a turning out of Holborn. “The figure of that fat boy on the corner
house of Cock Lane, then called _Pye Corner_, marks the place where the
flames were at last quenched by pulling down houses to make an open
space.”
“I wonder what the fat boy has to do with the Great Fire?” Betty said.
Godmother laughed. “There used to be an inscription under the figure
to say that the Fire was caused by ‘the sin of gluttony.’ But that was
probably only because ‘Pudding Lane’ and ‘Pie Corner’ suggested eating
too much of either or both!” she explained.
“Is there anything in the London Museum about the time of Charles the
Second?” Betty asked on the homeward drive.
“Yes. You’d better go there before next Saturday. You’ll find plenty
to interest you, and to remind you of the terrible as well as of the
charming things you’ve lately seen. Look for the placards that were
posted up in the streets at the time of the Great Plague. One is headed
‘_Lord have mercy upon us_’ and gives some curious directions about the
sort of medicine people should take to prevent infection. Then just
above these old placards, you will see one of the very hand-bells that
were tolled in the streets when men went round with the carts crying,
‘_Bring out your dead_.’ Go downstairs into the basement if you want to
see a splendid model of London burning.”
“Burning?” echoed Betty in surprise.
“Yes, and very cleverly managed too, as you’ll discover. Look at all
the other models while you’re in the basement part of the Museum.
There’s one of old St. Paul’s as it appeared before the Fire, and as
you saw it for the last time in the early years of Charles the Second’s
reign.”
“London will be almost a new city the next time we see it,” remarked
Betty. “I wonder whether I shall like it so well as the old one?”
“It will be different, certainly. And now, my dear, it’s getting so
late that I’m going to drive you straight home.”
V
The Eighteenth Century
THE LONDON OF THE GEORGES AND OF DR. JOHNSON
“To-day we’re going to see London as it was after the Fire!” exclaimed
Betty, when she had recovered as usual from her first astonishment and
delight at “remembering everything” the moment she saw Godmother. “How
are we going to get back this time?”
“Well, there’s a good deal we can see without ‘going back’ at all,”
Godmother replied. “Because all that surrounds us every day _is_ London
after the Fire. Many buildings exist now, just as they were put up when
the city began to rise from its ashes in the latter part of Charles the
Second’s reign.”
“Isn’t there to be any ‘magic’ at all to-day, then?” Betty’s voice was
full of disappointment.
“Not just yet, at any rate. We are not going back quite so far into the
Past this time. Only, in fact, about a hundred and fifty years—to the
middle of the eighteenth century.”
“But London must have changed even in that time?”
“It has—enormously. Yet at the same time much remains the same, and
I propose to show you first what is left in our own day of the end of
the seventeenth and the whole of the eighteenth centuries. It will only
be necessary to employ magic in the case of certain places that have
altogether vanished from the London of our own time. But before we
go any further with or without magic, we must have our usual little
history examination. So sit down and collect your thoughts.”
Betty obeyed with a good grace, for she knew she would find all she was
about to see, ten times more interesting for not being “in a muddle”
about her history.
“When we left London last time,” Godmother began, “Charles the Second
was reigning. Who was the next king?”
“James the Second, his brother,” Betty said, after a moment’s thought.
“And then?”
“William and Mary.”
“Why didn’t the son of James the Second come to the throne?”
“Because there was a revolution, and the people chose James the
Second’s son-in-law to be king, and he was William of Orange, who was
married to James’s daughter, Mary.”
“Very good!” exclaimed Godmother approvingly. “Queen Anne, you
remember, Mary’s sister, was the next sovereign. And after her?”
“Let me see. She had no children, so a relation of hers, a German man,
was chosen. He was George the First. Then came George the Second, and
then——”
“That will do,” Godmother interrupted. “The reign of George the Second
brings us to the London we’re going to see to-day, _partly_, but not
_altogether_ by magic. Some of it at least we can see in the course of
a walk or drive, for it still exists. Now we’ll have the car and go as
usual to London Bridge for a general view of the city that has risen up
since the Fire and has been growing bigger and bigger for two hundred
and fifty years.”
Half an hour later they were passing the Monument at the entrance to
the Bridge, and this time Betty looked up at it with greater interest
than ever.
