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Charles Hemstreet and Marie Hemstreet
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Title: Nooks and Corners of Old London
Author: Charles Hemstreet
Marie Hemstreet
Illustrator: W. J. Roberts
Release Date: June 27, 2012 [EBook #40072]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOOKS AND CORNERS OF OLD LONDON ***
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[Illustration: Book Cover]
NOOKS AND CORNERS OF OLD LONDON
[Illustration: The Mansion House]
NOOKS AND CORNERS
OF OLD LONDON
By
Charles and Marie Hemstreet
Authors of "Nooks and Corners of Old New
York," "Literary New York," etc.
WITH SPECIAL ILLUSTRATIONS
By
W. J. Roberts
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
JAMES POTT & COMPANY
Copyright, 1910, by JAMES POTT & COMPANY
FOREWORD
A writing of the odd nooks and quaint corners of wonderful old London
town, arranged so that a wanderer may reach the points in consecutive
order without going too far afield.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. WITHIN SOUND OF BOW BELLS 9
II. ON THE WAY TO GREAT ST. HELEN'S 38
III. MILTON'S BIRTHPLACE, LAMB'S WORKSHOP, AND SOME OTHER
THINGS 53
IV. BY WAY OF THE TOWER AND LONDON BRIDGE 68
V. THE SPELL OF THE TEMPLE AND INNS OF COURT 95
VI. ALONG THE STRAND, AND A PEEP AT COVENT GARDEN AND THE
COFFEE HOUSES 110
VII. A PASSING GLIMPSE OF MANY WINDOWS 135
VIII. FROM REGENT STREET TO THE SHADOWS OF SOHO 163
INDEX 177
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
THE MANSION HOUSE Frontispiece
CHURCH OF ST. LAWRENCE JEWRY AND FRONT OF THE GUILDHALL 16
THE FAMOUS PLANE TREE, WOOD STREET, CHEAPSIDE 22
THE MARTYRS' MEMORIAL, SMITHFIELD 32
EXTERIOR OF THE DINING HALL, CHARTERHOUSE 36
DEFOE TOMB 44
THE TOWER OF LONDON 72
STAPLE INN, LOOKING TOWARD HOLBORN GATEWAY 106
ENTRANCE TO OLD ROMAN BATH, STRAND LANE 114
ADELPHI TERRACE 126
TRAFALGAR SQUARE 134
INTERIOR OF ST. MARGARET'S, WESTMINSTER 136
ONE
WITHIN SOUND OF BOW BELLS
Said the Italian sculptor Canova, "Gladly would I journey to London if
only to see Somerset House, St. Paul's and St. Stephen's, Walbrook."
Just behind the Mansion House, in the ancient by-way called Walbrook,
stands hidden away the church of St. Stephen's, Walbrook, planned by Sir
Christopher Wren. Its name recalls one of the little streams of the
London of centuries ago, called the Brook by the Wall. Outwardly the
only thing to take notice of is the shop which has been built into its
side, and it is a surprise to note its lofty dome as seen from within.
The Corporation was very proud of St. Stephen's when it was first built,
and after many expressions of gratitude as to the skill and economy
evidenced by the great architect, presented Lady Wren with a purse of
ten guineas.
On the tower of the Royal Exchange rests a great gilded grasshopper,
eleven feet in length, put up when the Exchange, founded by Sir Thomas
Gresham, was built. It has been there for more than three hundred years.
The Great Fire of 1666 destroyed the building, but the metal grasshopper
was rescued from the ruins and raised above the dome when a new
structure was erected. In 1838 the Exchange was again burned, but the
tower on which the emblem rests was saved. The grasshopper was believed
to cast a spell of enchantment, insuring riches and good fortune, at
least so the old Romans used to think.
Close by the Mansion House the street called Poultry ends. This homely
name has clung to it for more than three hundred years, ever since the
poulterers had their chief market here. Where the house numbered 31
stands, Thomas Hood, who wrote the "Bridge of Sighs," was born in 1799.
Elaborate terra cotta panels on the house No. 14, commemorate the royal
processions that passed through Poultry in 1546, 1561, 1660 and 1844.
The thoroughfare called Old Jewry was occupied by the Jews whom William
I. brought over from Rouen, and came by its name from a synagogue which
was located in this street up to the time of the persecution of the Jews
in 1291.
Bucklersbury enters from the south where Poultry ends and Cheapside
begins, taking its name from the Bukerels, quite a famous family of the
13th century, one member of whom was made the Lord Mayor. The
thoroughfare was for centuries a market place for fruits and herbs, and
here dealers in medicines and drugs had their shops. In "The Merry Wives
of Windsor," Shakespeare tells of those who smell like Bucklersbury in
simple time. At this end of Bucklersbury there stood, in the middle of
the road, set up in 1285, the Great Conduit or cistern, round, and of
stone, to which water was brought underground in leaden pipes from
Paddington. Beside the Great Conduit, Jack Cade, the Kentish rebel,
beheaded Lord Say, the king's favourite. Here Lady Jane Grey was
proclaimed queen, here DeFoe was put in the stocks and the Bishop of
Exeter beheaded. After the Great Fire Bucklersbury market was no more.
In Pudding Lane by London Bridge, in the year 1666, a fire started which
has always been known as the Great Fire, for by it five-sixths of London
within and without the walls was destroyed. From September 2nd to the
7th it burned, eating up 13,200 houses, 89 churches, and despoiling 460
streets.
"Chepe" is an old-time name for market, and there have been markets of
one kind or another in the neighbourhood of Cheapside for hundreds of
years. In the days of King Edward III. and on into the times of Burly
King Hal, Cheapside was a famous street and the place of city pageants.
When Elizabeth held her much bejewelled court, Cheapside was the
gathering point for the shops of goldsmiths.
Set in the wall of house No. 6, near the end of Ironmonger Lane, is a
panel of 1668, limning the head of a girl with flowing hair--part of
the arms of the Mercers' Company.
Turn again, Whittington
Lord Mayor of London.
This is what the bells of St. Mary le Bow, sometimes called Bow Church,
chimed in the ears of Dick Whittington running away from London and his
hardships as a kitchen boy. And the sound cheered him, so that he did
turn, and in time came to be the best and most famous Lord Mayor that
London ever had. The church came by its name for being the first church
in London to be built on "bows" as the stone arches were called. Bow
Church was swallowed up by the Great Fire, and Sir Christopher Wren
rebuilt the present frame upon the ruins of the old arches. The tower is
considered the finest of the great number built by Wren after the Fire.
From the balcony many kings and queens and their attendants have
witnessed the shows and pageants in Cheapside. The Great Bell of Bow is
the last of the churches to speak in the old rhyme "Oranges and
Lemons," in which one can almost hear the different tones of the bells
as they question and answer each other:
Oranges and lemons,
Said the Bells of St. Clement's.
You owe me five farthings,
Said the Bells of St. Martins.
When will you pay me,
Said the Bells of Old Bailey.
When I grow rich,
Said the Bells of Shoreditch.
When will that be,
Said the Bells of Stepney.
I do not know,
Said the Great Bell of Bow.
Sir Christopher Wren, who built the present Bow Church, was a renowned
English architect, and is looked upon as having fashioned most of modern
London. He was born in 1632 and died in 1723. Early in life he devoted
himself to astronomy, chemistry, anatomy and mathematics as well as to
architecture, his real art. He gave much time to the invention of
mathematical instruments, and perfected the then recently invented
barometer. When St. Paul's Cathedral was found to be in a ruined
condition, Wren worked on plans for its restoration, but the Great Fire
of 1666 swept it away together with the greater part of London. Wren
planned to rebuild the city along new lines, with wide thoroughfares
radiating from a great central square. This, however, was not adopted
despite his great reputation. He did, though, rebuild St. Paul's and
more than fifty other churches which the fire had destroyed. His
economical use of money in his work was remarkable. In most cases he did
not attempt to make a feature of the entire building, confining himself
to a special part--a spire or an interior. He was 90 years old when he
died and was buried in the St. Paul's he had constructed. His last years
were sorrowful in that he was almost entirely neglected by the country
for which he had done so much.
The pigeons strutting about Guildhall Yard in front of the Guildhall,
that council hall of the City, are descendants of those that have
inhabited the yard time out of mind. The birds of to-day are a
remarkably tame variety, and crowd the court so thickly that there is
danger at every foot of treading upon them, for they seem to feel their
right to be here and refuse obstinately to give way to anyone. Although
the Guildhall suffered much in the Great Fire, and although it has been
many times restored and altered, there are still remaining portions of
the original building of 1411, and the crypt is as when first designed.
It was in this hall that Buckingham urged the people to acknowledge the
Duke of Gloucester king, after the death of Edward IV. and while the
little princes were shut up in the Tower; here, too, that Anne Askew, a
young and beautiful woman and one of the first Protestant martyrs, was
tried for heresy. Afterwards she was burned at Smithfield.
[Illustration: Church of St. Lawrence, Jewry, and front of the Guild
Hall]
Close by the Guildhall, to the west of the Yard, stands the official
church of the Corporation--St. Lawrence Jewry, the most expensive of
all the churches built by Wren, costing 12,000 pounds, and which it took
nine years, from 1671 to 1680, to build. The original clock, still to be
seen in the spire, was made by a clockmaker whose shop was to be found
in one of the houses which in that day lined both sides of London
Bridge.
When the Great Plague raged in 1665, the churchyard of St. Stephen's,
Colman Street, was a place of interment for plague victims. It is said
of John Hayward, sexton of the church at the time, that when everyone
through fear refused him aid, he alone drove the death cart and unaided
buried all the victims who lived within the parish limits.
Almost opposite St. Stephen's, in the short and narrow passageway with
the musical name of Great Bell Alley, midway of the block on the north
side, Robert Bloomfield, the poet of country scenes, in early days
worked as a shoemaker in a garret. While living here in extreme
poverty, Bloomfield, during his working hours, thought out the
"Farmer's Boy," which when he was able to purchase paper for, he made
haste to write. In two years twenty thousand copies of the poem had been
sold. Bloomfield was born in a little Suffolk village in 1766, and
worked as helper to a farmer, but ran away to London hoping to gain fame
and fortune as a poet. After the success of the "Farmer's Boy," he wrote
"Rural Tales," "News from the Farm" and other stories in verse, but
although they met with a welcome he finally drifted back to his own
country where he died very poor.
An aged sign, setting forth what looks to be a swan with two heads, is
set in the doorway above a railway parcels office in Gresham Street, at
the Aldermanbury corner, and is the original marking of the tavern
called "The Swan with two Necks," a most famous resort, which stood on
this site for almost three hundred years. It was a thriving place in
1556, and fell from public favour only when the age of stage coaches
passed away.
Aldermanbury came by its name because of there being held in the street
a famous court or bury of the Aldermen.
The church of St. Mary in Aldermanbury, close by the Guildhall, was the
scene of the marriage in 1656 of John Milton and Catherine Woodcock his
second wife. These two were very happy, and Milton mourned deeply when
fifteen months after the wedding he was left a widower. Under the altar
of this church was buried in 1689, Lord Jeffreys, the great favourite of
James II. and the notorious leader of the Bloody Assizes. His tomb is
still to be seen here.
From the west side of Aldermanbury stretches Love Lane, at the end of
which stands the small church of St. Alban's, built by Inigo Jones in
1634, severely damaged in the Great Fire, and restored by Wren in 1685.
It guards the site of the first house of worship set up by good King
Alfred after he had defeated the Danes. Close by the altar is an ancient
hour glass of quaint design, a relic of 16th century days, when the
preacher regulated the length of his sermons by the running sand.
The name of Milk Street, in a locality formerly given over to the
sellers of milk, has crept into history because it was here that Sir
Thomas More the great Lord Chancellor was born, on the east side of the
way, near Cheapside in 1480. He was found guilty of high treason when he
refused to acknowledge the lawfulness of the marriage of Henry VIII. to
Anne Boleyn and was beheaded in the Tower, the grim Tower whose frowning
walls hide many dark secrets.
One of the most important of London taverns, The Mermaid, stood in
Cheapside beyond Friday Street and close to Bread Street on the south
side of the road. Ben Jonson founded the Mermaid Club at this house in
1603, and here met in social converse Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher,
Dr. Donne, Selden and many another author. It is recorded that here
assembled "more talent and genius than ever met before or since." The
house, among so many others, was destroyed in the Great Fire. In the
epistle of Beaumont to Jonson, the Mermaid is spoken of thus:
What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid; heard words that have been
So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life.
In Friday Street, strangely enough, the Wednesday Club had its meetings,
and in 1694 were held the conferences, headed by William Paterson,
Scotch merchant, which resulted in the establishment of the Bank of
England, the first joint-stock bank of England.
Friday Street was, in other days, the heart of the district of
fishmongers, and came by its name because of Friday being the market-day
and fish-market-day as well.
In Cheapside, where Wood Street joins it, stood a cross, set up by
Edward I., to mark one of the spots where the funeral bier of his
beloved Queen Eleanor rested on the journey from Lincoln to Westminster
Abbey. This cross was finally destroyed in 1643, during the mayoralty of
Isaac Pennington, as under the Commonwealth it came to be regarded as a
relic of superstition.
[Illustration: The famous Plane Tree--Wood Street, Cheapside]
Where Wood Street joins Cheapside, close by the northwest corner, grows
a plane-tree, in a spot surrounded on three sides by houses, on ground
estimated to be worth one million pounds an acre. Although the space is
amply large for a building, and although innumerable legal efforts have
been made to build here, the tree is protected in the leases of the
nearby houses--evidently indefinitely protected under the "ancient
lights" laws which prevent shutting off light from windows. Still
further is the tree safe from invasion because it grows on ground that
was once part of the churchyard of St. Peters--a church destroyed in the
Great Fire--and an English law prevents building on sacred ground
without a special act of Parliament. This is the tree that Wordsworth
knew and loved, and of which he wrote in "Poor Susan":
At the corner of Wood Street when daylight appears,
There's a thrush that sings loud; it has sung for three years.
Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard,
In the silence of morning, the song of the bird.
A clock without a face, set in a church steeple, is the strange detail
of the church of St. Vedast in Foster Lane opposite the Post Office,
east. No other church in London has its like. It has all the works of a
regular clock, but there are no dials, a bell proclaiming the hours.
Near the northeast corner of St. Paul's Cathedral at the top of Ludgate
Hill, once stood the Cross of St. Paul, where for centuries before the
present cathedral was built sermons were preached, heretics were made to
recant and witches to confess. The pulpit was destroyed by order of
Parliament in 1643. Where the cathedral stands a church has been from
very early times. The first is believed to have been built by
Christians in the time of the Romans. There certainly was a church here,
which was reconstructed under Ethelbert, King of Kent, in 610. It was
burned in 961 and immediately rebuilt. Again in 1087 it was destroyed by
fire and a new church begun at once, but this was not completed for more
than 200 years. This Old St. Paul's, being many times restored, finally
came to an end in the Great Fire of 1666. The present cathedral was
begun in 1675, from designs by Sir Christopher Wren, and completed in
1710.
The open way called St. Paul's Churchyard was of much greater extent
around Old St. Paul's than it is about the cathedral of this day. Then
it extended quite to the present Paternoster Row on the north and to
Carter Lane on the south. On the northern side were the business places
of many booksellers just as in Paternoster Row now; and to the south
were several taverns of renown. Here, where Bell Yard is, to the north
of Knightrider Street, was the Doctors' Commons where, previous to 1861,
marriage licenses were issued. Right here, too, where the archway leads
into Bell Yard from Carter Lane is a tablet to mark the site of the old
Bell Tavern, where Shakespeare and his companions used to meet and talk
about the plays which were afterwards to delight an entire world.
The Chapter Coffee House of the 18th century ceased to exist in 1854,
but on its old site, at the eastern end of Paternoster Row, is a new
tavern. There has been a house of public entertainment on this spot for
more than two hundred years. In its palmy days the Chapter was the
gathering place of the booksellers whose business places were in this
locality, and many of them still continue here. To the Chapter,
Charlotte Brontë and her sister came on their first visit to London,
much to the surprise of the proprietor who never remembered ever before
having women guests. The Brontës had heard their father mention the
Chapter, and as it was the only inn they knew by name they came here.
In Panyer Alley, a short and narrow road extending from the north side
of Paternoster Row to Newgate Street, on one of the houses on the east
side of the way, there is an odd little stone figure of a boy sitting on
a pannier or basket. Carved in the stone is this quaint old rhyme:
When ye have sought
The Citty Round
Yet still this is
The Highest Ground
August 27 1688
In the 14th century a proclamation was made against the sale of bread in
the houses of bakers, and it could only be sold in the king's markets.
It was, however, sold on the streets in baskets, or panniers. Panyer
Alley was a place where the bakers' boys could always be found and where
their wares were eagerly purchased.
Celebrated indeed was the Ivy Lane Club, in Ivy Lane off Paternoster
Row. Dr. Samuel Johnson started the gathering to promote literary
discussion and to lighten and relieve his heavy working hours in Gough
Square, and it met every Friday evening, at the beefsteak house called
the King's Head.
Cut through the grounds of old Warwick Palace, where Paternoster Row
ends, is Warwick Lane. There is a reminder here of a long ago time, in a
carved panel of 1668, set in the wall of the first house from Newgate
Street on the west side of the way, depicting the grand old man of those
historic days--Warwick the King Maker. Bulwer Lytton has interestingly
combined history and fiction in his spirited tale the "Last of the
Barons," dealing with the life of the Earl of Warwick, who literally
held the fortunes of kings in the hollow of his hand.
One of the oldest streets of London is Newgate, named during the reign
of Henry I. at the time Old St. Paul's was being repaired. Then the
street from Cheapside to Ludgate was blocked and impassable and a new
gate was pierced through the wall of the city, where now Old Bailey
touches Newgate Street, so as to make a direct road to Ludgate and to
Ludgate Hill. The very beginning of Newgate Prison was here at this
gate, for the rooms over the arch were used as a prison.
Where the New Central Criminal Court now is, famous Newgate Prison stood
for more than one hundred years the chief prison of London. The building
of Newgate was begun in 1770. In 1780, when scarcely completed, it was
partly destroyed by the No-Popery rioters. At the head of these was Lord
George Gordon, and the lawless scenes are picturesquely written of in
Charles Dickens' novel of the times, "Barnaby Rudge." Of the many famous
prisoners of old Newgate were Jack Sheppard, Titus Oates, Claude Duval,
Dick Turpin, and Lord George Gordon himself who died here a prisoner.
DeFoe was detained here for publishing his "Shortest Way with
Dissenters," and William Penn for preaching in the streets. For eighty
years the open space in front of Newgate was used for public executions,
taking the place of Tyburn.
Prisoners were taken from Newgate to Tyburn for execution, and as they
passed the church of St. Sepulchre, each was given a nosegay of flowers.
Another custom of this church, carried on for many years by means of a
legacy left by a Christian Londoner, was in having the church clerk
ring a bell beneath the windows of the cell of the condemned the night
before his execution, so that he might be reminded to make his peace
with God, reciting as he rang his bell:
All you that in the condemned hold do lie,
Prepare you, for to-morrow you shall die;
Watch all and pray, the hour is drawing near
That you before the Almighty shall appear;
Examine well yourselves, in time repent,
That you may not to eternal flames be sent;
And when St. Sepulchre's bell to-morrow tolls,
The Lord above have mercy on your souls.
Within this church of St. Sepulchre were interred the remains of Captain
John Smith, who is said to have married the Indian princess Pocahontas.
He died in 1631, and his epitaph reads:
Here lies one conquered
that hath conquered kings.
St. Sepulchre was the last church edifice swept away by the great fire
of 1666.
Where Cock Lane touches Giltspur Street, is Pie Corner, the extreme
limit of the Great Fire of 1666. It was finally stopped here, after it
had burned its destroying way quite across London from Pudding Lane.
On a Giltspur Street house wall, near Pie Corner, there is part of a
carved figure of a child, placed here where the Great Fire was finally
extinguished. The inscription beneath the figure is now obliterated, but
it originally read:
This boy is in memory put up
of the Fire of London,
occasioned by the sin
of Gluttony, 1666.
