Part 4

Close by where the Victoria Embankment ends at Blackfriars Bridge and extending broadly to the north was the Black Friars Monastery, dating from 1276. This Monastery grew in time to great importance because of the favours bestowed upon it by Edward I. Here this king deposited the heart of his beloved queen Eleanor although her body was placed in Westminster Abbey. And it was here, in 1529, Cardinals Wolsey and Campeggio gave judgment against Catherine of Aragon in her divorce.

Playhouse Yard covers the site of the first theatre set up in the Blackfriars neighbourhood. The larger part of the Monastery was demolished by Sir Thomas Cawarden, Master of the King's Revels, when it was granted to him by Edward VI. Cawarden's executor, Sir William More, continued the demolition, granting a bit of the site for the Blackfriars Theatre to James Burbage the actor. Burbage conducted the Blackfriars Theatre as a private playhouse, in contrast to the public theatres of the time. Nobility supported it almost entirely. Unlike the other playhouses the pit as well as the galleries was entirely roofed over. Also in the pit there were seats, an unusual feature. In ordinary theatres the pit was filled with persons who ate, drank and made merry while the play went on as best it could, but at the Blackfriars nothing of the sort was permitted. There was, too, an unusually good orchestra, the musicians paying for the privilege of performing here where they were sure of attracting the attention of the nobility.

Famous Bridewell Prison, founded by King Edward VI., stood on what is now the westerly side of New Bridge near by Tudor Street. Fleet Brook occupied the space which is now New Bridge Street, extending as far as to the Holborn Viaduct of this day. The prison got its name from the holy spring of St. Bride's in this neighbourhood, the waters of which were supposed to effect miraculous cures. Before the prison was built, the site was occupied by the Palace of the Bridewell. Here the Lords of Court together with the Mayor and Aldermen were summoned by Henry VIII. when he was smitten with love for Anne Boleyn, to hear of the scruples that tormented him because of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon. It was here, too, that Shakespeare places an act of his play of Henry VIII.

The wonderful City of London was once a cluster of huts on a wooded slope of ground which in these days is known as Ludgate Hill. Roman London was enclosed by a wall which extended from about where the Tower is now to Ludgate Hill, and from Ludgate Circus to the Thames River. It had several gates now called to mind by the streets Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Moorgate, Cripplegate, Aldersgate, Newgate and Ludgate. This wall was built of brick and cement as hard as stone. The old Lud Gate stood about three parts of the way down Ludgate Hill and the name was derived from the legendary king, Lud. It was removed in 1760.

St. Martin's Church on Ludgate Hill was built by Wren, but an older church stood there before the Great Fire, and in this Cadwallo, King of the Britons was buried in 677. The tall and simple spire of the present structure contrasts strangely with nearby St. Paul's, and it is with St. Martin's partly in mind that one poet wrote:

Lo, like a bishop upon dainties fed, St. Paul's lifts up his sacredotal head; While his lean curates, slim and lank to view, Around him point their steeples to the blue.

On the west side of Old Bailey the second house south of Ship Court, numbered 68, is where Jonathan Wild world-famed thief and receiver of stolen goods, lived. He was hanged at Tyburn in 1725 and true to himself to the last stole the pocket-book of the parson who accompanied him in the cart on the way to the gallows. Henry Fielding wrote of the career of this noted criminal in his novel "Jonathan Wild."

Where Farringdon Street is now once flowed the Fleet Brook, so wide that ships sailed through it as far as to where Holborn Viaduct is to-day. In its course the Fleet passed through a deep cut called the Hole Bourne. From this came the name Holborn. The Viaduct of to-day bridges the Hole Bourne of old. On the east side of the Fleet Brook lay the notorious Fleet Prison for debtors close by where Fleet Lane is in this day. The main gate house of the prison was on the site of the nearby Congregational Memorial Hall. The clandestine Fleet marriages in this noisome place became notorious, being performed without let or hindrance and with no regard for existing laws, by unscrupulous clergymen among the debt prisoners encouraged by attendants who reaped ill gotten gains for their services. Outside the prison regular "runners" gathered in couples and gave every opportunity and encouragement for quick and illegal marriage. It was not unusual for two hundred marriages to take place in a single day. In this prison Mr. Pickwick of Dickens' "Pickwick Papers," was confined after he refused to pay the damages awarded to Mrs. Bardell. In 1846 the Fleet was demolished.

