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Dickens' London
BY FRANCIS MILTOUN
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Milton's England
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L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
New England Building
Boston, Mass.
[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS]
Dickens'
London
By
Francis Miltoun
_Author of "Dumas' Paris," "Cathedrals of
France," "Rambles in Normandy," "Castles
and Chateaux of Old Touraine," etc._
Illustrated
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
BOSTON PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1903_
BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
_All rights reserved_
Fourth Impression, April, 1908
Fifth Impression, April, 1910
_COLONIAL PRESS_
_Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co._
_Boston, U. S. A._
_All sublunary things of death partake!_
_What alteration does a cent'ry make!_
_Kings and Comedians all are mortal found,_
_Cæsar and Pinkethman are underground._
_What's not destroyed by time's devouring hand?_
_Where's Troy, and where's the Maypole in the Strand?_
_Pease, cabbages, and turnips once grew where_
_Now stands New Bond Street and a newer square;_
_Such piles of buildings now rise up and down,_
_London itself seems going out of town._
JAMES BRAMSTON, _The Art of Politicks_.
The attempt is herein made to present in an informal manner such facts of
historical, topographical, and literary moment as surrounded the
localities especially identified with the life and work of Charles Dickens
in the city of London, with naturally a not infrequent reference to such
scenes and incidents as he was wont to incorporate in the results of his
literary labours; believing that there are a considerable number of
persons, travellers, lovers of Dickens, enthusiasts _et als._, who might
be glad of a work which should present within a single pair of covers a
résumé of the facts concerning the subject matter indicated by the title
of this book; to remind them in a way of what already exists to-day of the
London Dickens knew, as well as of the changes which have taken place
since the novelist's time.
To all such, then, the present work is offered, not necessarily as the
last word or even as an exhaustive résumé, knowing full well the futility
for any chronicler to attempt to do such a subject full justice within the
confines of a moderate sized volume, where so many correlated facts of
history and side lights of contemporary information are thrown upon the
screen. The most that can be claimed is that every effort has been made to
present a truthful, correct, and not unduly sentimental account of the
sights and scenes of London connected with the life of Charles Dickens.
In Praise of London
"The inhabitants of St. James', notwithstanding they live under the same
laws and speak the same language, are as a people distinct from those who
live in the 'City.'"
_Addison._
"If you wish to have a just notion of the magnitude of the City you must
not be satisfied with its streets and squares, but must survey the
innumerable little lanes and courts."
_Johnson._
"I have often amused myself with thinking how different a place London is
to different people."
_Boswell._
"I had rather be Countess of Puddle-Dock (in London) than Queen of
Sussex."
_Shadwell._
"London ... a place where next-door neighbours do not know one another."
_Fielding._
"London ... where all people under thirty find so much amusement."
_Gray._
"Dull as London is in summer, there is always more company in it than in
any other one place."
_Walpole._
"London! Opulent, enlarged, and still--increasing London!"
_Cowper._
"What is London?"
_Burke._
"I began to study a map of London ... the river is of no assistance to a
stranger in finding his way."
_Southey._
Contents
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 11
THE LONDON DICKENS KNEW 20
DICKENS' LITERARY LIFE 47
THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS 60
DICKENS' CONTEMPORARIES 73
THE LOCALE OF THE NOVELS 99
DISAPPEARING LONDON 119
THE COUNTY OF KENT 139
THE RIVER THAMES 160
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS 181
PAST AND PRESENT 211
THE UNDER WORLD 236
LONDON TOPOGRAPHY 246
A BRIEF CHRONOLOGY 287
INDEX 289
List of Illustrations
PAGE
CHARLES DICKENS _Frontispiece_
NO. 8 CRAVEN STREET, STRAND.--MR. TULKINGHORN'S HOUSE 14
DICKENS' HOUSE IN DEVONSHIRE TERRACE.--NO. 48 DOUGHTY
STREET, WHERE DICKENS LIVED 54
THE READING OF "THE CHIMES" AT FORSTER'S HOUSE, IN
LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS 57
CHARLES DICKENS, HIS WIFE, AND SISTER GEORGINA 87
PLAN OF "THE POETS' CORNER" 97
RESIDENCE OF JOHN FORSTER, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS 105
THE (REPUTED) "OLD CURIOSITY SHOP" 127
DICKENS' STUDY AT GAD'S HILL PLACE 148
BILLINGSGATE 172
LONDON BRIDGE 176
"GOING TO THE PANTOMIME" 193
SMITHFIELD MARKET 207
INTERIOR OF ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL DURING THE DUKE OF
WELLINGTON'S FUNERAL 215
LORD MAYOR'S PROCESSION, ASCENDING LUDGATE HILL 221
"THE CITY," LONDON 246
LONDON AT THE TIME OF THE GREAT FIRE 250
THE WARDS OF THE CITY 253
WHITECHAPEL 281
DICKENS' LONDON
INTRODUCTION
This book is for the lover of Dickens and of London, alike. The former
without the memory of the latter would indeed be wanting, and likewise the
reverse would be the case.
London, its life and its stones, has ever been immortalized by authors and
artists, but more than all else, the city has been a part of the very life
and inspiration of those who have limned its virtues, its joys, and its
sorrows,--from the days of blithe Dan Chaucer to those of the latest
west-end society novelist.
