VThe Eighteenth CenturyTHE LONDON OF THE GEORGES AND OF DR. JOHNSON
“To-day we’re going to see London as it was after the Fire!” exclaimed Betty, when she had recovered as usual from her first astonishment and delight at “remembering everything” the moment she saw Godmother. “How are we going to get back this time?”
“Well, there’s a good deal we can see without ‘going back’ at all,” Godmother replied. “Because all that surrounds us every dayisLondon after the Fire. Many buildings exist now, just as they were put up when the city began to rise from its ashes in the latter part of Charles the Second’s reign.”
“Isn’t there to be any ‘magic’ at all to-day, then?” Betty’s voice was full of disappointment.
“Not just yet, at any rate. We are not going back quite so far into the Past this time. Only, in fact, about a hundred and fifty years—to the middle of the eighteenth century.”
“But London must have changed even in that time?”
“It has—enormously. Yet at the same time much remains the same, and I propose to show you first what is left in our own day of the end of the seventeenth and the whole of the eighteenth centuries. It will only be necessary to employ magic in the case of certain places that have altogether vanished from the London of our own time. But before we go any furtherwith or without magic, we must have our usual little history examination. So sit down and collect your thoughts.”
Betty obeyed with a good grace, for she knew she would find all she was about to see, ten times more interesting for not being “in a muddle” about her history.
“When we left London last time,” Godmother began, “Charles the Second was reigning. Who was the next king?”
“James the Second, his brother,” Betty said, after a moment’s thought.
“And then?”
“William and Mary.”
“Why didn’t the son of James the Second come to the throne?”
“Because there was a revolution, and the people chose James the Second’s son-in-law to be king, and he was William of Orange, who was married to James’s daughter, Mary.”
“Very good!” exclaimed Godmother approvingly. “Queen Anne, you remember, Mary’s sister, was the next sovereign. And after her?”
“Let me see. She had no children, so a relation of hers, a German man, was chosen. He was George the First. Then came George the Second, and then——”
“That will do,” Godmother interrupted. “The reign of George the Second brings us to the London we’re going to see to-day,partly, but notaltogetherby magic. Some of it at least we can see in the course of a walk or drive, for it still exists. Now we’ll have the car and go as usual to London Bridge for a general view of the city that has risen up since the Fire and has been growing bigger and bigger for two hundred and fifty years.”
Half an hour later they were passing the Monument at the entrance to the Bridge, and this time Betty looked up at it with greater interest than ever.
“That marks the place where the Fire began,” she murmured. “How soon afterwards was it built, Godmother?”
“About eight years afterwards. Sir Christopher Wren designed it. He, as I hope you remember, was the great architect who practically rebuilt London. At least so far as greatpublic buildings are concerned. We’ll get out now, and walk to the middle of the bridge.”
“The last time I saw it ‘magically’ the funny pretty houses on it were burning!” Betty said. “I do wish this was the very same bridge,” she added with a sigh.
“Well, at least it’s almost, though not quite in the sameplaceas the one you stood on with Chaucer, and that’s something, isn’t it? But now look right and left, and remembering the London you saw burning, tell me what changes you notice in thekindof buildings you see now. There’s the new St. Paul’s, for instance, and you remember the old one?”
“It’s quite a different sort of church now,” Betty said. “Old St. Paul’s had a spire and pointed roofs and arches instead of that big dome with the ball and cross on the top. All the churches now are different,” she went on, looking from one white steeple to another rising above the houses.
“Yes. You see, don’t you?—that thearchitectureof London,—that is, the way a building is made—has changed completely. Before the Fire, the churches and most of the other important buildings, were in a style we call Gothic. They had pointed arches, like Westminster Abbey, and if you keep the appearance of the Abbey in mind, you will have a good idea of what Gothic architecture means. See how very different is this new St. Paul’s! It has a dome. In front of it runs a line of pillars supporting a sort of stone triangle. Look at the gallery of columns upon which the dome rests. It is all as different as it can be, from the architecture of the Abbey. Now for the sort of architecture of which the new St. Paul’s is an example, the architects took the ancient Greek temples for their models. Nearly all the architects who lived later than Elizabeth’s time, built in this way, and Christopher Wren and Inigo Jones (who designed the Whitehall Banqueting House, you remember) were two of the men of the seventeenth century who planned their buildings on Grecian models. Now as Wren designed most of the important buildings, we may expect to find London architecture after the Fire, for the most part in this new style. It is called theclassicalstyle, and the new St. Paul’s is a good example of it.”
“But all the crowded houses and quays and bridges that we see now weren’t here till much later even, than George the Second’s time, were they?”
“Indeed no, though of course London had grown bigger in the eighteenth century than it was even after the time of the Fire. When we make use of the ‘magic’ presently we’ll just take a glimpse of the City from London Bridge in the eighteenth century. I’ve only brought you here now to get a general view of the new sort of churches.”
“Where are we going now?” Betty asked as they re-entered the car.
“I’m going to take you to see one at least of the four Inns of Court.”
