Chapter VI: Part 6

“No. The old one was burnt, and this took its place. But some sort of chain or bar or gate has been on this spot for eight hundred years to mark the place where the part of London called Westminster ends, and the City begins. Even now, in our time, though there’s no gate left, when the King pays a state visit to the City, he stops here and asks the Lord Mayor who comes to meet him for permission to pass Temple Bar!”

“Except that it’s newer, St. Clement Danes church, where Dr. Johnson goes, looks the same,” remarked Betty, searching for buildings with which she was familiar.

“Yes, it’s one of the many churches rebuilt after the Fire by Sir Christopher Wren.”

“‘Oranges and Lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clement’s!’”

Betty quoted. “That’s a nursery rhyme about that very church, isn’t it? It goes on to tell what all the other church bells say too!” she added.

“We’ll read it when we slip back into our own day,” Godmother answered. “Now look up and down the street.”

Glancing first at the road, Betty saw that instead of the smooth wood pavement with motor omnibuses running quickly over it, Fleet Street was now paved with round cobblestones which extended right up to the shops on either hand, and only a row of posts divided the foot passengers from the traffic.

Big lumbering coaches, with powdered footmen standing up behind them, rolled clattering over the stones. Wagons piled with vegetables jolted along, the horses led by carters in smock frocks, cracking their whips. Every now and then a sedan chair slung on poles and carried by men-servants, passed by, giving her a glimpse of a lady within, dressed in flowered silk, her hair piled high and powdered thickly.

Instead of gabled houses with the latticed windows of earlier times, she saw taller, plainer houses, like those in the streets of the Adelphi, built of small bricks, with sash windows level with their walls, and each story exactly over the one beneath it. There were no top windows now from which opposite neighbours shook hands across the street. At every shop door, a sign hung out, some painted on wood, others made of gilded metal.

“It’s all much cleaner and lighter since the Fire!” Betty exclaimed. “And how pretty the sign-boards make the street. And, oh, Godmother, how pretty the dresses are.”

Even the more plainly-dressed business men, she thought, looked nice in their knee-breeches, brown stockings and ruffled shirts. But every now and then, beautifully-dressed young men passed her, wearing flowered waistcoats, white or coloured satin coats and silk stockings with knee-breeches. Their swords were fastened with broad sashes round the waist. Dainty lace ruffles fell over their hands. Under their arms they carried three-cornered hats, trimmed with gold lace, and their hair, rather long and powdered, was tied with a black ribbon. Nearly all of them carried gold snuff-boxes, and long gold-handled canes.

“The men are quite, if not more elegant, than the women, you see—in this reign of George the Second,” said Godmother. “Here comes one, however, who is by no means well-dressed,” she added, smiling.

Betty looked in the direction to which she pointed, and saw two figures approaching. One was a neat dapper gentleman, but the other was the oddest-looking individual! He wore shabby buckled shoes, black worsted stockings, all wrinkled, knee-breeches, a long coat of a rusty brown, and a wig much too small for him; old and unpowdered. He was stout, and clumsily made, moved very awkwardly, and had a large heavy face.

“It’s Dr. Johnson!” cried Betty. “And that’s Mr. Boswell with him, I suppose?”

“Yes, listening intently to every word he utters. He will rush home presently and write down every syllable of Dr. Johnson’s conversation, and later on, publish it in that wonderful Life of his friend. Well, now that we’ve had a glimpse of Fleet Street as it was in the eighteenth century, I’m going to whisk you off to look at the river. Shut your eyes and wish yourself standing on the Embankment somewhere close to Westminster Bridge.” ...

“Why, there’s no Embankment, and there’s no Westminster Bridge!” Betty exclaimed when she found herself standing at the edge of the river which washed right up to the houses on its banks. Remembering the many bridges to be seen from Westminster in our day, she looked right and left, but not one was visible.

“London Bridge, out of sight because of the winding of the river, is still the only bridge over the Thames, you will notice!” said Godmother. “They’re just beginning to build one here, where our Westminster Bridge now stands. But it isn’t finished yet, and one must still row from bank to bank.”