London, as has been truly said, is a "mighty mingling," and no one has
breathed more than Dickens the spirit of its constantly shifting and
glimmering world of passion and poverty.
The typical Londoner of to-day--as in the early Victorian period of which
Dickens mostly wrote--is a species quite apart from the resident of any
other urban community throughout the world. Since the spell which is
recorded as first having fallen upon the ear of Whittington, the sound of
Bow Bells is the only true and harmonious ring which, to the ears of the
real cockney, recalls all that is most loved in the gamut of his
sentiments.
It is perhaps not possible to arrange the contents of a book of the
purport of this volume in true chronological, or even topographical,
order. The first, because of the necessitous moving about, hither and then
thither,--the second, because of the fact that the very aspect of the
features of the city are constantly under a more or less rapid process of
evolution, which is altering all things but the points of the compass and
the relative position of St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey. Between these
two guide-posts is a mighty maze of streets, ever changing as to its life
and topography.
Hungerford Market and Hungerford Stairs have disappeared, beside which was
the blacking factory, wherein the novelist's first bitter experiences of
London life were felt,--amid a wretchedness only too apparent, when one
reads of the miserable days which fell upon the lad at this time,--the
market itself being replaced by the huge Charing Cross Railway Station, in
itself no architectural improvement, it may be inferred, while the "crazy
old houses and wharves" which fronted the river have likewise been
dissipated by the march of improvement, which left in its wake the
glorious, though little used, Victoria Embankment, one of the few really
fine modern thoroughfares of a great city.
Eastward again Furnival's Inn, where Pickwick was written, has fallen at
the hands of the house-breaker.
The office of the old _Monthly Magazine_ is no more, its very doorway and
letter-box--"wherein was dropped stealthily one night" the precious
manuscript of "Pickwick"--being now in the possession of an ardent Dickens
collector, having been removed from its former site in Johnson's Court in
Fleet Street at the time the former edifice was pulled down.
Across the river historic and sordid Marshalsea, where the elder Dickens
was incarcerated for debt, has been dissipated in air; even its walls are
not visible to-day, if they even exist, and a modern park--though it is
mostly made up of flagstones--stands in its place as a moral, healthful,
and politic force of the neighbourhood.
With the scenes and localities identified with the plots and characters of
the novels the same cleaning up process has gone on, one or another
shrine being from time to time gutted, pulled to pieces, or removed. On
the other hand, doubtless much that existed in the fancy, or real thought,
of the author still remains, as the door-knocker of No. 8 Craven Street,
Strand, the conjectured original of which is described in the "Christmas
Carol," which appeared to the luckless Scrooge as "not a knocker but
Marley's face;" or the Spaniards Inn on Hampstead Heath described in the
XLVI. Chapter of Pickwick, which stands to-day but little, if any, changed
since that time.
For the literary life of the day which is reflected by the mere memory of
the names of such of Dickens' contemporaries in art and letters, as Mark
Lemon, W. H. Wills, Wilkie Collins, Cruikshank, "Phiz," Forster, Blanchard
Jerrold, Maclise, Fox, Dyce, and Stanfield, one can only resort to a
history of mid or early Victorian literature to realize the same to the
full. Such is not the scheme of this book, but that London,--the
city,--its surroundings, its lights and shadows, its topography, and its
history, rather, is to be followed in a sequence of co-related events
presented with as great a degree of cohesion and attractive arrangement as
will be thought to be commensurate and pertinent to the subject. Formerly,
when London was a "snug city," authors more readily confined their
incomings and outgoings to a comparatively small area. To-day "the
city" is a term only synonymous with a restricted region which gathers
around the financial centre, while the cabalistic letters (meaning little
or nothing to the stranger within the gates), E. C., safely comprehend a
region which not only includes "_the city_," but extends as far westward
as Temple Bar, and thus covers, if we except the lapping over into the
streets leading from the Strand, practically the whole of the "Highway of
Letters" of Doctor Johnson's time.
[Illustration: NO. 8 CRAVEN STREET, STRAND.]
[Illustration: MR TULKINGHORN'S HOUSE.]
A novelist to-day, and even so in Dickens' time, did not--nay could
not--give birth to a character which could be truly said to represent the
complex London type. The environment of the lower classes--the east end
and the Boro'--is ever redolent of him, and he of it. The lower-middle or
upper-lower class is best defined by that individual's predilection for
the "good old Strand;" while as the scale rises through the petty states
of Suburbia to the luxuries of Mayfair or Belgravia,--or to define one
locality more precisely, Park Lane,--we have all the ingredients with
which the novelist constructs his stories, be they of the nether world, or
the "_hupper suckles_." Few have there been who have essayed both. And now
the suburbs are breeding their own school of novelists. Possibly it is
the residents of those communities who demand a special brand of fiction,
as they do of coals, paraffine, and boot-polish.