Just what the inscription meant is uncertain, but perhaps it referred to
the fact that the Great Fire started in Pudding Lane and burned itself
out in Pie Corner, which would seem to indicate that some Old Londoners
had a nice sense of humour. This Giltspur Street was in olden times a
continuation of Knightrider Street, taking its name from the spurs worn
by the knights who galloped along the road on their way to the
tournaments at Smithfield.
The Cock Lane Ghost found its way into history in this wise. In this
lane in 1762, lived a man named Parsons. Passers-by heard strange noises
coming from his house, and neighbours thought they saw a luminous lady
who bore a resemblance to a Mrs. Kemt who had died here a few years
earlier. The rumour spread that Mrs. Kemt had been poisoned. The
supposed ghost submitted to questioning, making replies by knockings.
Mr. Kemt finally was suspected of having done away with his wife. Great
crowds came to see the ghost and hear her ghostly rappings. Many were
sceptics, and eventually the daughter of Parsons, who was suspected of
causing the ghostly sounds, was spirited away from her home and taken to
the crypt of St. John's Church, close by the square of that name. There
Dr. Samuel Johnson and others of prominence who had taken deep interest
in the affair, by inducement, argument and threats, cleared up the
deception. It was learned that the girl had taken a board into bed with
her and by scratching upon it had produced the mysterious sounds. As a
result of the exposure, Parsons was prosecuted for imposture, and
condemned to stand three hours in the pillory.
[Illustration: The Martyrs' Memorial--Smithfield]
Wide-spreading Smithfield Market stretches over ground that for
centuries has witnessed scenes of butchery, both human and animal. It
was originally a "smoothfield" beyond the wall of the City, where
tournaments took place, and where Bartholomew Fair was held annually for
more than seven centuries until its extinction in 1855. This Fair,
planned to foster trade and establish useful relations in buying and
selling, degenerated into an excuse for unrestrained license and
pleasure seeking. In the 13th century, Smithfield became a place of
public execution, the forerunner of Tyburn and Newgate, and on this
ground was beheaded in 1305, William Wallace, the Scotch patriot, hero
of Jane Porter's once famous "Scottish Chiefs." It was here, too, that
Wat Tyler was slain by Lord Mayor Sir William Walworth in 1381; here too
Protestants were burned at the stake in the days of "Bloody Mary," and
Nonconformists in Queen Elizabeth's time. To the south of the market
there is an open square, and in the centre of this is a statue erected
as a memorial to the Martyrs. Smithfield came to be the great cattle
mart of London, and so remained until 1855 when it was removed and the
present market soon after established.
The Square, where stands the memorial to the Martyrs, is between the
market and St. Bartholomew's Hospital, the oldest institution of its
kind in London and one of the wealthiest. Rahere, the favourite of Henry
I., founded it in 1123, and it has been restored in parts and enlarged
many times. You can see above the west gate the statue of Henry VIII.
where it was set when the gate was built in 1702. Close by in the wall
is a commemorative tablet that recites the burning of the Protestant
martyrs. Many world famous men have been connected with the Hospital.
Sir Richard Owen, noted as an anatomist was a surgeon here, and so was
Harvey, discoverer of the circulation of the blood.
St. Bartholomew the Less is the name of the church inside of the walls
of St. Bartholomew's Hospital. This church was built by Rahere, but has
been modernized several times and partly rebuilt in 1824. It was here,
that Inigo Jones, the great architect, was baptised.
Quaintly picturesque in its location is the mediæval burying ground of
St. Bartholomew the Great; its monuments crumbling to decay, its
greenery growing rank--a strangely hidden spot, hemmed in by church
walls, and on one side by tottering, hundreds-of-year-old buildings
whose seething humanity makes the place the more ancient by contrast.
The church of St. Bartholomew the Great, of which this is the old time
burying ground, lies hidden beyond the West Smithfield houses, hemmed in
by the overcrowded human hives of Little Britain and Cloth Fair. From
some points, just a glimpse can be had of its ancient red brick tower.
This church is very old, next to the chapel in the Tower the oldest in
London, founded by Rahere in 1123. Entrance to it is through an Early
English gateway between the houses of West Smithfield, and so past the
mouldering graveyard. The overhanging houses of Cloth Fair seem to have
turned their backs on this home of long dead people.
Like a wraith of bygone romance is dingy Cloth Fair, with its
lath-and-plaster houses and the tottering remains of the grandeur of
other days. Once the habitation of merchant princes and their wealthy
neighbours, it has degenerated into the abode of swarming small
tradesmen and day workers whose scant means find expression in ugliness
and penury. In this street, in times when the Bartholomew Fair held
yearly sway in Smithfield, the quaintly named "Court of Pie Powder" was
held, where licenses were granted for the Fair and where weights and
measures were corrected.
[Illustration: Exterior of the Dining Hall, Charterhouse]
The ancient and picturesque Charterhouse extends over the ground once
used as a field in which were buried victims of the Plague. Parts of the
Charterhouse have been there since 1371, and the buildings of to-day
have been gradually added during the passing centuries. This was
originally a Carthusian monastery, but after its dissolution in 1537,
the property passed through many hands before it came to that of a
wealthy coal owner of the North, Thomas Sutton, in 1611, who here set up
his school for "40 poor boys" and "80 poor men." Thackeray's Colonel
Newcomb was one of the "poor boys." The school occupied the buildings
until 1872 when it was transferred to Surrey, and the place is now an
almshouse for the "poor men" and for the Charterhouse School of the
ancient Merchant Taylors' Company.
Gothic St. John's Gate, a mediæval survival in St. John's Lane out of
Clerkenwell Road, is all that remains of a priory which was the chief
English seat of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, and which was
erected in 1504. Dr. Johnson lived in a room over the old gateway in
1731, and did hack work for Cave, the founder of the "Gentleman's
Magazine," whose office was here also. Nowadays the building is
headquarters for the Order of St. John which is engaged in hospital
work.
The church of St. John in nearby St. John's Square, was built upon a
crypt which was part of the old priory church of the Knights of St.
John. The crypt is still to be seen, and it was here that the final
exposure of the Cock Lane Ghost was made by Dr. Johnson.
Delightful memories of Dickens' folk crowd strong upon the journeyer
into Goswell Road beyond St. John's Square, for it was in this
thoroughfare that Mr. Pickwick lodged with Mrs. Bardell.
TWO
ON THE WAY TO GREAT ST. HELEN'S
The eastern section of the General Post Office stands on the site of the
ancient church and sanctuary of St. Martin's, commemorated in the street
of St. Martin's-le-Grand. This sanctuary was the outcome of a very old
custom--a place consecrated, where criminals who sought refuge within
its precincts were protected from all law. The Sanctuary of St. Martin's
was founded in the days of Edward the Confessor, and came to have a most
unsavoury reputation, for the rights of sanctuary brought a great
gathering of criminals of every sort and people of the lowest degree.
Within the shelter of the Sanctuary of St. Martin's, Miles Forest, one
of the murderers of the princes in the Tower, took refuge and finally
died.
The quiet little garden beside the church of St. Botolph Without
Aldersgate, was built over the graveyard that surrounded the church for
more than half a century. The church has stood here since 1796, and the
garden spot of to-day is called Postman's Park, because of the many
employes from the nearby General Post Office who gather here.
A fragment of the wall that surrounded early London is to be seen in the
northern boundary wall of the General Post Office, from Aldgate Street
to King Edward Street.
The walls that encircled Roman London, built between 360 and 380,
enclosed about 375 acres in its three miles of circumference, were
twelve feet thick, twenty feet in height, with towers at stated
distances twenty feet higher than the walls. It had its start near the
spot where the Tower is now, and followed generally the line of the
present streets of the Minories, Houndsditch, London Wall, and so on to
Newgate, Old Bailey, Ludgate to the Thames. The wall was marked in
later days by its chief gates--Ludgate, Aldgate, Cripplegate, Newgate,
Bishopsgate and Aldersgate. Fragments of it are still to be seen in the
street called London Wall, between Wood Street and Aldermanbury, where a
tablet marks it; at St. Giles, Cripplegate, and in the boundary wall of
the new Post Office from King William to Aldgate Street.
John Milton moved to the present Maidenhead Court from St. Bride's Lane.
It was then called Lamb Alley, and is off Aldersgate Street to the east.
This was his pretty garden house of which he often spoke. It was here he
had a sort of private school where he educated the two sons of his
sister and several children of his personal friends. Here, too, he
married Mary Powell, who before long finding married life irksome, left
her poet husband who even then was showing signs of the blindness that
was soon to be his portion.
In Jewin Street, about the year 1663, Milton lived when he had been
blind for ten years, and here he married Elizabeth Minshull, his third
wife.
In the street called Barbican, off Aldersgate Street, Milton lived for
two years after 1645, during which time he wrote "L'Allegro" and
"Comus." He moved here that he might have a large house to accommodate
the increasing number of pupils he had been educating in the Lamb's
Alley house. Here his wife, who had deserted him, returned, and here his
first child was born in 1646. In the narrow and winding roads
hereabouts, the great plague of 1665 caused greatest havoc.
Redcross Street came by its name because of a cross that once stood
where Beach Street touches Redcross.
In the green and quiet churchyard of St. Giles, Cripplegate, hemmed in
by tall warehouses, is a part of the old Roman wall, possibly the most
perfect bit that now remains. The church was built in the 14th century,
but has been well taken care of and often restored. Cripplegate takes
its name from "Crepel geat,"--a covered way or tunnel, which the Roman
soldiery used when defending the city wall. It was in this church that
Oliver Cromwell in 1620, when he was quite a young man, was married to
Elizabeth Bourchier. Milton, who wrote "Paradise Lost" in a house in
this parish, was buried here. In front of the chancel is a stone which
reads:
Near this spot was buried
John Milton
Author of 'Paradise Lost,'
Born 1608. Died 1674.
Foxe, who wrote the "Book of Martyrs," is also buried here, together
with Speed, the topographer, who died in 1629, and Sir Martin Frobisher,
the voyager, who was buried in 1594.
Although the part of town about Milton Street is fitted with memories of
Milton, this roadway was not named for him, but for a popular builder
who lived here. This is the former Grub Street, which Dr. Johnson's
dictionary speaks of as "inhabited by writers of small histories,
dictionaries and temporary poems; whence any mean production is called
Grub Street." Swift, writing of the street, said:
O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee,
Whose graceless children scorn to own thee;
Yet thou hast greater cause to be
Ashamed of them than they of thee.
On one side of the church of St. Alphage, which was at first a leper
hospital, there is yet to be seen a barred window through which the
afflicted could look and could hear the service, though they were not
permitted to enter the church. Across the road is a fragment of the old
Roman wall, railed off and preserved, and with it a bit of the
greensward that once formed part of the churchyard of St. Alphage.
[Illustration: Defoe Tomb]
Ruin and neglect mark what was once a green and beautiful spot--Bunhill
Fields--long the chief burial place for Nonconformists, its aged and
grime-covered stones now tottering in decay, and at war with the noise
of factory life coming from every side. Its original name was Bonehill
Fields, because it was a principal place of burial at the time of the
great plague. John Bunyan was buried here in 1688, and his tomb is still
to be seen. His memory recalls chiefly his great book "Pilgrim's
Progress," although he wrote many others--sixty in all. The "Pilgrim's
Progress" was written while he was in Bedford Jail, where he was
confined for twelve years for being a Dissenter. During this time he
supported his family by making lace. Here, too, is the tomb of Daniel
DeFoe, who was the son of a butcher of St. Giles, Cripplegate, and whose
fame also rests upon a single book, "Robinson Crusoe," although he too
wrote many others. Near by are the tombs of Isaac Watts and Susannah,
the mother of John Wesley.
In a house in Bunhill Row, whose site is covered now by the offices of a
company of well-diggers, John Milton died in 1674. Over the doorway
there is a tablet marking the spot. Milton moved here in 1664, the
street then being called Artillery Walk, from the nearby Artillery
Grounds. Here he wrote the last part of "Paradise Lost," and made
arrangements for its publication, by which he was to receive five pounds
down, with the further promise of an additional five pounds if an
edition of 1300 was sold, and still another five pounds if still another
edition of 1300 was sold. Here, too, he wrote "Paradise Regained" and
"Samson Agonistes."
Facing the eastern entrance to Bunhill Fields, in City Road, is the
chapel built in 1778 for John Wesley, the founder and preacher of the
Methodist Church; and behind the chapel is the tombstone showing where
Wesley was buried in 1791. He died in the house No. 47, next the chapel.
A commemorative window in the church of St. James in Curtain Road close
by Holywells Street, marks the location of the Curtain Theatre of
Shakespeare's time, which stood on the church site. Here, so the tale
goes, the première of "Hamlet" was given, and Shakespeare, standing at
the door, held the horses of those who attended the performances. But
that he did this is not at all certain. Like most of the theatres of
that time, this house was so arranged that the roof extended only over
the stage and galleries, leaving the central space, or pit, open to the
sky. A curtain of silk, running on an iron rod and opening both ways
from the middle, hid the stage before the performance began.
All the district about Finsbury Square was once the marshy ground of
Moorfields, a promenade of the 18th century. The name Finsbury happened
in an old ballad, which tells of a Knight who went to the crusades and
who forbade his two daughters to marry until his return. The Knight
never came back alive, but his head was sent to the daughters when they
had grown old and were still unmarried. This gruesome relic they buried
near by their home, and gave their father's name to his resting place,
as told in the ballad:
Old Sir John Fines he had the name
Being buried in that place,
Now, since then, called Finsbury,
To his renown and grace;
Which time to come shall not outwear
Nor yet the same deface.
Finsbury Pavement was the promenade of Moorfields, and was for a very
long time the one solid roadway in that marshy part of town.
The church of All Hallows-on-the-Wall was built in 1765 on a bastion of
the old Roman wall that enclosed old London. Close to the church door at
the back of the ancient burying ground, a bit of the wall is still to be
seen.
Bishopsgate is one of the few very old streets that escaped the Great
Fire. It is strangely narrow, and its hurrying throngs add to the
general picturesqueness of the high-roofed structures and the quaint
many-angled windows that line its sides.
Where Bishopsgate Within ends and Bishopsgate Without begins a gate was
cut through the wall of old London. One part was within the wall and one
part without the wall, hence the name of the street. At this gateway
were four churches. St. Botolph, Without Bishopsgate, dedicated to the
popular English saint, stands on the site of one of those early
churches. In this church John Keats, who afterwards wrote so delicately
of the Eve of St. Agnes and the Grecian Urn, was baptised.
Old White Hart Tavern stood a few yards north of St. Botolph, Without
Bishopsgate. It was much the same in arrangement as the other old inns
that existed when people travelled entirely by coach. Three sides of the
cobbled stone interior yard were lined with guests' rooms, and in front
of these extended a heavy wooden balcony. The inn yard was customarily
the resort of showmen and musicians. Sometimes a temporary stage was set
up, backing the entrance to the inn and fronting the gallery, so the
occupants of the rooms could witness the performances. The White Hart
Tavern has survived in name chiefly because Hobson, a famous Cambridge
carrier, always stopped here when he came to London. When at home Hobson
rented horses and had an unbreakable rule of letting them only in their
regular turn. This created the saying: "Hobson's choice: that or none."
When Hobson died his elegy was written by Milton.
The street called Houndsditch was a moat beyond the wall of the city in
very long ago times and was used often as a burying ground for dead
dogs. Into this ditch the headless body of Edric, the murderer of Edmund
Ironsides, was flung, after his crime had placed Canute on the throne.
He claimed as his promised reward the highest place in the city, and the
Danish king cried out: "The treason I like, but the traitor hate; behead
the fellow, and as he claims my promise, place his head on the highest
pinnacle of the Tower." And this was done.
Readers of Dickens' "Old Curiosity Shop," and who is there has not read
it, will recall Bevis Marks where Miss Sally Brass lived with her
brother Sampson; where the Marchioness, the tiny domestic, and Dick
Swiveller, the law clerk, did their visiting. Bevis Marks is close by
Houndsditch, and started existence as a garden plot of the Abbots of St.
Edmunds, but it is a very commonplace spot indeed in these times.
At the point where Bishopsgate Street Within ends and Bishopsgate Street
Without begins, the City wall crossed. On a house just where Camomile
Street touches Bishopsgate is a tablet affixed telling of the gate that
was once in the old wall just here.
Very timid in appearance is the church of St. Ethelburga, and said to be
the smallest church in London. It huddles away, in Bishopsgate Street
Within, just to the north of St. Helen's Place, between houses which
cover its old burying ground, and its tiny entrance way flanked by shop
windows. It has stood here since 1366, having been spared by the Great
Fire.
Until quite recently, Crosby Hall, a building of the early 15th century,
stood on the east side of Bishopsgate Street Within. In its last days it
was said to be the only example of a mediæval London house in the Gothic
style. Originally set up by a former grocer who with the passing years
came to be Sir John Crosby, Alderman, it came into the possession of the
Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard III. Owning many masters (among
them Sir Thomas More who here wrote his life of Richard III.), it was
converted at various times into a prison, a meeting-house, a storehouse,
a concert hall, and in its last days a restaurant.
Turning from Great St. Helen's, you come suddenly upon the curious 13th
century church of St. Helen's, in a square of ancient houses, often
alluded to as the Westminster Abbey of the City. Originally it was a
church of the Priory of the Nuns of St. Helen's, founded about 1145, by
"William, son of William the Goldsmith," and it contains many
interesting memorials. Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of the Royal
Exchange, lies buried here, and Shakespeare was a parishoner here in
1598.
At the junction of Throgmorton Street and Old Broad, on the north side
of the road is an open space leading into the courtway of Austin Friars.
Here is the Dutch Church; all that remains of the renowned Augustinian
Monastery founded in the 13th century. In this church was buried the
Earl of Arundel, son of the Black Prince and the Fair Maid of Kent; and
many another famous nobleman; and here are buried all those of noble
birth who were killed at the Battle of Barnet.
Threadneedle Street is a very old road, stretching in early days far to
the south and west. It got its name from the three needles appearing on
the arms of the Needlemakers' Company. Some of its old outlines are
covered by the Bank of England, which has been irreverently nicknamed
the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street.
THREE
MILTON'S BIRTHPLACE, LAMB'S WORKSHOP, AND SOME OTHER THINGS
Through a district of wholesale dealers in linens and laces, Bread
Street extends, joining Cannon Street to Cheapside. Midway between
these, on a building at Watling Street, is a sculptured bust of John
Milton with the inscription:
MILTON
Born in Bread Street
1608
Baptised in the Church of
All Hallows
Which Stood Here Ante
1878
The original All Hallows church destroyed in the Great Fire was rebuilt
by Wren and finally demolished in 1878.
Milton was born in this same Bread Street, near Cheapside, where a
warehouse numbered 53 now stands. His father was a scrivener--a writer
who prepared contracts, deeds and other documents, and the house in
which he lived and in which Milton was born bore the sign of "The Spread
Eagle." Signs in those days had great significance, for the houses were
not numbered, and distinctive sign boards were used in all professions
and trades. In former years a bust and a tablet marked the spot, but
when the present building was set up, the bust was taken down, and now
stands on a shelf inside the building on the third floor.
At the Watling Street corner of Old Change may be found the Church of
St. Augustine, built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1683. R. H. Barham,
author of the amusing "Ingoldsby Legends," was rector here for thirteen
years prior to his death in 1845.
Watling Street is the present day form of an old Roman road that
extended from London to Dover.
Further to the south is all that is left of a very old thoroughfare
called Knightrider Street. In long ago times it was a direct way from
the Tower to Smithfield, and came by its name in memory of the knights
who clattered through it on their way to the tourneys at Smithfield.
Around a corner, on the north side of Queen Victoria Street, St.
Nicholas Cole Abbey stands, the first church to be completed by Wren
after the Great Fire.
Shelley the poet married his second wife, Mary Godwin, in 1816, in the
church of St. Mildred which is in Bread Street very close to where Queen
Victoria and Cannon streets meet. It was in the first year of her
marriage that Mrs. Shelley wrote her remarkable novel "Frankenstein."
