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Let us, friend Eighty-seven, take a walk down the Strand on this fine April afternoon of Thirty-seven. First, however, you must alter your dress a little. Put on this swallow-tail coat, with the high velvet collar—it is more becoming than the sporting coat in green bulging out over the hips; change your light tie and masher collar for this beautiful satin stock and this double breastpin; put on a velvet waistcoat and an under-waistcoat of cloth; thin Cossack trousers with straps will complete your costume; turn your shirt cuffs back outside the coat sleeve, carry your gloves in your hand, and take your cane. You are now, dear Eighty-seven, transformed into the dandy of fifty years ago, and will not excite any attention as we walk along the street.

LONDON STREET CHARACTERS, 1827

(From a Drawing by John Leech)

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.

THE LAST CABRIOLET DRIVER

(From the Drawing by George Cruikshank in ‘Sketches by Boz’)

Do you see that thin, spare gentleman in the cloak, riding slowly along the street followed by a mounted servant? The people all take off their hats respectfully to him, and country folk gaze upon him curiously. That is the Duke. There is only one Duke to the ordinary Briton. It is the Duke with the hook nose—the Iron Duke—the Duke of Wellington.

The new-fashioned cabriolet, with a seat at the side for the driver and a high hood for the fare, is light and swift, but it is not beautiful nor is it popular. The wheels are too high and the machine is too narrow. It is always upsetting, and bringing its passengers to grief.

Here is one of the new police, with blue swallow-tail coat tightly buttoned, and white trousers. They are reported to be mightily unpopular with the light-fingered gentry, with whose pursuits they are always interfering in a manner unknown to the ancient Charley.

Here comes a gentleman, darkly and mysteriously clad in a fur-lined cloak, fastened at his neck by a brass buckle, and falling to his feet, such a cloak as in your time will only be used to enwrap the villains in a burlesque. But here no one takes any notice of it. There goes a man who may have been an officer, an actor, a literary man, a gambler—anything; whatever he was, he is now broken-down—his face is pale, his gait is shuffling, his elbows are gone, his boots are giving at the toes, and—see—the stout red-faced man with the striped waistcoat and the bundle of seals hanging at his fob has tapped him on the shoulder. That is a sheriff’s officer, and he will now be conducted, after certain formalities, to the King’s Bench or the Fleet, and in this happy retreat he will probably pass the remainder of his days. Here comes a middle-aged gentleman who looks almost like a coachman in his coat with many capes and his purple cheeks. That is the famous coaching baronet, than whom no better whip has ever been seen upon the road. Here come a pair of young bloods who scorn cloaks and greatcoats. How bravely do they tread in their tight trousers, bright-coloured waistcoats, and high satin stocks! with what a jaunty air do they tilt their low-crowned hats over their long and waving locks—you can smell the bear’s grease across the road! with what a flourish do they bear their canes! Here comes swaggering along the pavement a military gentleman in a coat much befrogged. He has the appearance of one who knows Chalk Farm, which is situated among meadows where the morning air has been known to prove suddenly fatal to many gallant gentlemen. How he swings his shoulders and squares his elbows! and how the peaceful passengers make room for him to pass! He is, no doubt, an old Peninsular; there are still many like unto him; he is the ruffling Captain known to Queen Elizabeth’s time; in the last century he took the wall and shoved everybody into the gutter. Presently he will turn into the Cigar Divan—he learned to smoke cigars in Spain—in the rooms of what was once the Repository of Art; we breathe more freely when he is gone.

Here comes a great hulking sailor; his face beams with honesty, he rolls in his gait, he hitches up his wide trousers, he wears his shiny hat at the back of his head; his hair hangs in ringlets; he chews a quid; under his arm is a parcel tied in red bandanna. He looks as if he were in some perplexity. Sighting one who appears to be a gentleman recently from the country, he bears down upon him.

‘Noble captain,’ he whispers hoarsely, ‘if you like, here’s a chance that doesn’t come every day. For why? I’ve got to go to sea again, and though they’re smuggled—I smuggled them myself, your honour—and worth their weight in gold, you shall have the box for thirty shillin’. Say the word, my captain, and come round the corner with me.’

A GREENWICH PENSIONER

(From a Drawing by George Cruikshank in ‘London Characters’)

Honest tar! Shall we meet him to-morrow with another parcel tied in the same bandanna, his face screwed up with the same perplexity and anxiety to get rid of his valuable burden? You yourself, Eighty-seven, will have your confidence trick, your ring-dropper, your thimble-and-pea, your fat partridge-seller, even though the bold smuggler be no more.

