mansions of the richest Citizens; but that is readily accounted for:
Stone requires no great deal of preparation; the facing received the
labours of the Sculptor or Mason, but the monstrous thick wall was
filled with fragments from the chissel, or rough pebbles. Besides,
pillars, mouldings, and fret-work, arose without difficulty from soft
stone. Could those embellishments have been produced in brick without
infinite trouble? and, would they ever have looked well when joined
with mortar? Is it not then plain that the noble ideas of our Princes,
Nobles, and other rich men who lavished vast sums on their structures,
required _Stone_ to embody them; and that, had it been common, Brick
would certainly have been rejected by them? The total disuse of brick
by the rich deprived the less fortunate Citizen of its advantages.
The revival or introduction of any manufacture demands encouragement
from the powerful; if that is withheld, who will attempt them merely
on disinterested motives? Parsimony in the great revived the art of
Brick-making. When a Prince found the price of labour increase, and
wished to build, he first stripped the design of his architect of
ornament: thus stripped, a plain surface might be composed of any hard
substance; Brick naturally occurred, and bricks were made. Still the
mass of the people had them not. The affluent used them both in London
and in the country; but the unhappy publick, fascinated with their
Wood and Plaster, at last saw one fatal flame destroy all their frail
tenements at one blow. The year 1666 expelled wooden buildings from our
Metropolis; and from that year Brick reigned with undiminished sway,
has crept beyond all reasonable limits, and even aspired to compose
Churches and Chapels.
The next object in this difficult article will be the attempt to trace
different æras in Domestic Architecture. Unfortunately the fire alluded
to has nearly deprived us of a possibility of so doing in London: the
most antient specimen there I should suppose to be the _ecclesiastical_
lodgings appendant to Westminster Abbey in Dean's-yard. I confess,
they are not strictly in point; but I have ventured to mention them,
as probably somewhat resembling those of the laity. Their date is
previous to 1386, as Abbot Litlington, who built them, died in that
year. It will be found that the windows are small and pointed: in this
particular they differ from those erected at the same period by Richard
II. adjoining the West side of Westminster-hall. Litlington's lodgings
are of stone; but the latter is of brick, and perhaps one of the oldest
specimens of that material in England, and certainly so in London. Part
of it was recently taken down to widen the street, but enough remains
to convince us œconomy prevailed in a very considerable degree at
the date of its erection. From the time of Richard II. to that of Henry
VIII. brick edifices were erected at intervals. In the reign of Henry
VII. the pointed style became so expensive, through the introduction
of excessive ornament, that its declination might readily be foreseen:
accordingly the rich had recourse to brick; and when Henry VIII.
dissolved religious houses, the pious had no motive to continue the use
of splendid architecture in erecting or supporting Churches and Abbeys.
But I would not be understood to mean that the mansions of men of
fortune were uniformly built of brick after Richard II. had introduced
the use of it in London: there is at least one proof to the contrary
now remaining, in the house of Sir John Crosby, erected soon after
1466. The reader, on referring to a view of that magnificent building
inserted in the third volume of "Londinium Redivivum," p. 565, will
find Sir John to have excelled the Monarch in his ideas of grandeur;
and perceive, besides, that pointed windows with rich mullions were by
no means confined to churches and ecclesiastical lodgings; and the roof
will convince him that pendents pierced and flattened arches were not
first introduced in the reign of Henry VIII.
The old gateway of St. James's Palace is a good specimen of brick
architecture of that reign. Somerset-house, built in the reign of
Edward VI. was an awkward imitation of the Grecian style; and the
intercolumniations in several instances were filled with appropriate
niches: but the remainder of those of the front had the old English
angular window, with mullions of the same figure; the wings were more
correct; that part of the Palace which faced the Thames resembled the
style of St. James's before Inigo Jones altered it[364:A].
If we may credit the date, there is one house in Bishopsgate-street,
almost adjoining St. Botolph's church, coæval with Sir John Crosby's,
which resembles many others known to have been built in far subsequent
periods. Whether the house alluded to of framed wood and plaster is
really of the age mentioned is of little importance; but I think it may
be safely adduced as a probable type of the mansions of tradesmen of
very remote days.