Cannon Street is part of the chief road of Roman London, and had been a
main road for the Britons before the invasion of the Romans. At a
meeting point of this road with several others was the Roman central
milestone from which distances on all roads were measured. Here a stone
was set up 2000 years ago, and all that remains of it to-day is called
"London Stone," and may yet be seen. It is set in the outer wall of the
Church of St. Swithin, the saint who controls the weather, in Cannon
Street, and is protected with an iron lattice work. This stone was
superstitiously looked upon as something that afforded protection to
citizens and a defence for the city. The Kentish rebel, Jack Cade, so
believed it when he entered London in 1450, calling himself John
Mortimer and made straight for London Stone. Arrived there, he struck it
with his sword and declared himself lord of the city. Shakespeare has
him say in Henry VI.:
"Now is Mortimer lord of this city. And here, sitting upon London Stone,
I charge and command that the conduit run nothing but claret wine this
first year of our reign. And now henceforth it shall be treason for any
that calls me other than Lord Mortimer."
London Stone remained by the roadside until 1742, when being in danger
of extinction as an interferer with traffic, it was placed close by the
church door. In 1798 it was given the place in the church wall where it
is now.
St. Mary, Abchurch, was finished by Wren in 1689. Here was buried--the
monument can still be seen--Sir Patience Ward, a Lord Mayor of London,
under whose administration the Monument to the Great Fire was built.
The official residence of the Lord Mayor, the Mansion House, was built
150 years ago, on a spot where a fish market called Stocks Market had
been since 1282. The market was named from a pair of "stocks" which long
stood on the spot and were used for the exhibition of offenders, and
which continued near by after the market was established.
Where Lombard Street touches King William Street, is the church of St.
Mary Woolnoth, an old church rebuilt by Nicholas Hawksmoor, the
"domestic clerk" of Sir Christopher Wren. Here John Newton, the friend
of Cowper the poet, was rector for 28 years, and here he was buried.
The thoroughfare of bankers, Lombard Street, got its name from the
Longbards, rich bankers who settled in the district during the reign of
Edward II. They used as their emblem three golden balls, derived from
the lower part of the arms of the Dukes of Medici. These continue to
this day as the sign of the money lenders. Many romantic associations
belong to this street. Here lived, with her goldsmith husband, Jane
Shore, described by King Edward IV. as "the merriest harlot of his
reign," and who after the king's death was accused of witchcraft by the
Duke of Gloucester, put in open penance at Paul's Cross, and made to
walk through Fleet Street with a lighted taper in her hand.
Pope's Head Alley, the footway leading south from the Royal Exchange,
from Cornhill to Lombard Street, is where in the earliest years of the
13th century, King John had his City palace. The roadway took its name
from the famous tavern of the Pope's Head, which after 1430 stood for
three hundred years on the westerly side.
To the south of the Royal Exchange, in Change Alley, centred, in the
first quarter of the 18th century, the excitement attending the South
Sea Bubble affair. This was the great stock gambling scheme by which the
South Sea Company, holding a monopoly of the trade with the South Seas,
and trading on the extravagant ideas the public had of such trade,
created an extraordinary desire in many persons to participate in the
fabulous profits. The company was carried on by fraud and deceit until
the bubble burst and caused disaster and ruin to thousands of unwise
investors. Gay, in his "Panegyrical Epistle," writing of the South Sea
project said:
Why did 'Change Alley waste thy precious hours
Among the fools who gaped for golden showers?
No wonder they were caught by South Sea schemes
Who ne'er enjoyed a guinea but in dreams.
Garraway's Coffee House in Change Alley was used chiefly by the Bubble
traders in 1720. At this house in 1651, tea was first sold in England,
the proprietor in his announcement recommending it as a cure for all
disorders. It certainly has been used extensively ever since. Next door
was Jonathan's Coffee House, another tavern of long existence. Both
places were burned in 1748, and a bank now marks where they once were.
Plough Court opens out of the south side of Lombard Street. The court is
notable as the birthplace of Alexander Pope, and his father here kept a
linen draper shop.
In the church of St. Edmund, which has stood for a century and a quarter
on the north side of Lombard Street, Joseph Addison was married in 1716,
just after the amazing success of his "Tragedy of Cato," to the Dowager
Countess of Warwick--a marriage which Thackeray referred to as "his
splendid but dismal union." Three years later Addison died.
Quaint and curious is the position of All Hallows, known as the
invisible church, literally buried by surrounding houses and approached
only through a narrow alley on the north side of Lombard Street. It was
in an open space when it was completed in 1694, but the buildings of the
City have gradually crowded about it, as though trying to crush it out
of existence.
St. Margaret Pattens, in Eastcheap at the Rood Lane corner, is a church
of 1678, designed by Wren, and taking its name from the district in
which, in the 17th century, pattens were generally sold. Dr. Thomas
Birch, author of the "Memoirs of the Reign of Elizabeth," was long its
rector. He died in 1766 and was buried beneath the chancel.
Mincing Lane borrowed its name from the Minchens or nuns of St. Helen,
and this order once owned all the ground hereabouts.
The Elephant, a tavern of great note, stood where is now the northwest
corner of Fenchurch Street at Ironmonger's Alley. It was a massive
building of stone, and one of the few in this neighbourhood sturdy
enough to resist the Great Fire. When the flames rushed by leaving a
desert of ruins on every side, the Elephant was a refuge for many who
were left homeless. It was taken down in 1826. At the Elephant lived the
great picture satirist, William Hogarth, in 1697, at a time when he was
very poor indeed.
At the northern end of Mark Lane, crowded about by business houses, may
be seen a fine old church tower. In the Great Fire of 1666, this tower
of All Hallows, Staining, escaped though the church itself was
destroyed. It is reached by narrow Star Alley, on the west side of Mark
Lane, and stands in a bit of the old churchyard which is now the court
of the Clothworkers' Hall. It was to All Hallows that Queen Elizabeth
came to offer up thanks after her deliverance from the Tower.
Hart Street is very short, which makes it easy to discern where once was
the house of Richard Whittington, the Lord Mayor of London, on the
north side of the road where the fourth house east of Mark Lane now
stands. Here, in "Whittington's Palace," Henry V. visited the Mayor, and
here Whittington destroyed the king's note for a debt of 60,000 pounds.
At which the king cried out: "No other king has had such a subject." To
which Whittington bowed low and made answer: "Sire, never had subject
such a king." Perhaps they were both right.
The picturesque gateway decorated with skulls, in narrow Seething Lane
by Hart Street, is an entrance way to the old church of St. Olave, which
escaped the Great Fire. This is the church frequented by Samuel Pepys,
who lived close by in Seething Lane. The pew he occupied is still to be
seen here, facing the memorial to Mrs. Pepys on the north side of the
church. It was from the tower of St. Olave that Pepys watched the great
City burn. Both he and his wife were buried here. The skulls surmounting
the gate were in remembrance of the plague of 1665, when 100,000 persons
died, and many of the victims were buried in this churchyard. In the
register yet may be seen entry of the burial of Mary Ramsey, with the
fatal letter "P" beside it, for she it is who was supposed to have
brought the plague into London.
Aldgate Pump, which has not been in use since 1875, stands at the
junction of Leadenhall and Fenchurch streets. Dickens mentions the old
pump very often in his books. In "Dombey and Son," Mr. Toots walked to
the pump and back for relaxation; and to this neighbourhood Fagan
removed secretly when he feared the result of the revelations of Oliver
Twist.
The Aldgate was the principal eastern gate of the City in Roman days and
later. In 1374 the rooms above the gate were leased by the corporation
to Chaucer the poet, for life. In 1471, the gate was attacked by Thomas
Neville, the Bastard of Falconbergh, when at the moment of success he
was separated from his men and killed. It was demolished in 1760, and
there is now no trace of it.
The church of St. Catherine Cree, in Leadenhall Street since 1631, was
built on the foundations of an older church. Hans Holbein lived close by
the original church, and was buried here when, in 1546, he died of the
plague.
In Leadenhall Street at the St. Mary Axe corner, the turreted church of
St. Andrew Undershaft takes its name from the fact that in olden times
there stood before it, towering above its height, a tall shaft. The
church, built in 1520, is almost five hundred years old. To this day the
passer-by wonders at the big rings of iron set in its wall. In these
rings the shaft or Maypole rested after the May-day sports were over. In
the reign of Edward VI. the Maypole was burned, because a preacher at
Paul's Cross had told the people they had made an idol of it by naming
their parish church "under the shaft." The tomb of John Stow, author of
the "Survey of London," is still to be seen here. Stow was a tailor, and
his book is thought to be the most important work on London ever
written. His efforts were not regarded in his lifetime, and being in
great poverty when he was 80 years old, he applied to James I. for aid,
receiving only a license to beg for a living--which he did. He died in
1605.
The buildings of the East India Company were to be found where Lime
Street touches Leadenhall at the northeast corner. There Charles Lamb,
the essayist and critic, worked. He entered the accountants' office of
the company and worked each day at his desk for thirty years until he
was retired on a pension. He has said that he found recreation in his
writings, and that his true works were to be found in the hundreds of
folios he had filled for the East India Company and that were filed away
in their archives. The East India was a commercial company of renown,
which came into existence in 1599 having its main offices here where had
been the home of Lord Craven. The building was restored many times, and
finally removed in 1862.
There is nothing to be seen of an historic old church in narrow Cornhill
Street, so hemmed in is it, except a tower above the roofs topped by a
windvane in the shape of a great key. Yet this church of St. Peter's,
which has been here since 1681, is most interesting, for the claim is
set up that it stands on the earliest consecrated ground in England. In
the vestry a tablet tells of how it was "originally founded in 179 A. D.
by Lucius, the first Christian King of this land, then called Britaine."
The house where Thomas Gray, the writer of the "Elegy written in a
Country Churchyard," was born, used to be where the building numbered 41
Cornhill now stands.
A carved doorway of quaint design, between two shop windows, and a tower
above the housetops, are all that may be seen of the church of St.
Michael's in narrow Cornhill. This church was built by Wren when he was
90 years old.
FOUR
BY WAY OF THE TOWER AND LONDON BRIDGE
In a passageway leading out of Brick Lane at No. 120 is still to be seen
the large room, pleasantly and airily situated at the top of a safe and
commodious ladder, where, in "Pickwick Papers," Dickens located "The
Brick Lane Branch of the United Grand Junction Ebenezer Temperance
Association." It is as Dickens pictured it, except that now the Mission
Hall is below at the foot of the ladder, and the former mission room at
the top is now a shop. It was here that Brother Tadger stumbled up the
ladder with Mr. Stiggins, and in the room above Sam Weller and his
father found the ladies drinking tea "until such time as they considered
it expedient to leave off." And if they are still in England it is safe
to say that they have never left off but are still drinking tea.
In Commercial Street, Whitechapel, at the corner of Flower and Dean
Street, is a dull and superior looking four story clothier's wareroom.
Though it does not seem it, this building has a history, for years ago
and until 1882 it was a cooking depot for the workers of this
neighbourhood, conducted upon the co-operative system. Dickens, in the
"Uncommercial Traveller" paper called "The Boiled Beef of New England,"
gives an account of the workings and merits of this establishment.
The Minories leads from the Tower to Aldgate High Street. Black and grim
at the head of this thoroughfare, rises the spire of the church of St.
Botolph. This structure, built in 1744, is on the site of an ancient
church. Here is still preserved the head of the Duke of Suffolk, father
of Lady Jane Grey, a relic formerly kept in the church of Holy Trinity.
Off this busy street called Minories, the first turning south of Aldgate
is a narrow hidden way called Church Street. Here, literally buried
from sight, is the tiny yellow and ancient church of Holy Trinity, once
belonging to an abbey of Minorites which was founded by Blanche, Queen
of Navarre, now used as a parish chapel of St. Botolph Aldgate. Many
persons sought out this church in the past, to look upon the head of the
Duke of Suffolk, father of Lady Jane Grey, who was executed on nearby
Tower Hill in 1554, and whose head was preserved as a relic here for
more than three centuries until its removal to St. Botolph Aldgate where
it is now.
The Little Wooden Midshipman, marking Sol Gills' instrument shop told of
in "Dombey and Son," is now used as a sign by an instrument maker at 9
Minories E. The firm employing the sign formerly were located in
Leadenhall Street, just as was Sol Gills' shop which Dickens has made so
real to all of us.
In Wellclose Square beyond the Tower, is a building that is more than
three hundred years old, and in it are still to be seen the oldest
police cells in London. Under them is the entrance to a subway which
tradition says once led direct to the Tower. The house is now used as a
club. The cells are in the rear of the building, and reached by a
winding stone stairway. They are dark and stifling. Many names and
inscriptions are carved on the wooden walls. There is still to be
deciphered the name of Edward Burk hanged for murder; that of Edward
Ray, December 27, 1758, and another inscription reading "Francis
Brittain, June 27, 1758. Remember the poor debtors."
[Illustration: The Tower of London]
The Tower of London, quite the most ancient and historic of English
fortresses, begun by William the Conqueror, has been successively a
royal palace, a State Prison, and is to-day a barracks and an arsenal.
The most ancient portion of the fortress, The White Tower, is still
standing. In this Tower of London, Richard II. while imprisoned, was
deposed; Henry VI. was murdered by the Duke of Gloucester; the Duke of
Clarence, brother of Edward IV., was drowned in a butt of wine; the
princes, Edward V. and his brother, were murdered by order of their
uncle, Duke of Gloucester, who thereafter took possession of the throne
as Richard III. Here Henry VIII. received in state all his wives before
he married them; here were imprisoned countless subjects, among them
Archbishop Cranmer; Shakespeare's patron the Earl of Southampton, and
Prince James of Scotland. Here Sir Walter Raleigh wrote, while a
prisoner, his "History of the World." Here were executed Queen Anne
Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey and Robert Devereux, Earl of
Essex. On the Thames side may still be seen the double water gate,
called the Traitors' Gate, through which prisoners charged with high
treason were brought into the Tower. Through this gate passed the
princess who was afterwards Queen Elizabeth, exclaiming as she entered:
"Here landeth as true a subject, being a prisoner, as ever landed at
these stairs; and before Thee, O God, I speak it." Rich in memories,
indeed, is this grimmest of grim monuments consecrated by time and the
tears and blood of many captives.
Where Trinity Gardens are now, to the west of the Tower and at the end
of Great Tower Hill, stood the scaffold where political and state
prisoners were sent from the Tower to be executed. With few exceptions,
only queens were executed within the Tower walls, so that the greater
number of historical executions took place outside them. Here met death,
Protector Somerset, Sir John More, Cromwell, Earl of Essex; James
Fitzroy, Duke of Monmouth, Sir Thomas Wyatt, and many another. The last
execution on Tower Hill, and the last person beheaded in England, was
Simon, Lord Lovat, in 1747. In his last moments he said how remarkable
it seemed that a great gathering should think it worth while to assemble
to see a grey head taken off. A stone in Trinity Square Gardens marks
the exact site of the scaffold. These gardens are a touch of pleasing
contrast close beside grimy warehouses, and in the daytime the constant
din of business life throbs on every side, an offset to their quietness.
Otway, the poet, lived and died on Tower Hill, and on Tower Hill William
Penn was born.
At the head of Tower Street is the church of All Hallows, Barking,
founded by the nuns of Barking Abbey during the reign of Richard I.
Bloody Judge Jeffreys, the leader of the Bloody Assizes, was married
here, as was also John Quincy Adams. William Penn, born close by, was
here baptised.
When Peter the Great visited London in 1698, he frequented a tavern
which stood on the spot where The Czar's Head is now opposite the church
of All Hallows, Barking.
Lower Thames Street is as old as the City itself. It is enclosed by tall
warehouses and shipping marts. Chaucer, sometimes called the father of
English poetry, lived in this street, where his father was a vintner.
St. Dunstan's-in-the-East stands where St. Dunstan's Hill and Idol Lane
meet, between Little Thames and Tower streets. In the building of this
church Wren made his first effort at perching a steeple upon
quadrangular columns. Though the work was much criticised, the architect
was well satisfied with the effect. Once when told that a violent
windstorm had toppled over all the steeples of the City churches Wren
exclaimed, "Not St. Dunstan's, I'm sure." For many years Archbishop
Morton, the tutor of Sir Thomas More, was rector of this church.
Further to the west, St. Mary at Hill was damaged in the Great Fire and
afterwards repaired and reconstructed by Wren in 1672. Here Dr. Young,
author of the tranquil "Night Thoughts," was married in 1731. For many
years John Brand, the author of "The Popular Antiquitus," was rector of
this church and was buried here.
The bad language of Billingsgate is proverbial all over the world. Since
the reign of Elizabeth there has been a market where Billingsgate Market
is now--the chief fish mart of London. Originally it was a place for the
sale of all sorts of provisions, but has been exclusively set apart for
the sale of fish since the time of William III., and the wharf of
Billingsgate is the oldest on the Thames.
On Fish Street Hill is a fluted Doric stone column, two hundred feet
high, crowned by a flaming urn of brass. This was erected in 1671 as a
memorial of the Great Fire of 1666. It has 345 steps leading to the top.
When the Monument was first set up an inscription was put on it which
wrongly traced the cause of the Great Fire to "the treachery and malice
of the Popish faction, in order to carry out their horrid plot for
extirpating the Protestant religion." And Pope, writing of the Monument,
and referring to the charge of the inscription as without foundation,
said:
Where London's column, pointing to the skies,
Like a tall bully, lifts the head and lies.
On the spot where King William joins Cannon Street is the statue of King
William IV. Here for generations stood a celebrated tavern called the
Boar's Head. Shakespeare speaks often of this house in his plays, making
it the scene of the revels of Falstaff and the Prince (afterwards Henry
V.). The original tavern was destroyed in the Great Fire but was
immediately rebuilt. In 1739 it was doubtless the principal tavern of
London. In 1831 it was demolished.
The church of St. Clement, Eastcheap, close by the statue of William IV.
in King William Street, was designed by Sir Christopher Wren. The
parishoners were very proud of their church when it was finished and
they gave the great architect a hogshead of wine costing £4 2_s_. 0_d_.,
and then were so pleased with their own liberality that this fact was
placed in the church records and the entry may be seen to this day.
In Pudding Lane south of the Monument the Great Fire of 1666 started,
raged for six days and destroyed three-quarters of London.
Miles Coverdale, Bishop of Exeter, who made the first complete English
translation of the Bible in 1535, was at one time rector of the church
of St. Magnus the Martyr at the foot of Fish Street Hill. He was buried
here and to the right of the altar is a tablet explaining that:
On the 4 of October 1535, the
first complete English version
of the Bible was published under
his direction.
The first London Bridge was begun in 1176 and completed in 1209 under
the direction of Peter of Colechurch chaplain of the church of St. Mary,
Colechurch, in the Poultry. Narrow and poorly paved, at each end was a
fortified gate, with a chapel in the centre. On the gatehouse were
exposed from time to time heads of poor fellows executed for treason.
There were twenty arches and a drawbridge for vessels, for most of the
arches were too narrow to permit the passage of boats. Afterwards houses
were built on the bridge so that it greatly resembled a regular street.
When the inhabitants needed water they lowered buckets by ropes from
their windows. In 1481 the houses tottered in decay and fell in one
block into the river. They were replaced and not finally removed until
1757. Wat Tyler and his followers entered the City over this bridge,
and Jack Cade and his rebel army chose the same way. Until 1769, London
Bridge was the only archway over the Thames. The present structure was
commenced in 1825, taking the place of the old bridge but about sixty
yards further up the river.
In the church of St. Michaels on College Hill, built by Sir Christopher
Wren, there is a memorial window to Dick Whittington who was buried in
the old church on this site--a church that was destroyed by the Great
Fire.
St. James Garlickhithe in Thames Street, erected in 1683, came by its
name because in earlier times garlic was usually sold close by along the
waterside. Steele has recorded that it was in this church he first
really came to understand the Common Prayer. For here he "heard the
service read so distinctly, so emphatically, and so fervently, that it
was next to an impossibility to be inattentive."
Of the church of St. Mary, Somerset, in Upper Thames Street, only the
tower of the original structure remains, that being spared by a special
Act of Parliament when the old church was demolished in 1868.
Where the red brick church of St. Benet's, Paul's Wharf, is now, used to
be an earlier church, destroyed in the Great Fire. In the older church
Inigo Jones was buried in 1652, and his tomb was not restored when the
present structure was set up by Wren in 1682.
