OVER LONDON BRIDGE.
Mr. Commissioner Harvey is particularly fond of figures. The other day
he caused an account to be taken of the number of persons entering the
city within a given period. The result shows that the amazing number of
706,621 individuals passed into the city by various entrances during the
24 hours tested; and as the day selected, we are told, was free from any
extraordinary attraction to the city, there can be no doubt that the
return furnishes a fair estimate of the average daily influx. Of this
large number it appears only one-fourteenth, or 49,242, entered the city
in the night--that is, between the hours of 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. Now this
enormous population in very large numbers patronises London Bridge for
many reasons--the principle argument with them in its favour undoubtedly
is, that it is the shortest way from their homes to their places of
business, or _vice versa_. Last year, for instance, the North London
Railway carried nearly six millions of passengers; the London and South
Western more than four millions; the Blackwall nearly five millions;
while 13,500,000 passengers passed through the London Bridge Station.
Mr. Commissioner Harvey, however, makes the importance of London Bridge
still clearer. On the 17th of March last year he had a man engaged in
taking notes of the traffic, and he furnished Mr. Commissioner Harvey
with the following figures:--In the course of the twenty-four hours it
appears 4,483 cabs, 4,286 omnibuses, 9,245 wagons and carts, 2,430 other
vehicles, and 54 horses led or ridden, making a total of 20,498, passed
over the bridge. The passengers in the same period were, in vehicles
60,836, on foot 107,074, total, 167,910. As we may suppose this traffic
is an increasing one. The traffic across the old bridge in one July day,
1811, was as follows:--89,640 persons on foot, 769 wagons, 2,924 carts
and drays, 1,240 coaches, 485 gigs and taxed carts, and 764 horses. We
must recollect that in 1811 the bridges across the Thames were fewer.
There was then no Waterloo Bridge, no Hungerford Suspension Bridge, no
bridge at Southwark, no penny steamboats running every quarter of an hour
from Paul's Wharf to the Surrey side, and London Bridge was far more
important than now. The figures we have given also throw some light on
the manners and customs of the age. Where are the gigs now, then the
attribute of respectability? What has become of the 1,240 coaches, and
what a falling off of equestrianism--the 764 horses of 1811 have dwindled
down (in 1859) to the paltry number of 54. Are there no night
equestrians in London now. It is early morn and we stand on London
Bridge, green are the distant Surrey hills, clear the blue sky, stately
the public buildings far and near. Beneath us what fleets in a few hours
about to sail, with passengers and merchandize to almost every
continental port. Surely Wordsworth's Ode written on Westminster Bridge
is not inapplicable:--
"Earth has not anything to show more fair.
Dull would he be of sense who could pass by,
A sight so touching in its majesty;
This city now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Shops, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky,
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air;
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour valley, arch, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt a calm so deep,
The river glideth at his own sweet will,
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep
And all that mighty heart is lying still!"
Of the traffic by water visible from London Bridge as you look towards
Greenwich, the best idea may be gathered by a few figures. A
Parliamentary Return has been issued, showing that the amount of tonnage
cleared from the port of London was in 1750, 796,632 tons, in 1800 the
tonnage entered was 796,632; and that cleared was 729,554. In 1857 the
tonnage entered had risen to 2,834,107, and that cleared to 2,143,884.
The traffic on London Bridge may be considered as one of the sights of
London. A costermonger's cart, laden with cabbages for Camberwell,
breaks down, and there is a block extending back almost all the way to
the Mansion House. Walk back and look at the passengers thus suddenly
checked in their gay career. Omnibuses are laden with pleasure seekers
on their way to the Crystal Palace. Look, there is "affliction sore"
displayed on many a countenance and felt in many a heart. Mary Anne, who
knows she is undeniably late, and deserves to be left behind, thinks that
her young man won't wait for her. Little Mrs. B. sits trembling with a
dark cloud upon her brow, for she knows Mr. B. has been at the station
since one, and it is now past two. Look at the pale, wan girl in the
corner, asking if they will be in time to catch the train for Hastings.
You may well ask, poor girl. Haste is vain now. Your hours are
numbered--the sands of your little life are just run--your bloodless lip,
your sunken eye, with its light not of this world--your hectic cheek,
from which the soft bloom of youth has been rudely driven, make one feel
emphatically in your case that "no medicine, though it oft' can cure, can
always balk the tomb." What have you been--a dressmaker, stitching
fashionable silks for beauty, and at the same time a plain shroud for
yourself? What have you been--a governess, rearing young lives at the
sacrifice of your own? What have you been--a daughter of sin and shame?
Ah, well, it is not for me to cast a stone at you. Hasten on, every
moment now is worth a king's ransom, and may He who never turned a
daughter away soften your pillow and sustain your heart in the dark hour
I see too plainly about to come. What is this, a chaise and four greys.
So young Jones has done it at last. Is he happy, or has he already found
his Laura slow, and has she already begun to suspect that her Jones may
turn out "a wretch" after all. I know not yet has the sound of his
slightly vinous and foggy eloquence died away; still ring in his ears the
applause which greeted his announcement that "the present is the proudest
of my life," and his resolution, in all time to come, in sunshine and in
storm, to cherish in his heart of hearts the lovely being whom he now
calls his bride; but as he leans back there think you that already he
sees another face--for Jones has been a man-about-town, and sometimes
such as he get touched. This I know--
"Feebly must they have felt
Who in old time attired with snakes and whips
The vengeful furies."