“And it’s still country on the other side,” Betty remarked, looking across the water at farms and clusters of cottages where now, immense buildings line the banks on the other side of the present Westminster Bridge. “And oh, Godmother, how strange not to see the Houses of Parliament of _our_ time! They haven’t been built yet, of course? And that’s part of the Old Palace of Westminster that stands where our Houses of Parliament is now, I suppose?”

“Yes, and St. Stephen’s Chapel, where the House of Commons met, was standing there, just as you see it now, ninety years ago, in my father’s lifetime. He saw it burning, and watched the building of the new Parliament Houses familiar to _you_.

“Let us go down these steps, and take the boat that waterman is just pushing off. We’ll first go down the river a little way, and then up towards Chelsea.”

“The Strand begins to look like the Strand of our time, doesn’t it?” Betty said. “Nearly all the beautiful old palaces have gone, and what were country lanes between them are now _streets_,” she sighed. “What a pity! And there are no streams now running across the countrified Strand and emptying themselves into the river.”

“No. But they still run underground, beneath the houses and roads,” Godmother said. “Under Fleet Street, for instance, flows the stream called Fleet. But instead of dancing along in the sunlight, it runs through iron pipes and is a sewer! A sad fate for the poor little river, isn’t it?”

“There’s quite a lot of building going on,” said Betty presently. “What’s that big place just begun, where the workmen are now?”

“Don’t you recognize it? It’s going to be the Adelphi you saw this morning.”

Betty was silent a moment. “And once it was Durham House, and Lady Jane Grey lived there, when it was all country round her,” she said rather sadly at last. “How London changes, doesn’t it, Godmother?” ...

Presently the boat turned, and they rowed westward up the river.

“We are going in the direction of Chelsea—_your_ home,” said Godmother. “You will find it a village among fields and woods. Kensington is also a country village, and the lanes and roads are terribly unsafe at night. Highwaymen often lie in wait for coaches that may be passing, and ‘_Your money or your life!_’ is what they say when they put a pistol at the heads of travellers.”

“It _is_ funny to think of the King’s Road in Chelsea, full of omnibuses and taxis now, being a country lane!” Betty said, for the boat had moved with all the swiftness to which she was accustomed in these visits into the Past, and they were passing Chelsea Church. “But at least I know the church! _That_ must have been there for hundreds of years, because Sir Thomas More’s tomb is in it.”

“And do you see the remains of a house near the church?” Godmother asked, pointing to all that was left of a beautiful mansion which workmen were even then pulling down. “That’s where Sir Thomas More lived for many years. You see it being destroyed before your eyes in the reign of George the Second. So it seems they were no more careful to preserve beautiful or interesting buildings in the eighteenth century than we are who live in the twentieth! Every time you walk down Beaufort Street, Chelsea, you may remember that you are on the site of that old house and its gardens.”

One other building besides the church, Betty had recognized. Like the church, it stood surrounded by fields and gardens, instead of by the houses and streets of modern days. This was the Chelsea Hospital which, as she already knew, had been built by Charles the Second as a home for the old soldiers of _his_ day and was still the home for the old soldiers of our own times. She knew well by sight the old men in their scarlet coats, and almost every day she walked through the gardens belonging to the Hospital. But the gardens she now saw from the boat looked much larger, and had an altogether different appearance.

“What’s that great round thing among the trees, Godmother?” she asked.

“That’s the Rotunda of Ranelagh.”

“But what is it? It’s not there now in our time!”

“No, but in this reign it’s a very celebrated place of amusement for all the gay world of London. The two fashionable pleasure gardens are Vauxhall and this _Ranelagh_, close to Chelsea Hospital. Do you know Doulton’s big factory on the opposite side of the river?”

“Yes, the place with the tall terra-cotta chimney, you mean?”

