situations they fill are, as a rule, much sought
after. It is, rather, the owners of the smaller establishments,
in the poorer districts, who " sweat " their unfortunate shop-
girls. Here the poor white slaves are often kept hard at work
from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and on Saturday nights till 12, with
short intervals for hurried and indifferent meals. Of course,
it is the working classes themselves who are the cause of this
xin SHOP-GIRLS 303
"sweating"; these do their shopping late, on Saturday nights
especially late ; and shops, if they closed early in poor districts,
would for this reason lose the greater part of their custom.
The shop-girl in a really good West End establishment is in
very different case. She is often more or less gently bred,
such breeding being an important factor in her engagement.
Very often, indeed, her superior manners contrast, oddly
enough, with the rudeness of the "lady" whom she happens
to be serving.
Shop-girls and shop-men are always popular elements of
London life. There was, quite lately, a comic opera written in
the shop-girl's honour. And, so far as shop-men are concerned,
it is an eloquent fact that in the recent revival of the Gilbert
and-Sullivan opera Patience, the only noteworthy alterations
in the text were the substitution of the "Twopenny Tube
young man " for the " Threepenny 'Bus young man," and of
the words " Tottenham House " for the departed " Waterloo
House." For a London audience must, above all things, be
kept up to date, and a small anachronism of the latter kind, a
mistake about the shops, would be noticed by them much
sooner than a more important one.
Everything can be got in London, if (and the " if" is a com
prehensive one) you know where to go for it. Old timber, for
instance, can be bought not only at the Westminster wharves,
but also in the Euston Road (where Messrs. Maple's vast
timber yards are in themselves an insight into the " highways
and byways " of London) ; old silver may be had in the now
spoiled Hanway Street, and Holborn ; old furniture and
antiques in Wardour Street and its neighbourhood ; new
furniture in Tottenham Court Road; liv< stock in and about
Seven Dials; artists' materials in Soho, and SO on .... The
best stationers' shops are in the City : the City shops, however,
make a "speciality" of solid worth rather than of outside
attractiveness, a quality in which the Regent Street and < >
Street marts bear the palm. It is not really of much importance
3°4
DANGEROUS GROUND
CHAP.
where you shop ; it is, however, important to remember that,
unless your money happens to be more valuable than your time,
you had better not frequent cheap marts or crowded stores.
The Dog Fancier .' ! .'
Book-shops are very inadequate in London ; so few are they
indeed, that one is tempted to wonder what the "five millions,
XIII
SECOND-HAND BOOK-SHi IPS
305
in the richest city in the world" read? In most foreign
towns book-shops are to be found, in twos and threes, in
every important street ; in English provincial towns, if you
want a book, you are usually directed to "a stationer's" : and
even in London, book-shops must diligently be sought forj
though, when found, they are, it must be confessed, usually
very good.
Second-hand book-shops are more plentiful than new hook
shops ; and these are mostly strangely dark, dingy, and rambling
places, where the depressed proprietor rarely seems to wish to
part with any of his dusty stock-in-trade, but sits apart in dusky
recesses, moody and abstracted like Eugene Aram, annotating
a catalogue. He is the unique tradesman who does not
appear to want to sell his goods. After he has got over his
annoyance at being disturbed, — and if you do happ< n to come
to terms with him, — he will as likely as not, heave a deep sigh
as he turns to search for some very second-hand sheets of
brown paper to enwrap the second-hand treasure. These old
book-shops, with their outlying " twopenny " and " fourpenny
boxes, are generally to be found on busy city thoroughfares, as
if by intent to entrap the unwary and impecunious scholar on
his way home from his office desk to his little suburban
home. In such spiders' webs of temptation he has been
known to spend, in one fatal half-hour, all the money destined
for the butcher's bill, or for the gas ran- '
But, while impoverished scholars haw a weakness lor second-
hand literature, the big circulating libraries, on the other hand,
are the great weakness of their wives and daughters, cousins
and aunts. About these vast emporiums ladies ol all ages (lit
all day like bees around a hive. I .adies would appear but seldom
to buy books ; they always hire. A morning spent at Smith's
or Mudie's is curiousl) instructive as to tin' methods pursued
by them in the search lor light literature. The library conn!-
then usually exhibit a double or treble row of women, with
a very faint sprinkling of elderly men, all waiting, in varying
In the Charing Cross Road.
en. xiii MUDIE'S 307
degrees of patience, for their turn. Several of the ladies have
considerately brought pet dogs which they hold by the chain,
the dear little animals being meanwhile thoughtfully 1
in entangling themselves round all the other customers' 1'
"Have you some nice, new, good novels?" asks a plain-
tive materfamilias, with a stolid-faced bevy of half-grown up
daughters behind her, just out of the schoolroom. " Something,
you know, that is quite fit for young girls; no problems, or
] lasts, or anything of that kind."
The young man looks nonplussed. "We have Miss Yonge's
latest," he suggests; "or Maeterlinck's Life of the Bee, just
out—"
" Oh ! Maeterlinck is so very Maeterlinck}-, you know. And
do you think that he's always quite sa
"I assure you, madam, you will find him so in this
instance," urges the young man.
"Well, bees are, of course, interesting : and very nice and
proper too, I'm sure ; but I myself prefer the lives of celebrated
people. Mr. Gladstone's Life, for instance ? Oh, it's not written
yet, is it ? What a bore! Well, I suppose it's no use our
waiting \nd Miss Yonge, no, thank you. . . .You see,
she died last year, and then she's so very Early Victorian !
The man, seeing that it is to be a long business, gives up
the problem for the moment, and mows in despair to the next
customer.
Now it is the turn of a little old lady, with a deprecating
manner: " I want something nice, and not too clever," she
murmured: "something 1 can knit over, von know, after
breakfast. No, not religious, I somehow find that's too
ing. How would this do 3 " as she picked up a volume that
was flaunting itself on the counter, u Sir Richara < . I
think I'd like that, if it's al all like Sir Georg
" No, madam, not at all the sort of thing for you," thi young
man hastened to say with an air of authority. " Allow me :
Try this ; this i.s a very safe book. Miss Edna Lyall's latest.
30S A LITERARY CENSOR chap.
/// Spite of All. This (confidentially) is an author we always
recommend."
Now there bustled up a young-old lady with fuzzy hair and
a sailor hat : " I want all the most go-ahead novels you have,"
she cried : " somethin' really startling, somethin' that'll keep
you awake and excited all through."
This lady being fortunately in a hurry, was quickly got rid
of with a judicious mixture of Hall Caine, Guy Boothby, and
Marie Corelli, in equal quantities.
Finally there came a nondescript, pudding-faced young woman,
who said, vaguely, as if fulfilling a painful duty : " I want a novel.
What is being read now ? " She, however, proved very amen-
able, and went off dutifully with Elizabeth's Visits, The Love-
letters of Anonyma, and the Transvaal War.
What vast knowledge of human nature must, one thinks,
these young men at the libraries possess ! They seem to enact
the part of general literary adviser to the enormous feminine
public. They know their types well, too : they rarely mistake.
They may almost be said to form the minds of their customers ;
and they may, they possibly do, rule over a large proportion of
human opinion.
Ladies, as I said, seldom buy new books; they seem to
prefer reading novels that others have well thumbed. New
book-shops, therefore, are few and far between ; they mostly
congregate abcut St. Paul's, and in the neighbourhood of
what used to be Holywell Street ; for trades in London, as is
well known, tend to have their own special districts. In the
poorer quarters, however, and in the near suburbs, everything
is, on the contrary, placed in the queerest juxtaposition ; thus,
you may see a house labelled " Embalming done here," between
two others respectively inscribed : " Hot Dinners served here,"
and " Cheap Mangling done; " while the big shopping palaces
in Westbourne Grove and elsewhere advertise themselves,
modestly, to provide everything, from a coffin to a hired guest.
Some of our shops and ways must indeed puzzle the unsophis-
xiii SHOP-LIFTERS
3o<j
ticated foreigner. Mr. Samuel Butler has told an amusing
story of how a poor Ticinese peasant woman was one day
found on her knees in prayer before an elaborate dentist'-,
" show case " in Soho,— imagining it, doubtless, to contain the
relics of a saint !
Shops, in some of the poor districts, afford remarkable
insight into cockney character. There is, for instance, the
old plant-hawker who sells you rotten roots with a sweet smile :
there is the no less charming bird-fancier who gets rid of .1
songless hen-canary at the modest price of 10/-, assuring you,
meanwhile, that "no better singer ever lived"; there is the
lady-greengrocer who lets you have plums at a penny a pound
dearer than the market-price — "though it's a robbin' me and
my poor innercent childern, that's whal it is ! "
It is not, however, always the shopman whose ways are
most open to criticism. For, not only in the poorer distrii ts,
customers exist whose ideas of integrity are not of the finest.
In Somers, Camden, or Kentish Towns, where the trader must.
of necessity and from custom, spread out his goods in the
street, to catch the eye, on projecting booths, thai articles
should occasionally be missed i>, perhaps, hardly wonderful;
and yet, curiously enough, it is rather in the big Wesl laid
emporiums that shop lifting is most common. Sales espi 1 i illy
are most dangerous in this respect. Managers, notably of I
drapery emporiums, say that they expect to lose a certain
percentage regularly in this way ; it is regarded as part of the
business.
"Oh, no! we don't prosecute now," a pleasant shop-walker
said in answer to my inquiries on the subject : " It 1^ 1
risky altogether ; the thing isn't worth it. And we lost ,{ soo,
one year, by getting hold of the wrong person . . . it's so easy
to mistake, in the crowd. No, we just place del
and there, where the biggest crushes are . . . they are dressed
like ordinary customers, and carry parcels; so that no one
could discover their business. . . Then, if a detective happi
3io KLEPTOMANIA CHAP.
to see a suspicious-looking individual, he marks her or him —
(it is generally her), and follows, from one counter to another,
to see if he is right. He doesn't speak until he is perfectly
sure ; but, when he is, he just goes up to the person and says
politely, ' Please, would you kindly follow me for a moment
into the office ? ' Once in the office, the shop-lifter is made very
quietly to disgorge. . . It's nearly always a lady — very well con-
nected some of them are, too. . . She's never one of our reg'lar
customers — sale-folks seem a kind of class by themselves, and
we see nothing of them from one sale-day to another. Some
of them make hay then, and no mistake. . . Why, madam,"
said the shop-walker, warming to his narrative, " why, I've seen
ladies go into that office, quite stout persons, and come out
of it so thin, you'd hardly know 'em again. . . They just wear
cloaks with deep inside pockets all round."
"And don't they ever object, or make a commotion in the
shop? " I inquired.
" No, they go as quiet as lambs mostly. . . and other
customers don't notice anything. . . . You see, they know
there's no help for 'em, no use for 'em to brazen it out, lined with
silks, and laces and stuffs as they are. Afterwards, we just warn
'em kindly, and let 'em go. They rarely do it twice in the
same shop."
'" What sort of things do they generally take ? " I asked.
" Why, lace, and bits o' ribbon, put up in odd lots for sale,
things lying about loose on the counter, like they are at sale
times. Well-dressed they are, too, you wouldn't think they
could want 'em badly. ' Oh, it must 'a got up my sleeve,' some
of 'em say, looking most innocent, with perhaps two or three
yards of brocade or surah hangin' out of their golf-capes. . . .
They've got a kind of a fancy, as well, for religious books : no
knowing why, for religion," added the shop-walker thoughtfully,
" has evidently done them no good.''
With which reflection I cordially agreed.
Sales, however tempting, should be avoided by the un-
xi ii SALE DAN s 311
wary shopper, for they are dangerous as spiders' webs. They
usually occur twice a year, in January and July ; in January,
they relieve the tedium of the winter fogs ; in July, they are a
very midsummer madness. The sales vary in honesty. Som<
of them are really held in order to clear out, at a sacrifice, the
"old stock"; 'some, especially in the smaller shops, are simply
quick sales of "cheap lines," bought in on purpose, and strewn
about heterogeneously on the counters. Sale days are truly
terrible experiences to the uninitiated. If you happened, un-
wittingly, to go to some familiar shop on one of these yearly
occasions, the mass of crowded, struggling, gasping humanity,
nearly all pushing', and nearly all fat, would lead you to imagine
that life and death, at least, were intimately concerned in th(
tussle, instead of merely the question of securing the " first
choice " of " Remnants."
The shopping, however, of the rich is one thing, and the
shopping of the very poor is quite another. Most interesting,
to those who care to study the book of human nature, are the
"street-markets " of the people, those rows of noisy booths and
barrows which have stood from time immemorial, by traditional
right, in certain streets, and where jets of brilliant, flaring naptha-
lights display the kaleidoscopic stock in-trade. Among such
streets are Goodge Street, Tottenham Court Road: Leather
Lane, Hoi born ; or, to descend toayel lower social depth, brick
Lane, Spitalfields. Booths and barrows are, as everj bod) knows.
not allowed to obstruct the majority of streets, being illy
limited to slums or wretched pavi d alleys ; h< re, however, the
authorities evidently make exceptions in favour of certain
ancient vested rights. InGood ruit and vegetab
mainly sold ; in Leather Lane, tools, appliances, pedlars' wai
butchers' meal ; everything, in fact, in infinite variety ; in
Spitalfields, birds and live stock, together with old cloth s, and
secondhand articles generally. In such street-marl om
eighl to ten on Saturdaj night is the gala time for business. M.
Gal iriel Mom. y sa) s :
312 STREET MARKETS chap.
"These streets of London, where the poor do their marketing, are, on
Saturday night, gay with light and thronged with people. Because of the
next day's rest, there is, until past midnight, an open market, which
invades the pavement with costers' barrows heaped wkh fruit, butchers'
stalls, booths of incongruous articles, kitchen utensils, old tools, all the
bric-a-brac of the second-hand suburban shop ; vehicular traffic is sus-
pended ; all barriers are encroached upon ; everyone walks in the middle of
the street. Dealers and brokers offer shoes, clothing, hats, boots, plates
and dishes, all at ridiculous prices."
Curious, indeed, are the bits of life and character that are
to be met with on these London by-ways. Not changed one
whit in essentials since Dickens's time, they recall his wonderful
insight, observation, and inimitable cockney touches. There
are small differences, of course ; the street matrons, for
instance, have changed their former floppy caps for battered
sailor hats, or other articles of damaged head-gear ; the use of
their nails, as an offensive weapon, for the more formidable
"hat-pin." The traditional dress of the self-respecting
feminine street-dealer is, however, still as sternly conventional
in its way as the Mayfair belle's. At the present day it
consists, usually, of a black cloth or plush jacket, a vividly
red or blue skirt, a large white apron, a black hat of either the
" feather " or " sailor " variety, slovenly boots down at heel,
and, — most important point of all — long and conspicuous gold
earrings. Thus attired, the lady street-vendor haggles and
chaffers all day in a conscious elegance and propriety. The
ladies of the profession generally monopolize the itinerant
greengrocery trade ; and among their customers you may still
see some Mrs. Prig, carefully selecting a juicy " cowcumber "
for the supper of her "friend and pardner, Sairey Gamp";
while yonder, perhaps, is some Mrs. Tibbs, or Mrs. Todgers,
carefully appraising the piece of steak destined for the dinner
of her rapacious boarders, and weighed down by all the dis-
tracting cares of paying guests. Near by, perhaps Jo. that
poor vagrant, finger in mouth, eyes wistfully a juicy plateful of
shellfish that the " winkle-barrow " man has just got ready for
Mil
BARROW-SELLERS
a customer. Then, maybe, a hansom rattles by with a jaded
diner-out, yawning from a sense of the emptiness, not of his
stomach, but of society and life, and you recall almost uncon-
sciously Molloy's haunting words :
" Go thy way ! Let me go mine,
I to starve, and thou t<> dine."
Saturday Night Shopping.
Let us, however, hope thai those who reall) " starve "are few in
number, fur the barrow men, who pay small ral i impared
to shop-owners, give good value in return for their mon< y, with
much homely wit and caustic joking thrown in ; and | r, ind
must be the household that cannot enjoy, on Saturday night,
314 CAVEAT EMPTOR chap.
their something " 'ot with innions," their portion of fried fish,
or of sheeps' trotters. Of course, when dealing with barrows,
the buyer must have as many eyes as possible. " Let the
buyer beware " may be specially said of this class of shopping.
It were perhaps too much to expect, as Mr. Oliver Wendell
Holmes seems to suggest, that fruit, when you buy it, should
" grow bigger downwards through the box " ; yet, perhaps, when
you see a pile of luscious pears or apples heaped up temptingly
in front of you, you need not allow yourself to be fobbed off with
a few rotten ones, shovelled up carelessly from unseen depths
behind. Much art is necessary when dealing with a barrow-
man, who, as often as not, really respects the careful and
fastidious shopper, and retorts to her complaints with a good-
natured joke. If a trifle less distant in manner than his West-
End brother, he is certainly more affectionate, and dubs his
customer ' my dear." But, in the street markets, it is usually
the meat-huckster who is the greatest "character." His voice
may be heard above the general din : " Buy my pretty meat,"
he shouts from his stall to the red-armed housewives ; " now,
lydies, don't go a fingerin' it too much, or it'll taste er kid gloves
when you go to eat it. . . . 'Ave that there sheep's 'ed, Miss ?
wy, certingly ; that wuz a 'appy sheep, that wuz ! jest look at the
smile 'e's got on 'im ; know'd you wuz a-goin' to buy 'im, 'e
did. . . . There now, my dear ! look wot you've been and done,
rolled that there bit 'o' shin in the mud, it '11 'ave to go for
cats' meat now," &c. &c.
This kind of "patter," continued ad libitum, seems to be
regarded as the slum butcher's special metier.
In Brick Lane, Spitalfields, — not the Jewish " Ghetto," but
the purely English quarter,— there is, moreover, a Sunday
morning "poor man's market." It is usually, in more select
London highways, more or less difficult to make purchases, be
the}- never so necessary, on Sunday morning. I remember,
indeed, a despairing search for food on such an occasion (food
necessitated by the arrival of unexpected visitors), which ended
xin BIRD-FANCI]
315
in the obtaining, almost by force, of a couple of boiled chick<
from a small Italian restaurant, with the added injunction to
"keep them well hidden" from the eye of the law on the
homeward journey. In the East End, however, it is very
different. !!rick Lane, an unsavoury region, described by the
late Mr. Montagu Williams as " a land of beer and bio
pn-scnts on Sunday morning a strange sight to the uninitiated.
Hereis its picture by an eye-witness:
In Brick Lane. . . . scenes arc to be witnessed on Sunday mornings
which afford a companion picture to those in Whitechapel. The Easl
End English have also, like the Jews, their 'poor man's market,' and
where Shoreditch, Bethnal Green and Spitalfields meel at the north
pari of Brick Lane, which is in Spitalfields, the poorest and meanest "i
them are to be found. Inthe early part of Sunday morning, for a couple of
hours or so, there is a woman's market wh ! off clothes, tawdry
finery, and the newest things in hats and feathers are bartered. Hetero-
geneous heaps # of clothing, hoots and shoes included, lie spread over the
ground, and some amusing scenes are to he witnessed. Pass along Sclater
Street and new cen meet the eye. The women are left behind..
men and hoys are met with. Instead of old I I hears
twittering birds. Here come the pigeon fanciers from all parts of Bethnal
(been and Spitalfields; birds of all kind- are to be bought, and the noise
and bustle are in striking contra dued, sorrow-stricken tone of
the women's market, li doi i riot 1 acquaintance with
these scenes to discover thai the men are fonder of their birds than of their
wives. Nowhere is bird-fancying and pigeon-breeding more general than
in the crowded East End. When one would think there was not hou
m enough or food enough foi human occupants, prize bio' tlue
are reared most probably with money that should have gone I
and clothe the children."
The special markets win re the poor buy ami sell are not.
however, exactly tempting to the well-to-do, unless in search
of "ropy" or other experience. 1 . > 1 tho e London s
who do not appn 1 1 slums, ye\ \\ hosi olfact n
not too fastidious, the big London n 1 n.
Smithfield, Billingsgate, will perhaps afford a suffii
ence in that line. Billingsgate is the most perilou
3*6 BILLINGSGATE
CHAT.
sion of the three. Its aroma is strong and lasting, and the
stranger in its diverging courts and alleys runs considerable
danger of having winkle-barrels or fish crates descend on his
devoted head, as they are lowered from the wharves on to their
respective carts. Yes, a little of Billingsgate will undoubtedly
go a very long way ; yet it is an interesting place to have seen,
and the strange, sudden appearance of ancient churches,— St.
Dunstan's, St. Magnus, St. Mary-at-Hill,— incongruously calm
amid the wild turmoil all round them, — gives a momentary peace
even " amid the City's jar." The language of Billingsgate fish-
wives and porters is proverbial, yet it is perhaps hardly worse
than in many other less fishy quarters of London. The Coal
Exchange, opposite Billingsgate, has, with its broad flight of
steps, on which people sit, itself a kind of ecclesiastical look.
The fish market opens at five in the morning.
All this quarter of London is a vast hive of industry. The
stranger should walk along the busy thoroughfare of Upper
and Lower Thames Street all the way from the Tower to St.
Paul's ; tall, blackened, ever-devouring warehouses line the
street, which is a very inferno of bustle and labour. Though
the street is muddy and noisy, and its perambulation may not
impossibly render the pedestrian more than a little cross, he
will, at any rate, gain from it some insight into London life.
Mr. Hafe describes the scene well :
"Thames Street," he says, "is the very centre of turmoil. From the
huge warehouses along the sides, with their chasm-like windows and the
enormous cranes which are so great a feature of this part of the City, the
rattling of the chains and the creaking of the cords, by which enormous
packages are constantly ascending and descending, mingle with uproar from
the roadway beneath. Here the hugest waggons, drawn by Titanic dray
horses, and attended by waggoners in smock-frocks, are always lading or
discharging their enormous burthens of boxes, barrels, crates, timber, iron,
or cork."
But, though a visit to Billingsgate is only faintly suggested,
and the delights of the great central meat-market of Smithfield
XIII
COVENT GARDEN 317
are, it is fair to say, only capable of thorough appreciation by
farmers and connoisseurs, every visitor to London ought to In-
enjoined to go and see Covent Garden Market, and preferably
in the early hours of the spring morning, the time of its highesl
activity. Not only interesting at the present day as a special
focus of London lite, ("ovent Garden has, also, the classic
charm of history. For as early as the thirteenth century this
was the " convent garden " of Westminster, supplying its monks
with fruit and vegetables. That the course of centuries and
the habit of cockneys has dropped the sacred " n," and
changed the name into " Covent Garden " is easily understood.
Covent Garden is still faithful to its fruit and vegetables,
though these, alas ! are no longer to be seen growing there,
but are transported thither from the rich gardens of England, as
well as from colonies and nations overseas. Here, within this
small enclosure, can be got, it is said, all that skill can grow,
care can transport, and money can buy. 1 lere can be obtained,
at any time, and at short notice, the roses of a Heliodorus, or
the orchids of a Vanderbilt ; together with priceless fruits in
mid-winter, new vegetables in February frosts, and tropical
produce all the year round. The middle avenue of Covent
Garden is expensive, but it can produce anything wished for
in the fruit and flower line. Riches in such places are as the
magic wand of an Aladdin. The central avenue of the mark< t
is refined and polite; outside its limits, however, the manners
of the locality are original and peculiar, a kind of "law unto
themselves." The ("ovent Garden porters ami market-women
are rough diamonds ; the men, especially, lull of good natured
horse-play, seem alarming on a first introduction, hut harm-
less when you are used to them. Yet I haw known timid
ladies who have shrunk from a walkthrough "the Garden,"
imagining its denizens to be robbers and (ait throats, or.
at least, revolutionary citi/ens of a supposed • R.
Terror ! "
Covent Garden is at its highesl glory on certain Maj
318 FLOWER-CxIRLS
i'ii \r.
mornings, from about six to eight, — on Tuesdays, Thursdays
and Saturdays, — which are special " market days." On these
occasions the din and bustle is indescribable ; and " Mud-Salad
Market," justifying its title, becomes a green sea of spring
vegetables, interspersed with still greener islands of laden,
tottering market carts. The show of cut flowers is a wonderful
sight, and street hawkers, flower-girls, itinerant flower-vendors
and plant-sellers, are one and all busy making their special
" bargains." The flower-girls, untidy, shawled and befeathered,
sit about on doorsteps or on upturned market baskets making
their " button-holes " for the day, and scanning anxiously the
weather; — so much of their profit depends on that! They
are all a cheery, though somewhat rowdy, folk, who mean no
harm by their very outspoken witticisms. Even their rowdiness
is an historic legacy ; for, in past days, this neighbourhood
used to be ravaged by the redoubted street bullies called
" Mohocks " or " Scourers," pests of an older time. There is
a well-known print of Covent Garden Market, from Hogarth's
picture, Morning ; the print shows the red, barn-like Church
of St. Paul dominating, as it still does, the market, and the
old taverns near to it. The taverns and inns of Covent
Garden used to be famous, but have now mostly decayed, like
its "Piazza," or Italian colonnade, little of which is now left
standing, but which was once the glory of the town. Thackeray,
who used to stay at the " Bedford," thus describes the place in
his day :
" The two great national theatres on one side, a churchyard full of
mouldy but undying celebrities on the other ; a fringe of houses studded
in every part with anecdote or history ; an arcade, often more gloomy
and descried than a cathedral aisle ; a rich cluster of brown old taverns,
one of them filled with the counterfeit presentments of many actors long
since silent, who scowl and smile once more from the canvas upon the
grandsons of their dead admirers ; a something in the air which breathes
of old books, old painters, and old authors ; a place beyond all other places
one would choose in which to hear the chimes at midnight, a crystal palace
— the representative of the present — which presses in timidly from a corner
xiii MUD-SALAI)
3>9
upon many things of the past ; a withered bank that has been sucked dry
by a felonious clerk, a squat building with a hundred columns, and chap
looking fronts, which always stands knee-deep in baskets, flowers, and
scattered vegetables; a common centre into which Nature showi
choicest gifts, and where the kindly fruits of the earth often Heath
the narrow thorou ;hfan ; a population that never seems to si p, and that
does all in its power to prevent others sleeping ; a place where the very
latest suppers and the earliest breakfasts j ich other over the
footways. "
Fielding, the novelist, devotes in Humphry Clinker a p
or two to Covent Garden market, which he supposes to be
described by an old country gentleman. The writer complains
of its dearness and dirt :
" It must be owned," (he says), "that Covent Garden affords some-
fruit ; which, however, is always engrossed by a few individuals of over-
grown fortune, at an exorbitant price ; so that little else than the reft oi
the market falls to the share of the community ; and that is distributed by
such filthy hands, as I cannot look at without loathing."
The old gentleman also goes on to complain of the nightly
terrors of the London "watchman, bawling the hour through
every street and thundering al every door." This cusb
fortunately for us, is now in abeyance; also Hi.- stre< I cries oi
London (at least in its more polite circles) are likewise much
diminished in intensity. Even the muffin man's lull, so w< 1
come in the winter ale moon's gloom, seems now more seldom
heard. "Sweet Lavender," however, still has a familiar autumn
sound, and the flower-hawkers of spring are still discordant.
\<t one's tars are no longer SO generally deal. ii. .1. and the reason
for this is not far to s. , k. For London is now with ad-
vertisements that in every direction our eyes meet strange, gaily
coloured hoarding and sky m^hs ; and the manifold attractions
of various articles, instead of bi ing cried in th< . now
cry at us from the walls, or shout discordantlj al us from out
of the blue of heaven, from ugly black wit. - .wn\ glaring ;
letters. We cannot go out oi doors without In ing asked
320 ADVERTISEMENTS chai\
hundred times, in varying type, such silly questions as " Why
does a Woman Look Old Sooner than a Man ? " " Why Let
Your Baby Die ? " " Why Pay House Rent ? " or other such
idiotic queries. Why, who would pay house rent, especially in
London, if he or she could help it ? In shops, or on railways,
it is the same. For at least several miles out of London you travel
in the constant company of " Pears's Soap," and " Colman's
Mustard ; " and outside eating-shops you see in large letters the
cunning legend, " Everything as Nice as Mother Makes it."
The Ait of Advertisement is everywhere paramount. You
cannot even travel in the humble omnibus without being
implored " not to let your wife worry over the house-cleaning,"
and being asked " why your nose gets red after eating " ;
together with suggested remedies for both these sad states of
things. These are really, when one comes to think of it, im-
pertinent personalities. This mania for posters has, of course,
largely resulted from the modern spread of education : for of
what use to ask such questions in old days, when few could have
succeeded in reading them ? The fashion of advertisements is
still growing, the Americans are encouraging it to preposterous
proportions ; and we shall soon, indeed, live in a mere criss-
cross of lettered wires, not unlike Mr. Wells's idea of a future
Utopia.
Yet far away be that time still ! Although the threatening
wires already faintly line the blue here and there above our
city gardens, although telephones and electric connections
necessitate the continual dragging up of our streets, London
his its charm still, and sweet is yet the London summer when
the square lilacs and acacias blossom, and when, to quote Mr.
Andrew Lang, " fans for a penny are sold in the Strand ! "
" When strawberry pottles are common and cheap,
Ere elms be black, or limes be sere,
When midnight dances are murdering sleep,
Then comes in the sweet o' the year ! "
XIII
RESTAURANTS
321
(Though T fear me that Mr. Andrew Lang did not mean it
altogether in that sense !)
The London children love flowers. " Give me a flow
lydy," some of the ragged street waifs will say, as you come
back, laden with your store, from Covent Garden. And the
';<?vi t^ervt.
.hi Aerated Bread .S7;,i/.
child will take the flown- lovingly, and stick ii forthwith into
her ragged bodice, smiling like a conscious princess.
The subject of shops and markets would lead us naturally
to that of restaurants. These, at the present day, are many
and excellent. While the more ancient taverns of Covent
322 THE ART OF DINING chap.
Garden and of die City have largely lost their fashionable
vogue, the general improvement in restaurants and modern
hotels has been rapid. In the last twenty years, revolutions
have been worked in this respect. Twenty years ago, to begin
with small things, a cup of tea at a confectioner's cost at least
sixpence, and was not always easy to get ; now, it is obtainable
for two or three pence anywhere, and for a penny at cheap
shops. Everything else in the commissariat has improved and
cheapened in proportion. Elegant little dinners may be had
now at all prices ; from the famous " Savoy " dinner at a
guinea, to the cheap and dainty repast "in the Italian style"
at 2S. 6d. Of this latter class is the " Comedy " Restaurant,
Panton Street, in a small and hidden by-way, where little
dinners, comprising smart waiters, separate tables, candle-shades,
and table decorations, are provided for the modest price of
half-a-crown per head. Or at the Holborn Restaurant Dinner,
at y. 6d., you may, if so inclined, enjoy the strains of a band,
while entertaining your pre-theatre party. Or, if you be rich,
the big hall of the new and expensive " Carlton " is now the
most modish place for after-theatre supper parties. Here the
parting guest is politely " sped," if he linger, by lamps discreetly
and suggestively lowered at intervals. . . .Ah, what a delight-
ful city London is for the rich to live in ! Everything may be
had and enjoyed !
The Art, then, even the Poetry, of Dining, may be thoroughly
studied in London at the present day. Every passing mood
may be consulted, every gastronomic fancy indulged. You
may choose your company as you choose your menu ; you may
make a free selection from the quality of either. You have
but to know exactly beforehand what you want. If the lady
whom you honour be frivolous by nature, you can take her to
the smart restaurant of the Hotel Bristol, and to a comedy
adapted " from the French " ; if she be serious, to the " Grand
Hotel," and then to Shakespeare ; if crude, to Frascati's and to
melodrama. But, whether you choose expensive dining places
x«i AND THE EXPENSE 3 2 3
or cheap ones, and in whatever manner you may elect to spend
your long London day, one thing is certain, that at its , lose
you will generally find yourself to have spent a considerable
sum. For, howe'er improved and reformed, in essentials the
city is yet not much changed since the days of fohn Lydgate,
who found, he says, to his cost, and even so early as the
fifteenth century that :
" lacking mony 1 mighte not spede."
Y 2
CHAPTER XIV
THE GALLERIES, MUSEUMS, AND COLLECTIONS
" Infinite riches in a little room."
" The great city has an unbroken history of 1,000 years, and has never
been sacked by an enemy." — Sir Waller Besant.
" Great are your privileges. For you is collected in the public palaces of
London all that human genius has ever achieved, all that power and wealth
can procure. For you has been dug from the earth all that remains of
mighty empires and long-vanished civilisations. The arts of Greece and
Rome, and Egypt and Assyria, and the not less wonderful arts of India, are
all contributory to your pleasures. The whole art and mystery of painting
is unfolded for you on the walls of our National Gallery. . . . You are rich
indeed, for you are the heirs of ail the Ages."
Are picture-galleries, museums, and such-like treasures of
the metropolis, to be described as London's. Highways, or as
its Byways? That they ought to be the former, is certain; as
certain as that they are but too often used as the latter, or are,
at any rate, regarded as refuges and shelters from the in-
clemency of the outer air. For Art, like Religion, has a
tendency in this respect, to serve not so much as a cloak, as
in the capacity of an umbrella. And it is sometimes con-
veniently adapted to yet other profane uses : " This 'ere ain't
a gymnasium, nor yet a refreshment room," I have heard a
much-enduring officer of the law remark, more in sorrow than
in anger, to a too-presuming visitor, who, seated opposite the
Ansidei Madonna, was placidly feeding such of her offspring
CHAT. XIV
TIIK NATIONAL GAL] I RY
325
as were not engaged in playing leap-frog over the chairs, with
crumbly bath-buns.
These, however, are varieties in the human species that are
ever with us. " Fear not to Sow because of the Birds," says the
Koran ; and the widespread sowing of culture has so far shown
-s&r
1 -*- . I Sketch in Tra/a .or.
results, that every year the British Museum, the National
Gallery, and other kindred institutions, a .wing more
popular and more frequented. In Art and Knowledge, as in
other directions, it takes time for "the People" to appre<
fully their oldest, much less tluir newest, heritage. Such
326 UNDISCOVERED TREASURES chap.
treasures in our vast metropolis are still too much hidden,
still undiscovered by the majority. Even the educated visitor
fresh from the country does not immediately realise the fact
that he is free at any time to walk the marble halls of the
National Gallery, to hear the fountain plashing in the Pompeian
hall of the riverside palace raised by Sir Henry Tate to modern
British Art, or to follow the strange instincts and laws of
Nature in the beautifully arranged Natural History Museum
of Kensington. The recent movement for "Sunday opening,''
now more or less widespread, has tended greatly to the popu-
larisation of the national collections, and does a good deal,
also, to the mitigation of the too utter gloom of the stranger's
" Sunday in London." Even M. Taine, who in the " sixties "
compared the metropolis of his day to " a well-ordered
cemetery," or " a large manufactory of bone-black closed on
account of a death," would surely have been less severely
splenetic had but a museum or two been open to beguile his
tedium. In our present year of grace, the British Museum,
from two till four, is thronged by the lower middle-class, who,
if their affection for mummies is a trifle out of proportion to
the interest they take in the Elgin Marbles, and their love of
historic missals is sometimes too subordinate to the intricacies
of the neighbouring World's Unique Stamp-Collection, yet
show in their way an intelligent and praiseworthy desire for
knowledge.
These treasure-houses of London, — what wealth do they not
represent, — what unimagined riches do they not contain? Lon-
don, the richest city in the world, yet for so long a period far be-
hind other capitals in representative art, has in the last century
equalled, if not surpassed them all. Some fifty or more years ago,
thegreat " Pan-Opticon" of Leicester Square, the precursor of the
present Biograph and Cinematograph, was the chief " artistic "
glory of London. In the days of our grandfathers, people were
for ever taken to see this '■ Pan-Opticon," a great building with
endless galleries, on the site of the present " Alhambra " ; where
xiv THE USES OF MILLIONAIR] S
J2V
you saw all the things of the world and the glory thereof. N<
this baby-show is superseded by museums and galleries fill
with the most priceless gems of art and of history
London collections may in this sense be regarded as variatio
of the Pan-Opticon — Pan-Opticons of a nobler kind. London's
National Gallery is now a collection of pictures worthy of so
great a nation, her museums are filled with the best of tl
spoils of ancient Greek art. If London has been late in awakii
to her artistic responsibilities, at any rate she takes them seriously
enough at the present day. And, of late years, her art treasure
has been enormously and continuously enriched, not only by
the expenditure of public moneys, but by private bequest and
private munificence. Rich men, with true patriotism, ha
spent their lives in painfully searching for, and collecting,
beautiful things, to leave them, afterwards, freely to the nation.
Millionaires, too, have, it would seem, their uses. And we are
thus all, in a sense, millionaires, for we inherit the priceh
treasures of others, and we enjoy the fruits of their lifelong toil.
It is in London, more than anywhere, that the real poetrj of
living may be enjoyed, and that every passing artistic whim
may be indulged. Does your mind require stimulating by the
study of Greek art ? the galleries of the British Museum i
open to you ; or
" Dost thou love pictures ? we will fetch Ihee straight
Adonis i>;iinu-<l by a running brook :
Or Cytherea, 'mid the sedges hid,
That seem to move and wanton with hei breath."