Anderson says, in his History of Commerce, that most of the houses in
London were thatched with straw in 1246; and that chimneys were not
known to the inhabitants of the wooden houses even in 1300. According
to this gentleman, they sat round stoves in the midst of smoke, which I
suppose he intends to infer escaped through the doors and windows. The
assertion that chimneys were _not known_ at that period is confuted by
every old Castle in the kingdom. How the poorest classes fared in this
particular, is another consideration.
[Illustration: _The Palace at Croydon_]
[Illustration: _Brick gate, near Bromley_]
There were numbers of private mansions erected in the reigns of Edward,
Mary, Elizabeth, and James I.; most of which were of brick with stone
quoins, ornaments, and window frames; for instance, Holland and Camden
houses, Wyer-hall, the Middle Temple-hall, &c. &c. The windows of
those were almost invariably angular and mullioned, and the ornaments
resembled the Grecian rather than any other style. The reign of Charles
I. was too unfavourable for general safety to admit the erection of
many houses; but Inigo Jones appears to have improved the British
imitation of the Grecian style almost to perfection. This architect, by
elevating his cielings and altering the shape of windows, removed that
darkness and gloom which belonged to the preceding æra.
Sir Christopher Wren completed the work commenced by Jones, and
established the present favourite fashion of building; the gradations
of which from splendour to extreme plainness are faithfully delineated
in the prints which accompany this Volume. The examiner of those
will find that our nobility and other rich persons can accommodate
themselves to a house calculated for a man worth less than 200_l.
per annum_, or occupy others of five times the dimensions.
We will now return to the more humble classes, and begin with some of
the instances spared us by the fire of 1666. To describe those would be
useless; prints are superior to the best description: the reader will
have the goodness to consult them, and he will find old streets with
the _projecting_ houses, and single old houses, and one or two sketches
from the country to shew the Citizens' place of retirement[366:A].
Sir William Davenant drew a ludicrous yet true picture of antient
London, which follows, and may be perused with double interest after
a survey of the above old streets and houses, and their improved
successors.
[Illustration: _The S. E. corner of Guildhall_]
[Illustration: Two buildings side by side
Building on left: _Erected in or before the reign of Queen Eliz._
_In Goswell street_
_Antient inconvenience contrasted with modern convenience_
Building on right: _Erected about 1800_]
[Illustration: _The old Magazine Hyde Park_]
[Illustration: _The entrance of great Portland-street_]
[Illustration: _Part of the Priory of the Holy Trinity Aldgate_]
[Illustration: _West end of Upper Grosvenor-street_]
[Illustration: _Meux's Brewhouse built about 1796_]
[Illustration: _Devonshire House_]
[Illustration: _The west end of Upper Brook street_]
[Illustration: _View in Privy garden_]
[Illustration: _In Hanover Square_]
[Illustration: _Mansion at Twickenham_]
[Illustration: _The East side of Fitzroy Square_]
[Illustration: _The late Lord Barrymores house Piccadilly_]
[Illustration: _Langley House_]
[Illustration: _The west side of Cavendish square_]
[Illustration: _The south side of Fitzroy Square_]
[Illustration: _Entrance to Hyde Park from Park Lane_]
[Illustration: _The Duke of Manchester's_]
[Illustration: _The Minced Pie house_]
"You of this noble City are yet to become more noble by your candour
to the plea between me a _Bourgeois_ of Paris, and my opponent of
London; being concerned in honour to lend your attention as favourably
to a stranger as to your native orator, since it is the greatest sign
of narrow education to permit the borders of rivers, or strands of
seas, to separate the general consanguinity of Mankind, though the
unquiet nature of Man (still hoping to shake off distant power), and
the incapacity of any one to sway universal empire, hath made them the
bounds to divide government. But already I think it necessary to cease
persuading you, who will ever deserve to be my judges; and, therefore,
mean to apply myself in admonishing him who is pleased to be awhile my
adversary.
"My most opinionated antagonist (for a Londoner's opinion of himself is
no less noted than his opinion of his Beef before the Veal of Italy),
you should know that the merit of Cities consists not in their fair
and fruitful situation, but in the manners of the Inhabitants; for,
where the situation excels, it but upbraids their minds if they be not
proportionable to it. And, because we should more except against the
constancy of minds than their mutability, when they incline to error,
I will first take a survey of yours in the long-continued deformity of
the _shape_ of your City, which is of your buildings.
