warehouses and dingy houses along the waterside. “There’s nothing of it
left.”
“Nothing but the names of streets. Come down this one, now called Park
Street. Look. That turning is Rose Alley.”
“Then here was the Rose Theatre?” Betty exclaimed, glancing up the
dingy, grimy little road.
“Now look at the tablet on this brewery which tells us that here stood
the Globe Theatre. It may have done; though some people think it is not
the exact site.”
They walked farther along by the river’s edge, towards the next bridge,
till Betty saw painted up at the entrance to another dingy street,
_Bear Gardens_.
“From that name you know that you are on the spot where some of the
poor bears were baited,” said Godmother, “and having so recently seen
Southwark as it _was_, you can in imagination sweep away all these
dreary streets and see the green fields and gardens round each of
the separate buildings. Now we’ll go back to London Bridge, and walk
straight on from it up what is now called the Borough High Street in
Southwark.
“This,” she explained when they reached the crowded thoroughfare, “as
you remember, was the country road along which, in the fourteenth
century, the pilgrims passed on their way to Canterbury. Look on the
left of the street for names of turnings which will bring the line
of inns back to your memory. Here,”—she stopped at a turning called
Talbot Yard—“was the _Tabard_ you visited in Chaucer’s day, and as
it was standing when Shakespeare lived here, he too must often have
visited it.”
“But why isn’t it called _Tabard_ Yard?”
“It was burnt down about seventy years after Shakespeare’s day, and
rebuilt and re-christened, but this is the actual place on which the
old Tabard stood. Let us cross the road. Do you see that Court nearly
opposite?”
“_St. Margaret’s Court_,” Betty read as they turned into a
dingy-looking place with rather old but very poverty-stricken houses on
either side. “Why, this must be where St. Margaret’s Church stood, and
where we saw the Miracle play in the Middle Ages!”
“It is. The church was still there when Shakespeare lived, though I
doubt whether he saw a Miracle play acted. They had gone out of fashion
in his day.”
“Well, I’m glad that at least the _names_ of the old places are kept,”
sighed Betty, “for there’s nothing else, is there? It’s all ugly and
dirty and _modern_ now. How I wish even one bit of an old inn was left!”
“Well, you have your wish,” said Godmother. “There _is_ one tiny bit of
an inn left standing. Come in here.”
They recrossed the road, and at No. 77 in the High Street entered a
yard, the end of which was occupied by the carts and other belongings
of a railway. But on the right, with its two rows of wooden galleries
still there, stretched one wall of an ancient tavern.
“This is the George Inn, and, so far as I know, the only old one left
in Southwark,” Godmother said. “Having seen the Tabard Inn as it
looked in the days of Chaucer and Shakespeare, you can sweep away in
thought, all the railway part of the yard, and see it as it used to
be. But I agree with you that except for its memories, Southwark is
dreary enough, though even now at the back of this High Street where
in ancient times so many processions have passed in and out of London,
there are old houses still standing.”
They took an omnibus again at the beginning of London Bridge, and
looking back towards St. Saviour’s Church, she added, “There’s the only
building which Shakespeare would recognize to-day, and even _that_ is
much altered since he lived near it three hundred years ago or more.”
“You said you’d take me to see the Charterhouse. Can’t we go now?”
urged Betty, almost before they were off the bridge.
Godmother laughed. “Haven’t you had enough sight-seeing yet? Well, as
what we’ve just been looking at isn’t _beautiful_, however interesting
it may be, we’ll end our excursion at Charterhouse. You shall see
there, not only a really lovely place, but the only one of the great
London schools which in our day looks more or less as it did in the
sixteenth century. This same omnibus will take us near it, so on the
way I’ll tell you a little of its history.”
“You said it was a monastery before it was a school, didn’t you?”
“Yes, it was a monastery when your friend Richard the Second was
reigning, and remained a monastery till the time of Henry the Eighth,
when the monks were turned out. In Elizabeth’s reign, the place was
sold to the Duke of Norfolk, who altered it to make it suitable for a
private house. A little later—and here the school part comes in—the
Duke of Norfolk sold it again to a rich man called Thomas Sutton,
who turned it into a home of rest for old gentlemen and a school for
boys. The school, as you know, has in our day moved into the country,
but as a home for poor gentlemen who are still called ‘the Brethren,’
Charterhouse goes on to this day.
