Picturesque Sketches of London, Past and Present

by Thomas Miller

Cows are also kept here, which, rumour says, never saw any other light beyond that of the gas which gleams through their prison-bars, or, by way of change, the cheering rays from a lantern, when they are milked or fed: that here many of them were calved, and have lived on, giving milk to a good old age—buried like the main-pipe that supplies us with water, and finding its way into our houses, without our once inquiring how. We have often pitied the London cows, which we have seen driven up one street and down another, and have fancied that what little milk they had must have been churned into indifferent butter, as they ran on, to escape the stones thrown after them by boys, while mongrels were ever sallying out, and either biting or barking at their heels; but we had not then seen those which are doomed to dwell in the unbroken darkness of the Adelphi arches, without ever breathing any other than the sepulchral air which stagnates in this murky purgatory. Assuredly, they ought to be taken out for a little fresh air now and then, and be led by the horns to

“Fresh fields and pastures new;”

for we can readily conceive how pleased and patiently they would go “blinking” along compared to those horned blackguards who come with a butt and a “a boo” at us as they return from Smithfield, and, before we have time to say “Now, stupid!” pitch us over the battlements of one of the bridges, and leave us to sink or swim.

The Adelphi arches form a little subterranean city; there is nothing like it in London: in some places you catch a glimpse of the river; a small loop-hole then lets in the light like the end of a railway-tunnel, yet seeming to diminish more than these tunnels, on account of the steep descent, until one of the steamers, in passing, appears to fill up the opening like a half-closed door. Beside these arches, there are narrow passages which go dipping down to the water-side, where on either hand houses stand looking at one another in the openings between the darkness. There is a dismal and solitary look about these tall imprisoned houses; you cannot conceive how they are entered, for there appears to be no way to them, and you conclude that they are empty. Or, if they are inhabited, you wonder if the people ever look out of these dim, dirt-ditched windows at the dead-looking walls opposite. We have turned back, and hunted up and down looking from below, but nowhere could we obtain a view of the entrance to those murderous-looking houses. We once saw a butterfly which had lost its way, and got into the little light which had stolen out to look at the entrance of these arches: it went up and down, and hither and thither, seeming to become feebler every moment, as if it had given up all hope of ever swinging with folded wings, like a peabloom, on the flowers again, and we doubted not but that it found a grave amid the green decay of some rotten water-butt.

There was a time when the great thoroughfare between Westminster and Temple Bar was all but impassable, when a petition was presented for the repairing of the highway, in which the petitioners complained that the foot-road was so overgrown with thickets and bushes that the wayfarer had difficulty to get along. Besides the brambly and thorny footpath, there were three old bridges to cross between Temple Bar and the village of Charing, which spanned the sweet streams that came tinkling all the way from Highgate-hill, passing along and edging the velvet green of many a pleasant meadow, like braids of silver, before they sent their sailing foam-bells into the bosom of the Thames. Ivy Bridge-lane and Strand Bridge-lane still mark the sites of two of these old bridges. The third was only discovered a few years ago; and, as it was but eleven feet long, every ancient stone might have been preserved and built up again over the Lee or some narrow water-course, so that we might have had another relic of bygone days to have looked upon, a bridge over which conqueror and captive had passed—tears and triumphs—from the Tower to Westminster, and from thence to the Tower again. Bolingbroke weeping—the hero of Agincourt—what a chapter could we have written on that old bridge, which was discovered while making a sewer near the church of St. Clement the Dane! It had been buried so long that not an antiquary mentions it—nowhere is it recorded by our old historians. When it was discovered, it was broken up, removed, and no one seems to know what became of the fragments. Perhaps Alfred himself might have crossed that ancient bridge when he pursued the daring Sea-King Haestings; perhaps—— But it is gone; and we should like to know the name of the surveyor who allowed it to be destroyed; in these pages he should have a “local habitation and a name” such as he deserves.

There are still standing in Holywell and Wych-street a few houses which bring before the eye the old London our forefathers inhabited—when Bluff Hal beheaded a wife before he breakfasted; and Queen Elizabeth measured not her words to her ministers if they offended her, and thought nothing of striking a nobleman, as she did the Earl of Essex, when not in a loving mood. In her endearing moments, we often picture her like a grim lioness at play with the king of the forest. We often wonder where Shakspeare was during the Sunday Essex broke out, and locked up the queen’s officers. We dare wager a silver groat, that he looked on that stormy scene in the Strand, and that, were he here to answer, we could point our pen to passages in his works which were suggested by what he either saw or heard on that memorable day.

How the warlike old barons would stare in wonderment, if it were possible that they could again “revisit the glimpses of the moon,” and see the rent-roll produced from the ground on which their towered and loop-holed palaces stood; could peep at the productions exhibited at the Society of Arts, in the Adelphi, and look back again upon the days when a flexible gauntlet, that could guard the hand yet give freedom to the grasp, or a visor through which they could see yet with the bars so tempered as to resist the point of a lance, were considered as the greatest wonders of art! How they would rub their dim old eyes at the sight of an express-train; stare at a steamer, and think what a smash and crash a couple would have made, to have run into each other at their water-quintains! Then, to send a message from Tilbury Fort to Kenilworth by the electric telegraph, where the amorous old queen was coquetting with Leicester, and she ignorant of such an invention, to tell her that the Spanish Armada was coming, would have consigned the messenger who came from the station to something like the Spanish inquisition, if not a stake at Smithfield. Oh, that we had a photographic portrait of the dear old lady, with all those nicely marked shadows, to which she had so great an objection, down to the “cunning wrinkles round her eyes!”

But we will cross over the way, and visit Covent-Garden Market, the ever-open flower-show of London. Here, when “the wind and rain beat dark December,” the costly chrysanthemum may be purchased, with which beauty decks her waving ringlets, as she shoots the arrows of love from her eyes, regardless on whom they may alight. In spring, summer, autumn, or winter, the choicest treasures of the floral world are here collected; from the conservatory and the humble cottage-garden, flowers of all hues are gathered to grace the Covent-Garden colonnades. Few places surprise a stranger more than when he emerges suddenly from that great, crowded, and noisy thoroughfare, the Strand, and finds himself all at once in this little world of flowers. In this spot are to be found the first offerings of spring; the snow-drop that comes “like an unbidden guest,” violets and primroses which have been gathered in many a far-off dell and sunny dingle, come to tell us the progress that Nature is making in the green and out-of-door world. Many a sad and many a pleasing thought must have been awakened in the bosoms of thousands who have long been in-dwellers in this mighty city, by walking through the ranks of flowers which are here placed. They must have recalled the image of some old home far away, and probably never again to be visited by them—the porch, over which the woodbine or jasmine trailed, and the garden-fence, along which the clustering moss-roses hung. Many a flower is thus borne away and treasured for the old memories it awakens, for the tender recollections it recals—feelings to which the heart had long been a stranger. For Byron has shewn how small a key can open the human heart—how slight a chord may be struck, and some slumbering affection be in a moment aroused:

“It may but be a sound—
A tone of music—summer’s eve—or spring—
A flower—striking the electric chain.”

Here are purchased the cut flowers that decorate the banquet and ball-room—the posy which the blushing bride bears with downcast look in her hand—the bouquet which is rained down at the feet of our favourite actresses; and here also affection comes for its last tribute to place beside the pale face of the beloved dead, or plant around the grave in the cemetery. The house of mirth and the house of mourning are both supplied from the same common store. Pride, love, interest, fame, and death come here to select their garlands.