"Sure your ancestors contrived your narrow streets in the days of
wheel-barrows, before those greater engines _Carts_ were invented. Is
your climate so _hot_, that as you walk you need umbrellas of tiles
to intercept the Sun? Or, are your shambles so empty, that you are
afraid to take in fresh air, lest it should sharpen your stomachs?
Oh, the _goodly_ Landscape of _Old Fish-street_! which, had it not
had the ill-luck to be crooked, was narrow enough to have been your
founder's perspective; and where the garrets (perhaps not for want of
architecture, but, through _abundance of amity_) are so made, that
opposite neighbours may shake hands without stirring from home. Is
unanimity of inhabitants in wise Cities better expressed, than by their
coherence and uniformity of building, where streets begin, continue,
and end in a like stature and shape? But yours (as if they were raised
in a general insurrection, _where every man hath a several design_)
differ in all things that can make distinction. Here stands one that
aims to be a _Palace_, and, next it, another that professes to be a
_Hovel_. Here a Giant, there a Dwarf; here slender, there broad; and
all most admirably different in their faces, as well as in their height
and bulk. I was about to defy any Londoner, who dares pretend there is
so much ingenious correspondence in this City, as that he can shew me
one house like another. Yet your old houses seem to be reverend and
formal, being compared to the fantastical works of the moderns; which
have more ovals, niches, and angles, than are in your custards, and
are enclosed with pasteboard walls, like those of malicious Turks,
who, because themselves are not immortal, and cannot ever dwell where
they build, therefore will not be at the charge to provide such
lastingness as may entertain their children out of the rain; so slight
and so prettily gaudy, that if they could move, they would pass for
pageants. It is your custom, where men vary often the mode of their
habits, to term the nation fantastical; but, where streets continually
change fashion, you should make haste to chain up the City; for it is
certainly mad.
"You would think me a malicious traveller, if I should still gaze on
your mis-shapen Streets, and take no notice of the beauty of your
River; therefore I will pass the importunate noise of your Watermen
(who snatch at fares as if they were to catch prisoners, plying the
gentry so uncivilly, as if they had never rowed any other passengers
but Bear-wards), and now step into one of your pease-cod Boats, whose
tilts are not so sumptuous as the roofs of Gondalo's, nor, when you
are within, are you at the ease of _Chaise-a-bras_. The community and
trade of your River belongs to yourselves; but give a Stranger leave
to share in the pleasure of it; which will hardly be in the prospect
or freedom of air, unless prospect consisting of variety be made with
here a Palace, there a wood-yard, here a garden, there a brew-house.
Here dwells a Lord, there a Dyer, and between both _Duomo Commune_.
If freedom of air be inferred in the liberty of the subject, where
every private man hath authority, for his own profit, to smoke up
a Magistrate; then the air of your Thames is open enough, because
it is equally free. I will forbear to visit your courtly neighbours
at Wapping; not that it will make me giddy to shoot your Bridge,
but that I am loth to disturb the _civil silence_ of Billingsgate,
which is so great as if the Mariners were always landing to storm the
Harbour; therefore, for brevity's sake, I will put to shore again,
though I should be constrained, even without my Goloshoes, to land at
Puddle-dock.
"I am now returned to visit your Houses, where the roofs (cielings) are
so low, that I presume your ancestors were very mannerly, and stood
bare to their wives (for I cannot discern how they could wear their
high-crowned hats). Yet will I enter; and therefore oblige you much,
when you know my aversion to the odour of a certain weed (Tobacco)
that governs amongst your coarser acquaintance, as much as Lavender
amongst your linen, to which, in my apprehension, your Sea-coal smoke
seems a very Portugal perfume. I should here hasten to a period, for
fear of suffocation, if I thought you so ungracious to use it in public
assemblies; and yet I see it grow so much in fashion, that methinks
your children begin to play with broken pipes, instead of corals, to
make way for their teeth. You will find my visit short; I cannot stay
to eat with you, because your bread is too heavy, and you disdain the
slight sustenance of herbs: your drink is too thick, and yet you are
seldom over-curious in washing your glasses. Nor will I lodge with
you, because your beds seem, to our alcoves, no bigger than coffins;
and your curtains so short, as they will hardly serve to inclose your
Carriers in Summer; and may be held, if Taffata, to have lined your
Grandsires shirts. But though your houses are thin, yet your kitchens
are well lined with beef; and the plentiful exercise of your chimneys
makes up that canopy of smoke which covers your City; whilst we on the
Continent are well contented with a clear sky, entertain flesh as a
regale; and we, your poor French frogs, are fain to sing to sallad.
