A Wanderer In London-continued

ST. PAUL'S AND THE CHARTERHOUSE

Observing in London The London gaze A few questions St. Paul's Sir Christopher Wren Temples of Prosperity Spires of Genius St. Paul's from a Distance London from St. Paul's The High Roads to the Country Florid Monuments The Great Painters The Thames Streets Wren again Billingsgate St. Sepulchre's and Condemned Men The Great Fire The Cock Lane Ghost Bartholomew's Hospital St. Bartholomew the Great A Wonderful Church Cloth Fair Smithfield Martyrs The Charterhouse The Old Gentlemen Famous Schoolboys A Spring Walk Highgate and Hampstead Heath The Friendly Inns A word on Hampstead and Kate Greenaway.

THERE are so many arresting movements in London, as indeed in all hives of men, that to observe widely is very difficult. Just as one is said not to be able to see a wood for trees, so one cannot rightly see a city for its citizens, London for its Londoners. I believe, to give an example of defective London observation, that one's tendency is to think that all its greater streets are straight ; whereas hardly any are. Here is a question on that fallacy, suggested to me one day as I stood at the point which we have now reached: "From the middle of the road under the railway bridge at the foot of Ludgate Hill how much of St. Paul's do you see?" I would wager that the majority of Londoners would expect to see the whole facade; but they would be very wrong.

In one of his delightful books Dr. Jessopp remarks that Whereas country people look up, Londoners look down. It is largely this habit which has limited their observing powers ; but London has itself to blame. I assume that one can observe well only by taking large views, and in London this is impossible, even if one would, partly from the circumscribing effect of bricks and mortar, partly from the dim light of a London distance, and partly from the need of avoiding collisions. One's eyes unconsciously acquire a habit of restricted vision: our observation specialises, like that of the little girl in Mrs. Meynell's book about children, who beguiled the tedium of her walks by collecting shopkeepers named Jones. Perhaps that is the kind of observation for which we in London have become best suited.

I remember how amazed I was, some years ago, when one clear Sunday morning, as I was walking in Fleet Street, I chanced on looking down Bouverie Street to see, framed between its walls, the Crystal Palace gleaming in the far distance. That, however, was an exceptional sight. Far less uncommon yet quite obvious characteristics cause astonishment when they are pointed out. It comes, for example, as a surprise to many people if you refer to the hill in Piccadilly. "What hill?" they ask. Indeed, if there is one thing more remarkable than one's own ignorance of London it is that of other people. Walking one day in Cheapside, from west to east, I was struck by the unfamiliar aspect of the building which blocked the end of that thoroughfare. It turned out to be a new set of offices at the foot of Cornhill, and it caused me to wonder how many people shared my belief that as one walks eastwards down Cheapside one ought to have a full view of the Royal Exchange; which is not, as a matter of fact, visible until one is almost out of the Poultry. And this error led me to examine other similar fancies, and in many cases to find them equally wrong. I amused myself in consequence by drawing up a little paper in London topography, or rather in London observation. Here are a few of the questions which I jotted down:

1. If the Nelson Column were to fall intact upon its side in a due southerly direction, where would Nelson's head lie?

2. If circumstances should confine your perambulations to an area comprised in a radius of three hundred yards from the Griffin in Fleet Street, what streets and how much of them would be open to you? Could you get to the theatre?

3. Give in detail the route of what is in your opinion the shortest walking-distance from (a) St. Pancras to Victoria, (b) Paddington to London Bridge, (c) the Lyceum to Oxford Circus, (d) the Zoological Gardens to the Albert Hall, (e) the Bank to the Tower, (f) Seat P4 in the British Museum Reading Room to seat C7.

4. Between what points of the compass do the following streets run: the Strand, Northumberland Avenue, Fen-church Street, Edgware Road, Knightsbridge, Tottenham Court Road, Cockspur Street, Bow Street, Whitehall, Westminster Bridge, Waterloo Bridge and London Bridge?

5. Give the approximate taxi fare between Charing Cross and (a) the Elephant and Castle, (b) the Spaniards, (c) Liverpool Street, (d) the Marble Arch, (e) the Brompton Oratory, (f) the People's Palace, (g) the Agricultural Hall.

6. If you followed that diameter of the four-mile radius which starts from the West Hill, Highgate, where would you collide with the opposite circumference?

7. Does it surprise you to learn that Westminster Bridge, if continued in a straight line for two or three miles on the Surrey side, would run into Tower Bridge, or somewhere very near it?