At any rate the London that Dickens knew clung somewhat to Wordsworth's
happy description written but a half century before:
"Silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie,
Open unto the fields and to the sky,"
whereas to-day, as some "New Zealander" from the back blocks has said:
_"These Londoners they never seen no sun."_ And thus it is that the scale
runs from grave to gay, from poverty to purse full, and ever London,--the
London of the past as well as the present, of Grub Street as well as
Grosvenor Square. The centre of the world's literary activities, where, if
somewhat conventional as to the acceptation of the new idea in many of the
marts of trade, it is ever prolific in the launching of some new thing in
literary fashions.
At least it is true that London still merits the eulogistic lines penned
not many years gone by by a certain minor poet:
_"Ah, London! London! Our delight,_
_Great flower that opens but at night,_
_Great city of the Midnight Sun,_
_Whose day begins when day is done."_
It is said of the industrious and ingenious American that he demands to be
"shown things," and if his cicerone is not sufficiently painstaking he
will play the game after his own fashion, which usually results in his
getting into all sorts of unheard-of places, and seeing and learning
things which your native has never suspected to previously have existed.
All honour then to such an indefatigable species of the _genus homo_.
Nothing has the peculiar charm of old houses for the seeker after
knowledge. To see them, and to know them, is to know their
environment,--and so it is with London,--and then, and then only, can one
say truly--in the words of Johnson--that they have "seen and are
astonished."
A great mass of the raw material from which English history is written is
contained in parochial record books and registers, and if this were the
only source available the fund of information concerning the particular
section of mid-London with which Dickens was mostly identified--the
parishes of St. Bride's, St. Mary's-le-Strand, St. Dunstan's, St.
Clement's-Danes, and St. Giles--would furnish a well-nigh inexhaustible
store of old-time lore. For a fact, however, the activities of the
nineteenth century alone, to particularize an era, in the "Highway of
Letters" and the contiguous streets lying round about, have formed the
subject of many a big book quite by itself. When one comes to still
further approximate a date the task is none the less formidable; hence it
were hardly possible to more than limn herein a sort of fleeting itinerary
among the sights and scenes which once existed, and point out where, if
possible, are the differences that exist to-day. Doctor Johnson's "walk
down Fleet Street"--if taken at the present day--would at least be
productive of many surprises, whether pleasant ones or not the reader may
adduce for himself, though doubtless the learned doctor would still chant
the praises of the city--in that voice which we infer was none too
melodious:
_"Oh, in town let me live, then in town let me die,_
_For in truth I can't relish the country; not I."_
Within the last decade certain changes have taken place in this
thoroughfare which might be expected to make it unrecognizable to those of
a former generation who may have known it well. Improvements for the
better, or the worse, have rapidly taken place; until now there is, in
truth, somewhat of an approach to a wide thoroughfare leading from
Westminster to the city. But during the process something akin to a
holocaust has taken place, to consider only the landmarks and shrines
which have disappeared,--the last as these lines are being written, being
Clifford's Inn,--while Mr. Tulkinghorn's house in Lincoln's Inn Fields,
redolent of Dickens and Forster, his biographer, is doomed, as also the
_Good Words_ offices in Wellington Street, where Dickens spent so much of
his time in the later years of his life. The famous "Gaiety" is about to
be pulled down, and the "old Globe" has already gone from this street of
taverns, as well as of letters, or, as one picturesque writer has called
it, "the nursing mother of English literature."
THE LONDON DICKENS KNEW
The father of Charles Dickens was for a time previous to the birth of the
novelist a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, then in Somerset House, which
stands hard by the present Waterloo Bridge, in the very heart of London,
where Charles Dickens grew to manhood in later years.
From this snug berth Dickens, senior, was transferred to Portsmouth,
where, at No. 387 Commercial Road, in Portsea, on the 7th February, 1812,
Charles Dickens was born.
Four years later the family removed to Chatham, near Rochester, and here
the boy Charles received his first schooling.
From Chatham the family again removed, this time to London, where the son,
now having arrived at the age of eleven, became a part and parcel of that
life which he afterward depicted so naturally and successfully in the
novels.
Here he met with the early struggles with grim poverty and
privation,--brought about by the vicissitudes which befell the
family,--which proved so good a school for his future career as a
historian of the people. His was the one voice which spoke with
authoritativeness, and aroused that interest in the nether world which up
to that time had slumbered.
The miseries of his early struggles with bread-winning in Warren's
Blacking Factory,--in association with one Fagin, who afterward took on
immortalization at the novelist's hands,--for a weekly wage of but six
shillings per week, is an old and realistic fact which all biographers and
most makers of guide-books have worn nearly threadbare.
That the family were sore put in order to keep their home together, first
in Camden Town and later in Gower Street, North, is only too apparent. The
culmination came when the elder Dickens was thrown into Marshalsea Prison
for debt, and the family removed thither, to Lant Street, near by, in
order to be near the head of the family.
This is a sufficiently harrowing sequence of events to allow it to be left
to the biographers to deal with them to the full. Here the author glosses
it over as a mere detail; one of those indissoluble links which connects
the name of Dickens with the life of London among the lower and middle
classes during the Victorian era.
An incident in "David Copperfield," which Dickens has told us was real, so
far as he himself was concerned, must have occurred about this period. The
reference is to the visit to "Ye Olde Red Lion" at the corner of Derby
Street, Parliament Street, near Westminster Bridge, which house has only
recently disappeared. He has stated that it was an actual experience of
his own childhood, and how, being such a little fellow, the landlord,
instead of drawing the ale, called his wife, who gave the boy a motherly
kiss.
