Part 10

The magic rite with the ‘Diary’ was once more performed, and in a flash they found themselves standing near one of the wharves close to London Bridge, on to which Mr. Samuel Pepys was just stepping from a boat. He was richly and trimly dressed as usual (having got over the fright of the Fire), and his face was full of importance and curiosity.

“He is going to look at the ruins,” Godmother said. “Let us follow him.”

Their unconscious guide led them over mounds of hot ashes into Cheapside.

“Oh, Godmother, the beautiful Chepe! All in ruins!” cried Betty. A moment later she saw what had been the Exchange, and was now nothing but a blackened skeleton. Mr. Pepys was standing before its remains, looking from the heaps of broken statues on the ground to one still standing, upon which he gazed in astonishment.

“It’s the statue of its founder, Sir Thomas Gresham—the only one on the building not burnt, strangely enough,” Godmother said.

“Oh! that’s St. Paul’s; with the roof all fallen in. Scarcely any of it left,” Betty exclaimed sorrowfully.

“_A miserable sight, my Lord!_” she heard Mr. Pepys remark with a low bow to a gentleman who stood near him among the crowd of dejected sightseers.

“The old Grey Friars’ church is gone, you notice,” Godmother said. “This, you remember, was Christ’s Hospital—the Blue Coat School, now all in ruins. Acres of streets and houses are destroyed, with more than eighty churches and an enormous number of schools and hospitals and public buildings of all sorts. In fact, old London, as you see, has practically vanished.”

“It’s too sad,” sighed Betty, looking round her at the ruin and desolation. “I don’t want to see any more. Look at those people crying. I suppose that heap of rubbish was their home?... Do let us go back to our own time, Godmother!”

In another flash they were there, and Betty, as usual when she returned so mysteriously to everyday life, rubbed her eyes.

“Poor London!” she sighed. “First the Plague, and then that awful Fire. I should think it was the worst fire that ever happened to a city, wasn’t it?”

“One of the worst, certainly. But out of the evil came one good at least. London has never since been visited by that dreadful Plague which before the Fire was always hovering in its narrow lanes ready to break out violently at intervals. In sweeping away the picturesque buildings, many of which had been standing for hundreds of years, it also swept the city free of the poisonous germs in it, which had never before died out. The new houses were healthier, many of the streets were made broader. There was air and light where formerly there had been stuffy darkness. And light and air are the good spirits that drive away the demons of disease.”

“But how did London ever get built again? I can’t think how ever the people found homes once more?”

“There was terrible suffering, of course, but they were brave and energetic. They did not sit down and cry for long, but helped by money from the rich, they began to build their city again. The part by the riverside that was needed for shipping and trade of all kinds, rose first out of the ashes, and then by degrees new churches and mansions, and public buildings arose on the ruins of the old. You must remember one man in particular who lived at this time, because it was he who designed most of the new churches and a great many of the public buildings. His name was Sir Christopher Wren.”

“Oh! It was Sir Christopher Wren who built the new St. Paul’s, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, and many of the other London churches we see every day. After the Great Fire, when most of the city was in ruins, it was at first proposed to rebuild it in an altogether different way, and Sir Christopher Wren was asked to prepare a plan for New London. If it had been built according to his drawing, we should see a very different London now. It would be a _regular_ city, with broad streets all more or less similar, running parallel to one another; rather like modern Paris or New York.”

“But it isn’t a bit like that, is it? There are lots of little curly streets and narrow lanes in the city in our own time,” said Betty.

“That’s because the people couldn’t wait to build till all these new arrangements were settled. They began putting up their new houses in the same places, following the lines of the old streets.”

“I’m so glad they did,” Betty remarked. “Because at least you can tell now exactly where the old places stood. It wouldn’t have been interesting to have a perfectly different city.”

“Well, it has stopped raining now,” said Godmother as a gleam of sunshine lighted her pretty parlour. “Shall we go to Whitehall and look at the only part of the Palace that is left?”

