Strand, London

“ Strand is a great deal more than London's most ancient and historic street: it is in many regards the most interesting street in the world. It has not, like Whitehall or the Place de la Concorde, seen the execution of a king ”

“ Thousands who pass along the Strand never dream of the shadowy region which lies between them and the river—the black-browed arches that span right and left, before and behind, covering many a rood of ground on which the rain never beats nor the sunbeam rests, and at the entrance of which the wind only seems to howl and whine, as if afraid of venturing farther into the darkness. ”

“ There are derelict churches in the Strand, and dingy, blatant taverns, and strident signs and hoardings; and there are slums hard by.
There are thieves in the Strand, and prowling vagrants, and gaunt hawkers, and touts, and gamblers, and loitering failures, with tragic eyes and wilted garments; and prostitutes plying for hire.
And east and west, and north and south of the Strand, there is London. Is there a man amongst all London’s millions brave enough to tell the naked truth about the vice and crime, the misery and meanness, the hypocrisies and shames of the great, rich, heathen city? ”

“ We who take our London carelessly as a matter of course can have no conception of its meaning to these wanderers who, feeling the ache of home-sickness, are too old to cry.
* * *
The Strand!
That means London in shack, bungalow, and camp. It means more: it symbolizes—home! Not Piccadilly, not Pall Mall, not fashionable Mayfair or Belgravia, but the curious old Victorian Strand.
What a street it is. It does not belong to London. Piccadilly, Regent Street, and Oxford Street stole its birthright long ago. It belongs to the Empire. Look at its shops. ”

“ The curious mixture of associations, as we wander up and down; the strange incredible squalor of some portions, the comparative stateliness and imposing air of others, the pretty gardens, the way in which memories of Garrick, Franklin, Peter the Great, the Romans, Charles Dickens, and many more, are suggested and jumbled together at every turn, make the old familiar Strand one of the most interesting quarters in London.
This may seem a puzzling statement. As all the world knows there is little or nothing of pretension about the streets—the houses are mean, the shops poor. ”

“ THE ADELPHI AND THE STRAND. THE little streets that descend from the Strand to the Embankment are mostly old-fashioned and picturesque in their way—perhaps from the contrast they offer to the noise and “sea-shell roar” of that busy thoroughfare. Many end in a cul de sac with an open aërial gallery as it were, whence we can look down on the silvery Thames below, with all its noble bridges. All these quiet alleys have some interesting or suggestive memorial to exhibit ”

“ We went out for a short stroll before eating, and for the first time I saw the Strand, and it instantly went to my head and to my heart, and I have never loved another street in quite the same way. My Strand is gone for ever; some of it is a wild rock-garden of purple flowers, some of it is imposing new buildings; but one way or another, the spirit is wholly departed. But on that June night in 1880 I walked up Surrey Street and stood on the [Pg 71] Strand pavement and looked before me and to right and to left and gasped. No man has ever seen London ”

“ Martin’s lane, life appears to have become suddenly a struggle and a calamity. Turbulent and dirty women are everywhere visible through the open windows; the half-naked children at the doors look already care-worn and incapable of a smile; and the men throng the gin-shops, bloated, surly, and repulsive. Hurry through this leprous spot in the vast body of London, and let us emerge in the Strand.
You would think London Strand the main artery of the world. I suppose there is no thoroughfare on the face of the earth where the stream of human life runs with a tide so overwhelming. ”

“ Stranleigh walked down Kingsway to the Strand, entered the Gaiety Restaurant, and treated himself to a well-chosen supper. When he emerged, remembering the last scene of the play, he strolled down Arundel Street to the Thames Embankment, intended to be London's chief boulevard, although this thoroughfare, bordered by great luxurious hotels, becomes after nightfall an out-door bedroom for the penniless; millionaire and pauper sleeping within a stone's throw of one another. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a favorite spot of mine when in London, for at afternoon, when the string band plays and the Americans and other cosmopolitans drink tea, there is a continual coming and going, a little panorama of life that to a student of men like myself is intensely interesting. And at night it is just as amusing to sit there in the shadow and watch the people returning from the theaters or dances and to speculate as to whom and what they are. At that one little corner of London just off the Strand you see more variety of men and women than perhaps at any other spot. ”

“ That walk embraces the long line of palaces which once adorned the Strand, or river-bank street, the countless haunts of artists in St. Martin’s Lane, the legends of Longacre, the theatrical reminiscences of Drury Lane, and the old noblemen’s houses in Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields. It comprises a period not so remote as East London, and not so modern as that of the West End. It brings us acquainted not only with many of the contemporaries of Shakspere and Dryden, but also with many celebrities of Garrick’s time and of Dr. Johnson’s age. ”

“ It is Sunday.
Some years ago there was a delightful song that devastated New York. It was a patriotic song, and it was called: "The sun is always shining on Broadway." At the time, I translated this into English, for rendering at a private show, the refrain being that the sun is always shining in the Strand. So it is. Dull as the day may be elsewhere, there is always light of some kind in the Strand. It is the gayest, most Londonish street in London. It is jammed with Life, for it is the High Street of the world. Men of every country and clime have walked down the Strand. ”

“ When the blinds were drawn across the windows of many little London houses, when dusk crept into Piccadilly Circus and shadows darkened down the Strand, when the great old soul of London slept a while in the night, these boys who had gone out from her streets were fighting, and are fighting still, in the greatest battle of the world, and as they lie awake in a ditch, or wounded in a shell-hole, their spirit travels home again, through the old swirl of traffic, to quiet houses where already, perhaps, there is the scent of may-blossom. ”