In the narrow passageway called Gunpowder Alley, jutting off Shoe Lane to the westward, Richard Lovelace died in a cellar, literally of starvation, in 1658. The house on the north side, second from Shoe Lane, stands on the site. Lovelace was the handsomest and most accomplished of the group of poets who gathered around Queen Henrietta. He was committed to prison in 1646 on account of his rebellious sympathy for Charles I., and on his release went to France to raise a regiment. He wrote to Lucy Sacheverell, to whom he was engaged, the poem containing the lines:

I could not love thee, dear, so much Loved I not honour more.

But the lady receiving news of his supposed death in France was married when he returned.

Fleet Street, still the centre of the newspaper and printing industries, is reminiscent of the literary associations of many decades. It takes its name from Fleet Brook which once crossed it at its eastern end. The stream still exists and now in the form of a great sewer flows under Farringdon Street and New Bridge Street, emptying into the Thames under Blackfriars Bridge. It was through Fleet Street in 1448 that Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, walked on her way to St. Paul's bareheaded, bearing a lighted candle as penance for having made a waxen figure of the king, that melted before a fire as she would have had his life slowly waste away.

At the east end of Fleet Street, surrounded by buildings is St. Bride's Church. It is only a few steps from Fleet Street if you happen to be familiar with any of the narrow ways that pierce into the centre of the block. But if you do not know the mystery of the block you will walk all around the church within sight of its two hundred and odd feet high steeple without coming to it. The church was built by Wren in 1680. In the centre aisle is the grave of Samuel Richardson the author who lived close by in Salisbury Square and who died in 1761. Beside the church in the present St. Bride's Lane Milton lived with a tailor named Russell. He moved here in 1640, and here wrote his treatises "Of Practical Episcopacy," "Of Reformation" and some others.

From 76 Fleet Street Salisbury Court is entered communicating direct with Salisbury Square. In the house numbered 9 at the southwest corner of the Square Samuel Richardson, the printer-novelist author of "Clarissa Harlowe," had his printing office and here Oliver Goldsmith for a time acted as a reader for him. Johnson was a friend of Richardson and often came to his printing shop, as did Hogarth the great satirist.

Tudor Street cuts through the very centre of the district once called "Alsatia" occupying the space between the river and Fleet Street. This was a cant name for Whitefriars. The neighbourhood had certain privileges of sanctuary derived from an old convent of the Carmelites or White Friars and was the abode of lawless classes. Scott immortalised it in the "Fortunes of Nigel."

Wine Office Court opens from Fleet Street and a few yards from the entrance is the Cheshire Cheese, the famous low-ceilinged, sanded-floored dining place of Dr. Johnson, looking doubtless much as it did in the days when Johnson and Goldsmith so often dined here together.

Goldsmith lived for a long time in Wine Office Court at No. 6 and it is here he is said to have written the "Vicar of Wakefield." His house has been replaced by a modern structure and the old Vicar and his daughters Olivia and Sophia would hardly feel at home now.

At the top of Wine Office Court is Gough Square and in a corner house numbered 17 may be found a tablet telling that Dr. Samuel Johnson once lived within. That was almost one hundred and fifty years ago but the house is very little changed outwardly. Within it is wholly given up to business. Of all the houses Johnson occupied in London this is the only one still standing. Here the greater part of his dictionary was written and here Mrs. Johnson died.

In Bolt Court the last years of Dr. Johnson's life were spent in the house No. 8, long since demolished. Here he died in 1784.

Johnson's Court a blind alley off Fleet Street was not named for Dr. Samuel Johnson although many persons believe so because Dr. Johnson lived here for a time on the site where No. 7 is now. The old "Monthly Magazine" had offices here in 1833, when Charles Dickens came and through the oaken doorway with uncertain hand dropped his first manuscript into the yawning opening of the letter box, that might or might not bring back good news.

