The Catholic World
Chapter 121 : LONDON.A Dublin saunterer of antiquarian propensities pacing the flags in front of Chr

LONDON.

A Dublin saunterer of antiquarian propensities pacing the flags in front of Christ church, or elbowing his troublesome way down the narrow defile called Castle street, can scarcely escape a certain sense of awe as he looks on the houses and the pa.s.sengers, and darts a thought back through dim and troubled time till he strives to arrive at an idea of' the first inhabitants and the scene in which they played out their short parts.

Pa.s.sing over the mysterious and weak race that preceded the Gaels, he fancies these last in their quaint garb going about their ordinary occupations, or rus.h.i.+ng to their earth mounds and d.y.k.es to repel the fierce Northmen. Then pa.s.s before his mind's eye the successive races of different speech, and different garb, and different interests--the Danes, Dano-Celts, and the Anglo Normans, employed in fierce struggles with each other, and each looking on the events of his own times as paramount to all that ever agitated society till then. All now quiet and silent in the dust. The shopkeeper attending to his customers, the tippler stepping into the corner shop for a dram, and the carman smoking his pipe, and giving his beast a mouthful of hay, are as unconscious of any personal connection with the dead generations as if they had sprung full grown and furnished with clothing from the fat glebe of the neighboring Phoenix Park.

So would feel still more intensely an archaeologist on Tower Hill, or by the Fleet Ditch, or on London Bridge, if the ever hurrying and feverish crowd would allow him to concentrate his thoughts on anything.

How it should make the feelings of the most dried up anatomy of an archaeologist glow, when, throwing his thoughts nearly nineteen centuries back, he sees the mighty robber conducting his band, guarded by strong defences of bronze, and leather, and wood, to the bank of the then clear river, and preparing to invest and destroy that ill-armed but heroic body of brave men on the other side, who, in defence of their weak children, and loving and high-souled wives and daughters, will soon send many an armed and ruthless Roman soldier to s.h.i.+ver on the cold banks of Styx.

And what was the profit of all the plotting, and all the unjust warfare, waged by men single or in ma.s.ses against those they considered their foemen? They shortened the career of their opponents, they shortened their own lives. They preferred a short and turbulent existence to the longer and quieter span intended for them, they pa.s.sed away, and were either speedily forgotten, or remembered but to be cursed.

It is a bewildering occupation to a stranger to contemplate a map of London in order to acquire some distinct notion of the number and arrangement of the streets (an idea of the inhabitants is out of the question), to ponder how the countless mult.i.tude can be fed and clothed, and to reflect that if old mother earth should lose her fruit-bearing qualities for one year, how little would avail the beauty, the bravery, the wit, the ingenuity, the industry, and the intelligence of the three million inhabitants, to prevent the circuit of famed London from becoming a vast charnel-house.

Our earliest historians were the poets, these were succeeded by the romancers. Geoffry of Monmouth, translating the "Chronicle of Kings"

brought from Brittany, informed the {837} people of the twelfth century that Brutus, great-grandson of Eneas, after many voyages and adventures, founded a town about where the Tower has long stood, and called it New Troy. This was afterward changed to Trin.o.bantum. Lud, brother to Ca.s.sibelan, again gave it his own name--_Caer Lud_. Hence Ludstown softened to London. Other derivations for the city's name are not at all rare. From the Celtic words _Leana_, marsh or meadow; _Linn_, a pool; _Lung_, or _Long_, a s.h.i.+p; and _Dunn_, a fort, it is easy to make out the fort among the meadows, the fort of the pool, or the fort of the s.h.i.+ps. The sister city, Dublin, is simply black pool.

As ancient Dublin occupied at first only the hill of which the castle occupies the south-eastern spur, so Tower Hill, Ludgate Hill, Cornhill, and Holborn Hill, formed the site of the original British Dun or Duns. Hence the most interesting portion of London to an antiquary must include those places of strength. But as the more easterly eminences have much longer ceased to be fas.h.i.+onable than our Fishamble and Ess.e.x streets, and the traditions of London literary characters from the time of Elizabeth date from regions further west, most writers choose to expatiate on the buildings that lie between Whitehall and Temple Bar, and on the remarkable personages and incidents connected with them. Charles Knight was unable to say his say concerning the modern Babylon in fewer than six royal octavo volumes, and the portly octavo lately put forth by Mr. Thornbury is concerned with a very small area of the city, Temple Bar being at its south-east angle, and the Strand, St. Martin's lane, Holborn, and Chancery lane its boundaries.

THE STRAND.

Temple Bar, that narrow neck through which the struggling sands find their way with difficulty from the Strand and the Fleet portions of the great hour-gla.s.s, and which is looked on by shallow readers as a relic of h.o.a.r antiquity, dates only from 1670, four years after the great fire. It forms the point of junction between the cities of London and Westminster, and in early times was only provided with posts, rails, and a chain. These were succeeded by a wooden house with a narrow gate-way and a pa.s.sage on one side. The present structure is inc.u.mbered with the statues of Elizabeth, James I., Charles I., and Charles II., all distinguished, according to Mr. Thornbury, by feeble heads, crimped drapery, and feet and hands kept whitish by the rain, the non-projecting portions of the bodies rejoicing in more than a century of dark atmospheric deposits.

