CHAPTER XLI.
GENERAL REMARKS AND CONCLUSION.
"A portraiture of London! It is Babel
In greatness, in confusion, and in change;
But yet there's order in it."—Babylon the Great.
A General View of London—Length of its Streets, and Number of Dwellings—Growth of London since the Time of Henry VIII.—The Population
at Various Periods since 1687—The Population of London compared with that of other Cities—Recent Alterations and Improvements in the
Streets of London—The Food and Water Supply—Removal of Sewage—The Mud and Dust of London—Churches and Hospitals—Places
of Amusement—Concluding Observations.
We have now journeyed together—it is to be
hoped pleasantly, and not wholly without profit—for six years, traversing one by one the highways
and byways of the metropolis, but always, as we
promised, within sight of the cross and ball of St.
Paul's Cathedral—objects which, from first to last,
we have kept steadily in view. We have, nevertheless, rambled over several hundred miles of
ground—from Highgate and Hornsey in the north
to Norwood and Streatham in the south, and from
the river Lea in the east to Chiswick in the far
west; and covering altogether an area upwards of
one hundred square miles in extent. It will, however, be our duty, before we actually part company,
to take our stand as it were upon the vantageground of some breezy height, and to give our
readers a general view of the vast city which we
have traversed in detail, and on which we may be
supposed to be looking down: our view extending,
in the happy and epigrammatic words of Mr. G.
A. Sala, over a sort of panorama—"from where
the town begins to where it ends; from the marshy
flats below Deptford to the twinkling lights of
Putney and Kew."
Standing, then, in this exalted (mental) position,
and surveying the expanse before us, we see at our
feet London, to use the phrase of the Brothers
Percy, "stretching out its arms, like a second
Briareus, in every direction," swallowing up all the
villas in our environs, and making them gradually
part and parcel of the capital. In order, however, to make our general view of London at all
permanently interesting and useful, it will be desirable here to add a few generalisations, based on
recent Parliamentary returns and other statistics.
First, then, according to a recent estimate, the
total length of the streets of London is about 2,500
miles; whilst the entire number of houses—"inhabited, uninhabited, and building"—concentrated,
at the time of taking the census of 1871, within
the area of "London according to Act of Parliament," amounted to rather more than 455,000; so
that, adding the average annual rate of domiciliary
increase (7,500), there must now be some 52,500
more, or 507,500 dwellings altogether. It has
been calculated that this large number of houses,
with an average frontage of five yards, would be
more than sufficient to form one continuous row of
buildings round the island of Great Britain, from
the Land's End to John o'Groat's, from John
o'Groat's to the North Foreland, and from the
North Foreland back again to the Land's End, or
1,460 miles altogether.
When we look at the great metropolis from an
antiquarian point of view, there is much to interest
in its gradual growth. Not to speak of the City
proper, which, as a matter of fact, has for centuries
been almost stationary, we may gain a general idea
of the outlying districts of London under King
Henry VIII. from some expressions in an Act of
Parliament passed in the fifteenth year of his reign,
and which regulates the extent of jurisdiction given
to the wardens of certain City companies with
respect to the control of apprentices. Under this
Act certain rights were given to these gentlemen
"within two miles of the City, namely, within the
town of Westminster, the parishes of St. Martinin-the-Fields, Our Lady in the Strand, St. Clement's
Danes without Temple Bar, St. Giles'-in-the-Fields,
St. Andrew's, Holborn; the town and borough
of Southwark, Shoreditch, Whitechapel parish,
Clerkenwell parish, St. Botolph without Aldgate,
St. Catharine's, near the Tower, and Bermondsey
Street." Most of these suburbs had no point of
contact with the City, and few had any contact
with each other or any continuous buildings. Both
St. Giles' and St. Martin's parishes were then literally "in the Fields," as, indeed, was St. Andrew's,
in Holborn; Marylebone and Islington are not
even mentioned; while Westminster, Clerkenwell,
Shoreditch, Whitechapel, and the Strand consisted
entirely of mansions of the nobility, standing in
their own gardens.
The suburbs, therefore, in the reign of which we
speak, must have been nearly void of buildings.
From the map of Ralph Aggas, published about
the year 1560, it appears that almost the whole of
the metropolis was confined, even at that time,
nearly half a century later, within the City walls.
Certainly a few straggling houses fringed one side
of the Strand, and a few more stood round about
Smithfield. Open fields were under grass close to
the City walls throughout almost its whole northern
circumference; while those houses which stood
within them were for the most part detached and
accommodated with gardens. The village of St.
Giles's lay entirely isolated across the open country.