“We must get down here, at the Church of St. Sepulchre’s in Holborn,
and walk through Smithfield,” she broke off to say, as the omnibus at
the moment, stopped.
“Smithfield? Is this where the martyrs were burnt?” asked Betty while
they crossed a wide space in front of the modern market.
“Yes. It’s full of memories, and all round about it there are wonderful
buildings that we shall have no time to see to-day. Here we are at the
entrance gate of the Charterhouse.”
They passed into a courtyard so quiet and old-world that for the moment
Betty forgot that “the magic” was not working now, and thought herself
once more back again in the sixteenth century. Indeed but for the
modern clothes of the porter who showed them the place, she _was_ as
completely there, as she had been a few hours previously.
As they presently went up a splendid carved oak staircase, Godmother
said, “You see here a beautiful private house and the remains of a
monastery and of a great school, all in one, and that’s what makes
Charterhouse specially interesting.”
A little while later Betty cried out in delight when they entered the
dining-hall where once upon a time Queen Elizabeth was entertained
by the Duke of Norfolk in the sixteenth century, and where that very
evening of the _twentieth_ century the poor gentlemen, “the Brethren”
as they are still called, would dine as usual.
“What a beautiful room!” she exclaimed, looking at its arched roof and
panelled walls.
“It’s a very fine example of a sixteenth-century hall,” Godmother
agreed. “There’s the minstrels’ gallery opposite us, you see, where no
doubt the musicians played their best when Queen Elizabeth was here to
listen to them.”
“I don’t know which I like best, the Chapel we’ve just seen, or this
Hall, or the Library, or the pretty Gardens where ‘the Brethren’ are
walking or sitting,” Betty declared. “What a lovely place for them to
have. I’m so glad Sir Thomas Sutton left it to be a home always for
poor gentlemen. But what a pity that the boys have all gone!”
“Yes, it’s sad, but even the present Charterhouse boys, who have,
of course, never lived in this old place at all (because it’s fifty
years since the school was moved to Godalming), are very proud of
this ancient dwelling which they feel still belongs to them. Did you
notice that new marble tablet in the stone passage or _cloister_, as
it is called, leading to the Chapel? On it are written the names of
Charterhouse boys who fell a year or two ago in the Great War and
are commemorated in the old school-house. Many famous men have been
educated here, of whom you’ll learn something when you know more about
the literature and history of our country. But there’s one of whom you
may have heard. He was a boy here and afterwards wrote a celebrated
novel in which Charterhouse plays a part.”
“Thackeray wrote about it in _The Newcomes_, I know! and I’ve just read
it!” Betty exclaimed. “In the book, Colonel Newcome comes here and is
one of the poor brothers. Thackeray was alive not so very long ago,
wasn’t he?”
“It seems to me a very little while ago,” Godmother answered, “but it’s
considerably over fifty years since he died, as I discovered just now
by looking at the tablet to his memory in the Chapel Cloister.”
“Oh! I’m so glad I’ve seen this place,” Betty said as they were
leaving, and she turned at the gate to look back at a sunny courtyard
with a glimpse of green lawn beyond. “I shall read _The Newcomes_ again
now, and imagine old Colonel Newcome walking just here. I had no idea
there were such beautiful places in London, Godmother—even without
the magic, I mean,” she added.
“Thousands of people live in this wonderful city of ours and _never_
find them—never even take any trouble to know of their existence,”
was Godmother’s reply. “And that seems strange to me, and also a great
pity. They lose much pleasure.”
* * * * *
Betty would gladly have lingered in Smithfield, and was full of
questions about various buildings which attracted her attention, but
Godmother hurried her away even from the great beautiful church of St.
Bartholomew near the Charterhouse.
“We must visit that another time,” she declared. “We’ve done enough for
the present. But before next Saturday,” she added, “go to the London
Museum. You will find all sorts of things in it to interest you if you
keep in mind what we’ve seen to-day. Go to the gallery in the basement
and look at the model of London in the sixteenth century. You will see
the bridge with the quaint houses clinging to it, and recognize some of
the buildings we saw on our magic visit. Then look at the big model of
the Tower in another room. Because it was more or less like that model
in Elizabeth’s day, and indeed except for the water in the moat, it has
nearly the same appearance now.
