BLOOMSBURY
"Some love the Chelsea river gales,
And the slow barges' ruddy sails,
And these I'll woo when glamour fails
In Bloomsbury.
"Enough for me in yonder square
To see the perky sparrows pair,
Or long laburnum gild the air
In Bloomsbury.
"Enough for me in midnight skies
To see the moons of London rise,
And weave their silver fantasies
In Bloomsbury.
"Oh, mine in snows and summer heats,
These good old Tory brick-built streets!
My eye is pleased with all it meets
In Bloomsbury."
[Illustration: _The German Band._]
The peculiar and somewhat old-world charm of Bloomsbury is, like that
of Chelsea, only made known to her devotees. To the visitor to London,
no less than to the fashionable dweller in the West-End, it is a
grimy, sordid, squalid region, where slums abound, where "no nice
people live," and where mere "going out to dinner" necessitates either
the paying of a half-crown cab fare, or the sacrifice of an hour in
the bone-shaking omnibus. Hence arises the custom of saying that
"Bloomsbury is so far away." Of course, the distance or proximity of
any part of London depends on what one chooses for the centre; but,
taking either Oxford Circus or Charing-Cross--surely natural enough
centres--as the diverging point, Bloomsbury is more central than any
residential part of the metropolis. But even at the play poor
Bloomsbury is maligned; and this, too, notwithstanding the fact that
it is the chosen abode of so many of the theatrical profession. "They
call the place where I live, Bloomsbury," says Mr. Todman, the old
second-hand bookseller of _Liberty Hall_, "though why Bloomsbury, I
don't know; for there ain't so much bloomin' as there is buryin',"
(this, by the way, is a two-edged libel, for Bloomsbury being on high
ground is notoriously healthy). And then the same gentleman goes on to
remark, "they call my 'ouse a ramblin' one, though why it ain't
rambled away to some nicer place, I can't think." We get, from the
same play, a further impression that the Bloomsburians live mainly on
a dish called "Smoked 'Addick." Perhaps the dramatist was led to this
conclusion from the very pervading smell of fried fish that fills
certain "unlovely streets" of cookshops or boarding-houses; where,
however, in my experience the 'addick aroma has always yielded the
palm to that of "sheeps'-trotters" or "stewed eels." Be this as it
may, the old solidly built squares and houses of Bloomsbury have a
dignity of their own. Some of the streets have, it is true, "come down
in the world;" nevertheless, in their decay they retain a mournful
look of having known better days,--a look that even their tenement
rooms,--their broken windows, half-stuffed with paper,--their
shock-headed dirty inmates,--cannot altogether abolish or destroy.
Dickens, who always saw the human side of everything, has often
noticed the peculiar pathos of some of these old, world-forgotten
houses. In his inimitable _Sketches by Boz_ he gives a graphic account
of the gradual decay of a house "over the water." Here, the process is
somewhat similar. First, it changes from a private dwelling-house to a
"select boarding-house"; then, it becomes a friendly, social affair, a
"Home from Home"; then, its area steps become dirtier, its cook sits
on them, shelling peas, and exchanging jokes with the milkman; it
blossoms out in gaudy paint, like a decorator's shop; cracked
flowerpots, of odd shapes and sizes, adorn its windows; and it
descends, by slow degrees, yet further in the scale of "gentility,"
till finally it becomes a mere tenement house, its juvenile population
going in and out with jugs of beer, its area railings hung round with
pewter milk-pots, and its door ornamented with a row of half-broken
bell-chains for the different occupants. And, if you should chance,
too hurriedly, to ring one of these in search of a special inhabitant,
ten to one a cross, dirty-faced female will appear, grumbling: "Can't
yer see as _this_ 'ere is Mrs. Smith's bell?--Two pair back--ye've
rung the wrong 'un!"
The Bloomsbury houses are pathetic, however, not so much from age, as
because their glory has departed,--because they have had their day,
and ceased to be; for, in the matter of actual age, few of them date
back farther than the end of the eighteenth century. Queen Square,
indeed, which is far prior to any of its neighbouring squares, was
laid out in the reign of Queen Anne, in whose honour it was named, and
whose statue still adorns it. It is a curiously shaped square, for,
though enclosed, no houses were built at the northern end; this
arrangement was made for the sake of the fine view of the hills of
Highgate and Hampstead, that the square then commanded. Strange
transformation! The Bloomsbury that we know was then all fields; the
houses of Queen Square being, so to speak, the last sentinels of the
London of that day! Rocques' map of 1746 gives no houses beyond the
northern end of Southampton Row. Between Great Russell Street and the
present Euston Road, was then open country,--called, first, the "Long
Fields,"--then "Southampton Fields," or "Lamb's Conduit Fields."
Earlier, they were famous for their peaches and their snipes; but in
about 1800 they were mainly waste ground, where brawling and
disorderly sports took place, and where superstition asserted that,
two brothers having fought there about a lady, the footsteps they made
in their death-struggle would never again grow grass or herb! "The
Brothers' Steps," the place was called, or, "The Field of the Forty
Footsteps." The present Gordon Square is said to be built upon the
exact spot. The place had, however, always been rife with
superstition; for here, on Midsummer-Day, in the 17th century, young
women would come looking for a plantain leaf, to put under their
pillows, so that they should dream of their future husbands. From
these fields could be seen, in 1746 and far later, but two or three
nobles' mansions, enclosed in their gardens,--such as "Bedford House,"
pulled down to build Bedford Square,--"Baltimore House," long since
built into Russell Square,--and "Montague House," now rebuilt as the
British Museum;--with the old "Whitefield's Tabernacle" appearing
through the trees towards the gardens of the ancient manor of "Toten
Court," which gave its romantic name to the essentially unromantic
Tottenham Court Road. (The ugly "Adam and Eve" public-house, at the
junction of Euston Road and Tottenham Court Road, now occupies the
place both of the old tavern of that name, and the older manor-house.)
The name "Bloomsbury" is, however, of more remote date; it is, like
most London appellations, a "corruption," and comes from
"Blemundsbury," the manor of the De Blemontes, or Blemunds, in the
reign of Henry III. Later, the manor of Bloomsbury came, together with
that of the neighbouring St. Giles, into the possession of the Earls
of Southampton, till in 1668 it passed with Lady Rachel,--daughter of
Thomas Wriothesley, last Earl, by her marriage with Lord William
Russell,--into the family of the Dukes of Bedford, the present owners.
Lord William Russell,--who was beheaded, without a fair trial, in
Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1683, for supposed connection with the famous
Rye House Plot,--lived in Bedford House (formerly Southampton House),
on the northern side of Bloomsbury, originally Southampton, Square.
(The house occupied the whole north side of the square until pulled
down in 1802, after the illustrious Russells had lived there for more
than 200 years.) This was the house admired by Evelyn, in an entry in
his diary of February 9, 1665: "Dined at my Lord Treasurer's, the
Earle of Southampton, in Blomesbury, where he was building a noble
square or piazza, a little towne; some noble rooms, a pretty cedar
chapel, a naked garden to the north, but good aire". It was at first
intended that Lord William Russell should suffer in Bloomsbury Square,
opposite his own residence; but this was apparently opposed by the
King as too indecent.... Poor, heroic Lady Rachel Russell! She lived
here in retirement till her death, at the age of 86, in the reign of
George I. She had, indeed, like Polycrates, given her treasured
"ring", and could fear no more from fate. The great landlords of
London may get their "unearned increment" easily enough now, yet they
had to pay the penalty of greatness in the past!
