1 MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON E. V. LUCAS — — By E. V. LUCAS More Wanderings in London Cloud and Silver The Vermilion Box The Hausfrau Rampant Landmarks Listener's Lure Mr. Ingleside Over Bemerton's Loiterer's Harvest One Day and Another Fireside and Sunshine Character and Comedy Old Lamps for New The Hambledon Men The Open Road The Friendly Town Her Infinite Variety Good Company The Gentlest Art The Second Post A Little of Everything Harvest Home Variety Lane The Best of Lamb The Life of Charies Lamb A Swan and Her Friends A Wanderer in Venice A W^anderer in Paris A Wanderer in London A Wanderer in Holland A Wanderer in Florence Highways and Byways in Sussex Anne's Terrible Good Nature The Slowcoach and The Pocket Edition of the Works of Charies Lamb: i. Miscellaneous Prose; II. Elia; iii. Children's Books; iv. Poems and Plays; v. and vi. Letters. ST. MARTIN's-IN-THE-FIELDS, TRAFALGAR SQUARE MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON BY E. V. LUCAS "You may depend upon it, all lives lived out of London are mistakes: more or less grievous—but mistakes" Sydney Smith WITH SIXTEEN DRAWINGS IN COLOUR BY H. M. LIVENS AND SEVENTEEN OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY L'Jz Copyright, 1916, By George H. Doran Company NOV -7 1916 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ICI.A445536 PREFACE THIS book is a companion to A Wanderer in London^ published in 1906, and supplements it. New editions, bringing that work to date, will, I hope, continue to appear. More Wanderings in London contains certain matter of interest omitted from the earlier book, such as descriptions of some minor museums, or touched there too lightly, and extends the range to Hampton Court. It also gives complete lists of the open-air statues of London and of those houses that are marked with tablets. Mr. Livens would have made, among other pic- tures not here, a drawing of the new Admiralty- Arch, had not this been forbidden, during war time, by the authorities. The end papers are a portion of an ingenious poster designed by Mr. MacDonald Gill for the Metropolitan District Railway Company, by whose courtesy it is used here. I offer no apology for the digressive character of the pages that follow. London was made for digres- sion. L- April, 1916 ^- ^- [V] CONTENTS CHAPTEB I. Bow Church and Sir Christopher Wren i II. The City's Pictures .... 28 III. A Medley of Churches .... 53 IV. The Royal Mint and New Scotland Yard 68 V. The Statues of London : I. The City to Charing Cross 80 VI. The Statues of London: II. Trafalgar Square and the Mall to Kensington 92 VII. Holland House and Sydney Smith 105 VIII. The Statues of London : III. Waterloo Place and Leicester Square 126 IX. John Hunter's Museum 133 X. The Statues of London: IV. Westmin STER AND THE EmBANKMENT 139 XI, The Oval 149 XII. The London Museum 163 XIII. The Circus 174 XIV. The Statues of London: V. Miscel laneous 185 [vii] CONTENTS CHAPTER PAQB XV. Sermons in Stones . , . 196 XVI. The Adelphi and James Barry . 202 XVII. The Society of Arts' Tablets . .218 XVIII. The County Council's Tablets . 229 XIX. GouGH Square and St. Clement Danes 250 XX. Hampton Court 267 XXI. Lord's 281 XXII. The Zoo . .294 XXIII. A Group of Londoners .... 303 [viii] PICTURES IN COLOUR BY H. M. LIVENS St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square Frontispiece / PAGB St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, Fleet Street . 20 ? St. Magnus the Martyr, from London Bridge 42 The Temple Church, from Johnson's Buildings 62 V A Mansion in Park Lane, from Hyde Park 82 '^ Kensington Palace, from the Green 100 . Holland House, from Holland Walk 122 The Horse Guards, from St. James's Park 130 : A Typical London Demolition Scene 144 The Westminster Guildhall 166 V EusTON Station, Main Entrance . 186 Berkeley Square, East Side . 206^ Dickens' House, Devonshire Terrace . 224 y The Inner Temple Hall, from the Corner of Crown Office Row, Where, at No. 2, ^ Charles Lamb Was Born . , . 246 Hampton Court, the Great Gateway 268V Richmond Bridge 278 ^'^ fix] OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS PAGB The Dead Cavalier. W. S. Burton (Guildhall) 10 George Herbert at Bemerton. W. Dyce (Guild- hall) 28 Thomas Tomkins. Sir Joshua Reynolds (Guild- hall) 48 Study of a Lion. J. M. Swan (Guildhall) . 74 Study of a Tiger. J. M. Swan (Guildhall) . 74 Jesus is Condemned to Death (The Stations of the Cross, I). Eric Gill (Westminster Cathedral) . 88 William Hunter Lecturing on Anatomy. Zof- fany (Royal College of Physicians) . .110 The Sisters. Hoppner (The Tennant Gallery). From a photograph by the Medici Society . 136 A Cricket Match at Chertsey. George Morland (Surrey County Cricket Club Pavilion) . .156 Miss Ridge. Reynolds (The Tennant Gallery). From a photograph by the Medici Society . 