Of recent years two important new thoroughfares have been made, viz., New Cannon Street, extending from London Bridge to St. Paul's Churchyard, and Queen Victoria Street, which, leaving the Mansion House, crosses Cannon Street about its centre, and extends to Blackfriars Bridge. The third main route begins at the Bank, and passes through the City Road and the New Road to Paddington and Westbourne. The New Road here mentioned has been renamed in three sections,—Pentonville Road, from Islington to King's Cross; Euston Road, from King's Cross to Regent's Park; and Marylebone Road, from Regent's Park to Paddington. The main cross-branches in the metropolis are Farringdon Street, leading from Blackfriars Bridge to Holborn, and thence to King's Cross; the Haymarket, leading from Cockspur Street; and Regent Street, running northwesterly in the direction of Regent's Park. Others from the north of Holborn are Tottenham Court Road, parallel to Gower Street, where the Dickenses first lived when they came to London. Gray's Inn Road, near which is Gray's Inn, where Dickens himself was employed as a lawyer's clerk, and Doughty Street, where, at No. 48, can still be seen Dickens' house, as a sign-board on the door announces: "Dickens lived here in 1837." Aldersgate, continued as Goswell Road, connects with Islington and Whitechapel, and Mile End Road leads to Essex.
Such were the few main arteries of traffic in Dickens' day, and even unto the present; the complaint has been that there are not more direct thoroughfares of a suitable width, both lengthwise and crosswise, to cope with the immense and cumbersome traffic of 'bus and dray, to say nothing of carts and cabs.
Nothing is likely to give the stranger a just estimate of the magnitude of this more than will the observance of the excellent police control of the cross traffic, when, in some measure, its volume will be apparent.
It would perhaps be impossible in a work such as this that any one locality could be described with anything like adequate completeness. Certainly one would not hope to cover the ground entire, where every division and subdivision partakes severally of widely different characteristics.
Southwark and the Borough, with its High Street, St. George's Church and Fields, the old Marshalsea—or the memory of it—"The King's Bench" Prison, and "Guy's," are something quite different with respect to manners and customs from Whitechapel or Limehouse.
So, too, are St. Giles' and Pimlico in the west, and Hampstead and Highgate in North London. Since all of these are dealt with elsewhere, to a greater or lesser degree, a few comments on the Whitechapel of Dickens' day must suffice here, and, truth to tell, it has not greatly changed since that time, save for a periodical cleaning up and broadening of the main thoroughfare. It is with more or less contempt and disgust that Whitechapel is commonly recalled to mind. Still, Whitechapel is neither more nor less disreputable than many other localities sustained by a similar strata of society. It serves, however, to illustrate the life of the east end, as contrasted with that of the west of London—the other pole of the social sphere—and is, moreover, peopled by that class which Dickens, in a large measure, incorporated into the novels.
In ancient times Northumberland, Throgmorton, and Crosby were noble names associated therewith. In Dickens' day butchers, it would seem, were the predominate species of humanity, while to-day Jewish "sweat-shops" are in the ascendant, a sufficiently fine distinction to render it recognizable to any dweller in a large city, whatever his nationality.
The fleur-de-lis and royal blazonings are no longer seen, and such good old Anglo-Saxon names as Stiles, Stiggins, and Stodges are effectually obliterated from shop signs. How changed this ancient neighbourhood is from what it must once have been! Crosby Hall, in Bishopsgate Street, not far distant, the ci-devant palace of Richard II., is now a mere eating-house, albeit a very good one. And as for the other noble houses, they have gone the way of all fanes when once encroached upon by the demands of business progress.
Baynard Castle, where Henry VII. received his ambassadors, and in which the crafty Cecil plotted against Lady Jane Grey, almost before the ink was dry with which he had solemnly registered his name to serve her, has long ago been numbered amongst the things that were. The archers of Mile-end, with their chains of gold, have departed: the spot on which the tent stood, where bluff Hal regaled himself after having witnessed their sports, is now covered with mean-looking houses: as one has said, "the poetry of ancient London is well-nigh dead."
The voice of the stream is for ever hushed that went murmuring before the dwellings of our forefathers, along Aldgate and down Fenchurch Street, and past the door of Sir Thomas Gresham's house, in Lombard Street, until it doubled round by the Mansion House and emptied itself into the river. There is still the sound of rushing waters by the Steam-Packet Wharf, at London Bridge; but how different to the "brawling brook" of former days is the "evil odour" which arises from the poisonous sewers of to-day.