The Country of Sir Walter Scott

by Charles S. Olcott

Coming out into Fleet Street, we should stand before the figure of a griffin on a high pedestal, which marks the site of Temple Bar. In Scott's time it was an arch crossing the street, and in the time of King James, merely a barricade of posts and chains. When the coronation procession passed this point, King George V, according to ancient custom, paused to receive permission from the Lord Mayor to enter the City of London. The civic sword was presented to the King and immediately returned to the Lord Mayor, after which the procession resumed its march.

Within Temple Bar and on the north side of Fleet Street, between Fetter Lane and Chancery Lane, is St. Dunstan's Church, built in 1832 on the site of an older church building. A few yards to the eastward, according to Scott, was the shop of David Ramsay, the watch-maker, before which the two 'stout-bodied and strong-voiced' apprentices kept up the shouts of 'What d'ye lack? what d' ye lack?'—very much after the fashion of a modern 'barker.' This was the opening scene of the novel, though not suggested in the slightest by the Fleet Street of to-day.

On the opposite side a narrow lane, called Bouverie Street, leads down toward the river along the eastern boundary of The Temple, into 'Whitefriars,' or Alsatia, where Nigel was compelled to take refuge for a time in the house of the old miser, Trapbois. The 'Friars of the Blessed Virgin of Mount Carmel,' otherwise known as the 'White Friars,' established their London house in 1241, between Fleet Street and the Thames, on land granted by Edward I. This carried with it the privileges of sanctuary or immunity from arrest, which were allowed to the inhabitants long after the dissolution of the religious houses. Indeed, before the suppression of the monastery, the persons of bad repute, who had flocked to the district in great numbers, were wont to make so much disturbance with their continual clamours and outcries, that the friars complained that they could not conduct divine service. The privilege was confirmed by James I, and in his time, as a consequence, 'Alsatia,' as the district came to be called, was one of the worst quarters in London. It was the common habitation of thieves, gamblers, swindlers, murderers, bullies, and drunken, dissipated reprobates of both sexes. Its atmosphere, thick with the fogs of the river, fairly reeked with the smell of alehouses of the lowest order, which outnumbered all the other houses. The shouts of rioters, the profane songs and boisterous laughter of the revellers, mingled with the wailing of children and the screaming of women. The men were 'shaggy, uncombed ruffians whose enormous mustaches were turned back over their ears,' and they swaggered through the dirty streets, quarrelling, brawling, fighting, swearing, and 'smoking like moving volcanoes.' They waged a ceaseless warfare against their proud and noisy, but not so disreputable, neighbours of The Temple.

Coming back to our imaginary trip by river (for we really visited these sites either on foot or by taxi-cab), we continue down the river, passing under Blackfriars Bridge, and stop for a moment at Paul's Wharf, near where Nigel found quarters in the house of John Christie, the honest ship-chandler. Journeying onward, we pass under London Bridge, which in James's time was the only means of crossing the river, other than by boat. It was then overloaded with a great weight of huge buildings, many stories high, under which passed a narrow roadway. At the southern entrance was a gate, the top of which was decorated with the heads of traitors. All the buildings were finally cleared away in 1757 and 1758.

Passing under London Bridge we soon come to the Tower of London, which the unfortunate Nigel entered through the Traitor's Gate. From the time of William the Conqueror, by whom its foundations were begun, until the reign of Charles II, the Tower of London was used as a palace by the kings of England. It has been said that the 'strong monarchs employed the Tower as a prison, the weak ones as a fortress.' It was as a prison that the Tower achieved its unenviable fame in history as

London's lasting shame;
With many a foul and midnight murder fed.

In its dark precincts many of the noblest of England's men and women found themselves prisoners, the majority of them perishing upon the block. Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard, wives of Henry VIII; Lady Jane Grey and her husband Guildford Dudley; the father[[2]] and the grandfather[[3]] of Dudley; and Sir Walter Raleigh were among the most famous of these victims. Nigel was confined in the Beauchamp Tower, where many distinguished persons were imprisoned. The inscriptions to which Scott refers may still be seen, including that of Lady Jane Grey, though it is probable that this was written by her husband or by his brother, who is supposed to have carved the device of the bear and ragged staff, 'the emblem of the proud Dudleys,' which is an elaborate piece of sculpture on the right of the fireplace.

To complete our survey of the scenery of 'The Fortunes of Nigel,' we have to continue our journey down the Thames until we land in Greenwich Hospital and the Royal Naval College, which occupy the site of the old royal palace, formerly called Placentia or Pleasaunce. It was a favourite royal palace as early as 1300, though it passed into the hands of the nobility and came back to the Crown in 1433 on the death of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. It was the birthplace of King Henry VIII and of Mary and Elizabeth. The building was enlarged by Henry VIII, James I, and Charles I. Charles II caused it to be pulled down, intending to carry out some ambitious plan, but succeeded in erecting only the building which is now the west wing of the hospital. Back of the palace is an extensive park of one hundred and ninety acres. This is where Nigel unexpectedly encountered the King, at the very climax of a stag-hunt, frightening him nearly to death; and here he was unceremoniously arrested and hurried off to the Tower. The park still has herds of deer, though they are no longer hunted, and a row of fine old chestnuts, originally planted by command of Charles II, who laid out the enclosure. In the centre is a hill, surmounted by the famous Royal Greenwich Observatory, from whose meridian longitude is reckoned and whose clock determines the standard of time for all England.

Just as 'The Heart of Midlothian' had produced a vivid picture of life in Edinburgh during the reign of George II, so 'The Fortunes of Nigel' reproduced the life of London in the time of King James. For this brilliant study, not only of the curious monarch, but of the strange manners and customs as well as the lawlessness of the city, which the King's folly did so much to create, the novel has been generally accorded a very high rank among Scott's productions.

[[1]] Quoted from Sydney's 'State Papers,' in The Old Royal Palace of Whitehall, by Edgar Sheppard, D.D.