Bloomsbury Square, though now rapidly becoming simply a square of
offices and business premises generally, was, in the time of Charles
I, the most fashionable and most admired Square in London. Pope,
later, alludes to it in the following couplet:
"In Palace yard, at nine, you'll find me there--
At ten, for certain, sir, in Bloomsbury Square--"
Here, in less ancient days, lived the great judge, Lord Mansfield,
whose house was burned during the Gordon Riots, in 1780; the mob threw
his pictures, valuable books, and manuscripts, out of the windows and
made a bonfire of them, while he and his wife escaped for their lives
by the back of the building. Sir Hans Sloane, the founder of the
British Museum, lived at one time in this square; also, Sir Richard
Steele, who, giving here a grand entertainment during financial
distresses, was waited on by bailiffs disguised as lacqueys; and,
finally, Isaac d'Israeli, the father of Lord Beaconsfield: who wrote
his _Curiosities of Literature_ at No. 6. "His only amusement," says
his son, who, as an infant, used to toddle round the square with his
nursemaid, "was to ramble about the booksellers' shops," still so
frequent in this vicinity. About 1760, the square was still so
countrified that the Duchess of Bedford used to send out cards to her
guests, inviting them to Bedford House to "take tea and walk in the
fields"; while their coachmen "were regaled with the perfume of the
flower-beds of the gardens in Great Russell Street." Within the
enclosure is now a bronze statue of Charles James Fox, by Westmacott.
These old London squares, with their tall plane trees, their
luxuriant and well-ordered garden enclosures, convey a delightful
sense, even now, of leisure and repose. No one in Bloomsbury,
Tavistock, or Russell Squares would imagine that behind those green
masses of foliage,--beyond the blue mist into which they melt so
picturesquely,--lies that great "cauldron" or "fermenting vat," as
Carlyle would say, of busy London. Yet it is there, but a stone's
throw, indeed, away. In the squares the birds twitter and chirp;
vistas of entwined branches, leafy glades, hide the glaring
continuity of the streets and houses; you might think yourself in
some suburban haunt of peace. Even the rumble of the wheels in
neighbouring Southampton Row and Holborn seems, in Russell Square in
summer, like a soothing tune "to rock a child asleep." You feel in
the world, yet not of it; close to the "mighty pulse of the
machine," yet in your garden enclosed, and at rest.... And in the
back gardens of the houses themselves (for some of the old mansions
yet have gardens, entered occasionally from side streets by
mysterious Jekyll and Hyde doorways) it is the same. I know a
"backyard" that still boasts its mulberry tree, bursting its fat
green buds gaily in the spring; and another that can flaunt, when
"soft April wakes," its hedge of fragrant lilac. The "daughters of
the varying year" deign to notice us even in Bloomsbury, though they
may not, perhaps, condescend to stay with us quite so long. (But
then we do not ourselves, as a rule, pay such long visits in London
as in the country.) Still, the crocus "breaks like fire" at our feet
in the spring; the graceful bells of the foxglove usher us
pleasantly into the autumn; and in London, imprisoned in brick, who
shall say how we love our "prison flower?"
The literary associations of Bloomsbury are yet another feature of its
charm. Though Russell Square and its surroundings generally are being
gradually rebuilt and improved, yet in some places you can still see
the actual old houses standing that, in the century's early years,
were the homes of celebrated men. Thus, No. 65 in Russell Square was
the abode of Sir Thomas Lawrence, the painter, and here he received
the distinguished sitters, the eminent men and fair ladies who have
made his name famous. Here, for instance, at this common-place house
door, while the Russian general Platoff was having his portrait
painted inside, were posted his attendant Cossacks, "mounted" says an
eye-witness, "on their small white horses, with their long spears
grounded," standing as sentinels at the door of the great painter.
Lawrence died here in 1830, and the house is not in essentials altered
since his day. At No. 5 in the square lived, from 1856 to 1862,
Frederick Denison Maurice, the "Christian Socialist," and here he held
his famous "prophetic breakfasts." At No. 56 Mary Russell Mitford
stayed in 1836. The house near by--No. 66--is a curious survival of
the days when Bloomsbury was a centre of fashion. Its enormous size,
its palatial reception rooms, its tall corridors, now deserted and
solitary except for a few colossal statues in niches, all suggest the
glare of light, the sound of music, the rustle of fine dresses that
filled it in old days. Hawthorne and Dickens suggested that old houses
felt and suffered; the same idea intrudes itself upon us here. The
rusted iron arches that used in the old days to support lamps,--now
darkened,--still hang here and there in Bloomsbury streets; and, in
some cases the actual iron torch-extinguishers that were used when
sedan chairs were in fashion, remain to tell their story of ancient
grandeur. Nothing is in its way more plaintive than an old and
desolate house of this kind; its glory departed, its decorations
falling to decay, its "garden" a wilderness of walls, roofs, and
broken bottles, its rooms, even, perchance, in course of being broken
up into solicitors' or other offices. Bloomsbury Square, indeed--the
square nearest to Holborn--has, in this way, entirely merged into
offices, the residents being practically ousted. But Russell Square,
despite the new Russell Hotel that rises palatially along its
north-eastern block, and despite the large Pitman's School of
Shorthand at its south-eastern corner, is still almost entirely
residential. None of its modern innovations can altogether abolish or
destroy the spirit and feeling of Thackeray that it breathes. Here
lived old Osborne, the purse-proud banker; there is going on old
Sedley's sale; I can see the packing-cases, the "loafers" and the vans
at this moment; and here, by these very prosaic green square railings,
is Amelia, sad and black garbed, looking with tear-filled eyes for her
boy George. Now that she comes into the light, I see that she is only
a nurse from one of the Great Ormond Street or Queen Square hospitals,
or, perhaps, a "Salvation Army" lassie; but for the moment she _was_
Amelia, poke-bonnet and all, to the life. Even the historic square
railings are just the same as when Thackeray drew them, and Amelia
beside them, in ch. 50 of _Vanity Fair_. The numerous pupils of
Pitman's Shorthand Institute now flock, unprotected, down Southampton
Row, where little Amelia and her kind, in the early years of the
century, walked, followed by "Black Sambo," with an enormous cane.
Little Amelia, whose simple strolls in the square were guarded by the
beadle; and before whose door, when asleep, "the watchman sang the
hours." The big houses--their fireplaces and ceilings often decorated
by Adam, their "powder-closets," curious relics of Queen Anne's time,
still existing, in many cases, behind the drawing-rooms--yet flaunt
their enormous kitchens, laundries, and basements, fitted with endless
bedrooms and offices for butlers and retainers, such as old Mr.
Sedley's "Black Sambo" and his tribe. They are out of date in this
region now, but the Bedford estate will not remodel them entirely so
long as their outer walls are solid; and that these mansions existed
long before the modern jerry-building days, their firm walls give
abundant proof.