The incident as recounted in "David Copperfield" called also for a glass
of ale, and reads not unlike:
"I remember one hot evening I went into the bar of a public-house, and
said to the landlord: 'What is your best--your _very best_ ale a glass?'
For it was a special occasion. I don't know what. It may have been my
birthday. 'Twopence-halfpenny,' says the landlord, 'is the price of the
Genuine Stunning Ale.' 'Then,' says I, producing the money, 'just draw me
a glass of the Genuine Stunning, if you please, with a good head to it.'"
After a time his father left the Navy Pay Office and entered journalism.
The son was clerking, meanwhile, in a solicitor's office,--that of Edward
Blackmore,--first in Lincoln's Inn, and subsequently in Gray's Inn. A
diary of the author was recently sold by auction, containing as its first
entry, "13_s_ 6_d_ for one week's salary." Here Dickens acquired that
proficiency in making mental memoranda of his environment, and of the
manners and customs of lawyers and their clerks, which afterward found so
vivid expression in "Pickwick."
By this time the father's financial worries had ceased, or at least made
for the better. He had entered the realms of journalism and became a
Parliamentary reporter, which it is to be presumed developed a craving on
the part of Charles for a similar occupation; when following in his
father's footsteps, he succeeded, after having learned Gurney's system of
shorthand, in obtaining an appointment as a reporter in the press gallery
of the House of Commons (the plans for the new Parliament buildings were
just then taking shape), where he was afterward acknowledged as being one
of the most skilful and accomplished shorthand reporters in the galleries
of that unconventional, if deliberate, body, which even in those days,
though often counting as members a group of leading statesmen, perhaps
ranking above those of the present day, was ever a democratic though
"faithful" parliamentary body.
In 1834 the old Houses of Parliament were burned, and with the remains of
St. Stephen's Hall the new structure grew up according to the plan
presented herein, which is taken from a contemporary print.
At the end of the Parliamentary session of 1836 Dickens closed his
engagement in the Reporters' Gallery, a circumstance which he recounts
thus in Copperfield, which may be presumed to be somewhat of
autobiography:
"I had been writing in the newspapers and elsewhere so prosperously that
when my new success was achieved I considered myself reasonably entitled
to escape from the dreary debates. One joyful night, therefore, I noted
down the music of the Parliamentary bagpipes for the last time, and I have
never heard it since." ("David Copperfield," Chap. XLVIII.)
Again, in the same work, the novelist gives us some account of the effort
which he put into the production of "Pickwick." "I laboured hard"--said
he--"at my book, without allowing it to interfere with the punctual
discharge of my newspaper duties, and it came out and was very successful.
I was not stunned by the praise which sounded in my ears, notwithstanding
that I was keenly alive to it. For this reason I retained my modesty in
very self-respect; and the more praise I got the more I tried to
deserve." ("David Copperfield," Chap. XLVIII.)
From this point onward in the career of Charles Dickens, he was well into
the maelstrom of the life of letters with which he was in the future to be
so gloriously identified; and from this point forward, also, the context
of these pages is to be more allied with the personality (if one may be
permitted to so use the word) of the environment which surrounded the life
and works of the novelist, than with the details of that life itself.
In reality, it was in 1833, when Dickens had just attained his majority,
that he first made the plunge into the literary whirlpool. He himself has
related how one evening at twilight he "had stealthily entered a dim
court" (Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, not, as is popularly supposed,
named for Doctor Johnson, though inhabited by him in 1766, from whence he
removed in the same year to Bolt Court, still keeping to his beloved Fleet
Street), and through an oaken doorway, with a yawning letter-box, there
fell the MS. of a sketch entitled "A Dinner at Poplar Walk," afterward
renamed "Mr. Minns and His Cousin," These were the offices of the old
_Monthly Magazine_ now defunct. Here the article duly appeared as one of
the "Sketches by Boz." In the preface to an edition of "Pickwick,"
published in 1847, Dickens describes the incident sufficiently graphically
for one to realize, to its fullest extent, with what pangs, and hopes, and
fears his trembling hand deposited the first of the children of his brain;
a foundling upon the doorstep where it is to be feared so many former and
later orphans were, if not actually deserted, abandoned to their fate.
These were parlous times in Grub Street; in the days when the art of
letters, though undeniably prolific, was not productive of an income which
would assure even a practised hand freedom from care and want. Within a
half-mile on either side of this blind alley leading off Fleet Street,
from Ludgate Hill on the east--redolent of memories of the Fleet, its
Prison, and its "Marriages"--to Somerset House on the west, is that
unknown land, that _terra incognita_, whereon so many ships of song are
stranded, or what is more, lost to oblivion which is blacker than darkness
itself.
In January, 1837, while still turning out "Pickwick" in monthly parts,
Dickens was offered the editorship of the already famous _Bentley's
Magazine_, which he accepted, and also undertook to write "Oliver Twist"
for the same periodical.
In March, of the same year, the three rooms at Furnival's Inn presumably
having become crowded beyond comfort, he removed with his wife to his
former lodgings at Chalk, where the couple had spent their honeymoon, and
where in the following year their son Charles was born.