“Oh yes. I want to hear what happened to it after Charles the Second’s time. It wasn’t burnt, of course, because the Great Fire didn’t reach so far as Whitehall.”

“Not in the Great Fire certainly, but it _was_ burnt down only about thirty years later, in the reign of William and Mary. Afterwards St. James’s Palace, which you know well by sight, was the London home of royalty till Buckingham Palace took its place.”

In less than half an hour, they were driving from Westminster up Whitehall, and the car stopped before that building opposite the Horse Guards which is now called the United Service Museum.

“The famous Banqueting Hall has been turned into a museum, you see, where all sorts of interesting relics connected with the Army and Navy are preserved. We’ll go in and look at it,” said Godmother.

They went upstairs into the lofty hall, and Betty gazed up at the painted ceiling high above her head and at the flags hanging in a line just below it.

“The ceiling is the work of Rubens, a famous Dutch painter, and the old flags hanging up there once belonged either to famous ships or famous regiments. Now come and look at this model of Whitehall Palace as you saw it half an hour ago.”

Betty followed her eagerly to a glass case near the door.

“Oh, it’s a splendid model of it!” she exclaimed. “Here’s the part that went along by the river, where the Queen lived, and some of the beautiful ladies of the Court as well. And there are all the gabled houses round the big garden in the middle.”

“And that’s the building we’re standing in at the present moment,” Godmother added, pointing out the Banqueting Hall in the model. “The beginning of what the architect intended as a great new palace, and the only part of it either built or remaining now.”

“That’s where the Tilt Yard was,” Betty exclaimed, when having examined the model, she went to one of the big windows of the Hall and looked across at the Horse Guards, with the scarlet-coated soldiers on their horses standing on either side of the gateway. “And just under this window poor King Charles was beheaded.”

There were numberless interesting things besides the model to be seen in the Hall, but Betty’s mind was full of Restoration days, and when Godmother proposed that they should drive to the place where the Great Fire ended, she readily agreed.

“You know where it began, because you’ve been up the Monument at London Bridge, and that commemorates the place of its outbreak. We must go to Smithfield to find the spot where it was checked.”

“Close to the Charterhouse, then?” murmured Betty.

“There!” Godmother said presently, when they reached Smithfield from a turning out of Holborn. “The figure of that fat boy on the corner house of Cock Lane, then called _Pye Corner_, marks the place where the flames were at last quenched by pulling down houses to make an open space.”

“I wonder what the fat boy has to do with the Great Fire?” Betty said.

Godmother laughed. “There used to be an inscription under the figure to say that the Fire was caused by ‘the sin of gluttony.’ But that was probably only because ‘Pudding Lane’ and ‘Pie Corner’ suggested eating too much of either or both!” she explained.

“Is there anything in the London Museum about the time of Charles the Second?” Betty asked on the homeward drive.

“Yes. You’d better go there before next Saturday. You’ll find plenty to interest you, and to remind you of the terrible as well as of the charming things you’ve lately seen. Look for the placards that were posted up in the streets at the time of the Great Plague. One is headed ‘_Lord have mercy upon us_’ and gives some curious directions about the sort of medicine people should take to prevent infection. Then just above these old placards, you will see one of the very hand-bells that were tolled in the streets when men went round with the carts crying, ‘_Bring out your dead_.’ Go downstairs into the basement if you want to see a splendid model of London burning.”

“Burning?” echoed Betty in surprise.

“Yes, and very cleverly managed too, as you’ll discover. Look at all the other models while you’re in the basement part of the Museum. There’s one of old St. Paul’s as it appeared before the Fire, and as you saw it for the last time in the early years of Charles the Second’s reign.”

“London will be almost a new city the next time we see it,” remarked Betty. “I wonder whether I shall like it so well as the old one?”

“It will be different, certainly. And now, my dear, it’s getting so late that I’m going to drive you straight home.”