At the head of Crane Court which opens out of Fleet Street is the spot selected by Sir Isaac Newton as "the middle of town and out of noise." Newton was president of the Royal Society and that body occupied the house from 1710 to 1762. The old house was burned in 1877 and a modern structure erected.

Fetter Lane evidently had an ill start taking its name from its early inhabitants the "Faitours" or beggars.

St. Dunstan's-in-the-West with its wondrous tower of fretwork is in Fleet Street close by Chancery Lane and is a restoration of 1831.

In Fleet Street opposite the gateway to the Temple once stood the old Cock Tavern which was swept away when Temple Bar was removed, and now exists in modern form close by on the south side. A cock is still the sign of the place, said to have been carved by Grinling Gibbons. It is this tavern that Tennyson speaks of in his "Will Waterproof's Lyric":

Oh plump head waiter at The Cock To which I most resort.

Samuel Pepys went often to the Cock Tavern, once with the elegant Mrs. Knipp and has left the record that they ate a lobster, sang and made merry until midnight--at which Mrs. Pepys was much annoyed.

Child's Bank close by the Temple Bar Griffin on the south side of Fleet Street, is the oldest of England's banking houses dating from the time of Charles I. when the first Francis Child, an apprentice to William Wheeler the goldsmith, married his master's daughter and by thrift and industry founded the fortunes of the great institution. The present bank stands on the site of the old Devil Tavern that for two hundred years was the haunt of men of letters. Here Ben Jonson had his social headquarters gathering around him in the famous Apollo Room wits of all degree.

In his day, Oliver Goldsmith was a most conscientious member of the shilling whist that met at the Devil Tavern. Several practical jokers in the club were quite in sympathy one evening when Goldsmith arrived and explained that he had given the cabman a guinea instead of a shilling. At the next meeting Goldsmith was surprised at being summoned to the door by a cabman who returned the guinea. He was quite overpowered and collected small sums from the other members, contributing heavily himself, and rewarded the cabman. He was still expatiating upon the honesty of the lower classes when one of the guests asked to see the returned guinea. It was counterfeit and in reality so was the cabman. Goldsmith realising that he had been imposed upon by his facetious colleagues retired amid a burst of much laughter.

Two doors to the south of the Devil Tavern towards the east Bernard Lintot had his bookshop. John Gay the poet who wrote "The Beggar's Opera," went himself to impress upon the book man the importance of having his books exposed for sale, and afterwards, in 1711, said in his "Trivia":

Oh, Lintot, let my labours obvious lie Ranged on thy stall for every envious eye.

FIVE

THE SPELL OF THE TEMPLE AND INNS OF COURT

The Temple lies between Fleet Street and the river, with Essex Street on the west and Whitefriars on the east. It is a wide area of quaint buildings, strange windings and uncertain by-ways relieved by unexpected open spaces and magnificent gardens--a place to wander in if you are fond of wandering, and to get lost in if you make up your mind to wander and do not mind getting lost. For hundreds of years this has been hallowed ground in sacred history. It was the quarters of the Knights Templars, a religious order founded in the twelfth century to protect the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and the recruiting point for Crusaders. When the Order was dissolved in 1313 the Temple became Crown property. In 1346 it was leased to the professors of common law and since then has been a school of law, and a great centre of learning in England.

There are two divisions of the Temple, the eastern or Inner Temple; the western or Middle Temple. The Inner Temple came by its name being nearest the City; the Middle Temple because it was between the Inner and Outer Temples. The Outer Temple vanished long ago. In 1609, James I. conveyed the Temple property by grant to the benchers of the Inner and Middle Temple--two of the Inns of Court.

The Inns of Court are four--the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple, Lincoln's Inn and Gray's Inn. These are societies formed for the study of law and custom has given them the exclusive privilege of deciding who may be called to the bar. Their quarters were called Inns of Court originally because as students of law they belonged to "the King's Court." In the 15th century there were ten other Seminaries called Inns of Chancery offshoots from the four parent societies. In the Inns of Chancery fees were low and suited to the middle classes--the Inns of Court being patronized by the aristocracy.