“Don’t forget also to look for the life-size figure of Queen Elizabeth
on horseback and one of the courtiers leading her horse. That also is
in the basement of the Museum, and will remind you of how you saw her
riding through the Chepe. There are, in fact, dozens of things in the
Museum belonging to London of the sixteenth century that ought to be
full of meaning to you now.”
“And Shakespeare’s plays will be more interesting too, and Edmund
Spenser’s poetry, and all about Raleigh, and Drake,” exclaimed
Betty rather incoherently. “Oh, the magic makes all the difference,
Godmother!”
IV
The Restoration
THE LONDON OF CHARLES II AND OF MR. SAMUEL PEPYS
“We can’t go for a drive to-day before the ‘magic’ begins,” said Betty
ruefully on the following Saturday,—a day of pouring rain.
“No. But how lucky that the rain won’t interfere with our visit to the
London of Charles the Second,” Godmother returned.
“Is that what we’re going to see to-day? Oh, do let’s go at once,
Godmother,” was Betty’s eager reply.
“Wait a little. I’m going to give you a short history examination
first, to make sure that you will understand what we see, when we _do_
see it. Elizabeth was reigning when we last went to old London. Who was
the next king?”
“Her cousin James the First, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots,” returned
Betty promptly. “We’ve just had it in the History class,” she added, to
explain her readiness.
“And then?”
“_His_ son, Charles the First. And he was beheaded, and then Cromwell
ruled and was called the Protector, and when he died, the people wanted
a king again, so they sent for Charles the First’s son from abroad, and
he was crowned, and that was called the Restoration,” said Betty very
fluently.
Godmother nodded. “The Restoration of course meaning the restoring of
kings to the English throne. Now Elizabeth died in the year 1603, and
Charles the Second was crowned in 1660, so as the London we shall
see will only be about sixty years older than it was in the time of
Elizabeth, you wouldn’t expect to find it much altered, would you?”
“No. Except that I suppose it will be a little bigger?”
“Yet during the reign of Charles the Second, London was almost
_completely_ changed for a reason you will understand presently,”
Godmother returned. “Now before we go back to Restoration days, I want
to tell you something about a man who lived in London in the time of
Charles the Second. His name was Samuel Pepys. He was educated at that
St. Paul’s School we talked about when we looked at some of the great
schools that had just begun to flourish in the reign of Elizabeth.
Afterwards he went to Cambridge, and then for some years he held posts
in the Admiralty,—that is the great office in which the affairs of the
Navy are managed. We have passed the street he lived in, many times on
our journeys to London Bridge. It is called Seething Lane, and is close
to the bridge, and not far from the Monument.”
“I remember seeing it,” Betty answered.
“Well, he was not a great man, though he was industrious and did his
work well. He was vain and stingy, and had a great many petty faults,
though on the whole he was lovable and kind-hearted. But we can never
think of the days of Charles the Second without thinking of Samuel
Pepys, and I’ll tell you why. He had the habit of keeping a diary, and
that diary, now printed, is one of the most interesting and amusing
books you can imagine. It is also very valuable, because as Pepys was a
great gossip, and described everything he did, and everything he saw,
and every place he went to, very fully, we seem to know the life of
London in his day almost as though we had lived it ourselves.”
“Shall we see him?” asked Betty with interest.
“We are sure to. He went a great deal to the Palace of Whitehall, so
perhaps we shall meet him there. Anyhow I can’t imagine going to London
any time between 1660 and 1670 without seeing Samuel Pepys. I think it
is he who must take us back to Restoration London.”
Godmother went to the Cabinet where the magic talismans were kept, and
took out a book. “Here is his ‘Diary,’ Shut your eyes, and I’ll read
you what he wrote in it one May, two hundred and sixty years ago. He is
recording in his ‘Diary’ how he spent that day, now so far in the past.
“‘_To Westminster. In the way meeting many milkmaids with their
garlands upon their pails, dancing with a fiddler before them, and
saw pretty Nelly standing at her lodging door.... She seemed a mighty
pretty creature._’”
“Who was ‘pretty Nelly’?” asked Betty, holding the book which Godmother
put in her hand in the special “magic” way.
“You will see her if you look now.”
Betty’s eyes flew open upon a charming scene.