What memories are conjured up of the past and, it is to be hoped, of
future greatness by those who, in taking their walks abroad, find
themselves within the confines of the parish of St. Bride's, with its
church built by Wren shortly after the great fire, and its queer pointed
steeple, like a series of superimposed tabourets overtopped with a
needle-like spire?
Here the brazen chimes ring out to all and sundry of the world of
journalism and letters, whose vocations are carried on within its sound,
the waking and sleeping hours alike. True! there are no sleeping hours in
Fleet Street; night is like unto day, and except for the absence of the
omnibuses, and crowds of hurrying throngs of city men and solicitors and
barristers, the faces of those you meet at night are in no way unlike the
same that are seen during the hours in which the sun is supposed to shine
in London, but which--for at least five months of the year--mostly
doesn't.
Old St. Bride's, destroyed by the great fire of London in the seventeenth
century, sheltered the remains of Sackville, who died in 1608, and the
printer, Wynken de Worde, and of Lovelace (1658). To-day in the present
structure the visitor may see the tomb of Richardson, the author of
"Clarissa Harlow," who lived in Salisbury Square, another near-by centre
of literary activity. In the adjacent churchyard formerly stood a house in
which Milton for a time resided. In later times it has been mostly called
to the minds of lion hunters as being the living of the Reverend E. C.
Hawkins, the father of our most successful and famed epigrammatic
novelist,--Mr. Anthony Hope Hawkins.
Equally reminiscent, and linked with a literary past in that close binding
and indissoluble fashion which is only found in the great world of London,
are such place names as Bolt Court, where Johnson spent the last years of
his life (1776-1784), Wine Office Court, in which is still situated the
ancient hostelry, "The Cheshire Cheese," where all good Americans repair
to sit, if possible, in the chair which was once graced (?) by the
presence of the garrulous doctor, or to buy alleged pewter tankards, which
it is confidently asserted are a modern "Brummagem" product "made to
sell." Gough Square at the top of Wine Office Court is where Johnson
conceived and completed his famous dictionary. Bouverie Street (is this,
by the way, a corruption or a variant of the Dutch word _Bouerie_ which
New Yorkers know so well?), across the way, leads toward the river where
once the Carmelite friary (White Friars) formerly stood, and to a region
which Scott has made famous in "Nigel" as "Alsatia." Fetter Lane, and
Great and Little New Streets, leading therefrom, are musty with a literary
or at least journalistic atmosphere. Here Izaak Walton, the gentle angler,
lived while engaged in the vocation of hosier at the corner of Chancery
Lane.
At the corner of Bouverie Street are the _Punch_ offices, to which
mirthful publication Dickens made but one contribution,--and that was
never published. Further adown the street is still the building which gave
shelter to the famous dinners of the round-table when all the wits of
_Punch_ met and dined together, frequently during the London season.
In Mitre Court, until recently, stood the old tavern which had, in its
palmier if not balmier days, been frequently the meeting-place of Johnson,
Goldsmith, and Boswell; while but a short distance away we are well within
the confines of the Temple which not only sheltered and fostered the law,
but literature as well.
An incident which shows Dickens' sympathy with the literary life of the
day was in 1854, when the great-grandson of the man who has given so much
to all ages of Englishmen,--De Foe,--was made happy with a relief of £2 a
month. Dickens was (as might have been expected) amongst the most liberal
subscribers to the little fund. If everybody who has derived delight from
the perusal of "Robinson Crusoe" had but contributed a single farthing to
his descendant, that descendant would become a wealthy man. When De Foe
was asked what he knew of his great ancestor's writings, he answered
(though doubtless without any intentional comment on his ancestor's
reputation) that in his happier days he had several of De Foe's works; but
that he never could keep a copy of "Robinson Crusoe;" "there were so many
borrowers of the book in Hungerford Market alone." Charles Knight, the
publisher and antiquarian, instituted the fund, and the money was raised
by him chiefly among literary men.
The most sentimental and picturesque interest attaches itself to the
extensive series of buildings on the south side of Fleet Street,
familiarly known as the Temple. Here Goldsmith is buried beside the
curious and interesting Temple Church. The other of the four great Inns of
Court are Lincoln's Inn in Chancery Lane and Gray's Inn in Holborn. Allied
with the four great inns were the more or less subsidiary Inns of
Chancery, all situated in the immediate neighbourhood, one of which, at
least, being intimately associated with Dickens' life in
London--Furnival's Inn, which, with Thavie's Inn, was attached to
Lincoln's Inn. Here Dickens lived in 1835 at No. 15, and here also he
lived subsequent to his marriage with Catherine Hogarth in the following
year. It was at this time that the first number of "Pickwick" was written
and published. The building itself was pulled down sometime during the
past few years.
Comprising several squares and rows, what is commonly referred to as the
Temple, belongs to the members of two societies, the Inner and Middle
Temple, consisting of "benchers," barristers, and students. This famous
old place, taken in its completeness, was, in 1184, the metropolitan
residence of the Knights Templars, who held it until their downfall in
1313; soon afterward it was occupied by students of the law; and in 1608
James I. presented the entire group of structures to the "benchers" of the
two societies, who have ever since been the absolute owners. The entrance
to Inner Temple, from Fleet Street, is nothing more than a mere gateway;
the entrance to Middle Temple is more pretentious, and was designed by Sir
Christopher Wren.