Or do you feel that what your mood needs is the ipla
tion of beautiful eighteenth century French furniture, and
Fragonard's pictures ? Go then, to Hertford House in quiet
Manchester Square, and see the world famed Wa I »llec
tion. The "Walla< e Collection," thai pearl i
which the bequesl has recently so convulsed th< art* the
latest expression of the patriotism of wealth. '
by the third Marquess oi Hertford,— thi '
328 THE WALLACE COLLECTION chap
Thackeray's novel, — and bis successor the fourth Marquess,
Attache at the Paris Embassy, — the treasure, since its formation,
has met, at one time or another, with strange and unique adven-
tures. In Paris, the fourth Marquess, Richard Seymour Conway,
built for his collection "a stately pleasure house/' fitted and
designed after his own sumptuous taste ; living meanwhile,
his wealth no doubt crippled by his vast " unearned increment,"
not, indeed, as a miser, but in a degree of seclusion that
almost amounted to eccentricity. During the Commune, the
bulk of that collection that we now admire was even, it is said,
buried in underground cellars for safety. The beautiful
French furniture, — the bric-a-brac, blazing with enamels and
precious stones, — one can well imagine these the constant delight
of the old collector, with whom the love for such things had
become a ruling passion. Yet, by the irony of fate, this fourth
Lord Hertford suffered from a painful disease, a continual
affliction which, they say, only the news of victories achieved
in sale rooms, by his agents, over some rival collector, at all
tended to alleviate.
Though reproached during his lifetime as an " absentee
landlord," a nobleman who preferred residence in Paris to a
home in his native land, Lord Hertford has certainly, in the
upshot, been proved to have deserved as well as any man of
his country. Time's revenges are slow, but they are effective ;
and the fourth Marquess, the flouted foreign resident, has
proved, indirectly, the greatest patriot of his age. But, while
the old nobleman's sentiment appears to have been mainly
negative (as shown, for instance, by his decision that the
collection should not enrich the Louvre), it was really Sir
Richard Wallace, his successor, faithful friend, and co-collector
(some say, also near kinsman), who should have the largest
share of the nation's gratitude.
Sir Richard Wallace, Lord Hertford's sole heir, deciding,
after the imminent dangers of the Commune, that it was rash
to leave the inheritance thus at the mercy of vandalism,
xiv HERTFORD HOI 329
removed it, in 1872, to London, where, for three years, it
filled the Bethnal Green Museum ; being removed to Hi 1
House, the London residence of the family (by then arra
to receive it), in 1875. Sir Richard, whose only son had
meanwhile died, left in his turn fhe whole of the property to
his wife, a French lady, whose loyalty to her husband's country
should cause her name, for all time, to be writ large on the
roll of honour. Here, in Hertford House, a few years after
Sir Richard's death, Lady Wallace died ; and, in accord
with her husband's secret wish, bequeathed the whole of the
immense property to the British nation. And now, for future
ages, Hertford House, with all its myriad treasun
collection perfect as it stands, fresh from the arrangement
and taste of the collector, will be the glorious heritage of the
nation.
One of the greatest charms of Hertford House is that it
suggests none of the red-tapeism, or of the dull uniformil
a museum, and, consequently, does not affect visitors, as so
many museums do, with a primary sense ol fatigue and
boredom. The rooms of the palatial mansion are still
arranged mainly as they were in the owner's time; the long
suites of reception saloons, through which the reflected sun-
light glitters, — vistas of French tapestries, pictures, lapis-lazuli,
enamels, and Sevres china,— convey all the suggestion, even in
prosaic London, of a fairy palace. Even a Countess d'Aulnoy,
with her wealth of imagery, could hardly have imagined a finer
setting for her Gracieuse and Percinet, or any of their dainty
royal line. Then' is an intime air, almost as of lion
about the long picture gallery where the Gainsboi
Sir |oshuas smile sedately upon us. The sw
fair dead ladies, seen here in their proper setting \ the p,. in-
central courtyard and plashing fountain, wl , the
aged Lady Wallace was daily to bi
balcony that projects from the upper r ns,
of birds, eager pensioners, with their bn akfi
33Q LADY LECTURERS chap.
combine to give an atmosphere of human charm, a thing quite
apart from the usual cold aloofness of museums. It is again
the idea of the Soane Museum, but on a very magnificent
scale. Beautiful in its publicity, how mysteriously lovely must it
not have been in the days of its seclusion! One can almost
share the feelings of that old retainer who said, on the last sad
day before the opening ; " Ah, Sir ! the Wallace Collection, as
it was, you and I will never see again — for the common people
are going to be let in ! "
Londoners, in this instance, at any rate, fully appreciate the
magnificence of the gift made them. Hertford House is, on
fine days, usually thronged ; all classes are represented there ;
but there is noticeably more of the " smart world " to be seen
there, than is usually to be found in London galleries. The
" smart world," as distinguished from the scholarly ; but the
scholarly world is to be met there too, and will still visit
Hertford House, after the " Good Society " has forsaken it, and
betaken itself to some newer haunt of fashion. In each of
London's picture-galleries and museums, its special clientele
may very easily be detected ; and, at any rate, that of Hertford
House is certainly, so far, the best-dressed. Among the crowd
are often to be seen groups of young girls, demurely following
in the wake of some feminine leader, who discourses to them
about the pictures, and the various schools of painting, — a thing,
this, that surely requires some courage in a mixed community.
It is not to be denied that the visitor is often sadly in need of
some guide : " Are all these pictures hand-painted ? " I have
myself heard ■ a well-dressed and (presumably) well-educated
young girl say, at the National Gallery. Perhaps it is a felt
want, for one never knows what extra " following " one may
not, unconsciously, attract : I myself once saw an unhappy
lady lecturer, carried away by the enthusiasm of the subject,
turn round and give an eloquent peroration and summary of
it to a policeman, a deaf old lady, and a nursemaid carrying a
vacant-looking baby :
xiv PERIPATE1 H (I. VSS1 -
J3'
"Now," said the lady cheerfully, "just to show what you
have learned, tell me, in your own words, what you consid
have been the influence of Giotto on Early Italian Art?"
No one answered ; but the vacant baby, apparently thinl
it a challenge, wailed.
And, in Hertford House, the custom lends itself to additional
dangers; for peripatetic classes are many, and in the nooks
and unexpected corners of the mansion, it is fatally easy to
lose your special crowd of students altogether, and to attai h
yourself, again unconsciously, to some one else's flock ; who,
by the chilly indifference with which they receive your well-
intentioned homilies, soon make you unpleasantly awan
your mistake. Like " Little Bo-Peep," you then vainly pursue
your wandering sheep, from one gallery into another, feeling,
perhaps, that the pursuit of pupils, as of Art, has its draw-
backs ; and that tea, in the shape of the nearest " Aerati d." is
all too distant.
The "sheep" in question are. however, discovered at last.
placidly gloating over the wonderful collection of jewelled
snuff-boxes — was there ever such a marvellous display o!
miniatures and of brilliants? Truly, the eighteenth century
was a luxurious age! . . . Surely, no one can ever have d
to sit comfortably on those priceless (hairs, or to have taken
tea out of a Sevres cup, at one of those marvellously inlaid.
jewel-encrusted tables ?
The pictures, however, are the chief delight of Hertford
House. It is easy to admire porcelain, armour, brii
but to really enjoy it in the best sense, one must
less learned in the cult: while pictures, though th< r full
appreciation implies a certain amount of education, ai
understanded of the multitude. But, though I
foreign schools are well represented, it is the ui
collection of French pictures of the •
nineteenth centuries, works by W
Greuze, and all the noted painters o! thi I n
332 GREUZE'S MASTERPIECES chap.
the great world, primarily, flock to see at Hertford House.
Twenty-one pictures by Greuze alone will delight the lovers of
that painter's work, and bring their minds back to the eternally-
charming affectations of that eighteenth century in which
so many of our modern poets yearn to have lived. One can
imagine, for instance, Mr. Austin Dobson echoing Campbell's
lovely lines to the pretty, typical girl-face that Greuze loved
so well :
" Transported to thy time I seem,
Though dust thy coffin covers —
And hear the songs, in fancy's dream,
Of thy devoted lovers." ....
Here, naive as always, yet never quite without a certain
faint meretriciousness of effect, the " girl-child " of Greuze
looks down on the visitor in every costume and attitude.
In the long picture-gallery that forms one side of the great
quadrangle, there are large canvases by Reynolds, Gains-
borough, Romney, Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Hals, Murillo,
and many others. Here is a charming picture of " Miss Bowles "
by Reynolds, — the little girl with round eyes, cuddling a dog,
so long familiar to us by engraving or print ; and here, too, is
Frans Hals's Laughing Cavalier, whose infectious laugh lingers
so long in the memory.
Sir Richard . Wallace offered his collection, with his house,
to the nation before his death ; the Government, however,
after the usual manner of Governments in such matters, raised
objections ; and the affair subsided, till the surprise of the
widow's legacy came, and showed the long and serious
intention of the gift. One little picture, The Peace of
Miinster, by Terburg, a small historical panel of untold and
unique value, was, indeed, given by Sir Richard to the National
Gallery before his death ; yet even this gift had a narrow
escape of being rejected ; for the would-be donor, unre-
cognized, and wearing shabby clothes, was ill received by Sir
William Boxall, the then Director, and was all but sent away
Kiv THE BRITISH MUSEUM 3 , 3
with contumely, with his picture, till he made it and him
known :
■• My name is Wallace.'' said the stranger quietly, ' hard
Wallace ; and I came to offer this picture to the National I •• I
nearly fainted," said Boxall when he told the story. ... "] had nearly
refused 77/i- Peace of Miinster, one of the wonders of the world ! "
Nevertheless, the little scene is in its way truly typical of
the nation's treatment of its would-be benefactors !
The story of the foundation of the British Museum, the
classic edifice in Bloomsbury that has arisen on the site of the
old historic Montague House, is not unlike that of Hertford
House. For, the first beginnings of the enormous museum
collections originated very much in the same manner as the
Hertford Bequest. Sir Hans Sloane, the Sir Richard Walla
of his day, Chelsea magnate, physician, naturalist, and philan-
thropist, determined his large library collections to the nation,
offering them by his will, at a fourth of their estimated valu<
desiring, like Sir Richard, that, if possible, the collections
should remain in his house,— Henry VIII.'s historic Chels
manor-house. This wish, however, was not in hi carried
out; the ancient building was demolished, and. in its stead,
the British Museum was founded.
At the British Museum the lady-lecturer, with her tribe of
earnest students, is occasionally also t<> be met with. 1
she is often youthful and attractive, and is g< nerally to be found,
— strange contrast of associations !- either in the Mausoleum
Room, or among the Elgin Marbl little band ol
pupils scribbling in their note-books at .1
Last March I saw a charming, Hypatia lik< lady, tall and lair,
gray-eyed and gray-robed, holding thus her lit
lovely figure ot Demeter ; I would fain have joii
the small gathering, and posed as a pupil, but that m\
failed. . . I felt, however, glad to think that, in tl. . the
study of Art had not, as some d< 1 Ian .
334 RAGS AND ERUDITION chap.
young lady regardless either of her appearance or of neatly-
fitting tailor-made clothes. But she went on with her following
to the Nereid's Tomb, and I saw her no more.
In the long galleries of the British Museum is generally to
be found a motley gathering of visitors, in which the poor, and
the children of the poor, largely predominate. Rows of
chattering little girls in pinafores, corresponding batches of
little boys in knickerbockers, greet one at every turn. And
the more ragged the children, the more astonishingly erudite and
profound are sometimes their utterances. This is a surprising
testimony to the efficacy of the Board Schools, as well as to the
advance of learning generally. The visitor who " lies low " and
listens, in any of the Greek Marble Rooms, will often find cause to
marvel at youthful and ragged intelligence. Girls are more flip-
pant, perhaps, than boys : " 'Ere's the Wenus," one will say :
" you can always tell 'er, 'cos she seems to be lookin' around and
sayin' : ' Ain't I pretty ' ? " Yet, though to hear unkempt and neg-
lected waifs talking wisely about Greek marbles does, I must
confess, puzzle me, I must, in fairness, own that there appears
to be another side to the question, and that the officials on guard
appear to entertain no very high views as to juvenile erudition.
" So far as I've noticed," a kindly British Museum policeman
once said to me, " the street children don't get much real good
out of going to the Museum. They bring a lot of dirt out of
the streets in with them, their fingers are generally sticky, and
they look about 'em — oh, yes ! but not usually with any object,
just vacantly."
This was depressing. (Did the accompanying dirt, I
wondered, at all affect this particular policeman's outlook ?
"But I saw a small crowd of boys and girls looking hard at
the King Alfred documents and missals," I murmured.
" Oh, and so you might have done ; but didn't you notice," said
the stern guardian of the law, " that a lot of ladies and gentle-
men had been lookin' at 'em just before ? They wouldn't have
troubled about 'em without that. . . . And King Alfred's all
XIV "THE PEOPLE'S DAY"
the thing now. . . . Children always conic, like bees, where
other people are lookin' ; and try and squeeze the older folks
out just to see what they've been a-lookm' at. . . . Yes," he
owned, in reply to my incredulous interjection, "the children
might have heard the name of Allied in their history bo
hut no more ; that wouldn't be the cause of their crowding up.
Their mothers often send 'em into the Museum when the)
want to go out themselves, or perhaps just to get rid ol > m for
a time. Children are more indulged, and not half so well-be-
haved, as I was when I was a boy."
But the chatter of the children is stilled, or, at any rate, lust
among the vast marbles of the collection, where so many
sounds mix and mingle in a soothing aloofm Here,
in the long galleries, where the faint light, "that kind of
light," as Rossetti said, "that London takes the day to be,"
slants down on Roman bust and Greek god, may sometimes
be heard charitable ladies explaining to dirty little street arabs
the influence of Phidias on Early Italian sculpture; or one of
the elegant Hypatia-like girhlecturers already described, dis-
courses, while a motley crowd of pupils :
— "school-foundations in the act
< >f holiday, three lik-s compact — "
— draw near to listen. . . And who can tell where the grain
may fall?
Sunday is now the great "People's Day" .it the British
Museum. Those who cavil at "Sunday opening"
really visit the Museum then, when, from two till four, the
galleries are dotted with intelligent sightseers. (For the
Museum, be it noted, is not so often used as a mere - !
from rain, "jes' to pass the toime away," or as tl
ment-room " already referred to, as it used to 1" haps
the greatest crowd is to be found upstairs, where the mummy-
room is greatly beloved, both of small I- d of hi
mooning couples. Noun- couples, I nol in the
336 AMONG THE MUMMIES chap.
" courting " or newly-married stage, have ever a strong affinity
for mummies ; — and as to boys ! . . . While you are, perchance,
reflecting over the decaying embroideries of a mummy-case,
and wondering what was the life and fate of its once-lovely
occupant, after the manner of Sir Edwin Arnold :
" Tiny slippers of gold and green !
Tied with a mouldering golden cord !
What pretty feet you must have been
When Caesar Augustus was Egypt's lord ' —
" 'l
'Ere, look 'ere, Jimmy," one of those demon boys will
break in, interrupting your reverie : " you can see the corpse's
'ole fice ! My ! ain't 'e jes' black ! Blimy if 'e aint 'ad 'is nose
bruk in a fight, as 'e ain't got but the 'alf of it left," &c, See,
" See wot this lydy's got wrote on 'er, 'Any," the
blooming betrothed of a speechless young man will strike in,
unconsciously carrying on the chorus : " Three thieusand
years old ! My ! 'ow-ever could they a kep' 'er all that time !
She's a bit orf colour, certingly — but sich good clothes to bury
'er in — I call it nothin' but sinful waste," &c, &c.
Yet I can tell a more touching story, in another sort, of the
Mummy Room. Once I happened to watch a small boy — a
very decidedly " earthly " small boy, too ; one would not have
expected it of him — on whom the mummies seemed to exercise
a quite indescribable fascination. He even stopped half-way
through his stale Museum bun, and gazed at them with a
species of horror. Then, after a five-minutes' silence, he
breathed hard, and said to his companion, in an awe-struck
whisper :
" They don't know we're looking at them ! "
The "Jewel Room " is another favourite haunt. Here only
some twenty people are allowed in at one time, and the police-
men are doubly reinforced ; and indeed, since the accident
to the Portland Vase, it is certainly a necessary precaution.
This beautiful vase, lent in 1S10 by the Duke of Portland,
xiv '• MUSEUM III. \h.\cil!
was smashed by a semi-lunatic in 1845. This man, suddenly
and without motive, deliberately aimed a brick at it, and
crashed it into fragments, from which it has been cleverly
restored as we see it at present.
People who find the British Museum exhausting— and they
are many— take too much of it at one time. It is then 1
small wonder that they often suffer from a kind of mental indi-
gestion — "Museum headache" it has been appropriately
termed. A pretty young girl complained to me of just such
headache the other day: "I wanted," she said, "to go to
"Niagara," but T— insisted on taking me to that dreadful
Museum instead, and I had to walk past rows and rows of
awful headless things for two hours ! " Poor thing ! Hut main
people share her feelings without possessing her frankn<
And to walk through the long, gloomy galleries of the Museum
without due object, preparation, or intention, is. no doubt,
exhausting. It is true that we are there "heirs of all the
ages," but it is equally true that nobody can satisfactorily
inherit all .the ages at one and the same time. If we' content
ourselves with but one department for the day, it is wonderful
how interested we may become. Mr. ('.rant Allen— who. by
the way, was generally unkind about London, must ha
experienced the boredom that comes with a mental surfeit.
"Tlu- British Museum 'Mi "is indeed .1
to saunter through carelessly with a glance righl I at what hap;
catch your eye or take your fancy. I musl add" '
antly), " that a certain blight of inexplii
over the vast collection \ whether il is the gloom "i Bloomsbury, the wanl
oi spare in the galleries, tin- haphazard ; I
know nol ; bul certainly, for some mysterio
hibited are far less interesting, relatively in their intrinsic scienl
artistic worth, than those ..I the Louvre, the Vatican, the Muni
or any other greal I luropi an museum. Dinginess and slingii
\\ here o mspicuous."
Mr. Grant Allen was, evidently, a \V< I he
elsewhere calls St. Paul's " bare, pretentious, and unimpi
338 A GALLERY OF INSTRUCTION chap.
and London generally "a squalid village," we need the less
mind his calling the British Museum " a gloomy and
depressed-looking building." He had evidently never seen
the pillared portico shining in the May sun, its flocks of pretty
pigeons feeding on the green plots that line the enclosure, and
the lately-planted young plane-trees bursting into vivid green,
— a new " boulevard " along its outer line of railings.
Mr. Allen was, of course, thinking of the more romantic sur-
roundings of foreign galleries, housed in ancient palaces, with
all the adornments of parquet, mosaic, and often tropical
gardens. There is, however, a faint glimmer of truth in what
he says. We in London have not the consummate art of the
foreigner in the arrangement and setting-off of beautiful objects.
In the Louvre, for instance, all the galleries lead to a final
star, shining through the long vista of space, — the Venus of
Milo ; in the Vatican, all the noble chefs-d'oeuvre glimmer in
alcoves round a central fountain. Here, in our Museum,
per contra, you seem rather to be in a Gallery of Instruction.
It is not only in shops that we in England have to learn
how to "dress our windows." But at any rate, no one
will deny that we have of late made enormous advances in
the art.
Nevertheless, the beauty and grandeur of the British
Museum collections, beauty on which I have already touched
in the Bloomsbury chapter, impress us in spite of fog, and
grime, and dull London galleries. And the feeling for the
suitable arrangement and disposal of our artistic treasures
grows upon our directors year by year. Thus, the gigantic
figure of Mausolus, as he stands driving his triumphal car, a
wonder of the world, is effectively placed ; and though it is but
seldom light enough to view the Assyrian Bull-gods thoroughly
in their dark corner, they form, doubtless, an imposing entrance
to the old Greek marbles. The Egyptian Hall is also impres-
sive, and the enormous scarab, called irreverently by an
American visitor, " about the biggest bug in Europe," is
x i v
339
SIGHT-S] EING
advantageously placed, as also that Grammar of Hieroglyphic
ht Royal
The collection <>f Tanagra figu on the upp< r fl
near the Jewel Room, is one oi thi
34Q TANAGRA FIGURINES chap.
merits in the Museum. Here, in a small compass, you may
follow the whole development of the plastic art, from the
rudest clay effigies and caricatures, to the most lovely realisa-
tion of the Greek feeling for beauty. Some of the ladies, with
their palm-leaf fans and " Liberty " draperies, seem hardly to
come to us from the tomb ; have we not met and loved them
in our own day ? Their dresses, their attitudes, are so modern,
even their hair is arranged in the present styles. Especially
charming are two damsels in tea-gowns, leaning earnestly
towards one another, enjoying some choice bit of gossip.
And there are two figures in this particular gallery, in which
I claim to take a quite special interest ; having seen them, so
to speak, in their transition stage. It happened thus :
When I was in Athens some few years back, a waiter, taking
us no doubt for " rich English milors," said, in a stage whisper,
that he had some fine things to dispose of. He kept them, he
said, for safety in the cellar. So to the cellar he went, and
produced, from many wrappings of cotton-wool, the treasures :
— that very winged Eros and that same pirouetting ballet-dancer
that now adorn one of the central wall-cases. Alas, in our
case, that waiter was doomed to disappointment. He wanted
no less than ^40 for the Eros and ^30 for the ballet dancer ;
and they were returned to their cotton-wool and to the cellar.
But, a twelvemonth passed, and behold ! one fine day we
recognised with joy our old friends in the familiar surroundings
of the British Museum !
Many of the British Museum treasures have, like that winged
Eros, endured strange vicissitudes of fortune. The great
" Elgin " marbles, — those sculptures from the Parthenon so
long furiously raged over in print on the much-vexed charge
of vandalism in appropriation, and still more furiously threat-
ened by the rage of the sea on their transit from the Acropolis,
—were, indeed, shipwrecked on their way here. Then there
are the contents of the " Mausoleum " Room, the whole
story of the discovery of which, by Sir Charles Newton at
xiv SOUTH KKXSTNGTON MUSI i M
J4'
Halicarnassus, in 1856. is like one long romance. Oth. r
objects recall various stories. The familiar bust called
"Clytie," for instance, so admired by Carlyle, and so familiar
in drawing schools, was the most cherished possession of Mr.
Townley, who "escaped with it in his arms when he
expecting his house to be sacked during the Gordon n
" Fortunately," says the chronicler, "th k did not take
place, and Mr. Townley's wife, as he called her, returned to
her companions." The corridors of the British Museum, that
suggest such boredom to the uninitiated, are full of such
stories. So much we know, but, ah! if these stone- could
only tell their histories, and let the full light into their
chequered past !
The South Kensington Museum, now officially, by order of
the late Queen, termed "the Victoria and Albert Museum," is
well known to all dwellers in, and visitors to, London. The
large and wonderful collections that it contains have been for
many years so overcrowded and so irregularly arranged, as to
lose half their attraction. For long it existed partly in shanties
and temporary buildings, and a hideous iron structure, nick-
named the " Brompton Boilers," was for long the disgrai
a rich and a beauty-loving nation. All these ha> ngth
been swept away; the terribly inadequate main entrance (in
the Brompton Road) is being done away with, and a new
facade is rising, which will soon effei t great 1 ! .m<\
improvements. Mr. Ruskin, who was always a victim of
moods, was apparently in his day made ver; by the
general muddle, and expressed his feelings on the subject in
the following burst of pathetic eloquent
■• Ai South Kensington (he says), "whei I I myself in
labyrinth of military ironmongery, advertisements
fish-farming, and plastei bathing nymphs \\iili .1 year's smul '>n lh<
them ; and bad to put myself in charge ol
Indeed, in its vast size, its involved construction, 1
encylopsedic scope, the South Kensington
342 NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM chap.
resembles a maze, and, once inside it, it is difficult indeed to
know the points of the compass. Yet, everything can be
seen here, if only you know where to look for it. It is, itself,
a " General Exhibition " on no mean scale. And here is more
than ever exemplified the great truth, that the most beautiful
objects lose in effect in proportion to the unsuitableness of
their immediate surroundings. Even the model of the Pisan
pulpit, crowded as it is among so many incongruous objects,
seems here a sort of glorified stove-pipe, while the carved front
of Sir Paul Pindar's old house almost suggests a magnified dolls'-
house awaiting sale, and plaster casts jostle on all sides with
the valuable treasures of antiquity. Here again are the groups
of feminine students with their guides, and also many isolated
toilers, " working up " some special branch of knowledge in
the different sections, such as Ivories, Porcelain, Lace, Musical
Instruments, or Italian woodwork. (The students are here, I
may add, a trifle better dressed than those at the British
Museum ; they are also, on an average, a thought cleaner,
and their hair has, perhaps, a tendency to be neater.) The
"omnium-gatherum," as it has been called, of South Ken-
sington, should, like any other Exhibition, be taken piecemeal,
and on the first visit the stranger should merely try, if possible,
to see the historic Raphael cartoons, and those most inter-
esting pictures of the British School that form the famous
" Sheepshanks " collection.
The neighbouring Natural History Museum, Waterhouse's
vast edifice of terra-cotta, is, internally, a most beautifully plan-
ned building, and the arrangement of its various classes of
specimens is no less excellent. Nothing could be better done,
either for purposes of entertainment or of instruction, than the
groups in the Great Hall of the building, where animals,
birds, and insects, are shown charmingly mounted and in their
own natural surroundings ; and where, by careful and well-
selected illustration, such strange living mysteries as
" melanism " and " albinism " are demonstrated and explained.
xiv TATE G \l U.kY 343
One of the most striking glass cases of all is that which illus-
trates " Protective Resemblances and Mimicry," a subj
which is attracting much notice at the present day ami
naturalists (see the late Professor Henry Drumi
Tropical Africa for further curious information on this
interesting subject). Some of the strange natural imitations
shown here, such as of dead leaves by butterfli< - or ol hits of
straw by insects, are wonderful indeed.
The new Tate Gallery, raised by the munificence of one ol
our merchant princes for the enshrinement of modern British
Art, is a building of quite another kind. This edifice, in the
Greek style, was built by the late Sir Henry Tate, on the
site of old Millbank Prison, at Westminster. When this Gallery
was first opened, in July, 1897, its approaches were always
thronged by private carriages, and powdered footmen waited
in the muddy, half-finished roads (for the whole locality was
then in a state of incompleteness). But this was in the early
days of its fame; the vagaries of fashion are of short duration,
and although even yet "smart" people are to be met with
occasionally in the Tate Gallery, they are now in a derided
minority; they have, most likely, betaken themselves to the
still newer exhibition of Hertford House.
It is the artisan, the small shopkeeper, the great "lower
middle-class," that frequent chiefly the Tate Gallery. Nol by
any means the same (lass, for instance, that you see at the
National Gallery; the visitors to the Tate Gallery are mainly
the lovers of "the human interest " in a picture, and not the
earnest students. Here the sightseers roam, like butterfli .
from flower to flower: not so much to gather the horn
just to enjoy the moment. Therefore, at Millbank. tin \
but rarely gowned in angular "art s< rge," and are but s< Idom
be-spectacled and be-catalogued. Neither are th< I
like girl-lecturers at all evident. Sir lb in I Ice
an evident pleasure in walking about the galleri s that I.
munificence had provided. Only a short iim<
344 NATIONAL GALLERY chap.
death, he was to be seen there, benevolent and urbane as ever,
the type of what Mr. Ruskin has called " the entirely honest
merchant."
The Tate Gallery is considered, administratively, as part of
the National Gallery ; and many pictures of the modern
British school have, as every one knows, been removed to
Millbank from the older collection. But the earlier pictures
of the British School, and the Turners, are still in Trafalgar
Square.
The wealth of foreign pictures now to be seen in the
National Gallery of London renders it the Mecca of every
visitor, both from our own country, and from overseas. The
National Gallery, fine as it is, is but a comparatively modern
growth. Founded in 1824 by the purchase of the Angerstein
Collection, it slowly, very slowly at first, crept into fame and dis-
tinction. Only some forty-five years ago, Mr. Ruskin said of it
that it was "an European jest !" Since 1887 its pictures have
nearly doubled in number and it is now, if not one of the
finest, at least one of the most representative, collections in the
world. The internal arrangement of the Gallery leaves little
to be desired, and its spacious entrance hall and staircase,
adorned with coloured marbles, has a solid dignity, with a cheer-
fulness and brightness usually somewhat lacking in London. A
fine bust of Egyptian porphyry, called the " Dying Alexander,"
(a copy of one in the Uffizi), presented by Mr. Henry Yates
Thompson, forms an effective centre-piece for the Entrance
Vestibule.
Once inside the magic portals of the National Gallery, a
very paradise is opened to the art-loving visitor. He will
soon forget, revelling in those soft Italian skies, that glowing
southern colour, that outside his shelter hums the London of
the twentieth century. The pictures are finely arranged, and
they are not crowded. A hint has been taken from the
Louvre, and the famous "Blenheim Raphael," the Ansidei
Madonna (bought by the nation for such a tremendous price
XIV
NATIONAL GALLERY
from the Duke of Marlborough), greets the entering visitor from
the far end of a long vista. The walls on which the pictures
Recruiting Serjeants by the Natiom
arc hung arc covered in Pompeian red
wall-covering that has the soothing
brocade, and that even improves in tone with \
346 PICTURE STORIES chap.
The National Gallery cannot be seen in one visit. For any
real appreciation of the vast collections, ten, twenty visits
rather are needed ; visits that need never, now, be other than
a pleasure ; the improved conditions making the place itself
attractive, and whatever light is obtainable in London finding
its way to those large and lofty galleries. The mass of "the
People " mainly frequent the British Schools ; and, even in
the larger portion of the building occupied by the Foreign
Schools, every room has usually, like the London collections
generally, its special votaries. For instance, in the little room
devoted to the Early Sienese painters, you will nearly always
find a few earnest students, making pencil marks on note-
books or in elaborate catalogues ; in the long Italian Gallery
they are, perhaps, just a trifle less severe, but are still more or
less of the same type, sitting in rapt contemplation and still
with catalogues ; but the Dutch School is already more
flippant, and but few catalogues survive into the Spanish and
French Schools.
The romance of the National Gallery, — what volumes might
not be written on the fascinating subject ! If, here again, old
pictures could tell stories of their past, what adventures could
they not relate ! The long corridors of the National Gallery,
filled with masterpieces from all nations and ages, would of
themselves furnish as copious records as many a shelf in the
British Museum Library. What stories might these pictures tell :
of their painting, their owners, the generations to which they have
served as the Lares and Penates, the families whose vicissitudes
they have shared ! This, maybe, had hung for years, blackened
and tarnished, in a pawnbroker's shop till some vigilant eye
rescued it from its oblivion ; that, perhaps, had saved its
owner's life, or redeemed the fortunes of a nation. This, again,
formed the " wedding-chest " of a beautiful dark-eyed bride, dust
long ago ; that caused the imprisonment, almost the death, of
its author. Unhappily, old pictures are " silent witnesses " of
history. We can, indeed, discover, through much searching
xiv TURNER AND CLA1 DE
in dusty archives, the provenance of a few of our mo
celebrated pictures, or read, perhaps, one or two of I
relating to them; but how many arc th< re of which we have
not been able to find a record? It depends mainly on chance
what stories survive, and what do not. Then, such as a
known are often not widely known ; they lie hidden, for the
most part, in musty blue-books, or in tomes of ancient V
attainable by the student only. The mere title, The Cornfield
or The Repose, tells so little. Does it not add to our inten
in the pictures to know that the one was thought by Constable
to be his best work, and that the scene of the other was laid
among the hills of Titian's own country? In connection with
the inscriptions on the frames, most visitors, I fancy, will
share the disappointment I felt, when on revisiting the
Gallery one day I found the familiar "Raphael" disguis
as "Sanzio," "Tintoret," as "Robusti" and so forth: but
this somewhat pedantic innovation has now been partially
remedied.
The early Italian pictures were usually painted to adorn
particular places; some, perhaps, to decorate a wooden chi
for the furnishing of a room, as Benozzo Gozzoli's Rapi
Helen; others to consecrate an altar, as Raphael's Madonna ;
many to assist in the carrying out of sonic architectural design, as
in Crivelli's pictures, or Fra Filippo Lippi's VisionofSt. Bernard.
All, at any rate, were painted, not to hang in rows in a gallery,
but for particular persons, places, and occasions, far removed
from the presentem ironment of them. Perhaps our only pictures
specially painted with a view to the < iallery which the) now a. lorn,
are those in which Turner's rivalry with ( :iaude is imm<
Visitors may wonder why, in a roomdevoted to th I
School of Painting, they arc suddenly confronted with two
large canvases of Turner's. The facl is that Turner pai
them in direct competition with ( 'laud.-. I hi
landscape-painter determined to heat the ancienl on 1 \ own
classical ground. Whether he has con
348 ANCIENT TOMB-PORTRAITS chap.
question ; but the pictures still hang side by side in unconscious
rivalry, telling the pathetic story of the dead man's ambition.
Turner, who left these two pictures, among many others, to the
nation, expressly stipulated that they should hang between
those two by Claude. In vain, during his life, large sums were
offered for them ; he steadily refused to sell. " What in the
world, Turner, are you going to do with it ? " his friend
Chantrey asked, referring to the Carthage. " Be buried
in it," Turner replied grimly, keeping its real destination a
secret.
There are in the National Gallery some pictures actually
painted for the sitters to be buried in. These are the early
Grasco-Egyptian portraits, which glare down upon us in the
vestibule. A few years ago a workman's spade, digging in the
Fayoum, accidentally struck against a mummy-case. Affixed to
the outside covering, in a position corresponding to the head of
the corpse, was a portrait of a man in his habit as he lived.
That "find " led to others. Some dozen tombs, closed 1,500
years ago, were rifled in order to supply a fresh link in the
historical development of art as exhibited in our National
Gallery.
Just above these old-world pagans hangs Spinello Aretino's
Fall of the Rebel Angels, with devils and dragons galore. If
you gaze at the mummy faces long enough, you can quite
imagine the dead men's faces looking at you ; as Spinello,
who was an imaginative Florentine, used to think his devils did.
Spinello's picture was painted to decorate the church of Sta.
Maria degli Angeli, in his native town of Arezzo ; and he
laboured hard to make the chief fiend, Lucifer, as hideous as
possible. So much did this idea prey upon him, that one
night he had a terrible dream. The demon he had painted
appeared to him in his sleep, demanding to know why the
painter had made him so ugly. Spinello, it is said, did not
survive the shock, which is a warning to those who take liberties
with the devil. The Greek painter, who, when confronted with
xiv WILLIAM BLAKE
an unpleasing sitter, said frankly, "Paint you? Who would
paint you, when no one would even look at you?" was «
Seeing the pictures in the National Gallery is like reading
bits of old biographies. All true artists put their life into their
work, and leave it there. Take Marco Marziale's work The
Circumcision of Christ (No. 803) — it is wonderful in
of the faithful labour put into things that the modern painter
would generalise as mere accessories. An amateur embroidi
could easily copy the elaborate cross-stitch of Marziale's le<
border, and find no stitch in its wrong place. He who did this
was only a second-rate Venetian painter, and a label painted on
the canvas fixes the date and makes it probable that this was
his first important commission; therefore, Mann spared no
trouble, and crowded his picture with all the most beautiful
textures and patterns known to the Venice ol his day. 1'eople
did not scamp work in those times.
The painter-poet, William Blake, with his charming in
sanity, has left us glimpses of his strangely warped mind in
his mysterious painting of Pitt Guiding Behemoth^ which
hangs on the walls in another part of the gallery. The more
one looks at this little picture, the more its green and
hues and the tongues of its flames have fascination. It is
dark and unattractive at a first glance: hut. to show how
fatally easy it is to attract a " following," and also how much in
need the average \ isitor is oi a pilot to the ( iallery, one only has
to draw up a chair and seat one's self before this small canvas
to collect an inquisitive crowd. People,even educated peopl
strangely imitative ! Besides this picture, there are onl
two minor works by Blake in our National Gallery. In
of his Canterbury Pilgrims, we havi here that of his 1
temporary Stothard, who took the idea fi and
supplanted him. Stothard's Canterbury /'
quarrel between himself and Blaki ; aquarrel which w
healed ; and Blake criticised his rival's pace;: n it-
exhibition. Hoppner, the artist, prais< d il .
35o PICTURES AND HISTORY chap.
Stothard had " contrived to give a value to a common scene,
and very ordinary forms." Thereupon Blake, in criticising the
critic, said that this was Hoppner's only just observation ; "for
it is so, and very wretchedly so indeed. The scene of Mr.
S.'s picture," he adds, "is by Dulwich hills, which is not the
way to Canterbury ; but perhaps the painter thought he would
give them a ride round about, because they were a burlesque set
of scarecrows, not worth any man's respect or care." Tantcene
animis ccelestibus irce ?
Among the works of the Lombard School is a picture by
Parmigiano, The Vision of St. Jerome (No. 33), which
shows how the artist can forget himself in his work. For
Parmigiano was engaged on this very picture, in Rome, during
the German sack of the city in 1527. Vasari says that the
painter was so intent on his work that, even while his own
dwelling was filled with the German invaders, he continued
undisturbed ; and that when they arrived in his room and
found him so employed they stood amazed at the beautiful
paintings, and wisely permitted him to continue. Parmigiano's
picture is thus, in the truest sense, historical.
