Saunterings in and about London

by Max Schlesinger

In despite of this innate conservatism, the masses are gradually awaking to political consciousness. Formerly it was considered a matter of course, that wealthy persons only were elected to serve in Parliament; or that rich traders only would aspire to the mayoralty, or the dignity of an alderman. Reforms are impending. What will come of them depends partly on the leaders of the movement; on the degree of resistance which the government of the day may oppose to them; and, partly, though the English are loth to admit it, on the course of events on the continent of Europe.

Perhaps we shall resume the question on another occasion. Just now we are in the capitoline market of the city. We leave the Mansion-house, and turn to the other temples which grace the spot.

Opposite to the Mansion-house, is the Royal Exchange; a vast detached building of an imposing aspect. The English are not, generally, famous for their style of architecture; the antique columns, though great favourites, puzzle them sorely. They put them exactly where they are not wanted; and, in many of their public buildings the columns, instead of supporting the structure, are themselves supported by some architectural contrivance. The modern buildings suffer, moreover, from a striking uniformity; they have all the same columned fronts, which we see at the Mansion-house, the Exchange, and several of the theatres. It is always the same pattern, exactly as if those buildings had come out of some Birmingham factory.

This monotony in the style of public buildings would be altogether unbearable, but for the climate. The smoky and foggy atmosphere of London indemnifies us for the want of original ideas in the architects. It gives the London buildings a venerable, antique colouring. The Exchange, for instance, has the appearance of having weathered the storms of a hundred winters, while, in fact, it is quite a new building. Still, it is quite as black and sooty as Westminster Abbey, or Somerset House; and yet it is not even nine years old. The old Exchange was burnt down in 1838; it required six years to complete the new building, which was opened in October, 1844, with much solemnity.

Up to the reign of Elizabeth, the London merchants had no Exchange building; they transacted business in the open air, in Lombard Street, in St. Paul’s Church-yard, and sometimes even in St. Paul’s; for this cathedral was, at the time we speak of, the great centre of business, fashion, and prostitution. Sir Thomas Gresham, who had frequently acted as the Queen’s agent on the Continent, offered to construct an Exchange building, provided the city would grant him the ground to build it on. His proposal was accepted; a piece of ground was bought for £3,737 6d., and the first stone was laid on the 7th June, 1565. At the end of the following year, the building was completed; and to judge from the sketches which still remain, it was designed in imitation of the Antwerp Exchange.

The virgin Queen expressed her high satisfaction with the undertaking most royally, by dining with Sir Thomas Gresham, and bestowing on the building the title of “Royal Exchange.” When Sir Thomas, at a later period, was compelled to depart this world, he bequeathed his Exchange to the City, and founded the Gresham College, of which, at the present day, nothing remains but the Gresham Lectures, which are generally, and justly, classed among the city jobs, whose name is Legion.

Gresham’s Exchange, with its profuse display of grasshoppers—the founder’s crest—fell a sacrifice to the great fire in 1666. So attached had the city merchants become to their new temple of Plutus, that they restored it in preference even to their churches; and, two years after the great fire the New Exchange was completed and solemnly opened by Charles II. Gresham’s bust, which had been saved out of the conflagration, was placed in a niche of honor, and a cast brass grasshopper, the last of its numerous family, was raised to the top of the steeple, on which bad eminence it had to stand all weathers, until, relieved by another conflagration in 1838, it has been allowed to find a retreat on the eastern front of the present Exchange building.

Times have altered since the days of Old Gresham, the site of whose Exchange cost less than £4,000, while the present building comes to £150,000, exclusive of the cost of the ground. In his time, grave and sober citizens had mustachios and imperials; and wild young fellows, bent upon mischief and dissipation, repaired to the taverns of the city. In our days everybody is smooth shaved, and there is a chapel in every corner. Formerly the merchants relied on their own understanding and the honesty of their high-born debtors; at present they have no confidence either in the former or the latter: and out of the fulness of their godly despair, they have engraved in front of their Exchange building the motto of the city—Domine dirige nos—Direct us, O Lord, and reveal unto us the time and the hour at which consols and shares should be bought and sold!

