WALKING, RAMBLING, AND PROMENADING IN EIGHTEENTH- CENTURY LONDON: A LI I ERARY AND CULTURAL HISTORY ALISON F. O'BYRNE PH.D. THE UNIVERSITY OF YORK DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND RELATED LITERATURE 2003 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page List of Illustrations v Declaration vi Abstract vii INTRODUCTION Walking in Eighteenth-Century London 1 CHAPTER 1 The Literary Forms of Eighteenth-Century London 18 1. Guidebooks to London 21 2. Histories, Topographies, and Antiquarian Tours 26 3. The Art of Walking the Streets of London 37 4. Ramble and Spy Narratives of Eighteenth- Century London 47 5. Translation and Appropriation 57 6. New and Modern: Recycling, Rewriting, and Reprinting 60 7. The Ramble in the Early Nineteenth Century 68 CHAPTER TWO Policing Politeness in the Periodicals of Addison and Steele 72 1. The Rise of the Town 73 2. The Paradigm of Politeness 76 3. Mapping and Presenting London 82 4. Categorizing London 89 5. Censors of Manners and Appearance 94 6. Politeness in the Streets 103 11 7. A Community of Spectators 115 CHAPTER THREE Politeness, Social Aspiration and the Eighteenth- Century Promenade 121 1. Vauxhall Gardens 126 2. The Promenade in St. James's Park 133 3. The Cit in the Park 139 4. Policing the Park 147 5. The Crowding of the Mall 152 6. The Promenade in the Early Nineteenth Century 161 CHAPTER FOUR Women, Shopping, Spectacle 167 1. Prostitution in the Metropolis 170 2. Manipulating Boundaries 177 3. A Lady's Midnight Ramble 181 4. London in the Novels of Frances Burney 188 5. Circulation and Commerce 196 6. A-shopping 205 7. Exchange 217 CONCLUSION Presenting London in the Early Nineteenth Century 220 1. London and Romantic Writing 221 2. London as Labyrinth 230 3. London as Spectacle 234 4. Life In and Out of London 241 5. The Finish 247 iii BIBLIOGRAPHY 253 iv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page Figure 1 Ladies fan displaying a map of London, (London, c. 1770s). Reproduced by kind permission of York Castle Museum. 2 Figure 2 Promenade in St. James's Park (London, 1793). Reproduced by kind permission of The Museum of London. 153 Figure 3 Thomas Gainsborough, The Mall in St. James's Park (London, 1784). 154 Figure 4 A Meeting in Green Park (London, 1809). Reproduced by kind permission of The Museum of London. 160 Figure 5 The Entrance to Hyde Park on a Sunday (London, 1804). Reproduced by kind permission of The Guildhall Library, London. 163 V DECLARATION This thesis is the result of my own work, and includes nothing done in collaboration. It has been prepared in accordance with the guidelines outlined by the Department of English and Related Literature and the University of York, and does not exceed the regulation length. vi ABSTRACT The dissertation examines the literature and culture of walking, rambling, and promenading in eighteenth-century London, exploring the ways in which walking informed the presentation of London over the course of the century, and how, as a social and cultural activity, it allowed writers to address contemporary issues such as luxury, class, politeness, gender, social mobility, and personal safety. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, walking had become an established means of organizing narratives of the metropolis and of composing and presenting one's experiences in London. At the same time, new kinds of social and cultural spaces — the promenade and the shopping street — gave rise to new forms of walking. Representations of London over the course of the century described a London that was interesting, spectacular, dangerous, and exciting — a city that needed to be presented, revealed, discussed, explained, and questioned. Rather than focus on a single genre or paradigm, the dissertation examines the variety of uses of walking in a range of presentations of London, including histories, topographies, guidebooks, ramble and spy narratives, periodicals, poems, travelogues, prints, and cultural artefacts. vi i INTRODUCTION WALKING IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LONDON A lady's fan, dated from the 1770s, opens to display a map of London [fig.!]. The listings at each side of the map offer a number of choices of places to visit, and mark the locations of churches, squares, places of interest, parks, and buildings of significance. The fan, presumably, is an early example of the same practice that now places maps of the London Underground on tea towels, socks, umbrellas, and ties. To own one of these objects announces that you have been to London (whether you have or not), and that you have some acquaintance, at least, with the area the map represents. You might point out the place where you stayed, the places you visited; you may trace on the map the routes you took. There are some important differences, however, between the eighteenth-century fan and the souvenirs of the present. The map of London, displayed on a fashion accessory like a fan, suggests the possibility of women moving unaccompanied through London, at a time when their freedom to do so was still insecurely established. Secondly, the map on the fan is a much more discreet aide-memoire then any comparable object sold today. To consult an A-Z in the street is to announce to everyone that you are a stranger to London, even new to the city; to glance briefly at a fan whose design is invisible to others makes no such troublesome confession. A number of issues raised by this fan — the marketing of the idea of London; the way women should and should not move through the city; how to 1 Figure 1. Ladies fan displaying a map of London. London, c.1770s. Reproduced by kind permission of York Castle Museum. 