slope of ground which in these days is known as Ludgate Hill. Roman
London was enclosed by a wall which extended from about where the Tower
is now to Ludgate Hill, and from Ludgate Circus to the Thames River. It
had several gates now called to mind by the streets Aldgate,
Bishopsgate, Moorgate, Cripplegate, Aldersgate, Newgate and Ludgate.
This wall was built of brick and cement as hard as stone. The old Lud
Gate stood about three parts of the way down Ludgate Hill and the name
was derived from the legendary king, Lud. It was removed in 1760.
St. Martin's Church on Ludgate Hill was built by Wren, but an older
church stood there before the Great Fire, and in this Cadwallo, King of
the Britons was buried in 677. The tall and simple spire of the present
structure contrasts strangely with nearby St. Paul's, and it is with St.
Martin's partly in mind that one poet wrote:
Lo, like a bishop upon dainties fed,
St. Paul's lifts up his sacredotal head;
While his lean curates, slim and lank to view,
Around him point their steeples to the blue.
On the west side of Old Bailey the second house south of Ship Court,
numbered 68, is where Jonathan Wild world-famed thief and receiver of
stolen goods, lived. He was hanged at Tyburn in 1725 and true to himself
to the last stole the pocket-book of the parson who accompanied him in
the cart on the way to the gallows. Henry Fielding wrote of the career
of this noted criminal in his novel "Jonathan Wild."
Where Farringdon Street is now once flowed the Fleet Brook, so wide that
ships sailed through it as far as to where Holborn Viaduct is to-day. In
its course the Fleet passed through a deep cut called the Hole Bourne.
From this came the name Holborn. The Viaduct of to-day bridges the Hole
Bourne of old. On the east side of the Fleet Brook lay the notorious
Fleet Prison for debtors close by where Fleet Lane is in this day. The
main gate house of the prison was on the site of the nearby
Congregational Memorial Hall. The clandestine Fleet marriages in this
noisome place became notorious, being performed without let or hindrance
and with no regard for existing laws, by unscrupulous clergymen among
the debt prisoners encouraged by attendants who reaped ill gotten gains
for their services. Outside the prison regular "runners" gathered in
couples and gave every opportunity and encouragement for quick and
illegal marriage. It was not unusual for two hundred marriages to take
place in a single day. In this prison Mr. Pickwick of Dickens'
"Pickwick Papers," was confined after he refused to pay the damages
awarded to Mrs. Bardell. In 1846 the Fleet was demolished.
In the narrow passageway called Gunpowder Alley, jutting off Shoe Lane
to the westward, Richard Lovelace died in a cellar, literally of
starvation, in 1658. The house on the north side, second from Shoe Lane,
stands on the site. Lovelace was the handsomest and most accomplished of
the group of poets who gathered around Queen Henrietta. He was committed
to prison in 1646 on account of his rebellious sympathy for Charles I.,
and on his release went to France to raise a regiment. He wrote to Lucy
Sacheverell, to whom he was engaged, the poem containing the lines:
I could not love thee, dear, so much
Loved I not honour more.
But the lady receiving news of his supposed death in France was married
when he returned.
Fleet Street, still the centre of the newspaper and printing industries,
is reminiscent of the literary associations of many decades. It takes
its name from Fleet Brook which once crossed it at its eastern end. The
stream still exists and now in the form of a great sewer flows under
Farringdon Street and New Bridge Street, emptying into the Thames under
Blackfriars Bridge. It was through Fleet Street in 1448 that Eleanor
Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, walked on her way to St. Paul's
bareheaded, bearing a lighted candle as penance for having made a waxen
figure of the king, that melted before a fire as she would have had his
life slowly waste away.
At the east end of Fleet Street, surrounded by buildings is St. Bride's
Church. It is only a few steps from Fleet Street if you happen to be
familiar with any of the narrow ways that pierce into the centre of the
block. But if you do not know the mystery of the block you will walk all
around the church within sight of its two hundred and odd feet high
steeple without coming to it. The church was built by Wren in 1680. In
the centre aisle is the grave of Samuel Richardson the author who lived
close by in Salisbury Square and who died in 1761. Beside the church in
the present St. Bride's Lane Milton lived with a tailor named Russell.
He moved here in 1640, and here wrote his treatises "Of Practical
Episcopacy," "Of Reformation" and some others.