By the riverside just to the east of where the Fleet stream flowed into
the Thames and in the district south of the present Queen Victoria
Street stood Bayard's Castle, where the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards
Richard III., lived. Here the crown of England was offered him, and here
he with pretence of humility at first refused it. The remains of the
castle were swept away in the Great Fire. This was the second castle of
the name on this site, the first having been that of Robert Fitz Walter
a malcontent Baron who fled after refusing allegiance to King John, who
in return destroyed his castle. It was here that King John made violent
but unsuccessful love to the Baron's daughter, Maud Fitz Walter.
Close by where the Victoria Embankment ends at Blackfriars Bridge and
extending broadly to the north was the Black Friars Monastery, dating
from 1276. This Monastery grew in time to great importance because of
the favours bestowed upon it by Edward I. Here this king deposited the
heart of his beloved queen Eleanor although her body was placed in
Westminster Abbey. And it was here, in 1529, Cardinals Wolsey and
Campeggio gave judgment against Catherine of Aragon in her divorce.
Playhouse Yard covers the site of the first theatre set up in the
Blackfriars neighbourhood. The larger part of the Monastery was
demolished by Sir Thomas Cawarden, Master of the King's Revels, when it
was granted to him by Edward VI. Cawarden's executor, Sir William More,
continued the demolition, granting a bit of the site for the Blackfriars
Theatre to James Burbage the actor. Burbage conducted the Blackfriars
Theatre as a private playhouse, in contrast to the public theatres of
the time. Nobility supported it almost entirely. Unlike the other
playhouses the pit as well as the galleries was entirely roofed over.
Also in the pit there were seats, an unusual feature. In ordinary
theatres the pit was filled with persons who ate, drank and made merry
while the play went on as best it could, but at the Blackfriars nothing
of the sort was permitted. There was, too, an unusually good orchestra,
the musicians paying for the privilege of performing here where they
were sure of attracting the attention of the nobility.
Famous Bridewell Prison, founded by King Edward VI., stood on what is
now the westerly side of New Bridge near by Tudor Street. Fleet Brook
occupied the space which is now New Bridge Street, extending as far as
to the Holborn Viaduct of this day. The prison got its name from the
holy spring of St. Bride's in this neighbourhood, the waters of which
were supposed to effect miraculous cures. Before the prison was built,
the site was occupied by the Palace of the Bridewell. Here the Lords of
Court together with the Mayor and Aldermen were summoned by Henry VIII.
when he was smitten with love for Anne Boleyn, to hear of the scruples
that tormented him because of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon. It
was here, too, that Shakespeare places an act of his play of Henry VIII.
The wonderful City of London was once a cluster of huts on a wooded
slope of ground which in these days is known as Ludgate Hill. Roman
London was enclosed by a wall which extended from about where the Tower
is now to Ludgate Hill, and from Ludgate Circus to the Thames River. It
had several gates now called to mind by the streets Aldgate,
Bishopsgate, Moorgate, Cripplegate, Aldersgate, Newgate and Ludgate.
This wall was built of brick and cement as hard as stone. The old Lud
Gate stood about three parts of the way down Ludgate Hill and the name
was derived from the legendary king, Lud. It was removed in 1760.
St. Martin's Church on Ludgate Hill was built by Wren, but an older
church stood there before the Great Fire, and in this Cadwallo, King of
the Britons was buried in 677. The tall and simple spire of the present
structure contrasts strangely with nearby St. Paul's, and it is with St.
Martin's partly in mind that one poet wrote:
Lo, like a bishop upon dainties fed,
St. Paul's lifts up his sacredotal head;
While his lean curates, slim and lank to view,
Around him point their steeples to the blue.
On the west side of Old Bailey the second house south of Ship Court,
numbered 68, is where Jonathan Wild world-famed thief and receiver of
stolen goods, lived. He was hanged at Tyburn in 1725 and true to himself
to the last stole the pocket-book of the parson who accompanied him in
the cart on the way to the gallows. Henry Fielding wrote of the career
of this noted criminal in his novel "Jonathan Wild."
Where Farringdon Street is now once flowed the Fleet Brook, so wide that
ships sailed through it as far as to where Holborn Viaduct is to-day. In
its course the Fleet passed through a deep cut called the Hole Bourne.
From this came the name Holborn. The Viaduct of to-day bridges the Hole
Bourne of old. On the east side of the Fleet Brook lay the notorious
Fleet Prison for debtors close by where Fleet Lane is in this day. The
main gate house of the prison was on the site of the nearby
Congregational Memorial Hall. The clandestine Fleet marriages in this
noisome place became notorious, being performed without let or hindrance
and with no regard for existing laws, by unscrupulous clergymen among
the debt prisoners encouraged by attendants who reaped ill gotten gains
for their services. Outside the prison regular "runners" gathered in
couples and gave every opportunity and encouragement for quick and
illegal marriage. It was not unusual for two hundred marriages to take
place in a single day. In this prison Mr. Pickwick of Dickens'
"Pickwick Papers," was confined after he refused to pay the damages
awarded to Mrs. Bardell. In 1846 the Fleet was demolished.
In the narrow passageway called Gunpowder Alley, jutting off Shoe Lane
to the westward, Richard Lovelace died in a cellar, literally of
starvation, in 1658. The house on the north side, second from Shoe Lane,
stands on the site. Lovelace was the handsomest and most accomplished of
the group of poets who gathered around Queen Henrietta. He was committed
to prison in 1646 on account of his rebellious sympathy for Charles I.,
and on his release went to France to raise a regiment. He wrote to Lucy
Sacheverell, to whom he was engaged, the poem containing the lines:
I could not love thee, dear, so much
Loved I not honour more.
But the lady receiving news of his supposed death in France was married
when he returned.
Fleet Street, still the centre of the newspaper and printing industries,
is reminiscent of the literary associations of many decades. It takes
its name from Fleet Brook which once crossed it at its eastern end. The
stream still exists and now in the form of a great sewer flows under
Farringdon Street and New Bridge Street, emptying into the Thames under
Blackfriars Bridge. It was through Fleet Street in 1448 that Eleanor
Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, walked on her way to St. Paul's
bareheaded, bearing a lighted candle as penance for having made a waxen
figure of the king, that melted before a fire as she would have had his
life slowly waste away.
At the east end of Fleet Street, surrounded by buildings is St. Bride's
Church. It is only a few steps from Fleet Street if you happen to be
familiar with any of the narrow ways that pierce into the centre of the
block. But if you do not know the mystery of the block you will walk all
around the church within sight of its two hundred and odd feet high
steeple without coming to it. The church was built by Wren in 1680. In
the centre aisle is the grave of Samuel Richardson the author who lived
close by in Salisbury Square and who died in 1761. Beside the church in
the present St. Bride's Lane Milton lived with a tailor named Russell.
He moved here in 1640, and here wrote his treatises "Of Practical
Episcopacy," "Of Reformation" and some others.
From 76 Fleet Street Salisbury Court is entered communicating direct
with Salisbury Square. In the house numbered 9 at the southwest corner
of the Square Samuel Richardson, the printer-novelist author of
"Clarissa Harlowe," had his printing office and here Oliver Goldsmith
for a time acted as a reader for him. Johnson was a friend of Richardson
and often came to his printing shop, as did Hogarth the great satirist.
Tudor Street cuts through the very centre of the district once called
"Alsatia" occupying the space between the river and Fleet Street. This
was a cant name for Whitefriars. The neighbourhood had certain
privileges of sanctuary derived from an old convent of the Carmelites or
White Friars and was the abode of lawless classes. Scott immortalised it
in the "Fortunes of Nigel."
Wine Office Court opens from Fleet Street and a few yards from the
entrance is the Cheshire Cheese, the famous low-ceilinged,
sanded-floored dining place of Dr. Johnson, looking doubtless much as it
did in the days when Johnson and Goldsmith so often dined here together.
Goldsmith lived for a long time in Wine Office Court at No. 6 and it is
here he is said to have written the "Vicar of Wakefield." His house has
been replaced by a modern structure and the old Vicar and his daughters
Olivia and Sophia would hardly feel at home now.
At the top of Wine Office Court is Gough Square and in a corner house
numbered 17 may be found a tablet telling that Dr. Samuel Johnson once
lived within. That was almost one hundred and fifty years ago but the
house is very little changed outwardly. Within it is wholly given up to
business. Of all the houses Johnson occupied in London this is the only
one still standing. Here the greater part of his dictionary was written
and here Mrs. Johnson died.
In Bolt Court the last years of Dr. Johnson's life were spent in the
house No. 8, long since demolished. Here he died in 1784.
Johnson's Court a blind alley off Fleet Street was not named for Dr.
Samuel Johnson although many persons believe so because Dr. Johnson
lived here for a time on the site where No. 7 is now. The old "Monthly
Magazine" had offices here in 1833, when Charles Dickens came and
through the oaken doorway with uncertain hand dropped his first
manuscript into the yawning opening of the letter box, that might or
might not bring back good news.
At the head of Crane Court which opens out of Fleet Street is the spot
selected by Sir Isaac Newton as "the middle of town and out of noise."
Newton was president of the Royal Society and that body occupied the
house from 1710 to 1762. The old house was burned in 1877 and a modern
structure erected.
Fetter Lane evidently had an ill start taking its name from its early
inhabitants the "Faitours" or beggars.
St. Dunstan's-in-the-West with its wondrous tower of fretwork is in
Fleet Street close by Chancery Lane and is a restoration of 1831.
In Fleet Street opposite the gateway to the Temple once stood the old
Cock Tavern which was swept away when Temple Bar was removed, and now
exists in modern form close by on the south side. A cock is still the
sign of the place, said to have been carved by Grinling Gibbons. It is
this tavern that Tennyson speaks of in his "Will Waterproof's Lyric":
Oh plump head waiter at The Cock
To which I most resort.
Samuel Pepys went often to the Cock Tavern, once with the elegant Mrs.
Knipp and has left the record that they ate a lobster, sang and made
merry until midnight--at which Mrs. Pepys was much annoyed.
Child's Bank close by the Temple Bar Griffin on the south side of Fleet
Street, is the oldest of England's banking houses dating from the time
of Charles I. when the first Francis Child, an apprentice to William
Wheeler the goldsmith, married his master's daughter and by thrift and
industry founded the fortunes of the great institution. The present bank
stands on the site of the old Devil Tavern that for two hundred years
was the haunt of men of letters. Here Ben Jonson had his social
headquarters gathering around him in the famous Apollo Room wits of all
degree.
In his day, Oliver Goldsmith was a most conscientious member of the
shilling whist that met at the Devil Tavern. Several practical jokers in
the club were quite in sympathy one evening when Goldsmith arrived and
explained that he had given the cabman a guinea instead of a shilling.
At the next meeting Goldsmith was surprised at being summoned to the
door by a cabman who returned the guinea. He was quite overpowered and
collected small sums from the other members, contributing heavily
himself, and rewarded the cabman. He was still expatiating upon the
honesty of the lower classes when one of the guests asked to see the
returned guinea. It was counterfeit and in reality so was the cabman.
Goldsmith realising that he had been imposed upon by his facetious
colleagues retired amid a burst of much laughter.
Two doors to the south of the Devil Tavern towards the east Bernard
Lintot had his bookshop. John Gay the poet who wrote "The Beggar's
Opera," went himself to impress upon the book man the importance of
having his books exposed for sale, and afterwards, in 1711, said in his
"Trivia":
Oh, Lintot, let my labours obvious lie
Ranged on thy stall for every envious eye.
FIVE
THE SPELL OF THE TEMPLE AND INNS OF COURT
The Temple lies between Fleet Street and the river, with Essex Street on
the west and Whitefriars on the east. It is a wide area of quaint
buildings, strange windings and uncertain by-ways relieved by unexpected
open spaces and magnificent gardens--a place to wander in if you are
fond of wandering, and to get lost in if you make up your mind to wander
and do not mind getting lost. For hundreds of years this has been
hallowed ground in sacred history. It was the quarters of the Knights
Templars, a religious order founded in the twelfth century to protect
the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and the recruiting point for Crusaders.
When the Order was dissolved in 1313 the Temple became Crown property.
In 1346 it was leased to the professors of common law and since then
has been a school of law, and a great centre of learning in England.
There are two divisions of the Temple, the eastern or Inner Temple; the
western or Middle Temple. The Inner Temple came by its name being
nearest the City; the Middle Temple because it was between the Inner and
Outer Temples. The Outer Temple vanished long ago. In 1609, James I.
conveyed the Temple property by grant to the benchers of the Inner and
Middle Temple--two of the Inns of Court.
The Inns of Court are four--the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple,
Lincoln's Inn and Gray's Inn. These are societies formed for the study
of law and custom has given them the exclusive privilege of deciding who
may be called to the bar. Their quarters were called Inns of Court
originally because as students of law they belonged to "the King's
Court." In the 15th century there were ten other Seminaries called Inns
of Chancery offshoots from the four parent societies. In the Inns of
Chancery fees were low and suited to the middle classes--the Inns of
Court being patronized by the aristocracy.
The inner Temple gateway in the Strand opposite Chancery Lane leads
after a few yards directly to the Temple Church, literally buried here
close to the busiest street in London. This is the famous Round Church,
the chapel of the Inner Temple in which the Knights Templars worshipped,
and is the only real relic left of the Knights Templars. It has stood
here since 1185, one of the four round churches of England, built in
imitation of the Round Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. In
early days lawyers received their clients in this church. It was
arranged in the manner of an exchange, each lawyer having his regular
standing place.
To the north of the Temple Church is a plain slab recording that Oliver
Goldsmith author of the "Vicar of Wakefield," lies buried here.
William Cowper the poet lived for years in the Inner Temple, where he
several times tried to commit suicide but failed in each attempt.
Charles Lamb was born in 1775 at No. 2 Crown Office Row in rooms
overlooking the Temple Garden.
In Temple Garden, best seen from Crown Office Row, you look upon the
spot where Shakespeare had the partisans first choose the red rose or
the white as the badge of the houses of York or Lancaster. In "King
Henry VI.," this picking is stirringly told of and the Earl of Warwick
exclaims:
And here I prophesy, the brawl to-day
Grown to this faction, in the Temple Gardens,
Shall send, between the red rose and the white,
A thousand souls to death and deadly night.
Middle Temple is entered from Fleet Street close by Temple Bar Memorial,
by way of Middle Temple Lane, through a brick gateway designed by Wren
and built in 1684. Middle Temple Lane divides Middle from Inner Temple.
It is narrow, crooked and dark, a survival of the long past. Here are
houses with overhanging upper floors, and law stationers' shops on the
lane level or below it. Off from the thoroughfare are dingy nooks and
odd courts. In one such, Brick Court, at No. 2, were Oliver Goldsmith's
last lodgings and here he died in 1774. The learned Blackstone lived in
the same building on the floor below Goldsmith and complained that he
was much disturbed on occasions when the author of the "Vicar of
Wakefield" and the "Deserted Village" gave supper parties that were
"filled with roaring comic songs."
The turning beyond Brick Court opens on the Hall of the Middle Temple, a
perfect example of Elizabethan architecture, and where Shakespeare's
charming comedy of "Twelfth Night" was first performed. In the Hall is
preserved a table made of wood from one of the ships of the Great Armada
on which the death warrant of Mary Queen of Scots was signed by
Elizabeth.
Before the Hall of Middle Temple is Fountain Court, a spot seeming far
away from London. In it is the Temple Fountain. The doves that drink of
the water here are as tame and as faded as the dusty foliage and the
skeletons of trees hereabouts. Here Ruth Pinch the sweet girl of
Dickens' "Martin Chuzzlewit" came often to meet her brother Tom and
afterwards her lover John Westlock.
From Fountain Court at the north is New Court and then on a few steps
further is Devereux Court where may be seen a bust of Lord Essex by
Colley Cibber, put here to mark the site of the Grecian Coffee House,
sacred to the legal profession.
The house in Fleet Street forming the east corner of the entrance to
Inner Temple Lane was the famous coffee-house called Nando's, in the
18th century. This house was built for the convenience of Henry, Prince
of Wales, in the reign of James I.
Obscured in dust and gloom the Sergeants' Inn, one of the original ten
Inns of Chancery, still stands in Fleet Street at Chancery Lane.
A grimy and narrow passage in Fleet Street, a few steps east of St.
Dunstan's-in-the-West, so insignificant that it would easily pass
unnoticed, is really an entrance to Clifford's Inn, one of the original
ten Inns of Chancery. Clifford's is now completely hidden by the church
and other buildings but reveals a mine of quaint corners and romantic
associations to one fortunate enough to stumble upon it in a day's
ramble.
It was in winding Chancery Lane that the dean of anglers Izaak Walton
kept a linen draper shop in the years from 1627 to 1647.
In Bishop's Court off Chancery Lane Dickens, in "Bleak House," saw fit
to place the rag and bottle shop of Crook, where that strange old man
died a death due to spontaneous combustion. Mr. Vholes the lawyer of the
Chancery Court also in "Bleak House," had his offices in Symond's Inn on
the other side of Chancery Lane where Chichester Rents is now.
Lincoln's Inn, one of the Inns of Court, was built in 1310 and there
remains no trace of the original. The front on Chancery Lane and the
gatehouse there were designed in 1518. Through an odd little pathway
from Chancery Lane the Stone Buildings are easily reached. These were
set up in the hope of rebuilding the entire Inn but this was not done.
Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, here maintained a town house in the 13th
century and the grounds extended all about the present site and have
taken his name as their own.
The gardens of Lincoln's Inn Fields were laid out by the great architect
Inigo Jones. Up to the first quarter of the 18th century Lincoln's Inn
Fields was a favorite duelling ground. Here also Babington and others
who conspired for the freedom of Mary Queen of Scots were executed in
1586. Lord William Russell was also executed here in 1683 because he was
supposed to have been concerned in the Rye House Plot. Altogether the
gardens may be said to have many gory associations of which their
present appearance gives no hint.
Inigo Jones the celebrated English architect has left the mark of his
genius on many London structures. He was born in London in 1576 and
during the reign of James I., when the main amusement of the Court was
the putting on of the masques of Ben Jonson he designed the scenery for
them. During this reign, too, he held the post of surveyor-general of
royal buildings. Long before his death in 1653 he was known to be the
first architect of England.
Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre stood where is now the Museum of the Royal
College of Surgeons on the south side of the gardens. In this playhouse
Congreve's "Love for Love," with Mrs. Bracegirdle as _Angelica_, was
first produced in 1695. "The Beggar's Opera" was also first seen here,
when Lavinia Fenton afterwards Duchess of Bolton was the _Polly
Peacham_. This is the theatre which Pepys visited so often that, as he
himself said, he made his wife "as mad as the devil."
Facing Lincoln's Inn Fields on the west side is still to be seen a stone
built house numbered 58, with Doric columns, quite grimy in appearance,
where once lived John Forster the biographer of Dickens. In this house,
Forster began the library which had grown to 18,000 volumes when he
bequeathed it to the nation. Here, too, he often entertained Dickens and
here heard him read in manuscript "The Chimes." Dickens made this the
home of Tulkinghorn the lawyer of "Bleak House," and killed him here.
There is no sign of the fore-shortened allegory on the first floor
ceiling now though from appearance it might well have been there once.
"Boz," writing of this first floor room declared that you might once
have heard "a sound at night, as of men laughing, together with a
clinking of knives and forks and wineglasses." The house was built by
Robert Bertie, Earl of Lindsey, a general of King Charles I.
In Great Queen Street at No. 56 not far from Lincoln's Inn Fields,
Boswell lived and wrote the greater part of the "Life of Johnson."
[Illustration: Staple Inn, looking toward Holborn Gateway]
Where Gray's Inn Road touches Holborn is the old quaint gabled Staple
Inn, one of the original ten Inns of Chancery harking back to the days
of James I. An arched gateway gives entrance to the interior court where
flourish plane trees that look to be as old as the inn itself. It was
here that Mr. Grewgious of Dickens' "Bleak House," had his chambers, and
over a doorway of the court is a stone with the lettering:
P
J T
1747
This seemingly cabalistic reference stands for Principal John Thompson
who presided over the inn for two terms in 1747. Dickens made fun of it
in "Bleak House." Dr. Samuel Johnson moved into Staple Inn March 22,
1757, from Gough Square, Fleet Street, and during his residence here the
great lexicographer wrote "Rasselas" in the evenings of a week, to pay
the funeral expenses of his mother!
