Dickens' London Part 20

"They come and ask what such a room is called ... write it down; admire a cabbage or a lobster in a market piece (picture?); dispute as to whether the last room was green or purple, and then hurry to the inn for fear the fish should be overdressed."

One who knows his London is amused at the disappointment that the visitor often feels when comparing his impression of London, as it really is, with the London of his imagination.

As they ride down Fleet Street they are surprised at the meanness of the buildings as compared with those which had existed in their mind's eye.

This might not be the case were but their eyes directed to the right quarter. Often and often one has seen the stranger on a bus gazing at the houses in Fleet Street instead of looking, as he should, right ahead. In this way he misses the most sublime views in London: that of the "Highway of Letters" in its true relation to St. Paul's in the east and the Abbey in the west.

The long dip of the street and the opposite hill of Ludgate give an incomparable majesty to the Cathedral, crowning the populous hill, soaring serenely above the vista of houses, gables, chimneys, signals, and telegraph wires,--

"Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot, Which men call town."

Coming by one of the existing modern gateways the railway termini, before mentioned, the visitor would be well advised to reenter London the next day _via_ the "Uxbridge Road," upon an omnibus bound for the Bank, securing a front seat. He will then make his triumphal entry along five miles of straight roadway, flanked by magnificent streets, parks, and shops, until, crossing Holborn Viaduct, he is borne past the General Post-Office, under the shadow of St. Paul's, and along Cheapside to the portico of the Royal Exchange--the hub of the world. As Byron well knew, only time reveals London:

"The man who has stood on the Acropolis And looked down over Attica; or he Who has sailed where picturesque Constantinople is, Or seen Timbuctoo, or hath taken tea In small-eyed China's crockery-ware metropolis, Or sat midst the bricks of Nineveh, May not think much of London's first appearance; _But ask him what he thinks of it a year hence!_"

As with society, so with certain localities of London; there are some features which need not be described; indeed they are not fit to be, and, while it cannot be said that d.i.c.kens ever expressed himself in manner aught but proper, there are details of the lives and haunts of the lower cla.s.ses of which a discussion to any extent should be reserved for those economic works which treat solely of social questions. The "h.e.l.l's Kitchens" and "Devil's Furnaces," all are found in most every large city of Europe and America; and it cannot be said that the state of affairs, with regard thereto, is in any way improving, though an occasional slum is blotted out entirely.

Not alone from a false, or a prudish, refinement are these questions kept in the background, but more particularly are they diminished in view in order to confine the contents of this book to a resume of the facts which are the most agreeable. Even in those localities where there is little else but crime and ignorance, suffering and sorrow, there is also, in some measure, propriety and elegance, comfort and pleasure.

If the old "Tabard" of Chaucer's day has given way to a garish and execrable modern "Public House," some of the sentiment still hangs over the locality, and so, too, with the riverside communities of Limehouse and Wapping. Sentiment as well as other emotions are unmistakably reminiscent, and the enthusiastic admirer of d.i.c.kens, none the less than the general lover of a historical past, will derive much pleasure from tracing itineraries for himself among the former sites and scenes of the time, not far gone, of which he wrote.

Eastcheap has lost some of its old-world atmosphere, and is now given over to the coster element. Finsbury and Islington are covered with long rows of dull-looking houses which have existed for a matter of fifty or seventy-five years, with but little change except an occasional new shop-front and a new street cut through here and there. Spring Gardens, near Trafalgar Square, is no longer a garden, and is as dull and gloomy a place as any flagged courtyard in a less aristocratic neighbourhood.

The old "Fleet Ditch" no longer runs its course across Holborn and into the Thames at Blackfriars. Churches, palaces, theatres, prisons, and even hospitals have, in a measure, given way to progressive change and improvement.

Guy's Hospital, identified with letters from the very foundation of its patron,--one Thomas Guy, a bookseller of Lombard Street,--dates only from the eighteenth century, and has to-day changed little from what it was in d.i.c.kens' time, when he lived in near-by Lant Street, and the fictional character of "Sawyer" gave his famous party to which "Mr. Pickwick" was invited. "It's near Guy's," said Sawyer, "and handy for me, you know."