AN OMNIBUS UPSET

(From Cruikshank’s ‘Comic Almanack’)

In the matter of street music we of Thirty-seven are perhaps in advance of you of Eighty-seven. We have not, it is true, the pianoforte-organ, but we have already the other two varieties—the Rumbling Droner and the Light Tinkler. We have not yet the street nigger, or the banjo, or the band of itinerant blacks, or Christy’s Minstrels. The negro minstrel does not exist in any form. But the ingenious Mr. Rice is at this very moment studying the plantation songs of South Carolina, and we can already witness his humorous personation of ‘Jump, Jim Crow,’ and his pathetic ballad of ‘Lucy Neal.’ (He made his first appearance at the Adelphi as Jim Crow in 1836.) We have, like you, the Christian family in reduced circumstances, creeping slowly, hand in hand, along the streets, singing a hymn the while for the consolation it affords. They have not yet invented Moody and Sankey, and therefore they cannot sing ‘Hold the Fort’ or ‘Dare to be a Daniel,’ but there are hymns in every collection which suit the Gridler. We have also the ballad-singer, who warbles at the door of the gin-palace. His favourite song just now is ‘All round my Hat.’ We have the lady (or gentleman) who takes her (or his) place upon the kerb with a guitar, adorned with red ribbon, and sings a sentimental song, such as ‘Speed on, my Mules, for Leila waits for me,’ or ‘Gaily the Troubadour;’ there is the street seller of ballads at a penny each, a taste of which he gives the delighted listener; there are the horns of stage-coach and of omnibus, blown with zeal; there is the bell of the crier, exercised as religiously as that of the railway-porter; the Pandean pipes and the drum walk, not only with Punch, but also with the dancing bear. The performing dogs, the street acrobats, and the fantoccini; the noble Highlander not only stands outside the tobacconist’s, taking a pinch of snuff, but he also parades the street, blowing a most patriotic tune upon his bagpipe; the butcher serenades his young mistress with the cleaver and the bones; the Italian boy delights all the ears of those who hear with his hurdy-gurdy.

EXETER CHANGE

Here comes the Paddington omnibus, the first omnibus of all, started seven years ago by Mr. Shillibeer, the father of all those which have driven the short stages off the road, and now ply in every street. You will not fail to observe that the knifeboard has not yet been invented. There are twelve passengers inside and none out. The conductor is already remarkable for his truthfulness, his honesty, and his readiness to take up any lady and to deposit her within ten yards of wherever she wishes to be. The fare is sixpence, and you must wait for ten years before you get a twopenny ’bus.

THE PARISH ENGINE

(From a Drawing by George Cruikshank in ‘Sketches by Boz’)

Now let us resume our walk. The Strand is very little altered, you think. Already Exeter Change is gone; Exeter Hall is already built; the shops are less splendid, and plate glass is as yet unknown; in Holywell Street I can show you one or two of the old signs still on the house walls; Butcher Row, behind St. Clement Danes, is pulled down and the street widened; on the north side there is standing a nest of rookeries and mean streets, where you will have your Law Courts; here is Temple Bar, which you will miss; close to Temple Bar is the little fish shop which once belonged to Mr. Crockford, the proprietor of the famous club; the street messengers standing about in their white aprons will be gone in your time; for that matter, so will the aprons; at present every other man in the street wears an apron. It is a badge of his rank and station; the apron marks the mechanic or the serving-man; some wear white aprons and some wear leather aprons; I am afraid you will miss the apron.

IN FLEET STREET—PROCLAIMING THE QUEEN.

Fleet Street is much more picturesque than the Strand, is it not? Even in your day, Eighty-seven, when so many old houses will have perished, Fleet Street will still be the most picturesque street in all London. The true time to visit it is at four o’clock on a summer morning, when the sun has just risen on the sleeping city. Look at the gables of it, the projecting stories of it, the old timber work of it, the glory and the beauty of it. As you see Fleet Street, so Dr. Johnson saw it.

CROCKFORD’S FISH SHOP

(From a Drawing by F. W. Fairholt)

There is a good deal more crowd and animation in Fleet Street than in the Strand. That is because we are nearer the City, of course; the traffic is greater; the noise is much greater. As for this ring before us, let us avoid it. A coachman fighting a ticket-porter is a daily spectacle in this thoroughfare; those who crowd round often get bloody noses for their pains, and still more often come away without their purses. Look! The pickpockets are at their work almost openly. They have caught one. Well, my friend, our long silk purses—yours will be square leather things—are very easily stolen. I do not think it will repay you for the loss of yours to see a poor devil of a pickpocket pumped upon.