“Inns of Court? What are they?”
“Well, they were founded to be colleges for the study of law, and lawyers still live in them and dine in their halls, and law students have to pass examinations set by the men who govern the Inns. They are all rather close together, round about Fleet Street, which as you know is a continuation of the Strand.”
“This is Fleet Street, isn’t it?” Betty said. “Yes! There’s the monument with the Griffin on it in the middle of the road, outside the Law Courts.”
“And here is the entrance to the Middle Temple, quite close to that monument,” Godmother replied, stopping the car. “The Middle Temple is the name of one of the Inns. The others are the Inner Temple, Lincoln’s Inn and Gray’s Inn. They are all interesting and beautiful, but we shall only have time to look at the two ‘Temples’—Middle and Inner—which are side by side.”
“Oh! what a nice entrance!” Betty said as they passed under an old brick gate and house.
“Yes. That was designed by Christopher Wren just after the Fire.”
“Why is this place called the Temple?” Betty asked, and almost in the same breath, “Oh, Godmother, how pretty it is! Isn’t it wonderful to turn out of the noisy street into this quiet place?”
“That’s one of the surprises of London town,” Godmother said. “It’s full of charming leafy places like this—if you know where to look for them.”
Betty was gazing at the straight-fronted houses enclosing numberless quiet courts,—houses whose bricks were now dark red with age, and from them she looked past a row of big, beautiful trees to where green lawns sloped down to the Embankment with the shining river beyond. She saw that the courts and corridors and gardens, covered a great space between Fleet Street on one hand and the river on the other.
“Let us sit down here under the trees in King’s Bench Walk,” Godmother said, “and I’ll tell you a little about this place. You asked me just now why it was called the Temple. Did you notice the church we’ve just passed—a curiousround-shaped church? Well, that was built more than seven hundred years ago, when Henry the Second was king, and knights from every civilized country were going to Palestine to fight in the Crusades. Some of these knights formed themselves into a society called the Templars, because they had sworn to defend the Temple of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. Well, when the English knights belonging to this great Society, orOrderas it was called, came home, they built that church and made it round in shape, in imitation of the Round Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Once upon a time these Knights Templars owned all this ground upon which the lawns and houses before us now stand.”
“But I thought you said this was a place forlawyers?” Betty began.
“So I did, and so it is now, and so it has been ever since the reign of Edward the Third. By that time, the Knights Templars were no longer the good sincere men who had formed the Society a hundred years or so before. They had become rich and proud and greedy of power, and the society was at last brought to an end. The property belonging to it went to the King, and in Edward the Third’s reign, was given to certain lawyers, and has ever since belonged to the profession of the law. But it keeps its old name of the Temple, and so recalls the time when it belonged to the great religious society of the Knights Templars.”
“But none oftheirhouses or buildings are left here now?” Betty said.
“Nothing except the round church which they built seven hundred years ago.”
“And even the houses here now, aren’t so old as the time when the Temple first came to the lawyers, are they? They are quite different from the houses of Dick Whittington’s time, or even Elizabeth’s reign, for instance.”
“Yes. That’s because all thesesmallhouses were builtafter the Fire, which destroyed most of the Temple. Fortunately it didn’t burn the church (the oldest part of it all), nor Middle Temple Hall, which was built in Elizabeth’s reign. We’ll go and look at that Hall now, because besides being beautiful, it’s full of interesting memories.”
They crossed various quiet courtyards till they came in sight of a Hall built of dark red brick and surrounded by the delicate green of trees, with lawns stretching in front of it towards the river.
“That great room,” said Godmother, “has seen some wonderful sights, especially at Christmas time, when feasting and revelry went on within it. You remember the ‘masques’ of Queen Elizabeth’s day? Well, Middle Temple Hall was a favourite place for them, and the Queen herself sometimes came to see them there. You will understand in a moment what a splendid place it was for entertainments.”
And indeed when Betty stood under the oak rafters of the great room, with its stained-glass windows and its wide floor, she could imagine it filled with laughing, dancing people of Elizabethan days, or as it looked when on a platform at one end of it, decked with holly and garlands of ivy, the players acted a masque before the standing crowd that filled the rest of the hall.
“In this very place,” Godmother said, “Twelfth Nightwas once acted, and it is thought that Shakespeare himself took part in the performance of his own play. I hope the people who dine in it now sometimes think of the folk who feasted and made merry here hundreds of years ago.”
“Is it still the dining-room for the law people, then?”
“Yes, the governors of the Inn, the benchers as they are called, and the students dine here, and by an old custom no student can become a barrister unless he or she has dined a certain fixed number of times in this Hall.”
“She?” echoed Betty.
“Yes, don’t you know that women have lately been allowed to study for the law?” Godmother laughed. “If any of all the famous lawyers now dead, could come back to this place, perhaps of all the changes the one that might most astonishthem would be to find girls and women dining—‘keeping commons’ as it is called—in this Hall which for hundreds and hundreds of years has been sacred to men alone.”