V

The Eighteenth Century

THE LONDON OF THE GEORGES AND OF DR. JOHNSON

“To-day we’re going to see London as it was after the Fire!” exclaimed Betty, when she had recovered as usual from her first astonishment and delight at “remembering everything” the moment she saw Godmother. “How are we going to get back this time?”

“Well, there’s a good deal we can see without ‘going back’ at all,” Godmother replied. “Because all that surrounds us every day _is_ London after the Fire. Many buildings exist now, just as they were put up when the city began to rise from its ashes in the latter part of Charles the Second’s reign.”

“Isn’t there to be any ‘magic’ at all to-day, then?” Betty’s voice was full of disappointment.

“Not just yet, at any rate. We are not going back quite so far into the Past this time. Only, in fact, about a hundred and fifty years—to the middle of the eighteenth century.”

“But London must have changed even in that time?”

“It has—enormously. Yet at the same time much remains the same, and I propose to show you first what is left in our own day of the end of the seventeenth and the whole of the eighteenth centuries. It will only be necessary to employ magic in the case of certain places that have altogether vanished from the London of our own time. But before we go any further with or without magic, we must have our usual little history examination. So sit down and collect your thoughts.”

Betty obeyed with a good grace, for she knew she would find all she was about to see, ten times more interesting for not being “in a muddle” about her history.

“When we left London last time,” Godmother began, “Charles the Second was reigning. Who was the next king?”

“James the Second, his brother,” Betty said, after a moment’s thought.

“And then?”

“William and Mary.”

“Why didn’t the son of James the Second come to the throne?”

“Because there was a revolution, and the people chose James the Second’s son-in-law to be king, and he was William of Orange, who was married to James’s daughter, Mary.”

“Very good!” exclaimed Godmother approvingly. “Queen Anne, you remember, Mary’s sister, was the next sovereign. And after her?”

“Let me see. She had no children, so a relation of hers, a German man, was chosen. He was George the First. Then came George the Second, and then——”

“That will do,” Godmother interrupted. “The reign of George the Second brings us to the London we’re going to see to-day, _partly_, but not _altogether_ by magic. Some of it at least we can see in the course of a walk or drive, for it still exists. Now we’ll have the car and go as usual to London Bridge for a general view of the city that has risen up since the Fire and has been growing bigger and bigger for two hundred and fifty years.”

Half an hour later they were passing the Monument at the entrance to the Bridge, and this time Betty looked up at it with greater interest than ever.

“That marks the place where the Fire began,” she murmured. “How soon afterwards was it built, Godmother?”

“About eight years afterwards. Sir Christopher Wren designed it. He, as I hope you remember, was the great architect who practically rebuilt London. At least so far as great public buildings are concerned. We’ll get out now, and walk to the middle of the bridge.”

“The last time I saw it ‘magically’ the funny pretty houses on it were burning!” Betty said. “I do wish this was the very same bridge,” she added with a sigh.

“Well, at least it’s almost, though not quite in the same _place_ as the one you stood on with Chaucer, and that’s something, isn’t it? But now look right and left, and remembering the London you saw burning, tell me what changes you notice in the _kind_ of buildings you see now. There’s the new St. Paul’s, for instance, and you remember the old one?”

“It’s quite a different sort of church now,” Betty said. “Old St. Paul’s had a spire and pointed roofs and arches instead of that big dome with the ball and cross on the top. All the churches now are different,” she went on, looking from one white steeple to another rising above the houses.

“Yes. You see, don’t you?—that the _architecture_ of London,—that is, the way a building is made—has changed completely. Before the Fire, the churches and most of the other important buildings, were in a style we call Gothic. They had pointed arches, like Westminster Abbey, and if you keep the appearance of the Abbey in mind, you will have a good idea of what Gothic architecture means. See how very different is this new St. Paul’s! It has a dome. In front of it runs a line of pillars supporting a sort of stone triangle. Look at the gallery of columns upon which the dome rests. It is all as different as it can be, from the architecture of the Abbey. Now for the sort of architecture of which the new St. Paul’s is an example, the architects took the ancient Greek temples for their models. Nearly all the architects who lived later than Elizabeth’s time, built in this way, and Christopher Wren and Inigo Jones (who designed the Whitehall Banqueting House, you remember) were two of the men of the seventeenth century who planned their buildings on Grecian models. Now as Wren designed most of the important buildings, we may expect to find London architecture after the Fire, for the most part in this new style. It is called the _classical_ style, and the new St. Paul’s is a good example of it.”