“That marks the place where the Fire began,” she murmured. “How soon
afterwards was it built, Godmother?”
“About eight years afterwards. Sir Christopher Wren designed it. He, as
I hope you remember, was the great architect who practically rebuilt
London. At least so far as great public buildings are concerned. We’ll
get out now, and walk to the middle of the bridge.”
“The last time I saw it ‘magically’ the funny pretty houses on it were
burning!” Betty said. “I do wish this was the very same bridge,” she
added with a sigh.
“Well, at least it’s almost, though not quite in the same _place_ as
the one you stood on with Chaucer, and that’s something, isn’t it? But
now look right and left, and remembering the London you saw burning,
tell me what changes you notice in the _kind_ of buildings you see now.
There’s the new St. Paul’s, for instance, and you remember the old one?”
“It’s quite a different sort of church now,” Betty said. “Old St.
Paul’s had a spire and pointed roofs and arches instead of that big
dome with the ball and cross on the top. All the churches now are
different,” she went on, looking from one white steeple to another
rising above the houses.
“Yes. You see, don’t you?—that the _architecture_ of London,—that
is, the way a building is made—has changed completely. Before the
Fire, the churches and most of the other important buildings, were in a
style we call Gothic. They had pointed arches, like Westminster Abbey,
and if you keep the appearance of the Abbey in mind, you will have a
good idea of what Gothic architecture means. See how very different
is this new St. Paul’s! It has a dome. In front of it runs a line of
pillars supporting a sort of stone triangle. Look at the gallery of
columns upon which the dome rests. It is all as different as it can be,
from the architecture of the Abbey. Now for the sort of architecture
of which the new St. Paul’s is an example, the architects took the
ancient Greek temples for their models. Nearly all the architects who
lived later than Elizabeth’s time, built in this way, and Christopher
Wren and Inigo Jones (who designed the Whitehall Banqueting House,
you remember) were two of the men of the seventeenth century who
planned their buildings on Grecian models. Now as Wren designed most
of the important buildings, we may expect to find London architecture
after the Fire, for the most part in this new style. It is called the
_classical_ style, and the new St. Paul’s is a good example of it.”
“But all the crowded houses and quays and bridges that we see now
weren’t here till much later even, than George the Second’s time, were
they?”
“Indeed no, though of course London had grown bigger in the eighteenth
century than it was even after the time of the Fire. When we make use
of the ‘magic’ presently we’ll just take a glimpse of the City from
London Bridge in the eighteenth century. I’ve only brought you here now
to get a general view of the new sort of churches.”
“Where are we going now?” Betty asked as they re-entered the car.
“I’m going to take you to see one at least of the four Inns of Court.”
“Inns of Court? What are they?”
“Well, they were founded to be colleges for the study of law, and
lawyers still live in them and dine in their halls, and law students
have to pass examinations set by the men who govern the Inns. They are
all rather close together, round about Fleet Street, which as you know
is a continuation of the Strand.”
“This is Fleet Street, isn’t it?” Betty said. “Yes! There’s the
monument with the Griffin on it in the middle of the road, outside the
Law Courts.”
“And here is the entrance to the Middle Temple, quite close to that
monument,” Godmother replied, stopping the car. “The Middle Temple
is the name of one of the Inns. The others are the Inner Temple,
Lincoln’s Inn and Gray’s Inn. They are all interesting and beautiful,
but we shall only have time to look at the two ‘Temples’—Middle and
Inner—which are side by side.”
“Oh! what a nice entrance!” Betty said as they passed under an old
brick gate and house.
“Yes. That was designed by Christopher Wren just after the Fire.”
“Why is this place called the Temple?” Betty asked, and almost in the
same breath, “Oh, Godmother, how pretty it is! Isn’t it wonderful to
turn out of the noisy street into this quiet place?”
“That’s one of the surprises of London town,” Godmother said. “It’s
full of charming leafy places like this—if you know where to look for
them.”
[Illustration]
Betty was gazing at the straight-fronted houses enclosing numberless
quiet courts,—houses whose bricks were now dark red with age, and
from them she looked past a row of big, beautiful trees to where green
lawns sloped down to the Embankment with the shining river beyond. She
saw that the courts and corridors and gardens, covered a great space
between Fleet Street on one hand and the river on the other.
