Side by side.
All within is dark as night.
In the windows is no light;
And no murmur at the door
So frequent on its hinge before.
Silence everywhere. The blinds are down in every window of the tall
stack of offices, the doors are all closed, if there are shutters they
are up, there are no carte in the streets, no porters carry burdens,
there are no wheelbarrows, there is no more work done of any kind or
sort. Even the taverns and the eating-shops are shut--no one is
thinking of work. To-morrow--Monday--poverty will lift again his cruel
arm, and drive the world to work with crack of whip. The needle-woman
will appear again with her bundle of work; the porters, the packers,
the carmen, the clerks, the merchants themselves will all come
back--the vast army of those who earn their daily bread in the City
will troop back again. But as for to-day, nobody works; we are all at
rest; we are at peace; we are taking holiday.
This is the day--this is the time--for those who would study the City
and its monuments. It is only on this day, and at this time, that the
churches are all open. It is only on this day, and at this time, that
a man may wander at his ease and find out how the history of the past
is illustrated by the names of the streets, by the houses and the
sites, and by the few old things which still remain, even by the old
things, names and all, which have perished. The area of the City is
small; its widest part, from Blackfriars to the Tower, is but a single
mile in length, and its greatest depth is no more that half a mile But
it is so crowded and crammed full of sites sacred to this or that
memory of its long life of two thousand busy years, there is so much
to think of in every street, that a pilgrim may spend all his Sunday
mornings for years and never get to the end of London City. I should
hardly like to say how many Sunday mornings I have myself spent in
wandering about the City, Yet I can never go into it without making
some new discovery. Only last week, for instance, I discovered in the
very midst of the City, in its most crowded part, nothing less than a
house--with a private garden. I had thought that the last was
destroyed about four years ago when they pulled down a certain noble
old merchant's mansion, No, there is one other stall left; perhaps
more. There are gardens, I know, belonging to certain Companies'
Halls; there is the ivy-planted garden of Amen Court; there are
burying-grounds laid out as gardens; but this is the only house I know
in the City which has a private garden at the back. One must not say
where it is, otherwise that garden will be seized and built upon. This
the owner evidently fears, for he has surrounded it by a high wall, so
that no one shall be able to seize it, no rich man shall covet it, and
offer to buy it and build great warehouses upon it, and the
underground railway shall not dig it out and swallow it up.
In such journeyings and wanderings one must not go with an empty mind,
otherwise there will be neither pleasure nor profit. The traveller,
says Emerson, brings away from his travels precisely what he took
there. Not his mind but his climate, says Horace, does he change who
travels beyond the seas. In other words, if a man who knows nothing of
archæology goes to see a collection of flint implements, or a person
ignorant of art goes to see a picture gallery, he comes away as
ignorant as he went, because flint implements by themselves, or
pictures by themselves, teach nothing. They can teach nothing. So, if
a man who knows nothing of history should stand before Guildhall on
the quietest Sunday in the whole year he will see nothing but a
building, he will hear nothing but the fluttering wings of the
pigeons. And if he wanders in the streets he will see nothing but tall
and ugly houses, all with their blinds pulled down. Before he goes on
a pilgrimage in the City he must first prepare his mind by reading
history. This is not difficult to find. If he is in earnest he will
get the great 'Survey of London,' by Strype and Stow, published in the
year 1720 in two folio volumes. If this is too much for him, there are
Peter Cunningham, Timbs, Thornbury, Walford, Hare, Loftie, and a dozen
others, all of whom have a good deal to tell him, though there is
little to tell, save a tale of destruction, after Strype and Stow.
