Regent Street

“ As I was walking up Regent Street I found in my mind a queer persuasion that it was Waterloo Station, and had an odd impulse to get into the Polytechnic as a man might get into a train. I put a knuckle in my eye, and it was Regent Street. How can I express it? You see a skilful actor looking quietly at you, he pulls a grimace, and lo!—another person. Is it too extravagant if I tell you that it seemed to me as if Regent Street had, for the moment, done that? Then, being persuaded it was Regent Street again, I was oddly muddled about some fantastic reminiscences that cropped up. ”

“ The cage came to a standstill exactly at the peak of the other crane. London lay beneath the trio. The curves of Regent Street and of Shaftesbury Avenue, the right lines of Piccadilly, Lower Regent Street and Coventry Street, were displayed at their feet as on an illuminated map, over which crawled mannikins and toy-autobuses. At their feet a long procession of automobiles were sliding off, one after another, with the guests of the evening. ”

“ And Gumbril Senior threw up his hands in horror. “It’s like listening to a symphony of cats to walk along them. Senseless discords and a horrible disorder all the way. And the one street that was really like a symphony by Mozart—how busily and gleefully they’re pulling it down now! Another year and there’ll be nothing left of Regent Street. There’ll only be a jumble of huge, hideous buildings at three-quarters of a million apiece. ”

“ You walk along Regent Street some fine day, and for a hundred paces or more you are troubled by the crowd keeping you always in the rear of an old, faded, frumpy bonnet, that hinders you from watching a sweet little chapeau-de-soie immediately beyond. Your patience is exhausted, and your curiosity driven to the highest pitch of anxiety ”

“ Regent Street and a few others, which have been recently erected, form an exception to the rule. But in almost every street in Paris a draftsman finds subject for his pencil; their richly carved gateways, their elaborately wrought iron balconies, their ornamented windows, and even their protruding signs, all help to break the formal straight line and afford ample food for sketching; and in many of their old and least fashionable streets, an ancient church with its gothic doorway, adorned by rich and crumbling sculpture, invites the artist to pause and exercise his imitative art. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A Frenchman’s first impressions of London can scarcely be favourable. He has but small appreciation of the comforts and conveniences which the town really contains; and he has an intense longing for various luxuries which it does not contain. Our foreign visitors would scarcely care a button about the well-paved and well-lighted streets on either side of Regent Street—but in Regent Street itself they would miss the splendour of the cafés, and the glare of lights at night, and the rattle of the dominoes, and the little marble tables under the canopies, and the moving gesticulating crowds. ”

“ To-day Whitehall had been transformed; it would be the turn of Regent Street to-morrow. And month by month the roads smelt more strongly of petrol, and were more difficult to cross, and human beings heard each other speak with greater difficulty, breathed less of the air, and saw less of the sky. Nature withdrew; the leaves were falling by midsummer; the sun shone through dirt with an admired obscurity.
To speak against London is no longer fashionable. ”

“ The course of our narrative compels us now to leave the little village of Learmont and all its mysteries to direct the reader’s attention to the great metropolis, not as it is now, crowded with costly buildings, and its shops vying with palaces in splendour, but as it was a hundred years since, before Regent-street was thought of, and when we were still enjoying that piece of wisdom of our dear ancestors which induced them to make every street as narrow as possible, every house as dark as possible, and everything as inconvenient as possible. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This thoroughfare is the Regent Street, the Broadway, the Boulevard des Italiens of San Francisco. Throughout its length, the great artery which crosses the city parallel with its quays is astir with life and movement; trams there are innumerable; carriages with horses, carriages with mules; men bent on business, hurrying to and fro over its stone pavements, past shops thronged with customers; men bent on pleasure, crowding the doors of the "bars," where at all hours are dispensed the Californian's drinks.
There is no need for us to describe the mansion of a Frisco nabob. ”

“ All the way down Regent Street she had peeped out from the cab windows, hoping to catch sight of familiar faces or fascinating wares in the shopping paradise of the late nobility; but, though the stores still stood, few passers were to be seen, and the filthy, smoky aspect of the sidewalks told that anarchy was rampant even here. Revolution is silent in England. The people uprising in their might do not overturn monuments and lop the limbs from statues. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Nothing can be more absurdly exaggerated than the usual talk about the scandalous state of the streets. Of course Regent-street at midnight is a grim and soul-saddening sight, and so are one or two other neighbourhoods that might be named. It may be possible to legislate solely for these quarters where vice is congested, by treating them as disorderly places, to be cleared by exceptional powers, only to be brought into exercise by the initiative of two or more residents in the neighbourhood. But we are against exceptional powers, even when initiated by private citizens. ”

“ At a point a short way up we cross Piccadilly, and enter a curve in the thoroughfare, called the Quadrant; at the corners of which, and also in Upper Regent Street, are some of the p. 31most splendid shops in London, several being decorated in a style of great magnificence. Regent Street, during the busy season in May and June, and during the day from one till six o’clock, exhibits an extraordinary concourse of fashionable vehicles and foot-passengers; while groups of carriages are drawn up at the doors of the more elegant shops. Towards its upper extremity Regent Street crosses Oxford Street. ”

