London City

by Walter Besant

When the Reformation came, the trade of the street was annihilated. Fortunately for the poor “Paternostrers” the work of destruction was not sudden; it took time for the old services and the old ceremonies, which required their handiwork, to be abolished. What they did when the accession of the Protestant party to power closed their shops; how they got rid of their unsold stock, their piles of rosaries, beads, crucifixes, candlesticks; what new trades they learned; what bankruptcies and disasters fell upon them, no one knows. There is no chronicle to tell of the immediate effects of the Reformation on the trade and the common life of the City. It is, however, certain that the Paternostrers had to try something else.

They vanish; the historian hears no more of them; they rejoiced, we may be very sure, when Queen Mary brought back the ancient things; they trembled when Queen Elizabeth showed herself as independent and as masterful as her father.

But the place is central; it is a quiet and convenient place, retired from the noisy market; it is essentially a street for business of a quiet kind. Therefore the people who had formerly occupied the stalls of Broken Cross, the Standard, and the Great Cross, changed their quarters and took the small shops of the Paternostrers, where they sold paper, parchment, ink, pens, and the like—being the forerunners of the booksellers.

But the day of the booksellers was not yet. Paternoster Row was too large for the stationers; the mercers, silkmen, and lacemen found out the place and began to crowd out the stationers. It became the principal place for the sale of these fashionable goods; in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries all the great ladies went to Paternoster Row for their fineries; latterly the lane was thronged with carriages.

Then came the Fire.

After the Fire, according to Strype, the mercers migrated to Covent Garden, Henrietta Street, and King Street. According to Defoe, the Row was rebuilt after the Fire, for the convenience of these trades; “the spacious shops, back warehouses, skylights, and other conveniences made on purpose for their trade are still to be seen.” He goes on to say that the other traders were then dependent on the more important shops: lacemen were in Ivy Lane, button shops at the Cheapside end, shops for crewels and fringe in Blowbladder Street. He says that this continued for twenty years after the Fire, and that the mercers began then to migrate to Covent Garden, where, however, they did not remain many years. They then returned to the City and established themselves on Ludgate Hill.

But all the mercers and silkmen did not desert the Row. In 1720 there were still some “with many tirewomen.” It is at this period that we first hear of booksellers in the Row. Their previous quarters, before the Fire, had been St. Paul’s Churchyard not far off. After the Fire, some of them went to the upper end of Paternoster Row, where there were built “large warehouses for booksellers well situated for learned and studious men’s access thither, being more retired and private” (Strype). Others retreated, their stocks destroyed by the Fire, in an impoverished condition, to the cheaper street of Little Britain, where they continued for eighty years, when they began to flock into Paternoster Row.

“From the manufacture of paternosters to the publication and sale of books is a long step. The Row, however, gradually lost all its mercers, lacemen, and silkmen, and became the home of books, old and new. Other booksellers there were in other parts, but not many—Dodsley, for instance, in Pall Mall, Murray in Fleet Street, Newbery in St. Paul’s; but the greater number had their shops, being booksellers as well as publishers, in the Row. No longer did the coaches rumble along the narrow street; posts placed across forbade the passage of coach or cart; it became the most quiet street in all London. Gradually another change fell upon the place: the booksellers’ shops disappeared, and with them the throng of scholars who had been wont to meet and talk among the books. The Row became a wholesale place, whither the ‘trade’ came to buy; printers, bookbinders, and papermakers came for orders; and needy authors came, hat in hand, in the hope of picking up a guinea.

“There is a book called Travels in Town, written in the year 1839. The author, speaking of the output of books, boldly states that they had all to pass through Paternoster Row—certainly an exaggeration, but by far the greater number had to do so. The busiest day in the month was Magazine day, when the new magazines were sold to the trade. About 400,000 copies left the Row that morning. When we consider the nature of these magazines—the Gentleman, Tait’s, the New Monthly, the Metropolitan, Blackwood’s, Fraser’s—there can be no doubt that among the better class of readers the magazine occupied a much more important place then than it does at present.

“The Row kept up its character as the headquarters of the book trade for many years. But other changes have set in. There now are as many publishers outside the Row as in it. We find publishers about Covent Garden and Charing Cross; booksellers there are, of course, everywhere. The Directory gives a list of over four hundred publishers, of whom not more than forty or fifty need be taken into account. Of the four hundred, however, the Row still numbers thirty; while of booksellers, stationers, and other persons connected with the book trade, there are another thirty in the Row. So the old literary atmosphere hangs about the place, and, though most of the greater publishers are gone, there are enough left to keep up the traditions of the past. And north of the Row, in Paternoster Square and the courts and lanes, other publishers and booksellers are found who lend their name to make the Row and its vicinity still the headquarters of new books.