“But all the crowded houses and quays and bridges that we see now weren’t here till much later even, than George the Second’s time, were they?”

“Indeed no, though of course London had grown bigger in the eighteenth century than it was even after the time of the Fire. When we make use of the ‘magic’ presently we’ll just take a glimpse of the City from London Bridge in the eighteenth century. I’ve only brought you here now to get a general view of the new sort of churches.”

“Where are we going now?” Betty asked as they re-entered the car.

“I’m going to take you to see one at least of the four Inns of Court.”

“Inns of Court? What are they?”

“Well, they were founded to be colleges for the study of law, and lawyers still live in them and dine in their halls, and law students have to pass examinations set by the men who govern the Inns. They are all rather close together, round about Fleet Street, which as you know is a continuation of the Strand.”

“This is Fleet Street, isn’t it?” Betty said. “Yes! There’s the monument with the Griffin on it in the middle of the road, outside the Law Courts.”

“And here is the entrance to the Middle Temple, quite close to that monument,” Godmother replied, stopping the car. “The Middle Temple is the name of one of the Inns. The others are the Inner Temple, Lincoln’s Inn and Gray’s Inn. They are all interesting and beautiful, but we shall only have time to look at the two ‘Temples’—Middle and Inner—which are side by side.”

“Oh! what a nice entrance!” Betty said as they passed under an old brick gate and house.

“Yes. That was designed by Christopher Wren just after the Fire.”

“Why is this place called the Temple?” Betty asked, and almost in the same breath, “Oh, Godmother, how pretty it is! Isn’t it wonderful to turn out of the noisy street into this quiet place?”

“That’s one of the surprises of London town,” Godmother said. “It’s full of charming leafy places like this—if you know where to look for them.”

Betty was gazing at the straight-fronted houses enclosing numberless quiet courts,—houses whose bricks were now dark red with age, and from them she looked past a row of big, beautiful trees to where green lawns sloped down to the Embankment with the shining river beyond. She saw that the courts and corridors and gardens, covered a great space between Fleet Street on one hand and the river on the other.

“Let us sit down here under the trees in King’s Bench Walk,” Godmother said, “and I’ll tell you a little about this place. You asked me just now why it was called the Temple. Did you notice the church we’ve just passed—a curious _round_-shaped church? Well, that was built more than seven hundred years ago, when Henry the Second was king, and knights from every civilized country were going to Palestine to fight in the Crusades. Some of these knights formed themselves into a society called the Templars, because they had sworn to defend the Temple of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. Well, when the English knights belonging to this great Society, or _Order_ as it was called, came home, they built that church and made it round in shape, in imitation of the Round Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Once upon a time these Knights Templars owned all this ground upon which the lawns and houses before us now stand.”

“But I thought you said this was a place for _lawyers_?” Betty began.

“So I did, and so it is now, and so it has been ever since the reign of Edward the Third. By that time, the Knights Templars were no longer the good sincere men who had formed the Society a hundred years or so before. They had become rich and proud and greedy of power, and the society was at last brought to an end. The property belonging to it went to the King, and in Edward the Third’s reign, was given to certain lawyers, and has ever since belonged to the profession of the law. But it keeps its old name of the Temple, and so recalls the time when it belonged to the great religious society of the Knights Templars.”

“But none of _their_ houses or buildings are left here now?” Betty said.

“Nothing except the round church which they built seven hundred years ago.”

