[Sidenote: 1714—Old London]
Most of the streets in the St. James's region bear the names they bore when King George first came to London. But it is only in name that they are unchanged. The street of streets, St. James's Street, is metamorphosed indeed since the days when grotesque signs swung overhead, and great gilt carriages lumbered up and down from the park, and the chairs of modish ladies crowded up the narrow thoroughfares. Splendid warriors, fresh from Flanders or the Rhine, clinked their courtly swords against the posts; red-coated country gentlemen jostled their wondering way through the crowd; and the Whig and Tory beaux, with ruffles and rapiers, powder and perfume, haunted the coffee-houses of their factions. Not a house of the old street remains as it was then; not one of the panelled rooms in which minuets were danced by candle-light to the jingle of harpsichord and tinkle of spinet, where wits planned pamphlets and pointed epigrams, where statesmen schemed the overthrow of {67} ministries and even of dynasties, where flushed youth punted away its fortunes or drank away its senses, and staggered out, perhaps, through the little crowd of chairmen and link-boys clustered at the door, to extinguish its foolish flame in a duel at Leicester Fields. All that world is gone; only the name of the street remains, as full in its way of memories and associations as the S. P. Q. R. at the head of a municipal proclamation in modern Rome.
The streets off St. James's Street, too, retain their ancient names, and nothing more—King Street, Ryder Street, York Street, Jermyn Street, the spelling of which seems to have puzzled last century writers greatly, for they wrote it "Jermyn," "Germain," "Germaine," and even "Germin." St. James's Church, Wren's handiwork, is all that remains from the age of Anne, with "the steeple," says Strype, fondly, "lately finished with a fine spire, which adds much splendor to this end of the town, and also serves as a landmark." Perhaps it sometimes served as a landmark to Richard Steele, reeling happily to the home in "Berry" Street, where his beloved Prue awaited him. St. James's Square has gone through many metamorphoses since it was first built in 1665, and called the Piazza. In 1714 there was a rectangular enclosure in the centre, with four passages at the sides, through which the public could come and go as they pleased. In a later generation the inhabitants railed the enclosure round, and set in the middle an oval basin of water, large enough to have a boat upon it. In old engravings we see people gravely punting about on the quaint little pond. The fulness of time filled in the pond, and set up King William the Third instead in the middle of a grassy circle. It would take too long to enumerate all the changes that our Georgian gentleman would find in the London of his day. Some few, however, are especially worth recording. He would seek in vain for the "Pikadilly" he knew, with its stately houses and fair gardens. It was almost a country road to the left of St. James's Street, between the Green Park and Hyde Park, {68} with meadows and the distant hills beyond. Going eastward he would find that a Henrietta Street and a King Street still led into Covent Garden; but the Covent Garden of his time was an open place, with a column and a sun-dial in the middle. Handsome dwellings for persons of repute and quality stood on the north side over those arcades which were fondly supposed by Inigo Jones, who laid out the spot, to resemble the Piazza in Venice. Inigo Jones built the church, too, which is to be seen in the "Morning" plate of Hogarth's "Four Times of the Day." This church was destroyed by fire in 1795, and was rebuilt in its present form by Hardwick.
[Sidenote: 1714—Anne's London]
Charing Cross was still a narrow spot where three streets met; what is now Trafalgar Square was covered with houses and the royal mews. St. Martin's Church was not built by Gibbs for a dozen years later, in 1726. Soho and Seven Dials were fashionable neighborhoods; Mrs. Theresa Cornelys's house of entertainment, of which we hear so much from the writers of the time of Anne, was considered to be most fashionably situated; ambassadors and peers dwelt in Gerrard Street; Bolingbroke lived in Golden Square. Traces of former splendor still linger about these decayed neighborhoods; paintings by Sir James Thornhill, Hogarth's master and father-in-law, and elaborate marble mantel-pieces, with Corinthian columns and entablatures, still adorn the interiors of some of these houses; bits of quaint Queen Anne architecture and finely wrought iron railings still lend an air of faded gentility to some of the dingy exteriors. Parts of London that are now fashionable had not then come into existence. Grosvenor Square was only begun in 1716, and it was not until 1725 that the new quarter was sufficiently advanced for its creator, Sir Richard Grosvenor, to summon his intending tenants to a "splendid entertainment," at which the new streets and squares were solemnly named.