Thus, before he begins he should learn something of Roman London,
Saxon London, Norman London, of London medieval, London under the
Tudors, London of the Stuarts, and London of the Georges. He should
learn how the municipality arose, gaining one liberty after another,
and letting go of none, but all the more jealously guarding each as a
sacred inheritance; how the trade of the City grew more and more; how
the Companies were formed, one after the other, for the protection of
trade interests. Then he should learn how the Sovereign and great
nobles have always kept themselves in close connection with the City,
even in the proudest times of the Barons, even in the days when the
nobles were supposed to have most despised the burgesses and the men
of trade. He should learn, besides, how the City itself, its houses,
and its streets, grew and covered up the space within the wall, and
spread itself without; he should learn the meaning of the names--why
one street is called College Hill and another Jewry and another
Minories. Armed with such knowledge as this, every new ramble will
bring home to him more and more vividly the history of the past. He
will never be solitary, even at noon on Sunday morning even in Suffolk
Street or Pudding Lane, because all the streets will be thronged with
figures of the dead, silent ghosts haunting the scenes where they
lived and loved and died, and felt the fierce joys of venture, of
risk, and enterprise.
But let no man ramble aimlessly. It is pleasant, I own, to wander from
street to street idly remembering what has happened here; but it is
more profitable to map out a walk beforehand, to read up all that can
be ascertained about it before sallying forth, and to carry a notebook
to set down the things that may be observed or discovered.
Or, which is another method, he may consider the City with regard to
certain divisions of subjects. He may make, for instance, a special
study of the London churches. The City, small as it is, formerly
contained nearly 150 parishes, each with its church, its
burying-ground, and its parish charities. Some of these were not
rebuilt after the Great Fire, some have been wickedly and wantonly
destroyed in these latter days. A few yet survive which were not
burned down in that great calamity. These are St. Helen and St.
Ethelburga; St. Katherine Cree, the last expiring effort of Gothic,
consecrated by Archbishop Laud; All Hallows, Barking, and St. Giles.
Most of the existing City churches were built by Wren, as you know. I
think I have seen them nearly all, and in every one, however
externally unpromising, I have found something curious, Interesting,
and unexpected--some wealth of wood-carving, some relic of the past
snatched from the names, some monument, some association with the
medieval city.
Of course, it is well to visit these churches on the Saturday
afternoon or Monday morning, when they are swept before and after the
service; but as one is never quite certain of finding them open, it
is, perhaps, best to take them after service on the Sunday. If you
show a real interest in the church, you will find the pew-opener or
verger pleased to let you see everything, not only the monuments and
the carvings in the church, but also the treasures of the vestry, in
which are preserved many interesting things--old maps, portraits, old
deeds and gifts, old charities--now all clean swept away by the
Charity Commission--ancient Bibles and Prayer-books, muniment chests,
embroidered palls, old registers with signatures historical--all these
things are found in the vestry of the City church.
Then there are the churchyards. We are familiar with the little oblong
area open to the street, surrounded by tall warehouses, one tomb left
in the middle, and three headstones ranged against the wall, patches
of green mould to represent grass, and a litter of scraps of paper and
orange-peel. This is fondly believed to be the churchyard of some old
church burned down or rebuilt. There are dozens of these in the City;
it is sometimes difficult to find out the name of the church to which
they once belonged. Every time a building is erected adjacent to them
they become smaller, and when they happened to lie behind the houses
they were shut in and forgotten, covered over and built upon when
nobody was looking, and so their very memory perished.
It is curious to look for them. For instance, there is a certain great
burying ground laid down in Strype's map of the year 1720. It is there
represented as so large that to cover it up would be a big thing. No
single man would dare to appropriate all at once so huge a slice of
land. I went, therefore, in search of this particular churchyard, and
I found a very curious thing. On one side of the ground stands a great
printing office. As the gate was open I walked in. At the back of the
printing office is a flagged court or yard. In the court the boys--it
was the dinner hour--were leaping and running. Not one of them knows
now that he is running and jumping over the bones of his ancestors. It
is clean forgotten that here was a great churchyard. Another great
burying ground long since built over lay at the back of Botolph's Lane
in Thames Street. That is built over and forgotten. There is another
where lies the dust of the marvellous boy Chatterton. I am due that of
the thousands who every day seek this spot not one can tell or
remember that it was once a burying ground. On this spot the paupers
of the parish of St. Andrew's, Holborn, were buried--Chatterton, that
poor young pauper! with them. And it is now a market, Farringdon
Market--close to Farringdon Street--opposite the site of the Old Fleet
Prison whence came so many of the bodies which now lie beneath these
flags.