There is another class of pictures that is associated with
incidents in history. First, we have that priceless little painting
by Gerard Terburg, The Peace of Minister (896), mentioned
before in connection with Hertford House. It hangs in the
Dutch Room, and is so small that one might easily overlook it.
Small as it is, it cost at its last sale ,£8,800 ; ^24 for every
square inch of canvas. The Dutch painter has represented
one of the turning-points of his country's history ; the ratifica-
tion, in 1684, of the Treaty of Miinster, by which the long war
between Spain and the United Provinces was ended. The
numerous heads are all portraits, and, in the background, the
painter has introduced himself. There is about this painting a
photographic truth, a minute fidelity, which makes it doubly
interesting. Terburg would not part with it during his
life. Afterwards, amid many vicissitudes, it passed into the
xiv TIME'S RIA KM, I S 35 ,
possession of Prince Talleyrand, and was actually hanging in
the room of his hotel, under the view of the Allied Sovereigns,
at the signing of the Treaty of 1814. Not less interesting in
its way is the painting by Holbein of the Duchess Christin
Denmark. Among Holbein's duties, as Court painter and
favourite of Henry VIII., was that of taking the portraits of
the ladies whom the King proposed to wed. This young
Christina was prime favourite after the death of Jane Seymour,
and Holbein was despatched to Brussels to paint her. Tin-
picture pleased his Majesty ; but, for political reasons, the
match was broken off. The story of Christina's me
the King, that she had but one head, but that if she "had
two one should be at the service of his Majesty," is now dis-
credited; but the Duchess seems to have had a character of
her own.
Peace and War, by Rubens, an allegorical canvas (46),
is another picture designed to sway the fate of nations.
Rubens painted it when he came over to England, in 1630. as
ambassador to negotiate a peace with Spain. He produced an
elaborate allegory showing forth the Blessings oi Peace, and
presented it, with much diplomacy, to Charles I. It was sold,
after the King's death, for ^100; to be bought back again for
^3,000. With regard to Charles I.,'s pictures generally, much
might be said of the- strange irony of history. The I
equestrian picture of the King by Vandyck (1172), bought for
the nation at the Blenheim sale for /j 7,000, was, after his
death, sold by Parliament, for a paltry sum ; and I
famous Mercury, Venus, and Cupid, (10). also included in
Charles's collection, was sold and bought again by sui 1 1 ssive
Parliaments.
Among the early Florentine pictures in th< <
Botticelli's Nativity of Christ (1034), is historj in
of showing the force of the religious revival in
time. Botticelli, al th< ol forty, fell under the pi
influence, and, forsaking the world's p in. id
352 BOTTICELLI'S SYMBOLISM chap.
" mourner " of himself until his death. This is the picture
that, as Mr. Lang says, was :
" Wrought in the troublous times of Italy
By Sandro Botticelli, when for fear
Of that last judgment, and last day drawn near,
To end all labour and all revelry,
He wept and prayed in silence."
The painting is full of theological symbolism, and its Greek
inscription, being translated, runs : " This, I, Alexander,
painted at the end of the year 1500, in the troubles of Italy,
in the half-time after the time during the fulfilment of the
eleventh of St. John, in the second woe of the Apocalypse, in
the loosing of the Devil for three years and a half. Afterwards
he shall be chained, and we shall see him trodden down, as in
this picture." Botticelli had already, earlier in life, got into
religious trouble by his reforming tendencies. When quite a
young man, he had painted, for a Florentine citizen, Matteo
Palmieri, a large picture called The Assumption of the Virgin,
which also hangs in our Gallery (No. 1126). Palmieri
had adopted Origen's strange heresy that the human race was
an incarnation of those angels who, in the revolt of Lucifer,
were neither for God nor for his enemies ; and, as he and
Botticelli, in working out the design of the picture, had made
amendments in theology, they fell into disgrace. Suspected of
heresy, Botticelli's work was covered up ; and the chapel for
which it had been painted was closed until the picture left
Florence for the Duke of Hamilton's collection and was
bought by the nation in 1882. "The story of the heresy
interprets," Mr. Pater says, " much of the peculiar sentiment with
which Botticelli infuses his profane and sacred persons, neither
all human nor all divine."
Most interesting, too, is Carpaccio's Venetian painting of the
Doge Giovanni Mocenigo (750), which faithfully represents a
page of the history of Venice. The doge is shown kneeling
before the Virgin, and begging her protection, on the occasion of
xiv Till-; VICISSITUDES OF I'K I I ,
the plague in 1478. Medicaments and nostrums against the
epidemic are contained in a gold vase on the altar befor< the
throne; and a blessing (according to the inscription below)
is asked on them: "Celestial Virgin, preserve tin ( iij
Republic of Venice, and the Venetian State', and extend your
protection to me, if I deserve it." Simple and modes)
indeed was Venice in the good days of her prosperity!
Compare with this kneeling, crownless doge, the new and
elaborate frescoes in the Vatican, where the Pope is repr< sented
in his grandest robes, benevolently granting to the Madonna
an audience, with masters of the ceremonies standing by, and
obsequious pages holding his gold-laced train.
Some of the greatest ornaments of our Gallery an- those
which have been thrown off easily in the magnanimity of art.
Chief of these is the Veronese called The Family of Darius
(294). This large painting, with its splendid architecture,
gemdike colour, and wonderful composition, was painted while
Veronese was detained by an accident at the Pisani Villa at
Este. Having left it behind him then-, he sent word that he
had left wherewithal to defray tin expense oi his entertainment ;
and his words were more than verified. The picture, whose
golden tones Smetham, the artist, so much admired, turned
really to gold afterwards. The Pisani family sold it l<> the
National Gallery, in 1857, for ^13,650. Veronese's lavish
ness in giving away his masterpieces was almost equalled,
however, by our own Gainsborough, who gave his Pa
Clerk (760) to a carrier who had conveyed his pictures I
Bath to the Royal Academy.
The wanderings and vicissitudes of celebrated pictun
been many indeed. The celebrated Van Kyk./. ■
and his Wife (186), painted five hundred years ago, lias had,
for instance, an eventful history. At one tinn a barbel
surgeon at Bruges presented it to the Queen Regent of the
Netherlands, who valued it so highly thai she pensioned him
in consideration of the gift. At another, it musl have y
354 GREAT MEN'S FAVOURITE PICTURES chap,
again into humbler hands ; for General Hay found it in the
room at Brussels to which he was taken in 1815 to recover
from the battle of Waterloo. The story of Michael Angelo's
Entombment is also curious. It was once in the gallery
of Cardinal Fesch, which was sold and dispersed after the
cardinal's death. Being in a neglected condition and un-
finished it attracted little attention, and was bought very
cheaply by Mr. Macpherson, a Scotchman sojourning in Rome.
After the dirt had been removed, it was submitted to competent
judges, who pronounced it to be by Michael Angelo. This
caused a great sensation ; and a lawsuit was instituted against
Mr. Macpherson for the recovery of the picture, a suit which
ultimately ended in his favour. He removed the picture to
England, and sold it to the National Gallery for ,£2,000.
The pictures that were the favourites of great men gain
an additional value in our eyes from that fact. Vandyck's
Portrait of Rubens (49), Bassano's Good Samaritan (277), and
Bourdon's Return of the Ark (64), were all owned and much-
prized by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who would often admire, to
his Academy pupils, the "poetical style" of the Bourdon.
Vandyck himself singled out the Portrait of Gevartius as
his masterpiece, and used to "carry it about from court to
court and from patron to patron, to show what he could do
as a portrait-painter." There is, too, a pretty story of how Sir
George Beaumont valued a little landscape by Claude (61), so
highly that he made it his travelling companion He presented
it to the National Gallery in 1826; but, unable to bear its
loss, begged it back for the rest of his life. He took it with
him into the country ; and on his death two years later, his
widow restored it to the nation.
I might go on multiplying picture-stories forever; for the
romance of the National Gallery is inexhaustible. Times,
and men, change; we live our little day, and are gone; but
here, upon our walls, live souls embodied in canvases, monu-
ments of human spirits which from age to age are still instinct
xiv THE SECRET OP THE "OLD MAS1 I
with life. "Paul Veronese," James Smetham writes, "three
hundred years ago, painted that bright Alexander, with his
handsome flushed Venetian face, and that glowing uniform ol
the Venetian general which he wears; and before him, on
their knees, he sel those golden ladies, who an pleading in
pink and violet : and there is he, and there are they in our
National Gallery ; he, flushed and handsome, they, golden and
suppliant as ever. It takes an oldish man to remember the
comet of 1811. Who remembers Paul Veronese, nine genera-
tions since? But not a tint of his thoughts is unfixed: they
beam along the walls as fresh as ever. Saint Nicholas stoops
to the Angelic Coronation, and the solemn fiddling of the
Marriage at Cana is heard along the silent galleries of die
Louvre ('Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are
sweeter')! yes: and will be so when you ami I have cleaned
our last palette, and, ' in the darkness over us, the four handed
mole shall scrape.' '
Paul Veronese and his contemporaries knew how in make
their works last. We in our day are not so fortunate. It is
sad to.think how many pictures of our own English School
are gradually fading away : how many nun have put their
best powers into pictures which are now (among them some
of Sir Joshua Reynolds's most beautiful creations) rapidly
becoming "ghosts of ghosts." With Turner the general wrei k
is more complete. "Turner," Constable said, to
paint with tinted steam, so evanescent, and so airy." .Mas
evanescent indeed. Reynolds devoted much time and atten
tion to finding out durable pigments. Trying to discover the
secret, he even cul up some old Italian pictures. Ii waj
vain quest. The old masters are long ago buried, and the)
have carried their secrel to thi
Sadder still is the cs e ol those artist - w hosi • ■
themselves have nol laded, but the fashion for who • pictures
has gone. Sir Benjamin West, who died some sixt) ■■<\'\
ago, enjoyed very great fame during hi lit I! tinted ri
356 THE HEIRS OF THE AGES chap.
large historical canvases, all painstaking, and, in their way,
of undoubted merit. They gained high prices in their day,
and are now mostly consigned either to cellars or to the
darkest rooms of suburban galleries.
Time is, after all, the greatest of art critics, and its judg-
ment is sure. The best of all the centuries adorns the
walls of the National Museum. It is the best only that
survives. To us, in all our painful twentieth-century newness,
it is given to inherit the mystery and magic of the old Greeks
and Egyptians ; the charming imagery of Raphael, filled with
simple faith and sweet imagination ; the quaint beauty of
Botticelli, and of the early Florentines, whose art was a part
of their life ; the gay voluptuousness of the later Venetians ;
"the courtly Spanish grace" of Velasquez; the charming
affectations of Sir Joshua Reynolds, shown in the fair ladies
whose portraits, in their beauty, once filled the halls of
England. All is given to us, unsparingly. For us and for the
enrichment of the walls of our National Gallery, did the rude
barbarians, in the sack of Italian cities, stay the hand of
destruction ; for us the treasures of art were wrested
from many a palace of antiquity ; it was for the delight of
thousands of modern Eondoners that the monasteries of the
Middle Ages were plundered. Altar-pieces painted for adora-
tion in the private chapel of some patron saint are now seen
dimly, through London fog and smoke, hanging, maybe, next
to some pagan Bacchus and Ariadne, or Venus and the
Loves. For our sake were battles fought, to include master-
pieces among the spoils ; for us did the Italian nobles sell
their treasures into the hands of money-lenders. Could
Botticelli, that fervent follower of Savonarola, he who " worked
and prayed in silence," have guessed that his beloved Nativity
of Christ would, centuries hence, be removed to barbarous
London, and be stared at by crowds of wondering Philistines,
who should see in it only the curious uncouthness of its
gestures, — he would, surely, have held his hand.
xiv PICTURE-FANCIES
357
The National Gallery is the natural haunt of such dreams.
.Sitting there in the quickly-growing twilight, how easily it
becomes peopled with ghosts, ghosts even nun, intangible than
Reynolds's. Our thoughts wander back into the past, the
walls grow dim, they seem to melt away into distance ; we
hear the sound of music, and see the glimmer of gay banm rs,
as Cimabue's Madonna is carried past, amid the acclamation
of a multitude ; or a gay court appears before oui Blled
with fine ladies, grandees, and inquisitors; and, apart from all,
a great King conversing eagerly with a little dark painter,
whose only ornament, beyond his lace ruffles, is the red < ross
of the Order of Santiago on his breast ; or we seem to be in
Italy, in a poetic "Romeo and Juliet " timeand atmosphi re,
in a rich noble's house, bright with splendid hangings and
works of art ; a painted wedding-chest, or cassone, has just
been presented, on the occasion of a marriage, and tin young
bride herself gazes down lovingly into its depths, which she
has just stored with rich silks and brocaded velvets, and all
her treasures ; just such a (best as Ginevra might have hid and
perished in ; just such a bride as Ginevra herself. Or tl
changes again to a dusty gallery in a dingy street, with a little
ugly old man mounted high on a stool, painting furiously away
amid a horde of tailless eats ; and anon a transformation, and
we see a brilliant illumination of Queen Mab's Grotto, with
fairies in wonderful gondolas, gliding to and fro; a ball in
Venice. . . . We, too, are invited, but, as we hesitate t" trust
ourselves to Turner's airy structures, a voice sounds in our
ear, a prosaic voice, however: " Closin' time, ma'am, cl
time!"
CHAPTER XV
HISTORIC HOUSES AND THEIR TENANTS
" I have seen various places. . . . which have been rendered interesting
by great men and their works ; .... I seem to have made friends with
them in their own houses ; to have walked and talked, and suffered and
enjoyed with them. . . .Even in London I find the principle hold good in
me. ... I once had duties to perform which kept me out late at night,
and severely taxed my health and spirits. My path lay through a neigh-
bourhood in which Dryden lived ; and though nothing could be more
commonplace, and I used to be tired to the heart and soul of me, I never
hesitated to go a little out of my way purely that I might pass through
Gerrard Street, and so give myself the shadow of a pleasant thought." —
Lei^h Hunt.
"Our houses shape themselves palpably on our inner and outer natures.
See a householder breaking up and you will be sure of it. There is a shell-
fish which builds all manner of smaller shell into the walls of its own. A
house is never a home until we have crusted it with the spoils of a hundred
lives besides those of our own past. See what these are and you can tell
what the occupant is." — Oliver Wendell Holmes.
The most curious thing about London houses, and
especially characteristic of our national reserve, is the fact that
we can, as a rule, till nothing at all about them until we get
inside the sacred enclosure. A Londoner's house is the shell
that hides him from the world ; our houses are, to the foreigner,
as enigmatic and as exclusive as we ourselves. But, once
past the magic gateway, once past the Cerberus at the door,
you come upon an interior often unguessed and undreamed of.
The contrast is striking. What can be more dully monotonous,
rii. w
1'XKi \ EALING 1\ I I RIi
more unromantic, than the row of brick and stucco house-
fronts that face the average large square oi ;tr< el ? Yet it is ten
to one that, inside, hardly one of these will exactly resembl
other, either in taste, architecture, or even genera] plan. I
the 'long unlovely street" of Tennyson's disapproval may, and
does, often hide unsuspected treasures. Who, for instance,
would suspect the existence of the Check has reliefs, the painted
<2^f ..,.-.
At the Club.
ceilings, the colonnades and statues in some of the
Bloomsbury houses ? Who would imagine the curi Soane
Museum" in the quiel house in Lincoln's Inn I
dignified Georgian spaciousness in the old man
Bedford Square? the gorgeous interioi ol th
Bruton Street ? the picture-galleries ol Pio d
or the Eastern magnificence and opulent the
360 SENTIMENT AND ASSOCIATION chap.
Park Lane mansions ? For in London, as a rule, there are but
few external signs to denote wealth. Even in our riches, we do
not wear our heart on our sleeve. From a survey of these, as
a rule, unimposing facades, we can imagine the uninitiated
foreigner wondering where in the world the people of the
richest city in the universe live. He may, even if intelligent,
wander at large through London, and notice nothing of beauty,
or even of interest. Was it not Madame de Stael who, lodged
as she was in uninspiring Argyll Street, said unkindly, but not,
perhaps, without some reason, with regard to her immediate
surroundings that " London was a province in brick " ? But
London houses have other and deeper associations than those
of mere riches ; the association with mighty spirits of the past,
poets dead and gone, great men of action, kings, warriors,
statesmen ; the infinite multitude of those who, " being dead,
yet live." And in some cases, even though the houses them-
selves have vanished, yet the places where they stood are still
sacred. Thus, — though it is perhaps difficult to define the exact
boundaries of the old Stuart Palace of Whitehall, or to say
where was the special site of the historic Cockpit,— yet, do they
not lend a glory and an attraction to all the district of
Westminster? Do not the purlieus of the unromantic Borough
High Street, murky as these often are, recall Chaucer's famous
Tabard Inn, of Canterbury pilgrims' fame ? and does not the
much-abused Griffin, on its Temple Bar pedestal, memorialise
the older and too obstructive arch, where of old the dreadful
heads of political scapegoats were displayed ?
Vanished, and every year still vanishing, treasures ! Sooner
or later, no doubt, the edifices made sacred by history and
association must go the way of all brick and masonry ; yet even
such landmarks as Turner's poor riverside cottage at Chelsea,
or Carlyle's modest abode in Cheyne Walk, it will be sad to
part with. That curious humanity that Charles Dickens gave to
houses makes itself again felt in their fall ; dwellings are not
immortal, any more than were their great occupants. There is
xv DISAPPEARING LANDMARKS $6i
no picturesque decay in London ; what is nol ol use lim-
it dare not cumber the precious ground. Therefore, thi
remaining timbered fronts of London an gone or going; only
recently some picturesque old red roofed houses, in the i
vicinity of New Oxford Street, wen- condemned and destroyed :
Staple Inn, indeed, has been saved and patched up, owing to the
prompt action of a band of public benefactors. Block
houses, forming whole streets, are continually washed away in
the tide of progress; Parliament Street has disappeared; the
old Hanway Street, as. it once was, has lately gone ; Holywell
Street is of the past ; the demolition of this latter, though,
indeed, urgently needed for the widening of the "straits
the Strand, was not without its special sadness. The decay of
houses that are at once picturesque and historical is, ofco
doubly afflicting ; yet even ugly houses often retain the charm
of association to those who know what memories are bound up
with them. Here romance and history serve to lend the
beauty that is lacking. Thus, Ruskin's prosaic home in
Hunter Street, Thackeray's commonplace man-ion in Onslow
Square; the house in Half Moon Street where Shelle)
''like a young lady's lark." in a projecting window, " hanj
outside for air and son- ;" even that dark corner in Mecklen-
burgh Square where Sala kept his curios and bri< . all
have their peculiar charm. Dr. Johnson's house in Gough
Square, Fleet Street ; the so-called "Old Curiosity Shop" in
Lincoln's Inn Fields ; John Hunter's house in I 'Square
—are all threatened with demolition. And. even apart from
historic interest, how -.ad is the frequent fall ol London's
landmarks! Tottering buildings, mere derelicts of time, old
houses
" whose ancient casemenl
With sad, dim eyes, al the d(
Instinct as they are with the pathos of humanity, thi
of Damocles hangs over them all.
If great men's houses, or the houses th menha>
362 BYWAYS OF FACT AND FICTION chai\
temporarily, lived in, could all be designated by some unobtrusive
memorial tablet, such, for instance, as the Carlyle bas relief at
Chelsea, — or even a plain inscription such as those recently
placed on John Ruskin's birthplace in Hunter Street, Reynolds's
house in Leicester Square, and Sir Isaac Newton's in St. Martin's
Street, — what an interest would it not lend to even " long and
unlovely " London streets ! For the romance of houses is not
divined by instinct ; and even the taste of a Morris or a Rossetti
has not always left its mark on their London abodes. That
Dickens, Thackeray, John Leech, Darwin, the Rossettis,
William Morris, have all lived in and about Bloomsbury, is not
patent to the casual visitor. Does not even the plain inscrip-
tion, "Poeta Inglese, Shelly," (sic) lend an added glamour to
the Lung' Arno of Pisa ?
The dividing line between history and fiction is not always
very strongly marked ; and this leads us to consider yet another
aspect of the question. A curious literary interest sometimes
attaches to certain houses, an interest hardly less deep for being
partly, or even purely, fictitious. Among the many novelists
who have made themselves responsible for this, none, perhaps,
have been more prominent than Charles Dickens. Dickens,
whose knowledge of London was, like his own Sam Weller's,
"extensive and peculiar," has invested certain houses,
certain localities, with an almost human sentiment and
pathos. Thackeray has also done much, yet not so much as
his contemporary, towards making London stones famous. The
tenants of " historic houses " in this sense — houses on whom
these and other writers have conferred immortality — are, of
course, merely the "ghosts of ghosts," and yet, how real, how
persistent are they, with the majority of us ! Harry Warrington
enjoying the May sun from his pleasant window in Bond Street ;
old Colonel Newcome kneeling among the " Grey Friars " of
the Charterhouse ; the pretty old house and garden in Church
Street, Kensington, where Miss Thackeray's charming heroine,
Dolly, lived; little David Copper field at the waterside
xv DR. JOHNSON
blacking warehouse ; poor weeping Nancy on th< st |
Surrey Pier, by London Bridge; ragged Jo at the gratin
the squalid burying-ground : they and their sorrows are more
real, more vivid, to us than the actual suffering the boy
Chatterton, the "Titanic" agony of spoiled Byron, or the short
glories of Lady Jane Grey. And, indeed, when we call to
mind the gay vision of the "ladies of St. James's" taking the
air, we think as much of such personagi > as Thackeray's
beautiful Beatrix, wayward and heartless, and of her solemn
cousin, Colonel Esmond,— as of Mrs. Pepys, in her n<
" tabby suit," or of my Lady Castlemaine herself, in all her
beauty, attended by her royal admirer.
Such are the '"byways of fiction" in London! N t t<>
Dickens, in whose persuasive company we have wand
from Fact to Fiction, Dr. Johnson is, perhaps, ol all our |
Londoners, the most prominent. To him, indeed, the evi r
lasting noise and bustle of the capital, "the roaring of the
loom of time,"' was ever (.bar. Sayings of his about London
have, in many cases, almost passed into household words:
" He who is tired of London is tired of existence"; "Sir, let
us take a walk into Fleet Street " ; "'I think the full tin
existence is at Charing Cross." Dr. Johnson had a ureal
admiration lor fleet Street, which he thought finer than
anything he knew. The old doctor's well known figure,
often painted, in the ancient full-bottomed d rusty
-lollies, yet, lor us, haunts the shade, ol thi Strand,
lingers near his old haunts, fumbling in the displaye
of the second-hand book shop-. "The old philosophi
s'.ill among us, in the brown coal and the metal butt'
Johnson's London houses,— Gough Square, Boll « ourt, J
son's ( 'ourt, and many others ; Johnson's favoui
taverns, notabl) the famous "( Iheshire Ch
known literar) i oteri< thi miliar to i
description; they, and the Johnsonian element the) recall,
are bound up intimately with London's itury
364 DR. JOHNSON'S LONDON HOUSES CH. xv
history. There is scarcely any street so little altered, since
then, in its characteristics, as Fleet Street. And if the Fleet
Street of our own day, with its still irregular houses, its
occasional glimpses, down some alley, of the shining river
which it skirts, is picturesque, — what must it have been in
Johnson's day, when its shops yet displayed their gay projecting
signs ? when " timbered fronts " and gables were the rule ; when
the charming dress of the day, with its gay satins and ruffles,
knee breeches and buckles, was the mode ? Though, for that
matter, the old doctor himself, the essential spirit of the Fleet
Street of the time, can hardly have been a fashionable figure :
" It must be confessed," says Boswell, " that his .... morning dress
was sufficiently uncouth. His brown suit of clothes looked very rusty ; he
had on a little old shrivelled, unpowdered wig, which was too small for his
head ; his shirt neck and the knees of his breeches were loose, his black
worsted stockings ill drawn up, and he had a pair of unbuckled shoes by
way of slippers."
Doctor Johnson was, indeed, a faithful Londoner. He lived
in no less than sixteen London houses (among them, several
" Inns "), all situated in and around Hoiborn and the Strand.
Nearly all of these abodes have now disappeared, or are
unidentified ; only the Gough Square house still exists. It is
picturesque, chiefly on account of its age ; it stands back out
of Fleet Street, in a little court, and has been often sketched.
It is a corner house, numbered seventeen (marked by a tablet),
and remains, in externals at least, much as Johnson left it 140
years ago, though internally it is a network of dusty offices.
Johnson's Court (not named from him), where he also lived,
is now swallowed up in "Anderton's Hotel." In Gough
Square the greater part of the celebrated Dictionary was
written ; here Johnson's wife died, and here he " had an upper
room fitted up like a counting-house in which he gave to the
copyists their several tasks." It was, however, in Bolt Court,
his last house, that the curious army of pensioners lived whom
this strange old scholar philanthropist collected round him :
U Street.
366 THE "CHESHIRE CHEESE" CHAP.
" His strange household of fretful and disappointed alms-people seems as
well known as our own. At the head of these pensioners was the daughter
of a Welsh doctor (a blind old lady named Williams), who had written some
trivial poems; Mrs. Desmoulins, an old Staffordshire lady, her daughter,
and a Miss Carmichael. The relationships of these fretful and quarrelsome
old dames Dr. Johnson has himself sketched, in a letter to Mr. and Mrs.
Thrale : 'Williams hates everybody; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does
not love Williams ; Desmoulins hates them both; Poll ( Miss Carmichael)
loves none of them."
These old waifs and strays were not, apparently, even
always grateful. But, in any case, the annoyance of " such a
menagerie of singular oddities " must have driven him more and
more to his clubs, and especially to his favourite haunt the
" Cheshire Cheese." This ancient tavern, still existing in its
pristine simplicity in Wine Office Court, " and," says Hare,
" the most perfect old tavern in London," is the classic
retreat where Johnson and Goldsmith held their court ;
Johnson in the window-seat, and Goldsmith on his right hand.
To American tourists, I gather, it is a specially sacred
place of pilgrimage. In that low, dark, sanded parlour of the
" Cheshire Cheese," you might easily imagine yourself in some
rural retreat, miles away from London, though so close in
fact to the din and civilisation of Fleet Street. Not only far
from London, but far away back in the eighteenth century.
Can such things be, you wonder, in the London of our day ?
You sit in Johnson's time-honoured seat, under his brass-plate
inscription, and his picture ; darkened oak panelling lines
the walls ; artistic Bohemians blow smoke-wreaths over their
toasted cheese and whiskies, hilariously in yonder corner ;
and even the waiters are not of the uncommunicative, cut-and-
dried modern sort, but rather the cheery, jovial order of
Dickens's time. One of them brings you the " visitors'
book " ; two ponderous tomes filled with brilliant sketches
by well-known artists, some of the sketches amiably sugges-
tive of the sketchers having supped " not wisely, but too
well"; another tells you. with all the pride of long association,
xv OLIVER GOLDSMITH
that "the place has not changed on< whil since [ohn
time"; and yet a third, with an expansiveness rare ini
in London, will poinl out to you "Goldsmith's favourite
window scat."
Oliver Goldsmith, the erratic genius who "wrote lik(
angel, and talked like poor PolL/' was one of [ohns
satellites, another shining light of old Fle< t. He had
the artistic temperament indeed, for when he was not in tin-
clutches of the bailiffs, he was usually revelling in absurd
extravagance. Goldsmith's last lodging, in No. 2, l!ri< k
Court, Temple, he furnished with ridiculous lavishi
dressing himself to match, in " Tynan bloom satin with gold
buttons." Dr. Johnson must sometimes have been tried by
his friend, as the following story shows: (Newbery, Gold
smith's publisher, had apparently refused further advano
his impecunious client) :
" I received one morning " f Boswell represents Johnson to
message from poor Goldsmith, that he was in great distress, and, as ii was
not in Iris power to come to me, begging thai I would come to hii
as possible. I sent him a guinea and pn to come to him directly. 1
accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had
arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I ; 1
that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a bottle of Madeira
and a glass In-fore him. I put the cork into the bottli . r] sired he would lie
calm, and began to talk to him ol the means by which he might be
cated. He then told me thai he had a novel ready for the press, whii
produced to me. [ looked into it and saw its merits, told the landl 1
should soon return, and, having to a booksi Hi r, sold it foi 1
brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not witho
rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him 50 ill."
The MS. was that of The Vicar oj Wa bul the
whole picture really sugg< from I >i< ken-'
Oliver Goldsmith acted al time as " 1
combination! to pri Id Samuel Richardson, the prii
novelist, al the latt< r's printing office in the soutl
of Salisbury Square, 1 ommuni< ating with
36S SAMUEL RICHARDSON chap.
Fleet Street. Richardson, also, had once befriended Johnson,
and the worthy doctor was for ever praising his friend, and
abusing his compeer in fiction, Henry Fielding, whom he
called "a barren rascal."
"Sir" (said Johnson), " there is more knowledge of the heart in one
letter of Richardson's than in all Tom Jones. Some one present here
remarked that Richardson was very tedious. "Why, Sir," replied Johnson,
"if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be
so great that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the
sentiment, and consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment. "
But if Richardson is tedious, Johnson was nothing if not
prejudiced ; though, after all, he has no less a person than
Macaulay on his side ; Macaulay, who declared that were he
to be wrecked on a desert island with only one book, he
would choose Clarissa, sentiment and all, for his sole delecta-
tion.
Hogarth, the painter, it is said, once met Johnson at
Richardson's printing-office ; when, seeing " a person standing
in the room shaking his head and rolling himself about in a
ridiculous manner, he concluded he was an idiot, whom his
relations had put under the care of Mr. Richardson as a very good
man. . . . To his great surprise, however, this figure stalked
forward to where he was, and all at once burst into an
invective against George II. . . . Hogarth looked at him in
astonishment, and actually imagined that this idiot had been at
the moment inspired."
Richardson's own home was, however, at some distance from
his Fleet Street printing-office ; as far, indeed, as North End,
Fulham. His house there, which still stands, is one of two named
" The Grange " ; that nearest the Hammersmith Road. Here, in
his garden-house, the novelist wrote his somewhat long-winded
romances, indulged his amiable vanity, and indited his letters,
with their touches of playfully elephantine wit, to " Lady
Bradshaigh " and his other fair correspondents.
It is this very house, "The Grange," old-fashioned, red-brick,
XV SIR EDWARD BURNE fONl
sedate, that, by another of Fate's curious ironies, was for twenty-
seven years the home and studio of Sir I
Strange contrast, indeed, between the prosy, fussy, pi old
painter-novelist, and the most ideal and imaginative of •
modern painters !
'• When the painter first settled here, the house stood in the mid
fields on the outskirts of London. Now, whole rows of new streets I
sprung up on every side, the fields are buill over, and omnibus
district trains have their stations within a stone's throw. Buttheleafj ti
and sheltered garden of the painter's hou e rem tin, a green oasis in
sandy waste. From the noise and dusl of crowded thoroughfares
into the quiet garden with its shady lawns and ga) flowi i borders, it - line
old mulberry-tree and rows of limes. Here snowdrops and ci
blossom in the early spring, and later in the year, blue irises and « '
lilies, sunflowers and hollyhocks grow tall under the ivied wall. And hi
at the end of the garden, among the flowers and li die studio wl
the master worked."
Here, then, in the historic "garden house," where Richardson
once wrote, and received his friends Hogarth and fohnson,
was Burne-Jones's studio, where he imagined that
" land of clear colours and sli >i
In a region oi shadowless hot
described by Swinburne the poet in the lovely dedication ol
his poems to his friend and Master in another art, begging
that they may find place, " foi the love of lost loves and 1
times," in the painter's creat< d paradise ; " R< 1 1 ive," he i ri< .
" in your pal painting
This revel of rhymes."
It is a far cry from I leel Stre< I to Fulham, whith i
wandered in company of Richardson and his friends,, uid we in
retrace our steps. All these sages and worthii
were, of course, mon or less connected with th
the Press, then comparatively in its childhood, but now, though
grown to mighty dimensions, occupying dill the
and classic ground. The Jupiters of the Pr< : iv< from the
37o "THE BERNERS STREET HOAX" chap.
first wielded their sceptres in Fleet Street and its immediate
neighbourhood. And not only the newspaper press, but all
sorts of lampoons, political skits, libellous pamphlets, and the
like, had here their home in early days. Here that meteoric
and unstable wit, Theodore Hook, devoted his misapplied
genius to the editing of the then scurrilous journal John Bull,
(a paper whose metier was the satirising of society) ; his favourite
and thoughtful axiom being " that there was always a concealed
wound in every family, and the point was to strike exactly at the
source of pain." The primary object of the paper, which was
started in " Johnson's Court " in 1820, was the slandering of the
unfortunate Queen Caroline, wife of George IV. The death
of the Queen soon reforming the John Bull, it altered to
dulness, and declined in sale ; its first editor is, indeed, now
mainly remembered by one of his early escapades, the famous
" Berners Street hoax." This was a wild practical joke played
on a harmless widow lady, living at 54, Berners Street. Hook,
it seems, had made a bet that " in one week that nice quiet
dwelling should be the most famous in all London ; " and, the
bet being taken, he forthwith wrote many hundred letters to
tradesmen, ordering goods and visits of every kind, from coals
to cranberry tarts, from attorneys to popular preachers. The
street became, of course, absolutely blocked with traffic, Hook
himself enjoying the " midday melodrama " from an apartment
he had himself hired in a house opposite. Such wholesale
destruction was the result that the enfant terrible, being
suspected, had to sham illness, until the affair had blown
over.
Theodore Hook was a Londoner of the Londoners, with "a
gigantic intellect and no morals," added to the peculiar
resourcefulness and adaptability of the typical cockney.
Nevertheless, even this unprincipled buffoon and wit, petted by
royalty and fashion, and left to die, a drunken worn-out spend-
thrift at last — must, he, too, have had his bad moments. There
is a peculiar and haunting horror attaching to the story (told in
w JOHN RUSKIN
his Life and Letters)^ of how, when passing by his birthpl
in Charlotte Street, Bloomsbury, Hook pointed toa spot nearly
opposite the house where he was born, saying, "There by that
lamp-post stood Martha the Gypsy."
The Strand, still picturesque, narrow, and tortuous, is m
nearly entirely given up to shops, newspaper offices and theatn
but at No. 149 (once a lodging-house and now a n<
paper office), the actress Mrs. Siddons Stayed when she first
came up to London, and here she supped joyfully with her fathi
and husband, to celebrate her first London success. Less chang< '1
is the historic Temple, where that constant Londoner, ('harks
Lamb, lived so long, and of which he has left us such lovely
descriptions. Indeed, Charles Lamb is one of those London
of whom, like Dickens, Milton, and Johnson, it is difficult to
say where they have not lived in the great metropolis. Milton,
perhaps, is, however, an extreme case : lor he not only lived in
a score of different residences, but further puzzles the con-
scientious topographer by being married in three different
churches and buried piecemeal ; having been also disinterred
at various times, and his remains scattered,— a thing manifestly
unfair to the future historian.
Ruskin, also, the latter-day apostle and critic, has been very
catholic in his London dwellings. Born in humble Hunter
Street, Bloomsbury, he migrated later with his parents to Heme
Hill and Denmark Dill, with a short interlude of married life in
Park Street. The 1 >enmark Hill house, so far from the centn
things as to be almost suburban, is yet a goal of pilgrimage to
Ruskin's faithful disciples. Denmark Hill, now so overbuilt,
so lined and scored with railways, was, some sixty j
still a very desirabli ntial region. Does not M
locate his Misses Dobbin, Amelia's Major's sisters, t!
that fine villa, too, with "beautiful graperies and peach-tl
which delighted little Georgy Osborne. The smaller hou
1 [erne I [ill, where little John Ruskin spent his boyhood, is
present day unattractive enough j but the Denmark Hill villa
r.
372 RUSKIN AND DENMARK HILL CHAP.
near by, taken later when the family launched out, has still its
charm. It, too, is a " fine villa," or rather country mansion,
not unlike the description of the Misses Dobbin's abode, and,
like it, full of peach-trees that, growing on old walls, still bear
abundantly. Readers of Prceterita will remember how, when
Mr. Ruskin became "of age, and B.A., and so on," his father
and mother decided on moving that short way to the larger
house : and how " everybody said how wise and proper" ; and
how " the view from the breakfast-room into the field was really
very lovely " ; and how the family lived for some quarter of a
century here in much " stateliness of civic domicile."
" The house itself " (says Mr. Ruskin) "had every good in it, except
nearness to a stream, that could with any reason be coveted by modest
mortals. It stood in command of seven acres of healthy ground. . . .
half of it in meadow sloping to the sunrise, the rest prudently and pleasantly
divided into an upper and lower kitchen garden ; a fruitful bit of orchard,
and chance inlets and outlets of woodwalk, opening to the sunny path by
the field, which was gladdened on its other side in springtime by flushes
of almond and double peach blossom. Scarce all the hyacinths and heath
of Brantwood redeem the loss of these tome ; and when the summer winds
have wrecked the wreaths of our wild roses, I am apt to think sorrowfully
of the tracings and climbings of deep purple convolvulus which bloomed
full every autumn morning round the trunks of the apple trees in the
kitchen garden."