176 Relief (Christ Blessing Children). J. Flaxman (University College) 192 Reproduced from the original in the Flaxman Gallery, University College, London, by per- mission of the University College Committee. [xi] OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS PAGB Soliciting Votes (from "The Election"). W. Ho- garth (Soane Museum) 212 ^ The Rake's Progress (Arrested for Debt). W. Ho- garth (Soane Museum) 236 Andrea Odoni. Lotto (Hampton Court). From a photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co. 254 V Princess Mary as Diana. Sir Peter Lely (Hamp- ton Court). From a photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co 270 The Holy Family with S. James. Correggio (Hampton Court). From a photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co 290 A Shepherd with a Pipe. Attributed to Giorgione (Hampton Court). From a photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co 316 [xiil MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON ^ — MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON CHAPTER I BOW CHURCH AND SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN St. Mary-le-Bow—An ancient crypt—The great Bell and the Dragon—Cockneys—London's lovely spires—Bridge viewpoints—The true white stone—Christopher Wren Dr. Busby—An apocryphal poem—A voracious experi- mentalist—The Fire of London—Samuel Pepys as eye- witness—The Monument—The Moment and the Man Wren's energy—His fifty-two London churches—A great life. 1 BEGAN my earlier wanderings in London at No. 1 London, or Apsley House. Bow Church, in Cheapside, is another good starting-point, since one is no true Cockney unless bom within sound of its bells. It has a further claim as a place of de- parture in that its crypt is among the earliest Lon- don buildings. Let us then begin these new wan- derings here. Bow Church, or, to give its true name, St. Mary- le-Bow, is the glory of Cheapside. although prob- [1] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON ably a plebiscite of children would award that hon- our to Mr. Bennett's giants. The second part of its name comes from the arches or bows on which the first church was built, still in perfect preserva- tion in the crypt; and the Court of Arches, our highest ecclesiastical tribunal, which in early days held its sittings here, derives its style from the same circumstance. This crypt, which is of perpetual interest to anti- quaries, offers the opportunity of shedding ten cen- turies in as many moments. One has but to leave the bustle of Cheapside, with its motor horns and modernity, and descend a few steps, and one is not only in perfect stillness but surrounded by massive masonry of immense age, eked out here and there by Roman tiles. Only half of the crypt is shown; the other half, sealed up, contains hundreds of cof- fins. On a shelf is a headstone of Wren's brought from All Hallows—^very like Mr. Chesterton. Bow Church itself is just a spacious siquare room. Its special attractions are the crypt; the famous bell whose firm attitude of ignorance is so familiar to all children who have ever played that most thrill- ing of games "Oranges and Lemons" (" T do not know,' says the great bell of Bow"); a^ J the gold dragon on the top of the spire which to any one in Cheapside caring to look up tells where the wind is. Londoners once never looked up, but the activities [2] SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN jf Count Zeppelin have given our necks a new lis- someness, and, kt any rate after dark, we now look up with great frequency. According to the picture postcard which the Bow verger induced me to purchase, this dragon is two hundred and twenty-one feet, six inches, above the pavement. Furthermore, it is eight feet, ten inches, long, and the crosses under its wings represent the crest of the City. The great bell of Bow, according to a similar source of information which cost me an- other penny, weighs fifty-three hundred-weights and twenty-two pounds. It is not the bell that Whit- tington heard,—some say on Highgate Hill and others in Bunhill Fields,—^but a successor. The Great Fire destroyed the ancient peal, but a new one of twelve now rings out merrily enough on practice nights. The postcard, turning from weights, enlarges upon the origin of the word "Cockney," in the following, to me unconvincing, terms : "People bom within the sound of Bow Bells are termed 'Cockneys,'—a term said to arise from a misshapen Ggg called by some country-folk a 'cock's tgg,' and applied by them to townsfolk as being poorly de- veloped and misshapen. Another story is that a London boy ''hearing on a visit to the country a horse's neigh, asked what the noise was, and was told ; he then heard a cock crowing and said : 'That's a cock's neigh, then.' Thus the term was applied to [3] MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON one who knew little of country life." Philology must do better than that.