it from where he sat in his gallery pew on the other side of the church.
There are other interesting things to be seen at St. Olave’s: the doorway to the old churchyard that Dickens-lovers will recognise from his description in the Uncommercial Traveller, the carved pulpit and quaint vestry and several fine old monuments, and, as I mentioned before, part of the old Roman wall.
If you have no passion for discovering bits of ancient walls, there are other more beautiful things near the bottom of Seething Lane. One of them is very new, so new that when I saw it all the scaffolding had not been removed from the buildings at its base—I mean the great tower of the Port of London Authority. I hear that Sir Joseph E. Broodbank has just written a fascinating History of the Port of London, that will waken everyone who has three guineas to spare to the interest of London’s immense docks and the organisation that has power over seventy miles of the Thames. The beautiful tower of the new buildings, with its fine groups of statuary, is worth a special pilgrimage to see. It is not very far from Trinity House, that unique institution that, as Mr. Cunningham says, has for its object “the increase and encouragement of navigation, the regulation of lighthouses and sea marks, and the general management of matters not immediately connected with the Admiralty.”
The Guild of Trinity House was founded in 1529 by Sir Thomas Spert, Henry VIII.’s Controller of the Navy and commander of the magnificent four-master, the Harry Grace de Dieu, which took the King to Calais on his way to the Field of the Cloth of Gold. You can see exactly what it looked like in the picture of Henry VIII.’s embarkation at Dover that hangs in Hampton Court Palace.
One of the delusions I have had when hastening through the streets of London filled with excitement at the thought of seeing some ancient place associated with more colourful days than our own, was caused by Mr. Wagner’s enticing account of the Crooked Billet in his fascinating book on old London inns.
Alas, the Crooked Billet, at the eastern extremity of Tower Hill, has nothing left of its former magnificence. The panelled walls and carved chimney-pieces have been ruthlessly taken away,—some say to that bourne overseas whither pass so many treasures of the Old World it affects to despise. There is nothing left but the sordid dirty rooms of slum tenements, with here and there the remains of a fine ceiling and a few wall cupboards. The old building that was once a royal palace, and since the days of Henry VIII. has been a lordly inn, has fallen into the state of drab degradation that is the forerunner of the pick and shovel of the démolisseur. Only the rich façade remains to remind the passer-by of its vanished glories!
The Tower
Having wandered so long in its neighbourhood, let me hurriedly make the shamefaced confession that I share Richard III.’s opinion about the Tower and that I have never seen it. I have skirted it, I have gazed into its asphalted moat, I have looked with awe on its battlemented towers,—but I have never crossed the drawbridge.