A single street led up Holborn, almost as far as
Chancery Lane; between that point and Somerset
House the space was entirely occupied by fields
and gardens. There were also many gardens and
open spaces within the City itself, and more particularly along the wall, within which a considerable
space was kept clear round the whole circuit, like
the Pomærium of ancient Rome. The largest area
occupied by gardens was immediately behind Lothbury. In the eastern and south-eastern parts of
the City a great many spots were similarly appropriated. And yet, within this very limited compass
of inhabited ground was crowded a population of
constant dwellers, amounting to not less than
130,000, or perhaps more than twice the number
of those who regularly sleep within the same area
at the present time.
Carefully, however, as its successive changes may
be described, it is hardly possible for words to
convey so clear and definite an impression of the
alterations which have from time to time been
made in our metropolis as may be gained from the
inspection of an old map of London and comparing
it with one of the present day. Thus, for instance,
in a map issued between 1680 and 1690, the Thames
is invested with an unusual degree of importance,
and from the number of landing-places and stairs
marked down it is evident that the Londoners of
that day must have been very fond of the water,
and must, moreover, have spent much time upon
it. Berkeley House, Albemarle House, and Burlington House stood in the green fields, which have
since been covered over with dwelling-places and
christened Piccadilly. Near "So Ho" we find
"the road to Oxford," and hard by "the road to
Hampstead" is indicated. The former of these is
now styled Oxford Street, and the other Tottenham
Court Road. Bloomsbury had in it a few houses,
while Clerkenwell was the residence of various
dukes, earls, and others of the nobility.
Passing on a few years further, Lord Macaulay
observes, in his "History of England," that "whoever examines the maps of London which were published towards the close of the reign of Charles II.
will see that only the nucleus of the present capital
then existed. The town did not, as now, fade
by imperceptible degrees into the country. No
long avenues of villas, embowered in lilacs and
laburnums, extended from the great centre of
wealth and civilisation almost to the boundaries of
Middlesex and far into the heart of Kent and
Surrey. In the east, no part of the immense line
of warehouses and artificial lakes which now
stretches from the Tower to Blackwall had even
been projected. On the west, scarcely one of
those stately piles of building which are inhabited
by the noble and wealthy was in existence; and
Chelsea, which is now peopled by more than forty
thousand human beings, was a quiet country village,
with about a thousand inhabitants. On the north,
cattle fed and sportsmen wandered with dogs and
guns over the site of the borough of Marylebone,
and over far the greater part of the space now
covered by the boroughs of Finsbury and of the
Tower Hamlets. Islington was almost a solitude;
and poets loved to contrast its silence and repose
with the din and turmoil of the monster London.
On the south, the capital is now connected with its
suburb by several bridges, not inferior in magnificence and solidity to the noblest works of the
Cæsars. In 1685 a single line of irregular arches,
overhung by piles of mean and crazy houses, and
garnished, after a fashion worthy of the naked
barbarians of Dahomy, with scores of mouldering
heads, impeded the navigation of the river."
We pass on to the London of Queen Anne's
reign, and find that its expansion, though considerable, had not been very rapid during that half
century. "A New Map of the Cityes of London,
Westminster, and the Borough of Southwark, together with the Suburbs, as they are now standing,"
was issued in 1707. What the suburbs were at that
date may be judged from the fact that the map
extends only from Haberdashers' Hospital, Hoxton,
on the north, to St. Mary Magdalen's, Bermondsey,
on the south; and from Stepney on the east to Buckingham House on the west; the City wall, with its
gates, being duly indicated. From a note we learn
that the spot now known as the Seven Dials was
then called "Cock and Pye-fields." In another
map, published about 1600, a note is made respecting "the prodigious increase of building and other
alterations of ye Names and Situation of Street,
&c., in this last Sentry (century)." Here, too, the
City wall is very carefully shown, and the several
gates are marked, the quaintness of the spelling
being most interesting and even amusing; as, for
instance, where just outside the boundary, near
"All Gate," is marked "Ye Goounefownders hs."
(The Gun-founder's house), its character being indicated by the presence of a cannon within the enclosure. In one point, however, this map may
serve to show that our forefathers were wiser than
ourselves; for ample provision seems to have been
made for open-air sports, and the fields which
stretched out on all hands furnished the young
citizens with as much room as they could well require for the development of any "muscular"
theories which may then have been in vogue.
Under the four Georges, however, more rapid
strides were made in the gradual extension of the
metropolis, the erection of new houses being no
longer prohibited by jealous legislation, and free
trade being established in building for the necessities of the growing population. The great increase in our national manufactures and commerce
which followed the establishment of peace, in 1815,
brought a large access to the population of London,
and these persons required to be accommodated
with houses near the scene of their daily labours.
Hence Islington, and Kensington, and South Lambeth, and Hackney, and Dalston were each doubled
in population and in houses; and the introduction
of railways in the second and third quarters of the
present century has more than doubled the
entire London over which George III. was king.
The population of London and its suburbs was
calculated by Sir William Petty, in 1687, to be
696,000; Gregory King, in 1697, by the hearthmoney, made it 530,000; and yet, by actual census
in 1801, including Westminster, Southwark, and
the adjacent hills, it proved to be only 864,845.