“And even the houses here now, aren’t so old as the time when the Temple first came to the lawyers, are they? They are quite different from the houses of Dick Whittington’s time, or even Elizabeth’s reign, for instance.”

“Yes. That’s because all these _small_ houses were built after the Fire, which destroyed most of the Temple. Fortunately it didn’t burn the church (the oldest part of it all), nor Middle Temple Hall, which was built in Elizabeth’s reign. We’ll go and look at that Hall now, because besides being beautiful, it’s full of interesting memories.”

They crossed various quiet courtyards till they came in sight of a Hall built of dark red brick and surrounded by the delicate green of trees, with lawns stretching in front of it towards the river.

“That great room,” said Godmother, “has seen some wonderful sights, especially at Christmas time, when feasting and revelry went on within it. You remember the ‘masques’ of Queen Elizabeth’s day? Well, Middle Temple Hall was a favourite place for them, and the Queen herself sometimes came to see them there. You will understand in a moment what a splendid place it was for entertainments.”

And indeed when Betty stood under the oak rafters of the great room, with its stained-glass windows and its wide floor, she could imagine it filled with laughing, dancing people of Elizabethan days, or as it looked when on a platform at one end of it, decked with holly and garlands of ivy, the players acted a masque before the standing crowd that filled the rest of the hall.

“In this very place,” Godmother said, “_Twelfth Night_ was once acted, and it is thought that Shakespeare himself took part in the performance of his own play. I hope the people who dine in it now sometimes think of the folk who feasted and made merry here hundreds of years ago.”

“Is it still the dining-room for the law people, then?”

“Yes, the governors of the Inn, the benchers as they are called, and the students dine here, and by an old custom no student can become a barrister unless he or she has dined a certain fixed number of times in this Hall.”

“_She?_” echoed Betty.

“Yes, don’t you know that women have lately been allowed to study for the law?” Godmother laughed. “If any of all the famous lawyers now dead, could come back to this place, perhaps of all the changes the one that might most astonish them would be to find girls and women dining—‘keeping commons’ as it is called—in this Hall which for hundreds and hundreds of years has been sacred to men alone.”

“_Shakespeare_ wouldn’t be so very surprised, perhaps?” suggested Betty. “He wasn’t a lawyer, of course. But he would remember writing about Portia.”

Godmother laughed again. “Quite right, Betty. I’m sure he would. And now that you mention Shakespeare, do you remember anything about the Temple in his plays?”

Betty shook her head.

“These are the gardens of Middle Temple,” said Godmother, pointing to the lawns in front of the Hall (on one of which some young men were playing tennis). “It was the same garden that Shakespeare, who knew it well, chose for a famous scene in his play of _Henry the Sixth_ when the party of Lancaster chose the red rose and the party of York the white one for a badge.”

“And then the Wars of the Roses began!” said Betty. “What does Shakespeare say about it?”

“The scene goes like this. The gentlemen who take different sides in the quarrel between the House of York and Lancaster are just coming out of that very building,” Godmother began, pointing to the Hall, “and one of them says:

‘Within the Temple Hall we were too loud: The garden here is more convenient.’”

“This _very_ garden,” interrupted Betty. “Only I expect it was wilder and had lots of flowers in it then?”

“Evidently there were many rose bushes, for one noble, who is on the side of the Yorkists, says:

‘Let him that is a true born gentleman And stands upon the honour of his birth If he suppose that I have pleaded truth From off this briar pluck a white rose with me.’

Then Somerset, on the side of the Lancastrians, takes up the challenge:

‘Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer But dare maintain the party of the truth Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.’

So the white and red roses are picked and stuck into the doublets as the sides are taken, and another noble, wise enough to see into the future, says that this quarrel in the Temple Gardens ‘_shall send between the red rose and the white, A thousand souls to death and deadly night_.’ And so it did, in the dreadful long War of the Roses, as you remember.”

“But, Godmother,” began Betty after a moment, “I thought we were going to be in the eighteenth century to-day, and so far we’ve been talking about much earlier times!”