“Shakespearewouldn’t be so very surprised, perhaps?” suggested Betty. “He wasn’t a lawyer, of course. But he would remember writing about Portia.”
Godmother laughed again. “Quite right, Betty. I’m sure he would. And now that you mention Shakespeare, do you remember anything about the Temple in his plays?”
Betty shook her head.
“These are the gardens of Middle Temple,” said Godmother, pointing to the lawns in front of the Hall (on one of which some young men were playing tennis). “It was the same garden that Shakespeare, who knew it well, chose for a famous scene in his play ofHenry the Sixthwhen the party of Lancaster chose the red rose and the party of York the white one for a badge.”
“And then the Wars of the Roses began!” said Betty. “What does Shakespeare say about it?”
“The scene goes like this. The gentlemen who take different sides in the quarrel between the House of York and Lancaster are just coming out of that very building,” Godmother began, pointing to the Hall, “and one of them says:
‘Within the Temple Hall we were too loud:The garden here is more convenient.’”
‘Within the Temple Hall we were too loud:The garden here is more convenient.’”
‘Within the Temple Hall we were too loud:The garden here is more convenient.’”
‘Within the Temple Hall we were too loud:
The garden here is more convenient.’”
“Thisverygarden,” interrupted Betty. “Only I expect it was wilder and had lots of flowers in it then?”
“Evidently there were many rose bushes, for one noble, who is on the side of the Yorkists, says:
‘Let him that is a true born gentlemanAnd stands upon the honour of his birthIf he suppose that I have pleaded truthFrom off this briar pluck a white rose with me.’
‘Let him that is a true born gentlemanAnd stands upon the honour of his birthIf he suppose that I have pleaded truthFrom off this briar pluck a white rose with me.’
‘Let him that is a true born gentlemanAnd stands upon the honour of his birthIf he suppose that I have pleaded truthFrom off this briar pluck a white rose with me.’
‘Let him that is a true born gentleman
And stands upon the honour of his birth
If he suppose that I have pleaded truth
From off this briar pluck a white rose with me.’
Then Somerset, on the side of the Lancastrians, takes up the challenge:
‘Let him that is no coward nor no flattererBut dare maintain the party of the truthPluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.’
‘Let him that is no coward nor no flattererBut dare maintain the party of the truthPluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.’
‘Let him that is no coward nor no flattererBut dare maintain the party of the truthPluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.’
‘Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer
But dare maintain the party of the truth
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.’
So the white and red roses are picked and stuck into the doublets as the sides are taken, and another noble, wise enough to see into the future, says that this quarrel in the Temple Gardens ‘shall send between the red rose and the white, A thousand souls to death and deadly night.’ And so it did, in the dreadful long War of the Roses, as you remember.”
“But, Godmother,” began Betty after a moment, “I thought we were going to be in the eighteenth century to-day, and so far we’ve been talking about much earlier times!”
“So we have! And that’s the worst, or best, of London. When a place like this Temple, is very old, the history of a great many ‘times’ belongs to it. But you’re quite right to remind me that I brought you here because, except for the church, and the Hall, and one or two other buildings, thelookof the place as it is now, is much more seventeenth and eighteenth century than anything else, and is ‘mixed up’ as you so often say, with the lives of many interesting eighteenth-century writers, who lived in one or other of the houses enclosing these charming courts. You’ll know, or yououghtto know, two of them, if I mention their names. Dr. Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith.”
“I’ve readThe Vicar of Wakefieldthat Goldsmith wrote,” said Betty, “and I’ve heard of Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary—but I don’t know much about him.”
“Yet he’s the man who will help us with our magic journey presently,” Godmother returned. “For the time you may remember that Oliver Goldsmith was one of his friends.”
“Why, there’s his name!” Betty exclaimed as she caught sight of a medallion on the wall of a house in an enclosure called Brick Court.
“That’s where he lived and died, and the tablet is there to commemorate him. He was buried in the churchyard of the Temple Church. Come! I will show you his tombstone. You will, I expect, read Goldsmith’s life when you are older, and find out what a lovable man he was, in spite of many tiresome ways,” she went on as they stood looking down at his grave.
“Perhaps we shall see him when the magic begins?” Betty suggested. “I should love to see him. The Sixth Form acted a scene out ofShe Stoops to Conquerlast term. That’s one of his plays, isn’t it?”
“Yes, and a very charming one. No doubt, as you say, we shall actually see him later on, but we can look at a very amusing picture of him even before the magic begins, in a house I’m going to take you to visit now at once.”
“What house? Who lives there?” asked Betty, turningto take a last glance at the quiet dignified old houses of the Temple before they left it for the noise and bustle of Fleet Street.
“No one now. But a hundred and seventy years ago Dr. Johnson lived there with his wife. It isn’t far from here, so we’ll walk.”
By this time they were standing under the archway at which they had entered the Temple.
“That’s the Law Courts, isn’t it?” Betty asked, pointing to a pile of buildings opposite. “Butthey’renot old, are they?”
