yesterday," it does not exist. Some remains there may be of a former
condition, and signs there assuredly are of still greater things to come,
but the very face of the earth in the great world of London is constantly
changing and being improved or disimproved, accordingly as its makers
have acted wisely or not.
[Illustration:
_Billingsgate and_ _The Bank, Royal Exchange,_
_the Custom House._ _and Mansion House._
_General Post-Office._ _King William Street and_
_Gracechurch Street._
_St. Paul's, Cheapside,_ _Fleet Street at Temple Bar._
_and Paternoster Row._
_"The City"--London._]
The London of Dickens' time--the middle Victorian period--was undergoing,
in some degree, at least, the rapid changes which were making themselves
felt throughout the civilized world. New streets were being put through,
old landmarks were being removed, and new and greater ones rising in their
stead; roadways were being levelled, and hills were disappearing where
they were previously known. How curious it is that this one topographical
detail effects so great a change in the aspect of the buildings which
border upon the streets. Take for instance the Strand as it exists to-day.
Dickens might have to think twice before he would know which way to turn
to reach the _Good Words_ offices. This former narrow thoroughfare has
been straightened, widened, and graded until about the only recognizable
feature of a quarter of a century ago is the sky-line. Again, St.
Martin's-in-the-Fields, a noble and imposing church, is manifestly made
insignificant by the cutting down of the grade, and even removing the
broad and gentle rising flight of steps which once graced its façade.
Generally speaking, the reverse is the case, the level of the roadway
being immeasurably raised, so that one actually steps down into a building
which formerly was elevated a few steps. All this and much more is a
condition which has worked a wondrous change in the topography of London,
and doubtless many another great city.
As for grandeur and splendour, that can hardly be claimed for any city
which does not make use of the natural features to heighten the effect of
the embellishments which the hand of man has added to what nature has
already given. London possesses these features to a remarkable degree, and
she should make the best of them, even if to go so far as to form one of
those twentieth-century innovations, known as an "Art Commission," which
she lacks. Such an institution might cause an occasional "deadlock," but
it would save a vast deal of disfigurement; for London, be it said, has no
streets to rank among those of the world which are truly great, such as
High Street at Oxford, and Prince's Street in Edinburgh, to confine the
comparison to Great Britain.
The author of this book has never had the least thought of projecting "a
new work on London," as the industrious author or compiler of Knight's
"Old and New London" put it in 1843, when he undertook to produce a
monumental work which he declared should be neither a "survey nor a
history." The fact is, however, that not even the most sanguine of those
writers who may hope to say a new word about any subject so vast as that
comprehended by the single word, London, could even in a small measure
feel sure that he has actually discovered any new or hitherto unknown
fact. In short, one may say that this would be impossible.
London's written history is very extensive and complete, and it is
reasonable to suppose that most everything of moment has at one time or
another been written down, but there are constantly varying conditions and
aspects which do present an occasional new view of things, even if it be
taken from an old standpoint; hence even within the limits of which this
section treats it is possible to give something of an impression which
once and again may strike even a supercritical reader as being timely and
pertinent, at least to the purport of the volume.
The latter-day City and County of London, including the metropolitan and
suburban area, literally "Greater London," has within the last few years
grown to huge proportions. From being a city hemmed within a wall, London
has expanded in all directions, gradually forming a connection with
various clusters of dwellings in the neighbourhood. It has, in fact,
absorbed towns and villages to a considerable distance around: the chief
of these once detached seats of population being the city of
Westminster. By means of its bridges, it has also absorbed Southwark,
Bermondsey, Lambeth, and Vauxhall, besides many hamlets and villages
beyond.
