every way unsuitable to its position, and mean as compared to
similar buildings erected elsewhere. Lacking the skill to form
proper foundations, Peter had spread them out into wide piers, which
formed an almost continuous dam, through the openings in which the
water rushed like a mill-race. The result was that the scour soon
affected the stability of the piers, which had to be protected round
by masses of masonry and chalk in the form of sterlings, which still
further contracted the narrow waterways. The passage of the bridge by
boat--"shooting the bridge," it was called--was always a dangerous
operation; and a writer of the last century speaks of "the noise of
the falling waters, the clamours of the water-men, and the frequent
shrieks of drowning wretches," in describing it. So imperfectly built
was the bridge that within four years of its completion King John
again interfered, and called upon the Corporation properly to repair
it; and from this time, or perhaps from Peter's death, when the three
merchants were elected to complete the work, the Corporation appears to
have taken over the responsibility of the bridge; and for this purpose
they were endowed with certain properties, which became the nucleus of
the present "Bridge House Estates." The increasing dilapidation of the
bridge, the debris of fallen arches, and the rubbish and waste material
which was suffered to accumulate, still further impeded the natural
flow of the water, and little effort at improvement was ever made. Of
the three widest arches of the bridge, which were called the navigable
locks, the most important had been the one nearest to the city end,
which became known as the "Rock Lock," and it acquired that name on
account of a popular delusion that in its fairway was a growing and
vegetating rock, which was nothing more than an accumulation of fallen
ruins, which caught and held the floating refuse carried to and fro by
the tides. And thus year after year the river dam became more solid,
and the waterfall increased in height until it was said by one who knew
them both that it was almost as safe to attempt the Falls of Niagara as
to shoot London Bridge.
As years went by, not only did the waterways become congested, but the
roadway above began to be encroached on by houses and other buildings,
for which a bridge was most unfitted. Two edifices, however, from the
first formed necessary, or at least customary, adjuncts to such a
building--the bridge gate and the bridge chapel. It was a Roman custom
to erect gates at one end, or in the centre of their bridges--not
triumphal arches, but twin gates, such as they built to their walled
towns, and such as stood at the end of the bridge at Saintes, when it
was altered by Isembert. Such gates as survived in mediæval times were
generally fortified, and formed the model for imitation by mediæval
builders; and such a gate was erected at the Southwark end of London,
which, under its name of Bridge Gate, became one of the principal gates
of the city. It was erected directly on one of the main piers, and was
therefore of a substantial character, but suffered much in the various
attacks made upon London from the Kentish side. In 1436 it collapsed,
together with the Southwark end of the bridge, but was rebuilt at
the cost of the citizens, chief among whom was Sir John Crosby, the
builder of Crosby House; and although the gate was again in great part
destroyed by the attack on London made in 1471 by Fauconbridge, one of
the towers of Crosby's gate survived until the eighteenth century. In
1577 the tower which stood at the north end of the bridge, and on which
were usually displayed the heads of traitors, became so dilapidated
that it was taken down, and the heads then on it were transferred to
the Bridge Gate, henceforward known as "Traitors' Gate." It was upon
the earlier gate that the head of Sir Thomas More was affixed, when
heads were so common that even his, as we know from its adventures
until buried in the Roper vault at Canterbury, was thrown into the
river to make room for a crowd of successors.
[Illustration: FIG. 2--THE SURREY END OF LONDON BRIDGE.]
Of the chapel, which the founder of the bridge is said to have erected,
no account survives; and although it was believed at the time of
the destruction of the bridge that his remains were discovered, no
satisfactory evidence of their identity was forthcoming. The first
chapel must have perished in one of the early misfortunes which befel
the fabric, as no trace of any detail which could be referred to the
thirteenth century was discovered when the pier on which the chapel
stood was removed. The drawings made by Vertue before the last remains
were cleared away show a structure which may be assigned to a date
but little later than the Chapel Royal of St. Stephen at Westminster,
to which, in many particulars, it must have borne a considerable
resemblance. It consisted of two storeys, both apparently vaulted,
measuring some sixty by twenty feet, with an apsidal termination. The
undercroft was nearly twenty feet high, and our illustration (fig. 1)
of a restoration of it, prepared from Vertue's drawings and dimensions,
will give some idea of its beauty. The upper chapel seems to have been
similar, but much more lofty, and had an arcade running round the walls
under the windows. The buttresses of the exterior were crowned with
crocketted pinnacles, and the effect of the whole, standing high above
the surging waters of the river, must have been as striking as it was
beautiful. The chapel was built on the centre pier of the bridge, on
the east side, and the chapels were entered from the roadway, the lower
one by a newel staircase, on which was found the holy-water stoup when
the bridge was destroyed in the last century. At the Reformation the
church was converted into a warehouse, but, thanks to the solidity of
its construction, it remained almost intact till it was swept away with
the houses in 1756.