You boast that your servants feed better than masters at Paris; and we
are satisfied when ours are better taught than fed. You allow yours
idleness and high nourishment, to raise their mettle; which is, to make
them rude for the honour of Old-England; we inure ours to labour and
temperance, that we may allay them; which is to make them civil for the
quiet of France. Yours drink malt, and the strong broth of malt, which
makes them bold, hot, and adventurous to be soon in command: ours are
cooled with weak water, which doth quench their arrogance, and makes
them fit to obey long. We plant the Vineyard, and you drink the Wine;
by which you beget good spirits, and we get good money. You keep open
houses for all that bring you in mirth, till your estate run out of
doors, and find new landlords: we shut our gate to all but such whose
conversation brings in profit; and so, by the help of what you call
ill-nature and parsimony, have the good luck to keep our inheritance
for our issue.
"Before I leave you in your Houses (where your estates are managed by
your servants, and your persons educated by your Wives), I will take
a short survey of your Children: to whom you are so terrible, that
you seem to make use of authority whilst they are young, as if you
knew it would not continue till their manhood: you begin with them
in such rough discipline, as if they were born mad, and you meant to
fright them into their wits again before they had any to lose. When
they increase in years, you make them strangers; keeping them at such
distance, out of jealousy they should presume to be your companions,
that, when they reach manhood, they use you as if they were none of
your acquaintance. If you take pains to teach them any thing, it is
only what they should not learn, bashfulness; which you interpret to
be their respect to you, but it rather shews they are in trouble,
and afraid of you; and not only of you, but all that are older than
themselves; as if youth were a crime, or as if you had a greater
quarrel to Nature than to the Devil. You seem to teach them to be
ashamed of their persons, even when you are willing to excuse their
faults. This education you give them at home; but though you have
frequently the pride to disdain the behaviour of other nations, yet you
have sometimes the discretion to send your sons abroad to learn it. To
Paris they come, the school of Europe; where is taught the approaches
and demeanours towards power; where they may learn honour, which is
the generous honesty, which is the civil boldness of courts. But there
they arrive not to converse with us, but themselves; to see the gates
of the Court, not to enter and frequent it; or to take a hasty survey
of greatness as far as envy, but not to study it as far as imitation;
at last return home, despising those necessary virtues which they took
not pains to acquire; and are only ill-altered in their dress and mind,
by making that a deformity in seeming over-careful and forced, which we
make graceful in being negligent and easy. I have now left your Houses,
and am passing through your Streets; but not in a Coach, for they are
uneasily hung, and so narrow that I took them for a Sedan upon wheels:
nor is it safe for a stranger to use them, till the quarrel be decided,
whether six of your nobles, sitting together, shall stop, and give
place to as many barrels of beer. Your City is the only Metropolis of
Europe where there is a wonderful dignity belonging to Carts. Master
Londoner, be not so hot against Coaches: take advice from one who
eats much sorrel in his broth. Can you be too civil to such gentry as
bravely scorn to be provident?--who, when they have no business here to
employ them, nor public pleasures to divert them, yet even then kindly
invent occasions to bring them hither, that at your own rates they may
change their land for our wares, and have purposely avoided the coarse
study of arithmetick, lest they should be able to affront you with
examining your accompts.
"I wonder at your riches, when I see you drink in a morning; but more
at your confidence, when I see gray-beards come out of a tavern, and
stay at the door to make the last debate of their business; and I am
yet more amazed at your health, when I taste your wine; but most of all
at your politicks, in permitting such public poisoning, under the style
of free mystery, to encourage trade and diligence.
