that this rather ugly structure, with its decidedly ungainly appendage in
the form of a huge railway station, did not exist in Dickens' day.
Instead there was a more or less graceful suspension bridge, known as
Hungerford Bridge, which crossed the river from the lower end of
Hungerford Market, now alas replaced by the aforesaid crude railway
station, which, in spite of the indication of progress which it suggests,
can hardly be an improvement on what existed on the same site some fifty
years ago.
Hungerford Market was a structure occupying much the same area as the
present railway station; beside it was Warren's Blacking Factory, where
Dickens, as a boy, tied up the pots of the darksome fluid. Just below was
"Hungerford Stairs," another of those riverside landing-places, and one
which was perhaps more made use of than any other between Blackfriars and
Westminster, its aristocratic neighbour, "York Stairs," being but seldom
used at that time. The latter, one of the few existing works of Inigo
Jones, remains to-day, set about with greensward in the "Embankment
Gardens," but Hungerford Stairs, like the Market, and old Hungerford
Bridge, has disappeared for ever. The present railway bridge is often
referred to as Hungerford Bridge, by reason of the fact that a foot-bridge
runs along its side, a proviso made when the former structure was
permitted to be pulled down. Of the old blacking factory, which must have
stood on the present Villiers Street, nothing remains, nor of its "crazy
old wharf, abutting on the water when the tide was out, and literally
overrun by rats."
On the 1st of May, 1845, Hungerford Suspension Bridge was opened to the
public without ceremony, but with much interest and curiosity, for between
noon and midnight 36,254 persons passed over it. Hungerford was at that
time the great focus of the Thames Steam Navigation, the embarkation and
landing exceeding two millions per annum. The bridge was the work of Sir
I. K. Brunel, and was a fine specimen of engineering skill. There were
three spans, the central one between the piers being 676 feet, or 110 feet
more than the Menai Bridge, and second only to the span of the wire
suspension bridge at Fribourg, which is nearly 900 feet. It was built
without any scaffolding, with only a few ropes, and without any impediment
to the navigation of the river. The entire cost of the bridge was
£110,000, raised by a public company.
The bridge was taken down in 1863, and the chains were carried to Clifton
for the Suspension Bridge erecting there. The bridge of the South Eastern
Railway at Charing Cross occupies the site of the old Hungerford Bridge.
Many novelists, philanthropists, and newspaper writers have dwelt largely
upon the horrors of a series of subterranean chambers, extending beneath
the Adelphi Terrace in the West Strand, and locally and popularly known as
the "Adelphi Arches." To this day they are a forbidding, cavernous black
hole, suggestive of nothing if not the horrors of thievery, or even
murder. They are, however, so well guarded by three policemen on "fixed
point" duty that at night there is probably no more safe locality in all
London than the former unsavoury neighbourhood, a statement that is herein
confidently made by the writer, as based on a daily and nightly
acquaintance with the locality of some years.
Coupled in association with Dickens' reference to having played round
about during his boyhood, while living in Lant Street, and working in
Warren's Blacking Factory, only two blocks away in Villiers Street, is
also the memory of David Copperfield's strange liking for these "dark
arches." Originally these yawning crevices were constructed as a
foundation for the "Adelphi Terrace," the home of the Savage Club, and of
Garrick at one time, and now overlooking the "Embankment Gardens," though
formerly overhanging the actual river-bank itself.
What wonder that these catacomb-like vaults should have been so ghostly
reminiscent and suggestive of the terrors associated with the "Jack
Shepards" and "Jonathan Wilds," whose successors lived in Dickens' day.
One very great reality in connection with its unsavoury reputation is the
tunnel-like opening leading Strandward. Through this exit was the back
door of a notorious "Coffee and Gambling House," like enough the "little,
dirty, tumble-down public house" hard by Hungerford Stairs, where the
Micawbers located just before emigrating, and referred to by Dickens in
"David Copperfield." Through this door persons of too confiding a
disposition were lured by thieves and blacklegs, drugged, swindled, and
thrown out bodily into the darksome tunnel to recover, if they returned to
consciousness before discovered by the police, their dazed and befuddled
wits as best they might.