From 1801 to 1841—that is, in forty years—the
population of London advanced from 864,000 to
1,873,000. In forty years the metropolis had increased above a million, or more than through all
the previous history of the kingdom. In ten years
more it had swelled to 2,361,640, or nearly half a
million more; and it was calculated, as far back as
1854, that the annual increase of the population of
London was at the rate of 40,000 souls. Accordingly, in 1861 it had risen to 2,803,034, being
an increase in ten years of 441,394 souls. In
1871, again, this number had swelled to 3,266,987,
to which, if the average yearly rate of increase has
been maintained since that date—of which there
is little doubt—we may now add, at least, another
half million.
Comparing the population of the metropolis
with that of other cities, it may be stated that
London contains nearly twice as many people as
Pekin (one of the most densely populated capitals
in the world); almost thrice as many persons as
Jeddo; and treble the number of the inhabitants
of Paris; more than four times as many as there
are in New York; nearly seven times as many as
St. Petersburg; eight times as many as Vienna,
Madrid, or Berlin; nine times as many as Naples,
Calcutta, Moscow, or Lyons; thirteen times as
many as Lisbon, Grand Cairo, Amsterdam, or Marseilles; not less than twenty times as many as
Hamburg, Mexico, Brussels, or Copenhagen; and
very nearly thirty times as many as Dresden,
Stockholm, Florence, or Frankfort. Further, in
comparison with our own large cities, it contains
nearly eight times as many people as the united
towns of Manchester and Salford, and the same
proportion as regards Liverpool; nine times as
many as Glasgow; twelve times as many as Birmingham; fourteen times as many as Dublin; and
upwards of twenty times as many as Edinburgh.
In England the following are the fifteen largest
towns: Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds,
Sheffield, Bristol, Wolverhampton, Newcastle, Plymouth, Bradford, Portsmouth, Stoke-upon-Trent,
Hull, Oldham, and Sunderland; and yet their
joint population is less than that of London by
nearly 30,000 souls. This may not be surprising
when we are told that five births occur every hour,
and that in one week nearly 900 are added to the
inhabitants of the metropolis.
A writer in the St. James's Magazine (1871) observes that "our metropolitan population is nearly
three times as large as that of the Papal States,
nearly three times as much as the whole population of Norway; it exceeds by 300,000 the whole
population of Portugal, by 1,300,000 that of Switzerland, by 200,000 that of Roumania. It exceeds
that of Canada by 80,000, and surpasses that of
the Netherlands by more than half a million. Yet
these two countries include independent states,
strong and stable monarchies, while London is but
a city: still, she is the Niagara of cities. The roar
of her population is heard afar off; and, as one
man is as another in these days, she is, at the
lowest estimate, even by the rule of counting heads,
the most important place in the world."
Again, a writer in the City Press pointed out, in
1870, that the population of ten Londons would
equal that of all Great Britain and Ireland; and that
of three hundred and fifty Londons would people the
whole globe. "Every eight minutes of every day of
every year," he adds, "one person dies in London;
and in every five minutes of every day in the year
one is born. London contains 100,000 winter
tramps, 40,000 costermongers, 30,000 paupers in
the unions; with a criminal class of 16,000, out
of whom, in 1867, it was found that only 7,000
could read or write. Suppose an average town
with a population of 10,000 persons; there are in
London, on Sunday, as many people at work as
would fill ten such towns, and as many gin-drinkers
as would fill fourteen. Two such towns London
could people with fallen women; one with
gamblers; three with thieves and receivers of stolen
goods; and two with children trained in crime. It
comprises two such towns of French people, four
of Germans, one of Greeks, and more Jews than
are to be found in all Palestine. It has as many
Irish as would fill the city of Dublin, and more
Roman Catholics than would fill the city of Rome.
It has 20,000 public-houses and beer-shops,
frequented by 500,000 people as customers. In
London, one in every 890 is insane; there is one
baker for every 1,200 persons, one butcher for
every 1,500, one grocer for every 1,800, and one
publican for every 650."
To place the matter in another point of view, we
may state that the size of "Greater London," with
its population of three and a quarter millions (according to the last census returns), may be inferred
from the fact that if the metropolis was surrounded
by a wall having a north gate, a south gate, an east
gate, and a west gate, each of the gates being of
sufficient width to allow a column of persons to
pass out freely six abreast, and a peremptory necessity required the immediate evacuation of the
city, the task could not be accomplished under
four-and-twenty hours, by the expiration of which
time the head of each of the four columns would
have advanced a no less distance than seventy-five
miles from its gate, all the people being in close
file, six deep. Or, to take another illustration: if
all the Londoners of to-day, men, women, and
children, were to stand joined shoulder to shoulder,
the line formed by them would stretch nearly from
one end of England to the other. Again, if the
entire people of the capital were to be drawn up
in marching order, two and two, and each couple to
be two feet apart from the next, the aggregate
length of the great army of Londoners would be
not less than 662 miles, or long enough to reach
from London to Inverness; while, supposing the
file to move at the rate of three miles an hour, it
would take more than nine days and nights for
the aggregate troop of the metropolitan population
to pass by.