8. Where are Hanging Sword Alley, William and Mary Yard and Whetstone Park?

Of St. Paul's Cathedral I find it very difficult to write. Within, it is to me the least genial of cathedrals, the least kindly. It has neither tenderness nor mystery. I would not call it exactly hard and churlish, like some of the white-washed Lutheran temples: it is simply so much noble masonry without sympathy.

Wren, of course, had no religion: one sees that in every church he built. He was a wonderful architect ; he heaped stone on stone as no Englishman has ever done, before or since; one feels that he must have known by inspired prevision exactly how the smoke and fog of the future would affect his favourite medium; but he had no religion, no secret places in his soul, no colour, His churches are churches for a business man, and a successful one at that: not for a penitent, not for a perplexed and troubled soul, not for an emotional sufferer. Poor people look out of place in them. Wren's churches are for prosperity.

To make satisfying exteriors especially to make the right spires was Wren's happy destiny. He never, or almost never, failed here. Within, his churches are for the most part merely consecrated comfortable rooms: without, they are London's most precious, most magical possession. At first they may not please; but and especially if one studies the city from a height one comes to realise their beauty and their extraordinary fittingness. On a bright day of scudding clouds, such as I remember in January of this year, when I was sitting in a room at the highest point of the Temple, the spire of a Wren church can have as many expressions, can reflect as many moods, as a subtle and sympathetic woman. I was watching St. Bride's with absolute fascination as it smiled and frowned, doubted and understood.

St. Paul's of course can hardly be ranked with Wren's churches at all: it is so vast, so isolated. It is too vast in its present Anglican hands for human nature's daily needs. The Roman Catholics, by their incense, their confessionals, their constant stream of worshippers, their little side chapels, their many services, and, perhaps most of all, by their broken-light, bring down even their largest cathedrals to reasonable dimensions, so that one does not feel lost in them. They might humanise St. Paul's. But as it is, St. Paul's is a desert: nothing is done for you, and its lighting is almost commercial. The dominant impression it conveys is of vastness: one emerges with no hush on one's soul.

St. Paul's should, I think, be loved from a distance; an interview should not be courted. The triumph of St. Paul's is that, vast and serene, it broods protectively over the greatest city in the world, and is worthy of its office. The dome is magnificent: there is nothing finer: and that to me is St. Paul's a mighty mothering dome; not cold aisles and monstrous groups of statuary, not a whispering gallery and worried mosaics, not tourists with red guide-books and typists eating their lunch. All that I want to forget.

St. Paul's best appeal, true appeal, is external. It has no religious significance to me: it is the artistic culmination of London city, it is the symbol of London. And as such it is always thrilling. One of the best near views is from the footbridge from Charing Cross to Waterloo; one of the best distant views is from Parliament Hill; another is from Greenwich Park where the dome seems to be held up by the Tower Bridge. By no effort of imagination can one think of London without it.

Yet go to St. Paul's one must, if only to reverse this view and see London from its dome. On a clear day, which in London means a windy day, you cannot have a more interesting sight than this great unwieldy city from the ball of its sentinel cathedral all spread out on every side, with a streak of river in the midst : all grey and busy right away to the green fields.

To trace the great roads from this height is one of the most interesting things. For it is pleasant to think that all the roads even of the crowded congested business centre take one in time into the country, into the world, right to the sea. In time, for example, Ludgate Hill is going to be Fleet Street, and Fleet Street the Strand, and the Strand King William Street, and so on to Leicester Square and Coventry Street and Piccadilly; and Piccadilly leads to Hounslow and Staines and the west of England. Behind us is Cannon Street, which leads to London Bridge and the Borough High Street and Tabard Street to Watling Street and Gravesend and Rochester and the Kentish coast : or via London Bridge and the Borough High Street, to Newington Causeway, to Clapham, Epsom, Leatherhead and Dorking to the Sussex coast ; or through Guildford to the Hog's Back and Hampshire. Cheapside leads to Cornhill and Leadenhall Street and Aldgate, and Aldgate to the Whitechapel Road and Romford, Brentwood, Chelmsford and the east; Bishopsgate leads to Edmonton, Hoddesden, Cheshunt, Ware and the northeast ; the City Road leads to Islington, Highgate and the North; and Cheapside to Holborn, Oxford Street, the Edgware Road, St. Albans and the north-west. From the ball of St. Paul's one can follow all these roads for a little way on their great journeys.