You are looking again at the plain windows with the small square panes. The shops make no display as yet, you see. First, it would not be safe to put valuable articles in windows protected by nothing but a little thin pane of glass—which reminds me that in the matter of street safety you will be a good deal ahead of us; next, an honest English tradesman loves to keep his best out of sight. The streets are horribly noisy. That is quite true. You have heard of the roar of the mighty city. Your London, Eighty-seven, will not know how to roar. But you can now understand what its roaring used to be. An intolerable stir and uproar, is it not? But then your ears are not, like ours, used to it. First, the road is not macadamised, or asphalted, or paved with wood. Next, the traffic of wagons, carts, and wheelbarrows, and hand-carts, is vastly greater than you had ever previously imagined; then there is a great deal more of porter work done in the street, and the men are perpetually jostling, quarrelling, and fighting; the coaches, those of the short stages with two horses, and the long stages with four, are always blowing their horns and cracking their whips. Look at yonder great wagon. It has come all the way from Scotland. It is piled thirty feet high with packages of all kinds: baskets hang behind, filled with all kinds of things. In front there sit a couple of Scotch lasses who have braved a three weeks’ journey from Edinburgh in order to save the expense of the coach. Brave girls! But such a wagon with such a load does not go along the street in silence. It is not in silence either that the women who carry baskets full of fish on their heads go along the street, nor is the man silent who goes with a pack-donkey loaded on either side with small coal; and the wooden sledge on which is the cask of beer, dragged along by a single horse, makes by itself as much noise as all your carriages together, Eighty-seven.

And there is nothing, you observe, for the protection and convenience of passengers who wish to cross the road. Nothing at all. No policeman stands in the middle of the road to regulate the traffic; the drivers pay no heed to the foot passengers; at the corner of Chancery Lane, where the press is the thickest, the boys and the clerks slip in and out among the horses and the wheels without hurt: but how will those ladies be able to get across? They never would but for the crossing-sweeper—the most remunerative part of the work, in fact, is to convoy the ladies across the road; if he magnifies the danger of this service, and expects silver for saving the lives of his trembling clients, who shall blame him?

There are still left some of the old posts which divided the footway from the roadway, though the whole is now paved and—what, Eighty-seven? You have stepped into a dandy-trap and splashed your feet. Well, perhaps, in your day they will have learned to pave more evenly, but just at present our paving is a little rough, and the stones sometimes small, so that here and there, after rain, these things will happen.

THOMAS CHATTERTON

Here we are at Blackfriars. This is the Gate of Bridewell, where they used to flog women, and still flog the ’prentices. Yonder is the Fleet Prison, of which we have just read an account in the ‘Pickwick Papers.’ They have cleared away the old Fleet Market, which used to stand in the middle of the street, and they have planted it behind the houses opposite the Prison. Come and look at it. Let us tread softly over the stones of Farringdon Market, for somewhere beneath our feet lie the bones of poor young Chatterton. No monument has been erected here to his memory, nor is the spot known where he lies, but it is somewhere in this place, which is a tragic and mournful spot, being crammed beneath its pavement with the bones of the poor, the outcast, the broken down, the wrecks and failures of life, and littered above the pavement with the wreckage and refuse of the market. This place was formerly the burial-ground of the Shoe Lane Workhouse.

We can walk down to the Bridge and look at the river. No Embankment yet, Eighty-seven. No penny steamers, either. Yet the watermen grumble at the omnibuses which have cut into their trade.

Here comes the lamplighter, with his short ladder and his lantern.

Gas, of course, has been introduced for ever so long. They have blindly followed the old plan of lighting, and have stuck up a gas lamp wherever there used to be an oil lantern. The theatres and places of amusement are brilliant with gas, and it is gas which makes the splendour of the gin-palace. The shops took to it slowly, but they are now beginning to understand how to brighten their appearance after dark. Go into any little thoroughfare, however, and you will see the shops lit with two or three candles still.

In the small houses and the country towns the candles linger still. And such candles! For the most part they are tallow: they need constant snuffing: they drop their detestable grease everywhere—on the tablecloth, on your clothes, on the butter and on the bread. You, Eighty-seven, will be saying hard things of gas, but you do not know from what darkness, and misery of darkness, it saved your ancestors.