The inner Temple gateway in the Strand opposite Chancery Lane leads after a few yards directly to the Temple Church, literally buried here close to the busiest street in London. This is the famous Round Church, the chapel of the Inner Temple in which the Knights Templars worshipped, and is the only real relic left of the Knights Templars. It has stood here since 1185, one of the four round churches of England, built in imitation of the Round Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. In early days lawyers received their clients in this church. It was arranged in the manner of an exchange, each lawyer having his regular standing place.

To the north of the Temple Church is a plain slab recording that Oliver Goldsmith author of the "Vicar of Wakefield," lies buried here.

William Cowper the poet lived for years in the Inner Temple, where he several times tried to commit suicide but failed in each attempt.

Charles Lamb was born in 1775 at No. 2 Crown Office Row in rooms overlooking the Temple Garden.

In Temple Garden, best seen from Crown Office Row, you look upon the spot where Shakespeare had the partisans first choose the red rose or the white as the badge of the houses of York or Lancaster. In "King Henry VI.," this picking is stirringly told of and the Earl of Warwick exclaims:

And here I prophesy, the brawl to-day Grown to this faction, in the Temple Gardens, Shall send, between the red rose and the white, A thousand souls to death and deadly night.

Middle Temple is entered from Fleet Street close by Temple Bar Memorial, by way of Middle Temple Lane, through a brick gateway designed by Wren and built in 1684. Middle Temple Lane divides Middle from Inner Temple. It is narrow, crooked and dark, a survival of the long past. Here are houses with overhanging upper floors, and law stationers' shops on the lane level or below it. Off from the thoroughfare are dingy nooks and odd courts. In one such, Brick Court, at No. 2, were Oliver Goldsmith's last lodgings and here he died in 1774. The learned Blackstone lived in the same building on the floor below Goldsmith and complained that he was much disturbed on occasions when the author of the "Vicar of Wakefield" and the "Deserted Village" gave supper parties that were "filled with roaring comic songs."

The turning beyond Brick Court opens on the Hall of the Middle Temple, a perfect example of Elizabethan architecture, and where Shakespeare's charming comedy of "Twelfth Night" was first performed. In the Hall is preserved a table made of wood from one of the ships of the Great Armada on which the death warrant of Mary Queen of Scots was signed by Elizabeth.

Before the Hall of Middle Temple is Fountain Court, a spot seeming far away from London. In it is the Temple Fountain. The doves that drink of the water here are as tame and as faded as the dusty foliage and the skeletons of trees hereabouts. Here Ruth Pinch the sweet girl of Dickens' "Martin Chuzzlewit" came often to meet her brother Tom and afterwards her lover John Westlock.

From Fountain Court at the north is New Court and then on a few steps further is Devereux Court where may be seen a bust of Lord Essex by Colley Cibber, put here to mark the site of the Grecian Coffee House, sacred to the legal profession.

The house in Fleet Street forming the east corner of the entrance to Inner Temple Lane was the famous coffee-house called Nando's, in the 18th century. This house was built for the convenience of Henry, Prince of Wales, in the reign of James I.

Obscured in dust and gloom the Sergeants' Inn, one of the original ten Inns of Chancery, still stands in Fleet Street at Chancery Lane.

A grimy and narrow passage in Fleet Street, a few steps east of St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, so insignificant that it would easily pass unnoticed, is really an entrance to Clifford's Inn, one of the original ten Inns of Chancery. Clifford's is now completely hidden by the church and other buildings but reveals a mine of quaint corners and romantic associations to one fortunate enough to stumble upon it in a day's ramble.

It was in winding Chancery Lane that the dean of anglers Izaak Walton kept a linen draper shop in the years from 1627 to 1647.

In Bishop's Court off Chancery Lane Dickens, in "Bleak House," saw fit to place the rag and bottle shop of Crook, where that strange old man died a death due to spontaneous combustion. Mr. Vholes the lawyer of the Chancery Court also in "Bleak House," had his offices in Symond's Inn on the other side of Chancery Lane where Chichester Rents is now.

