general description of london.—walk to the palace.—crowd in the streets.—shops.—cathedral of st paul.—palace of the prince of wales.—oddities in the shop windows.
wednesday, april 28.
my first business was to acquire some knowledge of the place whereof i am now become an inhabitant. i began to study the plan of london, though dismayed at the sight of its prodigious extent,—a city a league and a half from one extremity to the other, and about half as broad, standing upon level ground. it is impossible ever to become thoroughly acquainted with such an endless labyrinth of streets; and, as you may well suppose, they who 73live at one end know little or nothing of the other. the river is no assistance to a stranger in finding his way. there is no street along its banks, and no eminence from whence you can look around and take your bearings.
london, properly so called, makes but a small part of this immense capital, though the focus of business is there. westminster is about the same size. to the east and the north is a great population included in neither of these cities, and probably equal to both. on the western side the royal parks have prevented the growth of houses, and form a gap between the metropolis and its suburb. all this is on the north side of the river. southwark, or the borough, is on the other shore, and a town has grown at lambeth by the primate’s palace, which has now joined it. the extent of ground covered with houses on this bank is greater than the area of madrid. the population is now ascertained to exceed 74nine hundred thousand persons, nearly a twelfth of the inhabitants of the whole island.
having studied the way to the palace, i set off. the distance was considerable: the way, after getting into the main streets, tolerably straight. there were not many passers in the by-streets; but when i reached cheapside the crowd completely astonished me. on each side of the way were two uninterrupted streams of people, one going east, the other west. at first i thought some extraordinary occasion must have collected such a concourse; but i soon perceived it was only the usual course of business. they moved on in two regular counter currents, and the rapidity with which they moved was as remarkable as their numbers. it was easy to perceive that the english calculate the value of time. nobody was loitering to look at the beautiful things in the shop windows; none were stopping to converse, every one was in haste, yet no one in a hurry; the 75quickest possible step seemed to be the natural pace. the carriages were numerous in proportion, and were driven with answerable velocity.
if possible, i was still more astonished at the opulence and splendour of the shops: drapers, stationers, confectioners, pastry-cooks, seal-cutters, silver-smiths, booksellers, print-sellers, hosiers, fruiterers, china-sellers,—one close to another, without intermission, a shop to every house, street after street, and mile after mile; the articles themselves so beautiful, and so beautifully arranged, that if they who passed by me had had leisure to observe any thing, they might have known me to be a foreigner by the frequent stands which i made to admire them. nothing which i had seen in the country had prepared me for such a display of splendour.
my way lay by st paul’s church. the sight of this truly noble building rather provoked than pleased me. the english, after erecting so grand an edifice, will not 76allow it an open space to stand in, and it is impossible to get a full view of it in any situation. the value of ground in this capital is too great to be sacrificed to beauty by a commercial nation: unless, therefore, another conflagration should lay london in ashes, the londoners will never fairly see their own cathedral. the street which leads to the grand front has just a sufficient bend to destroy the effect which such a termination would have given it, and to obstruct the view till you come too close to see it. this is perfectly vexatious! except st peter’s, here is beyond comparison the finest temple in christendom, and it is even more ridiculously misplaced than the bridge of segovia appears, when the mules have drank up the manzanares. the houses come so close upon one side, that carriages are not permitted to pass that way lest the foot-passengers should be endangered. the site itself is well chosen on a little rising near the river; and were it fairly opened as it ought to be, 77no city could boast so magnificent a monument of modern times.
in a direct line from hence is temple bar, a modern, ugly, useless gate, which divides the two cities of london and westminster. there were iron spikes upon the top, on which the heads of traitors were formerly exposed: j— remembers to have seen some in his childhood. on both sides of this gate i had a paper thrust into my hand, which proved to be a quack doctor’s notice of some never-failing pills. before i reached home i had a dozen of these. tradesmen here lose no possible opportunity of forcing their notices upon the public. wherever there was a dead wall, a vacant house, or a temporary scaffolding erected for repairs, the space was covered with printed bills. two rival blacking-makers were standing in one of the streets, each carried a boot, completely varnished with black, hanging from a pole, and on the other arm a basket with the balls for sale. on the top of their poles 78was a sort of standard, with a printed paper explaining the virtue of the wares;—the one said that his blacking was the best blacking in the world; the other, that his was so good you might eat it.
