The Lure of Old London

by Sophie Cole

It is invariably reserved for Mrs. Darling to bring me up bump against prosaic facts in the midst of such speculations. We were standing before the monument erected to the memory of that incredible genius, and she greeted the alabaster figure which reclines against a topographical background as an old friend. She knew all about the ghost in "'Amblet" and something about someone who committed a murder in "Macbeth". She said, referring to the nude appearance of the poet's legs, that it was hard on the men of those days who were knock-kneed, they must have felt very cold with nothing more on their nether limbs than what she described as a "pair 'er bathin' drawers". A supercilious young woman standing near turned her lorgnette on the old lady, and fearing recriminations on the part of Mrs. D., should she discover that she was an object of derision, I drew her with me to examine some old bosses which I had noticed, stacked like winter logs in a corner near.

A verger explained that they were removed from the roof of the old nave when the church was restored. He said they were all of religious significance. A gross countenance in the act of swallowing a problematical morsel represented, for instance, the devil consuming Judas, whilst a hideous face with a lolling, twisted tongue, signified the liar. There were subjects of beauty, too, and as the man proceeded with his glib interpretation of those child-like specimens of mediæval art, I pictured the wood carvers, high up in vaulted roofs, giving the reins to their varied imaginations—beautiful, devout, ugly, or grotesque; at times even bestial. What matter! No one of the worshippers below would see the result of those patient hours of work—only the sunbeams, finding entrance as they travelled from east to west, or the light of the moon, stealing like a thief in the night into the darkness and silence, touching here a rafter, there a bit of carving. And so the artist could please himself and weave his own fancies, devout or profane, beautiful or monstrous, up there all alone in the roof, and if the demons and devils he created leered at the congregations beneath, the angels smiled at them too, and meanwhile no one was the wiser or any the worse.

And now here were the old bosses which had lived solitary and unknown in the dizzy altitudes above the nave, brought down to earth to be stared at and talked about. Did they appreciate the change? And would their creators, could they have foreseen such an anti-climax, have made them different?

I suggested to Mrs. Darling that we should go and have a look at "The George Inn" while we were in the neighbourhood of the Borough High Street. A policeman of whom I inquired said he had a sort of notion he had heard of it. "Down one of those side streets that look as if there's nothing in them," he volunteered. "About the third or fourth turning."

We found the place easily, owing to the forethought of the proprietor, who had placed a notice at the entrance of the yard warning passers-by not to be misled by the appearance of its leading to nothing. The George Hotel (I was sorry he had adopted that pretentious title in place of the old word "inn") was there, the notice stated, and with thoughts of stage coaches, Sam Weller, and Mr. Pickwick I turned into the yard.

Yes, there it was, tucked away in its funny little corner, conscious, it seemed, of being left behind and forgotten in the present-day rush of life. There were the old wooden galleries, one above another, running the length of its long, flat-windowed front, the sloping, red-tiled roof with its garret windows, the coffee-room with its faded red curtains, and the entrance by a low door down a step. A waggon, with some porters in attendance, stood in front of the Great Northern Goods Depot at the farther end of the yard, but no signs of life about "The George," save a charwoman with a pail in the lower of the two galleries. This was probably owing to the fact that it was closing time: surely an opportunity for the ghosts to put in an appearance! Perhaps, though, they preferred the bustle of customers and clink of glasses. For myself, I must confess that the sight of a closed "pub" has an effect as depressing as that which attends a walk in the City streets between three and four o'clock on a Christmas afternoon.

I apologised to Mrs. Darling for not being able to offer her a drink at "The George," and we retraced our steps towards London Bridge. Some day, Agatha, I will take you to London Bridge about 4.30 on a November afternoon, when there is just the right kind of sunset to fit the picture. It was the right kind this afternoon—one of those skies suffused with rose-coloured clouds which come on like the reinforcements of a vast army under the smoke of artillery, sullenly beautiful with a mood which found its response in the river glazed with a reflection of colour over its black oily depths. Of all the sights of London this, to myself, is the most inspiring, and judging by the row of loiterers one invariably finds leaning over the parapet, there are others who fall under its spell. London Bridge says to the big ships which the Tower Bridge has opened its arms to receive, "Thus far and no farther," and there they lie in the Pool, whilst the cranes, like giant fishing-rods, angle for their booty. Villainous-looking little tugs, with sinister green lights, belch black smoke which mingles with the white steam and yellow smoke from the funnels of the large boats. Amidst coils of rope, bales of goods, and a smutty mirk, the wharf workers and sailors move like ants to the accompaniment of clanking chains and the hooting of sirens. On the sides of the ships are painted strange-looking foreign names, Dutch, Norwegian, and Greek, and Mrs. Darling awoke with surprise to the knowledge that tea from India was deposited almost on her doorstep.

Whilst we stood there a big boat moved out into mid-stream, making a stately course through the smoke-veiled sunset towards where the Tower Bridge was opening its portals with a welcome to the high seas beyond. As the vessel neared the bridge, it was as if the artist who was painting the picture had touched it here and there with the point of a luminous pencil. The pencil travelled along the blackened wharves, dotting them with pin-pricks of light, and the men on the barges and boats below began to hang out their lanthorns. It was an epic, this passing of the ship through the gates of Old Father Thames. The lights shone out to give it good speed, and the smouldering fires of sunset followed in its wake. The majesty of the scene filled one with a sense of elation, and I said to myself, "It is not for nothing that London is called 'the Heart of the Empire'".

Mrs. Darling asked me if it was true that houses were built on old London Bridge, and I quoted the description of the place by a contemporary writer: "The street," he says, "was dark, narrow, and dangerous, the houses overhanging the road so as to almost shut out the daylight," adding the information that "arches of timber crossed the street to keep the shaky old tenements from falling on each other." "London Bridge," declared an old proverb, "was made for wise men to go over and fools to go under," but when one reads such statements as "in 1401 another house on the bridge fell down, drowning five of its inhabitants," it occurs to one that there was almost as much danger overhead as below, where fifty watermen were computed to be drowned every year.

What a picture those old records paint! There can be no pictures like it in the London of to-day. Add the ghastly touch of a row of rotting heads spiked on the battlements, and you are set wondering anew at the weird psychology of the dark ages.