Here in the heart of the great world of London exists, as in no other city
on the globe, a quiet and leafy suburb, peopled only by those whose
vocation is not of the commonalty. Its very environment is inspiring to
great thoughts and deeds, and small wonder it is that so many master minds
have first received their stimulus amid the shady walks and rather gloomy
buildings of the Temple.
True it is that they are gloomy, on the outside at least,--dull brick rows
with gravelled or flagged courtyards, but possessing withal a geniality
which many more glaring and modern surroundings utterly lack.
The stranger, for sightseeing, and the general public, to take advantage
of a short cut to the river, throng its walks during the busy hours around
noontime. All sorts and conditions of men hurry busily along in a
never-ending stream, but most to be remarked is the staid and earnest
jurist, his managing clerk, or the aspiring bencher, as his duties compel
him to traverse this truly hallowed ground.
By nightfall the atmosphere and associations of the entire Temple take on,
if possible, a more quiet and somnolescent air than by day. It must, if
report be true, be like a long-deserted city in the small hours of the
night. A group of chambers, called rather contemptuously Paper Buildings,
is near the river and is a good example of revived Elizabethan
architecture. A new Inner Temple Hall was formally opened in 1870, by the
Princess Louise. In October, 1861, when the Prince of Wales was elected a
bencher of the Middle Temple, the new Library was formally opened. The
Temple Church, as seen from the river, with its circular termination, like
nothing else in the world except Charlemagne's church at Aix la Chapelle,
is one of the most interesting churches in London. All the main parts of
the structure are as old as the time of the Knights Templars; but
restorations of the middle nineteenth century, when the munificent sum of
£70,000 was spent, are in no small way responsible for its many visible
attributes which previously had sadly fallen to decay. There are two
portions, the Round Church and the Choir, the one nearly 700 years old and
the other more than 600. The chief distinguishing features of the interior
are the monumental effigies, the original sculptured heads in the Round
Church, the triforium, and the fittings of the Choir. The north side of
the church has been opened out by the removal of the adjoining buildings
where, in the churchyard, is the grave of Oliver Goldsmith, who died in
chambers (since pulled down) in Brick Court. The Temple Gardens, fronting
the river, are laid out as extensive shrub and tree-bordered lawns, which
are generously thrown open to the public in the summer. A more charming
sylvan retreat, there is not in any city in the world.
In the good old times, legal education and hospitality went hand in hand,
and the halls of the different Inns of Court were, for several centuries,
a kind of university for the education of advocates, subject to this
arrangement. The benchers and readers, being the superiors of each house,
occupied, on public occasions of ceremony, the upper end of the hall,
which was raised on a daïs, and separated from the rest of the building by
a _bar_. The next in degree were the _utter_ barristers, who, after they
had attained a certain standing, were called from the body of the hall to
the bar (that is, to the first place outside the bar), for the purpose of
taking a principal part in the mootings or exercises of the house; and
hence they probably derived the name of _utter_ or outer barristers. The
other members of the inn, consisting of students of the law under the
degree of _utter_ barristers, took their places nearer to the centre of
the hall, and farther from the bar, and, from this manner of distribution,
appear to have been called inner barristers. The distinction between
_utter_ and inner barristers is, at the present day, wholly abolished;
the former being called barristers generally, and the latter falling under
the denomination of students; but the phrase "called to the bar" still
holds and is recognized throughout the English-speaking world.
The general rule, as to qualification, in all the Inns of Court, is, that
a person, in order to entitle himself to be called to the bar, must be
twenty-one years of age, have kept _twelve terms_, and have been for five,
or three years, at least, a member of the society. The keeping of terms
includes dining a certain number of times in the hall, and hence the
pleasantry of _eating the way to the bar_; the preparatory studies being
now private. Of the great business of refection, the engraving herewith
shows the most dignified scene--the Benchers' Dinner; the benchers, or
"antients," as they were formerly called, being the governors of the inn,
at the Temple called the Parliament. The Middle Temple hall surpasses the
halls of the other societies in size and splendour. Begun in 1562, and
finished about ten years afterward, it is 100 feet long, 40 feet wide, and
upwards of 60 feet in height. The roof and panels are finely decorated,
and the screen at the lower end is beautifully carved. There are a few
good pictures: amongst others, one of Charles I. on horseback, by
Vandyke; also portraits of Charles II., Queen Anne, George I., and George
II.
Lincoln's Inn was once the property of Henry De Lacy, Earl of Lincoln. It
became an Inn of Court in 1310. The New Hall and Library, a handsome
structure after the Tudor style, was opened in 1845. The Chapel was built
in 1621-23, by Inigo Jones, who laid out the large garden in Lincoln's Inn
Fields, close by, in 1620. Lord William Russell was beheaded here in 1683.
In Lincoln's Inn are the Chancery and Equity Courts. Lincoln's Inn vied
with the Temple in the masques and revels of the time of James I.