That hedge of almond blossom is still gay in spring, and the
" shabby tide of progress " has not touched the old house,
which, garden, field, orchard and all, is still virtually the same
as it was in Ruskin's time. No. 163, Denmark Hill, is its
designation ;— a big, roomy, detached mansion, a real "rus in
urbe." Much like other large suburban villas, the house itself;
yet this is the spot whence emanated Modern Painters, that
early work of genius that assured the young writer's fame.
There is the " study " that Mr. Ruskin used, his " workroom
above the breakfast-room " ; there, above it again, is his bed-
room, looking straight south-east, giving "command of the
morning clouds, inestimable for its aid in all healthy thought."
xv LORD BEACONSFIELD AND MAYFAIU
There, still, is the little reservoir made by Mr. Ruskin in
engineering zeal, a canal said by the neighbours to 1
£S every time he had it filled, in vain attempt to mal
little rivulet, or Alpine sluice, for watering! For, alth.
"of age and a B.A.," the chief reason, as Mr. Ruskin in-
genuously confesses, why his soul yearned for the Denmark
Hill house, was. that "< ver since I could drive a spade, I had
wanted to dig a canal, and make locks on it, like Harry in - Ham
and Lucy." And in the field at the back of the Denmark
Llill house I saw my way to a canal with any number of locks
down to Dulwich." .... "But," he adds sorrowfully, - 1
never got my canal dug, after all ! The garden* rs wanted all
the water for the greenhouse. [ resigned myself. . . . yet the
bewitching idea nevi r wenl out of m\ head, and some wat< r
works were verily set allowing twenty years afterwards."
Yet, be the actual bricks and mortar never so prosaic, tl
is a strange fascination about the dwellings when I men
have lived and died. Benjamin Disraeli was Lorn, like
Ruskin, in the shades of Bloomsbury, and, again like him.
migrated, later, to Mayfair on his marriage. Tin- late Lord
Beaconsfield remained, however, always faithful to the West
End. In his Park Lane house (No. 29) he lived over thirty
years: removing then to No 2, Whitehall Gardens, and
finally dying, after a short tenancy, a! 10. Cur/on Street. It
was a cold and inclement spring, a blast of Kingsley's much
belauded "north-easter," to which he succumbed. That
unassuming house in Curzon Street was. for the moment, the
world's centre. "It was half-past six in the morning that the
final bulletin of the dying -tan -man- condition wa d on
the railings to inform th: crowd who. even at thai earl)
waited for intelligence.
1 ■
Mr. Gladstone, too. his had as main London hous<
great rival, with perhaps, stormier residences in, them. There
is the house, for instance, in Marl, v S
smashed the great man's windows at the time ol his unpopularit)
374 DOWNING STREET chat.
over the Eastern question. And No. 10, Carlton House Terrace,
is the mansion where he lived for so many years at the zenith
of his fame. Is his spirit, I wonder, clean vanished, forgotten
there, and does no record of him remain ? Perhaps the militant
spirits of Disraeli and Gladstone still linger, if anywhere,
about 1 )owning Street ; that narrow street of which Carlyle says
that "it is evident to all men that the interests of one hundred
and fifty millions of us depend on the mysterious industry
there carried on " ; and where No. 10, that dingy old house which
has been the temporary home of successive Prime Ministers,
as well as the official head-quarters of the Government, " focuses
more historic glamour than any other house in London."
Hook said wittily of Downing Street :
" There is a fascination in the air of this little cul-de-sac ; an hour's
inhalation of its atmosphere affects some men with giddiness, others with
blindness, and very frequently with the most oblivious boastfulness."
Lord Rosebery used 10, Downing Street, for official
purposes ; Lord Salisbury did not use it at all. Many
historic scenes have been enacted, and many momentous
questions settled, within its walls. It was in its entrance hall,
trodden by the feet of successive generations of politicians, that
Wellington and Nelson met for the only time in their lives,
both waiting to see the Minister, and neither knowing who
the other was. They naturally entered into conversation, but
it was not until afterwards that they knew to whom they had
been speaking. The house itself is solid and substantial,
without any architectural attractiveness, and to the casual
observer suggests nothing different from thousands of other
London dwellings. From the outside, no one would imagine
it to be commodious, but it has some very large apartments ;
and the old council chamber, the principal features of which
are the book-lined walls, massive pillars, and heavy, solid
furniture, remains much as it was in Walpole's day. Here
many conferences of Ministers have been held, and the most
xv SIR JOHN Sham's mi si IM
delicate affairs of State settled. The Cabinel Councils I
however, not always been held here. Mr. Gladstone pi
to hold them in his own more cosy room on the floor .i 1
and Lord Salisbury preferred to hold them at the I
Office. Next door is the official residence of the Chancellor
of the Exchequer. The entrance to the Foreign Office and
the Colonial Office is opposite. Which of these great buildings,
with their numerous passages and annexes and waiting-rooms,
is the original of Dickens's "Circumlocution Office," it would
be invidious even to attempt to discover.
Nowhere is the curious unexpectedness of London hoi
better exemplified than in the building known as Sir John
Soane's Museum, on the north side of the square called
Lincoln's Inn Fields. Mere to all seeming, stands an ordinary
dwelling-house; — its front, it is true, somewhat of tin- ornate
kind, — but utterly misleading, so far as its outer appearance is
concerned, to the passer-by. Nor does the illusion ^t< >p at the
halbdoor. For there is here an air of homi ly friendliness, <>f
quiet welcome, that is altogether at variance with any precon-
ceived ideas that the visitor may have formed about museums
in general. Several dignified family servants of irreproachable
demeanour lie in wait for the stranger and kindly escort him
round. It is not till you have passed the Rubicon of the double
dining-room, yet arranged exactly as in the lifetime of the
founder, that you begin to realise that you an' in a museum, not
in a private mansion. And the realisation is even then difficult,
for the family butlers have a familiar way of alluding i • "Sir
John," the donor, as though he were alive and in the next
room, thus :
"Sir John gave /',\ \o for these Hogarths, ' hief
Butler, indicating the well known Rake series, and speaking
with a degree of intimacj ol "Sir John" that positively
startled me, till I remembered that the gentleman in question
died some si\tv years ago.
" Oh, er, \'i\ Hogarthian ! " I remark hat bashfully,
376 A POST-MORTEM JOKE chai\
for indeed the pictures are hardly all of them pleasing to the
uninitiated. " I wonder that Sir John could like to live with
them ! "
" Yes, indeed ! some of them are very gross," says the
Mentor ; and I almost wish that I had held my peace.
The panels of the mysterious room that contains the Hogarths
afford a wonderful example of how to hang many pictures in a
limited space. They open at the touch of a spring, disclosing
not only inner walls of pictures, but also their own inner
sides similarly adorned. Through the walls thus magically
opened a glimpse is obtained of a little basement room called
" The Monk's Parloir," adorned with carving and statuary.
Sir John Soane was, of course, the architect of the existing
bank of England, and interesting architectural drawings,
beside innumerable imaginary palaces by him. abound in the
museum. The chief treasure of the collection, the hieroglyphic-
covered alabaster sarcophagus of Seti I., father of the great
Rameses, lies in the basement ; which is, indeed, entirely filled
with works of "antiquity and virtue"; the "backs" and base-
ments of three adjoining houses being utilised for the required
space. To judge from the wide variety among the objects
collected, Sir John Soane must have been a man of cosmo-
politan tastes, and possessed of an interesting personality.
Perhaps he found some comfort in art for the tragedies of his
later life ; for his two sons (whose quaint portraits, in youthful
blue and silver, are to be seen in the museum) died in his
lifetime. At any rate, that Sir John was a man of some
humour seems to be sufficiently attested by the curious post-
mortem joke that he perpetrated on his trustees ! For, when
leaving his treasures to the nation, and specifying especially
that the house was to be left precisely as he had lived in it, he
appended to his will three codicils, directing that three
mysterious sealed cupboards in his museum-house should not
be opened till respectively thirty, fifty, and sixty years after his
death ! This was accordingly done, expectation rising higher
xv TIM-: LEIGHTON HOUSE
in each decade; and lo ! on cadi occasion nothing was
found but a few worthless papers, relating either to antiqu
accounts, or to still more antiquated family disagrei ments !
There is, at the present time, despite the encroachments of
a modern and generally iconoclastic London, now a wholesome
spirit of veneration abroad, which tends not only towards the
preservation of ancient and historical buildings, but also towards
the acquisition of the homes that have been lived in and made
beautiful by the celebrated men of our own day. Of this kind is
" Leighton House," bought since Lord Leighton's death by the
effort of a private committee, and now opened free to the
nation. The rooms and internal arrangement are, as in the
case of the "Carlyle House,'' left as nearly as possible in theii
original condition, and though of necessity much of the \alu
able furniture and accessories have been removed, yet the many
sketches and drawings illustrative ol the painter's life-work
that fill the walls do something to dispel the unavoidab
ol' incompleteness. It is interesting to wander through the
beautifully-proportioned rooms,togaze into the well tended, sun-
lit garden, with its gay geranium beds and its gr< < ;i lawn : to sit
in the mysterious semi darkness of the " Arab Hall." and look
up into its gold-encrusted dome; to listen to the mournful
splash of the tiny fountain in its marble basin : — and yet,
" wanting is — what ? "
" When the lamp is shatl
The light in the dust li<
It will always be a question how far the m< re dwellii
great painter is worth thus preserving in its integrity, when
once the magic of his presence, his genius, i
the growing work of his art no ' !
committee of the "Leighton House" have don their work
with judgment and care, audi, it the inevital
occurs to those who saw it in the life time or during the •
days" of its late master, o| former life .ci. I ur with
present -loom and sadness, this is only in the nati
373 LONDON PALACES chap.
The blue tiles that the painter loved still adorn, in bird-of-para-
dise like splendour, the wide, massive staircase ; the water still
tinkles in the Pompeian atrium as of old ; and the master's art
can still be studied in the many drawings and reproductions
that fill, so far as they can, the places left by greater works.
Hertford House, in Manchester Square, the sumptuous home
of the Wallace collection, bequeathed to the nation by Lady
Wallace in 1898, is the most important of the nation's artistic
legacies. Though in a sense historic — for it is the " Gaunt
House " of Vanity Fair, and its former owner, Lord Hertford,
was caricatured as the Marquis of Steyne ; — yet, as it is mainly
as a picture gallery that it must be noticed, it has fallen most
conveniently into a previous chapter.
But the historical houses of London are innumerable, and
my space is but limited. History is written in many kinds.
And the greater portion of the fine houses of the metropolis,
the palaces of Mayfair, Pall Mall, Kensington, possess historic
interest of their own ; interest, indeed, often unknown and
unsuspected by any but the privileged few, because unvisited
and generally inaccessible. Of these are Chesterfield House,
in South Audley Street, the home of the author of the famous
Letters, where the poor scholar Johnson waited patiently for
interviews with his noble patron ; Apsley House, — the pillared
facade of which is so well known to travellers on the humble
omnibus as it passes Hyde Park Corner,— the abode of the
" Iron Duke," that old man in the blue coat and white trousers,
to the last the people's idol, whose daily appearances, in old age,
were here awaited patiently by expectant crowds ; Lansdowne
House, Devonshire House, Sutherland House, Bridgewater
House, splendid mansions on or near the " Green Park," famed,
like so many others, for their picture galleries ; Sutherland
House, often now hospitably thrown open for gatherings of
" the people," is said to be the finest private mansion in London :
" I have come," a Queen is reported to have said to a former
Duchess of Sutherland, " from my house to your palace."
xv HAUNTED HOUSES 379
Many of the splendid old mansions of Stuart times have,
indeed, gone ; yet in some instances they have risen again
from their ashes to new spheres of interest. Thus, old
Montague House in Bloomsbury, old Burlington House in
Piccadilly, old Somerset House in the Strand, have been
rebuilt and utilised by Government as National Collections or
offices. Where lovely ladies of the Restoration trailed their
sheeny silks in Lely-like voluptuousness, where court gallants
presented odes, and court dandies took snuff and patronage,
now sweet girl graduates pace the galleries, spectacled lady-
students copy "old masters," Academy pupils study " the
antique." The contrast is picturesque as well as strange.
Does one not sometimes, as twilight falls, seem to hear the
ghostly " swish " of the court beauties' dresses along a deserted
British Museum Gallery, or seem to see in a stone Venus,
with uplifted arm, an insufficiently clad fair lady of the olden
time ? It is but fancy, yet such is the charm of history and of
historic association.
Ghosts of our own fancy may, and do, wander at their will
in London's misty galleries ; but ghosts, better authenticated,
are popularly supposed to haunt a few of London's old houses.
Thus, No. 50, in Berkeley Square has gained undesirable notoriety
as the " Haunted House," and many extraordinary tales have
from time to time been told as to its ghostly manifestations.
Berkeley Square has, undeniably, a solid and old-time look
that fits in well with the gloom)- tradition ; it has the best and
most ancient plane-trees of any London square, and its line
old iron-work, with occasional torch-extinguishers (used by
the " link boys " of sedan chairs in Stuart times), are all in
keeping with the old world spirit. Nevertheless, Berkeley
Square has other and sadder associations than those of mere
ghosts. For in No. 45,— a house specially noted for its good
iron-adornments. — the great Lord ('live, founder of the' British
Empire in India, committed suicide in 1774. "In the awful
close," says Macaulay, "of so much prosperity and glory,"
380 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS chap.
some men only saw the horrors of an evil conscience ; but
( 'live from early youth had been subject to '• fits of strange
melancholy," while now his strong mind was sinking under
physical suffering, and he took opium for a distressing
complaint.
In Berkeley Square (No. 38) is the town house of Lord
Rosebery, once the residence of Lady Jersey, and the place
whence her mother, — the daughter of Child, the banker, —
eloped to marry the Earl of Westmorland, in 1782.
It were, however, an invidious, as well as an impossible task,
to name all London's historic houses. What street in London
is, indeed, not "historic" in a sense? Houses may be pulled
down, but even thus their locality knows them still. Is not
even Turner the painter's squalid, dirty house in Queen Anne
Street, now razed, yet recalled to the passer-by, by the tablet
affixed to the houses that have since sprung up on its site?
"Unlovely" Wimpole Street is sacred to the shade of Elizabeth
Barrett Browning, that " small, pale person, scarcely embodied
at all." It was from this house, No. 50, that she wrote her
impassioned love-letters, and, after years of chronic invalidism,
ran away, secretly and romantically, to marry a brother-poet.
The picturesque chambers known as " the Albany," — a byway
out of Piccadilly, — recall Lord Macaulay, Lord Byron, Lord
Lytton. Curzon Street suggests the famous parties, in the
early nineteenth century, of the sisters Mary and Agnes Berry,
the friends of Horace Walpole. In Soho, — a district famous in
old days for an artistic, and semi-Bohemian fraternity, whose
houses emulated Turner's in dirt, — lived the painters Northcote,
Mulready, Fuseli, Stothard, — and Flaxman the sculptor. At
28, Poland Street, lived William Blake, the poet-painter, the half-
crazy, but wholly charming, seer and mystic ; here he wrote his
Songs of Experience and of Innocence, and drew his Visionary
Portraits. (The story of Blake and his wife, " reciting passages
from Paradise Lost, and enacting Adam and Eve, in character,"
belongs, however, not to dingy gardenless Poland Street, but
XV
I III. ROMANCE OF LONDON
*8i
to Hercules Buildings, then a modest Lambeth suburb). In
Poland Street, in 1811, lived also Shelley in early youth, with
his friend and biographer Hogg ; the latter being attracted,' says
Shelley, by the name of the street, "because it reminded him
of Thaddeus of Warsaw and freedom " :
"A paper (says Hogg) in the window of No. 15 announced lodgings
. . . . 'We must lodge there, should we .sleep even on the step of a
door.' . . .Shelley took some objection to the exterior of the house, but we
went in. . . .There was a hack sitting-room on the first floor, somewhat
dark but quiet, yet quietness was not the prime attraction. The walls of
the room had lately been covered with trellised paper. . . .This was
delightful. He went close to the wall and touched it. 'We must stay
here ; stay for ever.' Shelley had the bedroom opening out of the sitting
room, and this also was overspread with the trellised paper. '
But every part of London has its historic interest — is, in a
sense, a city peopled by the dead. "Where'er you tread is
haunted, holy ground." That spot, in that quiet, narrow street, —
Mavlair, Bloomsbury. Soho or Westminster, — where you chance
to live, and toil, and suffer, and enjoy,— has known many others
in its time, — others before you : men in stocks, and wigs, and
laced ruffles, and knee breeches ; women in brocades, ruffs, and
farthingales; children in long stiff skirts and prim stomachers;
who, in their turn, likewise lived, and toiled, and enjoyed, and
suffered. . . . Is it not this romance of London, this mysterious
past life of hers, guessed and unguessed, that makes us welcome,
and recognise as real friends, the types of a Thackeray, a 1 >ickens?
See, for instance', how a mere allusion to Thackeray puppets
serves to immortalise with a touch, the prosaic, if fashionable,
Clarges and Bond Streets: Clarges Street, "where' Beatrix
Bemstein held her card parties, her Wednesday and Sunday
evenings, save during the short season when Ranelagh was op< n
on a Sunday, where the desolate old woman sat alone, waiting
hopelessly for the scapegrace nephew that her battered old
h. art had learned to love."
■ Here', Baroness Bernstein taki s h 1 chocolate behind the drawn cur-
tains; she is the Beatrix Esmond of brighter days and fortunes. . . .There
382 HOLLAND HOUSE chap.
are the windows of Marry Warrington's lodgings in Bond Street, ■ at the
court end of the town ; ' geraniums and lobelias flourish in them to this day,
and no doubt they are let to some sprig of fashion ; but to me they are
Harry's rooms, hired from Mr. Ruff, the milliner's husband ; and the
' Archie ' or ' Bertie ' in possession to-day is a mere interloper, whom
Gumbo would have politely shown downstairs." —
{Byways of Fiction in London.)
Not less has Dickens done with the lower life of the Great
City. And has not Miss Thackeray (Mrs. Ritchie), with a
touch of her father's picturesque and vivid genius, glorified that
" Old Court Suburb," Old Kensington, in her well-known novel
of that name? Here, in Kensington, at No. 2, Palace Green,
then considerably more countrified than now, Thackeray died
in 1863. Here, too, is the red-brick Kensington Palace, built
by William and Mary in what Leigh Hunt called " Dutch
solidity," famous as Queen Victoria's birth-place, and also
more sadly reminiscent of poor Caroline of Brunswick, the
ill-fated and cruelly used wife of George IV.
Holland House is one of the most interesting and historically
important buildings in Kensington. It stands near Camp-
den Hill, in beautiful and spacious gardens, the same
gardens where the youthful George III. used to flirt with the
lovely Sarah Lennox ; the lady dressed as a shepherdess,
playing at haymaking while the King rode by : a youthful and
a pleasant idyl, in contrast with the lady's very chequered after
life! Holland House, says Mr. Hare, "surpasses all other
houses in beauty, rising at the end of the green slope, with its
richly-sculptured terrace, and its cedars, and its vases of
brilliant flowers." The house was originally built in 1607,
though its characteristic wings and arcades were all added later
by the first Earl of Holland, the same who was beheaded in
the Royalist wars. After his execution Holland House was
confiscated by the Parliamentary generals ; being, however,
restored in 1665 to the disconsolate widow, who comforted
herself by indulging privately here in the theatricals so strictly
XV
HOLLY LODGE 383
forbidden by the Puritan Government. Early in the eighteenth
century Holland House became associated with Addison (of
Spectator fame) ; he lived here for some three years after his
ambitious marriage with Charlotte, Countess of Warwick, a
marriage which, despite its splendour, report says was not
happy for the bridegroom. According to Dr. Johnson, it was
more or less " on terms like those on which a Turkish princess
is espoused, to whom the Sultan is reported to pronounce,
4 Daughter, I give thee this man for thy slave.' ' But the chief
interest of Holland House lies in its having been for so many
years the centre of a great literary and political coterie, and the
resort of Whig orators and politicians. In the lifetime of the
third Lord Holland, who died in 1840, the house was at the
height of its splendour as a world-renowned intellectual centre.
Holland House still exists in its integrity, though Macaulay long
ago prophesied mournfully that
"The wonderful city may :oon displace those turrets and gardens which
are associated will: so much that is interesting and noble — with the courtly
magnificence ofRich, with the loves of Ormond, with the councils of Crom-
well, with the death of Addison."
" The gardens of Holland House " (says Mr. Hare) " are unlike
anything else in England. Every turn is a picture. ... A
raised terrace, like some of those which belong to old Genoese
palaces, leads from the house high amongst the branches of the
trees to the end of the flower garden. . . . Facing a miniature
Dutch garden here is " Rogers' Seat," inscribed :
" Here Rogers sal, ami lure for ever dwell
With me those pleasures that he sin^s so well.''
Lord Macaulay's last residence was. as 1 have said, " Holly
Lodge." In this s.cluded villa, high-walled-in from the
outer world, were the two requisites for an author's ideal of
happiness, a library and a garden. The house bears a memorial
tablet. Here the great writer died while quietly seated in his
384 "THE CHOIR INVISIBLE 1 ' i h. xv
library chair, his book open beside him ; a peaceful close of a
busy life.
I have named a few of our great Londoners ; yet they,
indeed, are but few among the vast galaxy of the bright
particular stars who, even in our day, still enlighten with their
spirit their former dwellings and surroundings. It is their
human interest that so transfigures London stones ; it is the
mighty dead of England, the "choir invisible,"
" of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence : live. . . .
To make undying music in the world " —
that lend to their city such enchantment. - Surely something of
this feeling, — of this enchantment — is ours when we think of the
long roll of great spirits who illumined the archives of the past.
There is a magic, a glamour, in London streets, that affects the
strongest heads and hearts. All honour to them — to poor human
nature, — that it is so. Not only, let us hope, to the mad poet-
painter Blake was it given to " meet the Apostle Paul in Picca-
dilly." We, too, may, if we will, walk with Milton in Cripplegate,
may share Byron's Titanic gloom in the quaint Albany precincts,
may wander with Charles Lamb in those Temple Gardens that
he so loved, and may listen with him and Dickens to the
pleasant tinkle of the rippling water in secluded Fountain
Court. We inherit these associations, and we may — inestim-
able privilege— see our London, our " towne of townes, patrone
and not compare," through the eyes of all the great men who
loved her in the past.
" The dull brick houses of the square,
The bustle of the thoroughfare,
The sounds, the sights, the crush of men,
Are present, but forgotten then.
" With such companions at my side
I float on London's human tide ;
An atom on its billows thrown,
But lonely never, nor alone."
Cricket in the Parks.
CHAPTER XVI
RUS IN URB1
" It is my delight to be
Both in town and in countree." — Old Couplet.
" If <>nc must bave a villa in summer to dwell,
Oil, give me the sweel shady side of Pall Mall." — Charles Morris.
Oh, London! beautiful London! who would not be with
thee in May? Paris should not, surely, be recommended as
the only Mecca of that lovely month. When the London
street authorities, with unwonted forbearance, have for one
brief moment suspended their incessant repairing of the busiest
thoroughfares; when the hanging gardens of Park Lane, and
the window-boxes of Seven Dials, alike display their "pavilions
of tender green " ; when Piccadilly is blocked with traffic ; when
Rotten Row is thronged with the smart world : when the shops
386 "THE LUNGS OF LONDON" chap.
hang out their daintiest spring fashions ; when the gay parterres
of the Parks show flowers of kaleidoscopic brilliance, and their
sylvan seclusions suggest the "real country," what can be
more delightful than our own often-maligned metropolis ?
The Parks of London are, perhaps, the element that most
surprises the foreigner unused to English tastes and ways.
Here are neither the leafy terraces and regular alleys of German
capitals, nor the trim well-clipped boscages and levels of
Versailles and the Tuileries ; but only mere stretches of park-
like greensward, dotted here and there, in charming irregularity,
with old trees of noble girth. Walks there are, indeed, and
footpaths, shrubberies, and flower-beds ; but the chief area of
the London Parks is, ever and always, this fresh, radiant,
undulating turf, turf which here, more than ever, suggests the
little Board School girl's answer to a question on general
knowledge : " Turf, ma'am, is grass and clean dirt put
together by God."
Of Hyde Park, the largest and oldest of the London Parks,
Disraeli said truly in one of his novels: "Hyde Park has
still about it something of Arcadia. There are woods and
waters, and the occasional illusion of an illimitable distance of
sylvan joyance." The history of Hyde Park is the history,
generally, of Greater London ; first monastery grounds, then
royal demesne, then again, the people's. Some of the old
trees may even have seen the ancient manor of Hyde ; some
of them must certainly recall the time when this was a royal
Tudor hunting-ground, well-stocked with deer. Many of its
fine old timber-trees have, however, disappeared, so that the
famous " Ring " of Charles II. 's time can be now but imperfectly
traced.
The Parks are, naturally, " the lungs of London." Were it
not for these large " open spaces," so mercifully preserved to
us by the wisdom and farsightedness of former rulers and
legislators, the health of the great city would hardly now be
what it is. The little town of the early centuries, Roman,
xvi WHEN LONDON WAS IN THE COUNTRY 387.
Saxon, or Norman, surrounded by country woods and pastures,—
dotted with the gardens of merchants and magnates, as well as
with frequent convent closes, orchards, and leafy precincts,— had
small need of such vast pleasure-grounds. For London, even
in Elizabeth's day, consisted (as shown in Aggas's map), of
only two tiny townlets, "London" and "Westminster";
beyond, all was open fields. Tottenham Court Road, that
dreary thoroughfare of ugly modernity, was the solitary manor
of " Toten Court," a sylvan resort for " cakes and creame " ;
Chelsea was a pretty, distant riverside hamlet; Regent Street
and Bond Street were cows' pastures, and the " flowery fields "
of "Marybone" were altogether in the rural distances. Who,
indeed, would recognise the present Regent's Park in tin s<
lines (from an old play called " Tottenham Court ") :
" What a dainty life the milkmaid leads,
When o'er these flowery meads
She dabbles in dew,
And sings to her cow,
And feels not the pain
Of love or disdain . . . ."
But if, to the London of old time, the Parks were not
necessary, to modern London, which has more than doubled
its population and its area in the last century and a half, they
are an unspeakable boon. Our forefathers were wise in their
generation when they secured these stretches of the outlying
country for public use. We, too, in our own day, make similar
L-fforts, efforts of which the recent preservation of Parliament
fields, of part of Caen Wood, affords sufficient proof. In that
far-off day, prophesied by "Mother Shipton," when " Primrose
Hill shall be the centre of London," such breathing spaces,
such oases in the wilderness of bricks and mortar, would prove
of quite incalculable value.
Happily, London, even in her rampant growth, is oil. 11
jealously mindful of her responsibilities. Though our city boasts
no such spacious boulevards as are to lie seen in Paris, trees are
C <
3<SS ATMOSPHERIC "EFFECTS" chap.
often now planted at intervals on the sidewalks in many of the
newest thoroughfares, and a few of the older streets are being
widened and improved. Very few are the London views, as I
have said elsewhere, that are not in a measure enlivened by
foliage or greenery.
The colouring of London is a thing peculiar to itself; it
requires to be specially studied, even by painters whose eyes
are trained to observation. Its wonderful atmospheric effects
have been only more or less recently recognised by them. Very
few artists have rendered thoroughly the strange cold light on the
London streets ; cold, yet suffused by an underlying glow, by a
warmth of colour hardly at first guessed by the spectator. Even
a rainy day of London, greyness — what does the poet's eye see
in it?
" Rain in the measureless street,
Vistas of orange and blue ....
Blue of wet road, of wet sky,
(Grey in the depths and the heights),
Orange of numberless lights,
Shapes fleeting on, going by . . . ."
The cold pearly greyness of winter, the blue mist of
spring, the silvery haze of summer, the orange sunsets of
autumn, when the dim sun sinks in the fog like a gigantic red
fireball, all, in turn, have their charm. The artist's fault is that
he nearly always paints London scenes too cold, too joyless.
Mr. Herbert Marshall, the water-colour painter, to whom we are
indebtedforsomanycharmingimpressions of the London streets,
leans, if anything, somewhat to the other side, and hardly
allows for the aesthetic value of smoke. Painting, in London,
is always a difficulty ; but Mr. Marshall, it is said, used to
station himself and his paraphernalia securely inside some
road-mending enclosure, and thus pursue his calling un-
deterred by the persecution of the idle.
The faint blue-grey mist of the great city often gives to
London scenes something of the quality of dissolving views.
CVI
[\ I UK PARKS
389
Seldom is a vista perfectly clear : rathi r does it often suggest a
vague intensity of misty glory. Does not that lovely glimpse
of the Whitehall palaces from St. James's Park, seen, on fine
days in summer, from the little bridge over the "ornamental
Rotten /■'
gain an added charm from distance? Do not the more
or less prosaic Government buildings appear to be the
"cloud-capl towers and gorgeous pala
ol some dream of Oriental splendour? In such guise, one
might imagine, would the deceiving visions of a " I
39Q FASHION AND ROTTEN ROW chap.
Morgana," — a fairy palace, shaded by just such branching,
feathery trees,— appear to the thirsting traveller over the desert
sands.
Even M. Max O'Rell, who allows himself to scoff at most
things English, has a word of admiration for the peculiar misty
beauty of the London parks.
"Nothing" (he says) "is more imposing than the exuberant beauty of
the parks. Take a walk across them in the early morning when there is no
one stirring, and the nightingale is singing high up in some gigantic tree ;
it is one of the rare pleasures that you will find within your reach in
London. If the morning be fine, you will not fail to be struck with a
lovely pearl-grey haze, soft and subdued, that I never saw in such perfec-
tion as in the London parks."
The parks of London, like its districts, all have their special
attributes, their special place in thesocial plane. Thus, HydePark
is aristocratic, and in the season, its penny chairs, from Hyde
Park Corner to the Albert Gate, are thronged with the smart
world. Beautiful women, distinguished men, and gilded youths
may be seen riding — the best riders and the finest horses in the
world — along Rotten Row at the fashionable morning hour :
and, in the afternoon, the whole of "Society" appears to take
its afternoon drive round the magic " Ring " or circle of the
Park, enjoying seeing and being seen. Three times round the
Ring is a common afternoon allowance ; exercise, surely, that
habit must render, in time, not unlike a treadmill. In Hyde
Park, too, takes place the yearly meet of the " Four-in-Hand "
Club, extensively patronised by rank and royalty ; on which
the popular sentiment is delightfully echoed by the refrain of
the cockney song of The Ruiunvay Girl,
" I'd have four horses with great long tails,
If my papa were the Prince of Wales ! "
Here in the Park, on Sundays, takes place the famous
"Church Parade," so paragraphed in the society papers; here,
also, are often ratified on May mornings, the season's
XVI
FLIRTATION
391
matrimonial engagements ; and here fond mothers with pretty
daughters keep a watchful outlook for " detrimentals."
'Mfflw
"The Ring," in Smart times, was the scene of frequent
duels, the most noted of which was that between Lord Mohun
and the Duke of Hamilton (made use of in Thackeray's
302 THE REFORMERS' TREE CH. xvi
Esmond), in 1712, when both combatants were killed.
And one of the saddest modem associations of this circular
drive is connected with Mrs. Carlyle's death here on April 21,
1866. The poor lad)', to whom a brougham and an afternoon
drive were luxuries of her later and invalid years, died quietly
and silently in her carriage from heart failure caused by shock
at a trivial accident to her small dog, which she had put out
to run at Victoria Gate, near the Marble Arch ; the coachman,
knowing nothing of the fatality, driving on for some time before
discovering the sad truth.
The Tyburnia end of Hyde Park is that most frequented by
the populace. If the smart world monopolises the vicinity of
Hyde Park Corner, the green spaces fringing the Bayswater
Road, and near the Marble Arch, are generally appropriated by
tired workmen and idle loafers, who lie about on the grass, in
enviable bliss, on hot days in summer, looking like nothing so
much as an army of soldiers mown down by a Maxim gun,
and contentedly appreciating the fact that here in London, for
once, they have found free and undisputed possession — a place
where :
" no price is set on the lavish summer,
June may be had by the poorest comer."
In the space opposite the Marble Arch is the so-called
" Reformers' Tree," where political meetings sometimes take
place on Sundays, and where preachers, lecturers, and " cranks "
of every possible denomination, hold their respective courts.
Visitors to London should make a point of witnessing this
curious and well-known phase of London life ; the outcome,
M. Taine seems to suggest, of the latent seriousness of the
British mind; "an intense conviction, which for lack of an
outlet, would degenerate into madness, melancholy, or sedition."
Mr. Anstey in the pages of Punch, has, in his own inimitable
way, described these scenes, which are familiar to the readers
of "Voces Populi."
The "Serpentine,'' a large sheet of water mainly artificial,
394 THE SERPENTINE chap.
certainly cannot be said to "serpent," for it has but a very
slight bend. Originating, however, at a period when all garden
walks and ponds were of painful Dutch regularicy, it owes its
name to this trifling deviation. This prettily devised and
wooded piece of water is due mainly to Queen Caroline, wife
to George II, an energetic lady with gardening tastes. Very
charming is the view to be obtained from the five-arched stone
bridge over the Serpentine, "a view," says Mr. Henry James,
" of extraordinary nobleness." Yet the Serpentine, too, has
its tragic associations. Perhaps it suggests, in its beauty,
the haunting lines :
" When Life hangs heavy, Death remains the door
To endless rest beside the Stygian shore."
Always a noted spot for suicides, it was the place chosen by
Harriet Westbrook, the unfortunate first wife of Shelley, for
the ending of the many troubles of her short life ; "a rash act,"
says Professor Dowden with praiseworthy partisanship, which
it " seems certain that no act of Shelley's, during the two years
which immediately preceded her death, tended to cause."
"Shelley," comments Matthew Arnold drily, "had been living
with another woman all the time ; only that ! "
The charm of Kensington Gardens — detached from Hyde
Park in later times — is, perhaps, its greater seclusion and air of
guarded calm, as befits the gardens surrounding a royal palace.
No carriages are allowed to profane its sacred shades ; no rude
sounds of the outer world penetrate its leafy bowers. In one
pleasant spot of greenery a welcome innovation has lately been
introduced in the summer months, in the shape of afternoon
tea al fresco, provided by an enterprising club, and of
late much frequented by the fashionable world. Kensington
Gardens are always very select in their coterie \ on their
western side stands the old Dutch palace of solid red-brick,
built for William and Mary, — sorrowed in by desolate Queen
Anne, — birthplace of Queen Victoria, worthiest, noblest, and
xvi KENSINGTON GARDENS 395
most lamented of her line. With her, most of all, are the
associations of Kensington Gardens now bound up. In these
pretty walks crowded still by the children and nurses of the
wealthy and noble, the little royal girl used to play, regardless
alike of her coming doom — or glory.
Yet, with all the nursery din of Kensington Gardens — an
English Tuikrks — there yet are spots so secluded and so quiet
as still to justify Matthew Arnold's lovely lines :
" In this lone, open glade I lie,
Screen'd by deep boughs on either hand ;
And at its end, to stay the eye,
Those black-crown'd, red-boled pine-trees stand !
" Birds here make song, each bird lias his,
Across the girding city's hum.
I low green under the boughs it is !
How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come!
" Here at m)' feet what wonders pass,
What endless, active life is here !
Wli.it 1 (lowing daisies, fragrant grass !
An air-Stirred forest, fresh and char.
" In the huge world, which roars hard by,
Be others happy if they can !
But in in)- helpless cradle I
Was breathed on by the rural I'an.
" Yet here is peace for ever new !
When I who watch them am away,
Still all things in this glade go through
The changes of their quiet day."
Poor Haydon, the painter, whose fitful genius went out so
sadly in lurid gloom, said of Kensington Gardens that " here
are some of the most poetical bits of tree and stump, and
sunny brown and green glens and tawny earth." Disraeli, also,
wrote of it as follows in his most "classically-flowery"
manner : —
"The inhabitants of London are scarcely sufficiently sensible of the
beauty of its environs. ( Mi every side the most charming retreats open to
396
RUS IN URBE
en \i'.
them .... In exactly ten minutes it i., in liie power of every man to free
himself from all the tumult of the world ; the pangs of love, the throbs of
ambition, the wear and tear of play, the recriminating boudoir, the con-
spiring club, the rattling hell, and find himself in a sublime sylvan solitude
Tea in Kensington Gardens.
superior to the cedars of Lebanon, and inferior only in extent to the
clie. t nut forests of Anatolia. It is Kensington Gardens that is almost
the only place that has realised his idea of the forests of Spenser and
Ariosto."
XVI
ST. r AMES'S PARK 397
What havoc, truly, the Great Exhibition of 1851, the Prince
Consort's darling scheme, must have wrought in Hyde Park
and Kensington Gardens ! And what would die bright particular
spirits of the present day now think of such irreverent, such high-
handed proceedings? Even the Kensington Museum now
eschews the too close neighbourhood of ephemeral Exhibi-
tions ; they are relegated to the more distant shades of
Olympiaandof Earl's Court ; the immense Crystal Palace- the
Exhibition building— now nourishes at Sydenham, and the site
of the gnat show is commemorated in Hyde Park by the Albert
Memorial, an edifice about the merits of which much difference
of opinion rages. Yet, even its detractors must own the
magnificence of the monument, and admire the eastern
opulence of its mosaics, its gilding, its bronzes and marbles.