From 76 Fleet Street Salisbury Court is entered communicating direct
with Salisbury Square. In the house numbered 9 at the southwest corner
of the Square Samuel Richardson, the printer-novelist author of
"Clarissa Harlowe," had his printing office and here Oliver Goldsmith
for a time acted as a reader for him. Johnson was a friend of Richardson
and often came to his printing shop, as did Hogarth the great satirist.
Tudor Street cuts through the very centre of the district once called
"Alsatia" occupying the space between the river and Fleet Street. This
was a cant name for Whitefriars. The neighbourhood had certain
privileges of sanctuary derived from an old convent of the Carmelites or
White Friars and was the abode of lawless classes. Scott immortalised it
in the "Fortunes of Nigel."
Wine Office Court opens from Fleet Street and a few yards from the
entrance is the Cheshire Cheese, the famous low-ceilinged,
sanded-floored dining place of Dr. Johnson, looking doubtless much as it
did in the days when Johnson and Goldsmith so often dined here together.
Goldsmith lived for a long time in Wine Office Court at No. 6 and it is
here he is said to have written the "Vicar of Wakefield." His house has
been replaced by a modern structure and the old Vicar and his daughters
Olivia and Sophia would hardly feel at home now.
At the top of Wine Office Court is Gough Square and in a corner house
numbered 17 may be found a tablet telling that Dr. Samuel Johnson once
lived within. That was almost one hundred and fifty years ago but the
house is very little changed outwardly. Within it is wholly given up to
business. Of all the houses Johnson occupied in London this is the only
one still standing. Here the greater part of his dictionary was written
and here Mrs. Johnson died.
In Bolt Court the last years of Dr. Johnson's life were spent in the
house No. 8, long since demolished. Here he died in 1784.
Johnson's Court a blind alley off Fleet Street was not named for Dr.
Samuel Johnson although many persons believe so because Dr. Johnson
lived here for a time on the site where No. 7 is now. The old "Monthly
Magazine" had offices here in 1833, when Charles Dickens came and
through the oaken doorway with uncertain hand dropped his first
manuscript into the yawning opening of the letter box, that might or
might not bring back good news.
At the head of Crane Court which opens out of Fleet Street is the spot
selected by Sir Isaac Newton as "the middle of town and out of noise."
Newton was president of the Royal Society and that body occupied the
house from 1710 to 1762. The old house was burned in 1877 and a modern
structure erected.
Fetter Lane evidently had an ill start taking its name from its early
inhabitants the "Faitours" or beggars.
St. Dunstan's-in-the-West with its wondrous tower of fretwork is in
Fleet Street close by Chancery Lane and is a restoration of 1831.
In Fleet Street opposite the gateway to the Temple once stood the old
Cock Tavern which was swept away when Temple Bar was removed, and now
exists in modern form close by on the south side. A cock is still the
sign of the place, said to have been carved by Grinling Gibbons. It is
this tavern that Tennyson speaks of in his "Will Waterproof's Lyric":
Oh plump head waiter at The Cock
To which I most resort.
Samuel Pepys went often to the Cock Tavern, once with the elegant Mrs.
Knipp and has left the record that they ate a lobster, sang and made
merry until midnight--at which Mrs. Pepys was much annoyed.
Child's Bank close by the Temple Bar Griffin on the south side of Fleet
Street, is the oldest of England's banking houses dating from the time
of Charles I. when the first Francis Child, an apprentice to William
Wheeler the goldsmith, married his master's daughter and by thrift and
industry founded the fortunes of the great institution. The present bank
stands on the site of the old Devil Tavern that for two hundred years
was the haunt of men of letters. Here Ben Jonson had his social
headquarters gathering around him in the famous Apollo Room wits of all
degree.
In his day, Oliver Goldsmith was a most conscientious member of the
shilling whist that met at the Devil Tavern. Several practical jokers in
the club were quite in sympathy one evening when Goldsmith arrived and
explained that he had given the cabman a guinea instead of a shilling.
At the next meeting Goldsmith was surprised at being summoned to the
door by a cabman who returned the guinea. He was quite overpowered and
collected small sums from the other members, contributing heavily
himself, and rewarded the cabman. He was still expatiating upon the
honesty of the lower classes when one of the guests asked to see the
returned guinea. It was counterfeit and in reality so was the cabman.
Goldsmith realising that he had been imposed upon by his facetious
colleagues retired amid a burst of much laughter.