But notwithstanding the alarm which politicians
and legislators have at various times expressed,
and perhaps felt, at its growth, London has constantly advanced, amidst all impediments and
interruptions, to its present gigantic size; and,
what is more, it still continues to advance. Conjecture scarcely dares to fix its limits, for every
succeeding year we see some waste ground in the
suburbs covered with dwellings, some little village
or hamlet in the suburbs united by a continuous
street to the great metropolis; until what once,
and that at no remote period, was a portion of its
environs now forms an integral part of one great
and compact city, likely to verify the prediction of
James I. that "England will shortly be London,
and London England."
London, then, may well be termed "Babylon
the Great;" for even if we accept the statements
of Herodotus without any discount, the circuit of
ancient Babylon, with its palaces and hanging
gardens, was only 120 stadia, or furlongs; and it
reckoned its inhabitants only by myriads, or tens
of thousands, and not by millions. Yet the great
aggregate of houses called London must now be
larger by far than that of ancient Babylon; and
at the next census it will appear that the men,
women, and children who live within "Greater
London" do not fall far short of four million souls.
Even during the six years occupied in the production of this work the course of events has been
travelling on so fast that we have every reason to
believe the population of "Greater London" has
been increased by several thousands; and consequently, as may be easily imagined, whilst we have
been writing London has not been standing still in
other respects in order that we may take a photograph of its present aspect. Great alterations for
the better have been effected in the dwellings of
the poorer inhabitants in many parts of the metropolis, chiefly in consequence of the formation of
new streets. Model lodging-houses have been
erected in several localities, many of them being the
result of the generous gift of Mr. George Peabody
to the poor of London; whilst it appears, from the
latest reports, that about 1,000 families (averaging
four persons each) are in residence in these buildings.
Again, Board-schools—in most cases structures of
some architectural pretensions—have been erected
in almost every district in the metropolis; and in
many of our new thoroughfares (such, for instance,
as in those caused by the formation of the Holborn
Viaduct) the ornamental character of our street
architecture is very striking. Then, again, buildings
which a few years ago were at a standstill in consequence of commercial depression or "strikes"
have been completed, and have taken rank with
the older institutions of London. As an instance
in point we may mention the Inns of Court Hotel,
which, when we wrote our account of Lincoln's Inn
Fields, was an unfinished carcase, deserted and
desolate in appearance, (fn. 1) but is now one of the
largest and busiest hotels in London. After many
years of labour, a large and costly monument of
the Duke of Wellington has been completed in
St. Paul's Cathedral; and "Cleopatra's Needle,"
which has been brought to England at the expense
of a private individual, has been brought to the
Victoria Embankment, after having undergone in
its transit from the banks of the Nile a considerable
risk of foundering in the Bay of Biscay. The first
experiments have been made in lighting our gaslamps by electric currents, the scene of these experiments, curiously enough, being Pall Mall, where,
as stated by us, (fn. 2) the first experiment was made in
lighting the streets of London with gas, some
seventy years ago. To this we may add that the
telephone, the most recent of our scientific acquirements, promises, at no distant date, to throw the
telegraph into the shade. Even since we took our
pen in hand at the commencement of the last
volume of this work, the Surrey Gardens and
Cremorne have been blotted out of existence;
whilst, per contra, we may record the fact that at
least one step has been taken towards freeing the
metropolitan bridges from toll. Temple Bar, too,
has been swept away, and the New Law Courts,
adjoining it, are nearly completed. So quickly is
the "Old London" absorbed in the "New!"
CHISWICK MALL, IN 1820.
With such a vast and varied population before
us, it may be of interest to pass for a moment to
the commissariat department, and glance at the
food supply for this "noble army" of Londoners,
the supply of bread, water, and gas, and the various
other domestic and social arrangements whereby it
"lives and moves, and has its being."
In the Middle Ages, as we learn from Stow, the
citizens of London were mainly dependent for
their daily bread on the bakers of Stratford-le-Bow,
who seem to have enjoyed the privilege of bringing
their "long carts laden with bread" into the City.
But in respect of our supply of bread, as well as in
other branches of commerce, free trade has long
prevailed. As we learn from the last edition of
the "London Post Office Directory," there are
some 200 corn-merchants engaged in supplying the
metropolis with corn and grain, about 140 corn
and flour-factors, about 500 corn-dealers, about 50
millers, 2,500 bakers, and some 900 confectioners.