[Illustration: _London at the Time of the Great Fire_]
Even in Dickens' day each centre of urban life, whether it be Chelsea,
Whitechapel, or the Borough,--that ill-defined centre south of London
Bridge,--was closely identified with local conditions which were no part
of the life of any other section. Aside from the varying conditions of
social life, or whether the section was purely residential, or whether it
was a manufacturing community, there were other conditions as markedly
different. Theatres, shops, and even churches varied as to their method of
conduct, and, in some measure, of their functions as well. It was but
natural that the demand of the Ratcliffe Highway for the succulent
"kipper" should conduce to a vastly different method of purveying the
edible necessities of life from that of the West End poulterer who sold
only Surrey fowl, or, curiously enough, as he really does, Scotch salmon.
So, too, with the theatres and music-halls; the lower riverside population
demand, if not necessarily a short shrift, a cheap fare, and so he gets
his two and three performances a night at a price ranging from three
pence to two shillings for what in the west brings from one to ten
shillings.
To vary the simile still farther, but without going into the intricacies
of dogma, the church has of necessity to appeal to its constituency in the
slums in a vastly different method of procedure from what would be
considered dignified or even devout elsewhere; and it is a question if the
former is not more efficacious than the latter. And so these various
centres, as they may be best described, are each of themselves local
communities welded, let us hope, into as near as may be a perfect whole,
with a certain leeway of self-government and privilege to deal with local
conditions.
In 1850, taken as best representative of Dickens' time, London was divided
into twenty-six wards (and several liberties). The "Out Parishes" of the
"City," the City of Westminster, and the five "Parliamentary Boroughs" of
Marylebone, Lambeth, Southwark, Finsbury, and Tower hamlets, and a region
of debatable land lying somewhere between that which is properly called
London and its environs, and partaking in a certain measure of the
attributes of both.
London would seem to be particularly fortunate in its situation, and that
a large city should have grown up here was perhaps unavoidable:
sufficiently far from the open sea to be well protected therefrom, yet
sufficiently near thereto to have early become a powerful city and a great
port.
[Illustration: _The Wards of the City (E. C.)_]
Roman occupation, in spite of historians to the contrary, has with the
later Norman leavened the Teutonic characteristics of the people of
Britain perhaps more than is commonly credited. Cæsar's invasion was
something more than a mere excursion, and his influence, at least
afterward, developed the possibilities of the "mere collection of huts"
with the Celtic name into the more magnificent city of Londinium.
It has been doubted if Cæsar really did know the London of the Britons,
which historians have so assiduously tried to make a great and glorious
city even before his time. More likely it was nothing of the sort, but was
simply a hamlet, set down in a more or less likely spot, around which
naturally gathered a slowly increasing population.
In a way, like the Celtic hill towns of Normandy and Brittany, it took
Roman impulse to develop it into anything more beautiful and influential
than the mere stockade or _zareba_ of the aborigine. The first mention of
London is supposed to be in the works of Tacitus, a century and a half
after Cæsar's invasion. From this it would appear that by the year 62, in
the reign of Nero, _Londinium_ was already a place of "great importance."
Against the Roman domination the Britons finally rose at the call of the
outraged Boadicea, who marched directly upon London as the chief centre of
power and civilization. Though why the latter condition should have been
resented it is still difficult to understand. Ptolemy, who, however, got
much of his information second-hand, refers to London in his geography of
the second century as _Londinion_, and locates it as being situate
somewhere south of the Thames. All this is fully recounted in the books of
reference, and is only mentioned as having more than a little to do with
the modern city of London, which has grown up since the great fire in
1666.
As a British town it occupied a site probably co-extensive only with the
later Billingsgate and the Tower on one hand, and Dowgate on the other.
Lombard and Fenchurch Streets were its northerly limits, with the
Wall-Brook and Sher-Bourne on the west. These limits, somewhat extended,
formed the outlines of the Roman wall of the time of Theodosius (394).
Coming to a considerably later day, a matter of twelve hundred years or
so, it is recalled that the period of the great fire is the time from
which the building up of the present city dates, and from which all later
reckoning is taken. London at that day (1666) was for the most part
timber-built, and the flames swept unobstructed over an area very nearly
approximating that formerly enclosed by London wall.