2 present yourself on the city streets; and the association between London and polite and fashionable life — will return frequently in this dissertation. It explores the literature and culture of walking, rambling, and promenading in eighteenth-century London, examining the ways in which walking informed the presentation of London over the course of the century, and how, as a social and cultural activity, it allowed writers to address contemporary issues. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, walking had become an established means to present narratives of the metropolis and to compose and present one's experiences in London. The movements through the metropolis offered by narratives structured around walking allowed for the exploration of taverns, pleasure gardens, public promenades, shops, gaming houses, brothels, theatres, and exhibitions. At the same time, new kinds of social and cultural spaces — the promenade and the shopping street — gave rise to new forms of walking. Through their representations of London, authors and artists were able to respond to the swiftly growing metropolis, raising issues relating to morality, luxury, class, politeness, gender, social mobility, and personal safety. Representations of London over the course of the century described a London that was interesting, spectacular, dangerous, and exciting — a city which needed to be presented, revealed, discussed, explained, and questioned. That London should hold such sway over the eighteenth-century imagination is not surprising. Far larger than any other European city in the period, it grew considerably both in size and in population over the course of the century. Although population figures before the first census of 1801 are not entirely reliable (they do not include Jews, Roman Catholics, Protestant Dissenters, the foreign, and the children of the poor), it is generally understood 3 London's size increased by more than 50% from around 570,000 in 1700 to 900,000 in 1801. 1 Although still legally as well as imaginatively divided along complex boundaries, including Middlesex, Westminster, the City, and the Borough of Southwark, plus various liberties and precincts, which together seemed to form 'an Aggregate of various Nations,' the whole of the developed area was, by the early eighteenth century, considered to be `London.'2 Writing in the 1720s, Daniel Defoe remarks that 'when I speak of London, now in the modern acceptation, you expect I shall take in all that vast mass of buildings, reaching from Black-Wall in the east, to Tot-hill Fields in the west' as well as Southwark, the whole totaling over thirty-six miles in circumference. 3 As the home of court, government, and culture, and with its theatres, promenades, coffee-houses, pleasure gardens, assemblies, and exhibitions (as well as more illicit forms of entertainment), London often set the standard in provincial towns for social and cultural activities. It was home to fashionable society during the season, and as roads and transportation improved, became accessible to more and more visitors. Finally, as the center of the nation's printing and publishing, it featured in most newspapers and novels that were 'read across the country. I Roy Porter, London: A Social History (London: Penguin, 2000), pp. 121-2. George Rude, Hanoverian London 1714— 1808 (London: Secker and Warburg, 1971), p. 4.. The numbers were calculated by E. A. Wrigley, 'A Simple Model of London's Importance in Changing English Society and Economy 1650-1750'. Past and Present 37 (1967), p. 44. The numbers are not undisputed: Mary Dorothy George calculated the population in 1750 as 674,350 in London Life in the Eighteenth Century (1925), (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976). 2 Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, The Spectator ed. Donald F. Bond, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965) no. 403, III: 506. 3 Daniel Defoe, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724-6), 2 vols. (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1962), I: 314. 4 From some perspectives, the development of walking in London as a means to explore and experience the metropolis and as a pastime may seem surprising. Early eighteenth-century representations of London often focused on its filth, stenches, and noises.