Of the other buildings on the bridge there is little to say, for,
although they made up a picturesque composition, they were of a most
flimsy character, and wanting at the last in any architectural merit.
Our illustration (fig. 2), taken from an oil painting by Scott,
belonging to the Fishmongers' Company, gives the principal group on the
Surrey side, and in the sixth plate of Hogarth's _Marriage a la Mode_
we get a view through the open window of another part in the last stage
of dilapidation. There was, however, one exception to the commonplace
among them, in a timber house, made in Holland, which was known as
"Nonsuch House." It was erected, it was said, without nails, and placed
athwart the roadway, hanging at the ends far over the river, with
towers and spires at the angles, and over the great gate the arms of
Queen Elizabeth. The top of the main front was surmounted, at a later
date, with a pair of sundials, which bore the, for once, appropriate
motto--"Time and Tide wait for no man."
Had old London Bridge survived to this day, its waterfalls would
doubtless have been utilized to generate electricity, and the idea of
setting the Thames on fire realized in lighting the streets of London
by its means; but the value of the force of the falling water was not
overlooked by our ancestors. As early as 1582 one Peter Corbis, a
Dutchman, erected an engine, worked by the stream, which lifted the
water to a reservoir, whence it was distributed by means of leaden
pipes through the city. With many alterations and improvements, these
water works continued in use until the last century, and it was stated
before the House of Commons, in 1820, that more than 26 millions of
hogsheads of the pellucid waters of the river were thus daily delivered
to the city householders for their domestic use.
Such, shortly, is the history of the fabric, which, after enduring
for more than six hundred years, was swept away to make room for the
present structure. For any accounts of the many stirring events which
occurred on it, or about it, we have no space here. Are they not
written in the chronicles of England?
In the Fishmongers' Hall is preserved a valuable memorial of the
ancient structure, of which we give an illustration (fig. 3) by
permission of the Worshipful Company. It consists of a chair with
a seat of Purbeck marble, reminiscent in its arrangements of the
coronation chair, on which is engraved this inscription:--
"I am the first stone that was put down for the foundation of
old London Bridge in June 1176 by a priest named Peter who was
vicar of Colechurch in London and I remained there undisturbed
safe on the same oak piles this chair is made from till the
Rev^d. William John Jollife curate of Colmer Hampshire took
me up in July 1832 when clearing away the old bridge after new
London Bridge was completed."
The framework of the chair gives a pictorial chronicle of the city
bridges; the top rail of the back shows old London Bridge after the
removal of the houses, below which are new London Bridge, Southwark and
old Blackfriars Bridges. The arms of the city are carved at the top,
whilst the monogram of Peter of Colechurch and the device of the Bridge
House Estates complete the decoration. This device, which appears to
have been also the old badge of Southwark, was sometimes displayed
upon a shield, thus:--Az., an annulet ensigned with a cross patée, Or;
interlaced with a saltire enjoined in base, of the second. We give an
illustration of this in figure 5.
[Illustration: FIG. 3--THE FOUNDATION STONE CHAIR.