Though we of to-day have seen a good deal of what are called Anne and Georgian houses, of red brick, {69} curiously gabled, springing up in all directions, we must not suppose that the London of 1714 was chiefly composed of such cheerful buildings. Wren and Vanbrugh would be indeed surprised if they could see the strange works that are now done, if not in their name, at least in the name of the age for which they built their heavy, plain, solid houses. We can learn easily enough from contemporary engravings what the principal London streets and squares were like when George the Elector became George the King. There are not many remains now of Anne's London, but Queen Anne's Gate, some few houses in Queen Square, Bloomsbury, and here and there a house in the City preserve the ordinary architecture of the age of Anne. Marlborough House bears witness to what it did in the way of more pretentious buildings.
The insides of these houses were scarcely less like the "Queen Anne revival" of our time than the outsides. The rooms were, as a rule, sparingly furnished. There would be a centre-table, some chairs, a settee, a few pictures, a mirror, possibly a spinet or musical instrument of some kind, some shelves, perhaps, for displaying the Chinese and Japanese porcelain which every one loved, and, of course, heavy window-curtains. Smaller tables were used for the incessant tea-drinking. Large screens kept off the too frequent draughts. Handsomely wrought stoves and andirons stood in the wide fireplaces. The rooms themselves were lofty; the walls of the better kind wainscoted and carved, and the ceilings painted in allegorical designs. Wall-papers had only begun to come into use within the last few years of Anne's reign; windows were long and narrow, and small panes were a necessity, as glass-makers had not yet attained the art of casting large sheets of glass. The stairs were exceedingly straight; it was mentioned as a recommendation to new houses that two persons could go up-stairs abreast. The rents would seem curiously low to Londoners of our time; houses could be got in Pall Mall for two hundred a year, and in good parts of the town for thirty, forty, and {70} fifty pounds a year. Lady Wentworth, in 1705, describes a house in Golden Square, with gardens, stables, and coach-house, the rent of which was only threescore pounds a year. Pretty riverside houses let at from five to ten pounds a year. Lodgings would seem cheap now, though they were not held so then, for Swift complains of paying eight shillings a week, when he lodged in Bury Street, for a dining-room and bedroom on the first floor.
[Sidenote: 1714—"Not without danger walk these streets">[
There was no general numbering of houses in 1714; that movement of civilization did not take place until 1764. Places were known by their signs, or their vicinity to a sign. "Blue Boars," "Black Swans," and "Red Lions" were in every street, and people lived at the "Red Bodice," or over against the "Pestle." The Tatler tells a story of a young man seeking a house in Barbican for a whole day through a mistake in a sign, whose legend read, "This is the Beer," instead of "This is the Bear." Another tried to get into a house at Stocks Market, under the impression that he was at his own lodgings at Charing Cross, being misled by the fact that there was a statue of the King on horseback in each place. Signs were usually very large, and jutted so far out from the houses that in narrow streets they frequently touched one another. As it was the fashion to have them carefully painted, carved, gilded, and supported by branches of wrought iron, they were often very costly, some being estimated as worth more than a hundred guineas.
The ill-paved streets were too often littered with the refuse which careless householders, reckless of fines, flung into the open way. In wet weather the rain roared along the kennel, converting all the accumulated filth of the thoroughfare into loathsome mud. The gutter-spouts, which then projected from every house, did not always cast their cataracts clear of the pavement, but sometimes soaked the unlucky passer-by who had not kept close to the wall. Umbrellas were the exclusive privilege of women; men never thought of carrying them. Those whose business or pleasure called them abroad in rainy {71} weather, and who did not own carriages, might hire one of the eight hundred two-horsed hackney carriages; jolting, uncomfortable machines, with perforated tin sashes instead of window-glasses, and grumbling, ever-dissatisfied drivers. There were very few sedan chairs; these were still a comparative novelty for general use, and their bearers were much abused for their drunkenness, clumsiness, and incivility.