But St. James's Park is really, in some ways, quite the
prettiest of the London parks, and though sufficiently aristo-
cratic, it is yet much frequented by the populace. "A
genuine piece of country, and of English country," 'Paine says
of it. Round it are situated royal palaces and beautiful
mansions, standing amidst their spacious gardens. North of
St. James's Park stretches the Mall, so named from the
ancient game of" Paille Maille," played here by the gay court
of Charles II. The game consisted in striking a ball, with a
mallet, through an iron ring, clown a straight walk powdered
with cockleshells. Here, in later Stuart and Hanoverian
limes, was to be seen the very height of London fashion, the
ladies in "lull dress," and their cavaliers carrying their hats
under their arms. Perhaps, of all the varying "modes"
flaunted from time to time in the " Mall," the fashions of
1S00 — 1S10 would strike us now as being the most peculiar.
Past of St. James's Park are the stately Government Offii
and south is Birdcage Walk, overlooked by the pretty hanging
gardens and balconies that adorn the mansions of picturesque
Queen Anne's Gate. Where " Spring Gardens " now stand was,
in old days, " Milk hair," where asses' and cows' milk was
riijf^
-jqj/Cr^^-^ 1 -^,,
A Fountain in St. James's Park.
CH. xvi ORIGIN OF ST. JAMES'S I 'ARK 399
sold to the votaries of fashion, to repair the ravages of late
hours and " routs.'' Milk-vendors, boasting their descent
from the original holders, have still their cow-stall at the'
park corner under the elm-trees. In the distance the grey
old abbey, with its delicate tracery, appears at intervals above
the trees and buildings ; and, though so near the city smoke,
the Ornithological Society breeds many beautiful aquatic
birds on a small island on the Ornamental Water. St. James's
Park is a series of pictures ; the sketcher, too, will find many
convenient seats, as well as charming views.
It is difficult to believe that this lovely park was, in pre
Tudor times, merely a swampy field, pertaining to a hospital
" for fourteen maidens that were leprous," and far beyond
the precincts of the little London of that day. (The lepers'
hospital itself stood where now stands St. James's Palace.) It
was Henry VIII. who removed the leper maidens, converting
their asylum into a palace, their field into a park ; a park used
as the private garden to the palace until Charles II. 's time,
at which period it was made public and laid out by a French
landscape gardener called " Le Notre." There is a story that
Queen Caroline, wife to George II., wished to appropriate the
Park once more for the sole use of the Palace, and asked
"what it would cost to effect this?" "Only three crowns,"
was the pithy answer of the minister, Sir Robert Walpole.
Beautiful as St. (anus's Park still is, it must have been yet
more charming a century-and-a-half ago, when no houses as
yet intervened between it and the grey dignity of the old
Abbey of Westminster, and when the vanished Rosamonds
J'<>>id, with its wild and romantic banks, gave a rural attraction
to the scene. Rosamond's J'o/id, mentioned by Pope a\h\
other writers, was a favourite trysting-place for lovers, and
had also, from its seclusion, a less enviable notoriety for
sllieides.
Charles II., was especially fond of St. James's Park ; be
would sit here for hours among his dogs, amusing himself
400 BIRDS IN THE LONDON PARKS char
with the tame ducks, that he had himself introduced ; the
descendants of these ducks, it is said, flourish, like those
of the milk-vendors, to this day, and are fed familiarly by
constant Londoners. Perhaps it was Charles's fondness for
animals that, by a natural sequence of events, caused the
park, somewhat later, to become a sort of Zoological Gardens
for London. Birds of all kinds still thrive in it, although
distant Battersea Bark, new and semi-suburban, now claims
its share of ornithological fame. The London County Council,
among other good works, has adopted towards animals the
protecting role of Charles II., and sedulously encourages bird-
life in the parks ; woe, therefore, to the boy or man, who
goes bird-nesting or bird-snaring in one of these sacred
enclosures ! Wild birds reciprocate the Council's paternal
care by taking up their lodging in Battersea of their own free
will. A cuckoo's egg was even found in Battersea Bark lately,
laid, very annoyingly, in a " whitethroat's " nest, which had
been made in a bamboo-bush in the "sub-tropical" part of the
gardens. Nevertheless, the charitable whitethroats overlooked
the liberty, and safely hatched that cuckoo. Battersea Park
claims, moreover, robins, tits, hedge-sparrows, chaffinches,
wrens, and greenfinches ; to say nothing of herons, and even a
white blackbird. Birds take kindly to London ; do not even
the gulls come up the river by thousands in severe winters,
as the Albatross came to the call of the Ancient Mariner?
Also, over 200 wood-pigeons are said to roost regularly on the
Battersea Park islands. But then, wood-pigeons seem to be
everywhere at home in London. Do they not haunt the city
gardens that lie behind Queen Square, and coo sweetly all
through the London spring and summer ?
If Battersea Park, with its charmingly laid-out gardens, its
wealth of tropical plants, all its feathered population, and its
river glories of twilight and sunset, is yet undistinguished, so
also is the Regent's Park, which is situated at quite another,
(though equally semi-suburban), angle of the metropolis.
xvi REGENT'S PARK 401
Regent's Park, like Battersea Park, is the resort of the greal
middle-class. Here you may see, on Bank Holidays, the groups
so lovingly described by Ibsen, "father, mother, and troop of
children," all drest in their Sunday best, and all dropping
orange-peel cheerfully as they go. Here too, on Sundays, is a
"Church Parade," quite as crowded as that of Hyde Park,
though not, perhaps, so largely noticed in the " society "
papers. The demeanour of the young couples is perhaps here
a trifle more boisterous, that of their elders perhaps a shade
more prim ; the attire of the ladies, generally, a thought more
crude. The wide middle avenue of Regent's Park, on
Sundays, affords capital study to those interested in the vast
subject of Man and Manners. And then the great middle class
is so much more amusing than are the " Weil-Connected " !
The flowers in Regent's Park, in spring and early summer, are
a yearly marvel and a delight. Not even those of Hyde Park,
in all their season's glory, can surpass them. On each side
of the large middle avenue, gay parterres vie with one anothi i
in brilliance 1 . Tulips, hyacinths of wonderful shades, all the
glory of spring bulbs, make way, later, for summer " bedding-
out-plants " in lovely combinations of colour. Crocuses,
scillas, and snowdrops, too, are scattered here and there, with
a charming air of lavishness, over the grassy slopes ; this has
a delightful effect, giving all the look and suggestion of wild
(lowers.
Regent's Park has, then, an unrivalled charm to the flower-
lover. (Arid what true Londoner, one may ask, is not a llower-
lover? The Londoner loves flowers with an intensity undreamed
of in the real country.) The slum children, who frequent this
park in large numbers, respect, as a rule, the. flower-beds. Slum-
children ai m rally, — as I have observed Mom experience
gathered in the Temple Gardens, St. Paul's Churchyard,
Leicester Squa d elsewhere, more reverently inclined, as
regards flowers, than their more pampered contemporaries;
though, of course, nature is nature, and there may be occasional
D D
402 TEMPTATION chap.
lapses. Thus, the other day I chanced to notice, in Regents
Park, two small girls "of the people," whose ideas on the
subject of " property " seemed just a trifle elementary. They
were ragged and hungry-looking too, and to add to the pathos
of their rags, one of them flourished a broken green parasol,
and the other one's tattered hat flaunted a dirty pink ostrich
feather :
" Oh, Lizer," I heard the smallest one say, " I do wish I could
git one o' them flowers ! jest one geranium, for ter stick in my
'air at Sunday-school ter-morrer ! They'd niver miss it" !
" Certingly not ! The p'leaceman 'ud be after you, pretty
sharp," says the elder child, severely. " V T ou know 'ow Bert
caught it, three weeks back, for on'y a-breakin orf of two
daffies, and one of 'em nearly dead too ! Well, (relenting),
" you may git me jest a few, if you kin do it so's'the p'leaceman
can't see". . . . Rosie, shet it ! " as the younger girl clutched
at some flowers : "I see 'im a-comin' towards us, this minnit !
No, if you please, we ain't done nothin', sir ! My sister an'
me, sir, we was on'y jest a-lookin' at the flowers, an' saying as
'ow beautiful they 'ad grown, since this Sat'day gone a week. . . .
Our garding ain't got no show to equil them, and we ain't got
no cut flowers, for onst, in ma's drorin'-room ; and these 'ere
is grown that beautiful."
" You was a-goin' to 'elp 'em grow, wasn't you ? " said the
policeman, good-naturedly enough: "/see you a-stretchin'
over them railin's ! Your garding's a alley, that's wot it is !
an' your drorin'-room is jest a three-pair-model, / back ! . . . .
I know your sort ! 'Ere, tike yerselves orf, double quick ! "
The ignorant in such matters may, perhaps, vaguely wonder,
in Regent's Park, why the comfortable chairs provided,
apparently, for man's delectation, are all deserted of the
multitude, and why, on the other hand, the iron seats are
crammed to repletion? The explanation is a simple one.
The chairs cost a penny each to sit on ! It is, however, not
unusual to see a stray marauder occupy one of these sacred
XVI
"ON THE STUMP"
403
resting-places for a stolen minute of bliss, and, on seeing the
approach of the Guardian of the I 'ark furniture (whence such
guardians spring up is ever a mystery), rise and absent himseU
in well-feigned abstraction.
Regent's Park, like Hyde Park, is a focus of itinerant
*sgtt
The Reformer.
lecturers and preachers. These have apparen itablished a
kind of " Sunday right " to the upper part of the long avenue of
tiers beyond tin- flowei gardens. Mere, as in tin- larger park,
may be seen "cranks' ol ever) kind. Thus, one lecturer will
hold up to obloquy an unkind caricature oJ Mr. Chamberlain,
representing the great man with the addition of horns and
o D J
404 PARK ORATORS chap.
hoofs ; another, proclaiming the gospel of Jingoism, will shout
himself hoarse in the attempt to drown his adversary. (Political
meetings, however, may now possibly be regarded with dis-
favour by the authorities, the Boer War having lately rendered
many of them somewhat picturesque in incident.) Under
another big tree, a Revivalist meeting will be held, accompanied
by sundry groans and sobs, and varied at intervals by hymns
sung to the accompaniment of a harmonium or a small piano-
organ. The first beginnings of lectures, as of righteousness,
are hard. One poor orator, on the outskirts of the crowd, I
saw myself arrive on the scene, and " work up " his lecture
to the unsympathetic and goggle-eyed audience of a small
cockney nursemaid, a perambulator, and two wailing babies.
I quite felt for that poor man ; nevertheless, he persevered,
and in only five minutes auditors had already begun to
trickle in. (A considerable percentage of the Park congre-
gations, I may here observe, had no "fixed city," no abiding
convictions ; they wandered about here and there, from
one preacher to another, "just as fate or fancy carried"; or,
rather, to whichever of the said preachers happened at the
moment to be the most emphatic.) With lectures al fresco,
as with other things, it would appear to be only the premier pas
qui coiite ; and soon the would-be orator had a distinguished
and motley following. \Vhat, exactly, he was lecturing about,
it is really beyond me to say, for my attention was largely
woolgathering about the crowd ; but he seemed, like Mr.
Chadband, of immortal memory, to repeat himself a good deal,
and to be very angry indeed about something or other.
Indeed, I doubt whether the majority of his audience quite
understood the orator's drift, but they knew that he was
bellowing with all the strength of his lungs, and Englishmen
always respect a man who makes sufficient noise. The
lecturer's anger seemed, strangely enough, to be directed
against poor, unoffending Regent's Park itself:
"For twenty years," he kept reiterating, "for twenty years
xvi THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS 405
Regent's Park has been allowed to speak, unhindered, under
this very tree. For twenty years it has found its voice, ay,
and its pence, too, here. ... Is it to continue to find them,
or not ? That is the question. . . . Does Regent's Park wish
to sit tamely under insult? to lie down to be crushed? to bend
its back to the tyrant?" (here the speaker, in his fervour,
seemed to get a trifle mixed in his similes.)
"'Ear, 'ear," said a chubby baker's boy, who had stopped
for a moment to listen ; and one of the forgotten babies in the
perambulator wailed.
"Will Regent's Park, I say, tolerate this? It is, let me
repeat it, it is for Regent's Park to decade ! "
But the " Regent's Park " of the hour, though thus eloquently
adjured, was evidently not to be roused to fury; or even to
decision. " Kim on 'ome," cries the nurse-girl to the twins,
hitching the perambulator round with a sudden jerk : " ( !o it, old
kipper," shouts a facetious larrikin. Alas ! even now " Regent's
Park," with its pence too, was apathetically melting awa)
towards that all-important function of the day — its "tea."
There is, indeed, much "life" to be found in Regent's Park.
Some of London's pleasantest "by-ways" are the pretty,
well-kept, and delightfully-planted walks of the Zoological
Gardens. One of the big gates of this institution opens near upon
the "preaching trees" of Regent's Park ; and, certainly, after a
close experience of the "human animal," the rest of the
mammalia, unoffending, harmless, and discreetly caged, often
occur as quite a pleasant contrast (I wonder that the simile
• lid not occur to Lord Beaconsfield himself ; it is certainly in
his line.) Thackeray also, who enjoyed the Zoo greatly, saw,
as befitted a great novelist, the human side of it: "If I have
cans on my mind," he wrote, " I come to the Zoo, and fan v
they don't pass the gate; I recognise my friends, my enemii
in countless cages." Yes, the Zoo is an unfailing pleasure ; I
can conscientiously recommend it, with one word of caution :
Do not choose ,1 very hot day lor the excursion ; he careful
406 THE ELEPHANT
CHAP.
to go a little to windward of the feline race, and eschew the
monkey house as much as possible. Poor Sally the chimpanzee
is dead, alas ! of consumption, and none of her successors,
surely, can make up for the very unendurable temperature that
has ever to be maintained round them. Monkeys are sad
victims to pulmonary disease ; every London fog kills, it is
said, a few of them. The reptile house is, however, cool and
pleasant ; and the ponds for aquatic birds are very charming
resorts. Altogether, if the great carnivora and the great
crowds be shunned, the Zoological Garden becomes distinctly
pleasant ; its walks, moreover, have all the unexpectedness of
"Alice's" peregrinations in the " Live-Flower-Garden," where,
continually, round some bowery corner, she came face to face
with strange and uncanny-looking beasts. Just so, in the
Zoological Gardens, you may suddenly chance upon an amiable,
blinking Owl, or a casual Parrot, or a wondering Pelican,
peering at you round some bush in the shrubbed pathway.
Yet another caution : Do not be tempted, under any circum-
stances, to ride the Elephant. Its saddle has a knife-board
seat adapted only to juveniles ; those of the Society's
servants who assist you to mount the beast are uncomfortably
facetious ; and when you are at last safely on top, you feel
positively vindictive towards the small children who, down in
the depths below you, trifle with your life by offering your
elephant a bun.
The Botanical Gardens, enclosed by the ring drive called
"The Inner Gircle,"are, perhaps, best known to Londoners by
their three big flower-shows, held in May and June ; important
functions which are thronged by all the world of rank and
fashion.
But, delightful as are these open spaces and public gardens,
there is, perhaps, a homelier charm in one's very own London
garden, — one's own private rus in urbc. I myself never pass
through any part of suburban or semi-suburban London by
railway, without looking at all the back-gardens of the small
xvi WINDOW-GARDENS 407
houses. Oliver Wendell Holmes says that a man's belongings
and house are an index of his character; but, surely, his garden,
or even his yard, is more so. The nature, for instance, that
can willingly content itself with a clothes-line and six mouldy
cabbage-stalks, while the neighbouring London yards flaunt
the golden sunflower, or the graceful foxglove, — reflects, surely,
its own shallowness. And if in central London the poor have
no small yard even, is there not always a window-sill, where
from some biscuit tin (in North-Italian fashion,) or from some
painted wooden crate, flowers may spring, and rejoice the heart
of many a poor wanderer, dreaming, like Wordsworth's Susan,
of country meadows ami streams? Even the sins of a fried
fish shop may be redeemed by yellow trails of "creeping
jenny" from a box above it; even the powerful aroma of
" sheeps' trotters " may be almost forgotten in the enjoyment
of a stray plant of musk, treasured in some poor man's window
corner. It may In- only "a weakly monthly rose that don't
grow, or a tea-plant with five black leaves and one green.''
yet it reflects pleasantly, none the less, the owner's saving grace
of taste. To some, this kind of humble garden has a charm
all its own. " My gardens," said dray the poet proudly, "are
in the windows like those of a lodger up three pair of stairs in
Petticoat Lane, or Camomile Street, and they go to bed
regularly under the same roof that I do." There is, I believe,
a society for the cultivation of " window -gardening '' among
the poor, a society that gives prizes to the best results ; the
movement is a good one, and really deserves encouragement.
To beautify the dull and often ugly lives of the London poor,-
whit society could have a much worthier aim? How many a
hideous slum — some "Rosemary Lane," or ''Hawthorn Lane,"
— has been redeemed from utter -loom by some sprig of green-
ery, some frond of sickly fern, some crippled and stunted plant
brought there, at sonic- time, l>\ -some good angel of the poor?
As to the occasional gardens of the larger houses, these,
when they do exist, have, to the faithful Londoner, a beauty all
i-.s PLANE-TREES chap.
their own ; shut in and hidden, they have something of the
quiet of old cathedral closes, as well as the charm of unexpect-
edness. And then — last, best of all ! they hang out their
" pavilions of tender green " without giving any trouble in that
" spring cleaning," so trying to London housewives. Of course,
however, London gardens do not thrive without affection and
interest. If neglected, they die ; if tended, they repay your
care with a gratitude almost human. Too often the making of
gardens in London is on this wise : — First, the workman, or
gardener, levies an assortment of old sardine tins, kettles and
other household rubbish ; next, he arranges a good solid layer
of brickbats ; then he levels the " parterre " with a few old
sacks and coats ; then, finally, he fills up the chinks with a little
dank, sour, half-starved London soil — " dirt " is indeed the
only name for it ! — adding a thin layer of it over the whole.
Then the garden is considered "finished," and ready for the
credulous to sow their seeds. Such a London garden — a cat-
walk rather than a thing of beauty — is perhaps only redeemed
from utter dreariness by an occasional plane-tree.
Plane-trees, which thrive in London because of their tidy
habit of shedding their sooty bark yearly, are luxuriant all over
the metropolis, but especially so in Bloomsbury. Here also
lived Amy Levy, most pathetic of London poets, and here
she watched and loved her tree.
" Green is the plane-tree in the square,
The other trees are brown ;
They droop and pine for country air:
The plane-tree loves the town.
" Here, from my garret-pane, I mark
The plane-tree bud and blow,
Shed her recuperative bark,
And spread her shade below.
" Among her branches, in and out,
The city breezes play ;
The dun fog wraps her round about ;
Above, the smoke curls grey.
xvi CATS AND CAT-WALKS
"Others the country lake for choice,
And hold the town in scorn ;
But she has listened to the voice
( )f city breezes bome."
The purple clematis jackmanni, which flowers so well in
the Regent's Park terraces and in Kensington, flowers
yearly on a certain sunny balcony in Tavistock Square ; the
iris hangs out its brilliant flags every summer in St. Pancras
Churchyard — close under those smoke-begrimed Caryatids
whose sad eyes gaze ever, not on to the l'eiracus and to the'
Aegean Sea, but towards the dreary and everlastingly murky
Euston Road.
Even grass will grow in shut-in, walled Bloomsbury gardens ;
it may, indeed, sometimes require treating as an "annual";
but what of that? If the difficulties of the London garden are
great, why, so are its joys.
Cats are, of course, the primal difficulty. We know how
lately the "Carlyle House" in Chelsea was cursed with them :
it is said, also, that a certain eccentric lady once lived
with a family of some eighty-six cats, in a house in South-
ampton Row. The descendants of these cats must, one thinks,
still haunt the neighbourhood, to judge from the number that
prowl in it. Cats, in London, often become wild animals,
and lose all their domestic charm. "Cats," as the little
Board Scho ist naively wrote: "has nine liveses, which
is seldom required in this country 'cos of yumanitv." The
"yumanity" in question seems, however, to be rather at a dis-
count in London. For cats' owners have a distracting habit
of going away for the summer and leaving the poor beasts, .so
to speak, "on the parish.'' five such cats, starving and sick,
have I, to my own knowledge, gently released from a cru< 1
world at a neighbouring chemist's. A little boy -one "of the
streets streety," once held poor pussy while die quietus — of
prussic acid— was administered: "Won't I jest?" he said
with glee when asked to officiate. " Won'erful stuff, that
4io [MPERTINENT SPARROWS chap.
'ere, Miss !" he remarked at the close of the sad ceremony ;
adding, admiringly, " w'y, that ket did'nt mow once ! " " What
are you going to do with her ? " I inquired of the youth, who
now carried the corpse dangling by one leg. " Throw 'er over
the fust garding wall I come to," he replied, grinning. Thus,
I reflected, the poor London garden is still the victim !
A dead cat may be an awkward visitor, but the surviving
cats are the bane of London gardens. Their courtships — on
the garden-wall — are long and musical, causing even the
merciful to yearn for a syringe at all costs. The sparrows are
a far lesser evil. They, indeed, eat the garden seeds ; nothing
on earth is sacred to a London sparrow or robin. It is
impossible, by any system, however well-devised, to outwit
them. They are afraid of nothing. Set up an elaborate
scarecrow in the garden ; for the space, perhaps, of one hour it
will puzzle them ; but in a day or two they will hop and twitter
familiarly about it, even to the extent of pecking bits of thread
from it for their impertinent nests. Get a toy cat and place it
on the flower-bed ; in twenty four hours they will have dis
covered that the thing is a hollow sham, and will sit comfort-
ably in the warmth of its artificial fur. But one forgives them ;
for the birds, after all, are the chief joy of London gardens.
Their twitter is sweet on spring mornings ; in winter, the
robins and sparrows may be tamed by feeding, almost to the
extent of coming into the house itself for crumbs ; and, in
the summer, if you set them a shallow bath every day for their
disporting, they will rejoice your heart by their watery antics.
Robins and sparrows are alike charming ; the robins are the
stronger ; a single robin, pecking about on the garden step for
his breakfast, will scatter a host of sparrows ; but it is the
sparrows, after all, that form the real bird population of
London. Though they appreciate a quiet back garden, they
seem also to delight in the noise, traffic, and bustle of the
streets. Their cleverness, and their strength too, surpass
belief; they even seem to have aesthetic tastes (did I not see,
xvi EFFECTS OF LIGHT
411
last month, a sparrow decorate its nest with an overhanging
sprig of laburnum, or "golden chain?"); and they are,
besides, as irrepressible as the London street arabs, with
whom they have much in common ; for they are the "gamins"
of the bird world. For their parental instinct, on the other
hand, there is, in London at least, not much to be said ; their
way of dealing with their recalcitrant offspring would seem to
be a trifle overbearing, for in early spring small, half-fledged
corpses are often to be found, dropped unkindly from nests into
back-gardens. But, perhaps, as the small boy said of King
Solomon, " bavin' so many, they can afford to be wasteful of
'em." There are, indeed, many. On the statue of Francis
Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford, in Russell Square, — a figure,
rising erect, in the curious taste of the time, from a nest of cupids
and clouds, — sparrows have built many nests. The chinks in
the giant's robe are black, in spring, with their tiny heads ; the
curly hair of the cupids is fluffed with their downy feathers.
I have elsewhere touched on the great picturesqueness of
London views — a picturesqueness always more or less coloured
and influenced by romance and by history; the past and the
present, the natural and the artificial — all blended into one
glory :—
" glory (if warrior, glory of orator, glory of song,
.... the glory of goin^ on, and still to he."'
Lspecially beautiful are the effects of light that are obtain-
able on early summer mornings, or on lurid, stormy, autumn
evenings— evenings when the sun sinks with such splendour
of attendant fires as is rarely seen away from the greal
city. The vivid effects are largely increased by the smoky
atmosphere. What more mysteriously fine, for instance,
than the view of St. Paul's, looking up Ludgate Hill, with, in
the foreground, the railway bridge, emitting smoke, raised
high above the narrow street ; and the black, thin spirelet of
St. Martin's, as the attendant " aiguille " leading the eye up to
the colossal dome of grey St. Paul's? —
112 LONDON HARMONIES chap.
" Here, like a bishop, upon dainties fed,
St. Paul lifts up his sacerdotal head ;
While his lean curates, slim and lank to view,
Around them point their steeples to the blue."
Or what, on a fine morning of summer, can be more in-
spiring than the white and silver harmonies of Cheapside,
dominated by the pale tower of St. Mary-le-Bow? Or the
sublimity of the Houses of Parliament, that embattled mass
with its tall tower, backed by stormy, gold-edged threatening
clouds, through which the sunlight breaks? "Sky and cloud
and smoke and buildings are all mingled as if they belonged
to each other, and man's work stretching heavenward is touched
with the sublimity of nature." Or Trafalgar Square, as I saw
it lately, on a winter twilight ; its tall pillars grey-black against
i lurid sky, its fountain alchymised to a molten mass of pearl-
white, its geysers to sparkling brilliants, a " nocturne " of silver
and gold ? Or the Turneresque brilliance of light and
splendour on the river -that river to which London owes all
her prosperity and all her fame — that river of which already,
with true feeling and eighteenth-century artificiality, Alexander
Pope wrote : —
" her figured streams in waves of silver rolled,
And on her banks Augusta rose in gold-"
Put of all the views of London, perhaps none is so fine,
and certainly none is so comprehensive, as that which may be
obtained, under favourable conditions, from Primrose Hill —
that "little molehill," as it has been called, "in the great
wen's northern flank." It is a splendid and inspiring panorama.
Few people know of it ; yet it is a sight not to be forgotten.
Go thither on a clear spring or summer evening, three-quarters
of an hour before sunset, and you will be richly repaid. What
a view ! Grime and dinginess are as they were not ; the smoky
atmosphere is transformed, as if by magic, to a golden, trans-
parent haze— mellowing, brightening, idealising. "Who," as
xvi VIEW FROM PRIMROSE HILL 413
a recent writer says, "would have imagined that tins grimy,
smoky wilderness of houses, with its factories and its slums,
. . . could ever look like the fair and beautiful city of some
ethereal vision, embosomed in trees and full of glorious stately
monuments ? It is even so. Regent's Park lies below, a frame
of restful greenery. To the left rises Camden Town — prosaic
neighbourhood ! — up a gentle slope. In the evening sunlight
it is transfigured into a mass of brightness and colour, rising
in clear-cut terraces, like some fair city on an Italian hill-top.
St. Pancras Station is a thing of beauty, with a Gothic spire,
and lines like those of a Venetian palazzo on the Grand Canal.
Hard by rises the dome of the Reading-Room of the British
Museum, embowered in trees — a stately witness to the learning
of a continent. St. Paul's soars up grandly above its sister
spires, in misty purple — dominating feature of the city- as St.
Peter's in Rome. Away towards the mouth of the river rises
the high line of Blackheath, and the hills of the Thami s
valley curve round in a noble sweep above the light haze which
marks the unseen river, past the crest of Sydenham Hill with
the Crystal Palace shining out white and clear, past Big Ben
and the Abbey, and the Mother of Parliaments, to where the
ridges above Guildford and Dorking fade away into 'the
fringes of the southward-facing brow ' of Sussex and Hamp-
shire, towards the English Channel. Innumerable slender
church spires point upwards to the wide over-arching sky.
Northward, again, are the wooded heights of Highgate and
Hampstead, and the long battlemented line of the fortress at
llolloway. What a view! On Primrose Hill on a summer''.
evening the Londoner feels, indeed, that he is a citizen of no
mean city. Wordsworth, truly, thought that 'Earth had not
anything to show more fair ' than the view from Westminster
Bridge in the earl) morning. But it needs a modem poet— a
poet of the whole English speaking race— to do justice to this
view of the greal city on the Thames, lying bathed in the
magic glow of a summer sunset - th Primrose Hill."
A Jury.
. CHAPTER XVII
THE WAYS OF LONDONERS
" Laughing, weeping, hurrying ever,
Hour by hour they crowd along,
While below the mighty river
Sings them all a mocking song." — Molloy.
" An ever muttering prisoned storm,
The heart of London beating warm."— -John Davidson.
What is the best way to see London ? "From the top of
a 'bus," Mr. Gladstone is said to have sagely remarked. And
if you can study London itself from the top of a 'bus, you can
also, from the interior of the same convenient, if not always
savoury, vehicle, study the ways of Londoners. For, as means
of transit, omnibuses and road-cars are every decade, nay,
every year, coming yet more into popularity. Soon the patient
horses that drag them will disappear and they will transform
themselves into " motor-omnibuses," but their general character
will be still unaltered. Whether the new electric railway along
Oxford Street will at all affect the omnibus public, is a question
to be considered ; but up to now these popular vehicles have
certainly had it all their own way. To the unsophisticated,
there seems now even a dash of adventure about them. Why,
cir. xvn
"GARDEN SEATS"
4i5
it is only sonic twenty years since it was considered bold for a
young woman to venture into that hitherto exclusive])- male
'Bus Driver.
precinct, the very selecl " knifeboard " ; and now, the top "I .1
'bus usually harbours no1 one, but a majority of females, while
the uncomfortable "knifeboard" itself has given place to the
416 NATIONAL RESERVE chap.
luxurious "garden-seat." Then, it was in old days considered
necessary to talk of " omnibuses, and now, 'bus is a term as
common as " the Zoo," and used not only by " the
masses," but even by purists in the English language.
The ways of Londoners, then, as studied in the ubiquitous
" 'bus," are not at all the ways of any other people. To begin
with, the stranger should be warned of the fact that the average
Londoner resents being spoken to. He, or she, regards it as an
unwarrantable liberty. For the Londoner, — at any rate that
Londoner whose honour it is to belong to the great and
respectable " middle class," prides himself on " keeping 'isself
to isself." He, — or, again, it is generally she, — is nothing if not
conventional, and dreads nothing in life so much as the
unexpected. If, therefore, you should show such bad taste as to
suddenly die in the 'bus, or in the street, a dirty crowd would,
it is true, soon collect round you, but the more respect-
able would, like the Levite, "pass by on the other side,"
preferring " not to mix themselves up with any unpleasantness."
" People in London are so rude," I remarked once sadly to a
" lady friend " of mine who lived in a " two pair back " in a
select mews : " Wyever do you speak to 'em ? " was her retort —
evidently on the principle that you can't expect anything from
a wolf but a bite.
But the lowest classes are more genial. They have not got
such an overpowering amount of gentility to keep up. The)'
can even afford to be sympathetic. Once I happened to have
to ring up a doctor in the small hours of the morning. Hardly
had I pulled twice at the midnight bell, when with Gamp-like
alacrity two strange figures hurried up, and inquired with
breathless anxiety, " Anyone pizened, Miss ? " adding, with
knowledge born of experience, " Knock at the winder." The
advice was at all events opportune. Yes, the very poor have
always a certain rude, Dickensian, good nature. Thus, if an
old market-woman, for instance, happen to jump into your
'bus at Covent Garden, she will amiably rest her big (and
xvn OMNIBUS ROMAN< I 417
distinctly savoury) basket half on your knees, and, mopping
her crimson face with a dishcloth, " pass " you the time of
day. On the other hand, a great lady and her fashionably
dressed daughter will (if you happen to offer your own place
for their acceptance) take it without so much as "thank you,"
and will then proceed to eye you superciliously through a
lorgnette. Truly, our manners do not improve, in all respects,
with our social status.
Max O'Rell, in John Bull and his Island, has well hit off
the Englishman's little ways when travelling by omnibus :
"Ask John Bull if you arc in the riglil for such and such a place ; you
will get yes or no for an answer, and nothing more. When he enters an
omnibus or a railway carriage, if he docs not recognise any one, he eyes
his fellow travellers askance in a sulky and suspicious way. He seems I"
say, 'What a bore it is that all you people can't walk home, and let a man
have the carriage comfortably to himself . . . .' London omnibuses are
made (<> seat six persons on each side. These places are not marked out.
When, on entering, you find five people on either hand, you must not hope
to see an)- one move to make room for you. No, here everything is left to
personal initiative. You simply try t<> spy out the two pairs of thighs thai
seem to you the best padded, and with all your weight you let yourself
down between them. No need to apologise, no one will think of calling
you a bad name."
There is much character to be met with in a 'bus. The
incipient or embryo novelist should be encouraged to travel l>\
them. From the time when the poet Shelley frightened the
Highgate old lady in a 'bus, by his odd imitation to:
"sit upon the ground,
And tell strange stories of the death of kings . . . ."
— man\ romances have been enacted, many curious histories
related in them. Omnibuses have before now been utilised as
meeting-grounds for young couples whose courtship was
tabooed by unkind parents, and who consequently discovered
pressing engagements requiring their presence at "Hercules
buildings," or "the Elephant," as the ease might be. Mr.
1 1
4 i8 OMNIBUS TRAGEDY chap.
Anstey Guthrie's amusing conversations, overheard in the
'bus, and his intense anxiety as to the never discovered
denoftmeiit of the thrilling story about " the button-hook
as opened George's eyes," we have all known and laughed over.
But the omnibus, — mere comedy on a bright, dusty, spring or
summer day, when its garden-seats shine resplendent in new
paint, — becomes rather a thing of grim tragedy on muddy days
of winter gloom, when the rain comes down in torrents, and
a stern " Full inside," is all the response the weary wayfarer
gets after waiting long minutes, — painful, jostled minutes, — for
the desired vehicle, of which, as Calverley says :
". ... some, like monarchs, glow
With richest purple ; some are blue
As skies that tempt the swallows back.
Or red as, seen o'er wintry seas,
The star of storm ; or barred with black
And yellow, like the April bees."
The omnibus conductors are generally uncommunicative,
and often morose — perhaps, from too frequent digs in the
ribs from fussy old ladies and choleric old gentlemen. Some
of them, too, refuse to wait for you unless you pretend to
have a broken leg, or at least to be half-paralyzed ; yet, even
among 'bus conductors, there are still occasional pearls to
be met with. In one thing they show remarkable aptitude ;
namely, in an interchange of wit with the drivers of rival
vehicles. On these occasions their sallies, considering their
very limited vocabulary, are often quite brilliantly forcible. In
a " block " in Oxford Street or the Strand, or after a " liquor-
up " at a convenient " pub," such flights of humour will often
while away the time very agreeably for the passenger inside,
that is, if he be not too nervously fearful of being drawn
into the dispute himself. Omnibus conductors, however,
" frivel " as they may among themselves, are as adamant where
any infringement of their rules by their passengers is concerned.
Why they continually insist— against all show of reason too —
XVII
FULL INSIDE
419
on seating no less than six fat people on one side of their
vehicle, and no more than six thin ones on the other, has
always been a mystery to me. It is, however, as a law of the
Inside.
Medes and Persians, for it knows no alteration. But it has at
any rate the merit of pointing the parable about the fat and
the lean kine.
Fat people, it must be confessed, have a peculiar affinity
I E 2
420 OMNIBUS CHARACTER char
for omnibuses. The contents of a 'bus are, I have observed,
nearly always fat. An omnibus journey is, by the obese,
regarded as so much exercise. An old tradesman of my
acquaintance who suffered from liver was lately ordered exer-
cise by his doctor. Thereupon he took, like Mrs. Carlyle,
one sad shilling's worth of omnibus per day, and was sur-
prised when, at the end of a month, he felt no better. " One
shilling's worth of omnibus ! " —horrible suggestion ! It must
have taken nearly three hours, for the cost of omnibus journeys
can generally be reckoned at a penny for every ten minutes.
The distance traversed is immaterial, as the traveller will soon
discover. If he wishes to catch any particular train he had
better allow twenty minutes a mile to be quite on the safe
side.
On rainy days, character in omnibus is yet more self-
revealing. Thus, a wayfarer gets in with a wet cloak and wet
umbrella ; no one shows any desire to make room. The five
lean kine on the one side spread themselves out ; the
five fat ones on the other expand also. The new-comer
stumbles, the wet cloak splashes every one, the umbrella drips
genially ; it is a pleasant sight. When room is finally made
and the wanderer seated, the wet garments soon exhale a
fragrant steam — which scent mingles with the odours of cabbage,
peppermint, or onions, already discernible. These scents, it
may be added, vary in different quarters of London. Thus,
onions are partial to Long Acre ; antiseptics to Southampton
Row ; cheap scent to Oxford Street and Holborn ; whisky,
perhaps, to " the 'Ampstid Road " ; general frowsiness to King's
Road, Chelsea ; and the aroma of elegant furs to the shades
of Kensington. Omnibus scents vary, too, with "the varying
year." In the spring it is leeks and " spring onions " ; in the
winter it is paraffin or eucalyptus ; in the summer it is in-
describable.
Yet, it must be said on behalf of human nature, that there
is kindness to be met with even in the maligned 'bus. If, for
XVII
"ROOM OUTSIDE"
421
instance, some "absent-minded beggar" should happen to gel
in without possessing the necessary pence, at least half the
'bus are immediately ready to offer the deficit ; and hands are
similarly always stretched out to help in the lame and the blind.
Benk, Benk!!'