But change is at work everywhere in this region. Flats ascending to a
terrific height are erected in every direction; of these "Bedford
Court," with its foreign-looking inner glazed courtyard is the most
outwardly picturesque. It does not seem long since the "gates and
bars" went; and soon, no doubt, a new Electric Railway will continue
its tunnels and stations along Southampton Row from Holborn to King's
Cross.
The principal reason, of course, for the modern unfashionableness of
Bloomsbury is to be found in its inhabitants; it is, practically, a
city of cheap boarding-houses. It will be interesting to see how the
big new Russell Hotel in Russell-Square will affect these. Though
boarding-houses are vetoed in the big squares, they abound everywhere
else. They are chiefly frequented by Americans and Germans, who,
through the late summer and autumn, throng the streets, generally
discoverable by their red "Baedekers," no less than by their speech.
It is, in fact, in July or August, more common, just here, to hear
German spoken than English. London, it has been ascertained, attracts
now a greater number of tourists than any other place in the world,
and these tourists mostly lodge in Bloomsbury. The theatrical world,
also, lives largely about here--it is so convenient for the theatres;
but it prefers, for its part, private lodgings, or flats. Yet, even
with all this yearly influx from other nations, Bloomsbury is
wonderfully little known to the world of shops or of fashion. Oxford
Circus is only distant ten minutes from the Russell Hotel, yet "where
is Russell Square?" is no uncommon question, even in a shop as big as
Peter Robinson's. "Where is Russell Square?" is, indeed, an almost
classical question; for it was made in so august a place as the House
of Commons, by so omniscient a being as Mr. Croker. It is
crushing--but so it is. You might as well, in the world's eyes, live
at Fulham or Kennington Park. "Why do you live so far away?" is a
question constantly asked of the Bloomsbury resident by people from
distant Battersea or Campden Hill, whom it would be useless to try to
undeceive. "The very absence of any knowledge of this locality," said
a noted wit, "is accounted a mark of high breeding." Among those who
have spoken despitefully of Bloomsbury is Mr. Gladstone. Sir Algernon
West records a conversation about Panizzi, and his "sad, ill days
before his death," "which Mr. Gladstone attributed greatly to the
fact of his living in Bloomsbury Square." But, with all respect to Mr.
Gladstone, it may be submitted that Panizzi would have died anywhere,
while, on the other hand, he could not have lived anywhere except in
his beloved Museum-land. Bloomsbury, too, is Whig territory, and it
was too bad of Mr. Gladstone to identify it with the Inferno.
Its social glory may have passed away from Bloomsbury, but pathetic
little scenes from a lower strata of life daily enact themselves here
before our eyes. For the poor we have, indeed, always with us. Here,
for instance, to a certain humble street corner, has come for many
years an old blind man who sells collar-studs. He arrives punctually
every morning, led along carefully by his wife. Once arrived, his mode
of procedure is always the same.
He first goes to an iron railing attached to an uninviting blind wall,
and proceeds, with a key, to extract thence a rickety wooden seat,
padlocked on to the railing. This he takes to his accustomed spot, an
old hoarding of ancient date, where he is allowed by sufferance of the
authorities; when the hoarding is removed, the old man will lose his
means of living unless he find another haunt. His wife helps him
across the road, and leaves him to sit patiently all day, east wind,
wet, or shine, selling studs. At five o'clock she again appears to
fetch him home to tea. Once I witnessed a little domestic drama
between the two. It arose thus. The old man had been talking one day
to another woman,--a decrepit old waif she was,--and, when the wife
returned, the poor old husband had to expiate his flirtation sorely.
His wife "let him have it" all the way over the return crossing,
undeterred by passing 'buses, or cabmens' jeers, from "speaking her
mind"; and she was still hard at it, to judge from her thin shoulders
and her gesticulations, as they passed out of sight together into the
foggy night.
[Illustration: _The Pavement Artist._]
"Pavement artists," too, select the near neighbourhood of the squares
as their favoured haunt. These "open-air pastellists," as they have
been called, are a curious, unshaven, dilapidated race, with an
indescribable "come-down-in-the world" look about them; and their lot
seems hardly an enviable one. Their "plant," it is true, is not large;
a few coloured chalks and a soft duster form all their necessary
stock-in-trade. Gifted often with a fair amount of technical ability,
they lead the passerby to wonder, whether, given happier circumstances
and a less vivid acquaintance with the bar of the public house, they
might not now be exhibiting their efforts on the sacred walls of the
Royal Academy. Not that the Royal Academy pictures themselves would,
for that matter, if they could be painted on the pavement, draw so
many coppers as the lurid representations of railway accidents, or
the scenes of domestic bliss, or the "Mother's Grave" (the public love
sentiment and pathos), or even the innocent mackerel or salmon, "as
like as like," that form the _repertoire_ of the pavement artist. His
wares, to catch pennies, have to be highly coloured, if nothing else.
His trials are many; dust and rain efface his pictures, drunken
navvies fall foul of him, cramp attacks his legs, and east wind
benumbs his fingers, till, poor wretch, no wonder that he repairs,
with his hardly won money, to the nearest public-house,--the poor
man's refuge. He is, on the other hand, not obliged to rise early or
to work after dark, and it is said that occasionally his takings
average as much as 4/6 per day, although an amateur who recently tried
his hand at the business only gained 3-1/2_d_, a violent headache, and
nearly a sunstroke. There is, it is true, a new and degenerate kind of
Pavement Artist, who, instead of painstakingly bedaubing the same
"pitch" day after day, brings out with him a series of highly-coloured
oil-pictures on cardboard; the public, however, have already
discovered him to be a hollow fraud. There is also said to be in
existence one young lady pavement artist, in sailor hat and neat
get-up (though where her present "pitch" may be I know not), who
labels herself proudly "the only one in England."
That Londoners are great lovers of the picturesque may be seen from
the admiring crowd that surround the pavement artist; they prefer
Nature, however, brought "home" to them in crude and garish colours.
Yet, as likely as not, when the shabby pastellist has put away chalks
and duster for the day, and betaken himself to his nightly refuge in
Soho or Hatton Garden, the sky behind him will robe itself in intense
hues of orange, purple, and crimson that baffle imitation, and before
which even pavement-art fades into insignificance. For the
sunset-skies of London are a marvel. All through the varying year they
are beautiful, but in September and October they are at their best.
The sun either sinks, a bold red disc, behind the black houses and
still blacker plane trees, or it clothes its retreat with bright
purple and madder clouds, against which, with their golden background,
the tree branches show dark like prison-bars. Was it perhaps, on these
sunset-skies that Christina Rossetti gazed when she wrote her most
inspired poems? And was it from the small window of her gloomy little
house in Torrington Square, "the small upper back bedroom whose only
outlook," her biographer says, "was to the tall dingy walls of
adjacent houses;" was it from here that,--looking with rapt gaze over
to the neighbouring stables and mews,--she saw, in fancy, the angel
choirs of which she wrote?
"... Multitudes--multitudes--stood up in bliss,
Made equal to the angels, glorious, fair;
With harps, palms, wedding-garments, kiss of peace,
And crowned and haloed hair."