The large red brick insurance building opposite Staple Inn on the north
side of Holborn is on the site of Furnival's, one of the original ten
Inns of Chancery, where Dickens lived when he was first married and
where he began the writing of "Pickwick Papers."
A narrow alley between the Holborn houses east of Fetter Lane and having
over its entrance a jarring gilt sign leads to the smallest of the ten
original Inns of Chancery--Barnard's Inn. Its ancientness is evidenced
by its dwarfed courts and tiny Hall. Since 1874 it has been used by the
Mercers' Company for their schools. Herbert Pocket in Dickens' "Great
Expectations" had rooms here in which Pip slept on his arrival in
London.
Gray's Inn one of the four Inns of Court with its spacious gardens and
its sober courts is a reminder of the reign of King Edward III. The Hall
was built in 1560 and the gardens were laid out three centuries ago, the
walks being planned by Francis Bacon.
In Fox Court, which is off Gray's Inn Road close by Holborn, the
Countess of Macclesfield lived, and here, on the south side, her famous
son Richard Savage the poet was born in 1697. His father was Lord
Rivers, but Savage was never cared for by him and was treated with gross
neglect by his mother. His life was a dissipated one and he once killed
a man in a drunken brawl for which he was sentenced to death but
afterwards pardoned. His best poem is "The Bastard," in which he
execrated his own mother the Countess for the illegitimacy of his birth.
He died in 1743 in a Bristol jail to which he had been sent for debt.
Close by, at the Gray's Inn Road corner of Holborn, is the crossing that
was swept by the poor Jo of Dickens' "Bleak House."
In Brooke Street, near at hand, the house No. 39, is famous as standing
on the site of the lodging house where Thomas Chatterton ended his brief
and remarkable career. Chatterton was born in Bristol, the son of a poor
widow. He received some education at a charity school but otherwise was
self-taught. In the few years of his life he developed a poetic quality
wonderful even in an age noted for literary excellence. He was seventeen
years old when in 1769 he came to London where he met great
discouragement. He lived in the garret of the obscure Brooke Street
lodging and here on August 24th, 1770, in dire want, among strangers,
literally starving, he died of poison self-administered. He was buried
in the pauper burial ground adjoining a workhouse in Shoe Lane.
Since 1688 the present church of St. Andrew's has stood at the western
end of Holborn Viaduct. It is a Wren building set up where an older
church was once. The poet Richard Savage was baptised here, and Hazlitt
the essayist was here married having for best man Charles Lamb.
Quaint and quiet and fascinating in its strong old age the cloister of
St. Etheldreda's just beyond the busy roar of Holborn Circus is a
survival of the famous palace of the bishops of Ely. This cloister is in
part the same as that in which Henry VIII. first met Cranmer, and here
John of Gaunt father of Henry IV. died in 1399. Ely Place of to-day is
named for the old palace.
In narrow Mitre Court, connecting Ely Place with Hatton Gardens, set in
the wall of a public house is the "Sign of the Mitre," bearing date of
1546. The present house stands on the site of the main entrance to the
palace.
Bleeding Heart Yard of picturesque name and fame, at the head of Ely
Place, is written of by Dickens in "Little Dorrit", as the home of
Plornish the plasterer, and it was here that the honest Daniel Doyce had
his factory.
SIX
ALONG THE STRAND: AND A PEEP AT COVENT GARDEN AND THE COFFEE HOUSES
Where Temple Bar Memorial, surmounted by a Griffin, is now in the Strand
Temple Bar itself stood until 1878. In one form or another, at times
merely a wooden structure, Temple Bar defined the limits of the City
from the 14th century. To the very last of its days was preserved an
ancient custom of closing the gate when a sovereign approached the City
on any public occasion, and opening it with much ceremony to give
entrance way. The last Temple Bar was built in 1670, but was demolished
to facilitate traffic. On the top of the old gateway the heads of
criminals who had been executed were exposed.
The Strand probably the best known street in the world to-day was once a
royal road outlining the waterside. On one side were the castles of
noblemen fronting on the river, with gardens between, and state barges
carried the courtiers to the Tower, to Richmond or to Westminster
wherever the king was to be found. The chief castle belonged to Peter of
Savoy uncle of Henry III., and was set in the midst of an estate granted
by the king in 1245. In those days the bishops were the principal owners
of palaces on the Strand--the courtiers preferring the City as being
safer from the attacks of their enemies. But the bishops were regarded
as sacred and could live anywhere they pleased unmolested. The Strand
became a regular thoroughfare about 1560.
At the time of the Reformation the palace of Walter Stapleton Bishop of
Exeter was on the south, or river, side of the Strand and was called
Exeter House. Afterward when the Earl of Essex, Elizabeth's favourite
lived there it was called Essex House for him and the present Essex
Street so gets its name. The only tangible survival of Essex House is at
the end of the street--the aged and picturesque Water Gate, with the
worn stone stairs that once led directly to the water where the barges
received visitors from the palace. It was down these stairs that the
Earl of Essex was taken on his way to the Tower to be beheaded at the
command of the fickle queen.
In Essex Street just where is now an entrance into New Court stood the
tavern of the Essex Head. Here, in 1783, Samuel Johnson then suffering
from the diseases which caused his death in the next year established a
conversation club that was to meet three times a week. Johnson attended
regularly as long as he was able to walk from his home not far away in
Bolt Court.
Opposite Essex Street in the middle of the Strand is the church of St.
Clement Danes, designed by Sir Christopher Wren in 1681. At this church
Dr. Johnson was a regular attendant for years and the pew he sat in, No.
18 in the north gallery, is marked with a tablet telling of "the
philosopher, the poet, the great lexicographer, the profound moralist
and chief writer of his times." Joe Miller, the man of jokes, was buried
here, and his epitaph records among other things that he was a facetious
companion, a sincere friend and a tender husband, which is about all a
man need be.
In the 16th century the Bishop of Bath's palace was on the river side of
the Strand. It was called Arundel House and gave its name to Arundel
Street.
Norfolk Street, now a quiet thoroughfare of private hotels, is where at
No. 21 Dickens located "Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings." In the first house
from the river on the west side Peter the Great of Russia lived when he
came to London in 1698 on the invitation of William III., to make a
personal study of British industrial pursuits, military art, science and
trade, a study which he did make, carrying back to Russia with him more
than five hundred artisans, surgeons, artificers and engineers.
In Surrey Street the dramatist William Congreve who has been called the
greatest English master of pure comedy lived at the height of his
success, long after "The Old Bachelor," "Love for Love" and "The
Mourning Bride" had made him famous, and here he died.
Placed squarely in the centre of the Strand opposite Somerset House,
forming a cross current in the rush of traffic, stands the church of St.
Mary-le-Strand, since 1717. It is on the spot of an old Maypole and
bears the name of an older church demolished to make room for Somerset
House. The Maypole was set up originally in 1601 to honour the wife of
General Monk.
In the open space to the west of the church of St. Mary-le-Strand, in
1634, the first cab stand in London was established.
[Illustration: Entrance to old Roman Bath--Strand Lane]
In the narrow Strand Lane opposite the church of St. Mary-le-Strand is
the framework of an ancient Roman bath. It is one of the few survivals
of Roman London and has been here for fifteen hundred years. Water still
flows into it from a hidden spring and it is well worth passing through
the door of No. 5 Strand Lane to look upon this relic and to be assured
that the days of Boadicea were real.
The great inner square of the present Somerset House covers vaults built
into the cellars forming tombs in which lie many a favourite of King
James I. and King Charles I. But though the building has the same name
all else is changed and it is not the same Somerset House which
represented the height of political and kingly grandeur. At the time of
the Reformation on the Strand by the river were palaces of the Bishops
of Landaff, Chester and Worcester, and these palaces were torn down by
"The Protector" the Earl of Somerset uncle of Edward VI. On their site
in 1549 he had Somerset House built. But the lives of nobles were brief
in those days and Somerset was beheaded in 1552 before the completion of
his palace which became Crown property. James I. gave the mansion to
his queen Anne of Denmark and she called it Denmark House. When Charles
I. came to the throne Queen Henrietta Maria lived in Somerset's palace
and liked it so well it was her home for many years. In the reign of
Charles II., Somerset House passed to Queen Catherine of Braganza. It
was here that Inigo Jones died, and here that at different times lay in
state the bodies of Anne of Denmark, James I. and Oliver Cromwell. In
1775 when Buckingham House in St. James' Park was purchased for Queen
Charlotte, wife of George III., to replace Somerset, the home of many
famous folk was destroyed. Then the present structure was erected and
since that time has been used for various offices of State, requiring an
army of Government clerks and officials.
Midway between the Strand and the river, closed in by buildings and
reached by winding ways of which Savoy Street is one, is the Savoy
Church, the only reminder of the great palace which stood in this domain
of the House of Savoy. In 1246 Henry III. granted to his wife's uncle
Peter of Savoy certain land along the Thames. On this land Peter of
Savoy built a palace outside the City walls between the road called the
Strand and the River Thames. When he died in 1268, bequeathing his
Palace of Savoy in London to the reverent friars of Montjoy, they in
turn sold the palace to Queen Eleanor. She left it to her son Edmund of
Lancaster. After that it became the headquarters of the Duchy of
Lancaster and is much to be read of until 1381 when it was destroyed by
the followers of Wat Tyler. Henry IV. came into possession of the Duchy
of Lancaster on the death of John of Gaunt and in this roundabout way
the present Savoy Church became a "Chapel Royal." From 1381 the year of
its demolishment until 1509 it was little more than a ruin. In 1509
Henry VII. founded a hospital for the poor on the site--a group of
buildings directly on the river. This was finally dissolved in 1702, and
the buildings, used for various purposes, gradually vanished until now
only the chapel remains. This has been restored many times but much of
it is the same--part of the Lancastrian palace of Savoy.
A great modern hostelry, the Savoy Hotel, stands on part of the site of
the old Palace of Savoy and the statue over the entrance is that of
Count Peter of Savoy former owner of the palace.
On the north side of the Strand between Burleigh and Exeter streets and
on ground now occupied by a popular restaurant was Exeter House, the
home of the great statesman William Cecil, Lord Burleigh. Queen
Elizabeth visited here and on his explaining that he was unable to stand
in her presence, "because of the badness of my legs," the queen
graciously replied: "We do not make use of you, My Lord, for the badness
of your legs, but for the goodness of your head." The famous Exeter Hall
occupied this site later, but was demolished in 1908.
In York Street, laid out in the 17th century, on the south side at No. 4
Thomas De Quincey lived and wrote "The Confessions of an English
Opium-Eater;" a gruesome chronicle much read and said to be partly
autobiographical. A sadness seems to hang about the place, especially
when it is "To be Let," with gaping windows and desolate brick front.
For a century Bow Street has been closely associated with the chief
police court of London where many famous criminals have ended their days
of liberty. Wycherley the dramatist lived here, when he lay ill, and
Charles II. came to him and gave him the five hundred pounds that took
him to the south of France in search of health.
Grinling Gibbons, also had his home in Bow Street. A remarkable carver
in wood, whose work adorns many of the London church interiors, he was
an unknown worker in a small English town when John Evelyn the 17th
century writer and diarist discovered him and placed his work before
King Charles II. But in London Gibbons' art was not at first recognized
and he had a struggle for existence. In time however he became master
carver to the Court, an appointment which lasted until the reign of
George I. The subjects of his carvings were usually flowers, foliage,
birds and lace and they are remarkable for their delicacy of finish and
naturalness. He also finished many works in bronze and marble.
In a house standing where the Bow Street police station is now Henry
Fielding wrote "Tom Jones" in 1749,--a story famous as a picture of the
times and undoubtedly containing much autobiography.
At the northwest corner of Russell Street where it touches Bow, stood
Will's Coffee House, where from 1660 on for fifty years the literary
life of London centred. The coffee house was named for William Urwin,
the original owner. Dryden spent his dinner hours here for 35 years and
was the acknowledged leader of literary fashion until his death in 1700.
This, too, was the favourite house of Wycherley and Congreve the
dramatists.
To-day on the site of Will's Coffee House stands the old home of Charles
and Mary Lamb, where was written the first series of the "Essays of
Elia." Russell Street is a place of wholesale fruit and vegetable
dealers now, but there are signs of old-time pleasantness to be found,
especially in the delightful cornices over many of the windows.
Opposite Will's, Button's Coffee House was established in 1712, presided
over by Addison's old servant Daniel Button. As Will's was a place for
literary controversy, Button's was first of all ground for the
discussion of matters political. Joseph Addison was the recognized head
of the coterie who met there, among whom were Alexander Pope, Ambrose
Philips, Thomas Tickell, Henry Carey, Richard Steele and Richard Savage.
One faithful habitué was a playwright named Charles Johnson, whose fame
rested chiefly on the fact that for many years he wrote a play every
season and went to Button's every day. Steele, then editing the
"Guardian," was so constant in his attendance that he used the rooms as
his editorial office, setting up a lion's head, into the mouth of which
correspondents deposited communications to which Steele replied in the
pages of the "Guardian." Button the proprietor died in 1730 in great
poverty and was buried in the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden,
at the expense of the parish.
Another celebrated coffee house was Tom's, on the north side of Russell
Street, at No. 17, taking its name from Thomas West its first
proprietor. West killed himself by jumping from the second story window
of the house in 1722 but the business was continued with considerable
success until 1814.
Far back in the 13th century all the land about what is now the Covent
Garden district was a real garden, a great fertile tract attached to the
convent of the monks of Westminster. Since those early days it has
always been associated with flowers and growing things and the Covent
Garden Market is now the chief flower, fruit and vegetable market of
London. A map of the middle of the 16th century shows it a tract
stretching approximately from the Strand to the Long Acre of to-day and
surrounded by a wall. The Crown granted the land to the Bedfords in
1552, and in 1621 Inigo Jones planned the Covent Market Square. In 1831
the market buildings of this day were erected, but they have since been
added to and improved.
Under the Piazza in Covent Garden was Bedford's Coffee House, the
successor in popularity to Will's and Button's. Here gathered David
Garrick, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, William Hogarth, Samuel Foote and
Henry Fielding. The house continued a popular rendezvous until about
1803.
On the west side of Covent Garden, plain, dingy and unkempt in
appearance, blending with the unpleasantness of the streets surrounding
the market, is the church of St. Paul's, Covent Garden. Francis, fifth
Earl of Bedford, in the 17th century owned all the land hereabouts and
directed Inigo Jones to build a chapel for Covent Garden. But, he
explained, it must not cost much money--build simply a barn. And Inigo
Jones responded: "It shall be the handsomest barn in England." And he
built St. Paul's. One of the memories associated with it is the record
that here, in 1773, William Turner, the hair-dresser of Maiden Lane, was
married to Mary Marshall. Their son was baptised here in 1775 and
afterwards became the artist Joseph Mallord William Turner. In the
forlorn burial ground back of this church were buried Samuel Butler,
author of "Hudibras," in 1680; Grinling Gibbons, the wood carver, in
1721, and Edward Kynaston, an actor of female rôles, in 1712. This actor
gained fame not only as a rare interpreter of character, but on one
memorable occasion by keeping King Charles II. waiting, "because the
queen was not yet shaved." William Wycherley, dramatist and author of
"The Country Girl," was laid here in 1715, and T. A. Arne, composer of
"Rule Britannia," in 1778. It is here, too, that Daniel Button,
proprietor of the famous Button's Coffee House in Russell Street, lies,
and others whose names are known all over the world.
Close by busy Covent Garden Market, in the house numbered 27 Southampton
Street, David Garrick the actor lived for more than twenty years. A
fanciful tablet over the doorway reads:
David Garrick
Lived Here
1750-1772
Southampton Street takes its name from the Earl of Southampton, and was
the main approach to Covent Garden in the reign of Charles II.
Unattractive Maiden Lane leading from Southampton Street back of the
Adelphi Theatre is narrow and usually overcrowded with many people and
business vehicles. It was in this street, where the house No. 20 stands,
that the great Turner was born in 1775, his father here having carried
on his profession of hair-dresser. Voltaire, the Frenchman, lived in
this thoroughfare for a time. In our own times, close by the stage door
of the Adelphi, the actor William Terriss was done to death by a
madman.
Claude Duval the highwayman celebrated in song and story was captured in
"The Hole in the Wall," a well-patronized tavern of the 17th century. It
stood in Chandos Street, the second house from Bedford on the north side
of the road.
[Illustration: Adelphi Terrace]
High above Victoria Embankment, Adelphi Terrace, with Cleopatra's Needle
just below by the riverside, shows a line of fine old derelict houses
whose windows command a view of the Thames, Waterloo and Charing Cross
bridges, and the picturesque confusion of shipping on the Surrey side so
often muffled in fog. In the house No. 5, Garrick the actor died, and on
a tablet are the words:
David
Garrick
Actor
Lived Here
B 1716
D 1779
The neighbourhood is known as The Adelphi. In 1760, four brothers,
Scotch architects named Adam, began laying out the roads, and their
names were given to William, Adam, John and Robert streets. At No. 2
Robert Street lived Thomas Hood, and here he wrote the "Song of the
Shirt."
Near Buckingham Street once stood the palace of George Villiers, Duke of
Buckingham, given him by King James I. Before that, in the time of the
Reformation, it had belonged to the Archbishop of York and was on the
south, or river, side of the Strand. The street is dreary and desolate
appearing now. In a house at one end near the old Water Gate Dickens had
Betsy Trotwood engage a room for David Copperfield in the book of that
name. Across the way at the southwest corner overlooking the river
Samuel Pepys lived for many years, and Jean Jacques Rosseau and David
Hume lived together in this street in 1765.
In the public gardens beyond Buckingham Street is the Water Gate of York
House, a substantial relic in the middle of green lawns. It was built
by the Duke of Buckingham as the first stage in the rebuilding of York
Palace but the task was never completed.
Villiers Street is a clean and quiet thoroughfare, where people seem to
walk sedately as though strolling through a graveyard. It is named for
George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who was a fashionable courtier much
beloved by King James I., and who paid gallant court to Anne of Austria,
wife of the French King Louis XIII. The establishment of Charing Cross
Station robbed the street of its western side. Pepys' companion diarist,
John Evelyn, lived hereabouts, and Richard Steele, too, after the death
of his wife.
A newspaper office now occupies Number 149 Strand where Mrs. Siddons the
actress passed the night after her first appearance in London when she
captured the town by her art.
Charing Cross railway station stands where was once Hungerford Market,
which in 1669 took the place of the recently burned mansion of Sir
Edward Hungerford. On the Villiers Street side were a line of factories,
among them Warren's blacking factory where Charles Dickens worked as a
boy, the scenes and workers of which he reproduced in "David
Copperfield," changing only the character of the business from blacking
to wine. The river then crept up to what is now the northerly side of
the Embankment. At the foot of Villiers Street was the Hungerford Stairs
where passengers landed from the river. There were many of these
"Stairs" along the waterside and two reminders of them may be seen in
Essex and York gates.
When King Edward I., in 1290 journeyed from Lincoln to Westminster Abbey
with the body of his beloved Queen, Eleanor of Castile, he rested the
coffin on the spot now called Charing Cross. Some say the name Charing
was an alteration of Chère Reine (dear queen), but the locality was so
called before Edward's day so this cannot be verified. Charing was a
little settlement that lay in the fields between London and Westminster
and was at first called Cherringe. At all events, in the year after
Eleanor's body had rested here Edward erected a memorial cross of Gothic
design--which has since then been called Eleanor's Cross--to mark where
the coffin had rested, one of nine similar monuments commemorating the
various stages of the journey. In successive reigns, for almost four
hundred years, Eleanor's Cross was alternately defaced, reinstated or
repaired, on the occasion of coronations or visits of royalty. Finally
Parliament had it removed in 1647, but a modern copy of it stands to-day
in the courtyard of the Charing Cross railway station.