Lincoln's Inn, one of the Inns of Court, was built in 1310 and there remains no trace of the original. The front on Chancery Lane and the gatehouse there were designed in 1518. Through an odd little pathway from Chancery Lane the Stone Buildings are easily reached. These were set up in the hope of rebuilding the entire Inn but this was not done. Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, here maintained a town house in the 13th century and the grounds extended all about the present site and have taken his name as their own.

The gardens of Lincoln's Inn Fields were laid out by the great architect Inigo Jones. Up to the first quarter of the 18th century Lincoln's Inn Fields was a favorite duelling ground. Here also Babington and others who conspired for the freedom of Mary Queen of Scots were executed in 1586. Lord William Russell was also executed here in 1683 because he was supposed to have been concerned in the Rye House Plot. Altogether the gardens may be said to have many gory associations of which their present appearance gives no hint.

Inigo Jones the celebrated English architect has left the mark of his genius on many London structures. He was born in London in 1576 and during the reign of James I., when the main amusement of the Court was the putting on of the masques of Ben Jonson he designed the scenery for them. During this reign, too, he held the post of surveyor-general of royal buildings. Long before his death in 1653 he was known to be the first architect of England.

Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre stood where is now the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons on the south side of the gardens. In this playhouse Congreve's "Love for Love," with Mrs. Bracegirdle as _Angelica_, was first produced in 1695. "The Beggar's Opera" was also first seen here, when Lavinia Fenton afterwards Duchess of Bolton was the _Polly Peacham_. This is the theatre which Pepys visited so often that, as he himself said, he made his wife "as mad as the devil."

Facing Lincoln's Inn Fields on the west side is still to be seen a stone built house numbered 58, with Doric columns, quite grimy in appearance, where once lived John Forster the biographer of Dickens. In this house, Forster began the library which had grown to 18,000 volumes when he bequeathed it to the nation. Here, too, he often entertained Dickens and here heard him read in manuscript "The Chimes." Dickens made this the home of Tulkinghorn the lawyer of "Bleak House," and killed him here. There is no sign of the fore-shortened allegory on the first floor ceiling now though from appearance it might well have been there once. "Boz," writing of this first floor room declared that you might once have heard "a sound at night, as of men laughing, together with a clinking of knives and forks and wineglasses." The house was built by Robert Bertie, Earl of Lindsey, a general of King Charles I.

In Great Queen Street at No. 56 not far from Lincoln's Inn Fields, Boswell lived and wrote the greater part of the "Life of Johnson."

Where Gray's Inn Road touches Holborn is the old quaint gabled Staple Inn, one of the original ten Inns of Chancery harking back to the days of James I. An arched gateway gives entrance to the interior court where flourish plane trees that look to be as old as the inn itself. It was here that Mr. Grewgious of Dickens' "Bleak House," had his chambers, and over a doorway of the court is a stone with the lettering:

P J T 1747

This seemingly cabalistic reference stands for Principal John Thompson who presided over the inn for two terms in 1747. Dickens made fun of it in "Bleak House." Dr. Samuel Johnson moved into Staple Inn March 22, 1757, from Gough Square, Fleet Street, and during his residence here the great lexicographer wrote "Rasselas" in the evenings of a week, to pay the funeral expenses of his mother!

The large red brick insurance building opposite Staple Inn on the north side of Holborn is on the site of Furnival's, one of the original ten Inns of Chancery, where Dickens lived when he was first married and where he began the writing of "Pickwick Papers."

A narrow alley between the Holborn houses east of Fetter Lane and having over its entrance a jarring gilt sign leads to the smallest of the ten original Inns of Chancery--Barnard's Inn. Its ancientness is evidenced by its dwarfed courts and tiny Hall. Since 1874 it has been used by the Mercers' Company for their schools. Herbert Pocket in Dickens' "Great Expectations" had rooms here in which Pip slept on his arrival in London.

Gray's Inn one of the four Inns of Court with its spacious gardens and its sober courts is a reminder of the reign of King Edward III. The Hall was built in 1560 and the gardens were laid out three centuries ago, the walks being planned by Francis Bacon.