_At the Fishmongers' Hall._]
Westminster Bridge seems a very recent structure as compared to that
of London, but it is the next in point of date. The growing importance
of Westminster as the seat of the Court and Parliament had made the
necessity for an approach to the south side of the Thames, independent
of the circuitous and narrow ways of London, long apparent. In the
reign of Charles II. the question was seriously considered, to the
alarm of the Mayor and Corporation of the city, who feared that
their vested interests were endangered, and "that London would be
destroyed if carts were allowed to cross the Thames elsewhere"; but,
knowing their man, they devoted some of their ample funds to secure
that monarch's successful opposition to the scheme. In the middle
of the eighteenth century, however, when there was no Stuart to buy
off, the idea was revived, and in 1739, one Monsieur Labelye, a
Swiss engineer--English engineers having, apparently, not sufficient
experience--commenced a new stone bridge. His mode of putting in his
foundations may have been scientific, but was certainly simple. The
bridge piers were partly built in floating barges moored above the
place where they were to be permanently erected. The barges were then
sunk, their sides knocked out, and the piers completed. It is needless
to say that the result was not satisfactory, and for years before the
old bridge was pulled down many of its arches were filled up with
a picturesque, but inconvenient, mass of shoring. Whether Henry,
Earl of Pembroke, who laid the foundation stone, and of whom it was
said no nobleman had a purer taste in architecture, was in any way
responsible for the design, we cannot tell; but a French traveller of
discrimination, who criticised the work after its completion, came to
the conclusion that the peculiarly lofty parapets with which the bridge
was adorned were so designed that they might check an Englishman's
natural propensity to suicide by giving him time for reflection while
surmounting such an obstacle. It will be noticed in our illustration
(fig. 4), which is also taken from a painting by Scott, that the piers
are crowned by alcoves, which provided a shelter from the blasts which
blew over the river and from the mud scattered from the roadway. These
were, doubtless, a survival of the spaces left above the cutwaters
of mediæval bridges as refuges for pedestrians from vehicles when
the roadways were very narrow, and those who remember the old wooden
bridges of Battersea and Putney can appreciate their value.
The city Corporation, which had so strenuously opposed the erection
of a bridge at Westminster as unnecessary, set to work, as soon as
that became an accomplished fact, to improve their own communications
across the river. First, as we have seen, they cleared away the houses
and other obstructions on old London Bridge, and next they started to
build themselves a new bridge at Blackfriars. The land on both sides
of the river at the point selected was very low and most unsuitable
for the approaches, that on the north side being close to the mouth
of the Fleet ditch, which there formed a creek large enough, in 1307,
to form a haven for ships. The new bridge was begun in 1760, from the
designs of Robert Mylne, a Scotch architect, who made an unsuccessful
attempt to give an architectural effect to the structure by facing the
piers with pairs of Ionic columns, standing on the cutwaters. The steep
gradients of the bridge, necessitated by the lowness of the banks, made
such a decoration peculiarly unsuitable, as each pair of columns had to
be differently proportioned in height, although the cornice over them
remained of the same depth throughout. But, in spite of its appearance
of lightness, the structure was too heavy for its foundations, and for
years this bridge rivalled that of Westminster in the picturesqueness
of its dilapidation. The piers had been built on platforms of timber,
so that when London Bridge was rebuilt, and the river flowed in an
unchecked course, these became exposed to the scour and were soon
washed out.
[Illustration: FIG. 4--OLD WESTMINSTER BRIDGE.]
Waterloo Bridge was completed in 1817, and still remains unaltered
and as sound as when its builders left it. It is fortunate that the
approach on the north side was an easy one, as but a short interval
occurred between the Strand, at almost its highest point, and the river
bank, which it was easy to fill up, with the result that the bridge
passes across the river at a perfect level. The foundations of the
piers were properly constructed by means of coffer-dams, and no sign
of failure has ever shown itself in its superstructure. The architect
repeated the use of the orders, as at Blackfriars, but with a more
fortunate result, as, the work being straight throughout, no variations
in the proportions were required, and he was wise enough to select the
Doric order as more suitable to his purpose, and as suggesting more
solidity.
Londoners profess to be somewhat proud of Waterloo Bridge, and it is
a tradition among them that Canova, when he saw it, said that it was
worth a journey across Europe to see. It, therefore, seems the more
incredible that the grandchildren of those who could build such a
bridge and appreciate such a man, could have erected, and even affect
to admire, such a monstrosity as the Tower Bridge.
