Essex Street

“ But one must approach these old towns with reverence, to get at their secrets. They will not yield inspiration or meaning save to an imaginative effort. Under the influence of that, the faded past, traced in sympathetic ink, as it were, revives and starts into distinctness. Passing down Essex Street, or striking off from its modest bustle a little way, we come upon shy, ungainly relics of other times. Gray gambrel-roofed houses stand out here and there, with thick-throated chimneys that seem to hold the whole together. ”

“ She's a strornary pretty beggar-wench, with blue eyes and black hair, as used to stand at the corner of Essex Street, Strand, and the money as that gal got a-holdin' out her matches and a-sayin' texes out of the Bible must ha' been strornary. So the Essex Street Beauty's bin about here agin on the rainy-night dodge, 'es she? ”

“ The sign of the Hop-poles (p. 111) reminds us of the time when hop-growing formed a considerable industry in the county. Our various Blue Boars (p. 68) speak to us of the noble and once mighty Essex family of De Vere, which formerly wielded a great power in England. These are but a few instances. Others will occur to every one who peruses the following pages. At the present day, too, there is scarcely a village in the county that has not some street, square, or lane named after an inn-sign, as, for instance, Sun Street, Eagle Lane, Swan Street, Falcon Square, Lion Walk, Greyhound Lane, &c. ”

“ As a matter of fact, there is probably more wheat grown in Essex to-day than in any other county of its size.
In one mile, take a turning to the right, then the first to the left, and then the next two turnings to the right again, bringing the explorer to the scattered village of Kelvedon Hatch, a thoroughly Essex village, with the weather-boarded cottages and projecting [81] red brick chimney-breasts you will find scarce anywhere else than in this county. Make straight through the long, flat village street, and then to the left, where a sign-post marks the way to Blackmore. ”

“ This device appears to be unusually common in the county of Essex. Nearly every town or village of any consequence possesses an example. At present we have no less than fifty, and twenty years ago the number was exactly the same. London itself cannot boast of having more, as it has also just fifty examples of the sign. The White Hart in the High Street at Brentwood is in all respects the most notable house now displaying this sign in Essex. In its best days it was a coaching inn of great importance, and is still by far the best hotel in the town. ”

“ Wandering down the wharves at Lambeth, and hard by the hideous iron bridge, where we expect to find marble yards and trusses of hay and mounds of coal, we come on a magnificent doorway, richly carved and of the shell pattern; carved, also, are its pilasters. This work seems as sound as it was on the day it was set up. In Essex Street, Strand, on the right hand as we go down, we shall find some half a dozen doorways of merit, each of a different pattern and offering curious variety of treatment. In the City, close to Tower Hill, and in Seething Lane, and in quiet St. ”

“ They are numerous, so they say, in Essex, Sussex, and Surrey, but in the Walworth Road they are few and not popular with their neighbours, who possibly know no better. Now and then up comes a street-boy and makes a hideous noise through the keyhole; but the Peculiar People have got used to that. ”

“ Where the soul of a man is warped and sunk to the
soul of a mere machine,
In the flash of the wire to west and north, in the hum
of the restless street,
In the pulse of the toiling press that beats all night
in a fever heat,
Where the weary brain and the pen plod on 'neath
the white electric light–
Tho' we fail and fall still the fight goes on ”

“ The East End is a vast city, as famous in its way as any the hand of man has made. But who knows the East End? It is down through Cornhill and out beyond Leadenhall Street and Aldgate Pump, one will say: a shocking place, where he once went with a curate; an evil plexus of slums that hide human creeping things, where filthy men and women live on penn'orths of gin, where collars and clean shirts are decencies unknown, where every citizen wears a black eye, and none ever combs his hair. The East End is a place, says another, which is given over to the Unemployed. ”

“ I know, of course, that as an art-form for expressing a great people, Oxford Street is not all that it should be, but there is certainly something, after all the mooniness and the dim droniness, and lawyer-mindedness in the way the English people express themselves or think that they ought to express themselves in their house of Commons—there is certainly something that makes Oxford Street seem suddenly a fine, free, candid way for a great people to talk! ”

“ At last we turned into a wide street with very tall houses, alternating with far humbler erections, blazing with lights, gay with shop-windows, thronged in spite of the mud with well-dressed people, and pervaded by strings of omnibuses—Oxford Street was nothing to it for length. ”

“ Its public is mixed; goods, waggons, and private carriages, omnibuses, and men and women on horseback, men of business, fashionable loungers, and curious strangers, are mixed up; shops of all sorts, from the most elegant drapers’ shops down to the lowest oyster-stall, may be found in it; and there are, moreover, legions of costermongers, and shoals of advertising vans. Oxford-street is long and broad enough to take in the population of a small town. It changes its character several times, according to the greater or less elegance of the quarter through which it runs. ”

“ When one is asked, then, what is the matter with East London, and what lies behind those great thoroughfares, which look so broad and inviting on a fine summer's afternoon, one can only reply by taking one's questioner away from the broad thoroughfares into the crowded streets and alleys which lie behind them and between. Here is a photograph of a crowded back street, which gives an idea of what is going on, say, of a Sunday morning during the Bird Fair in Slater Street, or the Dog Fair at the top of Bethnal Green Road, or the old clothes sale down by Petticoat Lane. ”

“ Oh, 'tis the queen's apartment;
Each precious moment is by fate beset,
And time stands trembling whilst we thus confer.
Essex. Then, let us hence from this detested place;
My rescued soul disdains the house of greatness,
Where humble honesty can find no shelter.
From hence we'll fly, where love and greatness call;
Where happiness invites—that wish of all:
With sweet content enjoy each blissful hour,
Beyond the smiles of fraud, or frowns of power.
[Exeunt.
[Pg 28] ACT THE THIRD. SCENE I. An Apartment in the Palace.
Enter Burleigh and Lady Nottingham. ”