"The Adelphi" itself is one of those lovable backwaters of a London
artery, which has only just escaped spoliation at the hands of the
improver. A few months since it was proposed to raze and level off the
whole neighbourhood as a site for the municipal offices of the Corporation
of the County Council, but wire-pulling, influence, or what not, turned
the current in another direction, and to-day there is left in all its
original and winsome glory the famous Adelphi, planned and built by the
brothers Adam, as a sort of acropolis as a site for institutions of
learning and culture.
In Dickens' time, though the "Embankment" was taking form, it lacked many
of those adornments which to-day place it as one of the world's great
thoroughfares. Immediately opposite on the fore-shore of the river is the
Egyptian obelisk, one of the trio of which another is in the Place de la
Concord at Paris, and the other in Central Park, New York. Here it was
transferred to a new environment, and since the seventies this pictured
monolith of a former civilization has stood amid its uncontemporary
surroundings, battered more sorely by thirty years of London's wind and
weather than by its ages of African sunshine.
"Billingsgate" was one of the earliest water-gates of London, the first on
the site having been built in the year 400 B. C., and named after Belin,
King of the Britons. The present "Billingsgate Market" is a structure
completed in 1870. Since 1699 London's only _entrepot_ for the edible
finny tribe has been here, with certain rights vested in the ancient
"Guild of Fishmongers," without cognizance of which it would not be
possible to "obtain by purchase any fish for food."
[Illustration: BILLINGSGATE.]
A stage floats in the river off the market, beside which float all manner
of craft, from the humble wherry to the ostentatious puffy little
steamers who collect the cargoes of the North Sea fleet and rush them to
market against all competitors. The market opens at five A. M., summer and
winter. Moored to a buoy, a short distance from the shore, are always to
be found one or more Dutch fishing-boats, certain inalienable rights
permitting "no more than three" to be at any or all times tied up here.
There is among the native watermen themselves a guarded jealousy and
contempt for these "furriners," and should the cable once be slipped, no
other Dutchman would ever again be allowed to pick it up. Hence it is that
by traditionary rights one or more of these curious stub-nosed,
broad-beamed craft, like the Dutch _haus-vrow_ herself, are always to be
seen.
The Londoner found amusement at Whitsun-tide in a visit to Greenwich Fair,
then an expedition of far greater importance than in later years, the
journey having to be made by road. The typical "fish dinner" of Greenwich,
as it obtained in the middle of the last century, was an extraordinary
affair, perhaps the most curious repast which ever existed in the minds of
a culinary genius, or a swindling hotel-keeper,--for that is about what
they amounted to in the latter days of this popular function now
thankfully past.
Many and varied courses of fish, beginning with the famous "whitebait,"
the "little silver stars" of the poet's fancy, more or less skilfully
prepared, were followed by such gastronomic unconventions as "Duck and
Peas," "Beans and Bacon," and "Beef and Yorkshire," all arranged with due
regard for inculcating an insatiable and expensive thirst, which was only
allayed at the highest prices known to the _bon vivant_ of a world-wide
experience. For many years after Dickens' death in 1870, indeed, until
quite recent years, with only occasional lapses, the "Ministers of the
Crown" were wont to dine at Greenwich, as a fitting _Gargantuan_ orgy to
the labours of a brain-racking session.
As one who knows his London has said, you can get a much better fish
dinner, as varied and much more attractive, in the neighbourhood of
Billingsgate, for the modest sum of two shillings.
No mention of London riverside attractions can be made without enlarging
somewhat upon the sordid and unsavoury (in more senses than one) Limehouse
Hole and Limehouse Reach.