“No. They were built about forty years ago. But near them, are the two other beautiful old Inns I mentioned, Lincoln’s Inn and Gray’s Inn, both of which you must see some day. This part of London is full of buildings connected with the law.
“Now let us walk a little way up Fleet Street, and as we go, notice what a number of narrow alleys or passages there are on the left. All of them are interesting, but we shall only have time for the special one we are going to see.”
“Crane Court, Bolt Court, Johnson’s Court—we’re getting near him, aren’t we?” Betty said as she read the names aloud.
“Fleet Street is full of memories of Dr. Johnson. He had many dwelling places, but however often he moved, he never went far from Fleet Street.”
Godmother now led the way up a narrow alley called Bolt Court, and in a moment they came to a little enclosure in which one or two of the houses were of the kind Betty had seen in the Temple, old, square, and built of dark red bricks, while others were quite modern business places.
“This isGough Square, and here is Dr. Johnson’s house,” Godmother said, stopping opposite one of the old houses with the tiniest little garden in front of it. “For years it was used as an office for printers, and it would have been pulled down by now if a gentleman called Mr. Cecil Harmsworth had not bought it and given it to the nation to be kept for ever in memory of Dr. Johnson. Now we’ll ring the bell and go in, and you shall see what the inside of an eighteenth-century house was like. For this one has been arranged as nearly as possible as it was in Dr. Johnson’s time.”
Betty was delighted with the panelled rooms, with the quaint deep cupboards in the walls, one of which, as the interesting housekeeper who showed the place told her, was a powder closet, where the gentlemen’s wigs and the ladies’ hair were powdered before they went to parties or “routs,” and “assemblies,” as in eighteenth-century days, parties were called. Upstairs there was a big attic stretching the length of the house, and here it was that Dr. Johnson worked at his great and famous Dictionary. But every room was full of memories of him in the shape of letters or books arranged in glass cases, or in pictures on the walls.
“Here is the picture I told you about, showing Dr. Johnson and his friend Goldsmith together,” said Godmother, pointing to one of them. “It’s very interesting because the scene it represents, took place over there in Wine Office Court,”—she pointed out of the window to an opposite street,—“where at one time Goldsmith lived.”
“What are they doing?” asked Betty, looking at the painting. “That’s Goldsmith in the funny night-cap, I suppose?”
The caretaker, who seemed to know everything that was to be known about the house and its belongings, began to tell her the following story of the picture.
“Though he was the kindest-hearted man in the world, Oliver Goldsmith was so careless and happy-go-lucky that he was always in debt, and one morning before he was dressed, he sent over a messenger to this house in which you are standing, to borrow a guinea from his neighbour, Dr. Johnson. Dr. Johnson crossed this little Square which you see from the window, and went to his friend’s lodgings opposite, to find out what was the matter. The picture shows you why Goldsmith wanted the money. There is his angry landlady waiting to be paid, and there is Goldsmith in his night-cap and dressing-gown with Dr. Johnson sitting opposite to him, looking over some sheets of writing.”
“Why is he doing that?” Betty asked.
“Well, he knows that his friend is penniless, and even though he now has the money to pay his landlady, he must have some more to go on with. So he has asked him if he has written anything that might possibly be sold. Goldsmith, you see, hasbeen rummaging in that box into which he has thrown stories he has written from time to time, and the manuscript he has just handed to Dr. Johnson is no other thanThe Vicar of Wakefield!
“That’s the story so far as the picture tells it. But we know what happens next. Dr. Johnson puts the manuscript into one of those big pockets of his, goes out, and in a short time returns with sixty pounds—the price he has received for the book by which Oliver Goldsmith is best known—the famousVicar of Wakefield.”
“And perhaps if Dr. Johnson hadn’t taken it, it would never have been published at all?” Betty suggested.
“Very likely,” agreed Godmother. “Well, now that you’ve seen Dr. Johnson’s house, we’ll go and look at the inn in which he and Goldsmith often sat.”
They crossed the little Square, and found themselves almost at once in Wine Office Court.
“Unluckily Goldsmith’s house has gone, but here is theCheshire Cheese, one of the oldest inns in London, for it was old, when Johnson and Goldsmith used to come here.”
They stepped then into the quaintest of taverns! It was dark, with low ceilings and sanded floors, and when they had looked at everything and seen the chair pointed out as Dr. Johnson’s, Betty could scarcely believe they were in modern London.
“I understand now why we don’t need ‘the magic’ to see a good deal of London as it was in the eighteenth century!” she remarked. “There’s quite a lot of it left.”
“Much more than most people know about, because only a few take the trouble to discover it hidden away behind modern buildings,” Godmother returned.
“Is there any other place left in Fleet Street that Johnson used to go to?” Betty asked. “You said he was always walking about here.”
“I’m afraid most of the other houses with memories of him have been pulled down, but before we leave Fleet Street let us go into the church where Sunday after Sunday he worshipped. You know St. Clement Danes? Here it is, standing in the middle of the road near to the Temple—one of the seventeenth-century churches built after the Fire.”