“ Foul slums there are in the East End, of course, as there are in the West; want and misery there are, as wherever a host is gathered together to fight for food. But they are not often spectacular in kind.
Of this street there are about one hundred and fifty yards—on the same pattern all. It is not pretty to look at. A dingy little brick house twenty feet high, with three square holes to carry the windows, and an oblong hole to carry the door, is not a pleasing object; and each side of this street is formed by two or three score of such houses in a row, with one front wall in common. ”

“ The flagged square behind the Exchange seems like a mart—the busy hum, the perpetual, headlong va-et-vient, the general bustle and brightness, are all suggestive, and the bye streets, such as the old Thames Street, that skirts the river, the oddly-named Garlick Hill, and others, have all a strange, foreign effect, being narrow lanes, yet having fine old churches and towers rising to a great height. ”

“ From the Obelisk at the junction, or approximate junction, of the Westminster, Waterloo, Blackfriars, Borough, and London-roads, in pretty well every direction to the banks of the Thames, are a mass of private-looking streets—as far as the absence of shops constitutes the privacy of a street—old and half-ruinous, or modern and trim, in all of which perhaps may be found street-sellers, and in some of which are pickpockets, thieves, and prostitutes. ”

“ Martin's Lane, thence by Moore's sporting-print shop, and on through some of those ambiguous and tortuous streets that, appearing to lead all ways at once and none in particular, land the explorer, sooner or later, on the south side of Oxford Street.
Oxford Street acts to the north part of London what the Strand does to the south: it is sure to bring one up, sooner or later. A man can hardly get over either of them without knowing it. ”

“ The streets themselves, as I have said, are among the sights to be seen in this great metropolis of the civilized world. There is Pall Mall, or "Pell Mell," as the Londoners call it, with its splendid clubhouses, the "Travellers," "Reform," "Army and Navy," "Athenæum," "Guards," "Oxford," and numerous others I cannot now recall; Regent Street, to which I have referred, with its splendid stores; Oxford Street, a street of miles in length, and containing stores of equal splendor with its more aristocratic rival; Holborn, which is a continuation of Oxford, and carries you down to "the city;" ”

“ In London streets, the unexpected is always happening; thus, through the hideous plate glass of a bar parlour, you may catch glimpses of waving trees and grey towers, and even the dreadful glare of London advertisement hoardings does not "wholly abolish or destroy" the ancient charm of the crowded, irregular City streets. A City of parallel lines and squares, such as the Colonials love! Perish the thought! Let them widen Southampton Row if they will, remove Holywell Street and King Street if they list; but let us at any rate keep to our old and devious ways through the heart of the City! ”

“ There is a tide in the affairs of streets,
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
but the tide for Watergate Street has ebbed away, and now flows in other and more favoured channels. Still, as we shall presently see, this Street is not behind any of its neighbours in absorbing interest. You will perceive that, like Eastgate Street, it has the Cestrian characteristic on either side,—its high-level Row. The one upon the right hand, adjoining St. Peter’s Church, is, perhaps, as good a specimen as we have now left to us of the “Rows” of the last century. ”

“ A route stretching somewhat north-east—Whitechapel and Mile End Roads—connects the metropolis with Essex. It is a matter of general complaint that there are so few great channels of communication through London both lengthwise and crosswise; for the inferior streets, independently of their complex bearings, are much too narrow for regular traffic. ”

“ I shall not give you the address of Johnny Upright. Let it suffice that he lives on the most respectable street in the East End—a street that would be considered very mean in America, but a veritable oasis in the desert of East London. It is surrounded on every side by close-packed squalor and streets jammed by a young and vile and dirty generation; but its own pavements are comparatively bare of the children who have no other place to play, while it has an air of desertion, so few are the people that come and go. ”

“ If she had been pleased with Tottenham Court Road, and delighted with the essentially commonplace Oxford Street, she exulted in that alluring curve which will always make Regent Street a fascination for the visitor to London and even a satisfaction to the Londoner himself. ”

“ As one becomes familiar with the characteristics of the East End,—and this is only after long and persistent comings and goings in street and alley,—it is found that there are entire streets in Whitechapel or St. George's-in-the-East, the points where the tailoring trade seems to focus, in which almost every house contains one, and sometimes several, sweating establishments, managed usually by men, but now and then in the hands of women, though only for the cheapest forms of clothing. ”

“ I hate this incorrigible little thoroughfare; this New Street. It is full of bad smells, mangy little shops, obstructions, and bad characters. There is a yawning gin-palace at its south-western extremity. The odours of its eating-houses—especially of a seedy little French pension bourgeoise about half way up—are displeasing to my nostrils. The cigars vended in New Street are the worst in London, and the sweetstuff shops are mobbed—yes, mobbed—by children in torn pinafores who never have any pocket handkerchiefs. ”

“ Lord Beaconsfield, who knew and loved his London thoroughly, once wrote that, “Those who know Bond Street only in the blaze of fashionable hours can form but an imperfect conception of its matutinal charm when it is still shady and fresh, when there are no carriages, rarely a cart, and passers-by gliding about on real business.” ”

“ This was probably the Black{137} Boy Inn that formerly stood in Town-mead Lane. The Black Boy is a sign of venerable antiquity. From the first it has been largely used as a tobacconist’s sign. The crest of the Tobacco-pipe Makers’ Company, incorporated in 1663, was a demi-Moor, while the supporters were two young Moors proper, wreathed about the loins with tobacco leaves vert. A black Saracen’s head, too, was the badge of Lord Cobham in the time of Edward IV., and also of Sir John Harlwyn.
Essex contains at the present time no less than twenty-seven houses showing the sign of the Green Man. ”