Indeed it is not unlikely that she did see them, for the true poet's
mind sees what it brings, to the exclusion of all meaner things. There
is a pretty story told, in this connection, of William Blake, the
poor, half-crazed poet-painter of Fountain Court. "What," he said, "it
will be questioned" (of me) "when the sun rises, do you not see a
round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea? Oh! no, no! I see an
innumerable company of the heavenly host, crying 'Holy, holy, holy, is
the Lord God Almighty!' I question not my corporeal eye any more than
I would question a window concerning a sight. I look through it, and
not with it." And thus it was with Miss Rossetti. She, the patient,
noble, suffering woman,--suffering, latterly, from a long and painful
illness,--lay, day after day silent and uncomplaining, in that dismal
little London house where she had spent nineteen years of her
life,--her soul ever beating its prison-bars. Near by in the
neighbouring Woburn Square, is Christ Church, where Miss Rossetti
during her life was a constant attendant, and whose incumbent, the
Rev. J. J. Glendinning Nash, was her close friend. Here her impressive
funeral service (where her own poems were sung) took place on January
2nd 1895. The whole of this part of London is bound up with the lives
of the talented Rossetti family. Christina, her mother, and aunts,
lived at No 30 Torrington Square--and before that at 5 Endsleigh
Gardens; W. M. Rossetti, the younger brother and literary critic,
lived near by, close to Regent's Park; and Dante Rossetti, the chief
of this family of poets, was, as we know, a thorough Londoner, and
never even visited Italy at all. One of the most curious things about
London is the way in which, despite its gloom, it inspires and
stimulates the poet's thought, "moulding the secret gold." Else why is
it that so many beautiful things are produced there? Even Mr. Austin
Dobson's Muse, he complains, "pouts" when abroad, though "she is not
shy on London stones!" The many-hued beauties of the country do not
affect us as do the grey London stones and streets, eloquent with
association and history.
If the Rossetti family are deeply connected with Bloomsbury streets
and squares,--William Morris, the poet of _The Earthly Paradise_, the
Socialist, designer, prophet of the House Beautiful, is hardly less
so. It was in unromantic Bloomsbury that his ideas of beauty were
mainly nourished; Oxford Street, Upton, and Kelmscott came later.
Bloomsbury, whose drawing and painting schools are immortalised in
Thackeray's novels (_vide_ "Gandish's," in _The Newcomes_,), has
always been more or less a focus of art teaching. Bohemian in old
days, it is mildly Bohemian still, as any one who frequents the
art-schools of the neighbourhood will testify. When Morris first left
Oxford, in 1856, he and Burne-Jones took rooms together in Upper
Gordon Street, Bloomsbury, as being a convenient locality for the
study of art. Here they fell in with other kindred spirits, such as
Holman Hunt and Rossetti. "Topsy" (Morris) "and I lived together,"
Burne Jones wrote in 1856, "in the quaintest room in all London, hung
with brasses of old knights and drawings of Albert Duerer." In the
following year (1857) they removed to 17 Red Lion Square, a house
already consecrated to the early pioneers of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood:
"It was a first-floor set of three rooms; the large room in
front looked north, and its window had been heightened up to
the ceiling to adapt it for use as a studio: behind it was a
bedroom, and behind that another small bedroom or powdering
closet. Till the spring of 1859 this was their London
residence and working place, and it is round Red Lion Square
that much of the mythology of Morris's earlier life
clusters. From the incidents which occurred or were invented
there, a sort of Book of the Hundred Merry Tales gradually
was formed, of which Morris was the central figure."--(_Life
of W. Morris, by J. W. Mackail._)
"A great many of these stories are connected with the maid of the
house, who became famous under the name of 'Red Lion Mary.' She was
very plain, but a person of great character and unfailing good
humour.... One of the tales told of her shows her imperturbable good
nature. Rossetti one day, on her entering the room, strode up to her,
and in deep resonant tones, with fearful meaning in his voice,
declaimed the lines:
"'Shall the hide of a fierce lion
Be stretched on a couch of wood
For a daughter's foot to lie on,
Stained with a father's blood?'
"Whereupon the girl, quite unawed by the horrible proposition, replied
with baffling complacency, 'It shall if you like, sir'!"
From the fact of the Red Lion Square rooms being unfurnished came
practically the beginnings of Morris's work as a decorator and
manufacturer. He set to work to provide it with "intensely mediaeval
furniture," designed by himself, and painted in panels afterwards by
Rossetti and Burne-Jones. There were tables, chairs, and a large
settle; "chairs," says Rossetti, "such as Barbarossa might have sat
in." It is pleasant to think of Morris and Rossetti walking arm-in-arm
on summer evenings, wending their way through quaint alleys up to the
Red Lion Square lodgings, deep in earnest conversation; young,
intensely busy and hopeful--still more intensely full of "the joy of
life." They spent their holidays at the not far distant Zoological
Gardens, where Morris, who was fond of birds, would observe and
imitate the habits of eagles:
"He would imitate an eagle with considerable skill and
humour, climbing on to a chair, and, after a sullen pause,
coming down with a soft heavy flop; and for some time an owl
was one of the tenants of Red Lion Square, in spite of a
standing feud between it and Rossetti."
Morris had several Bloomsbury abodes. Later, when he married, and the
Red Lion Square household broke up, he and his wife went into lodgings
at 41, Great Ormond Street; and again, some five or six years later,
they took an old house, 26 Queen Square, (now pulled down to make room
for a hospital), a house which, with its yard and outbuildings behind,
had room and to spare for his family, and also for workshops to
accommodate his increasing trade as a decorative manufacturer. It is
sad that London houses where Morris lived should bear no trace of his
beautifying hand; for externally, it must be confessed, such of his
Bloomsbury dwellings as remain extant are commonplace. Red Lion
Square, a curiously antiquated enclosure near Holborn, approached by
paved diverging alleys at the eastern corners, and with a pathetic
look of having known better days (it is now mostly offices and
business flats), contains but few dwelling-houses. No. 17 still
stands, but the only thing about it that seems to suggest the Morris
tradition is its plain green door; and it differs from its neighbours
merely by its middle first-floor window being "heightened up to the
ceiling" as already described. Neither is 41, Great Ormond Street--one
of the smaller houses in that dignified old street--in any way
remarkable, except for its rather dilapidated look. It seems a pity,
by the way, that tablets do not more frequently indicate the houses
where great people have lived; the dullest of London streets would
gain infinitely in interest were this the rule, instead of merely the
exception.