Or, a pilgrim may consider the City with special reference to the
great Houses which formerly stood within its walls. There were palaces
in the City--King Athelstan had one; King Richard II. lived for a time
in the City; Richard III. lived here; Henry V. had a house here. Of
the great nobles, the Beaumonts, Scropes, Arundells, Bigods all had
houses. The names of Worcester House, Buckingham House, Hereford
House, suggest the great Lords who formerly lived here. And the names
of Crosby Hall, Basinghall, Gresham House, College Hill, recall the
merchants who built themselves palaces and entertained kings.
Again, there are the City Companies and their Halls. Very few visitors
ever make the round of the Halls: yet they are most curious, and
contain treasures great and various. It is not always easy to see
these treasures, but the conscientious pilgrim, who, by the way, must
not seek entrance into these Halls on the Sunday morning, will
persevere until he has managed to see them all.
As for the sights of the City--the things which Baedeker enumerates,
and which foreign and country visitors run to see--the Tower, the
Monument, the Guildhall, the Mansion House, the Royal Exchange, the
Mint, St. Paul's, and the rest, I say nothing, because the pilgrim
does not waste his Sunday morning over things to be seen as well on
any other day. But there are some things to be seen every day which
are best approached on Sunday, by reason of the peace which prevails
and a certain solemnity in the air. I would, for instance, choose to
visit the Charter House on a Sunday morning, I would sit with the
Pensioners in their quiet chapel, and I would stroll about the
peaceful courts of that holy place, venerable not only for its history
but for the broken and ruined lives--often ruined only in purse, but
rich in honour and in noble record--of the fifty bedesmen or
pensioners who rest there in the evening of their days. And quite
apart from its associations, I know no more beautiful place in the
City or anywhere else than the ancient Charter House.
Again, we may wander in the City and remember the great men who have
made certain streets for ever famous. Thus, to stand in Bread Street
is to think of Milton. Here he was born, here he was baptized, here
for a time he lived. Or we may visit Blackfriars and remember the
Elizabethan dramatists. Here Shakespeare had a house--it was among the
ruins of old Blackfriars Abbey, part of the foundations of which were
found when some years ago they made an extension of the Times'
printing office. Broad Street recalls the memory of Gresham, while
that of Whittington lingers along Thames Street and College Hill and
clings to St. Michael's Church. In that parish he lived and died. Here
he founded the College of the Holy Spirit which still exists in the
Highgate Almshouses; on its site the boys of Mercers School now study
and play. His tomb was burned in the Great Fire and his ashes
scattered, but the very streets preserve his name. Boas Alley, of
which there are two, records the fact that Whittington brought a
conduit or Boss of fresh water to this spot. It was he who paved
Guildhall, he who built a hall for the Grey Friars, now the Blue Coat
School, he who rebuilt Newgate; of all the merchants who have adorned
the great City not one whose memory is so widely spread and whose
example has so long survived his death. When country boys think of the
City of London they still think of Whittington.
Perhaps you are afraid that the preparation, the reading, for such a
walk about the City would be dull. I have never found it so. I do not
think that anyone who has the least love for, or knowledge of, old
things would find such reading dull. There are, to be sure, some
unhappy creatures who love nothing but what is new, and esteem
everything for what it will fetch. These are the people who are always
trying to pull down the City churches. They are at this very moment
pulling down another, the poor old church of St. Mary Magdalen. The
tower is down, the roof is off the windows are all broken, in a week
or two the church will be razed to the ground, and in a year or two
its very memory will have perished. Why, we vainly ask, do they pull
it down? What harm has the old church done? To be sure its
congregation numbered less than a dozen, but then we must not estimate
an old church by a modern congregation. There has been a church here
from time immemorial. It is mentioned in the year 1120. It was,
therefore, certainly a Saxon church. Edward the Confessor probably
worshipped here--perhaps King Alfred himself. One of its Rectors was
John Carpenter, executor of Whittington, and founder of the City of
London School; another was Barham, author of the 'Ingoldsby Legends.'