Mr. Thornbury's selection includes the long line of palaces that once adorned the Strand or River-bank street, the haunts of artists in St.

Martin's lane, the traditions of Long Acre, the reminiscences connected with Drury lane, and the old houses of the n.o.bility in Lincoln's-Inn Fields.

One of the most remarkable of the fine buildings of the Strand is that which bears the name of the ambitious brother of Jane Seymour, the Duke of Somerset, who boasted that he could muster retainers to the number of 10,000. To erect his palace, which, by the way, was unfinished at his death, he demolished the parish church of St. Mary, and pulled down the houses of the bishops of Worcester, Llandaff, and Lichfield. He would also have appropriated St. Margaret's at Westminster, but the mob would not sanction the sacrilege. "Moreover, he destroyed a chapel in St. Paul's Church-yard, with a cloister containing the Dance of Death, and a charnel-house (burying the bones in unconsecrated ground)." To crown his acts of rapine he stole the stone of a church of St. John near Smithfield. It is not worth mentioning the carrying away of the stone of the Strand Inn, it being the property of the lawyers, who could afford to be robbed.

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The Danish consort of our Solomon I. here delighted all who had no objection to spectacles, in which the handsome queen and her ladies masqueraded to their own and their admirers' content. Rare Ben Jonson was surely elated by the lists of royal and n.o.ble personages who presented his masques. From this same n.o.ble residence Charles I. had some trouble in dislodging the Gallic followers of his st.u.r.dy queen, with whom his hard-headed and wooden-shoe-abhorring subjects had come to be at deadly feud. As they were rather too tedious in "s.h.i.+fting the halter, and traversing the cart," the poor king was obliged to write thus to Buckingham:

"STEENIE,--I have received your letter by d.i.c.k Greame. This is my answer. I command you to send all the French away to-morrow out of the town, if you can by fair means (but stick not long in disputing), otherwise force them away, driving them away like so many wild beasts until you have s.h.i.+pped them, and the--go with them!

Let me hear no answer but of the performance of my command. So I rest, "Your faithful, constant, loving friend, C. R.

"Oaking, the seventh of August, 1626."

"The French inventing all sorts of vexatious delays, the yeomen of the guard at last jostled them out, carting them off in nearly forty coaches. They arrived at Dover after four days' tedious travelling, wrangling and bewailing."

Queen Henrietta taking part in a masque at Christmas in 1632-3, and Prynne's _Histriomastix_ happening to be published the next day, the poor man lost his ears for an uncomplimentary remark on women-actors, which was found in the margin, though it could not possibly have been written with any reference to the queen's appearance on that occasion.

To Somerset House returned Henrietta Maria after the restoration, and there the garrulous Pepys paid his respects to her as well as to Madame Castlemaine. "By-and-by, in came the king and Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of York. The conversation was not a very decorous one, and the young queen (Catherine of Braganza) said to Charles, 'you lie,' which made good sport, as the chuckling and delighted Pepys remarks, those being the first English words he had heard her say; and the king then tried to make her reply, 'confess and be hanged.'"

The most striking object in the old days of the Strand was the new Maypole which replaced the old one taken down by Oliver's Parliament.

It was of cedar wood, 134 feet high, and stood in front of the church of St. Mary. It was brought in two pieces from below Bridge, the splicing made secure by iron bands, three crowns fastened toward its top, and then the tall article was raised by twelve sailors to a vertical position, and firmly imbedded. The operation was happily accomplished under the superintendence of the Duke of York in four hours. Then sounded trumpets and drums; and morris-dancers in motley attire, and enlivened by the music of pipe and tabor, danced in glee around it, while thousands of throats became hoa.r.s.e with loyal shouting. James would have found little enjoyment in the general glee, if he could at the moment have had a prophetic glimpse of his wife, with her infant son folded to her breast, pacing along the river bank in doubt and fear, and watching for the friendly boat that was to convey her from the unfriendly city.

When the pole that succeeded this was obliged to abdicate, it was presented to Sir Isaac Newton, who again presented it to the rector of Wanstead, and in Wanstead park it helped to support the largest telescope then known.

From this memorable if unedifying goal, Pope started the racers in the Dunciad:

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"Amidst the area wide they took their stand, Where the tall maypole once o'erlooked the Strand; But now, as Anne and piety ordain, A church collects the saints of Drury lane."

In the old palace of the Savoy once lived John of Gaunt; John, King of France, the Black Prince's captive, died there; George Wither, the poet, is buried there; and there also was Geoffry Chaucer married.

Simon, earl of Montfort, once lived within its precincts; but where kings, archbishops, and high n.o.bles once walked and held high council, pickles are now sold, printing types set up, and gla.s.s rolled out and spun.