Queen Square, though its old houses have mostly been rebuilt as
large hospitals, and only a few of them remain, still has a charming
old world look. Great Ormond Street, with its tall old mansions of
time-darkened red brick, their quaint overhanging porch roofs, and
their often elaborate iron-work, runs into it at one end; while the
other--curious anomaly at this date!--is still a deadlock of
enclosed gardens, with no thoroughfare into dull Guilford street
beyond. This,--and it is a fact that of itself speaks well for the
health of the district,--is a region of hospitals; hence the
occasional whiff of ether or scent of iodine from bandaged
"out-patients" that greets the traveller by omnibus up Southampton
Row. The high ground on which Bloomsbury is built (for it is a
gradual ascent all the way from the river to Russell Square) render
it, its fogs and soot notwithstanding,--and despite the old
tradition that the victims of the plague were mainly buried
here,--far more bracing then the more fashionable West End. It has,
certainly, its quota of fogs, or "London particulars" as Sam Weller
called them; but so have other parts of London. In and about Great
Ormond Street and Queen Square are many hospitals; large, airy, and
splendidly managed institutions, such, for instance, as the
well-known Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, (abused
as "hideous" by Mr. Hare, principally because "two interesting
houses, Nos. 48 and 49," of real Queen Anne architecture, were
destroyed in 1882 to enlarge it); the National Hospital for Epilepsy
and Paralysis, under the great Dr. Ferrier; and the tall newly-built
Alexandra Hospital for children. In Powis Place, close to Queen
Square, Lord Macaulay lived in early manhood with his family. The
house is now joined to the Homoeopathic Hospital.
In Great Ormond Street, also, on the northern side, is the "Working
Men's College," the history of which is so deeply associated with
Ruskin, Rossetti, Madox Brown, and their friends. Started first by F.
D. Maurice at 31, Red Lion Square, (where Rossetti and Ruskin
subsequently volunteered to hold classes, Rossetti "teaching mechanics
to draw each other," and Ruskin instructing them in the more
rudimentary art of copying leaves, flowers, &c., according to the
"strictest school of Ruskinianism;")--it was subsequently moved to its
present site. In the lives of this gifted community of artists and
teachers, the Working Men's College played no small part, and showed
how deeply these young men were actuated, not only by the love of art,
but also by the feeling of universal brotherhood advocated later by
Morris in the social Utopia he propounded in one of his best known
works. The story of the College may be read in many books and
biographies. The kind of thing it practised, being rare in those days,
attracted strangers and philanthropic aristocrats, who came to look on
and to wonder. Irreverent stories, indeed, are told of the classes
there by mild scoffers,--such as W. B. Scott, for instance,--who
describes Mr. Ruskin's class, as follows:
"We drove into Red Lion Square, and here I found ... every
one trying to put on small pieces of paper, imitations by
pen and ink of pieces of rough stick crusted with dry
lichens!... I came away feeling that such pretence of
education was in a high degree criminal--it was intellectual
murder!"
For Mr. Scott, who was, as he says, "the representative of the
Government schools," some allowance must be made; but Dante Rossetti
himself, though he held a "life"-class, also saw the comic side. "You
think," he said to Mr. Scott:
"You think I have turned humanitarian, perhaps, but you
should see my class for the model! None of your _Freehand
Drawing-Books_ used. The British mind is brought to bear on
the British _mug_ at once, and with results that would
astonish you."
On the actual value of these things, opinions, as we see, may differ;
but who can doubt the indirect good that resulted from the effort,
both to teachers and to taught?
The Passmore Edwards Settlement, in Tavistock Place, goes perhaps,
far to realise some of the ideas of Morris's Utopia. To begin with, it
is a thing of beauty. Its newness is not aggressive, and its long
red-brick building, adorned by quaint porches and backed by refreshing
green plane-trees, is a pleasing object as viewed from the essentially
unromantic and grimy street into which it opens. Its architecture is a
credit to the two young men who designed it. Though the building, I
believe, at first excited some adverse comment in Bloomsbury circles,
yet there can be no doubt of its success as a whole. Its style, simple
yet decorative, gains on the beholder. While, externally, it forms a
little "isle of quiet breathing" in Bloomsbury streets, its
proportions and general construction are internally, no less charming.
The big lecture-hall with its white arched roof, its many windows, the
beautifully-proportioned drawing-room with its lovely colouring of
green and red, the well-stocked library, the gymnasium, the
sewing-rooms, the cooking-school, are all arranged and decorated in
the Morris style, and according to Morris's ideas.... Mrs. Humphry
Ward, as every one knows, is the inspiring spirit of the Settlement,
and Mr. Tatton is her warden and prophet. The present building, for
which the funds were principally provided by Mr. Passmore Edwards of
the _Echo_, is the outcome of Mrs. Ward's earlier "settlement" in
Gordon Square. It was built in 1897 on the site of a curious old house
called "The Grove," which stood apart in its own grounds; a house
where Herschel lived and where he first weighed the world; where,
also, report says, that George IV. kept one of his numerous "ladies."
The Settlement, which is of the Toynbee Hall type, is unsectarian, and
therefore looked coldly on by many church people; though, by the
admitted good it works, it has overcome many prejudices. Among the
most novel, and assuredly the most excellent, of its works is the
Cripples' School which is conducted within its walls. It is a pathetic
sight to see the vehicle--half omnibus and half ambulance--carrying
these poor little pupils to and from the Settlement. Also, it
ministers to the highest pleasures of the people; and it is far more
difficult to teach enjoyment than to teach learning. Gymnasiums,
cooking, and social gatherings for all classes alike pave, at any
rate, the way to still larger "departures" and Ruskinian possibilities
in the way of "preaching to the rich and dining with the poor." The
pretty drawing-room of the Settlement looks, with its bay window, on
to a charming green garden once backed by Dickens's old
house,--Tavistock House,--now demolished.
Literary memories attach even to Gower Street; that long, prosaic,
interminable thoroughfare.
Here, at No. 110 (then No. 12, Upper Gower Street, and now utilized
with neighbouring houses as Shoolbred's offices), lived, in 1839,
Charles Darwin; it was described by his son as "a small, commonplace
London house, with a dining room in front, and a small room behind, in
which they lived for quietness." Though Darwin sometimes grumbled, as
men will, over the necessity of living in "dirty odious London," he
also appreciated its peculiar charm, as the following extract will
testify:
"We are living a life of extreme quietness. What you
describe as so secluded a spot is, I will answer for it,
quite dissipated compared with Gower Street. We have given
up all parties, for they agree with neither of us; and if
one is quiet in London there is nothing like it for
quietness.... There is a grandeur about its smoky fogs, and
the dull, distant sounds of cabs and coaches; in fact, you
may perceive I am becoming a thorough-paced cockney, and I
glory in the thought that I shall be here for the next six
months."
In 1835, too, as Mr. Frith recalls in his amusing _Reminiscences_, he
himself was a boy, just introduced to his first drawing academy,
immortalized as "Gandish's" in the _Newcomes_; that of Mr. Henry Sass,
which still stands, a corner house at No. 6 Charlotte Street, the
Holborn continuation of Gower Street. At the side entrance, under the
classic bust of Minerva,--which, yellowed and antique in more senses
than one, "to this day looks down on the passer-by;"--under this
doorway came not only Frith, but Millais, and other well-known
Academicians. Edward Lear, of much _Nonsense Book_ fame, and much
undeserved neglect as a landscape-painter, "a man of varied and great
accomplishments," was also one of Sass's pupils.