Even should a fellow passenger be exceptionally conver
sational, it does not, T may add, usually answer to talk much
to the casual neighbour on a 'bus. even if it be by way of
ingratiating yourself with "the masses." Especially does tin's
422 OMNIBUS ACQUAINTANCE chap.
rule hold good where young women are concerned. A seriously-
minded girl — a girl, too, who was not a bit of a flirt, or
indeed remarkably pretty — once confessed to me her sad ex-
periences in that line. Being much interested in democratic
politics, she had one fine day begun to talk — on the 'bus roof — -
to a young artisan on the " Eight Hours' Bill." She imagined
herself to be getting along swimmingly, when suddenly the
young man, hitherto very intelligent and respectful, began to
" nudge " her (this being, I have reason to believe, the first
preliminary to courtship in his class). From "nudging" he
proceeded to " squeezing " ; and, finally, could it be fancy, or
was it an arm that began ominously to encircle her waist ?
She did not stay to investigate the phenomenon, but clambered
down the iron staircase with inelegant haste — a sadder and a
wiser young woman !
Another time I myself was " riding," as the Cockneys term
it, on the outside of a 'bus towards the sylvan park of Ken-
nington, and, fired no doubt by the lovely summer day, began
— with more enthusiasm than prudence — to discuss current
topics with my neighbour on the " garden seat." He was a
well-mannered youth, and for a while I was much edified by
his conversation — until, that is, his sudden interjection of
"There's a taisty 'at a-crawsin ' of the rowd," in some inex-
plicable manner cooled me off.
Carlyle was a constant traveller by 'bus, which economy, it
may be, agreed well with his Scotch thriftiness. Mrs. Carlyle,
on one of her solitary returns to their Chelsea home, describes
him as meeting her by the omnibus, scanning the passengers
(like the Peri at the gate) from under his well-known old white
hat. This white hat, even in Carlyle's day, used to attract
attention. " Queer 'at the old gent wears," once remarked an
unconsciously irreverent passenger to the conductor of the
Chelsea omnibus. " Queer 'at," retorted the conductor
reprovingly ; " it may be a queer 'at, but what would you give
for the 'ed-piece that's inside of it ? "
xvn HANSOMS AND GROWLERS 423
Cabs are vastly more luxurious than omnibuses, but arc to
be rigidly eschewed by the economical, except in cases where
time is of as much value as money. The fact is, that it is
almost necessary to overpay cabmen, and especially so if the
" fare " be at all nervous. Hence it has been said with some
truth, that life, to be at all worth living in London, should
disregard extra sixpences. People of the Jonas Chuzzlewit
type may, indeed, take cabs to their utmost shilling limits,
but this is a proceeding hardly to be recommended to the
sensitive. For the average cabman is prodigal in retort, and
not generally reticent on the subject of imagined wrong. In
the season overpaying is more than ever necessary, while
hiring " by the hour " is, at least by the nervous, to be depre-
cated. The familiar device of paying one penny per minute,
though fair enough in fact, has been characterised as " only
possible to the hardened Londoner." Some people make a
practice of only overpaying the cabman when, like John Gilpin,
they are "on pleasure bent"; yet I do not know how the
cabman is supposed to divine their mission.
The hansom — " the gondola of London," as Disraeli called
it — is far preferable to the antiquated " four-wheeler " or
"growler," a vehicle which has never been really popular
since Wainwright murdered Harriet Lane, and inconsiderately
carried about her mutilated body in one of these conveyances,
tied up in American cloth. True, hansoms have their faults.
Thus the hansom horse is sometimes afflicted with a mania
for going round and round in a manner which suggests his
having been brought up in a circus. Sometimes he <1
nothing but twist his head back to look at his fare : sometimes
he persists on turning into every "mews" he passes : some-
times he jibs in a way altogether distracting to a nervous
passenger who can only, for the moment, behold the horse and
the driver; but still then- is a "smartness" about the well
turned-out hansom that cannot be gainsaid. I me of
smartness is, perhaps, a private hansom with a liveried
424
CABMEN
CHAP.
driver; these, however, are exclusively seen in the haunts of
fashion. It is, perhaps, well for the London resident to be
liberally inclined, for in an incredibly short space of time his
or her " ways " become known to the cab-driving community,
and facilities for getting cabs largely depend on their verdict.
It may be added that if the hansom-driver is inclined to be
pert (a natural inclination, considering the height of his
The Hansom.
elevation above the general public), more generally the "growler"
is morose, and given to a huskiness that is suggestive of
that abode of light and polished brass — the " poor man's
club."
The visitors to London vary, like the omnibus scents, with
the varying year. In the spring and early summer, it is the
fashionable world that mainly haunts its streets ; in the later
xvn THE MAN IN BLUE
425
summer, the French, Italians, Germans — especially Germans —
flock with everlasting red Baedekers (indeed, in the London
streets in August, you but rarely hear your own language
spoken) ; in autumn, it is chiefly Americans who abound,
provided with all "Europe" in the compass of one guide
book ; in January the country cousins, and thrifty house
wives generally, come up for the day, armed with lists of
alarming length, to swell the crowds at the winter sales.
One of the things that strikes the foreigner, new to England
and England's ways, most in London, is the regulation of the
street traffic. The innumerable vehicles that throng the high
ways of London, every moment threatening, or seeming to
threaten, a " block "; the continuous rumble of many wheels,
omnibuses, cabs, drays, vans, bicycles, motors,— all these, an
apparently limitless force, are stopped, as if by magic, by " the
man in blue" simply holding up an arm. All power, for the
moment, is vested in him ; he is here the one authority against
which there is no appeal. Under the protection of the police
man's aegis, the most timid foot-passenger may pass in perfect
security; the flood will be stayed while his arm, like that of
Moses of old, is raised. And there is no such thing as dis-
obedience. Be the bicyclist never so bold, be the hansom-
driver never so smart, woe betide him if he disobey the man-
date ! Under the policeman's faithful pilotage, the big crossings
are safe ; danger only lurks in the smaller ones, where his presence
is not felt. The "man in blue" is, generally, a charming and
urbane personage ; if, in the exercise of his calling, he some-
times chance to develop a certain curtness, it is, perhaps, that
he has in his time been overmuch badgered. . . LI is urbanity,
as a rule, is marvellous ; and in great contrast to that of his
continental brethren. In Germany, the officer of the law
shakes his fist in people's laces ; in France, he gesticulates
wildly; in Italy, he is timid and ineffectual; 111 I'.ngland, he
merely raises his arm, and behold ! like the gods on Olympus,
he is obeyed.
426 LONDON ISOLATION chap.
Londoners are a curiously callous race, and are, as has been
shown, remarkably little interested in their neighbours. The
fact is, their life is much too busy for such interest. In the
country, your neighbours know everything you do, your business,
your position, your income even. In London, all that your
neighbours know of you is that you come and that you go ;
and, once gone, your place knows you no more. Miss Amy
Levy, who, more than any other poet, has expressed the feeling
of London streets, puts the idea well, in these most pathetic
lines :
" They trod the streets and squares where now I tread,
With weary hearts, a little while ago ;
When, thin and grey, the melancholy snow
Clung to the leafless branches overhead ;
Or when the smoke-veiled sky grew stormy-red
In autumn ; with a re-arisen woe
Wrestled, what time the passionate spring winds blow ;
And paced scorched stones in summer ;— they are dead.
" The sorrow of their souls to them did seem
As real as mine to me, as permanent.
To-day, it is the shadow of a dream,
The half-forgotten breath of breezes spent.
So shall another soothe his woe supreme —
No more he comes, who this way came and went."
(A London P/ane- Tree. )
The Londoner dies — the great bell of St. Pancras may toll
out his sixty years, or the deep tones of Westminster call to
his memorial service ; yet none the less a dance is given at the
house next door, and the immediate neighbours know not of
the death until they see the hearse and the long row of funereal
trappings. Truly was it said, that in a crowd is ever the
greatest solitude ! The mighty pulse of London, that
" Of your coming and departure heeds,
As the Seven Seas may heed a pebble cast,"
beats on just the same though you are gone. The vast machine
grinds out its daily life, the propellers work, the wheels of Jugger-
xvn "THE CRUEL LIGHTS OF LONDON" 427
naut hum, while, like a poor moth, you spin your little hour in the
sun, and then go under. This terrible desolation of London
has resulted, and still results, in many a tragedy, bitter as that
of young Chatterton, the boy poet, found dead in a Brooke
Street garret :
.... " the marvellous boy,
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride . . . ."
London, the "stony-hearted stepmother," as De Quincey
called Oxford Street — has many a time given her children stones
for bread. Many are the men and women, — poets, authors,
journalists, actors, — who come up to the vast city, attracted by
"the deceitful lights of London," to starve in Soho or Blooms-
bury garrets (Bloomsbury, to which place, it is said, more
MSS. are returned than to any other locality in the British
Isles). Too proud to beg, too sensitive to fight, they soon
become ousted in the struggle for life, and very often get
pushed altogether out of the ranks ; or, if they do succeed, are
soured by years of trial and suffering. The biographies of
successful men sometimes tell of such early struggles ; but of
the many who are not successful, the submerged ones, you do
not hear. Some of the Bloomsbury and Bayswater boarding-
houses afford sad evidence of retrenched fortunes and squalid
lives. The ragged window-blind, the dirty tablecloth, covered
always with remains of meals ; the sad, lined, discontented faces
pressed close to the dingy panes, the eternal smell of onions
or fried fish, the general wretchedness and frowsiness of every-
thing — all tell tales of a sadder kind than those of Dickens's
Mrs. Tibbs or Mrs. 'lodgers. And, descending yet lower in
the social scale, individual casts become yet sadder. I once
lived in a London square, next door to an empty house. For
two days a battered corpse lay on the other side of the wall,
in the garden, and no <>n<- knew of it. It was only the poor
caretaker left in the " mansion " who, weary of existence, had
herself severed the Gordian knot of life. And, in the immediate
neighbourhood of another square of " desirable residences," no
428
RAGGED LADIES
CHAP,
less than three murders was considered the usual winter
average — murders, too, of the worst and most squalid type.
Such, in London, is the close juxtaposition of " velvet and
ly*-^M keii.^.-
d-^T^T.
A Doorstep Party.
rags," luxury and misery. London is the refuge of blighted
lives, of the queer flotsam and jetsam of humanity. Where
can they all come from ? and what were their beginnings ?
xvn FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 429
Among such wails and strays do 1 recall one old man — feeble,
pitiful, wizened, who carried an empty black hag, and stretched
it out towards me appealingly. The contents, if any, of the
black hag, I never discovered ; but I often gave him a penny,
simply because he was so unutterably pathetic. He is gone now,
and his place knows him no more. But he always haunts my
dreams. And the afflicted girl — white-faced and expression-
less — who sat for many years close to the " Horse-Shoe " of
Tottenham Court Road (indeed, she may sit there still), her
face calm as that of a Caryatid, as though oblivious of Time
and inured to suffering, through all the noise and tumult of
drovers' carts and omnibuses ; she has often seemed to me as
a type of the eternal, dumb sorrow of humanity.
Yet this isolation of London, terrible as it is for the poor
and suffering, — is, — for the well-to-do class at least, — in some
ways advantageous. For one thing, it allows more liberty of
action ; — for another, it prevents any undue personal pride.
It is, fortunately, rare indeed for the individual to be as
conceited in London as he is in the provinces. True, —
London has occasional aesthetic crazes and literary fashions ;
but, as a rule, — and with the exception of special cliques and
coteries such as those of Chelsea and Hampstead, — people
are not unduly puffed up in London. The city, with its
vast size, acts as an automatic equaliser ; — personality be-
comes lost, — and individuals tend to find their proper level.
The Londoner is apt to realise, — that, in the words of Mr.
Gilbert's song, — "he never would be missed." Nowhere is
there mure liberty; no one even notices you as you walk
the streets. A man used, some years ago, to walk about
the Bloomsbury squares with long hair in be-ribboned
pigtails, and in a harlequin dress ; the street-boys hardly
marked him ; even a Chinaman in full costume only attracts
a following of a few nursery-maids and perambulators, but
in London it really matters very little what you do, or how you
dress. Dress here is in fart immaterial, unless uni are bent on
43° "COLD STEP" chap.
social successes. Eyes are not for ever scanning you critically,
as they do in country villages. And, for ladies who work in
slums and " mean streets," — the safest plan is always to wear
dark, shabby, and quiet clothes — clothes that do not " assert
themselves." Otherwise, it is likely that she may be accosted
as "dear" or "Sally," — invited to take "a drop o' tea," or
otherwise chaffed by rough women standing akimbo at street
doors. This practice of standing at doors and gossiping would
appear, indeed, to be the main occupation of women of the
lower class ; but, poor things ! they enjoy it ; and their life,
after all, must contain but few enjoyments. It is perhaps, less
certain that their babies enjoy the " cold step," on which they
are unceremoniously flopped at all hours of the day. An over-
dose of "cold step" may, indeed, partially account for the
bronchitis which riddles the ranks of the children of the
poor. You may see a family of six slum children playing
happily in the damp gutter one week ; the week following, you
may find half of them dead or dying from a visitation of this
fell plague. To say that the children of London are deci-
mated by it would be putting the case much too mildly. The
mothers, however, take a different view. " She niver looked
'erself agin sence that 'ere crool vaccination," — a mother will
say placidly, — ignoring the cold step and the bronchitis that
did the work. " Cold step," indeed, to their minds, acts as a
refreshing tonic ; they call it " bringin' 'im, — or 'er, — up
'ardy."
That " pity for a horse o'erdriven " that often catches you
by the throat in London streets, — is yet almost cast into the
shade by the far sadder lot of helpless humanity. 'Bus horses,
at any rate, are well fed, — to say nothing of their being worn
out, and released from their sufferings after an average period
of four years ; besides, you can always comfort yourself by
refusing to travel by 'bus (I have a friend, indeed, who always
vows that he will NOT on any consideration make one of
twenty-eight people for two horses to pull) ; — but it is little or
xvii BABY-FARMS 431
nothing you can do for the alleviation of the lot of the slum
babies. Sad indeed is the case of some of these. For, in
some dingy and romantically-named "Rose Lane," — or ••.Mari-
gold-Avenue," — (the filthier the London lanes, — the more
poetic their names), — baby-farms flourish and spread. Once,
I remember coming home sick at heart, from a visitation of
one such slummy " lane." In a dirty " two-pair-back " I found
an old woman of witch-like aspect and doubtful sobriety,
three mangy cats, and two miserable " farmed " babies, — one
an infant, wretched, scrofulous, and covered with sores,
lying on a dirty flock bed, its eyes half-closed, in the last
Stage of exhaustion ; — the other a girl of two, wasted and
cadaverous, sitting on the usual "cold step," and gazing
with pathetic and suffering eyes over to the cabbage-laden and
redolent gutter that, filthier far than any in Italian town or
foreign Ghetto, apparently did duty, in the middle of the
paved alley, as a common dustbin. (Truly, it well becomes
us to decry, — in this matter of cleanliness, — our neighbours of
Central Europe !) I went away sadly ; yet what could I have
done ? I could not take the poor neglected babies home ;
even though they probably belonged to girls who were not too
regular in paying for their weekly maintenance. Nothing short
of bringing in the Law would have been of any use, and I
was not sure enough of my facts to do this. Yet that elder
child's pathetic and mournfully-patient eyes still afflict my
memory.
Poor, little, neglected slum children ! Miss Dorothy
Tennant (Lady Stanley), has by her unique art surrounded
these waifs with all that glamour of poetry and sentiment that
had, by a foolish custom, been hitherto exclusively reserved
for the children of the rich. Even Du Marnier always made
his slum children ugly and repulsive. Nature, however, knows
no such differences. And, — apart from Miss Dorothy
Tennant's (harming ragamuffins, — who has not stopped to
admire, in some back street, the graceful dancing of some half-
432 STREET GAMES chap.
dozen of small ragged girls ? girls in shocking shoes, — but who,
nevertheless, hop so delightfully, and with such sense of time
and rhythm, to the wheezy old organ, the wheeziest of its
tribe, that they have inveigled into their custom. Indeed, I
have sometimes doubted whether the organ-man does not him-
self engage the small girls to dance, as a catch-penny ruse.
They do difficult, intricate, ever-changing steps :
" advance, evade,
Unite, dispart, and dally,
Re-set, coquet, and gallopade,"
as Mr. Austin Dobson hath it.
It is not, indeed, only in hospital wards that the children of
the great city are pathetic. I have been moved (like
Mrs. Meagles), almost to tears, at the sight of a big Ragged
School of small boys marching, ten abreast, in perfect drill, in
a large phalanx, numbering about five hundred. Five hundred
unwanted little human souls ! each child, of infant years, with
no mother to love it ; more destitute in a way than even the
slum baby, regarded as a cipher merely ; it is surely a sight
pitiful enough to make the angels weep !
All the street child's usual stock in-trade, in the way of toys,
is chalk (for drawing those incessant white squares on the
pavement), perhaps a few worn marbles, and a selection of old
buttons. The chalked squares, of course, refer to the ancient
game of " hop scotch," so called because the player in trying to
get a stone into a square, may only " hop " over the lines
which are " scotched " or " traced " on the ground. The
London children often use, instead of stones, broken bits of
glass or crockery they call " chaneys " ; and to own a private
" chaney " is considered, I believe, highly genteel. The
familiar game of " Tip-cat," and the skipping rope, have rival
attractions ; and great enjoyment may be derived from a primitive
swing — a bit of rope deftly fixed between area rails or on lamp-
posts. The pavement is the London child's playground, for,
XVII
THE SPREAD OF LEARNING
433
though in some quarters a movement has, I believe, been
started for opening some few of the select " squares ; ' to poor
children at certain days and hours, it would not appear to have
done much as yet. The pavement games and the Board Schools
together often produce a quite wonderful arithmetical sharpness :
" The idea of Em'ly gittin' a prize," I heard a ragged girl of
tender years remark contemptuously to her equally ragged
companion, " EnCly ! why, the girl's a perfect fool; past ten
year owld, and can't move the decimal point ! " Like other
children, these little pariahs of the street have their " make-
Hop-scotch.
believe" games; for instance, I have seen them look long-
ingly into toy-shop windows, and heard them talk to each
other of every article there, as though it were their own
peculiar property ; I have also overheard them, sitting on a
West-End doorstep, appropriate the mansion thus : " Ain't this
'ere a fine 'ouse, M'ria? didn't know as yer ma was sich a toff.
When are y going to arsl me in to tea ' J " &c , &c. w hal matter
if they popper their speech continually with such cockneyisms
as "not me," "chawnce it," "you ain't no class"; they are
generally sweet English children all the same, and immeasur
i i
434 "OUR STREET" chap.
ably superior to their surroundings. And such surroundings as
they are !
" Our street " (as a little Board School boy described his home in an
essay), " is a long lane betwixt two big streets. Our street is not so clean
as the big streets, coz yer mothers throws the slops and things in the
gutter, and chucks bits of Lloyds and cabbige leaves in the middle of the
road. That's why there's alius a funny smell down our street, speshally
when it's hot."
Another such essay thus describes a London " Bank
Holiday " :
"They call this happy day Bank Holiday, becose the banks shut up
shop, so as people can't put their money in, but has to spend it. People
begin talking about Bank Holiday a long time afore it comes, but they
don't begin to spree about much till the night afore .... Bank Holidays
are the happiest days of your life, becose you can do nearly what you like, and
the perlice don't take no notice of you .... There's only one thing as
spoils Bank Holiday, and that is not being fine and hot. When it's wet
all the gentlemen get savige and fight one another, and pull their sweetarts
and missises about. I'm very sorry for them all round, becose it is a shame
for to see. But when it's fine and hot, the gentlemen all larf and are kind,
and the women dance about and drink beer like the gentlemen. Every-
body's right, and boys don't get skittled round."
But, of course, the Board Schools have done, and are doing,
much to improve the rising generation. It is no small tribute
to them that into whatever slum or rough district you elect to
go, you are safe if you surround yourself with a bodyguard of
street children. And for the matter of that, even that pariah
of the schools, the London street arab, is with his " pluck "
and general resourcefulness, distinctly attractive. Have not
Dickens and other novelists adopted him as their hero ? All
honour to him if he outgrow his base surroundings ; small
wonder if he is like poor Tip, "of the prison prisonous and of
the streets streety." Quickwitted, idle, and hardened to priva-
tion, he may, when he grows up, turn to honest work, or he
may sink into a "loafer," — one of those mysterious beings who
XVII
" BANK HOLIDAY"
tf5
arise, as out of thin air, from the empty street whenever a four-
wheel cab, with its burden of boxes, arrives at its destination.
The Return, Hunk II,-.
The conversation of the London working man hardly, per
haps, shows him at his best. The familiar but ver) unpleasant
i i j
436 THE DERIVATION OF "COCKNEY" chap.
adjective that invariably greets your ears as you walk behind
him, is in the main its distinguishing element, and, notwith-
standing its more or less classical derivation (from " by'r
Lady "), it is somewhat too suggestive for squeamish ears.
Besides, from the frequency of its use, it would appear to
mean nothing at all, but simply to be a foolish habit that can-
not even plead the excuse of Cockneyism.
AYhat, by-the-way, is the derivation of the term " Cockney " ?
Its beginnings, as usual in etymological questions, are abstruse ;
for instance, the word began by meaning a "a cockered
child " ; then it was synonymous for "a milksop," "an effemin-
ate fellow" ; then, (16th cent.), "a derisive appellation for a
townsman as the type of effeminacy, in contrast to the hardier
inhabitants of the country." Then it became " one born in the
city of London, within sound of Bow Bells " ; a Bow-Bell Cock-
ney being always a term " more or less contemptuous or banter-
ing, and particularly used to connote the characteristics in
which the born Londoner is supposed to be inferior to other
Englishmen."
According, however, to an old writer, the term " cockney" arose thus :
" A Cittizeivs sonne riding with his father into the Country, asked when he
heard a horse neigh, what the horse did ; his father answered, the horse
doth neigh ; riding further he heard a cocke crow, and said, doth the cocke
neigh too ? and therefore Cockney or Cocknie, by inversion thus : incock, q.
iiicoctus, i. , raw or unripe in Country-man's affaires."
Some Cockneyisms are frankly puzzling, some are actually
startling. Factory girls are specially prodigal of them. Now,
the average factory girl is often rather a rough diamond, but
there is really no harm in her when once you get used to her
ways. She has, it is true, an embarrassing habit of shouting
into the ear of the inoffensive passer-by ; she may even (if
she happen, as frequently occurs, to be walking with two
others, three abreast) try to push you into the gutter ; but
this is simply her fresh exuberance of spirits ; she means no
ill by it. And her frank utterances are not always rudely
xvii FACTORY GIRLS AND COSTERMONGERS 437
meant. For instance, the Cockney remark, "You are a fine
old corf-drop, you are!" may even leave the person addressed
in some bewilderment as to whether it be a compliment or an
insult. It means, however, merely, that you are an " innocent,"
an ignoramus, a tyro in the ways of the world. " 'Ere's a fine
fourpenny lot ! " or " Where did you get that 'at ? " seem, on
the other hand, to sound a more distinctly aggressive note.
Next to factory-girls and flower-girls, costermongers talk,
perhaps, the raciest "cockney." I once knew an old flown
man with a wonderful gift of the gab, who was always
persuading me to sell him my husband's old boots, or "a' old
skirt for the missus " for some pot of depressed-looking fern.
" Did y' ever see sich fine plants ? " he will cry admiringly of
his barrow-full ; "all growed up in cold air, I don't tell you no
story. Wy, a gent larst year as kep' a mews, 'e bought a box
'o stershuns orf o' me, an' this year 'e come back an' said as 'e
didn't wawnt no more o' that sort, cos wy ? they blowed too
well, they did, and made 'is winders look that toffy, as 'is
landlord see 'em, and 'is rent wus riz on 'im. Now, this 'ere
cherry-pie, you niver see sich bewties ; got real stalks an' roots,
they 'ave ; been kep' warm under the children's bed, down
our court; 102, Little Red Fox Yard; kep' in they wuz,
cos of the rain; and blimy if they don't look all the better
for it ! "
The flower-girls have perhaps less voluble "patter," bill
their cry, "Fine Market Bunch!" "'Erey'are!" is no less
patiently reiterated. The London flower-girl, good-looking as
she often is, is yet, perhaps, hardly an ideal embodiment of
the goddess Flora. To begin with, she is generally enveloped
in a thick, rough, unromantic, Fringed shawl, ami wears an
enormous black hat with a still more enormous leather, the
latter in sad need of curling. Her abundant hair is CO
loosely on to the nape of her neck, and hangs, in a thick black
fringe, over her eyes and ears : anything more totally unlike the
dainty, slim, Venetian flower-girl can hardly be imagined.
438
FLOWER-SELLERS
en a i'.
Sonic kind ladies did, indeed, get up a benevolent scheme
for providing London flower-sellers with neat dresses, bonnets,
and hats ; two or three women, garbed in this costume, may
Flower Girls.
still occasionally be seen at London's principal flower-mart,
Oxford Circus. But Londoners are a conservative race, and it
is, I imagine, doubtful if the recipients themselves much
appreciate these gifts.
xvn ORGAN-GRINDERS 439
The organ-grinders who delight so many humble folk, and
enrage and afflict so many of the richer class, mostly hail from
Hatton Garden and its immediate neighbourhood. The street
organ, — " piano-organ " as its proud possessor generally terms it,
— is usually the sole support of the family. The organ-grinders
are, as a rule, Italian ; and are generally to be seen in their
picturesque native costume. The organ, however, requires, to
catch many pennies, one, at least, of two useful adjuncts ; viz., a
baby in a cradle, or a dressed-up monkey. The baby sleeps
peacefully through the noisiest tunes (what nerves of iron that
child must possess ! ), the monkey dances and postures, even
climbing up the area railings. Even in places where the
organ-man is cursed, he often reaps a rich harvest of pennies,
paid him to go away. Each organ has its special " pitches,"
its settled rounds. Thus, coming early from Hatton Garden,
they will frequent Bloomsbury, say at 9 a.m., and work slowly
towards the West End and back, to give the boarding houses
in Bedford Place yet another serenade by the light of the
setting sun. When once started, the organ-man is pitiless in
giving you his whole repertoire. Poor John Eeech ! it is said
that they helped to aggravate the lingering illness of which he
died. But there can be no doubt that they lighten the drab,
unlovely lives of the Eondon poor.
" Children, when they see thy supple
Form approach, are out like shots ;
Half-a-bar sets several couple
Waltzing in convenient spots.
•• Nol with clumsy Jacks or Georges :
Unprofaned l>y grasp ol man
Maidens speed those simple orgies
Betsey Jane with Betsey Ann."
German bands at street corners,— drum-and-fife bands or-
ganised by local talent, — all help, at nightfall, to swell the vast
volume of the noise of London.
There is om- day in the week, however, when silence .1
44Q SUNDAY IN LONDON CHAI-.
silence that can almost be oppressive — hangs over the entire
city, and not even the sound of the organ-grinder varies the
dulness of the monotonous streets. This is Sunday, a day
which strikes terror to the heart of the uninitiated foreigner.
M. Gabriel Mourey thus feelingly describes it :
"That English Sunday, which so exasperates the French, gives them,
from mere recollection, an attack of the spleen, a fit of yawning ....
Yet to me there is something comforting about it. It is really a day of resl ,
of compulsory rest, of rest against one's will ; a day when it is simply
impossible to do otherwise than rest ; it is an obligatory imprisonment
which at first revolts the prisoner, but which, if he control his feelings, he
will, at the end of an hour or so, find not without its charm. To know
for certain that no whim, no fancy for outside amusement can distract you,
no theatrical temptation, no yearning for active life can assail you, to be
assured that you are protected from the Unforeseen, be it happy or sad,
from a letter even — that, in short, it is for the moment impossible to do
anything useful, — all this gives you a tranquil security, a serene and
healthful calm of twenty-four hours, a calm of which we in France, and
especially of Paris, do not know the boon .... And if, in the evening,
you venture on to the deserted streets, you can pass freely on your way ;
no one will interrupt your walk ; it is like a dead city ; all trace of the life
and activity of the six past days has vanished. "
And here is another, and a still more depressing picture,
from the same author :
" In this immense and respectable cemetery into which London is
metamorphosed on Sundays, some characteristic and amusing beggars
patrol the streets. Two old people, a man and his wife, stop at a street
corner. The man takes a wretched violin out of an old black cloth bag.
The woman sings. What a voice ! a hungry voice of chilly misery, which
issues, bitter and shrill, from her toothless mouth. Though the weather is
warm, she seems to shiver beneath her ragged shawl. The violin grates
on obstinately. The man is tall, with a kind of remains of grandeur in
his torn coat-tails, and in his face, still haughty, though greasy and bloated.
Some passers-by have stopped, and some pence have dropped into the old
woman's dirty, wasted hand. The man, still drawing his violin bow, looks
round, satisfied, on the treasure .... Six o'clock strikes from a steeple
near ; they suddenly desist, she from her singing, he from the scraping of
his miserable instrument, and they go off to swell the little crowd which
xvn THE CASUAL WARD 441
awaits, al the public-house doors, the sixth stroke of six, — the re-opening of
the house where drunkenness, the cure of hunger-pain, is to be cheaply
bought."
Such tragedies, such pitiful sights, wring the heart every day,
"whene'er I take my walks abroad " in the streets of London.
"How the poor live," indeed! Some of the London wails
would find it hard to tell you how they do live! The day
often divided between the street and the public-house; the
night, perhaps, spent in the shelter of the " fourpenny doss " ;
and withal, a delightful uncertainty about the possibilities of
dinner and breakfast. Selling penny toys in the street in the
winter months must be chilly work ; and even in the hot days
of August, when the pavements blister in the sun, and American
and German tourists throng the streets with their Baedekers,
it must have its drawbacks. As to the " fourpenny doss," its
discomforts are probably mainly owing to its inmates. The
common lodging-houses are often comparatively clean, with a
big, central, well-warmed kitchen, presided over by a "deputy."
But, of course, where many individuals are herded together in
big dormitories, pickpockets will abound ; pickpockets, too,
abandoned enough to thieve even from other human wastrels.
The shelter of the " casual ward " is ever held to be the last
resource. A charwoman whom I once knew, a witty and
charming lady, — talented, too, in her mitier, but alas ! I fear, of
the "Jane Cakebread " type,- — often complained to me of 1
horrors she had endured there. " It's downright crool," she
would say with tears in her eyes, "the way them nurses treats
yer. Fust, you 'as to be washed : an' washed you must he ;
there's no gittin' away from it. An' your 'ed, too ! It's ' 1 )ip
your 'ed in,' and dip it you must, will or no. An' with so much
dippin' ni)- 'earin's lair gorn." \s for the compulsory oakum
picking, the lady minded it not at all. " I didn't never tike
much count on it.'' she said ; "but there, my 'andsis 'ardened
like."
One word of warning to the wise. Do not, in the mistaken
442 LOST CHILDREN chap.
kindness of your heart, take (as Mrs. Carlyle did to her subse-
quent repentance) to your own home, children that appear to
be " lost " ; or at least only do so under very exceptional cir-
cumstances. When children tell you that they are lost, they
are usually only frightened. " Bless your 'art," a kindly police-
man once said to me, " they'll find their way 'ome safe enough,
if you only leave 'em where they are." Even if really lost, the
best place for the stray child is, after all, the police station,
" and " (to quote a Mrs. Gamp-like member of the force),
" well they knows it, the little dears — well they knows as the
orficer is always their best friend." If you do take the child
home, it will prove — as it did to Mrs. Carlyle — as great a
riddle as the Sphinx. Once I did this. I took a lost infant
home, indulged it in nuts, oranges, buns, and picture books ;
yet still the wretched child howled, refusing, like Rachel, to be
comforted ; and I found out to my cost that I had better have
left it alone. (Perhaps the too unaccustomed neatness of my
room distressed it, or the absence of the friendly and familiar
" washing.") But once again was I strongly tempted to play
the good Samaritan. Returning home on a winter's day, I
met, in a "mean street," two children — boy and girl, of seven
and eight years — crying bitterly. I interrogated them as to
the cause of their tears :
" Our school's burnt down," the boy said betwixt his sobs,
" and we can't get in there to-day."
A compulsory holiday seemed a feeble reason for howls.
" Why don't you go home and say so? " I inquired.
" 'Cause — mother — she w — w — won't believe us," the youth
sobbed. " She said as she'd rive our livers out, if we ever
humbugged her any more, an' stopped away from school — and
— and — its really burnt down this time ! "
Terrible Nemesis, indeed, and worthy of Miss Jane Taylor's
well-known " moral poem," — this unforeseen result of "giving
Mamma false alarms ! "
Burglars in London are not uncommon ; they seem to know,
xvn LONDON SWINDLI S 4H
by mere predatory instinct, the houses where valuables and
silver abound. It is best to treat them, when found, gently
but firmly. But if we feel that we cannot all attain to the
courage of the Gower Street matron who held the thief by the
collar till the police came, then we can at least lock up safely
and retire to rest, resolute to ignore all suspicious sounds
within the house. Casual morning visitors give, on the whole,
more trouble to the London householder. Old ladies, for
instance, in black silk that has seen better days, who are-
kindly willing to sell to you, for the nominal sum of one and-
six, an ancient recipe for furniture polish, or smart and glib
young men who call as though they were old college friends,
and who, only alter some half-hour's discussion of the state of
Europe or the weather, divulge to you the fact that they came
as agents for a tea firm. Then there are the itinerant vendors
of tortoises, with barrow-loads of the poor distressed creatures.
" Wonnerful things for beadles, 'm ! eat a beadle as soon as look
at 'im "—a thing they seldom, if ever, do. And, on one memor-
able occasion, a whole hour of my precious morning was taken
up by an elderly female who represented herself, I know not
on what grounds, as "a relative and scion of the late Sir
Humphry Davy"! (I am glad, on the scion's behalf, to be
able to add that she did not also appropriate the tea-spoons !)
Yet another factor in city life calls for remark. This is the
newsboy of London, a personality into which the street arab
not infrequently develops. He is a curious being, gifted with
nine lives; I should describe him as "a survival of the
fittest." His raucous, indescribably husky voice may be heard
at every street corner, crying either "Win-ner" or "Extra
Spee-shul." Of late, the newsboys have, however, battened on
war. " Death o' Kroojer," one of them was bawling one day,
before the ex President's oblivion. "Why are you shouting
what's not true?"' I inquired kindly of the youthful delinquent,
"you've got plenty of fighting." "Shut up, you." the urchin
retorted, no whit abashed. " battles is played out ' I once
444 "THE SPLEEN" chap.
asked a newsboy, just as a matter of curiosity, what piece
of news he had found paid him best. " Wy, resignation o'
Mr. Gladstone," was the prompt reply, " I got meself a new
pair d' boots outer that." The familiar and oft reiterated
cry, " 'Orrible Murder ! " has, especially since " Jack the
Ripper " days, been sacred to the calm of Sunday evenings,
when men of the roughest class take the place of boys, and
generally cry bogus news. It is a curious fact, which says
much for the weakness of human nature, that the householder
can rarely resist the temptation of buying a Sunday evening
paper, even though he knows well, from bitter experience, that
the news cried is almost invariably false.
The curious indifference to other people's affairs that, as
already mentioned, characterises the Londoner, — shows itself
also in a certain want of public spirit. There is, naturally, very
little of the proud, local, personal feeling that the villager and
the small townsman so often feels. The Londoner, on the
contrary, is usually self-centred, unsociable, phlegmatic, nar-
row. This pleasing quality foreigners politely excuse in him
by calling it " the spleen," and account it, indeed, a kind of
result of the London fog on character. The fog, or " London
particular," as that incorrigible cockney, Sam Weller, called
it, is thus described by a trenchant French satirist, Max
O'Rell :
"The London fog, of universal reputation, is of two kinds. The most
curious, and at the same time the less dangerous, is the black species. It
is simply darkness complete and intense at mid-day. The gas is immedi-
ately lighted everywhere, and when this kind of fog remains in the upper
atmospheric regions, it does not greatly affect you. It does not touch the
earth, and the gas being lighted, it gives you the impression of being in
the street at ten o'clock at night. Traffic is not stopped ; the bustle of the
city goes on as usual. The most terrible of all is the yellow fog, that
the English call pea-soup. This one gets down your. throat and seems to
choke you. You have to cover your mouth with a respirator, if you do
not wish to be choked or seized with an attack of blood-spitting. The
gas is useless, you cannot see it even when you arc close to the lamp.
xvii "LONDON PARTICULARS- 445
Traffic is stopped. Sometimes for several hours the town seems dead and
buried .... When the sun makes his appearance he is photographed,
that folks may not forget what he is like."
Another Frenchman, M. Gabriel Mourey, describes the fog
more picturesquely :
"The frenzied, unbridled activity of the City" (he says) " loses half its
brutality under the mantle of fog. Everything seems to be checked, to
slacken into a phantom-like motion that has all the vagueness of hallucina-
tion. The sounds of the street are muffled; the tops of the houses are
lost, hardly even guessed ; the lower and first floors are, apparently, all that
exist : behind the shop-fronts, a light vapour floats, giving to the g
exposed for sale something of age and disuse. Everything shares, in a
fashion, in the solidity and heaviness of the atmosphere. The openings of
the streets swallow up, like tunnels, a crowd of foot-passengers and car-
riages, which seem, thus, to disappear forever. The trains that cross
Ludgate Hill wander off into emptiness on a cloud. St. Paul's resembles
Miiiie monumental mass of primitive times, at the foot of which the human
ant-heap swarms, ridiculous in size, of a mean and pitiable activity.