As for the churches, they are not yet generally provided with gas. There is some strange prejudice against it in the minds of the clergy. Yet it is not Papistical, or even freethinking. In most of them, where they have evening service, the pews are provided with two candles apiece, stuck in tin candlesticks, with four candles for the pulpit and four for the reading-desk. The effect is not unpleasing, but the candles continually require snuffing, and the operation is constantly attended with accidents, so that the church is always filled with the fragrance of smouldering tallow wicks. The repugnance to gas is so great, indeed, in some quarters, that one clergyman, the Rector of Holy Trinity, Marylebone, is going to commit all his vestrymen to the Ecclesiastical Courts because they have attempted to light the church with gas.

Here is a City funeral in one of the burial-grounds close to the crowded street; the clergyman reads the Service, and the mourners in their long black cloaks stand round the open grave, and the coffin is lowered into it, and outside there is no cessation at all to the bustle and the noise; the wagoner cracks his whip, the drover swears at his cattle, the busy men run to and fro as if the last rites were not being performed for one who has heard the call of the Messenger, and, perforce, obeyed it. And look—the mould in which the grave is dug is nothing but bits of bones and splinters of coffins. The churchyard is no longer a field of clay: it is a field of dead citizens. You, friend Eighty-seven, will manage these things better.

Here goes one of the long stages. Saw you ever a finer coach, more splendidly appointed, with better cattle? Ten miles an hour that coachman reckons upon as soon as he is clear of London. They say that in a year or two, when all the railways are opened, the stage coaches will be ruined, the horses all sold, and the English breed of horses ruined. We shall travel twenty miles an hour without stopping to change horses; the accidents will be frightful, but those who meet with none will get from London to Edinburgh in less than twenty-four hours. Next year they promise to open the London and Birmingham Railway.

3rd REGIMENT OF BUFFS

Here comes a soldier. You find his dress absurd? To be sure, his tight black stock makes his red cheeks seem swollen; his queer tall hat, with the neat red ball at the top, might be more artistic; the red shoulder roll, not the least like an epaulette, would hardly ward off a sword-cut; the coat with its swallow tail is no protection to the body or the legs; the whitened belt must cost an infinite amount of trouble to keep it fit for inspection, and a working-man’s breeches and stockings would be more serviceable than those long trousers. There are always brave fellows, however, ready to enlist; the soldier’s life is attractive, though the discipline is hard and the floggings are truly awful.

DOUGLAS JERROLD

(From the Bust by the late E. H. Bailey, R.A.)

My friend, it is half-past five, and you are tired. Let us get back to Temple Bar and dine at the Mitre, where we can take our cut off the joint for eighteen-pence. About this time most men are thinking of dinner. Buy an evening paper of the boy.

Leigh Hunt.

-LEIGH HUNT-

So: this is cosy. A newly sanded floor, a bright fire, and a goodly company. James! a clean tablecloth, a couple of candles, and the snuffers, and the last joint up. What have you got in the paper? Madagascar Embassy, Massacre in New Zealand—where the devil is New Zealand?—Suicide of Champion, who made the infernal machine, Great Distress in the Highlands, Murder of a Process-server in Ireland, Crossing of the Channel in a Balloon—I hope that some day an army may not cross it—Letter from Syria, concerning the recent Great Earthquake, Conduct of the British Legion in Spain, Seven Men imprisoned for unlawfully ringing the Bells, Death of the Oldest Woman in the World, aged 162 years, said to have been the Nurse of George Washington—a good deal of news all for one evening paper. Hush! we are in luck. Here is Douglas Jerrold. Now we shall hear something good. Here is Leigh Hunt, and here is Forster, and here—ah! this is unexpected—here comes none other than ‘Boz’ himself. Of course you know his name? It is Charles Dickens. Saw one ever a brighter eye or a more self-reliant bearing? Such self-reliance belongs to those who are about to succeed. They say his fortune is already made, though but yesterday he was a reporter in the House, taking down the speeches in shorthand. Who is that tall young man with the ugly nose? Only a journalist. They say he wrote that funny paper called ‘The Fatal Boots’ in Tilt’s Annual. His name is Thackeray, I believe, but I know nothing more about him.

JOHN FORSTER

(From a Photograph by Elliott and Fry)

Here comes dinner, with a tankard of foaming stout. Is there any other drink quite so good as stout? After you have taken your dinner, friend Eighty-seven, I shall prescribe for you what you will never get, poor wretch—a bottle of the best port in the cellars of the Mitre.

CHARLES DICKENS

My friend, there is one thing in which we of the Thirties do greatly excel you of the Eighties. We can eat like ploughboys, and we can drink like draymen. As for your nonsense about Apollinaris Water, we do not know what it means; and as for your not being able to take a simple glass of port, we do not in the least understand it. Not take a pint of port? Man alive! we can take two bottles, and never turn a hair.