Millais, when a boy attending Sass's school, lived with his parents at
83, Gower Street (the studio was built out behind). Mr. Holman Hunt
thus describes the Millais _menage_ at the time:
"It (the studio) was comfortably furnished with artistic
objects tastefully arranged.... The son put his hand on his
father's shoulder and the other on his mother's chair, and
said: 'They both help me, I can tell you. He's capital! and
does a lot of useful things. Look what a good head he has. I
have painted several of the old doctors from him. By making
a little alteration and putting a beard on him he does
splendidly, and he sits for hands and draperies, too; and as
for mamma, she finds me all I want in the way of dresses,
and makes them up for me. She reads to me, too, at times,
and finds out whatever I want to know at the British Museum
library. She's very clever, I can tell you,' and he stooped
down and rubbed his curly head against her forehead, and
then patted the 'old daddy,' as he called him, on the back."
It was close to Sass's old school, and opposite his benign Minerva,
that I once saw, myself, one bitter May-Day of nipping "north-easter,"
the real old "Jack-in-the-Green" described by Dickens and illustrated
by Cruikshank; the "May-Day sweeps" of the _Sketches by Boz_; "my
lord," "my lady," "clowns," "green," and all. Very wretched and
miserable looked these belated illustrators of an ancient custom, as
they danced and piped through the wind and sleet that usually, by some
strange perversity, usher in the first of May. The Cockney children
who storm the doorsteps, clamorously demanding May-Day tribute, and
crying their shrilly monotonous song:
"Fust er Ma--ay,
Dawn er da--ay,
It's only once a yee--ar"--
are usually suggestive of a cold, cheerless morn.
At the present day, many members of the legal profession still
inhabit Bloomsbury, recalling the old days when, from its residents,
it was dubbed "Judge-Land." Its proximity to Fleet Street renders it
equally beloved by writers; its nearness to the Strand endears it to
"the profession" and the music-hall artistes, who frequent the flats
near Tottenham Court Road; but the bulk of the residential population
is Jewish. Bloomsbury has, however, not only been the chosen abode of
judges, journalists, and Jews, but it is also the home of many sects
and religious communities, some important, and some, if report be
true, mustering but few adherents. There is a by-way off Lamb's
Conduit Street (which is a thoroughfare at the back of Great Ormond
Street, containing, like it, some quaint old houses, as well as some
interesting curiosity-shops); in this by-way is a tiny building,
pathetic in its minuteness, and chiefly discernible from its
projecting gas-lamp, labelled "Church of Humanity." Of this church, a
wit is said to have unkindly remarked, with reference to the size of
its congregation, that it contained "three persons, but no God."
Unitarians muster largely round the Bloomsbury squares; and the
Irvingites, or, as they call themselves, members of "the Catholic and
Apostolic Church," have their principal place of worship,--a fine
building erected for them in 1853,--in Gordon Square. Its door
is--rare indeed in London!--always open, enabling the visitor to enter
and admire the long cloister that leads to the church, and the
decorated interior with its triforium, wheel-window, and side-chapel.
The prayer-books lying in the pews seem much the same as those used by
the English Church, the chief difference being that in them the word
"saint" is always rendered as "angel." This beautiful church and its
strange creed result from the doctrines propounded by Edward Irving,
the Annandale prophet and seer, the preacher of "the gift of tongues,"
who was himself ordained the first "angel" or minister of his sect.
(This Edward Irving was the first lover of Jane Welsh Carlyle,--the
man of whom she said, that if she had married him, "there would have
been no gift of tongues!")
Whitefield's Tabernacle, that early home of Dissent,--where, in 1824,
Edward Irving delivered his famous missionary oration of
three-and-a-half hours,--stands near by in Tottenham Court Road.
Erected first by the preacher George Whitefield in 1756, and called
then "Whitefield's Soul Trap,"--it has been many times rebuilt,--and
is now just re-opened as an imposing red-brick and ornate edifice, on
its original site. Notwithstanding its deplorable newness, it
perpetuates the memory of Whitefield, Toplady, and John Wesley; and it
was here, by a curious coincidence, that two ministers preached their
own funeral sermons!
With Carlyle too, although his chosen home was in far-away Chelsea,
Bloomsbury has associations. At No. 6 Woburn Buildings,--in a dingy
little paved by-way close to New St. Pancras Church, Euston
Road,--Carlyle lodged for a short time in 1831--when trying to get his
_Sartor Resartus_ taken by a publisher. In these lodgings ("a very
beautiful sitting-room, quiet and airy" he describes it), Edward
Irving, his friend, had also stayed. And 5 Ampton Street, Mecklenburgh
Square, was another London lodging of Carlyle's--frequented before the
Chelsea days began in 1834. But, of the many literary men who have
lived in and around Bloomsbury, none is more associated with the
locality than Charles Dickens. Tavistock House has been recently
pulled down; it was an unassuming, ugly, semi-detached dwelling with a
heavy portico, one of three houses all now destroyed, railed off from
the eastern side of Tavistock Square, and entered from it through an
iron gateway. This was the novelist's home for ten years, from 1850 to
1860. He, and his famous New Year's theatricals, are still a
recollection of the older residents in the neighbourhood. The annual
plays of Tavistock House, performed "in a theatre erected in the
garden," and written and stage-managed under the collaboration of
Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens, are now matter of history. _Bleak
House_ was the earliest work written here. The house after Dickens's
time became a Jews' college, and the pupils "recreated" in the
novelist's theatre-garden. It is now a sad scene of desolation.
Memories of Bloomsbury haunt many of Dickens's works, but none are
better or more lifelike in their way than his early sketches of the
immortal Mrs. Tibbs--type of her class--and her select boarding house
in Great Coram Street, in "that partially explored tract of country
which lies between the British Museum and a remote village called
Somers Town." Mrs. Tibbs's advertisement to the effect that "six
individuals would meet with all the comforts of a cheerful musical
home in a select private family, residing within ten minutes' walk of
everywhere," is still not uncommonly met with.
But the literary memories of Bloomsbury are like the sands of the sea
for multitude. They may be found even in the dingy streets running
east of Tavistock Square, leading north towards the tram-lines and
general squalor of King's Cross. At No. 26 Marchmont Street, the
youthful Shelley and the still more youthful Mary Godwin, afterwards
Shelley's second wife, lived in 1815, before Harriet's death and their
own legal marriage; and here their first baby was born and died.
"Shelley and Clara go out about a cradle," Mary's diary records, a few
days after the infant's birth. Here Mary read _Corinne_ and
_Rinaldini_, and mourned over her little dead child, "a span-long dead
baby, and in the lodgings in Marchmont Street an empty cradle."
Possibly Marchmont Street then was not quite so slummy as it is now;
but this young couple, treading "the bright Castalian brink and
Latmos' steep," were probably just as unconscious of London mud as of
any disorder, actual or moral, in their establishment.
At 54, Hunter Street, a street just east of Marchmont Street, and now
exhibiting, in all its phases, the gradual decay described by Dickens,
John Ruskin was born in 1819; and here, as he describes in
_Praeterita_, he used, at the age of four, to enjoy from his nursery
window "the view of a marvellous iron post, out of which the
water-carts were filled through beautiful little trap-doors, by pipes
like boa constrictors," a mystery which, he says, he was never weary
of contemplating. If any such little observant boy should happen to
live there now, he would have something further to contemplate, to
wit, the frequent green omnibuses, for this is now the much-travelled
omnibus route between the stations of King's Cross and Victoria.