On the whole, London is remarkably well preserved; its great aspects suffer but very little change, and the landmarks and monuments which met d.i.c.kens' gaze are sufficiently numerous and splendid to still be recognizable by any who possess any degree of familiarity with his life and works. Many well-known topographical features are still to be found within the sound of Bow Bells and Westminster. Those of the Strand and Fleet Street, of the Borough, Bermondsey, Southwark southward of the river, and Bloomsbury in the north, form that debatable ground which is ever busy with hurrying feet. The street-sweeper, though, has mostly disappeared, and the pavements of Whitehall are more evenly laid than were the Halls of Hampton Court in Wolsey's day.

Where streets run off from the great thoroughfares, they are often narrow and in a way ill kept, but this is due more to their confined area than to any carelessness or predisposition on the part of the authorities to ignore cleanliness.

London possesses a series of topographical divisions peculiar to itself, when one considers the number thereof, referring to the numerous squares which, in a way, correspond to the Continental place, platz, or plaza. It is, however, a thing quite different. It may be a residential square, like Bedford, Bloomsbury, or Belgrave Squares, or, like Covent Garden and Lincoln's Inn Fields, given over to business of a certain sedate kind.

These latter two are the oldest of London squares. Or, like Trafalgar Square, of a frankly commercial aspect.

On the Continent they are generally more of architectural pretensions than in London, and their functions are quite different, having more of a public or ceremonial character; whereas here the more exclusive are surrounded with the houses of the n.o.bility or aristocracy, or what pa.s.ses for it in these days; or, as in the case of Trafalgar Square,--in itself of splendid architectural value,--little more than a point of crossing or meeting of streets, like Piccadilly and Oxford Circus.

In the "City," the open s.p.a.ces are of great historical a.s.sociation; namely, Charterhouse, Bridgewater, Salisbury, Gough, and Warwick Squares.

They show very few signs of life and humanity of a Sunday or a holiday, but are active enough at other times.

Further west are the quiet precincts of the Temple and Lincoln's Inn Fields, one of the most ancient and, on the whole, the most attractive of all, with its famous houses and inst.i.tutions of a storied past.

While, if not actually to be counted as city squares, they perform in no small degree many of their functions.

Red Lion Square, to the north of Fleet Street, is gloomy enough, and reminiscent of the old "Red Lion" Inn, for long "the largest and best frequented inn in Holborn," and yet more worthily, as being the residence of Milton after his pardon from King Charles.

Soho Square and Golden Square are quiet and charming retreats, away from the bustle of the shoppers of Regent and Oxford Streets, though perhaps melancholy enough to the seeker after real architectural charm and beauty.

It is to Bloomsbury that the heart of the American most fondly turns, whether he takes residence there by reason of its being "so near to the British Museum, you know," or for motives of economy, either of which should be sufficient of itself, likewise commendable.

The museum itself, with its reading-room and collections, is the great attraction, it cannot be denied, of this section of London, and Bloomsbury Square, Torrington Square, Queen's Square, and Mecklenburgh Square, where d.i.c.kens lived and wrote much of "Pickwick" in 1837-39, are given over largely to "board-residence" establishments for the visitor, or he who for reasons good and true desires to make his abode in historic old Bloomsbury.

In d.i.c.kens' time the region had become the haunt of those who affected science, literature, or art, by reason of the proximity of the British Museum and the newly founded University of London.

The wealthy element, who were not desirous of being cla.s.sed among the fas.h.i.+onables, were attracted here by its nearness to the open country and Regent's Park. Thus, cl.u.s.tering around Bloomsbury is a whole nucleus of squares; "some comely," says a writer, "some elegant," and all with a middle-cla.s.s air about them.

Still further west are the aristocratic and exclusive St. James' Square, Berkley, Belgrave, Grosvenor, Manchester, Devons.h.i.+re, and many more rectangles which are still the possession of the exclusives and pseudo-fas.h.i.+onables. Their histories and their goings-on are lengthy chronicles, and are not within the purpose of this book, hence may be dismissed with mere mention.

The flow of the Thames from west to east through the metropolis has given a general direction to the lines of street; the princ.i.p.al thoroughfares being, in some measure, parallel to the river, with the inferior, or at least shorter, streets branching from them. Intersecting the town lengthwise, or from east to west, are two great leading thoroughfares at a short distance from each other, but gradually diverging at their western extremity. One of these routes begins in the eastern environs, near Blackwall, and extends along Whitechapel, Leadenhall Street, Cornhill, the Poultry, Cheapside, Newgate Street, Holborn, and Oxford Street. The other may be considered as starting at London Bridge, and pa.s.sing up King William Street into Cheapside, at the western end of which it makes a bend round St. Paul's Churchyard; thence proceeds down Ludgate Hill, along Fleet Street and the Strand to Charing Cross, where it sends a branch off to the left to Whitehall, and another diagonally to the right, up c.o.c.kspur Street; this leads forward into Pall Mall, and sends an offshoot up Waterloo Place into Piccadilly, which proceeds westward to Hyde Park Corner. These are the two main lines of the metropolis.