The Exchange, as we have said, is a splendid building; but professional architects will shrug their shoulders when they look at it in the detail. Why all those corners on the eastern side, and why those small narrow shops? It is wrong to condemn anybody or anything on mere primâ facie evidence. The architect who designed the Exchange had similar though greater difficulties to contend with, than Paxton in the construction of the Exhibition Building in Hyde Park. Paxton’s great antagonist was Colonel Sibthorp, an honourable and gallant member of the House of Commons, who would not consent to sacrifice the trees which adorned the site of the building. “Make what fuss you like about your modern ideas of industry,” said the chivalric Don Quixote, “but you shall not touch the trees; they are worth all your industry, and all your foreign nicknacks, and free-trade and nonsense, and, indeed, anything that ever came from Manchester.” And what said Paxton? Why, he said, “Let the old trees stand, we will roof them over!” and he built his glass house one hundred feet higher in the middle, and thus made the transept. And there was room for everything and everybody—men and merchandize, stray children and lost petticoats, bad coffee, clever pickpockets from England, France, and Germany—and, sometimes, for the rain, too, when the weather was very bad, and we here sought shelter. But Colonel Sibthorp never crossed the threshold. Mr. Tite, the architect who made the plans for the New Exchange, had to contend with a legion of small conservative Sibthorpes, with a large number of shopkeepers who held places in the Old Exchange, and who insisted on having their shops in the new one. They could not be dispossessed; and in some manner or other it was necessary to sacrifice the beauty of the building to the claims of the vested interests. A great many people cannot understand why there is no covered hall for the accommodation of the merchants on Change, and why they must carry on their business either in the open court or in the arcade which surrounds it. The London climate is certainly not made for open-air amusements or occupations; and an Englishman, though with a threefold encasement of flannel, stands in great awe of draughts and rheumatism.

Nevertheless, the English merchant is condemned, in the fogs of winter and the rains of autumn, to brave the climate in an open yard, and to stake his health and his fortune on the chances of the season and the turn of the market. The reason is, that Englishmen are as much afraid of close rooms as of rheumatism and colds; and the Gresham Committee, which superintended the construction of the New Exchange, decided in favor of unlimited ventilation. Certain branches of business, which in many respects are much more extensive than the speculations in stocks and shares, have for a long time past been carried on in certain saloons. In the Exchange building itself there is a broad staircase, with crowds of busy people ascending and descending, and there is a door with large gold letters, “Lloyd’s Coffee House.” Let us ascend that staircase, and see what sort of a coffee-house this is. We pass through a large hall, from which doors open to several rooms; at each door stands a porter in scarlet livery. In the hall itself are several marble statues and a large marble tablet, which the merchants of London erected to the Times, out of gratitude for the successful labours of that journal in unmasking a gigantic scheme of imposition and fraud, which threatened ruin to the whole trade of London. In the centre of the hall there is a large black board, on which are written the names and destinations of all the ships carrying mails which will sail from English ports on that and the following day. In the corner to the right there is a door with the inscription, “Captains’ Room.” No one is allowed to enter this room but the commanders of merchant vessels, or those who have business to transact with them. Next to it is the “Commercial Room,” the meeting place of all the foreign merchants who come to London. We prefer entering a saloon on the other side of the hall, the doors of which are continually opening and shutting; it is crowded with the underwriters, that is to say, with capitalists, who do business in the assurance of vessels and their freights. The telegraphic messages of vessels arrived, sailed, stranded, or lost, are first brought into this room. Whoever enters by this door walks, in the first instance, to a large folio volume which lies on a desk of its own. It is Lloyd’s Journal, containing short entries of the latest events in English ports and the sea ports in every other part of the world. It tells the underwriters whether the vessels which they have insured have sailed, whether they have been spoken with, or have reached the port of their destination. Are they over-due?—run a-ground?—wrecked?—lost?