“Let us sit down here under the trees in King’s Bench Walk,” Godmother
said, “and I’ll tell you a little about this place. You asked me just
now why it was called the Temple. Did you notice the church we’ve just
passed—a curious _round_-shaped church? Well, that was built more than
seven hundred years ago, when Henry the Second was king, and knights
from every civilized country were going to Palestine to fight in the
Crusades. Some of these knights formed themselves into a society called
the Templars, because they had sworn to defend the Temple of the Holy
Sepulchre at Jerusalem. Well, when the English knights belonging to
this great Society, or _Order_ as it was called, came home, they built
that church and made it round in shape, in imitation of the Round
Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Once upon a time these
Knights Templars owned all this ground upon which the lawns and houses
before us now stand.”
“But I thought you said this was a place for _lawyers_?” Betty began.
“So I did, and so it is now, and so it has been ever since the reign
of Edward the Third. By that time, the Knights Templars were no longer
the good sincere men who had formed the Society a hundred years or so
before. They had become rich and proud and greedy of power, and the
society was at last brought to an end. The property belonging to it
went to the King, and in Edward the Third’s reign, was given to certain
lawyers, and has ever since belonged to the profession of the law. But
it keeps its old name of the Temple, and so recalls the time when it
belonged to the great religious society of the Knights Templars.”
“But none of _their_ houses or buildings are left here now?” Betty said.
“Nothing except the round church which they built seven hundred years
ago.”
“And even the houses here now, aren’t so old as the time when the
Temple first came to the lawyers, are they? They are quite different
from the houses of Dick Whittington’s time, or even Elizabeth’s reign,
for instance.”
“Yes. That’s because all these _small_ houses were built after the
Fire, which destroyed most of the Temple. Fortunately it didn’t burn
the church (the oldest part of it all), nor Middle Temple Hall, which
was built in Elizabeth’s reign. We’ll go and look at that Hall now,
because besides being beautiful, it’s full of interesting memories.”
They crossed various quiet courtyards till they came in sight of a Hall
built of dark red brick and surrounded by the delicate green of trees,
with lawns stretching in front of it towards the river.
“That great room,” said Godmother, “has seen some wonderful sights,
especially at Christmas time, when feasting and revelry went on within
it. You remember the ‘masques’ of Queen Elizabeth’s day? Well, Middle
Temple Hall was a favourite place for them, and the Queen herself
sometimes came to see them there. You will understand in a moment what
a splendid place it was for entertainments.”
And indeed when Betty stood under the oak rafters of the great room,
with its stained-glass windows and its wide floor, she could imagine
it filled with laughing, dancing people of Elizabethan days, or as
it looked when on a platform at one end of it, decked with holly and
garlands of ivy, the players acted a masque before the standing crowd
that filled the rest of the hall.
“In this very place,” Godmother said, “_Twelfth Night_ was once acted,
and it is thought that Shakespeare himself took part in the performance
of his own play. I hope the people who dine in it now sometimes think
of the folk who feasted and made merry here hundreds of years ago.”
“Is it still the dining-room for the law people, then?”
“Yes, the governors of the Inn, the benchers as they are called, and
the students dine here, and by an old custom no student can become a
barrister unless he or she has dined a certain fixed number of times in
this Hall.”
“_She?_” echoed Betty.
“Yes, don’t you know that women have lately been allowed to study for
the law?” Godmother laughed. “If any of all the famous lawyers now
dead, could come back to this place, perhaps of all the changes the
one that might most astonish them would be to find girls and women
dining—‘keeping commons’ as it is called—in this Hall which for
hundreds and hundreds of years has been sacred to men alone.”
“_Shakespeare_ wouldn’t be so very surprised, perhaps?” suggested
Betty. “He wasn’t a lawyer, of course. But he would remember writing
about Portia.”
Godmother laughed again. “Quite right, Betty. I’m sure he would. And
now that you mention Shakespeare, do you remember anything about the
Temple in his plays?”
Betty shook her head.
“These are the gardens of Middle Temple,” said Godmother, pointing to
the lawns in front of the Hall (on one of which some young men were
playing tennis). “It was the same garden that Shakespeare, who knew it
well, chose for a famous scene in his play of _Henry the Sixth_ when
the party of Lancaster chose the red rose and the party of York the
white one for a badge.”