Redolent of much that is of the under world, these localities, with indeed
those of all the waterside round about, have something of the fascination
and glamour which surrounds a foreign clime itself. Here in "Brig Place,"
evidently an imaginary neighbourhood, Dickens placed the genial
hook-armed Cuttle, and he must not only have studied these types upon the
spot, but must have been enamoured of the salty sentiment which pervades
the whole region from the notorious Ratcliffe Highway on the north, now
known by the more respectable name of St. George's Street, made famous in
the "Uncommercial Traveller," to the "Stairs" near Marshalsea on the
south, where Dickens used to stroll of a morning before he was allowed to
visit his father in the prison, and imagine those "astonishing fictions
about the wharves and the Tower."
It was at Limehouse, too, that Dickens' godfather, Huffam, a rigger and
sailmaker, lived, and with whom Dickens was so fond, when a boy, of making
excursions roundabout the "Hole" and the "Reach" with their "foul and
furtive boats."
Returning westward one finds, adjoining Somerset House, the famed Waterloo
Bridge, great as to its utility and convenience, and splendid as to its
appointments. "An exquisite combination of all that is most valuable in
bridge architecture," wrote Knight in 1842; called also by Canova, whom of
late it is become the custom to decry, the finest bridge in Europe, and
worth coming from Rome to see. It is the masterwork of one John Rennie, a
Scotch schoolmaster, and was completed in 1817, and named after the
decisive event achieved by His Majesty's forces two years before. It has
ever been the one short cut into South London from all the west central
region, and is the continuation of the roadway across the
Strand--Wellington Street--intimately associated with Dickens by the
building which formerly contained the offices of _Household Words_ and the
London chambers of Dickens' later years.
Blackfriars Bridge follows immediately after the Temple Gardens, but,
unlike Waterloo or the present London Bridge, is a work so altered and
disfigured from what the architect originally intended, as to be but a
slummy perversion of an inanimate thing, which ought really to be
essentially beautiful and elegant as useful.
At this point was also the _embouchement_ of the "Fleet," suggestive of
irregular marriages and the Fleet Prison, wherein Mr. Pickwick "sat for
his picture," and suffered other indignities.
As Dickens has said in the preface to "Pickwick," "legal reforms have
pared the claws by which a former public had suffered." The laws of
imprisonment for debt have been altered, and the Fleet Prison pulled down.
A little further on, up Ludgate Hill, though not really in the Thames
district, is the "Old Bailey," leading to "Newgate," whereon was the
attack of the Gordon Rioters so vividly described in Chapter LXIV. of
"Barnaby Rudge." The doorway which was battered down at the time is now in
the possession of a London collector, and various other relics are
continually finding their way into the salesroom since the entire
structure was razed in 1901.
[Illustration: LONDON BRIDGE.]
Southwark Bridge, an ordinary enough structure of stone piers and iron
arches, opened another thoroughfare to South London, between Blackfriars
and the incongruous and ugly pillar known as the Monument, which marks the
starting-point of the great fire of 1666, and is situated on the northerly
end of the real and only "London Bridge" of the nursery rhyme.
As recorded, it actually did fall down, as the result of an unusually high
tide in 1091. As the historian of London Bridge has said, "a magnificent
bridge is a durable expression of an ideal in art, whether it be a simple
arch across an humble brook, or a mighty structure across a noble river."
The history of London Bridge is a lengthy account of itself, and the
period with which we have to deal carries but a tithe of the lore which
surrounds it from its birth.
It was said by Dion Cassius that a bridge stood here in the reign of
Claudius, but so far into antiquity is this (44 A. D.), that historians in
general do not confirm it. What is commonly known as "Old London Bridge,"
with its houses, its shops, and its chapels, a good idea of which is
obtained from the sixth plate of Hogarth's "Marriage á la Mode," was a
wonderfully impressive thing in its day, and would be even now, did its
like exist.
The structures which roofed the bridge over, as it were, were pulled down;
and various reparations made from time to time preserved the old structure
until, in 1824, was begun the present structure, from the designs of
Rennie, who, however, died before the work was begun. It was opened by
William IV. and Queen Adelaide in 1831, and occupies a site two hundred or
more feet further up the river than the structure which it replaced, the
remains of which were left standing until 1832. Thus it is likely enough
that Dickens crossed and recrossed this famous storied bridge, many times
and oft, when his family was living in Lant Street, in Southwark, while
the father of the family was languishing in the iron-barred Marshalsea.
