Oxford Street

“ Meantime, I am again in London, and again I pace the terraces of Oxford Street by night; and oftentimes, when I am oppressed by anxieties that demand all my philosophy and the comfort of thy presence to support, and yet remember that I am separated from thee by three hundred miles and the length of three dreary months, I look up the streets that run northwards from Oxford Street, upon moonlight nights, and recollect my youthful ejaculation of anguish ”

“ But, while the plain, nondescript brick houses of Gower Street and Baker Street still remain the prevailing type of London architecture, there is everywhere noticeable a tendency to improve and embellish the streets of the metropolis, to rebuild in a better or, at any rate, a more ambitious way. Travelling along the highway of Oxford Street, from ancient Tyburn to Tottenham Court Road, how many tall, new, and ornate house-fronts rise along the line on each side of us! ”

“ He glanced up and down the small street. By this time the carriages had all been driven away to dinner-party and theatre; a perfect silence prevailed everywhere; there was not a single passer-by. It was a quiet corner, a restful haven, these two lonely creatures had found, after their varied buffetings about the world. And to this young man, who had just come away from the roar of Oxford-street and its surging stream of human life, there seemed something singularly fascinating and soothing in the stillness. ”

“ Perhaps Oxford Street is more efficient and more characteristic in expressing the genius and the will of the English people than the House of Commons is because of the way in which the people select the men they want to express them in Oxford Street.
It may be that the men the people have selected to be at the top of the nation's law-making are not selected by as skillful, painstaking, or thorough a process as the men who have been selected to be placed at the top of the nation's buying and selling. ”

“ Nothing is more pleasing than the sudden glimpse that is obtained of it from Oxford Street, or from Dean Street, its fine old trees spreading out umbrageously. The old houses have a quaint, solid air, notably those at the corners. Still flourishes the old Soho Bazaar at one corner, a visit to which in days gone by was thought a treat and a wonder for children. The houses, with the streets surrounding, are valuable as suggesting how old London of a hundred and fifty years back must have looked. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How many people are there who think of looking at the view from one of our London bridges, at the picturesque groups of sailing barges, at the curious effects of light behind, and the towers of Westminster in the distance? How many men wending their way homewards from the City on the top of an omnibus in summer ever thought of noting the flood of golden haze in Oxford Street, a street which from its position is peculiarly adapted for the study of sunlight effects? ”

“ One day, after a scene with the publisher similar to that which I have described above, I found myself about noon at the bottom of Oxford Street, where it forms a right angle with the road which leads or did lead to Tottenham Court. Happening to cast my eyes around, it suddenly occurred to me that something uncommon was expected; people were standing in groups on the pavement—the upstair windows of the houses were thronged with faces, especially those of women, and many of the shops were partly, and not a few entirely closed. ”

“ Oxford Street, Regent Street, the Strand and Holborn—all the buildings in main thoroughfares, whose front walls stand upon plate-glass, would fall prostrate at a blow, and choke the thoroughfares with heterogeneous ruins and the mashed frames of humanity. ”

“ One late winter afternoon in Oxford Street, amid the noise of vehicles and voices that filled that dusky thoroughfare, as I was borne onward with the crowd past the great electric-lighted shops, a holy Indifference filled my thoughts. Illusion had faded from me; I was not touched by any desire for the goods displayed in those golden windows, nor had I the smallest share in the appetites and fears of all those moving and anxious faces. ”

“ The coal-fire smelt homelike; the fog had a fruity taste of youth; anything was better than being turned out into the wastes of Wigmore Street. He could always amuse himself by living over his youth, and driving once more down Oxford Street in 1858, with life before him to imagine far less amusing than it had turned out to be. ”

“ Beside the other streets seem chalked out for a sect,—narrow-minded and devoted to a coterie. Thou alone art Catholic—all receiving. Regent-street belongs to foreigners, cigars, and ladies in red silk, whose characters are above scandal. Bond-street belongs to dandies and picture-buyers. St. James's to club-loungers, and young men in the Guards, with mustachios properly blackened by the cire of Mr. Delcroix; but thou, Oxford-street, what class can especially claim thee as its own? Thou mockest at oligarchies; thou knowest nothing of select orders! Thou art liberal as air—a chartered libertine! ”

“ It is tempting on this summer day to linger where grass is green and trees throw grateful shade; and indeed it would seem that few of all the many pens that have set down Oxford's charms have given their due to these her natural delights. But there is much that crowds into the mind and urgently complains lest there be not space enough to do them honour. What of her streets? Perhaps no other city in England—some say in the world—can boast of streets of equal beauty.
From Magdalen gate the High Street begins its curve—a true line of beauty. ”

“ They have grown with their burdens, but this has had vast burdens thrown upon it suddenly, and while it was immature. Oxford Street and Fleet Street are the roads of peace, and laden with wealth and luxury, law and literature--things that can wait. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But, to the trans-Atlantic visitor to Oxford, somehow, the "glories" of High Street are the streets and lanes that lead out of it: Oriel Street, Logic Lane, The Turl, and the rest of them, queer and delightful themselves and leading, always, to something delightful and queer. Every one of these streets has been trod, and trod again, by the present Landmarker, hat in hand in his reverence for the memories of the men who have trod them in days gone by. ”