In place of the ordinary-looking street of Drury Lane, leading at one
end into the Strand, she saw a road lined with gabled dwellings, rather
like the old houses still left over Staple Inn in Holborn. The houses
were not very close together, and slips of garden with trees in them,
gave the “lane” a countrified look. A group of girls wearing muslin
caps, short skirts and frilled aprons, and carrying milk-pails slung
from their shoulders, came dancing down the road to the music played on
a fiddle by a man who walked in front of them. From the milk-pails hung
garlands of bluebells and cowslips, and some of the girls carried on
their heads instead of pails, little pyramids of silver plates adorned
with ribbons and flowers.
Opposite to where Betty and her godmother found themselves standing,
leaning in the door of one of the gabled houses, was a pretty,
merry-looking little creature, who had evidently only just got up, for
she wore a flowered bed-jacket over her short skirt, and a night-cap
trimmed with pink ribbons.
“That’s ‘pretty witty Nelly,’” said Godmother. “Nell Gwynne, the famous
actress. She often plays at Drury Lane Theatre, lower down the road,
and the King greatly admires her.”
“Why, there was a play acted in London not very long ago called _Sweet
Nell of Old Drury_, wasn’t there?” Betty exclaimed. “Mother was talking
about it the other day.”
“Yes, a modern play with ‘sweet Nell’ as heroine. Well, there she is.
And this is ‘Old Drury’ where she lives.”
Just at the moment, the milkmaids and the fiddler stopped before Nell
Gwynne’s house, and began to sing.
“London, to thee I do present
The merry month of May”—
Betty heard these words, but the rest of the song was drowned by the
loud music of the fiddle, and the laughter of the girls, in which the
charming little actress joined as they came crowding round her to take
the coins she distributed right and left.
“If you look round,” said Godmother, “you will see Samuel Pepys, who is
a great admirer of pretty Nelly, watching this little scene.”
Betty turned her head, and saw a fat-faced, good-natured, rather
conceited-looking man grandly dressed in a black satin coat with silver
buttons, huge sleeves made of fine white lawn, a lace cravat, and a wig
with long curls. A sword in a scabbard hung at his side, and he carried
a tall gold-mounted cane.
“He is very gorgeous because he is going on to Court—to the Palace of
Whitehall,” said Godmother. “But _we_ will follow the milkmaids to the
Maypole.”
“The Maypole? How lovely!” Betty exclaimed. “Where is it?”
“Quite close. In the Strand. You know the church called St.
Mary-le-Strand? It is the first of the two churches that stand in the
middle of the road as you go up the Strand from Charing Cross. Well,
just in front of that church, we shall find the Maypole. You can hear
the shouts of the people now.”
In a minute or two they were in the Strand, and there, in the middle
of the road, with long coloured streamers hanging from its summit,
stood an enormously tall pole wreathed with flowers, round which with
laughter and shouting, men and girls were dancing. Some of the boys had
garters with bells round their knee-breeches, and nearly all of them
were waving handkerchiefs. The whole street was crowded with noisy,
merry-making people, and one boy in particular, standing on a high
wooden stool close to the Maypole, seemed to be directing the dance.
“He is the May-Lord, and he arranges the fun,” Godmother said. “Listen
to what he is reciting.”
“Up then, I say, both young and old,
Both man and maid a-Maying,
With drums and guns that bounce along
And merry tabor playing!
Which to prolong. God save our King,
And send his country peace,
And root out treason from the land!
And so, my friends, I cease.”
“London is very gay,” Betty remarked as they walked down the Strand
towards Whitehall, passing groups of merry-makers on the way. “But it
looks just the same as it did in Elizabeth’s day,” she added, glancing
from the line of stately mansions on the left, with wide stretches of
the river visible between them, to the fields and gardens on the right
of the Strand. “The people wear different sort of clothes now, but the
town hasn’t altered much, has it?”
“No. We are in the early years of Charles the Second’s reign as yet,
and London is as full of gaiety as a few years ago it was dull and
gloomy, when the Puritan party was powerful, Cromwell ruled, and all
amusements were forbidden. Now the theatres have been reopened, and all
the old sports and pastimes of the people have been revived.”
“Then there will be acting going on again in those funny theatres we
saw in Southwark?”
“Yes, but these are already falling out of fashion, and will disappear,
because finer play-houses are being built on this side of the river.
Drury Lane Theatre is one of them.”
“I went there to a pantomime last Christmas,” Betty remarked. “But of
course it’s quite a different building now, in _our_ time, isn’t it?”