The loss of St. Mary Magdalen is one more link with the past
absolutely destroyed, never to be replaced. These destroyers, for
instance, are the kind of people who pulled down Sion College. As
often as I pass the spot where that place once stood I mourn and
lament its loss more and more. It was the college of the City clergy,
they were its guardians, it was their library, it contained their
reading hall; formerly it held their garden, and it had their
almshouses. There was hardly any place in the City more peaceful or
more beautiful than the long narrow room which held their library. It
was a very ancient site--formerly the site of Elsing's Hospital, the
oldest hospital in the whole City. Everything about it was venerable,
and yet the City clergy themselves--its official guardians--sold it
for what it would fetch, and stuck up the horrid thing on the
embankment which they call Sion College. There they still use the old
seal and arms of the college. But there is no more a Sion
College--that is gone. You cannot replace it. You might as well tear
down King's College Chapel at Cambridge and call Dr. Parker's City
Temple by that honoured and ancient name. Well, for such people as the
majority of the City clergy who can do such things, there can be no
voice or utterance at all from ancient stones, the past can have no
lessons, no teachings for them, there can be no message to them from
the dead who should still live for them in memory and association. For
them the ancient City and its citizens are dumb.
Now that we know what to expect and what to look for, let us take
together a Sunday morning ramble in a certain part of the City. We
will go on a morning in early summer, when the leaves of those trees
which still stand in the old City churchyards are bright with their
first tender green, and when the river, as we catch glimpses of it,
shows a broad surface of dancing waves across to the stairs and barges
of old Southwark. We will take this walk at the quietest hour in the
whole week, between eleven and twelve. All the churches are open for
service. We will look in noiselessly, but, indeed, we shall find no
congregations to disturb, only, literally, two or three gathered
together.
I will take you to the very heart of the City. Perhaps you have
thought that the heart of the City is that open triangular space faced
by the Royal Exchange, and flanked by the Bank of England and the
Mansion House. We have taught ourselves to think this, in ignorance of
the City history. But a hundred and fifty years ago there was no
Mansion House, three hundred years ago there was no Royal Exchange,
and the Bank of England itself is but a mushroom building of the day
before yesterday.
In the long life of London--it covers two thousand years--the chief
seat of its trade, the chief artery of its circulation, has been
Thames Street. Along here for seventeen hundred years were carried on
the chief events in the drama which we call the History of London. Its
past origin, its growth and expansion, are indicated along this line.
Here the City merchants of old--Whittingtons, Fitzwarrens, Sevenokes,
Greshams--thronged to do their business. To these wharves came the
vessels laden from Antwerp, Hamburg, Riga, Bordeaux, Lisbon, Venice,
Genoa, and far-off Smyrna and the Levant. This line stretches across
the whole breadth of the City. It indicates the former extent of the
City, what was behind it originally was the mass of houses built to
accommodate those who could no longer find room on the riverside. It
is now a narrow, dark, and dirty street; its south side is covered
with quays and wharves; narrow lanes lead to ancient river stairs; its
north side is lined with warehouses, the streets which run out of it
are also dark and narrow lanes with offices on either side. It is no
longer one of the great arteries of the City. Those who come here use
it not for a thoroughfare but for a place of business. When their
business is done they go away; the churches, of which there were once
so many, are more deserted here than in any other part of the City Let
me give you a little--a very little--of its history.