And even Jones may regret he married Laura and quarrelled with Rose,
"A rosebud set with little wilful thorns
And sweet as English air could make her."
What a wonderful thing it is when a man finds himself married, all the
excitement of the chase over. Let all Jones' and Laura's and persons
about to marry see well that they are really in love before they take the
final plunge. But hear that big party behind in a Hansom, using most
improper language. Take it easy, my dear sir, you may catch the Dover
train, you may cross to Calais, you may rush on to Paris, but the
electric telegraph has already told your crime, and described your
person. Therefore be calm, there is no police officer dogging you, you
are free for a few hours yet. And now come our sleek city men, to
Clapham and Norwood, to dine greatly in their pleasant homes. The world
goes well with them, and indeed it ought, for they are honest as the
times go: are they slightly impatient, we cannot wonder at it, the salmon
may be overboiled, just because of that infernal old coster's cart.
Hurra! it moves, and away go busses, and carriages, and broughams, and
hansoms, and a thousand of Her Majesty's subjects, rich and poor, old and
young, saint and sinner, are in a good temper again, and cease to break
the commandments. Stand here of a morning while London yet slumbers;
what waggons and carts laden with provisions from the rich gardens of
Surrey and Kent, come over London Bridge. Later, see how the clerks, and
shopmen, and shopwomen, hurry. Later still, and what trains full of
stockbrokers, and commission agents, and city merchants, from a circle
extending as far as Brighton, daily are landed at the London Bridge
Stations, and cross over. Later still, and what crowds of ladies from
the suburbs come shopping, or to visit London exhibitions. If we were
inclined to be uncharitable, we might question some of these fair dames;
I dare say people connected with the divorce courts might insinuate very
unpleasant things respecting some of them; but let us hope that they are
the exception, and that if Mrs. C. meets some one at the West End who is
not Captain C., and that if the Captain dines with a gay party at Hampton
Court, when he has informed his wife that business will detain him in
town; or that if that beauty now driving past in a brougham has no
business to be there, that these sickly sheep do not infect the flock,
and, in the language of good Dr. Watts, poison all the rest. Yet there
are tales of sin and sorrow connected with London Bridge. Over its stony
parapets, down into its dark and muddy waters, have men leaped in
madness, and women in shame; there, at the dead of night, has slunk away
the wretch who feared what the coming morrow would bring forth, to die.
And here woman--deceived, betrayed, deserted, broken in heart, and
blasted beyond all hope of salvation--has sought repose. A few hours
after and the sun has shone brightly, and men have talked gaily on the
very spot from whence the poor creatures leapt. Well may we exclaim--
"Sky, oh were are thy cleansing waters
Earth, oh where will thy wonders end."
The Chronicles of Old London Bridge are many and of eternal interest.
When Sweyn, king of Denmark, on plunder and conquest bent, sailed up the
Thames, there was a London Bridge with turrets and roofed bulwarks. From
994 to 1750, that bridge, built and rebuilt many times, was the sole land
communication between the city and the Surrey bank of the Thames. In
Queen Elizabeth's time the bridge had become a stately one. Norden
describes it as adorned with "sumptuous buildings and statelie, and
beautiful houses on either syde," like one continuous street, except
"certain wyde places for the retyre of passengers from the danger of
cars, carts, and droves of cattle, usually passing that way." Near the
drawbridge, and overhanging the river, was the famed Nonsuch House,
imported from Holland, built entirely of timber, four stories high,
richly carved and gilt. At the Southwark end was the Traitor's Gate,
where dissevered and ghastly heads were hung suspended in the air. In
1212, the Southwark end caught fire, and 3000 persons perished miserably
in the flames. In 1264 Henry III. was repulsed here by Simon de
Mountfort, earl of Leicester. Thundering along this road to sudden death
rushed Wat Tyler, in 1381. Here came forth the citizens, in all their
bravery, ten years after, to meet Richard II. Henry V. passed over this
bridge twice, once in triumph, and once to be laid down in his royal
tomb. In 1450, we hear a voice exclaiming: "Jack Cade hath gotten London
Bridge, and the citizens fly and forsake their houses;" and thus the
chronicle goes on. Nor must we forget the maid servant of one Higges, a
needle-maker, who, in carelessly placing some hot coals under some
stairs, set fire to the house, and thus raised a conflagration which
appears to have been of the most extensive character. On London Bridge
lived Holbein and Hogarth. Swift and Pope used to visit Arnold the
bookseller on this bridge. From off this bridge leaped an industrious
apprentice to save the life of his master's infant daughter, dropped into
the river by a careless nursemaid; the father was Lord Mayor of London.
The industrious apprentice married the daughter, and the great-grandson
of the happy pair was the first duke of Leeds. On the first of August,
1831, New London Bridge was opened with great pomp by King William IV.,
and since then the stream of life across the bridge has rushed without
intermission on.