“ A thousand people at a time really eat all together at the Strand Corner House, and, in a way, no wonder. The place is quite clean, not offensive in its appurtenances, and can supply three courses for less than two shillings; the music is the ordinary dance or sentimental music, the sort that makes you feel friendly or affectionate as required. The public of the Strand Corner House is, therefore, the world. ”

“ Strand, is a busy place by day-time (it does a great business in the newspaper line, and about four or five in the afternoon it is used by the acute newsboys of the metropolis as a kind of Change) , but it is busier far by night, and the later the hour the more active and lively it grows. ”

“ But, in a way, all those places, the very rich and the very odd, are running on their own ticket, and do not express the times in which we live. Our modern times are the Strand Corner House. I should not wonder if many of my readers had never been into the Strand Corner House; that is, if they are incurious of life. If they repent their acceptance of things as they are, they will find an unexpectedly large building decorated with heavily flowered stucco mouldings, with plate-glass, with stained glass, with panels of crimson satin. They will find light, co-operative luxury ”

“ Fleet Street is irregular in shape, the houses being nowhere in line; the courts of Whitefriars are still remaining. The Strand has all its great houses facing the river; their backs open upon a broad street, with a line of mean houses on the north side. On the south of the river there is a line of houses on the High Street, a line of houses along the river bank on either side, and another one running near Bermondsey Abbey. ”

“ The hotel is the terminus of the railway by the same name, and is one of the largest in London. Travelers arriving at the metropolis of the world, by almost any of the large railway lines, can secure hotel accommodations at the end of their journey in the Railway Hotel. THE STRAND, London, England.—This street has been so named from its skirting the bank of the river, which is concealed here by the buildings. It is very broad, contains many handsome shops, and is the great artery of traffic between the city and the West End, and one of the busiest and most important thoroughfares in London. ”

“ For here stood the little Strand Theatre of the sixties in all the glory of its original popularity before it was improved (?) and modernised, only to find it had become out of the perspective, and so to be handed over to eternal obliteration.
The old Strand may surely claim to be the root of the theatrical genealogical tree, for from its original stock (company) sprang every sprig that struck root elsewhere to became famous either through theatrical enterprise, matrimonial enterprise, or any of the lucrative channels that commend themselves to commercial talent. ”

“ Fleet Street, with its Temple, is not unworthy of being contiguous to the Strand. The fire of London has deprived us of the delight of a real old quarter of the city; but some bits remain, and everywhere there is a stirring multitude, and a great crush and crash of carts and wains. The Inns of Court, and the quarters in the vicinity of the port, Thames Street, Tower Hill, Billingsgate, Wapping, Rotherhithe, are the best parts of London; they are full of character: the buildings bear a nearer relation to what the people are doing than in the more polished quarters. ”

“ The statues of the three military men are ‘black’ in that from Peter’s perspective they are silhouettes and two are made of bronze; ie, ‘black’ is not a noun.
the Strand: the street which, running east from Trafalgar Square, links the City of Westminster to the City of London. In the early twentieth century ‘the Strand was renowned for its restaurants, jolly public-houses, music-halls, and smoking-rooms. Harry Castling’s song “Let’s all go down the Strand”, gave rise to a familiar proposition’ (LE, p. 853) .
Dent’s shop in Cockspur Street: that is, E. Dent and Co. Ltd. ”

“ London may be declared empty, and half a million persons may have left to disport themselves in the country or by the sea, yet the ebb and flow in that most wonderful thoroughfare in the world—the Strand—is ever the same, the tide in the dog-days being the same as in December. It is the one highway in London that never changes. ”

“ The churchyard was levelled, the tombstones carried off, and the whole built over and turned into a yard!{215}
I have often thought that one of the great charms in exploring London is the abrupt change which often occurs when we pass from the roar and clamour of some modern crowded thoroughfare into some sequestered, silent inclosure, which seems almost monastic in its privacy. This peculiar sensation can be secured in many districts. It is thus strange to turn out of the Strand near to Wellington Street, and descend the steep incline into the old Savoy. ”

“ We left the Barrel at about one o’clock. It was a typical London late autumn night. Quiet with the peace of a humming top; warm with the heat generated from mellow asphalt and resinous wood-paving.
We turned from Bedford Street eastwards along the Strand.
Between one and two the Strand is as empty as it ever is. It is given over to lurchers and policemen. Fleet Street reproduces for this one hour the Sahara.
“When I knock at the Temple gate late at night,” said Malim, “and am admitted by the night porter, I always feel a pleasantly archaic touch.” ”

“ No other part of London offered such variety and scope in the study of humanity. The City was stodgy, the Strand too uniform, Piccadilly too fashionable, and the select areas for bachelor chambers, such as the Temple and Half Moon Street, were backwaters as remote from the roaring turbulent stream of London life as the Sussex Downs or the Yorkshire Moors. ”

“ I repeat, to this day, no verses to myself more frequently or with kindlier emotion than those of Spenser where he speaks of this spot. Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis. What a transition for a countryman visiting London for the first time—the passing [Pg 376] from the crowded Strand or Fleet Street, by unexpected avenues, into its magnificent, ample squares, its classic green recesses! ”

“ It has been chiefly seventeenth and eighteenth century life that has enchained us as we read the pages of the past, and in its richness and variety [Pg 111] at least the eighteenth century would be difficult to rival. Prosaic London, with her borough councils, her Strand improvements, and her immense utilitarian flats, still retains the glamour of her bygone days, and if her present buildings are without much attraction, they are glorified by the halo of their association with their fascinating predecessors. ”