The Tower escaped; so did All-Hallows, Barking, Crosby Hall, and Austin
Friars, but the fire was only checked on the west just before it reached
the Temple Church and St. Dunstan's-in-the-West.
He who would know London well must be a pedestrian. Gay, who wrote one of
the most exact and lively pictures of the external London of his time, has
put it thus:
"Let others in the jolting coach confide,
Or in a leaky boat the Thames divide,
Or box'd within the chair, contemn the street,
And trust their safety to another's feet:
Still let me walk."
Such characteristic features as are properly applicable to the Thames have
been dealt with in the chapter devoted thereto. With other localities and
natural features it is hardly possible to more than make mention of the
most remarkable.
From Tower Hill to Hampstead Heath, and from the heights of Sydenham to
Highgate is embraced the chief of those places which are continually
referred to in the written or spoken word on London.
The Fleet and its ditch, with their unsavoury reputations, have been
filled up. The Regent's Canal, which enters the Thames below Wapping,
winds its way, now above ground and occasionally beneath, as a sort of
northern boundary of London proper. Of other waterways, there are none on
the north, while on the south there are but two minor streams, Beverly
Brook and the River Wandle, which flow sluggishly from the Surrey downs
into the Thames near Wandsworth.
As for elevations, the greatest are the four cardinal points before
mentioned.
Tower Hill, with its rather ghastly romance, is first and foremost in the
minds of the native and visitor alike. This particular locality has
changed but little, if at all, since Dickens' day. The Minories, the Mint,
Trinity House, the embattled "Tower" itself, with the central greensward
enclosed by iron railings, and the great warehouses of St. Katherine's
Dock, all remain as they must have been for years. The only new thing
which has come into view is the garish and insincere Tower Bridge,
undeniably fine as to its general effect when viewed from a distance
down-river, with its historic background and the busy activities of the
river at its feet. A sentiment which is speedily dispelled when one
realizes that it is but a mere granite shell hung together by invisible
iron girders. Something of the solidity of the Tower and the sincerity of
a former day is lacking, which can but result in a natural contempt for
the utilitarianism which sacrifices the true art expression in a city's
monuments.
Of the great breathing-places of London, Hyde Park ranks easily the first,
with Regent's Park, the Green Park, St. James' Park, Battersea Park, and
Victoria Park in the order named. The famous Heath of Hampstead and
Richmond Park should be included, but they are treated of elsewhere.
Hyde Park as an institution dates from the sixteenth century, and with
Kensington Gardens--that portion which adjoins Kensington Palace--has
undergone no great changes during the past hundred years.
At Hyde Park Corner is the famous Apsley House presented by the nation to
the Duke of Wellington. At Cumberland Gate was Tyburn. The "Ring" near
Grosvenor Gate was the scene of gallantries of the days of Charles II.; of
late it has been devoted to the games of gamins and street urchins. The
Serpentine is a rather suggestively and incongruously named serpentine
body of water, which in a way serves to give a variety to an otherwise
somewhat monotonous prospect.
The first Great International Exhibition was held in Hyde Park in 1851,
and rank and fashion, in the mid-Victorian era, "church paraded" in a
somewhat more exclusive manner than pursued by the participants in the
present vulgar show. The Green Park and St. James's Park touch each other
at the angles and, in a way, may be considered as a part of one general
plan, though for a fact they vary somewhat as to their characteristics and
functions, though under the same "Ranger," a functionary whose office is
one of those sinecures which under a long-suffering, tax-burdened public
are still permitted to abound.
The history of Regent's Park, London's other great open space, is brief.
In 1812, the year of Dickens' birth, a writer called it "one of the most
fashionable Sunday promenades about town." It certainly appears to have
been quite as much the vogue for promenading as Hyde Park, though the
latter retained its supremacy as a driving and riding place. The
Zoological Gardens, founded in 1826, here situated, possess a perennial
interest for young and old. The principal founders were Sir Humphrey Davy
and Sir Stamford Raffles.