Kent, Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk have always
contributed very largely towards supplying London
with corn and grain; but since the introduction of
Free Trade, under the administration of Sir Robert
Peel, great quantities of corn are brought from
foreign parts. Of the average quantities of corn
which change hands in the London market, as
well as the regulations enforced in conducting the
business, ample details will be found in our notice
of the Corn Exchange. (fn. 3) Of meat and vegetables
we have already spoken at some length in our
accounts (fn. 4) of the Metropolitan Meat and Cattle
Markets, Covent Garden, and other places set apart
for these articles of daily consumption.
The water-supply of London is a subject which
has long engaged the serious attention of the
Legislature, and frequent official reports are issued,
under the auspices of the Local Government Board,
with respect to the quality of the water supplied by
the several Metropolitan Water Companies. As
to its quantity, it will be sufficient to state that the
water used in London for the purposes of drinking,
washing, street-cleansing, and the extinction of fires,
amounts to upwards of 100,000,000 gallons daily,
supplied by eight different companies. (fn. 5)
Our metropolitan water-supply is apparently
well watched by a paternal government. An
official report is made monthly by an official inspector as to the condition of the "intake," the
filter-beds, and the volume of supply of each company. The water is also analysed monthly by
duly-qualified public analysts. A yearly report, by
the auditor of the accounts, is likewise made to the
Board of Works as to the fiscal condition of each
undertaking. A report, issued in 1875, states that
the number of miles of streets which contain watermains constantly charged, and upon which hydrants
could at once be fixed, was no less than 667 miles.
Herodotus was thought to be telling fables when
he recorded the story of the Xanthus and other
rivers in Thrace being dried up by the thirsty souls
who composed the invading army of Xerxes; but
when we state that in 1877 the average daily consumption of water in London was about 119,000,000
gallons, or nearly thirty gallons per head of the
population, it would almost appear that we are
by degrees drifting into a condition when we shall
be in danger of drying up our own rivers by the
same means. "What other city in the world," it
has been asked, "has provided for the comfort,
direct or indirect, of each individual of its population,
a daily supply of so many gallons of this chief
article of life?" The contrast is indeed striking
between this state of things and the ancient conduits, which doled out water in retail! Whether,
therefore, there is any truth or not in the statement
of Herodotus respecting the rivers of Thrace, we
may certainly assert that in London we have exhausted our rivers, though in another way; for at
all events one river has disappeared during the last
ten or fifteen years by the drying up of the Fleet, (fn. 6)
which in former times wound sluggishly down from
the northern heights of Hampstead, and mingled
its slimy contents with the "silvery" Thames.
Since the introduction of gas for lighting the
streets of London, about seventy years ago, of
which we have spoken in our account of Pall Mall, (fn. 7)
both the demand and supply have been on a par
with the increase of the population.
London affords, in theory at any rate, a good
example to other towns as to the removal of street
refuse and sewage matter. Since the establishment
of the General Board of Health the metropolis has,
in this respect, taken and kept the lead. From
and after the year 1847 the abolition of cesspools
and the drainage of houses into the sewers had
been made compulsory, and upwards of 30,000
cesspools were so abolished in the space of six
years. But the evil was only transferred, not
removed, for all the sewers by which the cesspools
were superseded flowed directly into the Thames;
the result was that in about ten years from the
commencement of this reform the foulness of the
river became unbearable, and measures were taken
for the construction of a system of main-drainage,
by means of which the sewage is conveyed to a
more harmless distance. Of this system of drainage
we have already spoken at length in our chapter on
"Underground London." (fn. 8) By this system, called
the London Main-Drainage Works, is effected the
removal of the sewage of a population numbering
nearly four millions, packed within an area of 117
square miles. This is conducted to Crossness,
fourteen miles below London Bridge, and ultimately
discharged into the German Ocean. Some time
ago it was alleged on the part of the Conservancy
Board that the matter in suspension was forming a
deposit off the outlet, which not only had a tendency to occasion sanitary evils, but also threatened
in some degree to interfere with the navigation.
The engineer of the works, Sir Joseph Bazalgette,
however, has published the result of a careful
inquiry, which goes to show that, instead of causing
obstruction or offensive deposit, the effect of the
outflow at Crossness is to scour the channel, the
estuarian deposit in that part of the river having
been considerably reduced in quantity between
1867 and 1878, during which period systematic
soundings have been taken by order of the board.
It is therefore satisfactory to find that if the sewage
is not yet utilised for the production of food it is
not producing bad effects on the community.
From speaking of its sewers, our thoughts naturally pass to the mud and dust of London. In a
previous volume we have made mention of the
ash-mounds that were once to be seen in the neighbourhood of King's Cross, (fn. 9) the hidden treasures
of some of which may perhaps have suggested to
Charles Dickens the character of the "Golden
Dustman," in his work entitled "Our Mutual
Friend." That a great deal more is consigned
to the dust-bin than need be, in the shape of
"waste," there is little doubt; indeed, M. Soyer
used to say that he could feed 100,000 people
daily in London with what is thrown into the dustholes of the vast city.