the crowd in westminster was not so great as in the busier city. from charing cross, as it is still called, though an equestrian statue has taken place of the cross, a great street opens toward westminster abbey, and the houses of parliament. most of the public buildings are here: it is to be regretted that the end is not quite open to the abbey, for it would then be one of the finest streets in europe. leaving this for my return, i went on to the palaces of the prince of wales, and of the king, which stand near each other in a street called pall mall. the game from whence this name is derived is no longer known in england.
the prince of wales’s palace is no favourable specimen of english architecture. before the house are thirty columns planted 79in a row, two and two, supporting nothing but a common entablature, which connects them. as they serve for neither ornament nor use, a stranger might be puzzled to know by what accident they came there; but the truth is, that these people have more money than taste, and are satisfied with any absurdity if it has but the merit of being new. the same architect was employed[6] to build a palace, not far distant, for the second prince of the blood, and in the front towards the street he constructed a large oven-like room completely obscuring the house to which it was to serve as an entrance-hall. these two buildings being described to the late lord north, who was blind in the latter part of his life, he facetiously remarked, then the duke of york, it should seem, has been sent to the 80round-house, and the prince of wales is put into the pillory.[7]
6. the author must have been misinformed in this particular, for the duke of york’s house at whitehall, now lord melbourne’s, was not built by his royal highness; but altered, with some additions, of which the room alluded to made a part.—tr.
7. there is an explanation of the jest in the text which the translator has thought proper to omit, as, however necessary to foreign readers, it must needs seem impertinent to an english one.—tr.
i had now passed the trading district, and found little to excite attention in large brick houses without uniformity, and without either beauty or magnificence. the royal palace itself is an old brick building, remarkable for nothing, except that the sovereign of great britain should have no better a court; but it seems that the king never resides there. a passage through the court-yard leads into st james’s park, the prado of london. its trees are not so fine as might be expected in a country where water never fails, and the sun never scorches; here is also a spacious piece of water; but the best ornament of the park are the two towers of westminster abbey. having now reached the proposed limits of my walk, i passed 81through a public building of some magnitude and little beauty, called the horse guards, and again entered the public streets. here, where the pavement was broad, and the passengers not so numerous as to form a crowd, a beggar had taken his seat, and written his petition upon the stones with chalks of various colours, the letters formed with great skill, and ornamented with some taste. i stopped to admire his work, and gave him a trifle as a payment for the sight, rather than as alms. immediately opposite the horse guards is the banqueting house at whitehall; so fine a building, that if the later architects had had eyes to see, or understandings to comprehend its merit, they would never have disgraced the opposite side of the way with buildings so utterly devoid of beauty. this fragment of a great design by inigo jones is remarkable for many accounts; here is the window through which charles i. came out upon the scaffold; here also, in the back court, the statue of 82james ii. remains undisturbed, with so few excesses was that great revolution accompanied; and here is the weathercock which was set up by his command, that he might know every shifting of the wind when the invasion from holland was expected, and the east wind was called protestant by the people, and the west papist.
my way home from charing cross was varied, in as much as i took the other side of the street for the sake of the shop windows, and the variety was greater than i had expected. it took me through a place called exeter change, which is precisely a bazar, a sort of street under cover, or large long room, with a row of shops on either hand, and a thoroughfare between them; the shops being furnished with such articles as might tempt an idler, or remind a passenger of his wants,—walking-sticks, implements for shaving, knives, scissars, watch-chains, purses, &c. at the further end was a man in splendid costume, who proved to belong to a menagerie 83above stairs, to which he invited me to ascend; but i declined this for the present, being without a companion. a maccaw was swinging on a perch above him, and the outside of the building hung with enormous pictures of the animals which were there to be seen.
the oddest things which i saw in the whole walk were a pair of shoes in one window floating in a vessel of water, to show that they were water-proof; and a well-dressed leg in another, betokening that legs were made there to the life. one purchase i ventured to make, that of a travelling caissette; there were many at the shop-door, with the prices marked upon them, so that i did not fear imposition. these things are admirably made and exceedingly convenient. i was shown some which contained the whole apparatus of a man’s toilet, but this seemed an ill assortment, as when writing you do not want the shaving materials, and when shaving as little do you want the writing desk.
84in looking over the quack’s notices after my return, i found a fine specimen of english hyperbole. the doctor says that his pills always perform, and even exceed whatever he promises, as if they were impatient of immortal and universal fame.
