VANISHING LONDON.* THE London of the Stuarts has two great
claims on the attention of all who possess the historical temper of mind,— namely, an absorbing political interest on account of its pro- longed duel with the two Charleses, and an antiquarian interest, scarcely less fascinating, on account of the Rebellion and the Great Fire, which ushered in so remarkable a change of habits and health. Probably no city has ever passed through such a time of stress and anxiety as London did during the seven- teenth century. If we wished to take a period of a hundred years most comprehensive of all the evils which afflict man- kind, we should select that from 1588 to 1688. The coming of the Great Armada began this century of tribulation, a visitation of the Plague followed four years later, and the accessions of the first two Stuarts were signalised, especially the second, by two more dreadful visitations. Then came the peremptory demands for shipping and money. The City, sullen and suffering, gave grudgingly ; it was already preparing for the struggle. The Rebellion broke out, during which the City bled itself freely for the Parliament, to rest for a time during the Commonwealth. The Restora- tion opened with a brilliant promise for the merchants, who, however, found in their restored Sovereign a Rehoboam using scorpions instead of whips. When the Great Plague and the Great Fire had apparently reduced the City to ruin, when the roar of foreign guns added seemingly the last humiliation, .and Charles had whipped and brow-beaten the City to its knees, he added this crowning blow,—he seized the Exchequer. Sir Walter Besant says he can only suppose that the Plague and the Fire had brought the citizens to a very submissive .frame.of mind for them to stomach this insult.
The first portion of the book treats of the Sovereigns and their dealings with the City, and a truly interesting story the famous novelist has made out of it. Let no one get the impres- sion for a single moment that it is dry, for it is a bit of English history—and especially Stuart history—which explains many things. The chapters on " Religion," " Trade," and " City Usages " bring out many features of London life that must have made old London as interesting to Stuart citizens as it is to us. It certainly was a most extraordinary place, with its sanctuaries, its great political taverns and coffee-houses. The sanctuary and the tavern were perhaps the most remark- able essentials of London then, making life possible for• the decent citizen and the blackguard. One of the wonders of the later years of this century was the extraordinary recovery of London from its long years of tribulation, and the culmina- ting disasters of the Plague and the Fire. The merchant marine doubled between the Fire and the Revolution, and trade, doubtless helped by those industrious French Hugue- nots, made great strides. The comfort and wealth of the lower classes increased—artisans lacked no employment, we take it, after the Fire—and wholesomer conditions prevailed generally.
Sir Walter has much to tell us about the manners of the age. There was a vast difference between the Englishman of 1604 and the Englishman of 1688. Classes had in the mean- while amalgamated. The gentleman was a poorer if a more luxurious man, though scarcely a better one, and the mer- chant an infinitely wiser man. Sir Walter says he has no direct proof that people drank more then than now, though be is certain that they did,—and we are too. They had a good enough excuse. The interminable lists of strong waters, of various ales, and the descriptions of the vast stores of • (1) London in the Time of the stuarts. By Sir Walter Besant. London : A. and C. Black. [308.]—(2) Old Time Aidwych, Kingsway, and Neighbourhood. By Charles Gordon. London: T. Fisher Unwire. [218.]—(3) London on Thames in Bygone Days. By G. H. Birch. London: Seeley and Co. [78.]- (4) Chelsea Old Church. By Randall Davies. London: Duckworth and Co. [62s. 6d. net.]
liquor which made old London so combustible, are enough evidence for us, if we lacked that afforded by human nature. Moreover, they not only drank at, but before breakfast, and had to keep going during the day. Very interesting are the accounts of the Fire and the plans for rebuilding the City, and the last but not the least valuable item of the survey is Ogilby's fine map of the London of 1677. This is a hand- some and valuable volume, and the several chapters give, with the broad, comprehensive touch of a master hand, a wonderfully vivid impression of the great City the late Sir Walter knew so well in its modern aspect.
Alas ! even the London that Besant knew is disappearing fast. Notwithstanding the sneers at County Councils, and the satires on the dilatoriness of Trade-Union workers, every month sees some time-honoured tavern or house yet thick with famous dust crumble before the ruthless pick. But even the County Council had to deal tenderly with " Short's," where for generations the peripatetic of the Strand. has taken his quartern of port or sherry straight " from the wood." A very timely book indeed is Mr•. Gordon's Old- Time Aldwych, Ifingsway, and Neighbourhood. Not only have we always regarded Aldwych as the heart of London, but as old London itself. Nowhere else did the old tenement and the living tag, rag, and bobtail of low- class humanity hold out more firmly. Recollect that the Great Fire never reached Wych Street, stopping east of Temple Bar•. Here, cheek-by-jowl among the Inns of Court, and just outside the jealously guarded City Bar, were clustered the most motley crowd of trades and taverns. The worst characters in England were within reach of some safe haven here, with the sanctuaries of the Savoy and Milford Lane in the Strand, and those of Fulwood's Rents and Baldwin's Gardens in Holborn. Life must have been worth living to the man of spirit then. One can see the debtor, disturbed at the 'Red Lattice' while taking a friendly pot with Jack Sheppard, racing the bailiffs to the Savoy, and then' turning with his friends to drive the invaders away. The notorious Crockford was born in what was the last of the old bulkheads that stood outside Temple Bar,—to bring the old riotous days within touch of living memory. The spectator who stands in Aldwych by St. Clement's and looks along the splendid façade of the Courts of Justice is gazing across the site of Butcher's Row, and is within a stone's throw of the spot where the Gunpowder Treason was hatched. A portion of Holler's map is given, and explains this part of old London. We must all feel pleased that the Courts of Justice take up a little more of their• proper place in the eye of "the man in the street." Perhaps some day the block between Chancery Lane and the great pile will disappear. Then, indeed, we should see it to advantage.