They entered, and Betty followed her Godmother up into the gallery where a tablet on a certain pew near the pulpit, marked Dr. Johnson’s seat.
“It’s interesting to know just where he sat,” Betty said, as they left the church. “Is the next place we’re going to, hidden away like Gough Square, Godmother?”
“Far from it. I’m going to take you now to the Adelphi, to which business people who have offices there, go every day.”
“The Adelphi? That’s a turning out of the Strand, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Have you ever asked what the name means?”
Betty shook her head.
“Does it sound to you like an English name?”
“Adelphi,” Betty repeated. “No, it doesn’t. What language is it?”
“Greek. It’s the Greek word forbrothers.”
By this time the car had turned up a street near Charing Cross Station, and was moving slowly past lines of houses which Betty recognized as belonging to the eighteenth century.
“Look at the name of that street,” said Godmother, pointing to it.
“Durham House Street,” Betty read.
“Well now, remember the Strand as we saw it by magic about the time of Elizabeth, when stately houses surrounded by gardens, stood facing the river. Just here, where we are driving through these streets of eighteenth-century houses, stood Durham House, where Lady Jane Grey was born. We saw it, if you remember, when we were in Queen Elizabeth’s reign. That accounts for the nameDurham House Streetwhich you’ve just seen. But it doesn’t account for names like Adam Street, and James Street, does it?” As she spoke, Godmother was pointing to them as they appeared written up on the walls of corner houses. “I’ll explain about that in a minute, when you’ve looked at this beautiful place we’re coming to, called Adelphi Terrace.”
They had turned into a broad road, open on one side to the river, and lined on the other side by a row of stately houses with delicately ornamented flat pillars, against the walls.
“TheAdelphi, as you see,” she went on, “is really a whole district laid out in streets of eighteenth-century houses, built over the ground where Durham House once stood. About a hundred and fifty years ago, when Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith were living, there was a Scotch family of four brothers in London. Their names were John, James, Robert and William Adam. They were all architects, and also designers of a beautiful kind of furniture which has ever since been calledAdamfurniture, andis now very valuable. These brothers built this little part of London which was not only called the Adelphi—that is ‘the Brothers’—in honour of them, but each brother gave his Christian name to a street, while yet another street bears the surname of the family. So we have Adam, James, John and Robert Streets. There used to be a William’s Street, but that has been changed to Durham House Street within the last few years.”
“Poor William!” said Betty. “He’s gone out of the family! Still, the new namedoesremind us of Durham House and Lady Jane Grey, doesn’t it? Oh!twoof the brothers, Robert and James, lived here, Godmother!” she went on, pointing to a tablet on one of the houses in the terrace. “And here’s another tablet next door. It says that David Garrick lived in this house. Who was David Garrick?”
“A famous actor of the eighteenth century and one of Dr. Johnson’s friends. He acted at Drury Lane Theatre where, eighty years or so before his time, Pepys, you remember, used to go to see the pretty actress, Nell Gwynne. But you will read about these eighteenth-century people when you are older, and perhaps feel as I do, that you know them all very well. Take a last look at this Adelphi, because it’s a good example of the sort of architecture that belongs to the time of George the Second and Third. There are many other eighteenth-century streets and nooks and corners scattered about London among the forest of new buildings that has sprung up since the reign of George the Second. But I shall leave you to find them for yourself. It will make a nice occupation for you when you go for a walk! Now we must rush home if we want any lunch to-day.”
“But you won’t forget the ‘magic,’ will you?” urged Betty anxiously.
In the white parlour, an hour or two later, she sat full of expectation, watching Godmother as she took a volume from the enchanted cabinet.
A SEDAN CHAIR
A SEDAN CHAIR
A SEDAN CHAIR
“Here is the book that will take us back to-day,” she said. “It’s calledBoswell’s Life of Johnson, and it’s almost as good for news of the eighteenth century, asPepys’ Diaryis, for news of the seventeenth. Shut your eyes, hold the book in the magicway, and say, as Johnson used to say to his friend Boswell, ‘Sir, let us walk down Fleet Street.’”
In a flash they were there, and at first sight Betty could scarcely believe it was the same Fleet Street she had left only a few hours previously. In a minute or two, however, she recognized it, in spite of the changes, for she stood close to the entrance to the Temple, and not far from it rose the church of St. Clement Danes. But the great pile of the new Law Courts had vanished, and so had the monument with the Griffin upon it in the middle of the road. Where that had stood an hour or two previously there stretched a fine stone gateway, and a line of little shops took the place of the Law Courts.
“That’s Temple Bar,” said Godmother, pointing to the gate. “If you had lived forty years ago, you would have seen it without the help of magic, for it had not then been pulled down.”
“What are those long spikes for on the top?” asked Betty, gazing up at the gate.
“For a horrible purpose. On them were fixed the heads of men who had been executed as traitors. Johnson and Goldsmith saw the heads of certain rebels on those spikes, only a hundred and seventy years ago.”