Across the road from Charing Cross railway station Golden Cross Hotel
preserves the name of a famous place in old stage-coach days. The
original house of this name stood on the site now held by the Nelson
Column. In front of the original tavern, Mr. Pickwick of "Pickwick
Papers" and his friends met Alfred Jingle for the first time and from
here the entire party took the coach for Rochester. At this tavern,
David Copperfield met Steerforth, some years after their school days
together, when Copperfield had been put "into a small bedchamber, which
smelt like a hackney-coach, and was shut up like a family vault."
Where Drummond's Bank is, at Charing Cross, once stood the celebrated
tavern "Locket's Ordinary," where Thackeray in the novel "Henry Esmond,"
placed the dispute between Lord Mohun and Lord Castlewood ending at
Leicester Fields and in the killing of the patron of Esmond.
Just beyond Northumberland is Craven Street one of the lonely ways
leading from the busy Strand to the river. On the house No. 7 is a
tablet reading:
Lived Here
Benjamin Franklin
Printer
Philosopher and Statesman
Born 1706
Died 1790
In this street too, in Craven Buildings, in the time of William and
Mary, dwelt charming Mrs. Bracegirdle who was called the Diana of the
stage, and in the same house lived another actress, Madame Vestris. No.
8 is supposed to be the house in which lived Scrooge, of Scrooge and
Marley, in Dickens' "Christmas Carol." On the door is the knocker
pointed out as the one Scrooge looked at on Christmas Eve, imagining it
looked like the face of Marley.
Where the Grand Hotel stands in Northumberland Avenue by Trafalgar
Square was once Northumberland House. This was one of the Strand palaces
begun by Henry Howard, Earl of Northumberland in 1602. For more than two
hundred years it was the home of the Northumberland family and at the
time of its demolishment it was looked upon as the finest historical
house in London.
Leading from the Strand, close by, is Northumberland Street, called
Hortshorne Lane when Ben Jonson lived here with his mother and his
step-father the bricklayer who wanted Jonson to follow the bricklaying
trade. Here he still lived when he came to be known as the great wit,
poet and scholar and the friend of Shakespeare, Bacon and Raleigh.
[Illustration: Trafalgar Square]
The statue of Lord Nelson and the four British lions guard Trafalgar
Square, where are also statues of Napier, Havelock and Gordon. There is,
too, an equestrian figure of George IV. It is told of this king that
when he was Prince of Wales he would insist that he had taken part in
the Battle of Waterloo, whither he pretended he had gone secretly. He
used often to say to the Duke of Wellington, "I was there, wasn't I,
Arthur?" To which the duke would invariably reply discreetly: "I have
frequently heard Your Royal Highness say so." This statue was to have
been placed on the marble arch at Buckingham Palace but was found to be
too large so was set up in the square instead. The statue of Charles I.
in this square was originally placed close by the church in Covent
Garden in 1633 until the Civil War when Parliament sold it to a brasier
who was told to break it up. The brasier, however, buried it, and when
Charles II. succeeded to the throne at the Restoration it was dug up and
placed on a pedestal designed by Grinling Gibbons and set up where it is
now. Trafalgar Square was, in 1829, an open space at Charing Cross where
St. Martin's Lane, the Strand, Cockspur Street, Pall Mall, Whitehall and
Northumberland Avenue came to a point. The 145 foot pillar crowned with
the statue of Lord Nelson commemorates his death at the Battle of
Trafalgar Bay in 1805.
The columns of the façade of the National Gallery were taken from the
Carlton House when that historic palace was demolished in 1827.
SEVEN
A PASSING GLIMPSE OF MANY WINDOWS
Short and narrow Downing Street is the real centre of the British
Empire, for the building numbered 20, looking very much like a cheap
lodging house, has been the home of the Premier of England these two
hundred years, since Robert Walpole was Prime Minister.
Burial in Westminster Abbey is the highest mark of recognition and
honour that can be bestowed by the English nation. In this grand old
church have been crowned all the sovereigns of England from the time of
Saxon Harold. Where the Abbey stands to-day there was once a church
commenced by Sebert, King of Essex, in the year 610. It was on Thorney
Island, the boundaries of which are not now traceable, for closely
cemented partly by nature partly by artifice, it has become a solid
part of the British Isles. The original church was later destroyed by
the Danes. Another quite as large as the present one was begun in 1050
in the reign of Edward the Confessor and parts of this old edifice can
be traced to-day. In 1220, Henry III. began the rebuilding of the
Confessor's church but it was almost destroyed by fire before its
completion. The damage was repaired by Edward I., and the church was
added to by Edward II., Edward III., Henry VII., and indeed by all other
sovereigns down to the year 1714, when Sir Christopher Wren undertook
its complete restoration, adding the western towers as they are now.
Perhaps no other spot in all the world is so truly holy ground and the
number of the great ones of the earth sleeping here is very large.
[Illustration: Interior of St. Margaret's, Westminster]
Under the north walls of Westminster Abbey is the church of St. Margaret
built during the reign of Edward I. on the site of an earlier church.
William Caxton was buried in St. Margaret's in 1491. The fact that there
was a chapel in the old Almonry where his printing press had stood led
to the union branches of the printing trades being called "Chapels" even
to this day. Sir Walter Raleigh is also buried here. The interest of St.
Margaret's centres in a stained glass window made in Holland for Henry
VII., setting forth the Crucifixion, which many times narrowly escaped
destruction and was finally in 1758 purchased by the churchwardens and
given its present resting place.
The open space between Westminster Abbey and Westminster Hospital is the
Broad Sanctuary so called because here in the 15th and 16th centuries
was a sacred place of refuge for criminals who took advantage of the
ancient protection of the Church. The Sanctuary was a square Norman
tower containing two chapels. Elizabeth Woodville, widow of Edward IV.,
was seeking refuge here when her two children were taken from her and
afterwards killed in the Tower by order of the Duke of Gloucester.
Westminster Hall, now connected with the Houses of Parliament, was begun
in 1097 by William Rufus, the Conquerer's son, and it was the scene of
the first English parliaments. Richard II. enlarged the building and was
here himself deposed. English kings up to the time of George IV. held
their coronation festivals here. Charles I. was condemned to death in
this Hall, and a tablet set in the floor marks the spot where he
listened to his sentence of death. Cromwell was here hailed as Lord
Protector, and here a few years later his head was exposed for the
satisfaction of his enemies. Guy Fawkes of Gunpowder Plot fame, William
Wallace, Sir Thomas More, Somerset, Essex, Strafford and a host of other
folk, were tried and sentenced to death in Westminster Hall. It was in
this old Hall, in our own days, that the body of King Edward VII. lay in
state.
Between the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey is an open space
called Old Palace Yard, where in 1618 Sir Walter Raleigh was executed,
and where the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot met death opposite the
very house through which they carried the powder into cellars under the
House of Lords.
In Smith Square just beyond Westminster Abbey is the church of St. John
the Evangelist with its four queer looking towers, one at each corner.
It has been here since 1721. The story is told that it was ordered built
by a lady of wealth who objected to the plans originally drawn, and,
angry with the architect when he explained them to her, she kicked over
a footstool. As it lay upside down she pointed to it and cried
out--"Build it like that." The architect followed her instructions to
the letter, hence the odd appearing towers.
Church Street extending eastward from Smith Square towards the river is
identified with two of the books of Dickens. On the south side midway of
the block lived Jenny Wren, the dolls' dressmaker of "Our Mutual
Friend," whose back was bad and whose legs were queer; and down this
street, Martha, in "David Copperfield," fled to the river bent on
suicide, with Peggoty and Copperfield close at her heels.
What is now St. James's Park was once a marshy tract connected with the
leper hospital afterwards St. James's Palace. It remained uncultivated
until enclosed by Henry VIII., but was not actually laid out as a park
until the time of Charles II. It was this king who had the Mall for the
_palle malle_ game removed from beside St. James's Palace to the long
straight walk that marks the northern boundary of the park. Here the
fashionable game continued to be played by the cavaliers of the court.
For many a year, the Mall was the most fashionable and exclusive of
London's promenades, and it was along it that Charles I. walked to his
execution in 1648. Beau Brummell spent much time on the Mall, whether he
went to show to admiring friends the latest fashions in clothes at the
court of his friend and patron the Prince of Wales afterward George IV.
Birdcage Walk by St. James's Park takes its name from an aviary which
has been here from the time of James I. A continuous line of cages lined
the walk when Charles II. was king, and the "Keeper of the King's Birds"
was an important official.
In York Street to the south of Birdcage Walk, where the Queen Anne
Mansions are to-day was the house to which Milton removed in 1651. The
street was called Petty France then, from the number of French
Protestants residing there. In this house Milton became blind. Here his
wife died leaving three daughters, and later while still living here
Milton married Catherine Woodcock in 1656. A century and a half later
Hazlitt came here to live and set up a stone on the house-side:
Sacred to Milton
Prince of Poets
In the wainscoted room where Milton had often pursued his meditations
Hazlitt visited with Charles and Mary Lamb, Hayden and a host of others.
York Street was finally named in honour of the son of George III.,
Frederick, Duke of York.
In St. James's Park, where Buckingham Palace stands to-day, Buckingham
House was built in 1703 by order of John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham.
Later it was given to Queen Charlotte by George III. to replace
Somerset House as a royal residence. Remodelled in 1825 it became the
present Buckingham Palace, the town residence of the King. The eastern
façade facing St. James's Park was added in 1846.
Separating the private grounds of Buckingham Palace from Green Park is
Constitution Hill, and in this road leading from the Palace to Hyde Park
Corner attempts were made to assassinate Queen Victoria in the years
1840, 1842 and 1849 by lunatics of various degrees.
The first building to the east of Hyde Park Corner is Apsley House,
built in 1785, presented to the Duke of Wellington by the Government;
where he dined the survivors of the Battle of Waterloo every year until
his death.
The much famed Elgin Marbles now in the British Museum when first
brought to London in 1803 from the Acropolis at Athens were placed in
Gloucester House in Piccadilly opposite Green Park. Lord Byron spoke
irreverently of these relics and their home, calling it the:
General mart
For all the mutilated blocks of art.
Aristocratic Park Lane in early days was a narrow path called Tyburn
Lane leading to Tyburn, the place of execution. It is still a narrow
way, but to-day lined with splendid houses and crowded with the
carriages of rich and fashionable Londoners.
Out of Park Lane leads Hertford Street, full of memories of persons of
note who have lived there. A tablet on the house at No. 14 indicates
that it has been the home of Dr. Jenner, the discoverer of vaccination.
Other dwellers in the street were Richard Brinsley Sheridan, dramatist
and politician, who lived several years at No. 10, and Sir Edward Bulwer
Lytton, novelist, whose house was No. 36.
Where Edgware Road now ends at Marble Arch was once an open space taking
its name from the Tyburn brook which flowed from the north to the Thames
River. This was a place of execution and malefactors of all kinds and
conditions were here executed until 1783. Among the many thousands who
met death at Tyburn were Jack Sheppard; Fenton, who killed the Duke of
Buckingham, and the thief Jonathan Wild who even on his way to the
gallows picked the parson's pocket. Oxford Street was then called Tyburn
Street and was the road that led straight from Newgate to the gallows of
Tyburn. The prisoners were carried in a cart, usually sitting on their
coffins, holding in their hands the nosegay presented to them in
accordance with old custom in the church of St. Sepulchre before
starting for their last ride. In each cart was a minister. Arrived at
Tyburn, the cart was stopped beneath the scaffold until the noose was
adjusted, then driven on, leaving the prisoner hanging. Hogarth's
picture of the execution of the "Idle Apprentice" gives a detailed
sketch of the scene and shows the galleries from which the spectators
watched the gruesome sight.
The ancient cemetery of St. George lay near to Hyde Park close by the
Marble Arch. There may still be seen here the Tomb of Laurence Sterne,
author of "Tristram Shandy" and the "Sentimental Journey." Mrs.
Radcliffe, writer of the "Mysteries of Udolpho," is buried in this
graveyard, part of which is now a spot for recreation.
Edgware Road starts northward from the Marble Arch and is the
present-day tracing of an old Roman Road.
The grave of the great actress Sarah Siddons is in St. Mary's
Churchyard, much of which is now a public park in narrow Harrow Road
leading from Edgware Road to the west. Close by is a statue in honour of
the memory of this woman of genius.
Upper Baker Street stretches a short distance from Marylebone Road to
the entrance of Regent's Park. It was in this street that Sherlock
Holmes had his rooms and the house is quite easy to find.
Marylebone got its name from a bourne or rivulet running through a
little hamlet far outside the City of London. As the church of this
village was dedicated to St. Mary it came quite naturally to be known as
St. Mary-on-the-bourne and this in time was shortened to Marylebone.
In Marylebone Road at the end of High Street is Old Mary-le-bone Church
where George Gordon, Lord Byron, was baptised in 1788. Although the
older church on this site which figures often in Hogarth's series of
paintings of "The Rake's Progress," is gone, in the churchyard there is
still the flat tombstone on which the "Idle Apprentice" used to throw
dice of a Sunday.
At No. 1 Devonshire Terrace Charles Dickens lived from 1839 to 1851.
Here he finished "Barnaby Rudge" and "Dombey and Son," and wrote
"Martin Chuzzlewit," "Old Curiosity Shop," "David Copperfield," "The
Haunted Man," "The Christmas Carol," "The Cricket on the Hearth,"
"American Notes," and "The Battle of Life." Here he spent many happy
hours with Carlyle, Longfellow, Hood, Landseer, Macready and a host of
other good and famous men who visited him.
A tablet on the house No. 2 Blandford Street running out of Baker Street
to the east, tells that it was here that Michael Faraday the
distinguished chemist served his apprenticeship.
Hertford House in Manchester Square is the Gaunt House of "Vanity Fair"
and it was from the fourth Marquis of Hertford that Thackeray drew his
picture of Lord Steyne. The building now contains the Wallace Collection
of paintings, given to the nation by Lady Wallace some years ago.
During the last years of his life Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton lived in
Grosvenor Square in the house numbered 12. This is a three-storied
structure with a high iron fence, and before its door pillars on which
are flambeaux snuffers attest the age of the building. These
extinguishers were used by the footmen to put out the flambeaux that
were carried lighted on the backs of carriages at night. Writing of
these lights the poet Gay says:
Yet who the footman's arrogance can quell
Whose flambeau gilds the sashes of Pall-Mall,
When in long rank a train of torches flame,
To light the midnight visits of the dame.
Many men and many women prominent in the life of London have lived in
houses looking upon this Square during its two hundred years of
existence.
Mayfair, an aristocratic residential section of London, has Bond Street
and Park Lane on the east and west; with Piccadilly and Oxford Street on
the south and north. It is named for a fair held where Shepherd's Market
is now in each May until about the middle of the 18th century.
Through the Mayfair district stretches Curzon Street named for the third
Viscount Howe--George Augustus Curzon; noticeable for having no
thoroughfare for carriages at either end. To the west it ends in the
cul-de-sac Seamore Place; to the east continued as Bolton Row it is
halted against Devonshire Gardens.
In Curzon Street at No. 8 lived the great friends of Horace Walpole the
sisters Mary and Agnes Berry. Walpole was a constant visitor during the
latter years of his life and it is thought that he strongly desired to
marry Mary Berry. Just opposite where Queen Street ends was the Curzon
Street Chapel which was demolished in 1900. It was in this church that,
according to general report, George III. was married to Hannah Lightfoot
in 1759. In the house No. 24 Chantrey the sculptor lived in an attic
during the early years of his struggle for recognition. Thackeray tells
us that Becky Sharp took "a small but elegant house in Curzon Street,"
when as Mrs. Crawley she planned to live on nothing a year. Lord Curzon,
former Viceroy of India, is the most notable member of the Curzon
family to-day.
Where Curzon Street ends Seamore Place juts off at right angles, only a
few yards in length. Here at No. 6 Lady Blessington held her salon in
1830.
Chesterfield House, at the southern end of South Audley Street, was
built for the fourth Earl of Chesterfield who lived and died here. He
wrote the famous Chesterfield letters and their style and eloquence
coined the adjective--Chesterfieldian.
Jostling side by side with the homes of the rich, just to the south of
Curzon Street, is a cluster of ancient shattered buildings and dingy
shops two hundred and odd years old. This district is known as
Shepherd's Market. Here the fair was held that gave the name to
Mayfair.
Many notables have lived in Clarges Street, named for Sir Walter
Clarges, a relative of General Monk's wife--Anne Clarges. Early in the
19th century No. 11 in this street was for two years the home of Lady
Emma Hamilton, the friend of the greatest of British Admirals, Lord
Nelson. At No. 21 lived the celebrated lady scholar, Elizabeth Carter, a
comrade of Dr. Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Edmund Burke. In this
street, too, lived Edmund Kean the actor, and Thomas Babington Macaulay,
equally famous in their different arts.
Charles Street has changed less in appearance and atmosphere than any
other of the Mayfair streets. It was here, where the house numbered 42
is, that Beau Brummel lived in 1792.
Memories crowd thickly about the old houses around Berkeley Square, laid
out in 1698. On the west side in the house numbered 45 Lord Clive the
founder of the British Empire in India, lived, and where he killed
himself in 1774. At No. 11 Horace Walpole whose letters give the record
of fashionable society of his day died in 1797.
Below the level of the Lansdowne Gardens, off Berkeley Street, is the
Lansdowne Passage. The curious iron bar that blocks the entrance is a
reminder of the act of a bold highwayman in the last days of the 18th
century. After robbing a man in nearby Piccadilly, and mounting his
horse, he dashed through Bolton Street, then through this passage and up
the stone steps at full gallop. The bars were put up to prevent a
recurrence of this. Anthony Trollope in his book "Phineas Redux" makes
this dark uncanny looking passage the scene of a murder, and the place
where a body was found.
Opposite Lansdowne Passage is Hay Hill, once a favourite resort of
highwaymen. Here the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., and the
Duke of York were halted one night by a man, revolver in hand, who fared
ill, however, as the two nobleman had only three shillings between them.
It was a custom to exhibit on Hay Hill the heads of executed persons as
an example to evildoers. Here was exposed the head of Thomas Wyatt the
younger, in the rebellion of 1554 when he was captured after his attack
on Ludgate Hill.
In Berkeley Street a few doors south of Berkeley Square lived Alexander
Pope, the poet, on the east side of the street opposite Lansdowne House.
Dover Street, named for a very early resident, Henry Jermyn, Lord Dover,
was long a thoroughfare noted for the homes of statesmen. John Evelyn,
the diarist, lived here, near Piccadilly, and in 1705 died here. To-day
it is wholly given over to trade.
Albemarle Street was a dignified thoroughfare, and here lived at
different times James and Robert Adam, two of the famous brothers who
laid out the Adelphi district; Zoffany, who painted the portrait of John
Wilkes; Lord Butte, and Charles and James Fox. Now it is as much of a
business section as it was once residential.
In quiet Savile Row the place of high-priced tailors, on No. 12, a
yellow brick house with link snuffers before the door, is a tablet
telling that here Grote the historian died, and reading:
George Grote
1794-1871
Historian
Died Here
Close by in Savile Row No. 14 is a house now quite conventional in
appearance where Sheridan the dramatist lived and died, as is set forth
on the tablet of the house-front:
[Illustration]
Shunned by his friends Sheridan was arrested for debt on his deathbed
and but for his physician who declared that his removal would be fatal
would have been moved away. In contrast to his lonely deathbed, his
burial in Westminster Abbey was attended by a great concourse of people
of the highest rank who gathered to do homage to the genius of the man
whom living they forgot.
Queer Albany Courtyard lies close by Sackville Street and is entered
from bustling Piccadilly, passing from a thoroughfare of busy shops to a
courtyard of asphalt, quiet and dignified. After a few yards the space
widens and a moderate sized square brick building looms up. This is the
"Albany," with no external suggestion of the many memories within. Byron
lived here, and Lord Lytton, Monk Lewis, Canning and other great folk.
In St. James's Church in Piccadilly almost opposite the "Albany," is
buried the eccentric Duke of Queensberry, better known as "Old Q," and
Charles Cotton, the friend of Izaak Walton, fisherman. A tablet on the
outer wall reads:
Tom D'Urfey
Dyed February 26
1723
This was the poet who wrote "Pills to Purge Melancholy," and whose name
crept into history more because of his friendship for Charles II. and of
the king's for him than for the actual merit of his verse. Addison wrote
of him: "Many an honest gentleman has got a reputation in his country,
by pretending to have been in company with Tom D'Urfey." Lord
Chesterfield, the letter writer, was baptised here.