The last of the older bridges to be built was that of Southwark, which
was the speculation of a private company, who hoped to profit by the
continuously congested state of London Bridge; but the steepness of
the gradients and the inconvenience of the approaches from the city
made it from the first a failure. It was the first bridge in London to
be constructed in iron; its model being the great single-span bridge
across the Wear at Sunderland. It is in three great arches, the centre
one being 240 feet across, or four feet more than that at Sunderland,
and the mass of metal is such that an ordinary change of temperature
will raise the arches an inch, and summer sunshine much more.
Of the more recent bridges there is nothing to say worth the saying.
The Thames, which was the busy and silent highway of our forefathers,
is still silent, but busy no longer, and the appearance of its bridges
is now no one's concern, since no one sees them. So long as they will
safely carry the tramcar or the motor 'bus from side to side, they may
become uglier even than they now are, if only that make them a little
more cheap.
[Illustration: FIG. 5--BADGE OF BRIDGE HOUSE ESTATES.]
THE CLUBS OF LONDON
BY SIR EDWARD BRABROOK, C.B., F.S.A.
These are of many kinds. We suppose they are all more or less the
lineal descendants of the taverns and coffee-houses that we associate
with the memory of Ben Jonson, Dryden, Addison, and Samuel Johnson.
"Souls of poets dead and gone,
What elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid tavern?"
The wits' coffee-house, where Claud Halcro carried a parcel for Master
Thimblethwaite in order to get a sight of glorious John Dryden.
Button's coffee-house, where the "Guardian" set up his Lion's Head. The
Cock and the Cheshire Cheese, which resound with Johnson's sonorous
echoes. If, indeed, the tavern has developed into the club, that palace
of luxury, one can only say, as in the famous transmutation of alphana
to equus, "C'est diablement changé sur la route."
Intermediate is the host of clubs meeting occasionally, as the
Breakfast Club, and the numerous dining clubs, one of which, the Royal
Naval Club, established in 1765, is said to be a renewal of an earlier
one dating from 1674. "The Club," which comes down from the time of
Johnson and Reynolds, and still uses a notification to a new member
drawn up by Gibbon; the Royal Society Club; the X Club, which consisted
of ten members of the Athenæum; the Society of Noviomagus, and the
Cocked Hat Club, consisting of members of the Society of Antiquaries;
the Cosmos Club of the Royal Geographical Society; the Colquhoun Club
of the Royal Society of Literature; and a host of others in connection
with learned societies, most of which are content to add the word
"club" to the name of the society. Of another, but cognate, kind is
the famous "Sublime Society of Beef Steaks," which was founded in
1735, and died (of inanition) in 1867. The members were not to exceed
twenty-four in number. Beef steaks were to be the only meat for dinner.
The broiling began at 2.0, and the tablecloth was removed at 3.30. In
1785 the Prince of Wales, in 1790 the Duke of York, in 1808 the Duke of
Sussex, became members. It had a laureate bard in the person of Charles
Morris, elected a member in 1785, who died in 1838 at the age of 93
years. In early times the members appeared in the uniform of a blue
coat and buff waistcoat, with brass buttons bearing a gridiron and the
motto "Beef and Liberty." The hour of meeting became later gradually,
till in 1866 it was fixed at 8 o'clock; then the club quickly died out.
Founded by John Rich, harlequin and machinist at Covent Garden, it had
counted among its members William Hogarth, David Garrick, John Wilkes,
John Kemble, William Linley, Henry Brougham (Lord Chancellor), and many
other distinguished men. The Ettrick Shepherd gave an account, in 1833,
of a visit he paid to this club:--
"They dine solely on beefsteaks--but what glorious beefsteaks!
They do not come up all at once--no, nor half-a-dozen times;
but up they come at long intervals, thick, tender, and as hot
as fire. And during these intervals the members sit drinking
their port, and breaking their wicked wit on each other, so
that every time a new service of steaks came up, we fell to
them with much the same zest as at the beginning. The dinner
was a perfect treat--a feast without alloy."
Another somewhat similar club, though on a more modest scale, deserves
a cursory notice, inasmuch as it had to do with a state of things
that has passed away beyond hope of recovery. About 1870 the August
Society of the Wanderers was established with the motto, "Pransuri
vagamur." It selected all the remaining old inns at which a dinner
could be obtained, and dined at each in succession. It also had a bard,
Dr. Joseph Samuel Lavies, and, like the Beefsteaks, has left a poetic
record of its convivialities. Of all such records, however, the salt
quickly evaporates, and it is as well to leave them unquoted.