As Laurence Sterne has truly said, "Matter grows under one's hands. Let no
man say, 'Come, I'll write a duodecimo.'" And so with such a swift-flowing
itinerary as would follow the course of a river, it is difficult to get,
within a reasonably small compass, any full résumé of the bordering
topography of the Thames. All is reminiscent, in one way or another, of
any phase of London life in any era, and so having proceeded thus far on
the voyage without foundering, one cannot but drop down with the tide, and
so to open sea.
Below the metropolis of docks and moorings the river widens to meet the
sea, so that any journey of observation must perforce be made upon its
bosom rather than as a ramble along its banks.
Blackwall, with its iron-works; Woolwich, with its arsenal; and Greenwich,
with its hospital and observatory, are all landmarks by which the
traveller to London, by sea, takes his reckoning of _terra firma_.
The shipping of the Orient, the Baltic, the Continent, or the mere
coaster, with that unique species of floating thing, the Thames barge, all
combine in an apparently inextricable tangle which only opens out in the
estuary below Gravesend, which, with its departed glory and general air of
decay, is the real casting-off point of seagoing craft. Here the
"mud-pilot," as the river pilot is locally known, is dropped, and the
"channel pilot" takes charge, and here last leave-takings are said and
last messages left behind.
Opposite Gravesend, from where Dickens first set sail for America, is
Tilbury Fort, a reminder of the glories of England's arms in the days of
Elizabeth. It may be said to be the real outpost of London. Here passing
from the "Lower Hope" into "Sea Reach," we fairly enter upon the estuary
of the Thames. Here the river has rapidly expanded into an arm of the sea,
having widened from two hundred and ninety yards at London Bridge to
perhaps four and a half miles at the "London Stone" by Yantlet Creek,
where the jurisdiction of the Corporation of London ends.
To the north the Essex shore trends rapidly away toward Yarmouth; to the
south straight to the eastern end of the English Channel, past the
historic Medway, with Gad's Hill Place and Higham.
Beyond is Strood, Rochester, Chatham, Maidstone, Canterbury, and
Broadstairs, and with the latter place one takes leave, as it were, of
England, Dickens, and his personal and literary associations therewith.
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS
London is not a single city, but rather a sequence or confederation of
cities. In its multifarious districts there is not only a division of
labour, but a classification of society--grade rising above grade,
separate yet blended--"a mighty maze, but not without a plan." Says one of
her most able and observing historians, "were we not accustomed to the
admirable order that prevails, we should wonder how it was preserved." The
regular supply of the various food markets alone is a truly wonderful
operation, including all the necessaries and, what the Londoner himself
supposes to be, all the luxuries of life. The method of distribution is
truly astonishing, and only becomes less so to the liver in the midst of
it all by reason of his varying degree of familiarity therewith. As to the
means of sustenance, no less than livelihood, of a great mass of its
population, that is equally a mystery. All among the lower classes are not
Fagins nor yet Micawbers. How do the poor live who rise in the morning
without a penny in their pockets? How do they manage to sell their labour
before they can earn the means of appeasing hunger? What are the
contrivances on which they hit to carry on their humble traffic? These and
similar questions are those which the economist and the city fathers not
only have been obliged to heed, but have got still greater concern
awaiting them ahead. Poverty and its allied crime, not necessarily
brutalized inherent criminal instinct, but crime nevertheless, are the
questions which have got to be met broadly, boldly, and on the most
liberal lines by those who are responsible for London's welfare.
During the first half of the nineteenth century the economists will tell
one that England's commercial industries stagnated, but perhaps the
prodigious leaps which it was taking in the new competitive forces of the
new world made this theory into a condition.
In general, however, the tastes of the people were improving, and with the
freedom of the newspaper press, and the spread of general literature,
there came a desire for many elegancies and refinements hitherto
disregarded.