“ As we entered by Oxford Street, with its embeadled colonnade, it becomes our bounden duty to quit the building by means of that portal which I assumed to have been in days gone-by the stage-door of the pig-tail opera-house, and which gives egress into Great Marlborough Street. I can’t stand the parrots ”

“ Most people, seeking the imaginative reward of their sensibility, would obtain the finest thrill that Oxford could offer from the sudden sight of St. Mary’s tower against a green April afterglow, or of the moon-parched High Street in frost. Michael, however, found in Venner’s office, just as he had found in that old print of St. Mary’s tower rather than in the tower itself, the innermost shrine of Oxford, the profoundest revelation of the shining truth round which the mysterious material of Oxford had grown through the Middle Ages. ”

“ 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;" ”

“ Few will recognise the old “Tyburn Road” in modern Oxford Street, with its huge drapery and furniture emporiums, and the attractions which bring so large a part of the populace to shop there. A century and a half ago this was a country road, along which the two-wheeled, springless carts passed from Newgate with their escorts of sheriffs, officers, and marshalmen conveying condemned men to execution. ”

“ Yet, strange to say, such dreams fade as we drive home to dinner, and find us quite ready, after a refreshing sleep in the queerest and quaintest of all English inns, to depart for classic Oxford, which lies direct upon our London route. Time was when no more venerable and imposing architectural effect could be found in all Europe than that produced by the groups of buildings along the main street of Oxford, belonging to the twenty colleges that make the University. ”

“ He does not know, or does not stop to [Pg 176] consider, that New Oxford Street really is new, as newness in streets goes. It is, in fact, not older than 1847. Before it was made, there was no good through-route between the City and Tyburn, and the line of road went by a circuitous course, still easily traced—by High Holborn, Broad Street, and High Street, Bloomsbury. Passing under the very shadow of the Church of St. Giles—anciently "St. Giles-in-the-Fields"—the road again fell into the straight line opposite Tottenham Court Road. ”

“ I like driving about the streets in a hansom. There are some one never gets tired of Oxford Street, for instance, and the turn out of Leicester Square into Coventry Street, with the blaze of Piccadilly Circus ahead. ”

“ He finds himself marvelling that one who was merely a gentleman in London can be interesting in Long Wall Street or on the Cherwell. The superb, expensive young man who thinks that there is “practically nobody in Oxford”—the poor, soiled scholar—the exuberant, crimson-lipped athlete, whose stride is a challenge, his voice a trumpet call—the lean and larded æsthete, busily engaged upon the quaint designs of oriental life,—all discover some point in common when they are seen together in the Schools, or on the riverside. ”

“ I was walking in Oxford Street at eleven o'clock one morning in the height of the season when a little old lady, quietly and expensively dressed, crossed the pavement from a book shop to her carriage. The carriage was a one-horse brougham, and one of the shop assistants opened the door for her. She directed him to tell the coachman to drive to Saronel's in Bond Street. The old lady had beautiful white hair. She carried in her hand a religious magazine that she had probably purchased in the shop. ”

“ James’s, Hanover, Berkeley, Grosvenor, Cavendish, Bryanstone, Manchester, and Portman Squares—the last four being north of Oxford Street; and in connection with these squares are long, quiet streets, lined with houses suited for an affluent order of inhabitants. In and north from Oxford Street, there are few public buildings deserving particular attention; but a visitor may like to know that hereabouts are the Soho, Baker Street, and London Crystal Palace Bazaars. The once well-known Pantheon is now a wine merchant’s stores. ”

“ I never wearied or despaired of final success, and every day saw me at work, the tablet before me, and only at dusk would I go out and take my daily walk along Oxford Street, which attracted me I think by the noise and motion and glitter of lamps.
'This walk grew with me to a habit; every night, and in all weathers, I crossed the Gray's Inn Road and struck westward, sometimes choosing a northern track, by the Huston Road and Tottenham Court Road, sometimes I went by Holborn, and sometimes by way of Great Russell Street. ”

“ Holman Hunt's picture everybody is probably aware, the choir of the college annually salute the rising sun from the top of the tower by singing a Latin hymn on May morning--while the youth of the city, for reasons certainly not known to themselves, make morning hideous with blowing of unmelodious horns in the street below. At all times--even at sunrise on a rainy May morning--it is a noble prospect. The unlovely red-brick suburbs of the north are hidden from sight by the intervening towers and pinnacles of the real Oxford ”

“ We are far from liking London well enough till we like its defects: the dense darkness of much of its winter, the soot on the chimney-pots and everywhere else, the early lamplight, the brown blur of the houses, the splashing of hansoms in Oxford Street or the Strand on December afternoons.
There is still something that recalls to me the enchantment of children—the anticipation of Christmas, the delight of a holiday walk—in the way the shop-fronts shine into the fog. ”