It is often said that every man in his lifetime
eats a peck at least of dirt; but the Londoner, in
all probability, swallows much more than a bushel,
if there be truth in the following statement, which
we find seriously made in the Quarterly Review a
few years ago:—"The 300,000 houses of London
are interspaced by a street surface averaging about
forty-four square yards per house, and therefore
measuring collectively about thirteen and a quarter
million square yards, of which a large proportion
is paved with granite. Upwards of 200,000 pair
of wheels, aided by a considerably larger number
of iron-shod horses' feet, are constantly grinding
this granite to powder, which powder is mixed with
from two to ten cart-loads of horse-droppings per
mile of street per diem, besides an unknown quantity of the sooty deposits discharged from half a
million of smoking chimneys. In wet weather these
several materials are beaten up into the thin, black,
gruel-like compound known as London mud; of
which the watery and gaseous parts are evaporated,
during sunshine, into the air we breathe, while the
solid particles dry into a subtle dust, whirled up in
clouds by the wind and the horses' feet. These
dust-clouds are deposited on our rooms and furniture; on our skins, our lips, and on the air-tubes
of our lungs. The close, stable-like smell and
flavour of the London air, the rapid soiling of our
hands, our linen, and the hangings of our rooms,
bear ample witness to the reality of this evil, of
which every London citizen may find a further and
more significant indication in the dark hue of the
particles deposited by the dust-laden air in its
passage through the nasal respiratory channels.
To state this matter plainly, and without mincing
words, there is not at this moment a man in London,
however scrupulously clean, nor a woman, however
sensitively delicate, whose skin and clothes and
nostrils are not of necessity more or less loaded
with a compound of powdered granite, soot, and
still more nauseous substances. The particles
which to-day fly in clouds before the scavenger's
broom, fly in clouds before the parlour-maid's
brush, and next darken the water in our toiletbasins, or are wrung by the laundress from our
calico and cambric."
Of the ninety-eight parish churches within the
walls of the City at the time of the Great Fire of
1666, only thirteen escaped the general havoc
which was made by the conflagration. Of those
destroyed—eighty-five in number—about fifty were
rebuilt, several others being united to those of
other parishes. Pepys, in his "Diary," under date
of Jan. 7, 1667–8, makes the following singular
remarks concerning the churches destroyed in the
fire:—"It is observed, and is true, in the late Fire
of London that the fire burned just as many parish
churches as there were hours from the beginning to
the end of the fire; and next, that there were just
as many churches left standing in the rest of the
City that was not burned, being, I think, thirteen
in all of each; which is pretty to observe." Of
late years, even during the progress of this work,
several of the City churches have been swept away,
the parishes to which they belonged being united
to others, under Act of Parliament. The churches
now standing in the City are about eighty in all;
and according to Mr. Mackeson's "Guide to the
Churches of London and its Suburbs for 1878,"
there are about 1,000 in the entire metropolis, the
sacred edifices in the suburbs having been more
than doubled since the accession of Queen Victoria.
It is refreshing to know that suffering humanity
is not forgotten in this "great world of London;"
and some idea of the benevolence of Londoners
may be gathered from the fact that there are no
less than sixty-five general hospitals for the relief
and treatment of the various "ills that flesh is
heir to." Besides these, there are scores of other
charitable institutions of a special kind, such as
dispensaries, invalid and convalescent hospitals,
lunatic asylums, homes and refuges; institutions for
the blind, for the deaf and dumb, for incurables,
for nurses, for relief of distress, for gentlewomen,
for needlewomen, for widows, for infants, for
orphans, for the protection of women, for emigration, for employment, for labouring classes, for the
benefit of the clergy, dissenting ministers, Jews,
soldiers, sailors, discharged prisoners, and debtors;
and, lastly, penitentiaries for women. We may add
that the number of paupers in the metropolis (ex
clusive of lunatics and vagrants) receiving parochial
assistance is, on an average, from 80,000 in the
summer to 100,000 in the winter; whilst the total
number of vagrants relieved in the course of a day
may be set down as ranging between 600 and 800.
In such a vast area as London, theatres and
other places of amusement are, of course, very
numerous, and are capable of containing and
affording entertainment to thousands of the inhabitants. Mr. John Hollingshead, lessee of the
Gaiety Theatre, in 1877–8 gave to a Parliamentary
Committee an estimate of their number. First are
the two patent theatres, Drury Lane and Covent
Garden, each capable of holding 4,000 persons.