“And then the Wars of the Roses began!” said Betty. “What does
Shakespeare say about it?”
“The scene goes like this. The gentlemen who take different sides in
the quarrel between the House of York and Lancaster are just coming out
of that very building,” Godmother began, pointing to the Hall, “and one
of them says:
‘Within the Temple Hall we were too loud:
The garden here is more convenient.’”
“This _very_ garden,” interrupted Betty. “Only I expect it was wilder
and had lots of flowers in it then?”
“Evidently there were many rose bushes, for one noble, who is on the
side of the Yorkists, says:
‘Let him that is a true born gentleman
And stands upon the honour of his birth
If he suppose that I have pleaded truth
From off this briar pluck a white rose with me.’
Then Somerset, on the side of the Lancastrians, takes up the challenge:
‘Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer
But dare maintain the party of the truth
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.’
So the white and red roses are picked and stuck into the doublets as
the sides are taken, and another noble, wise enough to see into the
future, says that this quarrel in the Temple Gardens ‘_shall send
between the red rose and the white, A thousand souls to death and
deadly night_.’ And so it did, in the dreadful long War of the Roses,
as you remember.”
“But, Godmother,” began Betty after a moment, “I thought we were going
to be in the eighteenth century to-day, and so far we’ve been talking
about much earlier times!”
“So we have! And that’s the worst, or best, of London. When a place
like this Temple, is very old, the history of a great many ‘times’
belongs to it. But you’re quite right to remind me that I brought
you here because, except for the church, and the Hall, and one or
two other buildings, the _look_ of the place as it is now, is much
more seventeenth and eighteenth century than anything else, and is
‘mixed up’ as you so often say, with the lives of many interesting
eighteenth-century writers, who lived in one or other of the houses
enclosing these charming courts. You’ll know, or you _ought_ to
know, two of them, if I mention their names. Dr. Johnson and Oliver
Goldsmith.”
“I’ve read _The Vicar of Wakefield_ that Goldsmith wrote,” said Betty,
“and I’ve heard of Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary—but I don’t know much
about him.”
“Yet he’s the man who will help us with our magic journey presently,”
Godmother returned. “For the time you may remember that Oliver
Goldsmith was one of his friends.”
“Why, there’s his name!” Betty exclaimed as she caught sight of a
medallion on the wall of a house in an enclosure called Brick Court.
“That’s where he lived and died, and the tablet is there to commemorate
him. He was buried in the churchyard of the Temple Church. Come! I will
show you his tombstone. You will, I expect, read Goldsmith’s life when
you are older, and find out what a lovable man he was, in spite of many
tiresome ways,” she went on as they stood looking down at his grave.
“Perhaps we shall see him when the magic begins?” Betty suggested. “I
should love to see him. The Sixth Form acted a scene out of _She Stoops
to Conquer_ last term. That’s one of his plays, isn’t it?”
[Illustration]
“Yes, and a very charming one. No doubt, as you say, we shall actually
see him later on, but we can look at a very amusing picture of him even
before the magic begins, in a house I’m going to take you to visit now
at once.”
“What house? Who lives there?” asked Betty, turning to take a last
glance at the quiet dignified old houses of the Temple before they left
it for the noise and bustle of Fleet Street.
“No one now. But a hundred and seventy years ago Dr. Johnson lived
there with his wife. It isn’t far from here, so we’ll walk.”
By this time they were standing under the archway at which they had
entered the Temple.
“That’s the Law Courts, isn’t it?” Betty asked, pointing to a pile of
buildings opposite. “But _they’re_ not old, are they?”
“No. They were built about forty years ago. But near them, are the two
other beautiful old Inns I mentioned, Lincoln’s Inn and Gray’s Inn,
both of which you must see some day. This part of London is full of
buildings connected with the law.
“Now let us walk a little way up Fleet Street, and as we go, notice
what a number of narrow alleys or passages there are on the left. All
of them are interesting, but we shall only have time for the special
one we are going to see.”
“Crane Court, Bolt Court, Johnson’s Court—we’re getting near him,
aren’t we?” Betty said as she read the names aloud.
“Fleet Street is full of memories of Dr. Johnson. He had many dwelling
places, but however often he moved, he never went far from Fleet
Street.”