Two doors to the south of the Devil Tavern towards the east Bernard
Lintot had his bookshop. John Gay the poet who wrote "The Beggar's
Opera," went himself to impress upon the book man the importance of
having his books exposed for sale, and afterwards, in 1711, said in his
"Trivia":
Oh, Lintot, let my labours obvious lie
Ranged on thy stall for every envious eye.
FIVE
THE SPELL OF THE TEMPLE AND INNS OF COURT
The Temple lies between Fleet Street and the river, with Essex Street on
the west and Whitefriars on the east. It is a wide area of quaint
buildings, strange windings and uncertain by-ways relieved by unexpected
open spaces and magnificent gardens--a place to wander in if you are
fond of wandering, and to get lost in if you make up your mind to wander
and do not mind getting lost. For hundreds of years this has been
hallowed ground in sacred history. It was the quarters of the Knights
Templars, a religious order founded in the twelfth century to protect
the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and the recruiting point for Crusaders.
When the Order was dissolved in 1313 the Temple became Crown property.
In 1346 it was leased to the professors of common law and since then
has been a school of law, and a great centre of learning in England.
There are two divisions of the Temple, the eastern or Inner Temple; the
western or Middle Temple. The Inner Temple came by its name being
nearest the City; the Middle Temple because it was between the Inner and
Outer Temples. The Outer Temple vanished long ago. In 1609, James I.
conveyed the Temple property by grant to the benchers of the Inner and
Middle Temple--two of the Inns of Court.
The Inns of Court are four--the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple,
Lincoln's Inn and Gray's Inn. These are societies formed for the study
of law and custom has given them the exclusive privilege of deciding who
may be called to the bar. Their quarters were called Inns of Court
originally because as students of law they belonged to "the King's
Court." In the 15th century there were ten other Seminaries called Inns
of Chancery offshoots from the four parent societies. In the Inns of
Chancery fees were low and suited to the middle classes--the Inns of
Court being patronized by the aristocracy.
The inner Temple gateway in the Strand opposite Chancery Lane leads
after a few yards directly to the Temple Church, literally buried here
close to the busiest street in London. This is the famous Round Church,
the chapel of the Inner Temple in which the Knights Templars worshipped,
and is the only real relic left of the Knights Templars. It has stood
here since 1185, one of the four round churches of England, built in
imitation of the Round Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. In
early days lawyers received their clients in this church. It was
arranged in the manner of an exchange, each lawyer having his regular
standing place.
To the north of the Temple Church is a plain slab recording that Oliver
Goldsmith author of the "Vicar of Wakefield," lies buried here.
William Cowper the poet lived for years in the Inner Temple, where he
several times tried to commit suicide but failed in each attempt.
Charles Lamb was born in 1775 at No. 2 Crown Office Row in rooms
overlooking the Temple Garden.
In Temple Garden, best seen from Crown Office Row, you look upon the
spot where Shakespeare had the partisans first choose the red rose or
the white as the badge of the houses of York or Lancaster. In "King
Henry VI.," this picking is stirringly told of and the Earl of Warwick
exclaims:
And here I prophesy, the brawl to-day
Grown to this faction, in the Temple Gardens,
Shall send, between the red rose and the white,
A thousand souls to death and deadly night.
Middle Temple is entered from Fleet Street close by Temple Bar Memorial,
by way of Middle Temple Lane, through a brick gateway designed by Wren
and built in 1684. Middle Temple Lane divides Middle from Inner Temple.
It is narrow, crooked and dark, a survival of the long past. Here are
houses with overhanging upper floors, and law stationers' shops on the
lane level or below it. Off from the thoroughfare are dingy nooks and
odd courts. In one such, Brick Court, at No. 2, were Oliver Goldsmith's
last lodgings and here he died in 1774. The learned Blackstone lived in
the same building on the floor below Goldsmith and complained that he
was much disturbed on occasions when the author of the "Vicar of
Wakefield" and the "Deserted Village" gave supper parties that were
"filled with roaring comic songs."
The turning beyond Brick Court opens on the Hall of the Middle Temple, a
perfect example of Elizabethan architecture, and where Shakespeare's
charming comedy of "Twelfth Night" was first performed. In the Hall is
preserved a table made of wood from one of the ships of the Great Armada
on which the death warrant of Mary Queen of Scots was signed by
Elizabeth.
Before the Hall of Middle Temple is Fountain Court, a spot seeming far
away from London. In it is the Temple Fountain. The doves that drink of
the water here are as tame and as faded as the dusty foliage and the
skeletons of trees hereabouts. Here Ruth Pinch the sweet girl of
Dickens' "Martin Chuzzlewit" came often to meet her brother Tom and
afterwards her lover John Westlock.