Of recent years two important new thoroughfares have been made, viz., New Cannon Street, extending from London Bridge to St. Paul's Churchyard, and Queen Victoria Street, which, leaving the Mansion House, crosses Cannon Street about its centre, and extends to Blackfriars Bridge. The third main route begins at the Bank, and pa.s.ses through the City Road and the New Road to Paddington and Westbourne. The New Road here mentioned has been renamed in three sections,--Pentonville Road, from Islington to King's Cross; Euston Road, from King's Cross to Regent's Park; and Marylebone Road, from Regent's Park to Paddington. The main cross-branches in the metropolis are Farringdon Street, leading from Blackfriars Bridge to Holborn, and thence to King's Cross; the Haymarket, leading from c.o.c.kspur Street; and Regent Street, running northwesterly in the direction of Regent's Park. Others from the north of Holborn are Tottenham Court Road, parallel to Gower Street, where the d.i.c.kenses first lived when they came to London. Gray's Inn Road, near which is Gray's Inn, where d.i.c.kens himself was employed as a lawyer's clerk, and Doughty Street, where, at No. 48, can still be seen d.i.c.kens' house, as a sign-board on the door announces: "d.i.c.kens lived here in 1837." Aldersgate, continued as Goswell Road, connects with Islington and Whitechapel, and Mile End Road leads to Ess.e.x.

Such were the few main arteries of traffic in d.i.c.kens' day, and even unto the present; the complaint has been that there are not more direct thoroughfares of a suitable width, both lengthwise and crosswise, to cope with the immense and c.u.mbersome traffic of 'bus and dray, to say nothing of carts and cabs.

Nothing is likely to give the stranger a just estimate of the magnitude of this more than will the observance of the excellent police control of the cross traffic, when, in some measure, its volume will be apparent.

It would perhaps be impossible in a work such as this that any one locality could be described with anything like adequate completeness.

Certainly one would not hope to cover the ground entire, where every division and subdivision partakes severally of widely different characteristics.

Southwark and the Borough, with its High Street, St. George's Church and Fields, the old Marshalsea--or the memory of it--"The King's Bench"

Prison, and "Guy's," are something quite different with respect to manners and customs from Whitechapel or Limehouse.

So, too, are St. Giles' and Pimlico in the west, and Hampstead and Highgate in North London. Since all of these are dealt with elsewhere, to a greater or lesser degree, a few comments on the Whitechapel of d.i.c.kens'

day must suffice here, and, truth to tell, it has not greatly changed since that time, save for a periodical cleaning up and broadening of the main thoroughfare. It is with more or less contempt and disgust that Whitechapel is commonly recalled to mind. Still, Whitechapel is neither more nor less disreputable than many other localities sustained by a similar strata of society. It serves, however, to ill.u.s.trate the life of the east end, as contrasted with that of the west of London--the other pole of the social sphere--and is, moreover, peopled by that cla.s.s which d.i.c.kens, in a large measure, incorporated into the novels.

In ancient times Northumberland, Throgmorton, and Crosby were n.o.ble names a.s.sociated therewith. In d.i.c.kens' day butchers, it would seem, were the predominate species of humanity, while to-day Jewish "sweat-shops" are in the ascendant, a sufficiently fine distinction to render it recognizable to any dweller in a large city, whatever his nationality.

The fleur-de-lis and royal blazonings are no longer seen, and such good old Anglo-Saxon names as Stiles, Stiggins, and Stodges are effectually obliterated from shop signs. How changed this ancient neighbourhood is from what it must once have been! Crosby Hall, in Bishopsgate Street, not far distant, the _ci-devant_ palace of Richard II., is now a mere eating-house, albeit a very good one. And as for the other n.o.ble houses, they have gone the way of all fanes when once encroached upon by the demands of business progress.

