London

by Walter Besant

THE VIEW OF LONDON BRIDGE FROM EAST TO WEST

The people lived among the ruins but regarded them not, any more than the vigorous growth within the court of a roofless Norman castle regards the donjon and the walls. They did not inquire into the history of the ruins; they did not want to preserve them; they took away the stones and sold them for new buildings.

It was very remarkable and very fitting that on the site of the Grey Friars' House should be erected a great school. The teaching of the new thought was established in the place where those dwelt who had been the most stalwart defenders of the old. It was also very remarkable and very fitting that within the walls of Black Friars' Abbey, the home of austerity and authority, should rise a play-house for the dramas of free thought and human passion. It was further remarkable and very fitting that the house of the Carthusian monks, those who had fled from the work, and war, and temptations of the world, those who, while yet living, were already dead, should be converted into a home for those who were broken down and spent with that very work and war, a place where they could meditate in their old age over the storm and struggle of the past.

Once arrived at the second half of the sixteenth century we are in modern times. We have maps, surveys, descriptions of the city; we have literature in plenty to illustrate the manners of the time. There is no longer any doubt upon any point. The daily life of London under Elizabeth and the first James may be learned in all its details, by any one who will take the trouble to read, as easily as the daily life in our own time. Perhaps more easily, because things which are so trivial and yet mean so much are passed over or taken for granted in the literature of our day. But let no one be content with reading the modern books upon the Elizabethan period. They contain a great deal, but the literature of the time itself is a storehouse, into which every one who wishes, however lightly, to study the time should look for himself. And it is a storehouse so full that no man can hope to exhaust though he could carry out of it load upon load of treasure.

THE POOL

Before me hangs a fac-simile of the map made by Ralph Agas. "Civitas Londinium." One remarks first, that the part lying south of Chepe is still the most crowded, yet not so crowded that there are no open spaces. Between Size Lane, for instance, and Walbrook is a great garden. Behind Whittington College is a large open court, which was also certainly a garden. There are gardens in Blackfriars of which the only remains at the present day are the pretty little square called Wardrobe Court and the tiny garden—I believe there is still one other garden left—at the back of the rectory of St. Andrew's. North of Chepe the streets are wider, and the open spaces larger and more frequent. At Grey Friars, already the Bluecoat School, the courts of the monastery are yet standing with the church, and the great garden still stretches unto the city wall; in the corner of the wall, where is now Monkwell Street, with Barber Surgeon's Hall, is a fine large garden. On either side of Coleman Street there are very extensive gardens; those on the west belonged to the Augustine Friars, the last remnant of which, the Drapers' Garden, was built over a few years ago to the enrichment of the Company and the loss of the city. Some part of the gardens of the Holy Trinity Priory remain. There are gardens and trees and an open space within Aldgate; and an open court, or series of courts, where had been the nunnery of St. Helen's. Without the walls, on the east, East Smithfield is a large field, with paths across. The sites of New Abbey and the convent of the Clare Sisters are marked by courts and gardens. Houses stand north and south along the Whitechapel Road, but not far; a single row of houses runs along Hound's ditch from Aldgate to Bishopsgate. Without the latter there is a line of houses as far as Shoreditch Church, and here the open country begins. Finsbury and Moorfields are to a great extent divided up into gardens, each with its house, reminding one of Stubbes's complaint against the citizens' wives and daughters, that they use their husbands' gardens outside the walls for purposes of intrigue. All round the north and east of the city the people could step out of the gates into the country. Except the houses of Bishopsgate Without and the Whitechapel Road, there was nothing but fields and open ground. Around St. Giles, Cripplegate, however, we find a suburb already populous. About Smithfield the houses gather thickly. We observe the familiar names of Little Britain, Pye Corner, Cock Lane, and Hoosier Lane. Holborn, with gardens on the north, has a double line of houses as far as Chancery Lane. Where is now Blackfriars Bridge Road stood the palace of Bridewell, with its two square courts and its gabled front facing the river. Whitefriars is partly built upon, but some of the courts and gardens remain. The lawns of the Temple, planted with elms, slope down to the river, and these were followed westward by the palaces along the Strand—Exeter House, Arundel House, the Bishop of Llandaff's house, Somerset House, the Savoy, Bedford House, Cecil House, Northumberland House, and the rest, of which Somerset House alone remains, and that in altered guise. There are no docks as yet. The lading and the unlading of the ships continued almost until this century to be done in the Pool below London Bridge by barges and lighters.

In considering the people of London in the time of good Queen Bess one is forced to put the poets and dramatists first, because they are the chief glory of this wonderful reign. Yet such a harvest could only spring from a fruitful soil. Of such temper as were the poets, so also—so courageous, so hopeful, so confident—were the inarticulate mass for whom they sang and spoke. Behind Kit Marlowe, Greene, and Peele were the turbulent youth, prodigal of life, eager for joy, delighting in feast and song, always ready for a fight, extravagant in speech and thought, jubilant in their freedom from the tyranny of the Church. Behind Spenser and Sydney were the cultivated class, whose culture has never been surpassed. Behind Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Massenger, and Beaumont, and the rest were the people of all conditions, from Gloriana herself down to Bardolph and Doll. We can only get at the people through those who write about them. Therefore we must needs say something about the Elizabethan poets.