From Fountain Court at the north is New Court and then on a few steps
further is Devereux Court where may be seen a bust of Lord Essex by
Colley Cibber, put here to mark the site of the Grecian Coffee House,
sacred to the legal profession.
The house in Fleet Street forming the east corner of the entrance to
Inner Temple Lane was the famous coffee-house called Nando's, in the
18th century. This house was built for the convenience of Henry, Prince
of Wales, in the reign of James I.
Obscured in dust and gloom the Sergeants' Inn, one of the original ten
Inns of Chancery, still stands in Fleet Street at Chancery Lane.
A grimy and narrow passage in Fleet Street, a few steps east of St.
Dunstan's-in-the-West, so insignificant that it would easily pass
unnoticed, is really an entrance to Clifford's Inn, one of the original
ten Inns of Chancery. Clifford's is now completely hidden by the church
and other buildings but reveals a mine of quaint corners and romantic
associations to one fortunate enough to stumble upon it in a day's
ramble.
It was in winding Chancery Lane that the dean of anglers Izaak Walton
kept a linen draper shop in the years from 1627 to 1647.
In Bishop's Court off Chancery Lane Dickens, in "Bleak House," saw fit
to place the rag and bottle shop of Crook, where that strange old man
died a death due to spontaneous combustion. Mr. Vholes the lawyer of the
Chancery Court also in "Bleak House," had his offices in Symond's Inn on
the other side of Chancery Lane where Chichester Rents is now.
Lincoln's Inn, one of the Inns of Court, was built in 1310 and there
remains no trace of the original. The front on Chancery Lane and the
gatehouse there were designed in 1518. Through an odd little pathway
from Chancery Lane the Stone Buildings are easily reached. These were
set up in the hope of rebuilding the entire Inn but this was not done.
Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, here maintained a town house in the 13th
century and the grounds extended all about the present site and have
taken his name as their own.
The gardens of Lincoln's Inn Fields were laid out by the great architect
Inigo Jones. Up to the first quarter of the 18th century Lincoln's Inn
Fields was a favorite duelling ground. Here also Babington and others
who conspired for the freedom of Mary Queen of Scots were executed in
1586. Lord William Russell was also executed here in 1683 because he was
supposed to have been concerned in the Rye House Plot. Altogether the
gardens may be said to have many gory associations of which their
present appearance gives no hint.
Inigo Jones the celebrated English architect has left the mark of his
genius on many London structures. He was born in London in 1576 and
during the reign of James I., when the main amusement of the Court was
the putting on of the masques of Ben Jonson he designed the scenery for
them. During this reign, too, he held the post of surveyor-general of
royal buildings. Long before his death in 1653 he was known to be the
first architect of England.
Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre stood where is now the Museum of the Royal
College of Surgeons on the south side of the gardens. In this playhouse
Congreve's "Love for Love," with Mrs. Bracegirdle as _Angelica_, was
first produced in 1695. "The Beggar's Opera" was also first seen here,
when Lavinia Fenton afterwards Duchess of Bolton was the _Polly
Peacham_. This is the theatre which Pepys visited so often that, as he
himself said, he made his wife "as mad as the devil."
Facing Lincoln's Inn Fields on the west side is still to be seen a stone
built house numbered 58, with Doric columns, quite grimy in appearance,
where once lived John Forster the biographer of Dickens. In this house,
Forster began the library which had grown to 18,000 volumes when he
bequeathed it to the nation. Here, too, he often entertained Dickens and
here heard him read in manuscript "The Chimes." Dickens made this the
home of Tulkinghorn the lawyer of "Bleak House," and killed him here.
There is no sign of the fore-shortened allegory on the first floor
ceiling now though from appearance it might well have been there once.
"Boz," writing of this first floor room declared that you might once
have heard "a sound at night, as of men laughing, together with a
clinking of knives and forks and wineglasses." The house was built by
Robert Bertie, Earl of Lindsey, a general of King Charles I.
In Great Queen Street at No. 56 not far from Lincoln's Inn Fields,
Boswell lived and wrote the greater part of the "Life of Johnson."
