We will start from Charing Cross and will walk towards the City. You cannot remember, Eighty-seven, the King’s Mews that stood here on the site of Trafalgar Square. When it is completed, with the National Gallery on the north side, the monument and statue of Nelson, the fountains and statues that they talk about, there will be a very fine square. And we have certainly got rid of a group of mean and squalid streets to make room for the square. It is lucky that they have left Northumberland House, the last of the great palaces that once lined the Strand.
THE KING’S MEWS IN 1750
(From a Print by I. Maurer)
The Strand looks very much as it will in your time, though the shop fronts are not by any means so fine. There is no Charing Cross Station or Northumberland Avenue; most of the shops have bow windows and there is no plate-glass, but instead, small panes such as you will only see here and there in your time. The people, however, have a surprisingly different appearance. The ladies, because the east wind is cold, still keep to their fur tippets, their thick shawls, and have their necks wrapped round with boas, the ends of which hang down to their skirts, a fashion revived by yourself; their bonnets are remarkable structures, like an ornamental coal-scuttle of the Thirty-seven, not the Eighty-seven, period, and some of them are of surprising dimensions, and decorated with an amazing profusion of ribbons and artificial flowers. Their sleeves are shaped like a leg of mutton; their shawls are like a dining-room carpet of the time—not like your dining-room carpet, Eighty-seven, but a carpet of flaunting colour, crimson and scarlet which would give you a headache. But the curls of the younger ladies are not without their charms, and their eyes are as bright as those of their grandchildren, are they not?
Let us stand still awhile and watch the throng where the tide of life, as Johnson said, is the fullest.
BARRACK AND OLD HOUSES ON THE SITE OF TRAFALGAR SQUARE
(From a Drawing made by F. W. Fairholt in 1826)
Here comes, with a roll intended for a military swagger, the cheap dandy. I know not what he is by trade; he is too old for a medical student, not shabby enough for an attorney’s clerk, and not respectable enough for a City clerk. Is it possible that he is a young gentleman of very small fortune which he is running through? He wears a tall hat broader at the top than at the bottom, he carries white thread gloves, sports a cane, has his trousers tightly strapped, wears a tremendously high stock, with a sham diamond pin, a coat with a velvet collar, and a double-breasted waistcoat. His right hand is stuck—it is an aggressive attitude—in his coat-tail pocket. The little old gentleman who follows him, in black shorts and white silk stockings, will be gone before your time; so will yonder still more ancient gentleman in powdered hair and pigtail who walks slowly along. Pigtails in your time will be clean forgotten as well as black silk shorts.