I will first take a survey of the long-continued deformity in 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, if it had not 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 narrow, that opposite neighbours may shake
hands without stirring from home. Is unanimity of inhabitants in wide
cities better exprest than by their coherence and uniformity of
building, where streets begin, continue, and end, in a like stature and
shape?[45] But yours, as if they were raised in a general resurrection,
where every man hath a several design, differ in all things that can
make a distinction. Here stands one that aims to be a palace, and next
it, one that professes to be a hovel; here a giant, there a dwarf; here
slender, there broad; and all most admirably different in faces, as well
as in their height and bulk. I was about to defy any Londoner, who dares
to pretend there is so much ingenious correspondence in this city, as
that he can show me one house like another; yet your houses seem to be
reversed and formal, being compared to the fantastical looks of the
moderns, which have more ovals, niches, and angles, than in your
custards, and are enclosed with pasteboard walls, like those of
malicious Turks, who, because themselves are not immortal, and cannot
dwell for ever where they build, therefore wish not to be at charge to
provide such lastingness as may entertain their children out of the
rain; so slight and 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 your 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 than
bear-wards,) and now step into one of your peascod-boats, whose tilts
are not so sumptuous as the roofs of gondolas; nor, when you are within,
are you at the ease of a _chaise-à-bras_.
The commodity and trade of your river belong to yourselves; but give a
stranger leave to share in the pleasure of it, which will hardly be in
the prospect and freedom of air; unless prospect, consisting of variety,
be made up with here a palace, there a wood-yard; here a garden, there a
brewhouse; 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 loath to describe the civil silence at 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 so constrained, even without my galoshes, to land at
Puddle-dock.
I am now returned to visit your houses where the roofs are so low, that
I presumed your ancestors were very mannerly, and stood bare to their
wives; for I cannot discern how they could wear their high-crowned hats:
yet I will enter, and therein oblige you much, when you know my
aversion to a certain weed that governs amongst your coarser
acquaintance, as much as lavender among your coarser 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 as 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 distrain the light substance 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 no bigger
than coffins; and your curtains so short, as they will hardly serve to
enclose your carriers in summer, and may be held, if taffata, to have
lined your grandsire’s skirts.
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 sedans 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 way to as many barrels of beer. Your city
is the only metropolis in Europe, where there is wonderful dignity
belonging to carts.
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 metal
would be much magnified (since you have long allowed those two valiant
exercises in the streets) were you 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 meant for public pleasure, and to show the
munificence of your city) I shall desire you to banish your 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.[46]
[45] If a disagreement of neighbours were to be inferred from such a
circumstance, what but an unfavourable inference would be drawn from
our modern style of architecture, as exemplified in Regent-street,
where the houses are, as the leopard’s spots are described to be, “no
two alike, and every one different.”
[46] Sir W. Davenant.
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