Gray's Inn, nearly opposite the north end of Chancery Lane, once belonged
to the Lords Gray of Wilton. Most of its buildings--except its hall, with
its black oak roof--are of comparatively modern date. In Gray's Inn lived
the great Lord Bacon, a tree planted by whom, in the quaint old garden of
the Inn, could, in Dickens' time, yet be seen--propped up by iron stays.
To-day a diligent search and inquiry does not indicate its whereabouts,
which is another manifestation of the rapidity of the age in which we
live.
The nine Inns of Chancery allied with the four Inns of Court, the Inner
and Middle Temple, Lincoln's Inn and Gray's Inn, are Clifford's Inn,
Clement's Inn, Lyons' Inn, New Inn, Furnival's Inn, Thavie's Inn,
Sergeant's Inn, Staple Inn, and Barnard's Inn, all of which were standing
in Dickens' day, but of which only Staple Inn and Sergeant's Inn have
endured, Clement's Inn having only recently (1903) succumbed to the
house-breaker.
Staple Inn, in Holborn, "the fayrest inne of Chancerie," is one of the
quaintest, quietest, and most interesting corners of mediæval London left
to us.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, describing his first wanderings in London, said, "I
went astray in Holborn through an arched entrance over which was Staple
Inn, and here likewise seemed to be offices; but in a court opening
inwards from this, there was a surrounding seclusion of quiet
dwelling-houses, with beautiful green shrubbery and grass-plots in the
court and a great many sunflowers in full bloom. The windows were open, it
was a lovely summer afternoon, and I had a sense that bees were humming in
the court." Many more years have passed over the old corner since
Hawthorne's visit, but still it retains its ancient charm, and still the
visitor is struck by the rapid change from the hurrying stream of
Holborn's traffic to this haunt of ancient peace about which Mr. Worsfold
writes with pardonable enthusiasm.
With a history traceable backward for many centuries, Staple Inn was at
first associated in the middle ages with the dealing in the "staple
commodity" of wool, to use Lord Chief Justice Coke's words, but about the
fifteenth century the wool merchants gave way to the wearers of woollen
"stuff," and their old haunt became one of the Inns of Chancery--the
Staple Inn of the lawyers--perpetuating its origin in its insignia, a bale
of wool. For many years the connection of the Inn with the Law was little
beyond a nominal one, and in 1884 the great change came, and the haunt of
merchants, the old educational establishment for lawyers, passed from the
hands of "The Principal, Ancients and Juniors of the Honourable Society of
Staple Inn," to those of a big insurance society, while the fine old hall
became the headquarters of the Institute of Actuaries.
True it is, that perhaps no area of the earth's surface, of say a mile
square, has a tithe of the varied literary association of the
neighbourhood lying in the immediate vicinity of the Temple, the
birthplace of Lamb, the home of Fielding, and the grave of Goldsmith.
Shoe Lane, Fleet Street, is still haunted by the memory of the boy
Chatterton, and Will's Coffee House, the resort of wits and literary
lights of former days, vies with Royal Palaces as an attraction for those
who would worship at the shrines of a bygone age,--a process which has
been made the easier of late, now that the paternal Society of Arts has
taken upon itself to appropriately mark, by means of a memorial tablet,
many of these localities, of which all mention is often omitted from the
guide-books. Often the actual houses themselves have disappeared, and it
may be questioned if it were not better that in some instances a tablet
commemorating a home or haunt of some notability were not omitted. Still
if the accompanying inscription is only sufficiently explicit, the act is
a worthy one, and truth to tell, a work that is well performed in London.
Suburban London, too, in a way, may well come within the scope of the
passion of any lover of material things which have at one time or another
been a part and parcel of the lives of great men. And so, coupled with
literary associations, we have the more or less imaginary "Bell" at
Edmonton to remind us of Cowper, of many houses and scenes identified with
Carlyle, at Chelsea; of the poet Thompson, of Gainsborough, and a round
score of celebrities who have been closely identified with Richmond,--and
yet others as great, reminiscent of Pepys, Addison, Steele, Thackeray and
the whole noble band of chroniclers, essayists, and diarists of the
seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The "houses of entertainment"--as the Georgian novelist was pleased to
refer to inns and taverns--had in Dickens' day not departed greatly from
their original status. Referring solely to those coaching and
posting-houses situated at a greater or lesser distance from the centre of
town,--on the main roads running therefrom, and those city establishments
comprehended strictly under the head of taverns,--which were more
particularly places of refreshment for mankind of the genus male. These
two classes were, and are, quite distinct from the later-day
_caravanserai_ known as hotels, and as such performed vastly different
functions.
To be sure, all life and movement of the early nineteenth century, and for
a couple of hundred years before, had a great deal to do with inns and
taverns.
From Chaucer's famous "Tabard," where--
_"In Southwark at the Tabard as I lay_
_Ready to wenden on my pilgrimage,"_
to "The Bull," at Rochester, whose courtyard is still as described by
Dickens, and the somewhat mythical "Maypole" of "Barnaby Rudge," is a far
cry, though it would appear that the kind of cheer and accommodation
varies to a much lesser degree than might be supposed. Certainly the
demand for brevity and the luxuriousness of the later years of the
nineteenth century, and even to some extent during Dickens' time, with the
innovation of railway travel, gas-lamps, the telegraph, and what not, was
making an entirely new set of conditions and demands.