Nevertheless, they are innumerable, a compact army, these miserable little
human creatures ; the struggle for life animates them ; they are all of one
uniform blackness in the fog ; they go to their daily task, they all use the
same gestures, and every step that they take brings them nearer to death.
How many millions of men for centuries have followed the same road?
and how many millions will follow it in the future, when these of to-day
shall have finished their course? But the clouds settle down; they rain
themselves on to the ground in black masses ; the sky descends among men,
and covers them .1- with an immense funereal pall."
Londoners arc always very quick to "catch on" with the
latest " craze " ; they tire of it, however, also with proportionate
rapidity. Thus, the hero of May is often forgotten by Novem-
ber, even if he have not already become a villain by that time.
Therefore, with Londoners, it is best to take the ball on the
hop, and gather roses, so to speak, while you may. A catch word
is in every one's month one wilder : it is quite forgotten by next
summer. Even a wildly popular new novel has only a "quick
s.i I." of a few short weeks ; and may then be altogether ousted
in favour of a newer aspirant. The gie.it city is notoriously
fickle and wayward in her favours.
446 A RUSTIC VIEW ch. xvii
Mr. Charles Booth, and his fellow-workers, have, with infinite
labour and trouble, sifted and sorted the population of London
into varying classes of wealth and poverty, of toil, crime, and
leisure. The results of this work, which have reduced the
heterogeneous elements of London population to order as
with a fairy's wand, are very interesting as well as instructive.
The results are hardly encouraging to would-be immigrants
from the country ; and it is, perhaps, fortunate that there are
still some rustics who hold the great metropolis in horror, and
would not on any account venture near it. This I can endorse
from personal experience. For, only last year, I happened to
express to a well-educated, intelligent, small farmer of some
forty years of age, my surprise that he had never yet thought
well to make the short three hours' journey from his native
town to London. He seemed, however, quite contented with
his ignorance. " No," he remarked, in answer to my wondering
question, " I ain't never bin there, nor yet 'as the missus ; and ;
from all I 'ear, we're best away from sich places."
n
The Men in Blue
CHAPTER KVIII
THE STONES OF LONDON
" Let others chaunt a country praise,
Fair river walks and meadow waj
Dearer to me my sounding days
In London town :
To me the tumult of the stre
Is no less music, than the sweel
Surge of the wind among the wheatj
By dale or down." — Lionel Johtison.
" I pray you, let us satisfy our ej
With the memorials, and the things of fame,
That do renown this city." — Shakespeare.
What book has ever been written, nay, has ever attem]
to be written, about the general architecture of London? The
largest city in the world, the metropolis of many cities in one
city, the aggregate of a hundred towns, Oxford,
as Cambridge, as Winchester,- why should its stones be thus
448 " UGLY LONDON " chap.
neglected ? And, except for a sprinkling of traditional gibes,
an annual dole of scornful references, what attention does the
architecture of London receive from its inhabitants ? or, indeed,
from outsiders ? Every one, on the contrary, considers himself
at liberty to fling a stone at it. Such titles as " Ugly London,"
"The Uglification of London," are "stock" leaders for para-
graphs in daily papers. It is a well- known fact that nothing
new can be raised in the city without drawing upon itself the
scathing remarks and innuendoes of a too-critical, and generally
ignorant, public. Londoners are proverbially ungrateful ; they
also think it fine, and superior, to cavil at their works of art.
Mr. Gilbert designs a Florentine fountain in Piccadilly Circus ;
the very 'bus-conductors fling their handful of mud at it as
they pass ; the new Gothic Law Courts arise in the Strand, to
be freely criticised, and vituperated not only by every budding
architect, but also by every " man in the street " ; the City
Powers erect a Temple Bar Memorial Griffin, and nothing less
than their heads, it is felt, should with propriety go to adorn the
monument of their crass Philistinism. A scheme is proposed
for an addition to the cloisters of Westminster, and a public-
spirited citizen offers to carry it out at his own expense : he is
promptly fallen foul of, as a desecrator of the shade of Edward
the Confessor, by the united force of the press. It is hard,
indeed, in these critical days to be a philanthropist !
And not only are we thus critical to works of our own day,
but also to those of the past. Old London, no less than New
London, is gibed at and mocked. " A province in brick,"
" a squalid village," " a large wen " ; such are only a few among
the epithets that have from time to time been hurled at it by
men and women of letters. And yet, looking at the matter
calmly and without prejudice, — are London stones, indeed, so
unworthy, so poor, so inglorious ?
In respect of its architecture, as in nearly every other respect.
London suffers, primarily, from its vast size. "One cannot
see the forest for the trees," What chance has Italian cupola,
XVIII " A MIGHTY MAZE" 449
Doric portico, Gothic gable, so crowded and overpowered in
the busy mart of men and of things ? And how many
people, in the whirl and rush of London, even look at the
surrounding buildings at all? Ask the ordinary person what
the dominating architecture of London is ; he or she will very
probably be unable to make a suggestion on the matter, for
the simple reason that the question never occurred to them in
all their lives before. And, indeed, it is in any case a difficult
question to answer. In this vast conglomeration of houses.
houses built mainly for utility and not for beauty, it is difficult
to see at first anything but heterogeneous chaos ; all seems "a
mighty maze, without a plan " ; and the really noteworthy build-
ings are apt to be missed. The few Norman or Saxon antiquities
may well be passed over, and even a "gem of purest ray
serene" such as Staple Inn, may be overlooked in the general
bustle of busy Holborn. To the large body of shoppers from
the country and suburbs, "London" is represented satisfac-
torily, and finally, by the gay thoroughfares of Regent Street
and Oxford Street ; "the part where the shops are." And the
white gleaming river, crossed by its many bridges, encircling
the black causeways, the long line of the Embankment, the
Westminster towers at one end of it, the dome of St. Paul's on
the other, are, possibly, all that remains of London in the mind
of the average Londoner ; his view of it more or less resembling
Byron's :
'• A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping,
I >ii iv and dusky, bul as wide as <
Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping
In sight, then lost among the forestry
Of masts : a wilderness of steeples peeping
On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy ;
A huge, 'lun cupola, like a foolscap crown
i in a foul's head and there i-> London Tow n ! "
Why should we, the travellers of the world, who so admire
other cities, so persistently pour obloquy on our own It is
c, G
45° DUST AND GOLD chap.
true that London, on a day of east wind, when the sky is leaden,
when suffering is writ large on the faces of poor humanity,
and when dirty tracts of paper, notwithstanding the Borough
Councils, blow about in all directions, is hardly inspiring ; and
on a wet day, or a day of fog, when pedestrians peer vainly
through that " light which London takes the day to be," and
suffering 'bus and dray horses slide and stagger, in the peculiar
glutinous composition termed !i London mud," through the
murky thoroughfares, it can scarcely be said to be at its best.
But then, neither are Paris nor Berlin prepossessing under like
circumstances .... Paradise itself would be at a discount !
But, on fine days of spring or summer, days when the May
sun, with " heavenly alchemy," transforms the dust in the
atmosphere to gold, — when the slight haze of a London summer
but adds to pictorial charm, — does not the great city seem a very
Eldorado? Days such as these surely inspired Mr. Henley's
London Voluntaries ; soot, fog, grime are all forgotten ; the
city sparkles like a many-faceted diamond, and
" Trafalgar Square
(The fountains volleying golden glaze)
Shines like an angel-market. High aloft
Over his couchant lions in a haze
Shimmering and bland and soft,
A dust of chrysoprase,
Our Sailor takes the golden gaze
Of the saluting sun . . . ."
Yet it is, on the whole, not so much ourselves, as
foreigners and colonials, who are and have been the harshest
critics of London stones. The colonists of Melbourne,
accustomed to their own straight, wide streets, are shocked at
our narrow, tortuous, and inconvenient city thoroughfares ; the
denizens of New York, fresh from their own system of regular
" blocks," their town of parallelograms, are amazed at London's
want of "plan." The French, recalling their tall, white
palaces of the Place du Louvre and the Rue de Rivoli, are
win FOREIGN' \ n:\vs
45'
surprised no less at our prevailing soot and grime, than by the
lack of continuity in our streets, of conformity in our public build-
ings. So depressed, indeed, was M. Daudet in our metropolis
that he went so far as to call Englishwomen " ugly " ; the kindly
and accomplished author must really have suffered from "the
spleen." So, also, must M. Taine, when he unkim
likened Nelson, on the top of his column, to "a rat impaled
on the top of a pole," and added, further, that a swamp like
London was "a place of exile for the arts of antiquity." Not
one of these critics, be it observed, recognises either the
"aesthetic value " of soot, or the charm of irregularity. And
see how, even when we do try after conformity and classical
regularity, they fall foul of us ! For instance, M. Gabriel
Mourey, in his charming book on England, Passe k
Detroit, while admiring the beauty of Regent's Park, makes
somewhat scornful reference to those too-ambitious stucco
terraces, designed by Nash in the Prince Regent's time :
"The turf of Regent's Park" (he says) "under that misty sun of the
London summer, that gives both a vagueness to the horizon and an indefin-
ite enlargement to the immense city .... the turf of Regent's Park, with
its depths of real country, notwithstanding the ' new Greek' lines of the
big In .use, appearing in the distance — Greek lines that harmonise so badly
with that northern sun."'
Equally severe is M. Taine, the accomplished and broad-
minded critic. Hear his condemnation of one of our finest
palaces :
"A frightful thing is the huge palace in the Strand, which is called
Som i el House. Massive and heavy piece of architecture, of which the
hollows are inked, the porticoes blackened with soot, where, in ihe cavity
of the empty court, is a sham fountain without water, poolsol h tei onthe
pavement, long rows oi clos '1 windows whal cm they possibly do in
ill catacombs? Ii se m i if the livid and si . befouled
iln verdure ol th parks. Hut what most offends the eyes are the colonn
peristyles, Grecian aments, mouldings, and wreaths of the housi -
bathed in soot; poor antique architecture what i-- it doing in such a
climate?"
452 MIXED ARCHITECTURE chap.
We give up the whole defence of the Regent's Park houses ;
yet, surely, poor Somerset House was hardly deserving of
all this satire ! Somerset House, though its river frontage is
inadequate and lacking in dignity, yet testifies to the ability of
its eighteenth-century architect, Sir William Chambers. The
older palace of Protector Somerset, that English prison where
two poor foreign queens, Henrietta Maria and Catherine of
Braganza, languished in desolate grandeur, has given place to an
imposing structure, a community of Inland Revenue, a Circum-
locution Office on a vast scale. Situated at the Strand end
of Waterloo Bridge, its condemned river facade looms, never-
theless, attractively in gleaming whiteness, across the water — a
whiteness to which the encroaching soot that the French
writers complain of only lends picturesque setting.
M. Taine, however, had evidently no eye for sooty effects.
To him, that mystic view from the river bridges, that view
that inspired his best sonnet in Wordsworth, a " nocturne "
in Mr. Whistler, and immortal art in the boy Turner, has to
him merely "the look of a bad drawing in charcoal which
some one has rubbed with his sleeve."
While London's natural and primitive instinct is perhaps
toward Gothic architecture (" the only style," says M. Taine
of Westminster Abbey, " that is at all adapted to her
climate,") yet, no doubt, the prevailing note of her architec-
ture is its cosmopolitanism. It is her misfortune, as well as her
glory, to show every kind of feverish architectural craze and
style in close juxtaposition — Gothic, Renaissance, Norman,
Greek, and Early English. Ardent spirits have, at various
times, sought to erect in her streets the oriflammes of other
nations, quite regardless of suitability or appropriate setting.
Italian spires and cupolas that would adorn their native valleys,
and shine, gleaming pinnacles of white, — landmarks to the
wandering peasant over the intervening black forest of pines,—
are here crowded, perhaps, between a fashionable tC emporium "
and a modern hotel ; Doric temples, such as should stand
xvin WREN'S REBUILDING 453
aloof in lonely grandeur each on its tall Acropolis, here are
sandwiched, maybe, between a model dairy-shop and a
fashionable library ; Renaissance palaces that, by the waters
of Venice, would reflect their arches and pillars in a sunny,
golden glow, here confront blackened statues of square
nineteenth-century philanthropists, — or, more prosaic still, a
smoke-breathing London terminus !
Yet, while we concede the Gothic style to be more in keep-
ing with London skies and spirits, it is, nevertheless, difficult
to say which of her styles is most dominant — for all, truly, have
been dominant in their day. For London, in this respect, has
been the victim of succeeding fashions : over her resistless and
long-suffering mass have, in every new age and decade,
" Bards made new poems,
Thinkers new schools,
Statesmen new systems,
Critics new rules."
Nearly every decade of the past two centuries can be traced
by the scholar in London streets and monuments. Nay, from
the time of the Great Fire, when Wren, that master
spirit in architecture, rose in his strength, and undertook
to rebuild sixty destroyed churches, — the progress, or falling-off,
of London in this art can be generally traced in the metro-
polis. Wren, best known to posterity as the builder of St.
Paul's, was a remarkable figure of his robust time. Like the
magician of some old fairy tale, he caused a new and more
beautiful London to rise again from its ashes. Macaulay
wrote of him :
"In architecture, an art which is half a science .... our country
could boast at the time of the Revolution ol one truly greal man, Sir
Christopher Wren ; and the fire which laid London in ruin roying
13,000 houses and So churches, gave him an opportunity un] ( ted in
history of displaying his powers. The austere beaut) oi the Vthi
portico, the glowing sublimity of the Gothi . he «^. like mi
his contemporaries, incapable of emulating, and perhaps incapable of appre-
454 INIGO JONES chap.
dating ; but no man born on our side of the Alps has imitated with so
much success the magnificence of the palace churches of Italy "
Wren's master-work, it may be said, is after all only imita-
tive ; St. Paul's in London is but an adaptation of St. Peter's
in Rome. But it is a free adaptation, and in the grand style.
Nor will any one be disposed to deny the great architect's wealth
of imagination, originality and resource, who studies Wren's
sixty City churches, none of which, either in spire or church
itself, is a duplicate of another. Perhaps, among them all, it
is the spire of St. Mary-le-Bow that, for grace and beauty of
design, bears away the palm.
For forty years no important building was erected in London
in which Wren was not concerned. That his wider plan for
the regulating and straightening of the streets themselves was
not adopted we have, perhaps, reason to be thankful. While
nearly all the city spires recall Wren's master-hand and versa-
tile tastes, the Banqueting House, that well-known palatial
fragment in Whitehall, is the principal monument left to us by
Inigo Jones, Wren's immediate predecessor. Inigo Jones is
principally famous as the designer of that splendid palace of
Whitehall that was never built, that " dream-palace " of Palla-
dian splendour that was intended to replace the ancient " York
House " of Wolsey, the former " Whitehall " of the Tudors.
The river-front of this imagined palace, as designed by Inigo,
would, in its noble simplicity, have been a thing of beauty for
all time ; it is to be regretted that the plan was never carried
out. The civil troubles of the impending Revolution, the want
of money for so grandiose a scheme, prevented the under-
taking. The sole realisation of the dream is now the old
Banqueting House that we pass in Whitehall, a building iso-
lated among its neighbours, intended only as the central por-
tion of but one wing of the enormous edifice. Cruel, indeed,
is the irony of history, and little did James I., for whose glory
this magnificent palace was planned, think "that he was rais-
ing a pile from which his son was to step from the throne to a
xvin WHITEHALL: IMAGINED, AM) ACTUAL 455
scaffold." For this very Banqueting House served later as
Charles's vestibule on his way to execution. With the final
banishment of the Stuarts, Whitehall was deserted as a Royal
residence; and the old palace, destroyed by successive fires,
its picturesque " Gothic " and " Holbein " gateways removed
as obstructions, has in its turn made way for imposing Govern-
ment Offices. Yet the Banqueting House, sole and sad relic
of a vanished past, still stands solidly in its place, and is now
used as a Museum.
What, one imagines, would modern London have been had
Inigo Jones's plan found fruition, and the whole of Whitehall,
from Westminster to the Banqueting House, been given up to
his palatial splendours? That the present Buckingham Palace
is but a poor substitute for such imagined magnificence is cer-
tain, and the loss of Inigo's fine Palladian river-frontage is
perhaps hardly atoned for by the terrace of our modern Houses
of Parliament ; yet these, too, are beautiful, and Whitehall has
not lost its palatial air ; for its wide and still widening streets,
its spacious and imposing Government Offices, still serve to
keep up the illusion, and, at any rate, the state of royalty.
Already one of the handsomesl streets in London, its build
ings are being yet further improved, and a new War Office oi
vast proportions is rising slowly on the long-vacant plot of
ground where, it was said, three hundred different kinds of
wild flowers lately grew, whose yellow and pink blossoms used
to wave temptingly before the eyes of travellers on omnibus-
tops. . . . Now. never more will flowers grow there ; no Ioul. 1
will the picturesque, green-gabled roofs of "Whitehall Court "
look across to the fleckered sunlight of the Admiralty and
tin- Horse Guards. Instead, palatial buildings, something
after the Palladian manner of [nigo Jones's imagined Whitehall
Palace, will form a noble street, in a more or less continuous
line of massive splendour; a road of palaces, to he lurthei
dignified by the erection of new and spacious Governmenl
Offices, near the Abbey, on the line of the destroyed and
456
THE WHITEHALL OF THE FUTURE
CHAP.
obstructive King Street. When all the Whitehall improve-
ments are carried out, the dignity and beauty of London will
gain immensely, and the view down the long street of palaces,—
the Abbey, unobstructed by intervening buildings, shining like
The Horse Guards.
a star at its Parliament Street end, — will be among the very
finest sights in the metropolis.
If Inigo Jones, steeped in Italian art, was severely Palladian
in style, Wren, his successor, " a giant in architecture," was a
xvin THE CLASSICAL FEVER 457
versatile and original genius. The quantity and the quality of
his work may well overpower a later age. " He paved the way,"
says Fergusson, "and smoothed the path"; none of his
successors have surpassed if, indeed, equalled him. During
the eighteenth century, the Renaissance still held sway in archi-
tecture; James Gibbs, in 1721, built the church of St.
Martin-in-the-Fields, of which the Grecian portico, says Mr.
Hare, " is the only perfect example in London " ; the brothers
Adam, of " Adelphi " fame, flourished, giving, with their
doorways, their fireplaces, their curves and arches, a new
impulse to the domestic architecture of their day ; Sir William
Chambers erected Somerset House ; and Sir John Soane, who
in 1788 designed the present Bank of England, was. with
others of his contemporaries, a pioneer of the coming classical
revival. With the beginning of the nineteenth century the
change came, and architectural design in England completely
changed. Now the " new ( '.reek lines " that, say the French, " go
so ill with our northern climate," became all the rage ; the mild
Gothic of Wren, itself a "last dying echo," completely (lis
appeared, and (I reek temples, "orders," pediments, columns,
grew everywhere like mushrooms. Nash, the architect of the
Regency, the " Apostle of Plaster," planned out Regent Street,
a new road to extend from the Prince's colonnaded mansion
Carlton House, to the new Park named after him : hence arose
the Quadrant, and the Regent's Park terraces already alluded to.
All was Greek, everything was colonnaded, at that day :
"Once the fashion was introduced it became a mania. Thirty or forty
years ago no building was complete withoul a Doric portico, hexastyle, or
octastyle, prostylar, or distyle in antis; and no educated man dared t<>
confess ignorance of a greal many very hard words which then became
fashionable. Churches were mosl afflicted in this way ; nexl i" these came
s^ank and county halls, but even railway stations and panoramas found
their best advertisements in these sacred adjuncts ; and terraces and >ln>|>-
fronts thought they had attained the acme of elegance when eithei
wooden "i plaster caricature "I a Grecian order suggested the classical taste
ol the builder."
458 THE APOSTLE OF STUCCO chap.
Nash was the chief introducer of " stucco " (the covering of
brick with cement to imitate stone), which has since become
so vulgarised everywhere, and especially in the fashionable
West End squares and streets. Nash's tastes in this respect
gave rise to the following epigram :
" Augustus at Rome was for building renowned,
And of marble he left what of brick he had found ;
But is not our Nash, too, a very great master ?
He finds us all brick, and he leaves us all plaster."
All the great public buildings of the time shared in the
classic revival. The British Museum, built by the Smirkes in
the first half of the last century, at enormous expense, is the
most successful imitation of Ionic architecture in England.
The style of the pediment is after that of the Athenian
Acropolis. Though critics object to it that it has no suitable
base, it is, nevertheless, an imposing structure. The Greek
portico of the London University Buildings, in Gower Street,
erected by Wilkins in 1827, is, says Fergusson, "the most
pleasing specimen of its class ever erected in this country."
But it is so secluded and recessed from the street, as to be hardly
seen. Its architect, Wilkins, had the misfortune to be chosen
to erect our much-abused National Gallery building, with its
condemned " pepper-boxes " of cupolas ; the designer, however,
was so hampered by conditions and restrictions, as to be
almost helpless in the matter. The National Gallery, never-
theless, still stands on the finest site in London, an object of
scorn to visitors and foreigners.
But the ultra-classic craze, in London, burnt itself out at
last in one final flare. Of the innumerable buildings that
still tell of the extent of the mania, perhaps the most ex-
aggerated is the church of New St. Pancras, built after not one
but several Athenian temples. It is a strange medley of forms,
a real nightmare of Greek art. Its tower is a double repro-
duction of the "Temple of the Winds," one temple on the
xviii THE GOTHIC REVIVAL 459
top of the other: while its interior and its caryatids are
modelled on the Erechtheion. Poor caryatids, designed for
the bright sunlight of the Acropolis, and imprisoned,
blackened and ogre-like, in the dreary and muddy Euston
Road ! " Calm " you may be, in your pre surroundings, but
hardly "far-looking"; for your view is restricted (even if fog
does not restrict it yet further) to the uninspiring buildings of
Euston Station opposite ! Truly, they who placed you here must
have been somewhat lacking in sense of humour ! The double
Tower of the Winds is not so unhappy as the poor caryatids ;
it even looks well, in its height and its silvery greym n over
the Tavistock Square trees, which hide its inadequate portico.
The failure of this incongruous church, added to its vast
expense, brought the final reaction from the classical fever ; yi t.
from one extreme, men directly rushed to the other.
The Gothic revival, as might be expected, set in severely ; the
classic sculptors changed their style and became Gothic ; new
Gothic sculptors, Pugin, Britton, and others, arose on the
artistic firmament. Then, in 1840-59, Sir Charles Barry
built the chief modern architectural feature of London, the
New Palace of Westminster, in the mediaeval and Tudor style.
The small chapel of Henry VII. gave the idea for this vast
edifice. The enormous structure, so often criticised, is yet, to
judge by the many photographs and views annually sold of it,
the most popular building in London.
Even M. Taine. who consistently falls foul of all London
architecture that is not Gothic, speaks thus of it :
" The architecture .... has the meril of being neither Grecian nor
Southern; it is Gothic, accommodated to the climate, to the requiremi
The pal jnificently mirrors itself in the shining rh
in the distance, its clock-tower, its li and of carvings are
juely outlined in the mist. Leaping and twisted lines, complicated
mouldings, trefoils and rose windows diversify the enormous mass which
rs four acres, and produces on the mind the ide; ngled forest.
The great Exhibition of [851 gave, naturally, much impetus
460 THE QUEEN ANNE CRAZE chap.
to the enlargement, as well as the architecture, of London.
And though the English school of architects became somewhat
more catholic in taste, yet the Gothic style still held the public
favour. Butterfield's severe church of All Saints, Margaret
Street, delighted the public taste, and initiated the fashion for
" Butterfield " spires ; Scott's church of St. Mary Abbott's,
Kensington, was also popular. Would not either of these be
noticed, if "planted out" in an Italian valley? And Street's
well-known New Law Courts, in the Strand, built 1879-83,
are the latest expression of modern Gothic. Opinion is divided
on the subject of their merits, but undoubtedly they form,
viewed from the Strand, a fine pile of buildings.
What is called the " Queen Anne " building craze has set in
strongly of late years, its chief pioneers being the two architects,
— Norman Shaw, who built the picturesque mansion of Lowther
Lodge, solidly fine in its darkened red-brick, close to the
Albert Hall, — and Bodley, who designed the fine offices of the
London School Board on the Thames Embankment. Lowther
Lodge is said to " exhibit very well the merits of the best order
of "Queen Anne" design of the domestic class " ; its successors
are much more efflorescent. Everywhere now spring up so-
called " Queen Anne " mansions, streets, houses, public offices ;
and red-brick, terra-cotta, nooks, ingles, casement windows are
multiplying ad libitum all over the metropolis. Different styles
prevail at different times, and the " Queen Anne " wave just
now threatens to overwhelm us. Flats, stores, police-stations,
hotels, all are becoming " Queen Anne." Even if walls are
still thin, even if the jerry-builder is still to the fore, new streets
are, none the less, built in the " Queen Anne " manner ; and
the last stage of every craze is worse than the first.
What, then, is the prevailing architecture of London ? We
have perused its history ; we have wandered through its streets,
and have gazed on all and every style of building. Decision
ought to be easy. Yet it is not so easy as it looks. In the
Forum at Rome, you have to dig to find out all the different
xvni THE IDEAL LONDON 461
strata of buildings — republican, monarchical, imperial. In
London, it is even more puzzling, for here you sec them all
together, above ground, in close juxtaposition — Tudor, Stuart,
Hanoverian — it needs more than a magician's wand to
relegate each to its proper period in history. Wren's St. Paul's,
the enormous Hotel Cecil, the Whitehall Government Offices,
the old timbered mansions in Bishopsgate Street, Pennethorne's
new Tudor Record office, the Railway Architecture of Charing
Cross and of Liverpool Street, the Aquarium hung gaily with
posters, the Savoy Hotel in white and gold — you have them
all, side by side. You pass through the prevailing stucco and
heavy porticoes of Belgrave Square, — the new red-brick and
terra-cotta of the Cadogan and Grosvenor Estates, — the stone
dignity of Broad Sanctuary, — the dull brick uniformity of
Bloomsbury ; — which style, think you, suits your ideal London
best?
but, while it may reasonably be matter for conjecture as to
what architectural style really suits London best,— or if, indeed,
a wholesome mixture of all styles be not a desideratum,— it
seems, perhaps, safe to say that it is the " dark house," in the
" long, unlovely street " of Tennyson's condemnation, of
Madame de Stael's vituperation, — that, in its dull uniformity,
really occupies most of the area of London. There are, of
course, minor differences. In West London, the "unlovely
street" may flower into questionable stucco ; in East London,
it may become lower, dingier, and meaner ; but in original
intent all are the same. So monotonous, indeed, are the}',
that, in secluded squares or corners, one welcome.-, joyfully an
original door-knocker, even such a door-canopy as dial de-
scribed in Little Dorrit, "a projecting canopy in carved work,
of festooned jack-towels, and children's heads with water-on-
the brain, designed after a once-popular monumental patten
In interiors, these Name monotonous houses may all dil
widely, though even lure no universal rule of taste can In- laid
down: and the little School Board boy who said, naively,
462 "OPEN SESAME"
CHAP.
"Rich people's houses ain't nice inside; there is books all
round, and no washin' " unconsciously testified to the wide
differences entailed by " the point of view." In Mayfair,
Westminster, or Belgravia, — yes, even in Bloomsbury, one dull
brick or stucco house-front may present the same external
gloom as another, and yet, internally, may differ much from
that other in glory. And this fact is typical of poor as well as
of rich London. An Englishman's house is his castle, and
Englishmen's tastes, as we know, are seldom much in evidence.
" Adam " ceilings, " Morris " tapestries, Pompeian courts,
leafy vistas, mediaeval halls, " Queen Anne " ' ingleneuks,"
all these may surprise the visitor, when once the "Open
sesame " has revealed to him all that lies behind that magic
front door that guards the Briton's household gods from the
vulgar glare of the street.
Even some of the treasure-houses of England's magnates,
merchant-princes, and collectors are curiously unsuggestive
externally. In this connection I may quote Mr. Moncure
Conway's description of the late Mr. Alfred Morrison's house
in Carlton House Terrace, adorned by the genius of Mr.
Owen Jones :
" The house " (he says) "is one of those large, square, lead-coloured
buildings, of which so many thousands exist in London, that any one pass-
ing by would pronounce characteristically characterless. It repeats the
apparent determination of ages that there shall be no external architectural
beauty in London. Height, breadth, massiveness of portal, all declare that
he who resides here has not dispensed with architecture because he could
not command it. In other climes this gentleman is dwelling behind
carved porticoes of marble and pillars of porphyry ; but here the cloud and
sky have commanded him to build a blank fortress and find his marble and
porphyry inside of it. Pass through this heavy doorway, and in an instant
every fair clime surrounds you, every region lavishes its sentiment ; you are
the heir of all the ages."
•The street that Tennyson really designed in In Memoriam
was Wimpole Street, surely not as ugly or as pretentious a
street as many others of the West End. Gower Street, too,
XVIII DULL UNIFORMITY 463
was called unkindly by Mr. Ruskin " the ne plus ultra of ugli-
ness in British architecture" ; yet, indeed, Bloomsbury hous
unfashionable as they are, seem by their very plainness and
want of adornment to maintain a certain dignity that is un-
known to those long rows of stucco catafalques of Kensington
and Belgravia, where, standing beneath the endless vista of
projecting porches, one's mind naturally turns to tombs and
whited sepulchres.
The Bloomsbury houses are, at any rate, simple and inoffen-
sive. Mr. Moncure Conway, in a further passage, pleads the
cause of London's ugly residential streets :
"Much is said from time to time aboul the ugliness of London streel
architecture .... the miles and miles of yellow-gray and soot}- brick
houses, each as much like the other as if so many miles of hollow bloc]
were chopped al regular intervals. And yel there is something so pleasant
to think of in these interminable rows of brick blocks, that they are nol
altogether unpleasant to the eye. For they are houses of good size, com-
fortable hou es ; and their sameness, only noticeable through their \
number, means thai the averaged well to-do-people in London is also vast.
It implies a distribution of wealth, an equality of conditions, which make
the best feature of a solid civilisation. There is much beauty inside these
orange-tawny walls. Before any house in thai league of sooty brick you
may pause and say with fair security: in that house are industrious,
educated people .... they have made there, within their mass of burnt
clay, a true cosmos, when' love and thoughl dwell with them ; and between
all thai and a line outside the}' have chosen the better part."
But, according to Edward Gibbon, the historian, the excuse
for London's ugly "exteriors " is not so much because the in-
habitants have "chosen the better part," as because theavera
Englishman mostly keeps his show and his magnificence for
his country seat. Comparing London and Paris, Gibbon said
(in 1763) :
" I devoted man;.' hours of the morning to the circuit of Paris and the
neighbourhood, to the \i-ii of churches and palaces conspicuous by their
architecture \n Englishman may hear withoul nee that in
these . . . . Paris is superior to London, since the opulence oi the French
capital arises from the delects oi its government and religion. In the
464 SQUARES OF QUEEN ANNE'S TIME chap.
absence of Louis XIV. and his successors the Louvre has been left
unfinished ; but the millions which have been lavished on the sands of
Versailles and the morass of Marli could not be supplied by the legal
allowance of a British king. The splendour of the French nobles is
confined to their town residence ; that of the English is more usefully
distributed in their country seats ; and we should be astonished at our own
riches if the labours of architecture, the spoils of Italy and Greece, which
are now scattered from Inverary to Wilton, were accumulated in a few
streets between Marylebone and Westminster.''
In some parts of Bloomsbury, — Great Ormond Street, for
instance, or Queen Square, — some of the old houses are charm-
ing in their darkened red-brick and plain casements neatly
outlined with white paint. But then most of these are, like
old Kensington Palace, really of Queen's Anne's time, and the
original is ever better than the imitation. No doubt, to the
inhabitant, there are accompanying drawbacks to some of
these ; beetles of long standing may infest their grimy kitchens,
and their ancient oak panelling may be prolific in those large rats
which are so unpleasantly suggestive, to the nervous, of ghosts.
Queen Square is the oldest of all the Bloomsbury Squares ;
for in 1746 London hardly extended further than the northern
end of Southampton Row, all beyond being more or less open
country. Queen Square is so named in honour of Queen Anne,
and her statue, as its presiding genius, adorns its further end,
which was left open, as already mentioned, on account of the
beautiful view it afforded of the heights of Highgate and Hamp-
stead. Of the same solidity and almost mediaeval suggestion
as Queen Square are the picturesque Charterhouse Square
(now mainly hotels and business precincts), Trinity Square,
near the Tower (with the same tendency), and other unsus-
pected haunts of old time. And in the charming " old Court
suburb " of Kensington, several such squares, delightful in
greenery and mellowed red brick, are to be found. How
refreshing, for instance, is Kensington Square, a square that still
keeps its old-world look, and suggests Miss Thackeray's
pleasant touches, despite the sad encroachments of modernity
xvni HOMES FOR THE PEOPLE 465
at one end, in the shape of tall and very prosaic blocks of
" model dwellings." There is, as staled, a great modern craze
for red-brick, and the many new and often quaintly designed
houses, when darkened by years, will no doubt improve resi-
dential London vastly. And despite the enormous recent
growth of London, and the incessant crowding of bricks and
mortar, there yet remains an almost suburban charm about
Kensington, Chelsea, and Fulham — in Kensington especially —
where a few old-world corners are still untouched, where Ken-
sington Palace still, in its Dutch solidity, "maintains all the
best traditions of Queen Anne's time," and where the pretty
modern dwelling houses abound, described so sympathetically
by M. Gabriel Mourey in Passe le Detroit :
"In fronl of the pretty link- facades of the little red-brick houses, the
style which Philip W'clil), the architect, invented, and which is so
happily appropriate alike i<> the requirements <>f English life and to the
colour and movements of the atmosphere, it is pleasant to dream of an
existence in which all is calm, intimate, and gravely happy. The windows
are guillotine-like, half hidden by balconies with trailing plants, and
through them one catches sight of neat, bright furniture, designed at once
l''i utility and decoration. A woman is seated at the window, working or
reading, of quiel and pi icid beauty. The children come in from playing in
some neighbouring park. They are supple and vigorous, like young
animals, frank and direel "I a ipi ct, not spoilt by any unhealthy precocity.
The husband comes in from the City, hi. hag in hand, after his hours of
feverish business, the joy of the same horizon found every evening, the
sweetness of home ; happiness composed of simple, various elements, a
nsation of prosperity in all the little houses, all alike the same comfort-
able contentment. And a i 1 efore a camera or in leading a book one likes
to imagine or evoke the soul "i die artist, so here the personality of this
Philip Webb claim, me, the soul of tin- architeel who, like Solness, the
master builder, ha. passed his life in building not palaces or churches, hut
simple houses."
Such modern houses are, at any rate, a great relief from the
monotonous and too-predominating fever of Georgian and
Early Victorian stucco. A new cil ol red brick has arisen on
the Cadogan Estate, and in the remodelled purlieus of Sloane
11 11
466 FIXE REBUILDINGS chap.
Street big mansions of red fiats tower skywards, and blossom
into oriels, gables, dormer-windows, and such like excrescences.
Originality is a new thing in London domestic architecture, and
the Cadogan Estate is, on the whole, vastly improved. The
Bedford Estate of Bloomsbury might, no doubt, be rebuilt to
equal advantage but for two potent reasons, the one being that
its house walls, built strongly in last century's beginning, show
no signs of decay ; the other, that the fitful tide of fashion has
so deserted the locality as to make the expense hardly worth
incurring. Therefore, Bloomsbury houses are merely "tinkered"
up in places, and adorned here and there with facings and
mouldings of terra-cotta ; a half-hearted proceeding at best, and
no more successful than such half-measures usually are.
But, while the plain, nondescript brick houses of Gower
Street and Baker Street still remain the prevailing type of
London architecture, there is everywhere noticeable a tendency
to improve and embellish the streets of the metropolis, to
rebuild in a better or, at any rate, a more ambitious way.
Travelling along the highway of Oxford Street, from ancient
Tyburn to Tottenham Court Road, how many tall, new, and
ornate house-fronts rise along the line on each side of us !
There is a warehouse in Oxford Street by Collcutt, which, say
architectural authorities, " has probably the most showy facade
in England for the money." The lease of a small, mean house
expires ; it is promptly destroyed — to rise again in dazzling
red-brick, terra-cotta, and wide casements. Everywhere else it
is the same ; everywhere is red-brick, and red or buff terra-
cotta, adorning alike shop-front, warehouse, " Tube " station,
and palatial mansion, till, indeed, you hardly know which is
which. Very good indeed is the effect of some of this new
street-architecture. Sometimes the new houses are even re-
built in " old English " style, or on old models, with all the
latest improvements ; as, for instance, " Short's " famous wine-
tavern in the Strand, lately re-erected as a semi-mediaeval
building, with white and green adornments, sloping roof,
win "THE PATRIOT ARCHITECT :J 467
and the projecting "sign" of old times. Could we "dip into
the future far as human eye can see " ; were it given to us, but
for one moment, to behold the architectural glories and wonders
of the London of, say, the year a.D. 2000 ; well, we should, at
any rate, comprehend better whither our present efforts tend.