Our main object in this chapter is to state a few incidents in the
history of some of the great London clubs. The oldest existing club
appears to be White's, founded in 1697. Boodle's, Brooks's, the Cocoa
Tree, and Arthur's date from 1762 to 1765. Most of the others belong to
the nineteenth century. The Guards' Club, which was the first of the
service clubs, dates from 1813, but that is confined to officers of the
Brigade of Guards. It was soon, however, followed by the establishment
of a club for officers of other branches of military service.
We have it on good authority that before that club was founded officers
who came to London had no places of call but the old hotels and
coffee-houses. On May 31st, 1815, General Lord Lynedoch, Viscount Hill,
and others united in the establishment of a General Military Club. On
the 24th January, 1816, it was extended to the Navy, and on the 16th
February in the same year it adopted the name of the United Service
Club. On the 1st March, 1817, the foundation stone of its house in
Charles Street was laid. In November, 1828, it entered into occupation
of its present house in Pall Mall, and handed over the Charles Street
house to the Junior United Service Club. Its premises in Pall Mall were
largely extended in 1858-59, and have recently been greatly improved
at a cost of £20,000. The Club holds a lease from the Crown to 4th
January, 1964. It has a fine collection of eighty-two pictures and
busts, many of them of great merit as works of art, others of interest
as the only portraits of the originals. The library contains several
splendid portraits of Royal personages. The King is the patron of
the Club, and, as Prince of Wales, was a member of it. The Prince of
Wales, the Duke of Connaught, and Prince Christian, are now members.
Ten high officers of state and persons of distinction are honorary
members. Twelve kings and thirty princes are foreign honorary members.
The number of ordinary members is 1,600, but officers below the rank of
Commander in the Royal Navy, or Major in the Army, are not eligible.
The entrance fee is £30, and the annual subscription £10. Members have
the privilege of introducing guests. Games of hazard are not allowed to
be played, or dice to be used. Play is not to exceed 2s. 6d. points at
whist, or 10s. per hundred at bridge.
As we have seen, this club shortly became full, and a Junior United
Service Club was formed in April, 1827, on the same lines, under the
patronage of the Duke of Wellington, but admitted officers of junior
rank, and in 1828 entered into occupation of the premises in Charles
Street, vacated by the Senior, on payment of £15,000. It erected its
new house in 1856 at a cost of £81,000. The entrance fee is £40, and
annual subscription eight guineas. It was not many years after its
establishment that the list of candidates for membership of the Junior
Club became so long that the necessity for the establishment of a third
service club was felt. Sir E. Barnes and a few officers, just returned
from India, joined in the movement, and in 1838 the Army and Navy Club
was opened at the corner of King Street and St. James's Square--the
house memorable as the scene of the party given by Mrs. Boehm on the
night the news of the Battle of Waterloo arrived. Sir E. Barnes, who
was its first president, died the same year. In 1851 the club moved
to its present stately building, the site of which includes that of a
house granted by Charles II. on the 1st of April, in the seventeenth
year of his reign, to Nell Gwynne, where Evelyn saw him in familiar
discourse with her. The club possesses a mirror that belonged to her,
and a portrait by Sir Peter Lely, which was supposed to be of her,
until it was discovered to be one of Louise de Querouaille, Duchess
of Portsmouth, and is also rich in pictures, statuary, and other
works of art--among them, two fine mantelpieces carved by Canova,
and a miniature of Lady Hamilton found in Lord Nelson's cabin after
his death; it has also autograph letters of Nelson and Wellington.
It derives its popular name of the "Rag and Famish" from a tradition
that Captain Duff came late one night asking for supper, and being
discontented with the bill of fare, called it a rag and famish affair.
In memory of the event he designed a button which used to be worn by
many members, and bore the device of a ragged man devouring a bone.
Napoleon III. was an honorary member of the club, and frequently used
it. He presented it with a fine piece of Gobelin tapestry in 1849. The
regular number of members is 2,400. The club has a scheme for granting
annuities or pensions to its servants.