“I’m glad they’re not there now,” said Betty, shuddering. “Does Temple Bar belong to the time before the Fire?”
“No. The old one was burnt, and this took its place. But some sort of chain or bar or gate has been on this spot for eight hundred years to mark the place where the part of London called Westminster ends, and the City begins. Even now, in our time, though there’s no gate left, when the King pays a state visit to the City, he stops here and asks the Lord Mayor who comes to meet him for permission to pass Temple Bar!”
“Except that it’s newer, St. Clement Danes church, where Dr. Johnson goes, looks the same,” remarked Betty, searching for buildings with which she was familiar.
“Yes, it’s one of the many churches rebuilt after the Fire by Sir Christopher Wren.”
“‘Oranges and Lemons,Say the bells of St. Clement’s!’”
“‘Oranges and Lemons,Say the bells of St. Clement’s!’”
“‘Oranges and Lemons,Say the bells of St. Clement’s!’”
“‘Oranges and Lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clement’s!’”
Betty quoted. “That’s a nursery rhyme about that very church, isn’t it? It goes on to tell what all the other church bells say too!” she added.
“We’ll read it when we slip back into our own day,” Godmother answered. “Now look up and down the street.”
Glancing first at the road, Betty saw that instead of the smooth wood pavement with motor omnibuses running quickly over it, Fleet Street was now paved with round cobblestones which extended right up to the shops on either hand, and only a row of posts divided the foot passengers from the traffic.
Big lumbering coaches, with powdered footmen standing up behind them, rolled clattering over the stones. Wagons piled with vegetables jolted along, the horses led by carters in smock frocks, cracking their whips. Every now and then a sedan chair slung on poles and carried by men-servants, passed by, giving her a glimpse of a lady within, dressed in flowered silk, her hair piled high and powdered thickly.
Instead of gabled houses with the latticed windows of earlier times, she saw taller, plainer houses, like those in the streets of the Adelphi, built of small bricks, with sash windows level with their walls, and each story exactly over the one beneath it. There were no top windows now from which opposite neighbours shook hands across the street. At every shop door, a sign hung out, some painted on wood, others made of gilded metal.
“It’s all much cleaner and lighter since the Fire!” Betty exclaimed. “And how pretty the sign-boards make the street. And, oh, Godmother, how pretty the dresses are.”
Even the more plainly-dressed business men, she thought, looked nice in their knee-breeches, brown stockings and ruffled shirts. But every now and then, beautifully-dressed young men passed her, wearing flowered waistcoats, white or coloured satin coats and silk stockings with knee-breeches. Their swords were fastened with broad sashes round the waist. Dainty lace ruffles fell over their hands. Under their arms they carried three-cornered hats, trimmed with gold lace, and their hair, rather long and powdered, was tied with a black ribbon. Nearly all of them carried gold snuff-boxes, and long gold-handled canes.
“The men are quite, if not more elegant, than the women,you see—in this reign of George the Second,” said Godmother. “Here comes one, however, who is by no means well-dressed,” she added, smiling.
Betty looked in the direction to which she pointed, and saw two figures approaching. One was a neat dapper gentleman, but the other was the oddest-looking individual! He wore shabby buckled shoes, black worsted stockings, all wrinkled,knee-breeches, a long coat of a rusty brown, and a wig much too small for him; old and unpowdered. He was stout, and clumsily made, moved very awkwardly, and had a large heavy face.
“It’s Dr. Johnson!” cried Betty. “And that’s Mr. Boswell with him, I suppose?”
“Yes, listening intently to every word he utters. He will rush home presently and write down every syllable of Dr. Johnson’s conversation, and later on, publish it in that wonderful Life of his friend. Well, now that we’ve had a glimpse of Fleet Street as it was in the eighteenth century, I’m going to whisk you off to look at the river. Shut your eyes and wish yourself standing on the Embankment somewhere close to Westminster Bridge.” ...
“Why, there’s no Embankment, and there’s no Westminster Bridge!” Betty exclaimed when she found herself standing at the edge of the river which washed right up to the houses on its banks. Remembering the many bridges to be seen from Westminster in our day, she looked right and left, but not one was visible.
“London Bridge, out of sight because of the winding of the river, is still the only bridge over the Thames, you will notice!” said Godmother. “They’re just beginning to build one here, where our Westminster Bridge now stands. But it isn’t finished yet, and one must still row from bank to bank.”
“And it’s still country on the other side,” Betty remarked, looking across the water at farms and clusters of cottages where now, immense buildings line the banks on the other side of the present Westminster Bridge. “And oh, Godmother, how strange not to see the Houses of Parliament ofourtime! They haven’t been built yet, of course? And that’s part of the Old Palace of Westminster that stands where our Houses of Parliament is now, I suppose?”
“Yes, and St. Stephen’s Chapel, where the House of Commons met, was standing there, just as you see it now, ninety years ago, in my father’s lifetime. He saw it burning, and watched the building of the new Parliament Houses familiar toyou.