Then will the public buildings of the Victorian Age, as of the
Elizabethan Age, be pointed out proudly to the wondering
sightseer; the golden glitter of the "Anno Victoria? " on the
Royal Exchange Pediment will prove no less inspiring than the
"Anno Elizabethse " ; and while such ancient monuments as
St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey must ever command the
primal reverence of every Englishman worthy the name, no less
will such landmarks as the Albert Hall, the Albert Memorial,
the Natural History Museum, or the Imperial Institute, speak
to the ages of the famous "sixty years of ever-widening
Empire." For, surely, the greatest power of architecture is
that it leaves the memorial, in turn, of every age. Therefore,
all the more, should
" You, the Pati i< >t Architect,
\'<>u thai shape for Eternity,
Raise a stately memorial,
Make ii regally gorgeous, . . .
Rich in symbol, in ornament,
Which may speak to the centuries,
All the centuries after us . . . ."
Architecture, like literature, needs time Id orb it "into the
perfect star," to give it its right place and setting in history.
And yet, it should he of every age. " We could name," said
thi late Mr. Walter Pater, "certain modern churches in
London .... to which posterity ma) well look back puzzled.
Could these exquisitely pondered buildings have been, ind< ed,
works of the nineteenth century ? Were they not the subtlest
creations ol the age in which Gothic art was spontaneous? In
truth, we have had instances of workmen, who, through long,
Large devoted study of the handiwork of the past, havedonethe
11 11 2
468 NEW MANSIONS AND FLATS chap.
thing better, with a more fully enlightened consciousness, with
full intelligence of what those early workmen only guessed at."
The Albert Hall, so much abused for its acoustic defects, is,
from its impressive size at least, a well known London land-
mark. " That monstrous caricature of the Colosseum," some
one has called it ; but critics of London's modern buildings
generally err on the side of severity, and the vast elliptical
mass is certainly imposing. In the Albert Hall, the new style
of terra-cotta decorations, already referred to, is largely promi-
nent ; the Pantheon-like dome has a pleasing solidity, and the
glow of smoke-darkened red, in spring, is delightfully contrasted
with the green trees of the neighbouring Park. Enormous
" mansions," also red-brick, but hardly attractive, have arisen,
in Babel-like height, beside the Albert Hall, painfully dwarfing
and overshadowing the charming building of " Lowther
Lodge" adjacent. These "mansions" and "fiats" have
increased of late years enormously in London, are, indeed,
still increasing. Prom " model lodging-houses " to elaborate
and expensive palaces, every kind of income and taste is, in
this respect, catered for ; and these enormous dwelling-houses,
— cities, or at least villages, in themselves, — attain terrific pro-
portions of height and size. In them live "all sorts and condi-
tions of men." Thus, in the " blocks " of model dwellings,
ladies in eternal " Hinde's curlers " quarrel vociferously, with
arms akimbo, from across their railed-in outer landing-places ;
while, in more elaborate dwellings, tubs of "yuccas "and other
evergreen trees greet the visitor cheerfully from the glazed-in
Nuremberg-like courtyards, and elaborate flower-boxes adorn
the balconies. Indeed, the modern "flats" already form no
inconsiderable factor in London's street architecture ; and
sometimes, as in Bedford Court Mansions, Bedford Square,
they are of considerable artistic merit. The new hotels, also,
are another leading feature of modern London. Fifty years
ago London had but few hotels, and those that did exist, often
left much to be desired in the way of comfort, cleanliness,
xvm VENETIAN AND SECULAR GOTHIC 469
and reliability. Now enormous palaces have arisen everywhere,
not only in the West End, but in Bayswater, Bloomsbury, and
other less modish quarters ; sumptuous mansions, still of
ornate red briek and terra cotta, springing up with the prompti-
tude of an Aladdin's palace, and dominating, as it may be,
their respective street or square. It was not long since that I
chanced to meet two queens in a cart filled with straw — unregal
state for a queen ! going along, smiling placidly, to their final
resting place. The queens were of terra cotta, and their last,
sad journey was presumably only from Doulton's factories in
Lambeth to their destined abode on the Russell Hotel facade :
nevertheless, I sympathised with the poor things in their
patient submission, led thus, in an open cart, to execution,
roped and hung amid the jeers of the populace.
In the "Venetian Gothic" style is the modern Crown
Insurance Office, in New Bridge Street, built by Woodward.
Of this edifice, 1). G. Rossetti, who lived at one time close by
it, says: "It seems to me the most perfect piece of civil
architecture of the new school that I have seen in London.
I never cease to look at it with delight." Of what is called the
"Secular Gothic" order, is the large terra-cotta "Natural
History Museum,'' at South Kensington, an ambitious building
by Waterhouse, about which much difference of opinion rages.
While Mr. 1 [are has no doubt at all but that it is "an embodi
ment of pretentious ugliness, a huge pile of mongrel Lombardic
architecture," other authorities have seen in its originality
"many evidences of anxious and skilful pains." Its general
effect is, it must be confess* d, at presi nt somewhat bizarreand
striped. The " Prudential Assurance Offices," also by Watei
house, built (lose to the site ol old Furnival's Inn, in Holborn,
is a more generally popular edifice, sober and solid in its
unrelieved, dark red terra cotta.
Many other notable buildings might, of course, be mentioned,
but space is limited. Enough, however, lias bei n said tO show
that Londoners are still slaws to architectural fashion, ami
4-0 THE BEAUTY OF GRIME chap.
that the now prevailing mode is for red-brick and terra-cotta.
Indeed, the London of the close of the nineteenth and the
opening of the twentieth century, will surely be " picked out " by
future antiquaries by lines and "holdings" of red, just as the limits
of the Georgian and early-Victorian classical fever are now shown
by white Doric and Ionic pediments and columns, gleaming
from beneath their invading mantle of soot. Some people say,
by the way, that the present love of terra-cotta as building
material, partly arises from the fact that it can be washed. If
this be true, then it only shows that the Londoner of to-day is
wanting in appreciation of the before-mentioned "artistic
value " of soot. It may be, that, like the tailless fox of the
fable, we admire what we must perforce put up with, or what we
are accustomed to. Yet, it has always seemed to me that
London's chief beauty lies in this all-pervading grime,
mellowing, softening, harmonizing. M. Taine, we know, did
not hold this view ; is it, indeed, to be expected from any one
but a true, a born Londoner ? St. Paul's blackened festoons
of sculptured roses ; the grimy cupids, nestling on the pedestals
of the Russell family's statues in the Bloomsbury squares ; the
mournful Greek frieze on the Athenaeum Club, in Pall Mall ; —
yes, even the sooty resignation of the St. Pancras caryatids ;
does not the pall of soot, which so afflicts the Southerner,
seem to convey something of London's spirit, humanity, Ego,
in fact ? Who, for instance, will maintain that the blackness
of St. Paul's itself does not immeasurably add to the grandeur
of its effect ? As G. A. Sala said :
" It is really the better for all the incense which all the chimneys since
the time of Wren have offered at its shrine ; and are still flinging up every
day from their foul and grimy censers."
Who, also, will not own that the new Tate Gallery, erected at
such expense by Sir Henry Tate's munificence on the old site of
Milbank Prison, is not improving, year by year, by the combined
action of London's river, fogs, and soot ? It already looks less
xvin THE SMILE OF THE CYCLOPS 471
incongruously white amid its murky surrounding wharves; less
like a frosted wedding-cake, less aggressively Greek near the grey
Gothic pile of neighbouring Westminster. And what of that
picturesque railway station of St. Pancras, picturesque with
the combined glamour of blue London mist and distance,
towering like some shadow)- mediaeval fortress over the murky
modernity of the Euston Road! (Even the Euston Road,
saddest and least inspiring of thoroughfares, can, on occcasion,
be glorified.) In one of London's lurid autumn sunsets, the
large red sun, obscured through fog and mist, sinks slowly
behind the embattled towers of St. Pancras, lending it such an
appearance of romance that e\ na French writer (not, however,
M. Taine !) has < ailed it :
" A monumental railw >n, like a cathedral with its arched windows,
its turrets, and enormous belfry, all of red-brick, which the weather
darkens so prettily."
And lias not the misty glory of soot and river fog appealed
to Turner, the artisl ; appealed, in turn, to all the painters who
have at all penetrated to the spirit of the beauty and the mystery
of London ? Even M. Taine, so severe otherwise upon London's
sooty palaces, is compelled to admit, reluctantly, some charm,
after all, in this " huge conglomeration of human creation," and
to confess that "the shimmering of river waves, the scattering
of the light imprisoned in vapour, the soft whitish or pink tints
which cover these vastnesses, diffuse a sort of grace over the
prodigious city, having the effect of a smile upon the lace of a
shaggy and lil. a k( ned ( lyclops."
The "Cyclops" is maligned and traduced by tradition, and
the smile on his blackened lace is often beautiful. We call
London Ugly, mostly from mere custom, but very few among
us trouble to look and judge for ourselves. " 1 wonder," ^n^'
said Archbishop Benson, " who oul ol the many thousands who
daily pass St. Paul's, ever look up al it." And it is so with
all London's greal and historic buildings. Church spires and
472 THE STONES OF LONDON ch. xvm
towers were supposed, in the simple days of old, to carry
the eye and the mind up to Heaven ; but what chance have
they, poor things, when, even on one of London's delightful
grey-blue skies of summer, no one heeds them, or their
message? Like Bunyan's " Man with the Muckrake," we fix
our eyes ever steadily on the ground ; the only London
stones that attract our notice being its jutting kerb-stones, its
sounding asphalt and macadamized pavements .... we fix
our attention on the dull, dead levels ; we lose " the fair illu-
minated letters, and have no eye for the gilding." Yet we still
scoff at our own historic city, not because we ever look at it on
our own account, but because we have always been taught that
it is the right thing to do so.
It is a curious fact that the fine passages which everybody
knows and quotes about the Stones of London, all refer to them
in ruins. Macaulay placed his New Zealander on a broken
arch of London Bridge, to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's.
Shelley pictured London as "an habitation of bitterns," and
the piers of Waterloo Bridge as " the nuclei of islets of reeds
and osiers." Rossetti overthrew the British Museum in order
to leave the archaeologists of some future race in confusion as
to the ruins of London and Nineveh. Ruskin, who had so
much that is bright and beautiful to say of the Stones of Venice,
dismissed London with a warning of prophetic doom ; saw her
stones crumbling " through prouder eminence to less pitied
destruction." It is surely time that some new and ardent
spirit — some twentieth-century Ruskin — with eyes no longer
set upon the dear dead past, should fix his gaze on what is
grand and significant in the Stones of London, while still they
stand the one upon the other ; and, seeing, should reveal to
the world something of the sombre glory of its greatest city.
INDEX
"Adam " decorations, 246, 462
Addison, 8o, 179, 383
. 290
Advertisement, art of, in London, 320
Aggas's Map, 5, 187
r, I inon, 146
Alb iny, the, 380
Albert Bridge, 26, 224
Albert Embankment, the, 32
Albert Hall, 213, 468
Albert Memorial, 397
All 1 1..11 Aer of, 55, 81
iclc's," 181
Amen Court, 97
ican Tourists in I >.ndon, 299
Ancient Tomb-portraits, 348
Anne Askew, burning of, 65
Antiquarian zeal, 55
Appiar. Way, our, 193
Apsle) 1 1 >use, 378
Arnold, Sir Edwin, on a mummy-case,
336
I, Matthew, on Kensington Gardens,
395; on the legend of Westminster
\1.i11.y, iS3 ; lecture at Toynbee Hall,
'74
Artists in k 1. 217
Ashbee, C. K..
" Asia Miir i", ' 295
.\~i.iti. s in tii. I asi End, 295
Asti ir Estate ( Iffii • ■, 42
" Augusta," 2, 21
B
B ' Y-l \KMS, 431
Ba ' . I rancis, 139, 160
Bank Holiday, 1 t
Bankside tli
1 Pel kins's brewery, 129
I .id's Inn, 159
tt, Canon, 173
Barry, Sir Charles, 205
Bartholomew Fair, 64
Battersea Park, 27, 224, 400
Beauchamp 'lower, 106
Beaumont, Sir George, 354
Bed G iurt, 246
rd House, 242
Hen Jonson, 153
llcnson, Archbishop, 471
Berkeley Square, 379
Berners Street hoax, 370
1 1 it. Sir Walter, 8, 13, 24
Be\ is Marks, 80
Billingsgate, 43, 316
Birds in London, 400, 410
Birkbi ck Bank, 156
Bishopsgati Stn et, 75
B ickfi iars, 13, 42
1 William, 26, 251, 349, 380, 384
• Bleak House," 144, 148, 154, 159, 261
" Blenheim Raphael," 344
1 idy Tower, 104
Bloomsbury, 238, 247
tnsbury Square, 243, 245
Blue mist, 23, 27, 388, 471
1 5, 263, 427
Bolt Court, 364
Bond Street, 176
Book-shops, 305
Booth, Charles, 446
Borough Huh Street, 126
B I G dens, 405
Botticelli,
I • Sighs, English, 40
British Mu 1
I Iroad .-s.i 1 1. in. u v, 204
" Li. impti ■■■ 1 ■
I 15
Brontes, thi
Browning, Elizalx th 1 ;8o
1 ; t. .Hi \ie» l|. Ill tli.
Ill s, 51
Buckland, I 1
474
INDEX
Burglars in London, 442
Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 252, 369
Butler, Samuel, 42
Byron's view of London, 449
Cabs in London, 423
Cabmen, wages of, 425
Calverley's " -Savoyard," 289
Campden Hill, 217
Canova, 40
Canterbury Pilgrims, the, 126
Carlton House, 181
Carlton House Terrace, 181
Carlton Restaurant, 322
Carlyle, on the Press, 14 ; on Westminster
Abbey, 193 ; on Cheyne Row, 225 ; on
the Lei^h Hunts, 226; his London
homes, 261 ; on the British Museum
reading-room, 268 ; and the omnibus
conductor, 422
Carlyle House, the, 22 \
Carlyle, statue of, 226
Carlyle, Mrs., 225, 260, 392, 442
Carpaccio, 352
Caryatids on St. Pancras Church, 409, 459
Casual wards, 441
Catherine of Braganza, 36, 228
Cats in London, 409
Chained books at Chelsea Old Church, 234
Chancery Lane, 148
Chapter Coffee House, 97, 183
Charles I., 205
Charles II., 201, 400
Charterhouse, 9, 68
Charterhouse Square, 67, 464
Chatham, Lord, 192
Chatterton, 183, 427
Chaucer's Inns, 126
Cheapside, 81
Chelsea, 26, 222, 235
Chelsea Bun-house, 222, 236
Chelsea Embankment, 235
Chelsea Ferry, 235
Chelsea Hospital, 236
Chelsea Old Church, 231, 233
"Cheshire Cheese," the 366
Chesterfield House, 378
Cheyne Row, 224
Cheyne Walk, 26, 227
Chichester Rents, 148
Christina of Denmark, 351
Christ's Hospital, 9
Churches : —
All Hallows, Barking, 115
Great St. Helen's, 77
Holy Trinity, Minories, 114
St. Alphage, London Wall, 82
St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield,
56
St. Botolph, 114
Churches : —
St. Dunstan-in-the-West, 131
St. Edmund the King and Martyr, 80
St. Ethelburga, 79
St. Giles, Ciipplegate, 12, 81
St. John's Chapel (in the White Tower),
108
St. John's, Clerkenwell, 73
St. Magnus, 2;, 44
St. Margaret's, Westminster, 202
St. Mary, Aldermanbury, 81
St. Mary, Lambeth, 31
St. Mary Overy, 122
St. Michael's, Cornhill, 75
St. Olave's, Hart Street, 117
St. Pancras, 265, 458
St. Paul, Covent Garden, 318
St. Peter-ad-Vincula, 105
St. Peter-upon-Cornhill, 75
St. Saviour's, Southwark, 122
St. Swithin's, 82
Church House, Kensington, 220
Church House, Westminster, 204
"Church of Humanity, ' 260
"Church Parade," 390, 401
City Companies, the, 14
Classical Fever in London, 457
Clement's Inn, 148
"Cleopatra's Needle," 36
Clifford's Inn, 150
" Clink," the, 129
Clive, Lord, 379
Cloth Fair, 58, 64
Clothworkers' Hall, 55
Coal Exchange, the, 316
Cobbett, 23
Cock Lane Ghost, the, 73
"Cockney," derivation of, 436
Cole, Vicat, 49
Coleridge, 158
Collins, Wilkie, 261
Comedy Restaurant, Panton Street, 322
Common lodging-houses, 441
Constable, 347, 355
Conway, Moncure D., 462, 463
Coronation Chairs, 200
Costermongers, 437
County Council, the, 400
Court of Pie Powdre, 64
Covent Garden Market, 317
Covent Garden, old taverns of, 318
Cromwell, 153, 199
Crosby Hall, 55, 77
Curzon Street, 373, 380
D
Darwin, Charles, 258
Davidson, John, on " The Loafer," 186
Dean's Yard, 202
Defoe, on Pall Mall, 183
Detectives in shops, 309
INDEX
475
Dickens, on waterside scenes, 50 ; the Mar-
sbalsea, 130, 134; City churches, 115 ;
as the chronicler of London. 136 ; on the
Bon iugh, 1- ■-.'■ ; Fi mntain Court, 1
Staple Inn, 155 ; Barnard's Inn, 159; his
social satires, 177; his grave, 193; on
decaying I I 1 'ury types,
262; his private theatrical 1 : Cock-
ney types, 312 ; on London houses, 362
1 lining, the art 1 if, 322
Disappearing landmarks, 361
Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield), on Regent's
Park, :■/ ; on class diff < in I ondon,
162 ; his death in Curzon Street, 373 ;
on Kensington Gardens, 395
I I'Israi li, I
I I 11 ks, the, 47
" Doggi 11 ' badge, 235
" I tomesdaj Bi 10k," 151
1 lownini; Street, 374
I Irama, popular tastes with regard to, 282
of the poor, conventionalities in, 312
E
Earl's Covrt, 220
I art's Terrace, 218
Eastcheap, 81, 118
East End, the, 168
Edward the Confessor, 189
Edwardes Square, 217
" Edwin Drood," 155, 295
Eight tury, London in, 179
1 11 bles, the, 340
I
" Esmond,'' 220, 228, 392
Evelyn's Diary. 242
Eyre Street Hill, 292
Factory-girls, 437
Farm Street Roman Catholic Church, 177
I 1 .ane, 15^
Fii tion strong! r than reality, 10, 363, 381
Ills," 280
Fleet Street, 364
Fleur-de-Lis Court, 156
1 1 j's love for, 321,
402
I I ;ent's Park, 402
Fli iwer-eirls, 318, 437
1 Ditch, 51
I '. 81
Foreign waiters, 288
Foundling h spital, 263
" I iuni 1 1 • 111," 143
" Four-in-hand Club," 390
" Frenidenindustrie " in London, 200
li furniture at Hertford Hou 1
1 h Si hool of Painting at H<
House,
Frith's reminiscences, 258
Frost Fairs, 44
Froude, J. A., on ancient tombs, 196 ; the
dissolution of the Carthusian monastery,
68 ; Anne Boleyn, 105
Furnival's Inn, 159
C. UNSBOROUGH, 353
" ( lallery of Instruction," 338
"Gandish's," 252, 258
Gardens, making of, in London, ^08
private, in London houses, 406
" ( latti's," 290
" Gaunt House " of " Vanity Fair," 378
Gibbon, 463
Gladstone, W. E, on Bloomsbury, 247;
his London resiliences, 373 ; on the way
to see London, 414
Godfrey, Sir Edmondsbury, 36
Goldsmith, Oliver, 147, 367
1 li irdi in Riots, 243
Gordon Square, 260
Gothic style in London, 452-459
( 1. .11-h House. ( helsea, 236
Gough Square (Dr. Johnson's house), 364
( lower Street, 258
( Sower's tomb, 123
Grant Allen, 23, 337
Gray's Inn, 1^9, 159
"Grange," the. North End, 368
in Sir..!. 263
"Great Expectations," 159
Creat Fire, the, 7, 86
Great Ormond Street, 254, 464
( »reat Tower Hill, 113
( Greenwich, 51
1 uze's Pictures, 332
< irosvenor Road, 28
. Irub Str< 1 t," 64
"Guild and v < hool of Handicraft," 176
Guy's Hospital, 133
C.wynne, Nell, 232, 236
H
Hair-Dki 1 I .>86
■■ Hand 0( I I
Han, A J. C . on St. Thomas's Hospital,
29; Chelsea Embankment, 32; Gray's
Inn t lard< n, 1 ;g ; Thami 316 ;
IT illand I l i iuse, 382
Hatton t >arden, 292, 439
Haunted 1 1 iusi 5, 379
1 1 /don, 395
, Rev. H. R., 229
Hawthorne, 90, 155, 160
1 1 !u I. 257
•• Hiring-F air," Ji * isb, 297
I, 265, 368
476
INDEX
Holbein, 351
Holborn Restaurant, 322
Holland House, 382
Holly Lodge, 383
Holman Hunt, W., 252
Holywell Street, 147
" Homes for the People," 465
Hood, Thomas, 40
Hook, Theodore, 370
Hotel Cecil, 33
Hotels, palatial, 32
Houndsditch, 79
Houses, historic, 358
Houses, humanity of, 245
Houses of Parliament, 29, 205
"Humphry Clinker" (and Covent Gar-
den), 319
Humphry Ward, Mrs.. 257
Hunter Street, Bloomsbury, 262
Hyde Park, 386
I
Ice-Cream Traije, 292
Inchbald, Elizabeth, 218
Inigo Jones. 454
Inland Revenue Office, 36
Inns of Court, the, 137
Iron-work, old, on houses, 379
Irving, Edward, 260
Irvingite Church, 260
Italian Colony in London, the, 292
Jack Cade, 44
"Jacob's Island," 51
Jersey, Lady, 181, 380
Jerusalem Chamber, 203
Johnson, Dr., 73, 91, 138, 147, 363
K
Katherine Howard, 105, 129
Kensington, 210
Kensington Gardens, 394
" Kensington House," 219
Kensington Palace, 382, 394, 465
Kensington Square, 220, 464
King's Bench Walk, Temple, 147
Kingsley, Charles, 47
Kingsley, Henry, 233
King's Road, Chelsea, 232
Knightsbridge Road, 212
Lady Jane Grey, 107
Lady-lecturers, 330, 333, 342
Lamb, Charles, 139, 147, 160
Lamb's Conduit Street, 260, 265
Lambeth Palace, 29
Lang, Andrew, 37, 320
Lant Street, 130
Laud, Archbishop, 31
Law Courts, 460
Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 245
Lawson, Cecil, 227
Leadenhall Market, 3
Lear, Edward, 259
Leech, John, 263, 439
Leicester Square, 285
Leigh Hunt, 217, 226
Leighton House, the, 377
Lennox, Sarah, 382
Levy, Miss Amy, on plane trees in Lon-
don, 408 ; on London isolation, 426
Liddon, Canon, 97
Life of London, the, 28s
Lincoln's Inn, 152
Lincoln's Inn Fields, 154
Little Britain, 64
"Little Dorrit," 132, 177, 264
"Little Midshipman, the," 115
Lollard's Tower, the, 30
Lombard Street, 80
London : atmospheric effects, 388, 412,
450 ; approach to, 23 ; architecture, 460 ;
the cult of, 20 ; charm of, in early sum-
mer, 385, 400 ; cosmopolitanism of, 285 ;
crowds, 282 ; classes in, 162 ; contrasts
in, 19, 54, 151, 167, 175 ; crazes, 445 ;
colouring of, 388,_ 412 ; feeding of, 48 ;
houses, characteristics of, 359, 462; iso-
lation in, 426; liberty in, 429; opportu-
nities in, 327; phoenix like, 24, 95, 181 ;
picturesqueness of, 49, 388, 411 ; prim-
arily a seaport,' 24 ; resources in, 17 ; re-
building of, 466 ; suffering in, 427, 429 ;
as a tourist haunt, 33; unexpectedness
of, 10, 18, 54 ; wealth of, 47.
London Bridge, 43, 121
Londoners, ways of, 414, 416, 462
London Stone, 82
London Wall, 81, 82
Lost children, 442
Lowther Lodge, 213, 460
Ludgate Hill, 93
Lyon's Inn, 159
M
Macaulay, on the tombs of Chatham and
Pitt, 192 ; Westminster Hall, 205 ; his
residence at Holly Lodge, 217, 383 ; in
Powis Place, 255 ; on Holland House,
383 ; the New Zealander, 472
Maclise, Daniel, 227
Mall, the, 397
Manning, Cardinal, 177
Mansfield, Lord, 243
Mansions and Flats, 468
Marchmont Street, Bloomsbury, 262
INDEX
477
Marco Marziale, 349
Marshall, Herbert, 388
Marshalsea, the, 130
Marshalsea Court, 150
" Martin Chuzzlewit," 118, 143
Matinee Hat, 282
Maurice, F. D., 245, 256
Mausolus, car of (in British Museum), 270,
338
"May-Day Sweep,,' 259
Mecklenburg h Square, 265
Men ers' School, 159
Meredith, George, 228
Michael Angelo, 354
Middle Temple Hall, 143
Middle Temple Lane, 144
Millais, Sir John, 259
Millbank Penitentiary, Old, 28
Millionaires, Uses of, 327
Milton, 631, 371
Mincing Lane, 81
Minories, the, 1 13
Mitford, Mary Russell, 245
Model lodging-houses, 468
Monasteries, the fall of, 13
Montague House, 269, 333, 379
Monument, the, 43, 118
Monumental Brasses, 115
Monumental Sculpture, 91, 193
More, Sir Thomas, no, 233
Motley, Charles, quoted, 131
Morris, William, 252
Mi ither Shipton. 387
Mottrey, Gabriel, on the view from Char-
in- Cross Bridge, 38 ; the Tower Bl
45 ; the Pool of London, 46 ; < hai
in hair-dressing, 286 ; street markets,
312; Sunday in London, 441. ; I .■ n 1. 1 . .11
fog, 445 ; Regent's Park terraces, 451 ;
Philip Webb's houses, 465
Mudie's Library, 305
Mudlarks, 28
Mummy-room at the British Museum, 335
" Murdstone and Grinby's," 50, 134
Museum Habitues, 268
" Museum Headache" 337
N
\ \ Mm's COFFE 1 HOI 1 , 14s
Nash, 457
National Gallery, 344 ; romance of, 346,
354
Natural Hi ton Mu eum, 14 . 469
" Newi ime ," The, 69
New Inn, 148
Newsb iys, 443
New ton I [all, 158
N.w ton, Sir I aai . 158
New War < >ffi< e, 455
Nithsdale, Lord (escape from the Tower),
1 1 1
Norman London, 4
Markets, 313
"Old C'nri >sity Shop," 50, 80, 135
Old Palace Yard, 207
Old St. Paul's, 88
Old Swan Tavern, 235
" Oliver Twist," 51
Omnibuses, character in, 420
Omnibus Conductors, 418
Omnibus travelling. 417
Open air sen ices, 98
( Ipium I ii 11-. 296
O'Kell. Max, mi the Parks, 390; London
omnibuses, 417 ! London fog, 444
Organ-grinders. 263, 439
Ornitholi 1 ;i< al Society, 399
" Our Mutual Friend," 50
Oxford Street, 18
I'm 1. M m.i., 183
Panizzi, 247
" I '.in optii I " of Leicester Square, 326
Pantomimes, .77
Panj 1 r Alley, 97
I '.11 adise Ri >« , 232
" Paris t '.anleii," 128
Park Orators, 392, 403
Parmigiano, ,
Passm 1 irds Si ttl ment, 256
Pati 156
; 11 ster Row, 95
Pal ; . W alter, 218, 467
Paul's 1 ross, 98
Paul Pindai 1 1 iuse, 55, 342
" Paul's Walkers," 88
Pa\ ement Artists, 248
1 n Steamers, 25
Pi 1 ., Samuel, 1 16, 139
Philanthropists, I of, in London,
1.
trden, the, 234
l'ii inn galleries, 330, 343
Pictu 346
Pitman's Shorthand Institute, 246
ires, vicissitudi ;53
Picturesqueness of Railw aj 5, -■ j, 95
Pigeon-fanciers, 315
Plane trees in Li mdon, 40S
I'lani. '. 199
I ' i -'02
Poinl ol \ iew, the, 16 |
Policei it-
Pi 11 il ol Lone 11. the, 1 1, 46
1 ' ilar " lines " in I
" Portland \
Positi\ :
Li. • I
Primro .11 i' ;
Print ii 1 H
478
INDEX
Prior Houghton, 68
Protector Somerset, 35, 73
Prudential Assurance Company's Offices,
'54. 159. 469
Pyx, Chapel of, 190, 203
Quality Court, 156
Queen Anne, 201
Queen Anne Craze, the, 460
Queen Anne's Gate, 397
Queen Anne's Statue, Ludgate Hill, 95 ;
Queen Square, 241
Queen Caroline (wife of George II.), 39^,
399
Queen Caroline (of Brunswick), 202, 370
Queen Charlotte, 36
Queen Elizabeth, 25, 51, 201
Queen Mary (of Modena), 31
Queen Mary II., 201
Queen Victoria, visit to St. Paul's, 93 ; at
Kensington Palace, 395
Queen's House, Chelsea, 227
Queen Square, 241, 254, 264
Ragged Children, erudition of, ^34,
433
Ragged Schools, 432
Rahere, 58
Raleigh, 107
" Ranelagh," 222
Reading-room, British Museum, 266
" Reconciliation," Temple of, 192-199
Record Office, 151
Red Lion Square, 253, 254
Reformation, the, 8, 62
" Reformer's Tree," the, 392
Regalia, 109
Regent's Park, 401
Restaurants, cheap, 287, 322
" Restorers," sins of, 125
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 354
Richardson, Samuel, 367
Richmond's Mosaics in St. Paul's, 93
" King, The," 391
Rocques', Map of, 1746, 241
Rogers, Samuel, 181
Rolls Chapel, 151
Roman City Wall, 81
Roman London, 24
Roman Remains, 3, 82, 97, 103
" Rosamond's Pond," 399
Rosebery, Lord, on St. James's Square, 184
" Rosetta Stone," the, 339
Rossetti, Christina, 251
Rossetti, D. G., at Queen's House, Chel-
sea, 227 ; at Red Lion Square, 252 ;
at the Working Men's College, 256 ; on
the British Museum. 270 ; on Venetian
Gothic in London, 469
Rotten Row, 390
Royal Exchange, 74, 75
Royal Mint, 113
Royal Society, 158
Rubens, 351
Ruskin, on the Houses of Parliament, 32 ;
Victoria Embankment, 41 ; the Pool of
London, 49 ; Social Contrasts, 185 ;
South Kensington Museum, 341 ; born
in Hunter Street, 262 ; at the Working
Men's College, 256 ; at Denmark Hill,
37'
Russell, Lady Rachel, 242
Russell, Lord William, 154, 242
Russell Hotel, 247
Russell Square, 244
Rye House Plot, 242
S
" Sailors' Town," the, 49
St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 66
St. James's Park, 397
St. James's Place, 179
St. James's Square, 184
St. James's Street, 178
St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell, 72
St. Pancras Station, 27, 265, 471
St. Paul's Cathedral, 42, 51, 84
St. Paul's Churchyard, 95
St. Paul's School, 98
St. Thomas's Hospital, 29
Sala, G. A., 265
Sale-Days, 311
Saleswomen, trials of, 302
Sandford Manor House, 232
Sass's School, 258
Savoy Hotel, 33
Saxon London. 4
Scents, in London districts, 420
Scotland Yard, 33
Scott, W. B., 256
Sea-gulls in London, 35, 121
Seamy Side, the, 185, 248, 441
Sebert, King of the East Saxons, 188
Second-hand Bookshops, 266, 305
" Secular Gothic," 469
Seething Lane, 116
Serjeants' Inn, 149
Shaw, Norman, 33, 235, 460
Shelley, in Marchmont Street, 262 ; in
Half Moon Street, 361 ; in Poland Street,
381 ; on Hell and London, 297 ; in the
Highgate omnibus, 417
Shelley, Harriet, 394
Shelley, Mary, 262
Ships' figureheads, 29
Shops of London, 299
Shoppers, ways of, 301
Shop-lifters, 309
Siddons, Mrs., 371
" Sixpenny Days," drawbacks of, 195
" Sketches by Boz," 240, 259, 262
Sloane, Sir Hans, 228, 234, 243, 333
INDEX
479
Slum children, 430
Smart Society in London, 179, 390
Smetham, James, 355,
Smithfield Martyrs, 64
Soane Museum, 375
Soane, Sir John, 376, 457
Somerset House, 35, 451-452
Soot as a beautifier, 23,27,90, 388, 452,
470
South Kensington, 222
South Kensington Museum, 341
South Sea Bubble, 76, 133
Southward. 121
Sparrows in London, 410
Spinello Aretino, 348
Spitalfields, 314
" Spleen," the, 444
Squares of Queen Anne's Time, 464
Squares. Old London, charm of, 244
Stael, Madame de, 23
Stage Door, the, 284
Stage Neophytes, 275
Stage rehearsals, 279
Stanley, 1 (ean, 187, 233
Staple Inn, - ;, 154
Stee'e, Sir Rii hard, 243
" Steyne, Lord," 327
Stones of London, the 447-472
Street Arabs, 434
Street games, 432
Street markets, 311
Stuart, Arabella, in, 197
Stuart, La Belle, 201
Submerged, the, 170, 185
Sunday in London, 440
Sunday mai ki ts, 314
" Sunday opening," 326-335
Sunsets in London, 250
Sutherland House, 378
Sutton. Thomas, 69
" Sweating " dens, 297, 302
Swift, Dean, 177
Swinburne, A. ('., 228, 369
Swindles in London, 443
Swiss Waiters, 287
Taine, Henri, on Greek Architecture
in London, 32; the docks, 48; the
ways of "good society," .70; English-
women, 286 ; the London Sunday,
British seriousm : !
451 ; the Houses ol Parliament, 459
Tanagra figurines (in British Museum
I anfield ( lourt, Temple, 147
Tate t rallery, the, 27, 343
I ate, Sii II. my, 28, 343
T.i\ isKx k Hi iu ie, 258, 261
Temple, the, 140; I lardens, 141 ; Churi h,
145
Tennant, Miss Dorothy (Lady Mauley),
43'
Tennyson, Alfred Lord, on Cleop:
Needle, 39; "London's central roar,"
95
Terburg's " Peace of Miinster," 332, 350
Terra-cotta, in building, 470
Terriss, William, 284
Thackeray, in Cornhill, 76 ; in Great
Coram Stteet, 263; in Kensington, 216,
220, 382 ; on old Carlton House, 181 ;
Russell Square, 246; Denmark Hill,
371 ; the " Zoo," 405
Thackeray, Miss (" Old Kensington"), 213
Thames, influence on history of London, 2,
24
Thames, Enchantment of, 49
Thames Street, 43, 316
Thavies' Inn, 159
Th< urical Profession, the, 274
Thompson, Henry Yates, ^44
"Thorney Island," 188
" Time Machine," the, 20
Tite Street, 236
"Tom-All-Alone's," 58
Tomb of Gordon, 92 ; Lord Leighton, 92 ;
Duke of Wellington, 92
Tooley Street, 43, 126
Torch Extinguishers, 379
I otencourt," Manor of, 18, 242, 387
Tottenham Court Road, 18
Tourists in London, 247, 424
'I o« 1 r, the, 4' , too
I u er Bridge, 44
I eer Green, 105
Tower Lions, the. 112
Tower Victims, 105
Toynbee, Arm ild, 173
I \ nbee Hall, 173
Trade-.. spe< ial districts for, 308
" Traitor's t^ate," 104, no
Treasure-house s of London, 326
Trinity Square, 113, 464
Turner, J. M. W , K A., 26, 49, 347, 355,
357. 380
Tyburn, 113
U
1 vealing Exteriors, 359
\i 1 \. national, 191
154
\ in I \ ■ ;. .
Vanishing London. 360
" \ , ' 246
" \ auxhall," 222
" Vi netian ( Sothic," 469
, ways of, 195
Victoria Eml
Views in 1 . : 49, 51,
265, 389. 394, 41 t 41a
480
INDEX
"Virginians," the, 381
Visitors to London, 424
W
Waifs and Strays, 429, 440
Wallace, Sir Richard, 65, 328, 332
Wallace Collection, 327
Wallace, Lady, 329
Walworth, Sir William, 65
" Wanderlust," the, 289
Warwick Square, 97
Watling Street, 3
Waterloo Bridge, 40
Wat Tyler, 65
Webb, Aston, 60
Webb, Philip, 465
Weller, Sam, 128
Wellington, Duke of, 378
Westminster Abbey, 187 ; chapel of Henry
VIL, 190, 197; chantry of Henry V.,
194 ; cloisters, 203 ; wax effigies, 200
Westminster Bridge, 207
Westminster Hall, 205
Where to shop, 303
Whistler, J. McN., 23, 236
Whitechapel Road, 18, 172
Whitefield's Tabernacle, 242, 261
Whitefriars, 13
Whitehall, 455
Whitehall Court, 33
" White Tower," 108
Whittington, 9
Wimpole Street, 380
Winchester House (old), 129
" Window gardens," 407
" Wittenagemot" Club, 97
Wood Street plane tree, 10, 81
" Working Men's College, The," 255
Working Classes, 168
Wren, Sir Christopher, 7, 86
Wych Street, 148
Yiddish colony in London, the, 295
York House, old, 35
York Stairs, 35
Zoological Gardens, 405
THE END
RICHAKD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BUNGAY.
THE LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
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. THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE
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