Of a Sunday morning Petticoat Lane is still the most interesting spot in London. It is here that one goes to buy back his stolen dog, or to lay in a supply of chickens, cats, white mice, jellied eels, Eastern silks, or camels for the coming week. Once I saw a bear offered there. Elephants have been sold on its exchange. One does not walk through the Sunday morning crowd here. One takes a long breath and commits himself to the stream, at the imminent peril of his buttons. It was with some trepidation that we bussed it down the Commercial highroad from Aldgate in search of the Limehouse Causeway and Penny Field. This is London's Chinatown, We sniffed the air for the black smoke, we listened for the sounds of murder, we peered into each open door for one of the "broken blossoms" we had been led to believe haunted these thoroughfares of vice. The streets were dirty, sordid, and uninteresting. As for danger: "Ho!" said a large, red-faced policeman. "They be-'ave themselves better than Christians." Topical Press Agency We ride on down Whitechapel and the Mile End Road, whereabouts the Hebrew population mostly centers. One may walk for blocks of a Saturday night here and hardly hear a word of intelligible English. Immensely interesting, colorful, and fragrant; also, well behaved. I am forever being disappointed in the quality of London's wickedness. PETTICOAT LANE, THE MOST INTERESTING SPOT IN LONDON St. George Street was once the Ratcliff Highway, in which not a night passed without a cold-blooded murder. Now one is safe. A bit of asking will find Middlesex Street, which was once Petticoat Lane. Why, one wonders, should these old. names be changed? True, here and there a bland Chinese smoked a cigarette and we sometimes. glanced into closepacked rooms where Orientals of sorts sat reading, sewing on buttons, and playing odd games. Back to the bus for the long, jolting return to Aldgate and a pedestrian excursion to St. Olave's Church in Hart Street, one of the few churches that lived through the Fire. Here worshiped Samuel Pepys, the diarist-whose name, by the way, was pronounced peepes in his day-and it is This finest of London thoroughfares was constructed, under act of Parliament of 1813, to provide direct access from Carlton House, the residence of the Prince Regent, to the Regent's Park. The architectural character of the street has been greatly changed since the World War by the erection of imposing retail establishments similar to that at the right of the picture. there that he caused to be set up the portrait bust of his rather ill-used young wife. In a corner we found the monument erected by the Davison and Newman families. "But why?" we asked of the verger, who regarded us breathlessly. "They are the tea merchants whose cargo was dumped in Boston Harbor," said he, "and brought on the American Revolution; and only yesterday I bought my tea from the same firm." ALL HISTORY AND NARROW STREETS It wasn't worth while to debate his American history. We got back on the bus, to go through Leadenhall and Cornhill toward the Bank (see page 567). Nothing but history here-history and a myriad narrow, twisting streets, through which pattered a multitude of busy men. Why do the English sneer at our American hurry? Surely the New Yorkers themselves do not pant more breathlessly through their days than these city dwellers. We ask a policeman-all visitors to London are forever asking policemen and are always courteously answered-and he tells us where to find the sights. Lloyd's new building, where the associated agents will issue insurance policies against any conceivable disaster (fire WHEN THE KING OF ENGLAND "VISITS" THE CITY OF LONDON His Majesty is addressing the Lord Mayor after receiving at the latter's hands the City sword. This ancient ceremony takes place at Temple Bar (see text, page 563). By this token royalty is given permission to pass through the City gates. insurance was invented after the Great Fire) the Mansion House, official home of the Lord Mayor, the Guildhall, the Royal Exchange. When one tires, there is a survival of the real old English ordinary in Simpson's restaurant in Bird-in-Hand Court. If a person guesses the height, girth, and weight of the giant cheese which stands at the chairman's right, the house stands. cigars and champagne for all hands. It has been done several times in Simpson's 200 years. We are, somehow, making a rapid way through Cheapside, by a miraculous cooperation of chauffeur and policemen and rapid side-skipping by pedestrians. Cheapside was once the market for all little things in medieval London. Here the pageants passed on their way to the tilting grounds, apprentices fought, thieves sat in the stocks. The names of the streets around tell their own story to us rumbling past. Milk Street, Wood Street, Goldsmith Street, Honey Lane. As early as 1277 Friday Street was the place of the fishmongers. It was from No. 37 Cheapside that John Gilpin traditionally set out on his ride. John Milton was born near by, Chaucer lived here; Shakespeare, Kit Marlow, Beaumont and Fletcher met for wine and witticisms in the Mermaid Tavern in Bread Street. It was the bells of Bow Church that called to Dick Whittington to turn again. ON THE WAY TO FASHION AND Now we are fairly on our way to the London of fashion and sophistication. Yet in London one is never out of touch with the past. In Newgate Street we thump past the site of Newgate Prison, where malefactors condemned to death were confined. When the bells of St. Sepulchre near by sounded, the hangman placed the condemned wretch, heavily ironed, in the open cart that was to take him to Tyburn Gallows through the eager streets. All the night previous a hand bell had been rung, to remind him that he must die with all his sins upon him. A benefactor of the day had left a sum of money in his will to that end, and another sum to pay the services of a clerk to keep the ringer up to his job. We take another bus at Farringdon Road for a visit to the Charterhouse. Half a dozen centuries of history in this lovely old structure, which is, perhaps, the finest example in England of what a nobleman's home of the first order used to be. It was to the Charterhouse that Thackeray's Colonel Newcome came to end his days, and fifty brethren of the Charterhouse live there to-day in the peace and dignity to which age is entitled after a life filled with honor. Not five minutes' walk away is the gatehouse of the Priory of the Order of St. John. Even the hurried passer-by must pause to admire the solid grandeur of Prior Docwra's building. Then, perhaps, he will do as we did, and continue on the bus to Hampstead Heath, the best of London's open spaces. Here the Spaniards. Inn may be found, and Jack Straw's Castle, with pistols said to have been Dick Turpin's hanging on the wall. Or continue on the bus along Oxford Road, pausing again where Charterhouse Street opens into Holborn Circus; for there is Ely Place, won by Sir Christopher Hatton by his dancing. Every vestige of the palace of the Bishops of Ely has been swept away, but each night the iron gates of Ely Place are locked, as they have been for 600 years, and a gold-laced watchman goes on his rounds to cry, "Past ten o'clock and all's well." At Tottenham Court Road one may journey to the Caledonia Market, Hogartian in atmosphere, where, two days a week, things of no value whatever are sold at commensurate prices. It should be seen, if only to mingle with the lively, laughing, cockney crowd. Yet prizes are sometimes found. A patient seeker picked up for sixpence the silver model of a sixteenth-century galleon, and a soldier. bought for a trifle an almost complete set. of armor. "It made my little nipper larf," he explained. THE LEGEND OF THE STOLEN SNAIL Of an evening it is worth while wandering down Soho Street to see the foreign restaurants. THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE AT THE OPENING OF THE LONDON LAW COURTS A QUAINT CUSTOM HONOR'D IN THE OBSERVANCE After morning service on Good Friday 21 aged women of the poor may pick up a new sixpence which has been laid on a certain flat gravestone in the churchyard of St. Bartholomewthe-Great. The custom originated in 1686 from a bequest left by a pious woman to provide doles for widows. The gift is also supplemented now by a shawl, hot-cross bun, and a half crown. |