Hunter Street runs into Brunswick Square, where, at No. 32, the
_Punch_ artist John Leech lived for ten years, and suffered many
afflictions at the hands of persistent organ-grinders, who, if they
did not really shorten his life, at any rate aggravated the illness of
which he died. London is conservative in its habits, and
organ-grinders, trooping in from their neighbouring home of Hatton
Garden--even occasionally a low type of nigger minstrels--still haunt
this spot, as they do all places, for that matter, where
boarding-houses congregate. The regular attendance of what is termed a
"piano-organ" always denotes a boarding-house; the louder its screech
the better, for the boarder seems fond of noise. His mode of life is
peculiar and unique. He will sit on the balcony smoking, or eat his
dinner with his friends almost in public; it is all the same to him.
Such sign-manuals betray the "select boarding establishment" almost as
much as does the row of five ornate cracked glazed pots, yellow and
blue alternately, that adorn its lower windows; or to quote Dickens:
"the meat-safe looking blinds in the parlour windows, blue and gold
curtains in the drawing-room, and spring roller blinds all the way
up." Adjoining Brunswick Square on the west is Great Coram Street,
where (at No. 13), Thackeray lived when first married, and wrote his
_Paris Sketch Book_. This district has been altered lately by tall
ugly workmen's flats; but Great and Little Coram Street still
perpetuate the memory of old Captain Thomas Coram, the benevolent sea
captain, and originator of the well-known Foundling Hospital close by
in Guilford Street. This picturesque and important institution is a
kind of show place on Sundays, to which many visitors are taken. The
chapel services, with the raised tiers of boys and girls singing in
trained choir on each side of the big organ presented by Handel, not
only please alike the eye and ear, but have the indescribable charm of
pathos. As Mrs. Meagles in Dickens's novel (_Little Dorrit_) well
expresses it:
"Oh dear, dear" (she sobbed), "when I saw all those children
ranged tier above tier, and appealing from the father none
of them has ever known on earth, to the great Father of us
all in Heaven, I thought, does any wretched mother ever come
here, and look among those young faces, wondering which is
the poor child she brought into this forlorn world, never
through its life to know her love, her kiss, her face, her
voice, even her name!"
Blake's poem pictures the scene:
"Oh, what a multitude they seemed, these flowers of London town!
Seated in companies they sit, with radiance all their own;
The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,
Hundreds of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands."
In the early days of the hospital, first established in Hatton Garden
in 1740, the admission of unwanted children was more or less
indiscriminate, and the mortality among them--packed for transit from
the country in some cases "five infants in a basket"--enormous. Now it
is only a "foundling" hospital in that it receives illegitimate
children, who must not be more than a year old, and whose mothers must
personally apply and state their case. The "tokens" left with the
babies in the early days of the institution as means of future
identification, are preserved in the hospital. Some of them are very
curious:
"Coins of an ancient date ... a playing card--the ace of
hearts--with a dolorous piece of verse written upon it; a
ring with two hearts in garnets, broken in half, and then
tied together; three or four padlocks, intended, we suppose,
as emblems of security; a nut, an ivory fish, an anchor, a
gold locket, a lottery ticket. Sometimes a piece of brass,
either in the shape of a heart or a crescent moon, was used
as a distinguishing mark, generally engraved with some
little verse or legend. Thus one has these words upon it,
'In amore haec sunt vitia'; another has this bit of
doggerel:--
"You have my heart;
Though we must part."
By admission, after the service, to the long dining-hall, the visitors
are allowed to see the children's temporal, as well as their
spiritual, wants well attended to. Hogarth's _March to Finchley_, a
picture which he practically presented to the hospital, hangs in its
picture gallery, and testifies to the painter's interest in the
institution. The hospital's playing-grounds look into Lamb's Conduit
Street, where often through the railings passers-by stand and gaze at
the children in their quaint uniform, the boys in red and brown,
playing on one side of the gravelled enclosure; the girls, in brown
frocks with white caps, tuckers, and aprons, on the other. In
Mecklenburgh Square, which adjoins the hospital on the east,--the most
curiously secluded square, surely, in all London,--lived George
Augustus Sala, the well-known journalist, whose house was a perfect
museum of curiosities and works of art. "Highly respectable but not at
all fashionable," is the cruel sentence pronounced both upon this
square and its neighbour Brunswick Square. The broken-nosed statue of
the girl with a pitcher, that stands opposite the big iron gates of
the Foundling Hospital (at the opening of Lamb's Conduit Street),
shows how much less reverently inclined the youth of London are to
art, than the Florentine.
This, on a day of atmospheric charm, a day haloed by blue depths of
mist, is, to the chastened eye of the constant Londoner, one of
Bloomsbury's prettiest spots. But others there are as charming; for
instance, the view from Tavistock Square, of the tower of New St.
Pancras Church, that tower imitated from the Athenian "Tower of the
Winds," white against a blue sky; or, more mysterious, the great
towers of St. Pancras Station, as they loom up blackly, like some
mediaeval fortress, against a lurid twilight.
Lamb's Conduit Street has many interesting curio-shops: Hindoo idols,
yellow dragons, and the like, glare in quite human fashion at the
passer-by from behind the grimy shop panes; and books and curios,
combined, form the main stock-in-trade of the four quaint diverging
alleys of the neighbouring Red Lion Square, already mentioned. It is a
great mistake, however, to imagine that because a shop is dirty and
tumble-down, its wares will necessarily be cheap. Though Bloomsbury
shops may be slightly cheaper than those of Soho and Wardour Street,
yet here, too, the engaging and generally picturesque old dealer has,
in the case of old china, a keen eye to business; and as regards old
books, that apparent disinclination to sell which is so general among
second-hand booksellers, as to suggest that it is not without its
magnetic charm for the buyer. Some old gentlemen seem, indeed, to
utilize most of the available light of a London winter's day at the
outside counters of these dusty second-hand book emporiums. So long do
they browse, shivering and blue-nosed, in ragged "comforters" and very
inadequate great-coats, that one is tempted to believe the story of
the old scholar who read the whole of a long-sought classic in a
winter's stolen hours at the counter. Seldom, in these days, do the
"twopenny" or "fourpenny" boxes, that used to yield such prizes, now
repay the book-hunter. Old school books, old guide books, and old
sermons, "the snows of yester-year," now mainly fill them. And,
indeed, with such a mine of fiction as Mudie's close by, where kind
gentlemen recommend appropriate reading to timorous old ladies, or,
better still, with such privileges as may be obtained in the
neighbouring Reading Room of the British Museum, practically "for the
mere asking," it is a strange taste to prefer to stand and shiver at a
dingy book-counter. Once inside the sacred portals of the Reading Room
(the stranger having satisfied the Cerberus at the wicket gate that he
or she is "over twenty-one," a point on which there is not generally,
as regards the Reading Room _clientele_, much doubt), a warm
atmosphere, a comfortable seat, and a luxurious leather desk await the
jaded wayfarer; with, further, polite attendants in the innermost
circle to assist, if necessary, his researches; and, should he be
hungry, a further possibility of a cheap lunch of sausage and mashed
potato flanked by zoological and geological buns in the refreshment
room, a locality now somewhat unkindly sandwiched between Greek heroes
and Egyptian gods.