“Let us go down these steps, and take the boat that waterman is just pushing off. We’ll first go down the river a little way, and then up towards Chelsea.”
“The Strand begins to look like the Strand of our time, doesn’t it?” Betty said. “Nearly all the beautiful old palaces have gone, and what were country lanes between them are nowstreets,” she sighed. “What a pity! And there are no streams now running across the countrified Strand and emptying themselves into the river.”
“No. But they still run underground, beneath the houses and roads,” Godmother said. “Under Fleet Street, for instance, flows the stream called Fleet. But instead of dancing along in the sunlight, it runs through iron pipes and is a sewer! A sad fate for the poor little river, isn’t it?”
“There’s quite a lot of building going on,” said Betty presently. “What’s that big place just begun, where the workmen are now?”
“Don’t you recognize it? It’s going to be the Adelphi you saw this morning.”
Betty was silent a moment. “And once it was Durham House, and Lady Jane Grey lived there, when it was all country round her,” she said rather sadly at last. “How London changes, doesn’t it, Godmother?” ...
Presently the boat turned, and they rowed westward up the river.
“We are going in the direction of Chelsea—yourhome,” said Godmother. “You will find it a village among fields and woods. Kensington is also a country village, and the lanes and roads are terribly unsafe at night. Highwaymen often lie in wait for coaches that may be passing, and ‘Your money or your life!’ is what they say when they put a pistol at the heads of travellers.”
“Itisfunny to think of the King’s Road in Chelsea, full of omnibuses and taxis now, being a country lane!” Betty said, for the boat had moved with all the swiftness to which she was accustomed in these visits into the Past, and they were passing Chelsea Church. “But at least I know the church!Thatmust have been there for hundreds of years, because Sir Thomas More’s tomb is in it.”
“And do you see the remains of a house near the church?” Godmother asked, pointing to all that was left of a beautiful mansion which workmen were even then pulling down. “That’s where Sir Thomas More lived for many years. You see it being destroyed before your eyes in the reign of George the Second. So it seems they were no more careful to preserve beautiful or interesting buildings in the eighteenth century than we are who live in the twentieth! Every time you walk down Beaufort Street, Chelsea, you may remember that you are on the site of that old house and its gardens.”
One other building besides the church, Betty had recognized. Like the church, it stood surrounded by fields and gardens, instead of by the houses and streets of modern days. This was the Chelsea Hospital which, as she already knew, had been built by Charles the Second as a home for the old soldiers ofhisday and was still the home for the old soldiers of our own times. She knew well by sight the old men in their scarlet coats, and almost every day she walked through the gardens belonging to the Hospital. But the gardens she now saw from the boat looked much larger, and had an altogether different appearance.
“What’s that great round thing among the trees, Godmother?” she asked.
“That’s the Rotunda of Ranelagh.”
“But what is it? It’s not there now in our time!”
“No, but in this reign it’s a very celebrated place of amusement for all the gay world of London. The two fashionable pleasure gardens are Vauxhall and thisRanelagh, close to Chelsea Hospital. Do you know Doulton’s big factory on the opposite side of the river?”
“Yes, the place with the tall terra-cotta chimney, you mean?”
“Well, just about where the factory stands in our day, stretches a garden laid out with winding walks and avenues of trees. You can just see it from this point. That is the famous Vauxhall. Eighteenth-century novels are full of mention of Ranelagh and Vauxhall, and Boswell tells us how fond Dr. Johnson was of both of them.”
“Oh, can’t we land, and see one of them?” Betty implored.
“You shall have a glimpse ofRanelaghby night. We needn’t land either, for our magic is all powerful, you know. Just shut your eyes a moment and wish yourself in Ranelagh at ten o’clock in the evening.... Now open them and look.”
For a moment Betty was dazzled by glittering lights, but as she looked round her she drew a long breath of delight.
“Oh, how pretty!” she exclaimed. “It’s like fairy-land.”
The “round thing” of which she had caught sight between trees, she now saw to be a sort of dome, beneath which was a circle of gilded and painted recesses, something like the boxes ina theatre. From a pavilion in the middle of the covered part of the gardens, came the sound of music, and in every recess ladies and gentlemen were seated before little tables with glasses and cups upon them. With the dome, orRotunda, as Godmother called it, as a centre, long alleys of trees stretched in every direction, like the spokes of a wheel, and were lighted by lamps hanging from the trees. The whole place indeed sparkled with lights, and in their radiance walked charming figures. Pretty ladies in gowns of brocade with powdered hairand little black patches on their faces, were escorted by gentlemen no less charming in their satin coats, flowered waistcoats and three-cornered hats. They walked up and down the leafy alleys, sometimes stopping before platforms where people were singing or acting, sometimes greeting other parties of friends with low curtsies from the ladies and deep bows from the gentlemen.
Betty was entranced by the charming scene.