The rambler in old London, whether he be on foot or in a cab, or by the
more humble and not inconvenient "bus," will, if he be in the proper
spirit for that edifying occupation, be duly impressed by the mile-stones
with which the main roads are set. Along the historic "Bath Road," the
"Great North Road," the "Portsmouth Road," or the "Dover Road," throughout
their entire length, are those silent though expressive monuments to the
city's greatness.
In old coaching days the custom was perhaps more of a consolation than it
proves to-day, and whether the Londoner was on pleasure bent, to the Derby
or Epsom, or coaching it to Ipswich or Rochester,--as did Pickwick,--the
mile-stones were always a cheerful link between two extremes.
To-day their functions are no less active; the advent of the bicycle and
the motor-car makes it more necessary than ever that they should be there
to mark distance and direction.
No more humourous aspect has ever been remarked than the anecdote
recounted by a nineteenth-century historian of the hunt of one Jedediah
Jones for the imaginary or long since departed "Hicks' Hall," from which
the mile-stones, cryptogrammatically, stated that "this stone was ten
(nine, eight, etc.) miles from Hicks' Hall." The individual in question
never was able to find the mythical "Hicks' Hall," nor the equally vague
"Standard in Cornhill," the latter being referred to by an accommodating
'bus driver in this wise: "Put ye down at the 'Standard in
Cornhill?'--that's a good one! I should like to know who ever seed the
'Standard in Cornhill.' Ve knows the 'Svan wi' Two Necks' and the 'Vite
Horse' in Piccadilly, but I never heerd of anybody that ever seed the
'Standard in Cornhill.' Ve simply reckons by it."
The suburbs of London in Dickens' time were full of such puzzling
mile-stones. As late as 1831 a gate existed at Tyburn turnpike, and so, as
if marking the distinction between London and the country, the mile-stones
read from Tyburn.
Hyde Park Corner is still used in a similar way. Other stones read merely
from London, but, as it would be difficult to know what part of London
might best be taken to suit the purposes of the majority, the statement
seems as vague as was Hicks' Hall. Why not, as a writer of the day
expressed it, measure from the G. P. O.? which to the stranger might prove
quite as unintelligible, meaning in this case, however, General
Post-Office.
The population return of 1831 shows a plan with a circle drawn eight miles
from the centre, a region which then comprised 1,776,000 inhabitants. By
1841 the circle was reduced to a radius of one-half, and the population
was still as great as that contained in the larger circle of a decade
before. Thus the history of the growth of London shows that its greatest
activities came with the beginning of the Victorian era.
By the census of 1861, the population of the City--the E. C. District--was
only 112,247; while including that with the entire metropolis, the number
was 2,803,034, or _twenty-five times_ as great as the former. It may here
be remarked that the non-resident, or, more properly, "non-sleeping"
population of the City is becoming larger every year, on account of the
substitution of public buildings, railway stations and viaducts, and large
warehouses, in place of ordinary dwelling-houses. Fewer and fewer people
_live_ in the City. In 1851, the number was 127,869; it lessened by more
than 15,000 between that year and 1861; while the population of the
_whole_ metropolis increased by as many as 440,000 in the same space of
time.
In 1870, when Dickens was still living, the whole population was computed
at 3,251,804, and the E. C. population was further reduced to 74,732.
In 1901 the "City" contained only 3,900 inhabited houses, and but 27,664
persons composed the night population.
The territorial limits or extent of London must vary greatly according as
to whether one refers to "The City," "London proper," or "Greater London,"
a phrase which is generally understood of the people as comprehending not
only the contiguous suburbs of a city, but those residential communities
closely allied thereto, and drawing, as it were, their support from it. If
the latter, there seems no reason why London might not well be thought to
include pretty much all of Kent and Surrey,--the home counties lying
immediately south of the Thames,--though in reality one very soon gets
into green fields in this direction, and but for the ominous signs of the
builder and the enigmatic references of the native to the "city" or
"town," the stranger, at least, might think himself actually far from the
madding throng.