Then there are 45 theatres licensed by the Lord
Chamberlain, holding in the aggregate about 80,000
persons. There are also ten theatres licensed by
the divisional magistrates, one of which houses is
the Court Theatre, at Chelsea, about twenty yards
outside of the Lord Chamberlain's jurisdiction, and
these ten theatres will hold altogether about 38,100
persons. The Crystal Palace is included, containing
two theatres and one concert-hall under the same
roof. Next come the music-halls. The Middlesex
magistrates license 347 places, together holding
136,700 persons. These music-halls include three
of the first-class, holding from 15,000 to 20,000
people; six second-class halls, holding from 2,000
to 3,000; 13 third-class halls, holding from 800 to
1,500; 53 fourth-class halls, holding from 300 to
700 persons; and then there are 272 smaller places,
which may be called public-house concert-rooms or
harmonic meetings, or whatever they are termed.
The Surrey magistrates also license on the south
side of the Thames 61 music-halls; 58 are of a
smaller type, but three are very large places, and
altogether these 61 will hold 32,800 persons. The
City of London licenses only two places—the
Sussex Hall and the "White Horse;" but there
must be four or five other places where balls and
concerts are given, and the City may be stated
as having in all these places accommodation for
6,400 persons. The total, therefore, is 57 theatres,
capable of holding 126,100 persons, and 415 musichalls, capable of holding 175,900 persons, making
altogether 472 places, accommodating 302,000
persons. This includes the Crystal Palace and the
Alexandra Palace, which are licensed by the
magistrates. Many of the smaller places are probably very small, being rooms in or over publichouses, where there is music but no stage or other
appliances—places, in some instances, where people
come in the evening and drink their spirits or beer,
hear a song or two, and then go away home.
We have only to lament, in this general view,
the extreme paucity of open parks and places of
recreation, which add so much to the attractiveness of Paris and other European capitals. For,
exclusive of the greater parks of London, which
are vested in the Crown but open to the public,
there are only about 1,100 acres of public recreation
ground, and these are mostly in distant parts of the
suburbs. They are distributed as follows:—Blackheath, 267 acres; Hampstead Heath, 240 acres;
Finsbury Park, 115 acres; Southwark Park, 63
acres; Hackney Downs, 50 acres; Well Street
(Hackney) Common, 30 acres; North and South
Mill Fields, 57 acres; London Fields, 27 acres;
Tooting Beck Common, 144 acres; and Tooting
Graveney Common, 63 acres. The gardens on the
Thames Embankment and in Leicester Square
present 14 acres. The remainder of the acreage is
made up of the commons at Clapham, Stoke Newington, and Shepherd's Bush.
The great metropolis, then, being such as we
have portrayed it, there have never been wanting
those who have felt towards London and its neighbourhood an attraction which nothing could destroy.
These, of course, have been the persons in whom
the social qualities have predominated. Such, in
their day, were Horace Walpole, Dr. Johnson,
Samuel Rogers, and Macaulay; and such, too,
were Leigh Hunt, Thackeray, and Dickens. Away
from London and its surroundings such men would
have been lost; here they found their respective
métiers. The Boswellian reasons for Dr. Johnson's love of London are of general applicability.
"Johnson," he writes, "was much attached to
London; he observed that a man stored his mind
better there than anywhere else; and that in
remote situations a man's body might be feasted,
but his mind was starved, and his faculties apt to
degenerate, from want of exercise and competition.
No place, too, he said, cured a man's vanity or
arrogance so well as London; for as no man was
either great or good per se, but as compared with
others not so good or great, he was sure to find in
the metropolis many his equals, and some his
superiors."
It would be almost as easy to cull from English
writers a long chain of passages in praise of London
as of others written in praise of country scenes.
Thus Dr. Johnson remarks: "The happiness of
London is not to be conceived but by those who
have resided in it. I will venture to say there is
more learning and science within the circumference
of ten miles from where we now sit than in all the
rest of the kingdom. The only disadvantage is
the great distance at which people live from one
another. But that is occasioned by the very largeness of London, which is the cause of all the other
advantages." If Dr. Johnson could speak thus of
the metropolis when its population was under a
million, what would he have said now, when we
number nearly four million souls within a radius of
ten miles from Charing Cross? Again, the burly
doctor thus philosophises on the same subject in a
homely and practical strain:—"London is nothing
to some people; but to a man whose pleasure is
intellectual London is the place. And there is
no place where economy can be so well practised as
in London: more can be had here for the money,
even by ladies, than anywhere else. You cannot
play tricks with your fortune in a small place; you
must make an uniform appearance. Here a lady
may have well-furnished apartments and an elegant
dress, without any meat in her kitchen."
The same opinion is expressed somewhat more
bluntly by "Jack" Bannister:—"I have lived too
long (he observes) in London, from early life to
the present time, to like the country much; you
cannot shake off old habits and acquire new ones.
I must die (please God!) where I have lived so
long. Kemble once said to me, 'Depend on it,
Jack, when you pass Hyde Park-corner you leave
your comforts behind you.' Experientia docet!