Wat Tyler's mob being forbidden to plunder, and supposing a couple of barrels to contain money, flung them into a great fire. The money, alas, was gunpowder, as in the Dunleary ballad, and blew up the great hall, shook down the neighboring houses, killed sundry of the social reformers, and reduced the palace to ruins.

Henry VII. inst.i.tuted within its precincts a house of refuge for every indigent person pa.s.sing down the River-side-road, and by a natural process of abuse the poor wayfarers derived little advantages from it.

Loiterers, sham cripples, and vagabonds of both s.e.xes begged abroad all day, and came in the evening to the Savoy to sup and sleep. Edward VI. transferred a good portion of its revenue to Bridewell Prison and Christ's Hospital. Mary replaced the charity on its old footing, much to the enjoyment of inveterate beggars; but Elizabeth in her turn disagreeably surprised the lazy inmates and the corrupt governor, and they had to look out for victims in other quarters.

The building had not lost its privilege of sheltering imposture and knavery in the last century, having served as an asylum for fraudulent debtors in Queen Anne's time; it became the darling haunt of such chaplains as Mr. Lever's Reverend Paul; and in 1754 we find in the _Public Advertiser_ this precious doc.u.ment put forth by them:

"BY AUTHORITY.--Marriages performed with the utmost privacy, secrecy, and regularity, at the ancient royal chapel of St. John the Baptist in the Savoy, where regular and authentic registers have been kept from the time of the reformation (being two hundred years and upward) to this day, the expense not being more than one guinea, the five-s.h.i.+lling stamp included. There are five private ways to this chapel by land, and two by water."

Wither, the Cromwellian poet, who had a hard time of it after the restoration, lies in the Savoy. Denman, pet.i.tioning for his life, used this ingenious device: "As long as Wither lives, I shall not be considered the worst poet in England."

It is not easy to a pa.s.senger sauntering or hurrying down the Strand at this day, admiring the facade of Somerset House, glancing into the windows of rich shops, elbowing his way through an eager and bustling crowd, and having his ears stunned by the thundering rumble of cabs, busses, and wagons, to fancy it once a sandy and marshy road, and the footpath very disagreeable to the feet, and interfered with by bushes and thickets. Three water-courses from the northern fields found their way across it to the river, and these were spanned by three bridges.

The building of Westminster Abbey encouraged the erection of the first houses along the River-side-way, but the bad state of the road made a subject for a pet.i.tion so late as the reign of Edward II.

PUBLIs.h.i.+NG IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

Of the coffee-houses in the neighborhood of the Strand and Fleet street frequented by the witty and the learned from the restoration to the close of last century, we shall gladly speak if our limits permit.

Meanwhile, being on a literary subject, we must not omit to mention that the father of {840} Mudie's and all other circulating libraries in London, was established at 132 Strand, in 1740, by a bookseller named Bathoe.

Had there been such establishments in Pepys' time, they would have saved him some money and some trouble. Witness his disappointment about "Hudibras:"

"26th of September, 1662. To the Wardrobe. Hither come Mr.

Battersby, and we falling into discourse of a new book of drollery in use, called 'Hudibras,' I would needs go find it out, and met with it at the Temple; cost me 2_s_. 6_d_. But when I come to read it, it is so silly an abuse of the presbyter-knight going to the wars, that I am ashamed at it, and meeting at Mr. Townsend's at dinner, I sold it him for 18_d_." (The new book of drollery continuing to be the rage), "February 6th, 1663. To a bookseller's in the Strand, and there bought 'Hudibras' again. I am resolved once more to read him, and see whether I can find him an example of wit or no." (Success very doubtful.) "28th November. To Paul's Church-yard, and there looked upon the second part of 'Hudibras,'

which I buy not, but borrow to read." (He bought it a few days after, however.) "The world hath mightily cried up this book, though it hath not a good liking in me, though I had tried but (by?) two or three times reading to bring myself to think it witty."

We find him a few days after these researches purchasing "Fuller's Worthies," the "Cabbala, or Collection of Letters of State," "Les Delices de Holland," and "Hudibras" again, "now in great fas.h.i.+on for drollery, though I cannot, I confess, see enough where the wit lies."

Pepys' great acquaintances seem to have discovered this sore spot in his mental configuration, and to have angered it oftentimes by quoting "Hudibras" at him, and chuckling over the fun, which, alas, was the reverse of fun to him.

It was long after the introduction of printing into the country that bookseller's shops became an inst.i.tution. At and before the time of the great fire, St. Paul's Church-yard was the chief bookselling mart.

On the 31st November, 1660, Pepys bought a copy of the play of Henry IV. in that place, "and so went to the new theatre, and saw it acted, but my expectation being too great, it did not please me as otherwise I believe it would, and my having a book did, I believe, spoil it a little."

Poor Pepys! A leaf out of the scandalous chronicle of the court would have interested him more than all the wit and wisdom of Shakespeare.

He tells us in his diary how his wife and he laughed a whole evening over a pamphlet written about the queen.

The fire destroyed thousands of fine works in the Church-yard; and so much was the value of books increased, that Ricaut's "Turkey," 8_s_.