“ So that Bond Street and Regent Street, the Boulevard des Capucines, the Corso, and Broadway will still be brilliant and crowded for many years for all the diffusion that is here forecast—all the more brilliant and crowded, perhaps, for the lack of a thronging horse traffic down their central ways. But the very fact that the old nucleus is still to be the best place for all who trade in a concourse of people, for novelty shops and art shops, and theatres and business buildings, by keeping up the central ground values will operate against residence there and shift the "masses" outwardly. ”

“ Architecture was practically unknown, and the only improvement that had been made for many years was the building of Regent Street. It was reserved for the Victorian era to (p. 271) redeem the apathy of the past. Hear what a foreigner, Baron d'Haussez, writing in 1833, says—
"In the more recently built parts of London there is nothing imposing but the breadth and handsome proportions of its streets; and in the City nothing but its immense population and the impress of life which commerce imparts to it. ”

“ The Strand on Ash Wednesdays and Good Fridays is still the Strand; but on the Sabbath it would seem as though every house in the West and East ends had put on its special Sunday suit, and had decorated itself with a certain smug spruceness quite marked and distinct. You have a difficulty in recognising your most familiar streets. Regent Street is quite altered. The aspect of Piccadilly is entirely changed; and Cheapside is no more like the Cheapside of yesterday than Hamlet is like Hecuba. The people, too, are not by any means the same people you meet on week-days. ”

“ The street is famous for its shops, which line it from end to end; it has also the merit of being wider than most of the London streets.
The part of the parish lying to the east of Regent Street is quite uninteresting except for Golden Square, which has been well described by Hatton as "not exactly in anybody's way, to or from anywhere." The square is mentioned in both "Humphrey Clinker" and "Nicholas Nickleby." Here Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, lived, 1704-1708, and Mrs. Cibber in 1746. Angelica Kauffman lived in the centre house on the south side for many years. ”

“ After qualifying as an architect, he spent many years in building speculations, and did not, until 1792, return to London and architecture, in which he speedily rose to eminence. He designed numerous mansion-houses for the nobility and gentry in England and Ireland, but he is chiefly celebrated in connection with the great street improvements in London, especially in the Marylebone region, which he helped to transform into Regent's Park. Regent Street, Haymarket Theatre, Langham Place Church, Park Square, and the terraces in Regent's Park are specimens of his designs. ”

“ Besides the inhabitants of Regent-street, for instance, all the riders in the 5000 vehicles that daily pass through that great thoroughfare are affected by its condition; and the inhabitants of Regent-street, who have to bear the cost of keeping that street in good repair and well cleansed, for others’ benefit as well as for their own, may fairly feel aggrieved if they do not experience the benefits of good and clean streets when they go into other districts. ”

“ New York is not equal to London, nor Broadway to Regent Street, although the Americans would compare them. Still, New York is very superior to most of our provincial towns, and, to a man who can exist out of London, Broadway will do very well for a lounge—being wide, three miles long, and the upper part composed of very handsome houses; besides which, it may almost challenge Regent Street for pretty faces, except on Sundays. (On Sundays the coloured population take possession of Broadway.) ”

“ Other streets are proposed by the same active genius under which Regent-street has been accomplished; the vile houses which surrounded and hid the finest portico in London—that of St. Martin’s church—are already taken down; a square is to be formed round this building, with two large openings into the Strand, and plans are already in agitation to lay open other churches in the same manner. Even the economical citizens have given us a peep at St. Bride’s—being ashamed again to hide beauties which accident had given them an opportunity of displaying to greater advantage. ”

“ But all the want, and all the sin produced by want, in London, it would take all the volumes of the Conversations-Lexicon to recount. The streets—every street—is filled with it. Survey the thoroughfares at night. If any modest person is occasionally shocked at the exhibitions in Broadway, what would he say to Regent street, the Haymarket, the Strand, Fleet street, Cheapside, or fifty other streets in London? I have reckoned nearly three hundred unfortunate females, as they call themselves, in the space of one mile, on one side of the street alone, from Charing Cross to Temple Bar. ”

“ But, perambulating Regent Street at all hours of the day and night, as I do now frequently, I see no diminution in the number of moustached, or rouged, or naughty faces, whose prototypes were familiar to me, years agone, in the brilliant Quadrant. As to the purlieus of the County Fire Office, they are confusion, and a scandal to London and its police. The first-floor balconies above were in my childhood most glorious playgrounds. ”

“ He stepped out, left the park at Stanhope Gate, jumped on to a passing omnibus, changed it for another in the middle of Oxford Street, and walked down. Regent Street with a well-founded belief that he had defeated espionage for the time. Thereafter, he behaved exactly like several hundred thousand young men In London that night. He dined, bought some cigars, rare luxuries to him, went to a music-hall, soon wearied of its inanities, and traveled by an early train to Brixton, where he rented cheap lodgings. ”

“ It is mainly a rich residential quarter; the most fashionable part is found in the south, in the vicinity of Cavendish and Portman Squares, but there are numerous fine houses surrounding Regent’s Park and in the north-western district of St John’s Wood. Oxford Street, with its handsome shops, bounds the borough on the south, crossing Regent Street at Oxford Circus; Edgware Road on the west; Marylebone Road crosses from east to west, and from this Upper Baker Street gives access to Park, Wellington, and Finchley Roads ”