Two thousand years ago, or thereabouts, the City of London was first
begun. At that time the Thames valley, where now stands Greater
London, was a vast morass, sometimes flooded at high tide, everywhere
low and swampy, studded with islands or bits of ground rising a few
feet above the level--such was Thorney Island, on which Westminster
Abbey was built; such was the original site of Chelsea and Battersea.
On the south side the swamp and low ground continued until the ground
began to rise for the first low Surrey Hills at what is now called
Clapham Rise. On the north side the swamp was bordered by a
well-defined cliff from ten to thirty or forty feet high, which
followed a curve, approaching the river edge from the east till it
reached where is now Tower Hill, where it nearly touched the water,
and the spot now called Dowgate--a continuation of Walbrook
Street--where the river actually washed its base, and where it
presented two little hillocks side by side, with the
brook--Walbrook--running into the river between. This was a natural
site for a town--two hills, a tidal river in front, a freshwater
stream between. Here was a spot adapted both for fortification and for
communication with the outer world. Here, then, the town began to be
built. How the trade began I cannot tell you, but it did begin, and
grew very rapidly, Now, as it grew it became necessary for the people
to stretch out and expand; there was no longer any room on the two
hillocks; they, therefore, built a strong wall to keep out the river
and put up houses, quays, and store-houses above and along this
wall--portions of which have been found quite recently. The river once
kept out--although the cliff receded again--the marsh became dry land,
but, in fact, the cliff receded a very little way, and the slopes of
the streets north of Thames Street show exactly how far it went back.
Many hundreds of years later precisely the same course was adopted for
the rescue of Wapping from the marsh in which it stood. They built a
strong river wall, and Wapping grew up on and behind that wall, just
exactly as London itself had done long before.
The citizens of London had, from a very early time, their two ports of
Billingsgate and Queenhithe, both of them still ports. They had also
their communication with the south by means of a ferry, which ran from
the place now called the Old Swan Stairs to a port or dock on the
Surrey side, still existing, afterwards called St. Mary of the Ferry,
or St. Mary Overies. The City became rapidly populous and full of
trade and wealth. Vast numbers of ships came yearly, bringing
merchandise, and taking away what the country had to export. Tacitus,
writing in the year 61, says that the City then was full of merchants
and their wares. It is also certain that the Londoners, who have
always been a pugnacious and a valiant folk, already showed that side
of their character, for we learn that, shortly before the landing of
Julius Cæsar, they had a great battle in the Middlesex Forest with the
people of Verulam, now St Albans. The Verulamites had reason to repent
of their rashness in coming out to meet the Londoners, for they were
routed with great slaughter, and never ventured on another trial of
strength. As for the site of the battle, it has been pretty clearly
demonstrated by Professor Hales that it took place close to Parliament
Hill, at Hampstead, and the barrow on the newly acquired part of the
Heath probably marks the burial-place of the forgotten heroes who
perished on that field. And as for the Londoners who fought and won,
let us remember that they came from this part of the modern City--from
Thames Street.
The town was walled between the years 350 and 369. The building of the
Roman wall has determined down to these days the circuit of the City.
Now, here a very curious and suggestive point has been raised. In or
near all other Roman towns are remains of amphitheatres, theatres and
temples. There is an amphitheatre near Rutupiæ, the present
Richborough; everybody knows the amphitheatres of Nîmes, Arles and
Verona; but in or near London there have never been found any traces
of amphitheatres or temples whatever. Was the City then, so early,
Christian? Observe, again, that the earliest churches were dedicated,
not to British saints, or to the saints and martyrs of the second or
third centuries--the centuries of persecution--but to the Apostles
themselves--to St. Peter, St. Paul, St. James, St. Stephen, St. Mary,
St. Philip. These facts, it is thought, seem to indicate that very
early in the history of the City its people were Christians. When the
Roman wall was built, Thames Street already possessed most of the
streets which you now see branching northward up the hill, and south
to the river stairs, the space beyond was occupied by villas and
gardens, and the life of the merchants and Roman officers who lived in
them was as luxurious as wealth and civilization could make it.