Godmother now led the way up a narrow alley called Bolt Court, and in
a moment they came to a little enclosure in which one or two of the
houses were of the kind Betty had seen in the Temple, old, square,
and built of dark red bricks, while others were quite modern business
places.
“This is _Gough Square_, and here is Dr. Johnson’s house,” Godmother
said, stopping opposite one of the old houses with the tiniest little
garden in front of it. “For years it was used as an office for
printers, and it would have been pulled down by now if a gentleman
called Mr. Cecil Harmsworth had not bought it and given it to the
nation to be kept for ever in memory of Dr. Johnson. Now we’ll
ring the bell and go in, and you shall see what the inside of an
eighteenth-century house was like. For this one has been arranged as
nearly as possible as it was in Dr. Johnson’s time.”
Betty was delighted with the panelled rooms, with the quaint deep
cupboards in the walls, one of which, as the interesting housekeeper
who showed the place told her, was a powder closet, where the
gentlemen’s wigs and the ladies’ hair were powdered before they went
to parties or “routs,” and “assemblies,” as in eighteenth-century
days, parties were called. Upstairs there was a big attic stretching
the length of the house, and here it was that Dr. Johnson worked at
his great and famous Dictionary. But every room was full of memories
of him in the shape of letters or books arranged in glass cases, or in
pictures on the walls.
“Here is the picture I told you about, showing Dr. Johnson and his
friend Goldsmith together,” said Godmother, pointing to one of them.
“It’s very interesting because the scene it represents, took place
over there in Wine Office Court,”—she pointed out of the window to an
opposite street,—“where at one time Goldsmith lived.”
“What are they doing?” asked Betty, looking at the painting. “That’s
Goldsmith in the funny night-cap, I suppose?”
The caretaker, who seemed to know everything that was to be known about
the house and its belongings, began to tell her the following story of
the picture.
“Though he was the kindest-hearted man in the world, Oliver Goldsmith
was so careless and happy-go-lucky that he was always in debt, and one
morning before he was dressed, he sent over a messenger to this house
in which you are standing, to borrow a guinea from his neighbour, Dr.
Johnson. Dr. Johnson crossed this little Square which you see from the
window, and went to his friend’s lodgings opposite, to find out what
was the matter. The picture shows you why Goldsmith wanted the money.
There is his angry landlady waiting to be paid, and there is Goldsmith
in his night-cap and dressing-gown with Dr. Johnson sitting opposite to
him, looking over some sheets of writing.”
“Why is he doing that?” Betty asked.
“Well, he knows that his friend is penniless, and even though he
now has the money to pay his landlady, he must have some more to go
on with. So he has asked him if he has written anything that might
possibly be sold. Goldsmith, you see, has been rummaging in that box
into which he has thrown stories he has written from time to time, and
the manuscript he has just handed to Dr. Johnson is no other than _The
Vicar of Wakefield_!
[Illustration]
“That’s the story so far as the picture tells it. But we know what
happens next. Dr. Johnson puts the manuscript into one of those big
pockets of his, goes out, and in a short time returns with sixty
pounds—the price he has received for the book by which Oliver
Goldsmith is best known—the famous _Vicar of Wakefield_.”
“And perhaps if Dr. Johnson hadn’t taken it, it would never have been
published at all?” Betty suggested.
“Very likely,” agreed Godmother. “Well, now that you’ve seen Dr.
Johnson’s house, we’ll go and look at the inn in which he and Goldsmith
often sat.”
They crossed the little Square, and found themselves almost at once in
Wine Office Court.
“Unluckily Goldsmith’s house has gone, but here is the _Cheshire
Cheese_, one of the oldest inns in London, for it was old, when Johnson
and Goldsmith used to come here.”
They stepped then into the quaintest of taverns! It was dark, with low
ceilings and sanded floors, and when they had looked at everything
and seen the chair pointed out as Dr. Johnson’s, Betty could scarcely
believe they were in modern London.
“I understand now why we don’t need ‘the magic’ to see a good deal of
London as it was in the eighteenth century!” she remarked. “There’s
quite a lot of it left.”
“Much more than most people know about, because only a few take the
trouble to discover it hidden away behind modern buildings,” Godmother
returned.
“Is there any other place left in Fleet Street that Johnson used to go
to?” Betty asked. “You said he was always walking about here.”