It is unnecessary to urge the excellence of such a name as Aldwych, which simply recalls the Danish settlement of that name, and perpetuates the old name of Drury Lane, which was once known as " Via de Aldwyche." Wych Street, now a. forsaken street with its desolate façade of grimy walls and broken windows, will live a more glorious existence as the great crescent of Aldwych. Kingsway will be a thoroughfare to be proud of with its breadth of 100 ft.
We would advise all who know their London to read Mr. Gordon's volume, and study it with a large map. It treats of but a small portion of the London we know now ; but of what surpassing interest and immemorial association is that portion ; and Mr•. Gordon has outlined its history with the happiest effect from the times of Alfred the Great to those of Victoria the Good.
The charm of Mr. Birch's London on Thames in Bygone Days is derived chiefly from the beautiful prints of drawings and water-colours. To attempt to give a connected story of the riverside City means that a writer must arm himself with a long telescope packed like a kaleidoscope with prismatic inci- dents of history, coloured with fact and fancy in about equal proportions, and turn it slowly round in his hand the while he shortens the focus for each successive period. Mr. Birch may have had some such idea in his mind, for he seems somewhat uncertain as to the arrangement of his facts. It would be hard to find a more complicated picture for the historian to fill in. Probably it is beyond the reach of all but a very few literary artists ; we must seek our impressions from such
drawings as early artists have left us. Mr. Birch follows the antiquarian method,—that is to say, each house and palace and prison has a little history of its own. Now this is bewildering, especially in Tudor times, for Henry VIII. had a perfect passion for building, and had as many palaces on hand as a speculative builder has " carcases " on his hands to-day. Mr. Birch should have taken a date and elaborated a scene from his materials.
We do not see why Peter of Colechurch should not have diverted the river so as to build the piles of London Bridge, as Stow declared. Our ancestors have set us many an engineering puzzle harder to solve than that. They had a noble simplicity of method that enabled them to overcome extraordinary obstacles. The Thames had probably not the same volume of water that it has now. Mr. Birch has here and there one or two touches of description, but he has lost some opportunities. And the river must have seen superb water festivals. What would we not have given for Turner to have lived and painted the Tudor Haroun-al-Raschid rowing on the river in the long summer evenings to the sounds of zither and harp, princely Buckingham floating down to the Tower in that fatal barge with its Yeomen of the Guard crew, or the arrival of some Ambassador at Whitehall. Every day had some pageant. The value of this handy volume—it is a thin post quarto—consists in the illustrations, those from the Gardner collection being especially interesting to the river student. We praise them sufficiently when we say the repro- ductions from Bonington give his richness, and the prints after Wyck and others their true softness. Particularly pleasing is the view of the ruins of Winchester House.
Chelsea Old Church is the title of the last book on our list. This church may be fairly reckoned as in London now, and Chelsea itself, one thinks, has not had the vicissi- tudes that have befallen other suburbs. The memorials of the families who dwelt there in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries have been collected by Mr. Randall Davies into one of those fall and particular parochial Domes- day Books that are the delight of the antiquarian. Fortunately, both monuments and muniments are in good preservation, so that we can follow the life and fortunes of these seventeenth- century ladies and gentlemen with some success. Sir Thomas More heads the list; then follow Cheyne, Danvers, Gorges, Law- rence, Gervoise, Palmer, Verney, and many other names. There were some fine houses in the seventeenth century : the Old Manor House, Gorges House, Danvers House, Lindsey House, the Manor House of the Lawrences, and one or two others. Pepys tells us how these people lived, and Aubrey what their houses were like. Reading Aubrey's description of Sir John Danvers's garden, "long gravelled walks margented with hyssop and several sorts of thyme," we can almost see Sir John brushing his beaver on the thyme and hyssop to carry away some of the perfume. There is an interesting account in the " Little Chelsea" chapter of the engagement and marriage pre- liminaries of one of the Verneys with an Elizabeth Palmer which gives us a fair notion of these arrangements, and an almost familiar picture of social life in the years after the Restoration. But this by no means exhausts the interest of the book. The old church is singularly fortunate in its fine Elizabethan and Stuart monuments. One sees the best of the memorial art of the period in the Dacre tomb and the later Cheyne and Stanley tombs. Nor are they less fortunate in epitaphs. Mr. Davies has done his subject justice without producing an inconveniently heavy book, and has apparently forgotten nothing. It is a book which will give pleasure to all who live in or care for Chelsea.
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