Baynard Castle, where Henry VII. received his amba.s.sadors, and in which the crafty Cecil plotted against Lady Jane Grey, almost before the ink was dry with which he had solemnly registered his name to serve her, has long ago been numbered amongst the things that were. The archers of Mile-end, with their chains of gold, have departed: the spot on which the tent stood, where bluff Hal regaled himself after having witnessed their sports, is now covered with mean-looking houses: as one has said, "the poetry of ancient London is well-nigh dead."

The voice of the stream is for ever hushed that went murmuring before the dwellings of our forefathers, along Aldgate and down Fenchurch Street, and past the door of Sir Thomas Gresham's house, in Lombard Street, until it doubled round by the Mansion House and emptied itself into the river.

There is still the sound of rus.h.i.+ng waters by the Steam-Packet Wharf, at London Bridge; but how different to the "brawling brook" of former days is the "evil odour" which arises from the poisonous sewers of to-day.

And to what have these old-world splendours given place? Splendid gin-shops, plate-gla.s.s palaces, into which squalor and misery rush and drown the remembrance of their wretchedness in drowsy and poisonous potations of an inferior quality of liquor. Such splendour and squalor is the very contrast which makes thinking men pause, and pause again.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHITECHAPEL.]

The Whitechapel butcher was of the old school. He delighted in a blue livery, and wore his "steel" with as much satisfaction as a young ensign does his sword. He neither spurned the worsted leggins nor duck ap.r.o.n; but with bare muscular arms, and knife keen enough to sever the hamstring of a bull, took his stand proudly at the front of his shop, and looked "lovingly" on the well-fed joints above his head. The gutters before his door literally ran with blood: pa.s.s by whenever you would, there the crimson current constantly flowed; and the smell the pa.s.senger inhaled was not that of "Araby." A "Whitechapel bird" and a "Whitechapel butcher" were once synonymous phrases, used to denote a character the very reverse of a gentleman; but, says a writer of the fifties, "in the manners of the latter we believe there is a great improvement, and that more than one 'knight of the cleaver' who here in the daytime manufacture sheep into mutton chops, keeps his country house."

The viands offered for sale augur well for the strength of the stomachs of the Whitechapel populace. The sheep's trotters look as if they had scarcely had time enough to kick off the dirt before they were potted; and as for the ham, it appears bleached, instead of salted; and to look at the sandwiches, you would think they were anything except what they are called. As for the fried fish, it resembles coa.r.s.e red sand-paper; and you would sooner think of purchasing a penny-worth to polish the handle of a cricket bat or racket, than of trying its qualities in any other way. The "black puddings" resemble great fossil ammonites, cut up lengthwise. What the "f.a.ggots" are made of, which form such a popular dish in this neighbourhood, we have yet to learn. We have heard rumours of chopped lights, liver, suet, and onions as being the components of these dusky dainties; but he must be a daring man who would convince himself by tasting: for our part, it would seem that there was a great mystery to be unravelled before the innumerable strata which form these smoking hillocks will ever be made known. The pork pies which you see in these windows contain no such effeminate morsels as lean meat, but have the appearance of good substantial bladders of lard shoved into a strong crust, and "done brown" in a superheated oven.

Such, crudely, is an impression of certain aspects of "trade" in Whitechapel, but its most characteristic feature outside of the innumerable hawkers of nearly everything under the sun, new or old, which can be sold at a relatively low price, is the famous "Rag Fair," a sort of "old clo's" mart, whose presiding geniuses are invariably of the Jewish persuasion, either male or female. Rags which may have clothed the fair person of a d.u.c.h.ess have here so fallen as to be fit only for dusting cloths. The insistent vender will a.s.sure you that they have been worn but "werry leetle, werry leetle, indeed.... Vell, vot of it, look at the pryshe!"

Dank and fetid boxes and barrows, to say naught of the more ambitious shops, fill the Whitechapel Road and Petticoat Lane (now changed to Middles.e.x Street, but some measure of the old activities may still be seen of a Sunday morning).

A rummaging around will bring to light, likely enough, something that may once have been a court dress, a bridal costume, or a ball gown; a pair of small satin slippers, once white; a rusty crepe, a "topper of a manifestly early vintage, or what not, all may be found here. One might almost fancy that Pride, in some material personification, might indeed be found buried beneath the ma.s.s of dross, or having shuffled off its last vestiges of respectability, its corse might at least be found to have left its shroud behind; and such these tattered habiliments really are. Rag Fair to-day is still the great graveyard of Fas.h.i.+on; the last cemetery to which cast-off clothes are borne before they enter upon another state of existence, and are spirited into dusters and dish-clouts.