[Illustration: _Mudie's._]
But such mundane things as sausages are, primarily, far from the
thoughts of the devotee of learning. Entering first the vast Dome of
Knowledge,--where, as in St. Paul's, the blue mist and fog of London
seem to hang, and where, underfoot, floor-cloth deadens all sound,--a
certain solemnity impresses the visitor, a sense, almost, of being in
another world. As, indeed, in some respects he is; for the denizens of
the British Museum Reading Room are, mainly, a race apart and to
themselves. They and their ways, "their tricks and their manners,"
form an interesting study. Day after day, each one has his--or
her--special place in the long diverging galleries that, like spokes
of a wheel, emerge from the central sun of wisdom and electric light
under the dome. Nobody, it is true, may reserve seats; yet often
custom, seconded by public feeling (and that conservatism which is the
birthright of every Londoner), reserves them none the less. The girls
and women are largely of the art-serged, fuzzy-headed type,
occasionally also dowdy and sallow, with that dust-ingrained
complexion so peculiar to Bloomsbury; the men are generally, if young,
badly tailored and long-haired, and, if old, irascible, snuffy and
unwashed.
Was it perchance of any of these that Thomas Carlyle was thinking when
he wrote the following characteristic diatribe?--
"There are several persons in a state of imbecility who come
to read in the British Museum. I have been informed that
there are several in that state who are sent there by their
friends to pass away their time. I remember there was one
gentleman who used to blow his nose very loudly every
half-hour. I inquired who he was, and I was informed that he
was a mad person sent there by his friends; he made extracts
out of books, and puddled away his time there."
Woe betide the novice whose evil star leads him to one of these
gentlemen's special haunts! Of course there are a few smart visitors
and a modicum of mere "fribblers" (some years ago, indeed, so many
damsels repaired to the reading-room to skim recent novels, that a
rule was passed forbidding the issue of any recent work of fiction),
but the dowdy, plodding type forms the vast majority. In many cases
the toilers are simply slaves sent by some absentee literary
taskmaster to ferret out knotty points, or to look up references.
Sometimes they are clergymen in search of detail for sermons;
sometimes they are learned Casaubons or untiring Jellybys working on
their own account.... A kind Government provides pens, ink, often
tracing paper, and any amount of civility and trouble, free. It has
been said unkindly by West-Enders, jealous of such liberality, that
Bloomsbury alone should be taxed for the British Museum; such an
injustice, however, has not, so far, been perpetrated!--
That the British Museum is gradually absorbing all the houses near it,
and enlarging its boundaries into a large square, is evident. The
whole eastern side of Bedford Square, and part of the western side of
Russell Square, will soon be amalgamated into the vast building. The
little lions, those ornaments on the old outer railings, about whose
disappearance such an outcry was raised some years back, have been
adapted to the internal use of the Museum, and higher, stronger, more
important railings substituted on the outside in their place. The
large pediment of the portico, imitated--at how long an
interval!--from the Greek model, is, like the statues in the squares,
filled with nesting birds, and is generally also white with the
pigeons' plumage. And, where this enormous building now stands, was
originally Old Montague House, the "stately and ample ancient palace,"
adorned by Verrio and built in the "French pavilion" way, when,
practically, all the rest of Bloomsbury was open country. Where the
big galleries now extend were corridors adorned by fresco paintings:
and where the halls now given up to statues and treasures stand, were
rooms full of light, music, and dancing.
But I am wandering from the present. Yet, in the early winter twilight
of the British Museum galleries, it is easy for vagrant fancies,
unbidden, to arise. The vast dim galleries raise, indeed, ghosts and
visions of a brilliant past, and confer almost humanity on their
marble tenants, gigantic figures shining through the gloom. The Greek
gods of the heroic age,--the creatures "moulded in colossal calm,"--we
can almost imagine the minds who inspired, the workmen who wrought,
the sculptors who fashioned, the temples that contained them. The
stream of life still flows around the feet of these immortal ones, who
in their calm smiling seem to scorn the poor passions of humanity; in
their immortality, to rise above the feeble ebb and flow of human
life. As Aurora they remain ever youthful, while we poor mortals, like
Tithonus, adore their eternal youth and beauty, and ourselves grow
old. Here, in the dim vestibule, is just such a Grecian Urn as that
which Keats apostrophized, with its lovers whose undying youth and
unsatisfied longing he envied.... "Ars longa, vita brevis," indeed! We
go, but they shall endure,--to see "new men, new faces, other minds";
to have, perchance, new labels written for them by future Dryasdusts;
to be invested with fresh attributes by a newer school of ambitious
critics. Many of them have seen cities rise and fall; they have
survived ruin, siege, burial, neglect; and now at last they have come
here to the same dead level of monotony:
"Deemed they of this, those worshippers,
When, in some mythic chain of verse
Which man shall not again rehearse,
The faces of thy ministers
Yearned pale with bitter ecstasy?
"Greece, Egypt, Rome--did any god,
Before whose feet men knelt unshod,
Deem that in this unblest abode
Another scarce more unknown god
Should house with him"--
If these dead stones could feel, would they not lament their departed
glory? The heroic figure of Mausolus, who, on the pinnacle of his
temple, once drove his marble car, the cynosure of all eyes and the
wonder of the world, outlined against the blue Aegean sky and sea,
and the white-walled city; the gigantic bas-reliefs of the Parthenon,
whose very existence here is the "shibboleth" of aesthetic criticism,
that once adorned the ancient Athenian temple, brilliantly violet and
golden against the faint blue line of the bay and hills of Salamis;
the famous "Harpy Tomb," torn from its sunny Lycian height, and now
glimmering dimly through London fog, guarded by a vigilant
policeman,--what former beauties of surrounding nature do they not
suggest or recall! We forget, in gazing, the nineteenth-century prose
of Bloomsbury, the monotony of its gloomy streets; we forget that we
ourselves are "the latest seed of time," the "last word" of the human
race, dwelling, amid all the dull luxury of civilisation, in the
greatest and richest city of the world. And, leaving the gallery by
way of the vast and unique Assyrian collection of sculptures, passing
through the two colossal human-headed bulls that guard its entrance,
creatures whose excavation from the buried city of Nineveh forms one
of the most romantic of modern discoveries; passing out into the misty
sunshine and the flying doves before the pediment, we recall again
Rossetti's wonderful lines, with their final suggestion of a future
lost and rediscovered London--rediscovered under the dust and oblivion
of future ages:
"And as I turned, my sense half shut
Still saw the crowds of kerb and rut
Go past as marshalled to the strut
Of ranks in gypsum quaintly cut.
It seemed in one same pageantry
They followed forms which had been erst;
To pass, till on my sight should burst
That future of the best or worst
When some may question which was first,
Of London or of Nineveh.
"For as that Bull-god once did stand
And watched the burial clouds of sand,
Till these at last without a hand
Rose o'er his eyes, another land,
And blinded him with destiny:--
So may he stand again; till now,
In ships of unknown sail and prow,
Some tribe of the Australian plough
Bear him afar--a relic now
Of London, not of Nineveh!"