For a fact this is not so, and local life centres, even now, as it did in
days gone by, very much around the happenings of the day in London itself.
Taking it in its most restricted and confined literal sense, a circuit of
London cannot be better expressed than by quoting the following passage
from an author who wrote during the early Victorian period.
"I heard him relate that he had the curiosity to measure the circuit of
London by a perambulation thereof. The account he gave was to this
effect: He set out from his house in the Strand toward Chelsea, and,
having reached the bridge beyond the water works, Battersea, he directed
his course to Marylebone, from whence, pursuing an eastern direction, he
skirted the town and crossed the Islington road at the 'Angel.' ...
passing through Hoxton he got to Shoreditch, thence to Bethnal Green, and
from thence to Stepney, where he recruited his steps with a glass of
brandy. From Stepney he passed on to Limehouse, and took into his route
the adjacent hamlet of Poplar, when he became sensible that to complete
his design he must take in Southwark. This put him to a stand, but he soon
determined on his course, for, taking a boat, he landed at the Red House
at Deptford and made his way to Saye's Court, where the wet dock is, and,
keeping the houses along Rotherhithe to the right, he got to Bermondsey,
thence by the south end of Kent Road to Newington, and over St. George's
Fields to Lambeth, and crossing over at Millbank, continued his way to
Charing Cross and along the Strand to Norfolk Street, from whence he had
set out. The whole excursion took him from nine in the morning to three in
the afternoon, and, according to his rate of walking, he computed the
circuit of London at about twenty miles."
Since this was written, even these areas have probably extended
considerably, until to-day the circuit is more nearly fifty miles than
twenty, but in assuming that such an itinerary of twenty miles covers the
ground specifically mentioned, it holds equally true to-day that this
would be a stroll which would exhibit most of the distinguishing features
and characteristics of the city.
Modes of conveyance have been improved. One finds the plebeian cab or
"growler," the more fastidious hansom, and the popular electric tram,
which is fast replacing the omnibus in the outlying portions, to say
nothing of the underground railways now being "electrified," as the
management put it.
These improvements have made not only distances seem less great, but have
done much toward the speedy getting about from one place to another.
It matters not how the visitor enters London; he is bound to be duly
impressed by the immensity of it. In olden times the ambassador to St.
James' was met at Dover, where he first set foot upon English soil, by the
Governor of the Castle and the local Mayor. From here he was passed on in
state to the great cathedral city of Canterbury, sojourned for a space
beneath the shadow of Rochester Castle, crossed the Medway, and finally
reached Gravesend, reckoned the entry to the port of London. Here he was
received by the Lord Mayor of London and the Lord Chamberlain, and "took
to water in the royal galley-foist," or barge, when he was rowed toward
London by the Royal Watermen, an institution of sturdy fellows which has
survived to this day, even appearing occasionally in their picturesque
costumes at some river fête or function at Windsor.
With a modern visitor it is somewhat different; he usually enters by one
of the eight great gateways, London Bridge, Waterloo, Euston, Paddington,
St. Pancras, King's Cross, Victoria or Charing Cross, unless by any chance
he arrives by sea, which is seldom; the port of London, for the great
ocean liner, is mostly a "home port," usually embarking or disembarking
passengers at some place on the south or west coast,--Southampton,
Plymouth, Liverpool, or Glasgow.
In either case, he is ushered instantly into a great, seething world,
unlike, in many of its features, anything elsewhere, with its seemingly
inextricable maze of streets and bustle of carriages, omnibuses, and
foot-passengers.
He sees the noble dome of St. Paul's rising over all, possibly the
massiveness of the Tower, or the twin towers of Westminster, of those of
the "New Houses of Parliament," as they are still referred to.
From the south only, however, does the traveller obtain a really pleasing
first impression. Here in crossing any one of the five central bridges he
comes at once upon a prospect which is truly grand.