The foundation of the British Museum in 1750, by the purchase of the
library and collection of Sir Hans Sloane, and Montagu House, gave an
early impetus to the movement, which was again furthered when, in 1801,
George III. presented a collection of Egyptian antiquities, and in 1805
and 1806 were purchased the Townley and Elgin marbles respectively. The
Museum continued to increase until, in 1823, when George IV. presented his
father's library of sixty-five thousand volumes, Montagu House was found
to be quite inadequate for its purpose, and the present building, designed
by Sir Robert Smirke, and completed in 1827, was erected on its site. In
making this gift, the king said, "for the purpose of advancing the
literature of his country, and as a just tribute to the memory of a parent
whose life was adorned with every public and private virtue."
The magnificent reading-room was not constructed until 1855-57, but it
became a "felt want" from the time when George IV. made his valuable
presentation to the Museum. The great "reading age" was then only in its
infancy.
Early in 1830 George IV. fell ill, and on the 25th of June he died. During
his regency, although he himself had little to do with the matter, his
name was associated with many splendid triumphs, by the marvellous
progress of intellect, and by remarkable improvements in the liberal arts.
With fine abilities and charming manners, England might have been proud
of such a king, but he squandered his talents for his own gratification;
alienated himself from all right-minded men; lived a disgraceful life, and
died the subject of almost universal contempt. His epitaph has been
written thus: "He was a bad son, a bad husband, a bad father, a bad
subject, a bad monarch, and a bad friend."
The memory of old London is in no way kept more lively than by the
numerous City Companies or Guilds. Established with a good purpose, they
rendered useful enough service in their day, but within the last
half-century their power and influence has waned, until to-day but three,
of the eighty or more, are actually considered as Trading Companies,--the
Goldsmiths', the Apothecaries' and the Stationers'.
The first companies, or fraternities, of Anglo-Saxon times gradually
evolved themselves into the positive forms in which they have endured till
to-day. Just when this evolution came about is obscure. An extinct
"Knighten Guild" was licensed by Edgar, a reminiscence of which is
supposed to exist to-day in Nightingale Lane, where the Guild was known to
have been located.
The oldest of the City Companies now existing is the Weavers' Company,
having received its charter from Henry II. Though licensed, these trade
organizations were not incorporated until the reign of Edward III., who
generously enrolled himself as a member of the Merchant Tailors.
At this time it was ordained that all artificers should choose their
trade, and, having chosen it, should practise no other; hence it was that
these "Guilds" grew to such a position of wealth and influence, the
ancient prototype, doubtless, of the modern "labour unions."
The twelve great City Companies, whose governors ride about in the lord
mayor's procession of the 9th of November of each year, are, in order of
precedence, ranked as follows: Mercers, Grocers, Drapers, Fishmongers,
Goldsmiths, Skinners, Merchant Tailors, Haberdashers, Salters,
Ironmongers, Vintners, Cloth-workers.
Allied with these are eighty odd other companies divided into three
classes:
I. Those exercising a control over their trades: Goldsmiths, Apothecaries.
II. Those exercising the right of search or marking of wares: the
Stationers, at whose "hall" must be entered all books for copyright; the
Gunmakers, who "prove" all London-made guns; Saddlers, Pewterers, and
Plumbers.
III. Companies into which persons carrying on certain occupations are
compelled to enter: Apothecaries, Brewers, Builders, etc.
The "halls," as they are called, are for the most part extensive
quadrangular buildings with a courtyard in the centre.
The most pretentious, from an architectural point of view, are Goldsmiths'
Hall in Foster Lane, and Ironmongers' Hall in Fenchurch Street.
Fishmongers' Hall, at the northwest angle of London Bridge, built in 1831,
is a handsome structure after the Greek order, with a fine dining-room.
The Merchant Tailors' Hall, in Threadneedle Street, has a wonderful
banquet-room, with portraits of most of the Kings of England, since Henry
VIII., adorning its walls.
Stationers' Hall will perhaps be of the greatest interest to readers of
this book. All who have to do with letters have a certain regard for the
mysticism which circles around the words, "Entered at Stationers' Hall."