St. James's Street off Piccadilly and terminating at the gateway of St.
James's Palace is the street in which Lord Byron lived, at No. 8, when
the world acclaimed him a poet. Of St. James's Street Frederick Locker
Lampson wrote:
Why that's where Sacharissa sigh'd
When Waller read his ditty;
Where Byron lived and Gibbon died
And Alvanley was witty.
Sir Christopher Wren died at his home in this street in 1723. Close by
the Pall Mall end the Conservative Club stands on the site of the house
where Gibbon, the historian of the Roman Empire, died in 1794. Next door
to Gibbon's home, set well back from the street, stood the Thatched
House Tavern, for two centuries a meeting place for littérateurs, and
such famous clubs as the Dilettanti and the Literary. The Brothers Club,
of which Dean Swift was one of the organisers, also met in the Thatched
House Tavern and concerning this club Swift wrote to Stella: "The end of
our Club is to advance conversation and friendship, and to reward
learning without interest or recommendation. We take in none but men of
wit, or men of interest; and if we go on as we began, no other Club in
this town will be worth talking of." But the time came before long when
he wrote again to Stella that there was much drinking and little
thinking at the Brothers and that the business the members met to
consider was usually deferred to a more convenient season. In one of the
shops beneath the wall of this tavern was the hair-dressing
establishment of the great Rowland who made a fortune with his Macassar
Oil--a fortune doubtless largely contributed to by his regular
business, since he charged five shillings for cutting hair.
St. James's Street ends at the gateway to St. James's Palace. This
gateway designed by Holbein is one of the few survivals of the original
palace where in the open fields was once a hospital for lepers founded
in 1190. The royal palace took the place of the hospital buildings under
Henry VIII., who had Holbein design the structure. It was a royal abode
until the time of George IV. Here Queen Mary died; here Charles I. slept
the night before he walked through St. James's Park to Whitehall and to
death, and here Charles II. and James II. were born. This, too, was the
refuge for Marie de Medici in some of her unhappy wanderings.
In Bury Street beyond St. James's Street, Steele lived after his
marriage. Horace Walpole also had lodgings here and so had Crabbe and
Tom Moore. Dean Swift lived in this thoroughfare for a time, and it was
from his Bury Street quarters that he wrote to the unfortunate Stella:
"I have the first floor, a dining room, and a bed chamber, at eight
shillings a week, plaguy dear."
Willis's restaurant in King Street stands on the site of Almack's the
famous club opened in 1765, of which strange stories have been
recounted. It is told that when a man dropped ill before the door and
was carried inside club members made bets on his chances of life or
death. When a doctor arrived his ministrations were interfered with
because the members said that any medical aid would affect the fairness
of the bets. So this must have been a great gaming place indeed.
Pall Mall now the thoroughfare of fashionable clubs got its name from
the Italian game of _palle-malle_ played with a palla and
maglia--otherwise ball and mallet--which Charles I. introduced into
England about 1635. Pall Mall was a suburban promenade until 1689 when
it was laid out as it is to-day. At first it was called Catherine Street
in honour of Catherine of Braganza Queen of Charles II. Nell Gwynne
lived in this street from 1671 until her death in 1687 where No. 79 now
is, and it was over the wall of the surrounding garden that she used to
talk with Charles II. Here gas was first experimented with as a street
illuminative, when in 1807 a row of lamps were set up before the
colonnade of Carlton House.
The Smyrna Coffee House celebrated in the days of Queen Anne for the
group of writers who gathered here to talk politics in the evenings was
in Pall Mall close to Waterloo Place on the south side. Prior and Swift
came here much together. Thomson the poet was a regular visitor and put
up a notice announcing that subscriptions would be taken by the author
for "The Four Seasons."
St. James's Square is a reminder of the times of Charles II. who had it
laid out. In a house on the east side, now London House, Lord
Chesterfield was born in 1694. Next door at the south-east corner now
part of Norfolk House, is where George III. was born in 1738. It was
around this square that Savage and Johnson brimful of much patriotism
but having little money used to walk together.
Where now stands the York Column in Waterloo Place leading to Waterloo
Steps and The Mall was the main entrance to Carlton House, built for
Henry Boyle, Lord Carlton, in 1709, and afterwards occupied by the
Prince Regent who became George IV. When the old building was demolished
in 1827 the columns of the entrance were saved and used in 1832 to form
the façade of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square.
The name of the Haymarket has clung to it since the reign of Elizabeth
when it was a mart for the sale of hay and straw and which existed until
1829.
The short and crooked street called Suffolk, off Pall Mall East, began
its existence in the middle of the 17th century and marks the site of
one of the homes of the Earl of Suffolk. It was in this street that
Esther Vanhomrige lived for several years--Vanessa, the story of whose
life is inseparable from that of Dean Swift. It was here also that Moll
Davis lived in a house fitted up for her by King Charles II.
EIGHT
FROM REGENT STREET TO THE SHADOWS OF SOHO
North of Trafalgar Square stands St. Martin-in-the-Fields, on the
foundations of an older church which Henry VIII. built literally in the
fields. Henry VIII., living at Whitehall, objected when the people of
the parish of St. Margaret's at Westminster had the bodies of the dead
carried by the palace. So he had St. Martin's built. The first church
was a small one and being found quite too small the present St. Martin's
took its place. The burial ground that once surrounded the church was
gradually encroached upon to make way for the widening of the street and
was done away with in 1829. Francis Bacon was christened here and in the
old burial ground were laid to rest many whose names are familiar--Jack
Sheppard, John Hunter, famous as a surgeon, Nell Gwynne, and Lord
Mohun, a duellist, concerning whom much may be read in Thackeray's
"Henry Esmond." It was beside St. Martin's that David Copperfield one
wintry night came upon Martha Endell who had once been the companion of
little Em'ly at Mr. Omer's.
St. Martin's Lane leading from Trafalgar Square to Long Acre was famous
when it was called Crooked Lane. Here at different times lived Sir John
Thornhill whose decorations adorn the interior of St. Paul's and whose
daughter married Hogarth; Fuseli, a famous artist; Sir Joshua Reynolds,
Oliver Goldsmith, Roubiliac, the French sculptor; and Thomas Chippendale
the cabinet maker who published "Gentlemen and Cabinet Makers'
Directory."
The Music Hall centre, Leicester Square, has gradually grown out of
Leicester Fields the garden of Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester whose
mansion stood close by where Daly's Theatre is now. On a house facing
the square on the west is a tablet telling that Sir Joshua Reynolds
once lived there; and another on the east side shows where Hogarth
lived.
Around the corner from Leicester Square in Rupert Street Robert Louis
Stevenson, in the "New Arabian Nights," places the Bohemian Cigar Divan
conducted by Theophilus Godall, the Prince Florizel, formerly one of the
magnates of Europe, whom a revolution hurled from the throne of Bohemia
in consequence of his continued absence and edifying neglect of public
business, and who, exiled and impoverished, embarked in the tobacco
trade.
The plain brick building numbered 37 Gerrard just to the south of
Macclesfield Street now occupied by a restaurant was long the home of
Edmund Burke the philosopher and statesman. On the house-front is a
tablet reading:
Edmund Burke
Author and Statesman
Lived Here
B 1729
D 1797
Close by at No. 43 Dryden lived for fourteen years until his death in
1701. Within a few doors on the same side of the way Dickens places the
home of Jaggers, the criminal lawyer of "Great Expectations." The street
itself takes its name from Gerrard, Earl of Macclesfield, whose mansion
stood on the south side facing the present Macclesfield Street. Here in
1694 he died. The house was afterwards occupied by Lord Mohun and his
body was brought here after the fatal duel with the Duke of Hamilton.
The Turk's Head Tavern was to be found in Gerrard Street at the Greek
Street corner. In the tavern, in 1764, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Dr.
Samuel Johnson founded the Literary Club, an association of scholars,
authors and statesmen which has been called "the formidable power in the
commonwealth of letters." The club met here until 1783. In its early
days it was limited to forty members among whom were Boswell, Gibbon,
Oliver Goldsmith and George Colman the elder. It was most exclusive in
those days and for years David Garrick struggled for admittance but
finally became one of them. Many men of note were blackballed,
including the Bishop of Chester and Lord Camden.
Just off busy Shaftesbury Avenue in Wardour Street is the square brick
church of St. Anne's, seeming for all the world to be passing a
contented old age. Well up from the street, behind a wall and an old
iron fence, there is about it still a remnant of green sward but hemmed
in by asphalt spaces that have engulfed the few tombstones. One tablet
tells that William Hazlitt, painter and critic, was buried here in 1830;
another how Theodore, King of Corsica, found a last resting place in
1756 beside the church near which the last years of his life had been
spent in poverty. On the outer wall of the church the tablet erected by
Horace Walpole can yet be deciphered:
Near this place is interred Theodore, King of Corsica, who died in
this parish, December 11, 1756, immediately after leaving the
King's Bench Prison, by the benefit of the Act of Insolvency, in
consequence of which he resigned his kingdom of Corsica for the
use of his creditors.
His funeral expenses were paid by an oilman who declared himself willing
_for once_ to pay the funeral expenses of a king.
Regent Street was at first part of an elaborate plan to provide a wide
and systematic street system for London--a plan that failed and left to
time merely a name for this thoroughfare and for Regent's Park in honour
of the Prince Regent who afterwards became George IV.
Golden Square a space of commonplace residential houses now given over
to business is hidden away in the labyrinthian streets to the east of
Regent Street. It was here that Dickens placed the home of Ralph
Nickleby, in the house No. 2 on the east side, now a small hotel.
Hanover Square was first laid out in 1731 and was the cause of changing
the place for execution of criminals from Tyburn to Newgate. The square
and its surroundings being intended for the homes of wealth and fashion
it was feared that the sight of the criminals passing in carts from
Newgate to Tyburn would be annoying to them.
In Brook Street near Bond Street is a tablet on the house numbered 25
marking it as the one time home of George Frederick Handel. Here he
rehearsed his oratories. Brook Street is a reminder of the old Tye
Bourne Brook the course of which followed its direction.
Lord Byron was born in 1788 at No. 28 Holles Street, between Oxford
Street and Cavendish Square, in a house now given over to trade.
So high above the roadway that its inscription can hardly be made out is
a tablet on the house numbered 50 Wimpole Street on the west side above
New Cavendish. It sets forth that this was the house of Mrs. Browning's
father, from which she went secretly to marry Robert Browning. In this
house she wrote her "Cry of the Children" and other poems.
A narrow dingy thoroughfare of small shops called Poland Street extends
south from Oxford Street. In 1811 Percy Bysshe Shelley then a young man
lived hereabouts attracted to the street by Hogg his biographer who
liked it because of its name which reminded him of "Thaddeus of Warsaw"
and the cause of freedom. William Blake, the painter-poet, also lived in
this street when he depicted "Visionary Portraits" and wrote the "Songs
of Experience."
The "Berners Street Hoax" carried quiet Berners Street into history.
This was brought about by Theodore Hook, a novelist, dramatic writer and
celebrated wit, in this wise. He laid a wager that he could make the
quiet dwelling No. 54, occupied by a demure widow, Mrs. Tottingham, the
talk of the town. Then he wrote hundreds of letters to merchants of
every line, ordering everything from candles to a hearse, and all
reached the street at the same hour. The thoroughfare was blocked and
the story stirred London for a day. Hook after a meteoric career, at
times the friend of royalty and fashion, finally died in 1841 lonely
and miserable. Berners Street was long the home of artists. John Opie,
Royal Academician, author, and painter of "The Slaughter of James I. of
Scotland," lived at No. 8; at No. 13 lived Henry Fuseli the famous
portrait painter and critic of the early part of the 19th century; Henry
Bone the painter of miniatures lived at No. 15. It was here, too, that
the painter of cathedrals David Roberts suffered the apoplectic stroke
that resulted in his death.
In Newman Street jutting from Oxford to the north Benjamin West the
Anglo-American painter lived at No. 14 and here he died. Fanny Kemble
the actress was born in this street.
The Soho neighbourhood lies enclosed by Charing Cross Road, Leicester
Square, Warwick Street and Oxford Street. The name is a reminder of the
old cry of the harriers--Co, ho! The Square of Soho was part of the
garden of the Duke of Monmouth whose home was what is now the south
side of the square and occupied almost the entire space between the
present Greek and Frith streets.
Frith Street extending south from Soho Square has an air of genteel
poverty. In the block below the square on a low house of brick numbered
6 is a tablet:
William Hazlitt
1778-1833
Essayist
Died Here
Here he wrote some of his most notable essays and it was from this house
that his body was taken to the quiet little churchyard of St. Anne's in
Wardour Street.
In the block below the Hazlitt house at No. 7 Mozart lived when eight
years old during the two years he remained in London with his father.
Beyond New Oxford Street to the south in High Street is the church of
St. Giles-in-the-Fields. The fields of this day are the massed and
dreary houses standing so close about the old church that they seem like
to crowd it out of existence. But there is still a bit of green in the
churchyard and among the tombstones a most interesting one telling that
the body of Richard Pendrell lies buried here since 1671, and further
reciting the story of how this Richard Pendrell was the preserver of the
life of King Charles II. after the Battle of Worcester. St. Giles was
built in 1734 and its spire Hogarth has put in his picture of "Beer
Street."
Bloomsbury the heart of the boarding house district where Americans most
congregate is enclosed by Tottenham Court Road, Southampton Road, Euston
Road and on the south by Oxford Street and High Holborn. The name is a
corruption of Blemundsbury, which was the manor of the de Blemunds when
Henry III. was king.
There was formerly a graveyard beside St. George's church in Hart Street
but it has been made into a recreation ground. Munden the actor whom
Charles Lamb wrote of was buried here. It was the spire of this church
that Hogarth incorporated into his fearful picture of "Gin Lane." The
statue on the steeple top is a representation of George I., and inspired
the lines:
When Henry the Eighth left the Pope in the lurch,
The Protestants made him the head of the Church;
But George's good subjects, the Bloomsbury people,
Instead of the church, made him head of the steeple.
Great Russell Street on which the British Museum borders has been the
home of many well-known men. John Philip Kemble the great actor lived
here in the years after 1790 when Drury Lane came under his direction.
His house was demolished when the west wing of the Museum was added.
Gower Street, monotonous in the regularity of its houses, is where, in
the building numbered 110, Charles Darwin lived and where he wrote about
"Coral Reefs." Peter de Wint the painter of English cornfields lived at
No. 40 and Millais at No. 87.
When Sherlock Holmes first came to London by invitation of Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle he lived in one of the staid looking brick houses with a
prim stoop in Montague Street opposite the British Museum. The house is
mentioned in the "Musgrave Ritual."
To Bloomsbury Square in 1780 the Gordon rioters dragged the documents,
paintings and books of Lord Mansfield and made a bonfire of them. The
house, too, of the famous judge which faced the square was burned. It
was a fashionable locality in those days, unlike to-day when for the
most part the houses are used for business offices. The founder of the
British Museum Sir Hans Sloane long lived in this square; and at No. 6
Isaac d'Israeli wrote his "Curiosities of Literature."
In broad Kingsway just a few steps south of High Holborn is the church
of Trinity, contracted and ill kempt. There is nothing pleasant or
romantic about its appearance and it is noteworthy only because of being
on the site of the home in which in 1796 Mary Lamb while temporarily
insane stabbed her mother to death.
Dingy Red Lion Street near by the square of the same name in the house
numbered 9 William Morris started to make the furniture that was to
leave its mark on all such work in future times. Rossetti and
Burne-Jones lived at No. 15.
At 48 Doughty Street Charles Dickens lived and here he finished
"Pickwick Papers" and "Oliver Twist," wrote "Nicholas Nickleby," and
began to write "Barnaby Rudge."