The old "Tabard" of Chaucer's day is no more, though an antiquary of 1840
has attempted to construct what it may have been out of the "Talbot" of
that day, which stood in the ancient High Street of Southwark, just across
London Bridge, where, said the annalist Stow, "there were so many fair
inns for receipt of travellers,"--the rivals of the Boar's Heads and
Mermaids of another generation.
Of the actual Dickens' inns, perhaps none is more vividly impressed on the
imagination than that of the "Maypole," that fantastic structure of
"Barnaby Rudge," the original of which is the "King's Head" at Chigwell on
the borders of Epping Forest. It was here that Mr. Willet sat in his
accustomed place, "his eyes on the eternal boiler." "Before he had got his
ideas into focus, he had stared at the plebeian utensil quite twenty
minutes,"--all of which indicates the minutiæ and precision of Dickens'
observations. This actual copper, vouched for by several documents of
attestation, with an old chair which formerly stood in the Chester Room of
the "Maypole," is to-day in the possession of Mr. Bransby Williams, of
London, an ardent enthusiast of all matters in connection with Dickens and
his stories.
Of the _Pickwickian Inns_, the "White Horse" at Ipswich--"the overgrown
tavern" to which Mr. Pickwick journeyed by the London Coach--is something
of tangible reality, and doubtless little changed to this day; the same
being equally true of "The Leather Bottle" at Cobham. The old "White Hart"
in the Borough High Street, the scene of the first meeting of Mr. Pickwick
and Weller, was demolished in 1889. Not so the "Magpie and Stump,"--that
referred to in "Pickwick" as being in the vicinity of the Clare Market,
and "closely approximating to the back of the 'New Inn.'" This seems to
have been of an imaginary character in nomenclature, at least, though it
is like enough that some neighbourhood hostelry--or, as it is further
referred to, as being what the ordinary person would call a "low
public-house"--was in mind.
The old "Fountain Inn" of the Minories, referred to in "Oliver Twist," and
the "little inn" ("The Sun") at Canterbury, where the Micawbers lodged,
and the "White Hart" at Hook,--or more probably its predecessor of the
same name,--visited by the Pickwickians en route to Rochester,--were
realities in every sense of the word, and show once again the blending of
truth and fiction which was so remarkable in the novels, and which
indicates so strongly the tendency of Dickens to make every possible use
of accessories, sights, and scenes, with which, at one time or another, he
had been acquainted.
The "Saracen's Head" at Snow Hill,--a real thing in Dickens' day,--where
the impetuous Squeers put up during his visits to London, has disappeared.
It was pulled down when the Holborn Viaduct was built in 1869, and the
existing house of the same name in no way merits the genial regard which
is often bestowed upon it, in that it is but an ordinary London "_Pub_"
which does not even occupy the same site as its predecessor.
"The Spaniards," where foregathered the No-Popery rioters, on Hampstead
Heath, remains much as of yore; certainly it has not changed to any
noticeable degree since Mrs. Bardell, _et als._, repaired hither in the
Hampstead stage for their celebrated tea-party, as recounted in
"Pickwick."
The very term _Pickwickian Inns_ inspires rumination and imagination to a
high degree. Remembrance is all very well, but there is a sturdy reality
about most of the inns of which Dickens wrote. Thus the enthusiast may, if
he so wish, in some cases, become a partaker of the same sort of comfort
as did Dickens in his own time, or at least, amid the same surroundings;
though it is to be feared that New Zealand mutton and Argentine beef have
usurped the place in the larder formerly occupied by the "primest Scotch"
and the juiciest "Southdown."
It is said there are twenty-five inns mentioned in "Pickwick" alone; the
writer has never been able to count up but twenty-two: still the assertion
may be correct; he leaves it to the curious to verify. Certainly such well
revered names as the "Golden Cross," "The Bull," at Rochester, which,
above all other localities drawn in "Pickwick," has the liveliest
associations, "The Leather Bottle," "The Magpie and Stump," "The Marquis
of Granby," "The Blue Boar," "The White Horse Cellars" in Piccadilly, and
"The Great White Horse" at Ipswich are for ever branded upon the memory.
The following half-dozen will perhaps be best recalled: "The Old White
Hart" in the Borough High Street; "The George and Vulture," Mr. Pickwick's
own favourite; "The Golden Cross," reminiscent of Dickens' own
personality as well; "The White Horse Cellars," the starting-place of the
Ipswich Coach; "Osborne's Hotel" in the Adelphi, still occupied as a
rather shabby sort of hostelry, though the name has gone; "Jack Straw's
Castle," where "Boz" and his friend Forster so often enjoyed that
"shoemaker's holiday;" and lastly, "The Spaniards" at Hampstead. A
description of one, as it is to-day, must suffice here.
"The Golden Cross," which stands opposite Charing Cross Railway Station,
with its floriated gilt crosses usually brightly burnished, and the entire
edifice resplendent in new paint.
There is still, however, something of the air of the conservatism of a
former day, if only in the manner of building, which in the present case
furthers the suggestion that the ways of the modern architect--striving
for new and wonderful constructive methods--were unknown when the walls of
this old hostelry were put up.