Builders and Streets.
Sir John Vanbrugh[104] was the architect of Blenheim, and you will recognize his name as that of one of the popular comedy writers of Queen Anne’s time, who not only wrote plays, but ran a theatre which he built at the Haymarket. It was not so successful as the more famous one which stands thereabout now; the poor architect, too, had a good many buffets from the stinging Duchess of Marlborough; and some stings besides from Swift’s waspish pen, which the amiable Duchess did not allow him to forget.
Another architect of these times, better worth our remembering—for his constructive abilities—was Sir Christopher Wren, who designed some forty of the church-spires now standing in London; and he also superintended the construction of the Cathedral of St. Paul’s, which had been steadily growing since a date not long after the great fire—thirty-five years intervening between the laying of the foundations and the lifting of the cross to the top of the lantern. It is even said that, when he was well upon ninety, Wren supervised some of the last touches upon this noble monument to his fame.[105]
There was not so much smoke in London in those days—the consumption of coal being much more limited—and the great cross could be seen from Notting Hill, and from the palace windows at Kensington. The Queen never abandoned this royal residence; and from the gravel road by which immediate entrance was made, stretched away the waste hunting ground, afterward converted into the grassy slopes of Hyde Park—stagnant pools and marshy thickets lying in place of what is now the Serpentine. People living at Reading in that day—whence ladies now come in for a morning’s shopping and back to lunch—did then, in seasons of heaviest travelling, put two days to the journey; and joined teams, and joined forces and outriders, to make good security against the highwaymen that infested the great roads leading from that direction into the town. Queen Anne herself was beset and robbed near to Kew shortly before she came to the throne; and along Edgeware Road, where are now long lines of haberdasher shops, and miles of gas-lamps, were gibbets, on which the captured and executed highwaymen were hung up in warning.