The Lure of Old London

Octo

Darling. Your reference to Verdant Green was apposite but not quite kind. I be

thwark Street because I wanted to see some ancient alms-houses I had been told were tucked away in a side turning near. Alms-houses have an atmosphere of their own which I always find congenial to my age and aspirations-a roof to cover one, food and light, and time to idle: what more could one want! Mrs. Darling didn't agree with me. S

ering anything unusual. One sees nothing but an iron railing and a hint of green, and had I not been on the look out, I should ha

ldings opposite. On a tablet was inscribed the laconic statement, "Chas. Hopton, Esq.: Sole founder of this charity. Anno 1752," and when the winte

tree in each section. The grass was very green, and pigeons were assembled on the tiled roofs. There were wooden ben

s his little garden, in which a few chrysanthemums were making a brave struggle against the city smoke. Each house, he

of which the vicinity of the river was disclosed by the rattle and clank

Ben Jonson's plays were performed. But what has this dingy wharf to do with the rural scene amidst which those old theatres were placed? Surely there never could have been fields and country lanes in this neighbourhood of slums, fac

if having caught the warmth of a hidden sun. A few moments ago there had been no St. Paul's, but now there grew the vague outline of a vast circumference suspended in the air high above the warehouse

inside. To see its purple dome float in majesty above the sea of house-tops, as unsubstantial as an opium-eater's dream, or to meet its august presence face to face half-way up Ludgate Hill, when the pigeons are whe

nary workman, it always seems to me. They may not be conscious of it, but the meditative spirit of the lazy tide, the slow-moving barges, and thos

e Lane, Passing Alley, Pudding Lane, Hen and Chicken's Court, World's End Passage, Fig Tree Court, Green-Arbour Court, Boss Alley, Maypole Alley, Crucifix Lane, Sugar Loaf Court. And last week I came across a book dated 1732 in which was an alphabetical table of all the streets, courts, lanes, alleys, yards, rows, within the

and the skulls and crossbones on top of the gate bring a breath from the dark ages into some moment of to-day. Probably not one person in a hundred notices the skulls or pauses to look through the iron railings and reflect that Pepys himself must have walked down that very pathway between the gravestones on that occasion of which he wrote. "This is the first time I have been in

ho had perished by the Black Death, but I have never had the privilege of seeing the registers.

Pepys (the only man who ever told the unromantic truth about himself) could, if he would, paint pictures of some of the scenes those old walls have witnessed. His body lies beneath the altar, and high above it, on

ave an audience which would last through the centuries. I wondered as I looked at the sculptured face with its ex

ry mentions bringing Mrs. Knipp (an actress of whom his wife was jealous), and where they "drank, eat a lobster and sang and mighty merry till almost midnight". And how these meetings went on until Mrs. Pepys came to the bedside of her husband one nig

patch". How on another occasion he records, "Talking with my wife, in whom I never had greater content, blessed be God!" How he had given her five pounds to buy a petticoat,

elves to thank for it. The theme is a favourite one of the old lady's, and she continued her discourse as we made our way to Houndsditch-a "melancholy" spot, according to Shakespeare, taking its name from the old city ditch full of dead dogs. A region of small wholesale shops in the drapery line which made no pretentions at setting out the wares to advantage, everything being cond

s and General Market". A man who had been sitting unnoticed in a pay-box thr

t to see t

y, pl

Beyond was a little market-place where men were ranging their goods on long forms under a zinc roof. All round lay huge bundles of wearing appare

esman fitting a customer with an overcoat, and a ticket hanging from

ments having no relation to what the seller expected to get (unless "a mug" came along). Bargaining was the very s

woman in the place, and who, for a consideration, would take the gentleman round and show him such things as he had never dreamed of. There was the house which had been raided by the police and three of them shot-he could show the bullet marks in the wall. Then th

were digging foundations they came upon hundreds of bodies, being able to distinguish the women by their long hair. There was an outcry about the fear of contagion, and th

ST. HE

rpeted with dead leaves and the church inside was vague with a coloured dusk. The glowing windows shut out the light, but through one of p

founder of the Royal Exchange; and Julius C?sar, Privy Counsellor to James I, the sunbeams which had penetrated here and there through cracks and crevices were crossin

eveal to the curious who peer through them. On the same side of the church is a walled-up door, and a little circular stone staircase which invites ascent, then confronts

es as "bad feet," so instead of going on to the Charterh

ainly give a little time to the study of Cockney slang. I have arrived at the conclusion that it

hich I could apply it to yourself, and occasions on wh

the best of

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