“It’s very pretty, isn’t it?” said Godmother. “No wonder Dr. Johnson said, ‘When I first entered Ranelagh it gave me an expansion and gay sensation in my mind such as I never experienced anywhere else.’”
“I wonder if he’s here to-night?” Betty replied.
“Very likely. I see many well-known people. There’s Oliver Goldsmith in the claret-coloured velvet coat. He’s much tidier and better dressed than usual! And do you notice that little man, rather deformed, in black satin, with ruffles of lace? That’s Mr. Pope, the poet. He is very witty. You see how he is surrounded by laughing men and women? But they’re all rather afraid of him, for he’s quite likely to make fun of them in his next poem.”
“Oh, I should like to live in these times,” sighed Betty, “and go to parties in a sedan chair, and be dressed like these ladies when I grow up....”
Godmother laughed at her face of amazement when she found herself finishing the sentence in the white parlour at Westminster.
“There are advantages and disadvantages about every age,” she said. “I don’t think you’d care at all for the way most little girls of the eighteenth century were brought up. You wouldn’t have the freedom you enjoy now, I can assure you!”
Betty sighed again, but this time because she remembered with a pang that this was her last visit for a long time to the little house from which she had taken so many magic journeys. Godmother was going abroad again, and for many months her house would be closed. Before she could speak, however, the old lady went on: “Now mind you go soon to the London Museum to refresh your memory about to-day’s glimpse of theeighteenth century in this wonderful city of ours. Go into the Costume rooms, and look at the dresses. You will find there the very velvet coat we saw dear old Oliver Goldsmith wearing at Ranelagh. You will see the sedan chairs in which the fine ladies were carried, and a thousand other things belonging to eighteenth-century London which you must find for yourself.”
“I can go on Monday,” Betty said, “because holidays are beginning.”
“Do. And on your way home, try to imagine how all the changes in the streets since the eighteenth century would strike Dr. Johnson, for instance.
“You will go back by Tube, which is to you a familiar way of getting about. But think of Dr. Johnson’s face if he could suddenly walk into a lift and be lowered into the depths of the earth, and then shot through a narrow tunnel from the Bank to Marble Arch, or farther!”
Betty laughed. “And he wouldn’t recognize Marble Arch when he got there, would he?”
“Not a bit. He would expect to see a more or less country road where Oxford Street now runs, and close to the place where the Marble Arch stands to-day he would look for the gallows called Tyburn Tree, where in his time people were hanged. Think how amazed he would be to behold motor vehicles instead of coaches and sedan chairs in the streets.”
“Or to see trains, and telephones, and electric lights, and telegrams and aeroplanes,” put in Betty. “They would all be strange to him. After all, aeroplanes are still alittlestrange to us!” she added.
“You’ll pass several Post Offices on your way to Chelsea,” Godmother went on, “and toyou, to drop a letter this afternoon through a slit outside the office, and expect it to reach Newcastle or Exeter to-morrow morning seems quite natural. To Dr. Johnson it would appear marvellous, for inhisday, letters had to be carried by men on horseback from one town to another. These are only a few examples of the changes which have taken place since the eighteenth century, which in some ways seems so near us and in other respects so far away.” ...
“Oh, Godmother, do come back soon!” Betty said, whenthe sad moment for saying good-bye had come. “There are hundreds and hundreds more things I want to see in London!”
“Then you don’t hate it quite so much as you did some weeks ago?” asked the old lady slyly.
“Oh, I love it! But I never should have loved it without you and the magic journeys. And now there won’t be any more magic for ages.”
“That will be your own fault then,” returned Godmother briskly. “With certain books, some of which you know already, as guides, and a certain exercise of imagination which will grow stronger if you practise it, the Present will melt into the Past, and you will be able to call it up at your pleasure. But never forget, Betty, that the Past has made the Present, and when you are grown up, try to make other people reverence the Past of London, and be unwilling, except for very pressing reasons, to destroy what is old and full of memories. London is changing before our eyes, and too much that is beautiful and interesting is being swept away, often through carelessness and indifference. I hope you’ll be one of the small group of people who help to guard the Past, and use their influence to prevent unnecessary destruction in our wonderful city. And remember that you’ve only just begun to know a tiny fraction of its history. There is enough yet left to learn to last you your lifetime.”
“I know,” said Betty. “Godmother,” she added after a moment, “you said you would read me the rhyme about London bells.”
Godmother went to the cabinet, out of which so many charms had been drawn, and took out a book which she put into Betty’s hand.
“You’ll find it in this book, which I’m going to give you in memory of our journeys, magic and otherwise. It’s calledLondon in Song, and I hope it will remind you of many things we’ve seen together. The Nursery Rhyme about the bells was written by some unknown lover of London who lived in the eighteenth century, and some of it at least you’ve often sung at parties when you played ‘Oranges and Lemons.’”
So in the Tube on her way home to Chelsea, which she couldnow picture as it was before it had become just a part of London instead of a country village, Betty read the rhyme of the bells, and amused herself by counting up how many of the churches mentioned in it she knew.