INDEX
Adam Brothers, 127, 153
Addison, Joseph, 60, 121, 156
Adelphi Terrace, 125, 126
Adelphi, The, 127, 153
Adelphi Theatre, 125
"Albany, The," 155
Albemarle Street, 153
Aldermanbury, 19
Aldersgate, 40
Aldgate, 40, 64
Aldgate Pump, 64
All Hallows, Barking, 73
All Hallows, Lombard Street, 61
All Hallows on the Wall, 47
All Hallows, Staining, 62
Almack's Club, 159
"Alsatia," 88
"American Notes," 147
_Angelica_, in "Love for Love," 104
Apsley House, 142
Arne, T. A., 124
Arundel House, 113
Arundel Street, 113
Askew, Anne, 16
Austin Friars, 51
Baker Street, 145
Bank of England, 21, 52
Barbican, 41
Barham, R. H., 54
"Barnaby Rudge," 28, 146, 176
Barnard's Inn, 106
Bartholomew Fair, 32, 35
"Bastard, The," 107
Bath, Roman, 115
"Battle of Life," 147
"Bayard's Castle," 80
Beaumont, Francis, 20
_Becky Sharp_, in "Vanity Fair," 149
Bedford's Coffee House, 123
"Beer Street," 173
"Beggar's Opera," 93, 104
Bell Tavern, 25
Berkeley Square, 151
Berkeley Street, 153
Berners Street Hoax, 170
Berry, Agnes, 149
Berry, Mary, 149
_Betsy Trotwood_ in "David Copperfield," 127
Bevis Marks, 49
Billingsgate, 75
Birch, Dr. Thomas, 61
Birdcage Walk, 140
Bishop's Court, 101
Bishopsgate, 40, 47
Bishopsgate Street Within, 50
Blackfriars, 81
Blackfriars Theatre, 82
Blackstone, Sir William, 99
Blake, William, 170
Blandford Street, 147
"Bleak House," 101, 102, 107
Bleeding Heart Yard, 109
Blessington, Lady, 150
Bloomsbury, 173
Bloomsbury Square, 175
Boar's Head, 76
Boleyn, Anne, 72, 83
Bolt Court, 90
Bolton Street, 152
Bone, Henry, 171
Bonehill Fields, 44
Boswell, James, 105, 166
Bourchier, Elizabeth, 42
Bow Church, 13
Bow Street, 119
Bracegirdle, Mrs., 104, 132
Brand, John, 75
Bread Street, 53
"Brick Lane Branch of the United Grand Junction Ebenezer
Temperance Association," 68
Bridewell Palace, 83
Bridewell Prison, 82
Broad Sanctuary, 137
Brontë, Charlotte, 25
Brook Street, 169
Brooke Street, 108
Brothers Club, 157
Browning, Mrs., 169
Buckingham House, 141
Buckingham Palace, 141
Buckingham Street, 127
Bucklersbury, 11
Bunhill Fields, 43
Bunhill Row, 44
Bunyan, John, 44
Burbage, James, 82
Burke, Edmund, 165
Burleigh, Lord, 118
Burne-Jones, 176
Bury Street, 158
Butler, Samuel, 124
Button, Daniel, 121, 122, 124
Button's Coffee House, 121
Byron, Lord, 143, 146, 155, 156, 169
Cab stand, The First, 114
Cade, Jack, 11, 56, 79
Camomile Street, 50
Cannon Street, 55
Canute, 49
Carey, Henry, 121
Carlton House, 134, 161
Carter, Elizabeth, 151
Catherine Street, 159
Cave, the publisher, 36
Cawarden, Sir Thomas, 81
Caxton, William, 136
Chancery, Inns of, 97
Chandos Street, 126
Change Alley, 59
Chapter Coffee House, 25
Charing Cross, 128, 129
Charing Cross Railway Station, 128, 130
Charles Street, 151
Charterhouse, 35
Chatterton, Thomas, 108
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 64, 74
Cheapside, 12, 21
"Chepe," 12
Cherringe, 129
Cheshire Cheese, 89
Chesterfield, Lord, 150, 156, 160
Chesterfield House, 150
Chesterfield Letters, 150
Child's Bank, 92
"Chimes, The," 104
Chippendale, Thomas, 164
"Christmas Carol," 132, 147
Church Street, 69, 139
Clarges Street, 151
"Clarissa Harlowe," 88
Clifford's Inn, 101
Clive, Lord, 151
Cloth Fair, 34, 35
Cobham, Eleanor, 87
Cock Lane Ghost, 31, 37
Cock Tavern, 91
Colechurch, Peter of, 78
Colman, George, the Elder, 166
Column, York, 161
Conduit, The Great, 11
"Confessions of an English Opium Eater," 118
Congreve, William, 103, 114, 120
Constitution Hill, 142
"Coral Reefs," 174
Cotton, Charles, 156
"Country Girl, The," 124
Covent Garden, 122
Coverdale, Miles, 77
Cowper, William, 98
Crabbe, George, 158
Crane Court, 90
Cranmer, Archbishop, 72
Craven Street, 131
"Cricket on the Hearth," 147
Cripplegate, 40, 41, 42
Cromwell, Oliver, 42, 116, 138
_Crook_, of "Bleak House," 102
Crooked Lane, 164
Crosby Hall, 50
Cross, Eleanor's, 21, 22, 130
Cross, St. Paul's, 23
"Cry of the Children," 169
"Curiosities of Literature," 175
Curtain Theatre, 45
Curzon Street, 149
Curzon Street Chapel, 149
Czar's Head, 74
_Daniel Doyce_ in "Little Dorrit," 109
Darwin, Charles, 174
"David Copperfield," 127, 129, 130, 139, 147, 164
DeFoe, Daniel, 28, 44
De Quincey, Thomas, 117
Devereux Court, 100
Devil Tavern, 92, 93
Devonshire Terrace, 146
Dickens, Charles, 28, 90, 104, 105, 106, 127, 129, 146, 176
Dilettanti Club, 157
D'Israeli, Isaac, 175
Doctors' Commons, 24
"Dombey and Son," 64, 70, 146
Dover Street, 153
Downing Street, 135
_Doyce, Daniel_ in "Little Dorrit," 109
Doyle, Conan, 175
Dryden, John, 120, 165
D'Urfey, Tom, 156
Dutch Church, 51
Duval, Claude, 28, 126
East India Company, 66
Edgware Road, 145
Eleanor's Cross, 21, 22, 130
"Elegy written in a Country Churchyard," 67
Elephant Tavern, 61
Elgin Marbles, 142
"Essays of Elia," 121
Essex Head Tavern, 112
Essex House, 111
Essex House Water Gate, 111
Essex Street, 112
Evelyn, John, 119, 153
Exeter House, 111, 118
Fair, Bartholomew, 32, 35
Faraday, Michael, 147
"Farmer's Boy," 18
Fawkes, Guy, 138
Fenton, Lavina, 104
Fetter Lane, 91
Fielding, Henry, 85, 120, 123
Fines, Sir John, 46
Finsbury Pavement, 47
Finsbury Square, 46
Fire, The Great, 12, 30
Fitz Walter, Maud, 81
Fitz Walter, Robert, 80
Flambeau snuffers, 148
Fleet Brook, 82, 85, 87
Fleet Prison, 85
Fleet Street, 87
_Florizel, Prince_, 165
Foote, Samuel, 123
Forest, Miles, 38
Forster, John, 104
"Fortunes of Nigel," 89
Fountain Court, 100
Fountain, Temple, 100
"Four Seasons, The," 160
Fox Court, 107
Foxe, John, 42
"Frankenstein," 55
Franklin, Benjamin, 131
Friday Street, 21
Frith Street, 172
Frobisher, Martin, 42
Furnival's Inn, 106
Fuseli, Henry, 164, 171
Gallery, National, 134, 161
Garraway's Coffee House, 60
Garrick, David, 123, 125, 126, 166
Gas, First used, 160
Gate, York House Water, 127
Gay, John, 59, 93, 148
"Gentleman and Cabinet Maker's Directory," 164
"Gentleman's Magazine," 36
Gerrard Street, 165
Gibbon, Edward, 157, 166
Gibbons, Grinling, 91, 119, 124, 157
Giltspur Street, 30
"Gin Lane," 174
Gloucester House, 143
Godwin, Mary, 55
Golden Cross Hotel, 130
Golden Square, 168
Goldsmith, Oliver, 88, 89, 93, 97, 99, 164, 166
Gordon, Lord George, 28
Gordon Riots, 28, 175
Goswell Road, 37
Gough Square, 89
Gower Street, 174
Gray's Inn, 96, 107
Gray, Thomas, 67
Great Bell Alley, 17
Great Conduit, 11
"Great Expectations," 106
Great Fire, 12, 30
Great Plague, 17, 44, 63
Great Tower Hill, 72
Grecian Coffee House, 100
Gresham, Sir Thomas, 10, 51
Gresham Street, 18
_Grewgious, Mr._, in "Bleak House," 105
Grey, Lady Jane, 11, 72
Grosvenor Square, 147
Grote, George, 154
Grub Street, 42, 43
_Guardian, The_, 121
Guildhall, 15
Guildhall Yard, 15
Gunpowder Alley, 86
Gunpowder Plot, 138
Gwynne, Nell, 160, 163
Hamilton, Lady, 151
"Hamlet," 45
Handel, George Frederick, 169
Hanover Square, 168
Hart Street, 62
Harvey, 33
"Haunted Man, The," 147
Hawksmoor, Nicholas, 58
Hay Hill, 152
Haymarket, 161
Hayward, John, 17
Hazlitt, William, 108, 141, 167, 172
"Henry Esmond," 131, 164
Hertford House, 147
Hertford Street, 143
Hobson's Choice, 48
Hogarth, William, 62, 88, 123, 144, 146, 165, 173
Holbein, Hans, 65
Holborn Viaduct, 85
Hole Bourne, 85
"Hole in the Wall," 126
Holy Trinity Church, 70
Hood, Thomas, 10, 127
Hook, Theodore, 170
Houndsditch, 39, 49
"Hudibras," 124
Hume, David, 127
Hungerford Market, 128
Hungerford Stairs, 129
Hunter, John, 163
"Idle Apprentice," 144, 146
"Ingoldsby Legends," 54
Inner Temple, 96
Inns of Chancery, 97
Inns of Court, 96
Ironmonger Lane, 12
Ivy Lane, 26
Ivy Lane Club, 26
_Jaggers, Mr._, in "Great Expectations," 166
Jeffreys, Judge, 19, 74
Jenner, Dr., 143
_Jenny Wren_ in "Our Mutual Friend," 139
Jewin Street, 40
_Jo_, in "Bleak House," 107
Johnson, Charles, 121
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 26, 36, 88, 89, 90, 106, 112, 161, 166
Johnson's Court, 90
_John Westlock_, in "Martin Chuzzlewit," 100
Jonathan's Coffee House, 60
Jones, Inigo, 34, 80, 103, 116, 123
Jonson, Ben, 20, 92, 132
Kean, Edmund, 151
Keats, John, 48
Kemble, Fanny, 171
Kemble, John Philip, 174
King's Head Tavern, 26
Knightrider Street, 30, 55
Kynaston, Edward, 124
Lamb Alley, 40
Lamb, Charles, 66, 98, 120
Lamb, Charles and Mary, 141
Lamb, Mary, 120, 176
Lampson, Frederick Locker, 156
Lansdowne Gardens, 152
Lansdowne Passage, 152
"Last of the Barons," 27
Leicester Fields, 131, 164
Leicester Square, 164
"Life of Johnson," 105
Lightfoot, Hannah, 149
Lincoln's Inn, 96, 102
Lincoln's Inn Fields, 102
Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, 103
Lintot, Bernard, 93
"Lirriper's Lodgings, Mrs.," 113
Literary Club, 166
Little Britain, 34
"Little Dorrit," 109
Locket's Ordinary, 131
Lombard Street, 58
London Bridge, 17, 78
London Stone, 56, 57
London Wall, 39, 40, 41, 43, 47, 83
"Love for Love," 103, 114
Lovelace, Richard, 86
Love Lane, 19
Lower Thames Street, 74
Ludgate, 39
Ludgate Hill, 83
Lytton, Bulwer, 27, 143, 147, 155
Macclesfield, Countess of, 107
Maidenhead Court, 40
Maiden Lane, 125
Mall, The, 140
Mansion House, 57
"Martin Chuzzlewit," 147
Martyrs, Nonconformist, 32
Martyrs, Protestant, 32
Marylebone, 146
Mary-le-Bone Church, 146
Mayfair, 148, 150
"Memories of the Reign of Elizabeth," 61
Mermaid Club, 20
Mermaid Tavern, 20
Middle Temple, 96, 99
Middle Temple Hall, 99
Middle Temple Lane, 99
Milk Street, 20
Millais, 175
Miller, Joe, 113
Milton, John, 19, 40, 41, 42, 44, 53, 54, 88, 141
Milton Street, 42
Mincing Lane, 61
Minories, 39, 69
Mitre, Sign of the, 109
Mohun, Lord, 164, 166
Montague Street, 175
"Monthly Magazine," 90
Monument to Great Fire, 76
Moore, Tom, 158
Moorfields, 46, 47
More, Sir John, 73
More, Sir Thomas, 20, 50, 138
More, Sir William, 82
Morris, William, 176
"Mourning Bride, The," 114
Mozart, 172
"Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings," 113
"Musgrave Ritual," 175
"Mysteries of Udolpho," 145
Nando's Coffee House, 100
National Gallery, 134, 161
Nelson, Lord, 133, 134, 151
"New Arabian Nights," 165
"Newcombs, The," 36
Newgate, 27, 39
Newgate Prison, 27, 28
Newman Street, 171
"News From the Farm," 18
Newton, Isaac, 90
Newton, John, 58
"Nicholas Nickleby," 168, 176
_Nickleby, Ralph_, in "Nicholas Nickleby," 168
"Night Thoughts," 75
Norfolk Street, 113
Northumberland House, 132
Northumberland Street, 132
Oates, Titus, 28
"Old Bachelor, The," 114
Old Bailey, 39
"Old Curiosity Shop," 49, 147
Old Jewry, 11
Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, 52
Old Palace Yard, 138
"Old Q," 155
"Oliver Twist," 64, 176
Opie, John, 171
Otway, Thomas, 73
"Our Mutual Friend," 139
Outer Temple, 96
Owen, Sir Richard, 33
_Palle-Malle_, 159
Pall Mall, 159
"Panegyrical Epistle," 59
Panyer Alley, 25, 26
"Paradise Lost," 42, 44
"Paradise Regained," 44
Paternoster Row, 24, 25
Paterson, William, 21
Pavement, Finsbury, 47
Pendrell, Richard, 173
Penn, William, 28, 73
Pepys, Samuel, 63, 92, 104, 127, 128
Peter of Colechurch, 78
Peter of Savoy, 114, 117
Peter the Great, 74, 113
Petty France, 141
Philips, Ambrose, 121
"Phineas Redux," 152
"Pickwick Papers," 37, 68, 86, 130, 176
Pie Corner, 29
Pie Powder Court, 30
"Pilgrim's Progress," 44
"Pills to Purge Melancholy," 156
_Pinch, Ruth_, in "Martin Chuzzlewit," 100
_Pinch, Tom_, in "Martin Chuzzlewit," 100
_Pip_, in "Great Expectations," 106
Plane Tree, Wood Street, 22
Plague, The Great, 17, 44, 63
Playhouse Yard, 81
_Plornish_, in "Little Dorrit," 109
Plough Court, 60
Pocahontas, 29
_Pocket, Herbert_, in "Great Expectations," 106
Poland Street, 170
_Polly Peacham_, in "The Beggar's Opera," 104
"Poor Susan," 23
Pope, Alexander, 60, 76, 121, 153
Pope's Head Alley, 58
Pope's Head Tavern, 59
"Popular Antiquitus," 75
Postman's Park, 39
Poultry, The, 10
Powell, Mary, 40
Protestant Martyrs, 33
Pudding Lane, 12, 30, 77
Radcliffe, Mrs., 145
Rahere, 33
"Rake's Progress, The," 146
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 72, 137, 138
_Ralph Nickleby_, 168
Ramsey, Mary, 64
"Rasselas," 106
Red Cross Street, 41
Red Lion Street, 176
Regent's Park, 168
Regent's Street, 168
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 164, 166
Richardson, Samuel, 88
Road, Edgware, 145
Robert Street, 127
Roberts, David, 171
"Robinson Crusoe," 44
Roman Bath, 115
Roses, War of the, 98
Rossetti, 176
Roubiliac, 164
Round Church, 97
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 127
Rowland, hair dresser, 157
Royal Exchange, 10
Royal Society, 91
"Rule Britannia," 124
Rupert Street, 165
"Rural Tales," 18
Russell Street, 121
_Ruth Pinch_, in "Martin Chuzzlewit," 100
St. Alban's, Love Lane, 19
St. Alphage's, 43
St. Andrew's, 108
St. Andrew Undershaft, 65
St. Anne's, Wardour Street, 167
St. Augustine's, 54
St. Bartholomew the Great, Churchyard, 34
St. Bartholomew the Less, 33
St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 33
St. Benet's, Paul's Wharf, 80
St. Botolph, Without Aldersgate, 39
St. Botolph, Without Bishopsgate, 47
St. Botolph, Aldgate, 69
St. Bride's, 87
St. Bride's Lane, 88
St. Catherine Cree, 65
St. Clement Danes, 112
St. Clement, Eastcheap, 77
St. Dunstan's-in-the-East, 74, 75
St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, 91
St. Edmund's, 60
St. Ethelburga, 50
St. Etheldreda's, 109
St. George's, Hart Street, 173
St. George's Cemetery, 145
St. Giles, Cripplegate, 41
St. Giles in the Fields, 172, 173
St. Helen's, 51
St. James's, Curtain Road, 45
St. James Garlickhithe, 79
St. James's Palace, 158
St. James's Park, 139, 140, 141
St. James's, Piccadilly, 155
St. James's Square, 160
St. James's Street, 156
St. John's, St. John's Square, 36
St. John the Evangelist, 139
St. John's Gate, 36
St. John's Lane, 36
St. Lawrence Jewry, 16
St. Magnus the Martyr, 77
St. Margaret, Westminster, 136
St. Margaret Pattens, 61
St. Martin's, 38
St. Martin in the Fields, 163
St. Martin's Lane, 164
St. Martin's-le-Grand, 38
St. Martin's, Ludgate Hill, 84
St. Martin's Sanctuary, 38
St. Mary, Abchurch, 57
St. Mary, Aldermanbury, 19
St. Mary at Hill, 75
St. Mary's Churchyard, 145
St. Mary, Colechurch, 78
St. Mary le Bow, 13
St. Mary-le-Strand, 114
St. Mary, Somerset, 80
St. Mary Woolnoth, 57
St. Michael, Cornhill, 67
St. Michael's, College Hill, 79
St. Mildred, Bread Street, 55
St. Nicholas Cole Abbey, 55
St. Olave, Hart Street, 63
St. Paul's Cathedral, 23, 24
St. Paul's Churchyard, 24
St. Paul's, Covent Garden, 122, 123, 124
St. Paul's Cross, 23
St. Peter's, Cornhill, 67
St. Sepulchre's, 28, 29, 144
St. Stephen's, Colman Street, 17
St. Stephen's, Walbrook, 9
St. Swithin's, 56
St. Vedast's, 23
Sacheverell, Lucy, 86
Salisbury Square, 88
Sanctuary, Broad, 137
Sanctuary of St. Martin, 38
Savage, Richard, 107, 108, 121, 161
Savile Row, 154
Savoy Church, 116, 117
Savoy Court, 116, 117
Savoy Hotel, 118
Savoy Palace, 117
Savoy, Peter of, 117, 118
Scott, Walter, 89
"Scottish Chiefs," 32
_Scrooge_, in "Christmas Carol," 132
Seamore Place, 150
"Sentimental Journey," 145
Sergeant's Inn, 101
Shakespeare, William, 25, 45, 51
Shelley, Mrs., 55
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 55, 170
Shepherd's Market, 148, 150
Sheppard, Jack, 28, 144, 163
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 123, 143, 154, 155
_Sherlock Holmes_, 145, 146, 175
Shore, Jane, 58
Siddons, Sarah, 128, 145
"Sign of the Spread Eagle," 54
Simon, Lord Lovat, 73
Sloane, Sir Hans, 175
Smith, Captain John, 29
Smith Square, 139
Smithfield, 32
Smyrna Coffee House, 160
Snuffers, Flambeau, 148
Soho, 171
Soho Square, 171
Somerset, Earl of, 115
Somerset House, 115
Somerset, Protector, 73
"Song of the Shirt," 127
"Songs of Experience," 170
Southampton Street, 125
South Sea Bubble, 59
"Spread Eagle, Sign of the," 54
Staple Inn, 105
Sterne, Lawrence, 145
Steele, Richard, 79, 121, 128, 158
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 165
_Steyne, Lord_, in "Vanity Fair," 147
Stow, John, 65
Strand, The, 110
Strand Lane, 114
Suffolk Street, 161
Surrey Street, 114
"Survey of London," 65
Sutton, Thomas, 35
Swan with two Necks, 18
Swift, Dean, 43, 157, 158, 162
Symond's Inn, 102
Tea, first sold, 60
Temple, The, 95
Temple Bar Memorial, 110
Temple Church, 97
Temple Fountain, 100
Temple Gardens, 98
Terriss, William, 125
Thackeray, William Makepeace, 147, 149
"Thaddeus of Warsaw," 170
Thatched House Tavern, 157
_Theophilus Godall_, in "New Arabian Nights," 165
Thomson, James, 160
Thorney Island, 135
Thornhill, Sir John, 164
Threadneedle Street, 52
"Tom Jones," 120
_Tom Pinch_, in "Martin Chuzzlewit," 100
Tom's Coffee House, 122
Tower Hill, 72, 73
Tower of London, 71
Trafalgar Square, 133
"Tragedy of Cato," 60
Traitor's Gate, 72
Trinity Church, 175
Trinity Gardens, 72
"Tristram Shandy," 145
"Trivia," 94
Trollope Anthony, 152
_Trotwood, Betsy_, in "David Copperfield," 127
_Tulkinghorn_, in "Bleak House," 104
Turk's Head Tavern, 166
Turner, William, 124, 125
Turpin, Dick, 28
"Twelfth Night," 99
Tyburn, 144
Tyburn Brook, 144, 169
Tyburn Lane, 143
Tyburn Street, 144
Tyler, Wat, 32, 78
"Uncommercial Traveller," 69
Urwin, William, 120
Vanhomrige, Esther, 162
"Vanity Fair," 147
Vestris, Madame, 132
_Vholes, Mr._, in "Bleak House," 102
Viaduct, Holborn, 85
"Vicar of Wakefield," 89
Villiers, George, Duke of Buckingham, 127, 128
Villiers Street, 128, 129
"Visionary Portraits," 170
Voltaire, 125
Walbrook, 9
Wall of London, 39, 41, 43, 83
Wallace Collection, 147
Wallace, William, 32, 138
Walpole, Horace, 149, 151, 158, 167
Walton, Izaak, 101
Wardour Street, 167
War of the Roses, 98
Warren's Blacking Factory, 129
Warwick, the King Maker, 27
Warwick Lane, 27
Warwick Palace, 27
Waterloo Steps, 161
Watling Street, 54
Watts, Isaac, 44
Wednesday Club, 21
Wellclose Square, 70
Wellington, Duke of, 142
Wesley, John, 45
Wesley, Susannah, 44
West, Benjamin, 171
West, Thomas, 122
_Westlock, John_, in "Martin Chuzzlewit," 100
Westminster Abbey, 135
Westminster Hall, 137
Whitefriars, 88
White Hart Tavern, 48
White Tower, 71
Whittington, Dick, 13, 63, 79
Wild, Jonathan, 84, 144
"Will Waterproof's Lyric," 92
Will's Coffee House, 120
Wine Office Court, 89
Wint, Peter de, 174
Woodcock, Catherine, 19, 141
Wooden Midshipman, of "Dombey and Son," 70
Wood Street Plane-Tree, 22
Woodville, Elizabeth, 137
Wordsworth, William, 22
Wren, Sir Christopher, 9, 14, 156
_Wren, Jenny_, in "Our Mutual Friend," 139
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 73, 153
Wycherley, 119, 120, 124
York Column, 161
York House Water Gate, 127
York Street, 118, 141
Young, Edward, 75
Zoffany, 153
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