London for beef, fish, poultry, vegetables too; in
the country you get ewe-mutton, cow-beef, and in
general very indifferent veal. London is the great
market of England. Why? Because it abounds
in customers; and I believe you may live as cheap
in London, and nobody know anything about you,
as anywhere else. I delight in the country occasionally; but London is your best retirement after
long industry and labour."
London has also, in an eminent degree, the great
attraction of personal independence and freedom
from the eyes of censorious and inquisitive neighbours. This is well drawn out by Boswell, who
writes:—"I was amused by considering with how
much ease and coolness he (Dr. Johnson) could
write or talk to a friend, exhorting him not to suppose that happiness was not to be found as well in
other places as in London; when he himself was
at all times sensible of its being, comparatively
speaking, a heaven upon earth. The truth is, that
by those who from sagacity, attention, and experience have learnt the full advantage of London,
its pre-eminence over every other place, not only
for variety of enjoyment, but for comfort, will be
felt with a philosophical exultation. The freedom
from remark and petty censure with which life may
be passed there is a circumstance which a man
who knows the teasing restraint of a narrow circle
must relish highly. Edmund Burke, whose orderly
and amiable domestic habits might make the eye of
observation less irksome to him than to most men,
said once, very pleasantly, in my hearing, 'Though
I have the honour to represent Bristol, I should
not like to live there; I should be obliged to be so
much upon my good behaviour.' In London, a man
may live in splendid society at one time, and in
frugal retirement at another, without animadversion.
There, and there alone, a man's own house is truly
his castle, in which he can be in perfect safety
from intrusion whenever he pleases. I never shall
forget how well this was expressed to me one day
by Mr. Meynell: 'The chief advantage of London,'
said he, 'is that a man is always so near his
burrow.'"
But there are other writers of authority besides
Johnson whose testimonies in praise of London
deserve to be quoted here; for instance, Lord
Macaulay, who writes to a friend: "London is the
place for me. Its smoky atmosphere and muddy
river charm me more than the pure air of Hertfordshire and the crystal currents of the Rib.
Nothing is equal to the splendid varieties of
London life, the 'fine flow of London talk,' and
the dazzling brilliancy of London spectacles."
Again, we may summon Leigh Hunt, who writes
in his "Table Talk:" "London is not a poetical
place to look at; but surely it is poetical in the
very amount and comprehensiveness of its enormous experience of pleasure and pain. . . . It
is one of the great giant representatives of mankind,
with a huge beating heart, and much of its vice
and misery . . . . is but one of the forms of the
movement of a yet unsteadied progression, trying
to balance things, and not without its reliefs."
We have said that to the man of intellectual
culture London has attractions beyond all other
places. Nor is this position better illustrated and
enforced than in the inexhaustible Boswell:—"Of
London, Johnson observed, 'Sir, if you wish to
have a just notion of the magnitude of the city, you
must not be satisfied with seeing its great streets
and squares, but must survey the innumerable
little lanes and courts. It is not in the showy
evolutions of buildings, but in the multiplicity
of human habitations which are crowded together,
that the wonderful immensity of London consists.'
'I have often amused myself,' adds Boswell, 'with
thinking how different a place London is to different
people. They, whose narrow minds are contracted
to the consideration of some one particular pursuit,
view it only through that medium. A politician
thinks of it merely as the seat of government in
its different departments; a grazier, as a vast
market for cattle; a mercantile man, as a place
where a prodigious deal of business is done upon
'Change; a dramatic enthusiast, as the grand scene
of theatrical entertainments; a man of pleasure, as
an assemblage of taverns, and the great emporium
for ladies of easy virtue; but the intellectual man
is struck with it, as comprehending the whole of
human life in all its variety, the contemplation of
which is inexhaustible.'"
Charles Dickens, too, is not far behind his compeers in his love of London. Its society and life
was "meat and drink" to him—that on which he
always set his heart most strongly, in spite of his
love for Gad's Hill. Even when spending the
winter in bright and sunny Genoa, he could write
home to his friends, "Put me down on Waterloo
Bridge at eight o'clock in the evening, with leave
to roam about as long as I like, and I would come
home, as you know." In the same spirit he wrote
again, at a later date: "For a week or a fortnight
I can write prodigiously in a retired place, as at
Broadstairs; and then a day in London sets me up
again and starts me. But the toil and the labour
of writing day after day without that magic-lantern
(London) is immense."
It would be almost a sin not to add, by way of
conclusion to these testimonies to London's character, the merry and good-humoured lines of
Captain Morris, the "Laureate of the Beef-steak
Club:"— (fn. 10)
"In London I never knew what to be at,
Enraptured with this and enchanted with that;
I'm wild with the sweets of variety's plan,
And life seems a blessing too happy for man.
"In town let me live, then, in town let me die,
For in truth I can't relish the country, not I.
If one must have a villa in summer to dwell,
Oh, give me the sweet shady side of Pall Mall!"