[Illustration: Staple Inn, looking toward Holborn Gateway]
Where Gray's Inn Road touches Holborn is the old quaint gabled Staple
Inn, one of the original ten Inns of Chancery harking back to the days
of James I. An arched gateway gives entrance to the interior court where
flourish plane trees that look to be as old as the inn itself. It was
here that Mr. Grewgious of Dickens' "Bleak House," had his chambers, and
over a doorway of the court is a stone with the lettering:
P
J T
1747
This seemingly cabalistic reference stands for Principal John Thompson
who presided over the inn for two terms in 1747. Dickens made fun of it
in "Bleak House." Dr. Samuel Johnson moved into Staple Inn March 22,
1757, from Gough Square, Fleet Street, and during his residence here the
great lexicographer wrote "Rasselas" in the evenings of a week, to pay
the funeral expenses of his mother!
The large red brick insurance building opposite Staple Inn on the north
side of Holborn is on the site of Furnival's, one of the original ten
Inns of Chancery, where Dickens lived when he was first married and
where he began the writing of "Pickwick Papers."
A narrow alley between the Holborn houses east of Fetter Lane and having
over its entrance a jarring gilt sign leads to the smallest of the ten
original Inns of Chancery--Barnard's Inn. Its ancientness is evidenced
by its dwarfed courts and tiny Hall. Since 1874 it has been used by the
Mercers' Company for their schools. Herbert Pocket in Dickens' "Great
Expectations" had rooms here in which Pip slept on his arrival in
London.
Gray's Inn one of the four Inns of Court with its spacious gardens and
its sober courts is a reminder of the reign of King Edward III. The Hall
was built in 1560 and the gardens were laid out three centuries ago, the
walks being planned by Francis Bacon.
In Fox Court, which is off Gray's Inn Road close by Holborn, the
Countess of Macclesfield lived, and here, on the south side, her famous
son Richard Savage the poet was born in 1697. His father was Lord
Rivers, but Savage was never cared for by him and was treated with gross
neglect by his mother. His life was a dissipated one and he once killed
a man in a drunken brawl for which he was sentenced to death but
afterwards pardoned. His best poem is "The Bastard," in which he
execrated his own mother the Countess for the illegitimacy of his birth.
He died in 1743 in a Bristol jail to which he had been sent for debt.
Close by, at the Gray's Inn Road corner of Holborn, is the crossing that
was swept by the poor Jo of Dickens' "Bleak House."
In Brooke Street, near at hand, the house No. 39, is famous as standing
on the site of the lodging house where Thomas Chatterton ended his brief
and remarkable career. Chatterton was born in Bristol, the son of a poor
widow. He received some education at a charity school but otherwise was
self-taught. In the few years of his life he developed a poetic quality
wonderful even in an age noted for literary excellence. He was seventeen
years old when in 1769 he came to London where he met great
discouragement. He lived in the garret of the obscure Brooke Street
lodging and here on August 24th, 1770, in dire want, among strangers,
literally starving, he died of poison self-administered. He was buried
in the pauper burial ground adjoining a workhouse in Shoe Lane.
Since 1688 the present church of St. Andrew's has stood at the western
end of Holborn Viaduct. It is a Wren building set up where an older
church was once. The poet Richard Savage was baptised here, and Hazlitt
the essayist was here married having for best man Charles Lamb.
Quaint and quiet and fascinating in its strong old age the cloister of
St. Etheldreda's just beyond the busy roar of Holborn Circus is a
survival of the famous palace of the bishops of Ely. This cloister is in
part the same as that in which Henry VIII. first met Cranmer, and here
John of Gaunt father of Henry IV. died in 1399. Ely Place of to-day is
named for the old palace.
In narrow Mitre Court, connecting Ely Place with Hatton Gardens, set in
the wall of a public house is the "Sign of the Mitre," bearing date of
1546. The present house stands on the site of the main entrance to the
palace.
Bleeding Heart Yard of picturesque name and fame, at the head of Ely
Place, is written of by Dickens in "Little Dorrit", as the home of
Plornish the plasterer, and it was here that the honest Daniel Doyce had
his factory.
SIX
ALONG THE STRAND: AND A PEEP AT COVENT GARDEN AND THE COFFEE HOUSES
Where Temple Bar Memorial, surmounted by a Griffin, is now in the Strand
Temple Bar itself stood until 1878. In one form or another, at times
merely a wooden structure, Temple Bar defined the limits of the City
from the 14th century. To the very last of its days was preserved an
ancient custom of closing the gate when a sovereign approached the City
on any public occasion, and opening it with much ceremony to give
entrance way. The last Temple Bar was built in 1670, but was demolished
to facilitate traffic. On the top of the old gateway the heads of
criminals who had been executed were exposed.