“There have been _three_ Drury Lane theatres since the one in which
Nell Gwynne plays now. You went to the fourth building on the same
spot.... Now we’re at the end of the Strand and I’m just going to let
you have a glimpse of Whitehall Palace which last time we saw only
from the water. Look at that beautiful monument in the middle of the
road, just where in our time, stands the statue of Charles the First
on horseback. That’s the last of the thirteen crosses put up by Edward
the First to mark the place where his wife’s body rested when it was
brought from Nottinghamshire to be buried in Westminster Abbey.”
“It’s in Charing Cross Station yard now, isn’t it?” Betty asked.
“Not that one. The monument outside the station in _our_ day, is only a
copy of the cross you are looking at. I needn’t tell you that when it
was first set up, long, long ago in Edward the First’s time, this place
was all country with a tiny hamlet called _Cherringe_ surrounded by
fields and woods, where we are standing....
“Now look down the road, remembering that if we were in our own day
we should have our backs to Trafalgar Square and our faces towards
Westminster. On our left we should see, first shops and houses, and
then big buildings all the way down to the Houses of Parliament. On our
right, there would be the Horse Guards and a line of Government Offices
with St. James’s Park behind them.”
But on what a different scene Betty looked! The whole of the space
stretching between the river (which she could see gleaming on her
left) and St. James’s Park in full view on her right, was covered
with houses, separated from one another by gardens and lawns, but all
belonging to, and part of, the Palace of Whitehall. Right through the
midst of this great plot of buildings, ran a public road, over-arched
by two fine gateways at some long distance apart.
“You remember I told you that Henry the Eighth was the first king to
live in this palace?” said Godmother. “He moved here, you remember,
from the old Palace of Westminster when Cardinal Wolsey, to whom it
originally belonged, fell into disgrace, and had to give it up to him.
Henry invited the German painter Holbein, to live at Whitehall, and
began a famous collection of pictures here. It was Henry the Eighth
also who built many of the houses you see now. They are all part of the
Palace. You know that this was one of Queen Elizabeth’s many homes,
because you saw her land from the river over there on the left. Now
look in the opposite direction. Do you see that great open space on the
right? It is called the Tilt Yard, and you have walked through it many
times—as it is now in our own day, I mean.”
“Have I? What is it now?” Betty asked.
She was puzzled, for the whole place looked so different from the
Whitehall she knew.
“The Horse Guards Parade. The great open space at the end of St.
James’s Park, you know. It was there that Queen Elizabeth with her
Maids of Honour sat to watch one of the masques she liked so much. It
was a sort of masque and tournament combined. The gallery in which she
was seated, was called _The Fortresse of Perfect Beauty_, and a company
of splendidly-dressed knights stormed it by shooting sweetly-scented
powder and perfumes at it. Then another company of knights calling
themselves ‘The Defenders of Beauty’ met the enemy in a mock fight, and
defeated them.”
“That was when she was young and beautiful, I suppose?” Betty said.
“She was quite old when we saw her.”
“Yes. She was young at the time of that particular masque, but she kept
her love for acting and for dancing almost to the day of her death.”
“Did she die here?”
“She died at her palace at Richmond, but her body was borne on a
funeral barge down the river there, and here in Whitehall it lay in
state till she was buried in the Abbey yonder. Then came James the
First, and not content with this great palace, he planned to build a
new one! Do you remember I told you of an artist called Inigo Jones
who designed beautiful scenery for the masques in this reign? Well, he
was also an architect, and he made a plan for a wonderful new palace,
and actually began to build it. There is the little bit he finished.”
Godmother pointed to a stately house on the left.
“Why, I remember that! It’s in Whitehall now. Opposite the Horse
Guards.”
“It is, and it’s all that’s left of Whitehall Palace in our own day.
The dream of a new palace remained a dream, for that’s all of it that
was ever built, and was only a tiny part of what Inigo Jones meant to
do. But it remains to our day, and I never pass it without thinking of
the tragedy that happened there.”
“What tragedy?”
“Don’t you remember that it was there on a scaffold put up outside that
second window at this end, that James’s son, Charles the First, was
executed?”
“I’d forgotten,” Betty said, looking with interest at the window
Godmother pointed out. “James little thought he was having the very
place built where his poor son was to die, did he?” she added after a
moment. “Then did Oliver Cromwell come to live at Whitehall?” she asked
presently.