"I would now make a safe retreat, but that methinks I am stopped by
one of your heroic games, called _Foot-ball_; which I conceive (under
your favour) not very conveniently civil in the streets, especially
in such irregular and narrow roads as _Crooked-lane_. Yet it argues
your courage much like your military pastime of Throwing at Cocks. But
your mettle would be more magnified (since you have long allowed those
valiant exercises in the street) to draw your Archers from Finsbury,
and, during high market, let them shoot at butts in Cheapside. I
have now no more to say but what refers to a few private notes,
which I shall give you in a whisper when we meet in Moorfields; from
whence (because the place was for public pleasure, and to shew the
magnificence of your City) I shall desire you to banish the laundresses
and bleachers, whose acres of old linen make a show like the fields of
Carthagena, when the five months' shifts of the whole fleet are washed
and spread."
The following letter from the celebrated Erasmus to Dr. Francis,
Physician to Cardinal Wolsey, will afford a disgusting view of the
interior of common dwellings in the reign of Henry VIII.:
"I often wonder, and not without concern, whence it comes to pass,
that England for so many years hath been continually afflicted with
pestilence; and above all with the sweating-sickness, which seems in a
manner peculiar to that country. We read of a City which was delivered
from a plague of long continuance, by altering the buildings according
to the advice of a certain philosopher. I am much mistaken, if England,
by the same method, might not find a cure. First of all, they are
totally regardless concerning the aspect of their doors and windows to
the East, North, &c. Then they build their chambers so that they admit
not a thorough air, which yet, in Galen's opinion, is very necessary.
They glaze a great part of the sides with small panes, designed to
admit the light and exclude the wind; but these windows are full of
chinks, through which enters a percolated air, which, stagnating in the
room, is more noxious than the wind.
"As to the floors, _they are usually made of clay, covered with rushes_
that grew in fens, which are so slightly removed now and then, that
the lower part remains _sometimes for twenty years together_, and in
it a collection of spittle, vomit, urine of dogs and men, beer, scraps
of fish, and other filthiness not to be named. Hence, upon change of
weather, a vapour is exhaled, very pernicious, in my opinion, to the
human body. Add to this, that England is not only surrounded with the
sea, but in many parts is fenny, and intersected with streams of a
brackish water; and that salt fish is the common and the favourite
food of the poor. I am persuaded that the Island would be far more
healthy, if the use of these rushes were quite laid aside, and the
chambers so built as to let in the air on two or three sides, with
such glass windows as might be either thrown quite open, or kept
quite shut, without small crannies to let in the wind. For, as it is
useful sometimes to admit a free air, so is it sometimes to exclude
it. The common people laugh at a man who complains that he is affected
by changeable and cloudy weather; but, for my part, for these thirty
years past, if I ever entered into a room which had been uninhabited
for some months, immediately I grew feverish. It would also be of
great benefit, if the lower people could be persuaded to eat less of
their salt fish; and if public officers were appointed to see that the
streets were kept free from mud and ----, and that not only in the City,
but in the Suburbs. You will smile, perhaps, and think that my time
lies upon my hands, since I employ it in such speculations; but I have
a great affection for a country which received me so hospitably for a
considerable time, and I shall be glad to end the remainder of my days
in it if it be possible. Though I know you to be better skilled in
these things than I pretend to be, yet I could not forbear from giving
you my thoughts, that, if we are both of a mind, you may propose the
project to men in authority; since even Princes have not thought such
regulations to be beneath their inspection."
The tyrant who then reigned could not plead ignorance of the causes
which almost depopulated London. A physician cannot offend when he
talks of health to his patron. Wolsey must have heard the above truths
repeated by Francis, and the _name_ of Erasmus must have enforced his
arguments: the haughty Cardinal accomplished far more unworthy objects
with his master than a consideration of the health of his people would
have been; therefore each were criminal in not doing that for the
benefit of the publick which a nod from absolute power could effect.
A despicable disregard of decency evidently prevailed in the royal
breasts of the Monarchs who reigned between the Conquest and the great
Fire; the plague, the leprosy, and the sweating-sickness, reigned with
them; filth in the dark confined streets, and filth in every house,
made infection eternal; and yet not one step appears to have been taken
in obedience to instinct--Instinct makes a man inimical to dirt.
Heaven be praised, old London _was burnt_. Good reader, turn to
the views, in order to see what it has been; observe those hovels
convulsed; imagine the chambers within them, and wonder why the plague,
the leprosy, and the sweating-sickness, raged. Turn then to the prints
illustrative of our present dwellings, and be happy.