“Well, just about where the factory stands in our day, stretches a garden laid out with winding walks and avenues of trees. You can just see it from this point. That is the famous Vauxhall. Eighteenth-century novels are full of mention of Ranelagh and Vauxhall, and Boswell tells us how fond Dr. Johnson was of both of them.”

“Oh, can’t we land, and see one of them?” Betty implored.

“You shall have a glimpse of _Ranelagh_ by night. We needn’t land either, for our magic is all powerful, you know. Just shut your eyes a moment and wish yourself in Ranelagh at ten o’clock in the evening.... Now open them and look.”

For a moment Betty was dazzled by glittering lights, but as she looked round her she drew a long breath of delight.

“Oh, how pretty!” she exclaimed. “It’s like fairy-land.”

The “round thing” of which she had caught sight between trees, she now saw to be a sort of dome, beneath which was a circle of gilded and painted recesses, something like the boxes in a theatre. From a pavilion in the middle of the covered part of the gardens, came the sound of music, and in every recess ladies and gentlemen were seated before little tables with glasses and cups upon them. With the dome, or _Rotunda_, as Godmother called it, as a centre, long alleys of trees stretched in every direction, like the spokes of a wheel, and were lighted by lamps hanging from the trees. The whole place indeed sparkled with lights, and in their radiance walked charming figures. Pretty ladies in gowns of brocade with powdered hair and little black patches on their faces, were escorted by gentlemen no less charming in their satin coats, flowered waistcoats and three-cornered hats. They walked up and down the leafy alleys, sometimes stopping before platforms where people were singing or acting, sometimes greeting other parties of friends with low curtsies from the ladies and deep bows from the gentlemen.

Betty was entranced by the charming scene.

“It’s very pretty, isn’t it?” said Godmother. “No wonder Dr. Johnson said, ‘_When I first entered Ranelagh it gave me an expansion and gay sensation in my mind such as I never experienced anywhere else_.’”

“I wonder if he’s here to-night?” Betty replied.

“Very likely. I see many well-known people. There’s Oliver Goldsmith in the claret-coloured velvet coat. He’s much tidier and better dressed than usual! And do you notice that little man, rather deformed, in black satin, with ruffles of lace? That’s Mr. Pope, the poet. He is very witty. You see how he is surrounded by laughing men and women? But they’re all rather afraid of him, for he’s quite likely to make fun of them in his next poem.”

“Oh, I should like to live in these times,” sighed Betty, “and go to parties in a sedan chair, and be dressed like these ladies when I grow up....”

Godmother laughed at her face of amazement when she found herself finishing the sentence in the white parlour at Westminster.

“There are advantages and disadvantages about every age,” she said. “I don’t think you’d care at all for the way most little girls of the eighteenth century were brought up. You wouldn’t have the freedom you enjoy now, I can assure you!”

Betty sighed again, but this time because she remembered with a pang that this was her last visit for a long time to the little house from which she had taken so many magic journeys. Godmother was going abroad again, and for many months her house would be closed. Before she could speak, however, the old lady went on: “Now mind you go soon to the London Museum to refresh your memory about to-day’s glimpse of the eighteenth century in this wonderful city of ours. Go into the Costume rooms, and look at the dresses. You will find there the very velvet coat we saw dear old Oliver Goldsmith wearing at Ranelagh. You will see the sedan chairs in which the fine ladies were carried, and a thousand other things belonging to eighteenth-century London which you must find for yourself.”

“I can go on Monday,” Betty said, “because holidays are beginning.”

“Do. And on your way home, try to imagine how all the changes in the streets since the eighteenth century would strike Dr. Johnson, for instance.

“You will go back by Tube, which is to you a familiar way of getting about. But think of Dr. Johnson’s face if he could suddenly walk into a lift and be lowered into the depths of the earth, and then shot through a narrow tunnel from the Bank to Marble Arch, or farther!”

Betty laughed. “And he wouldn’t recognize Marble Arch when he got there, would he?”

“Not a bit. He would expect to see a more or less country road where Oxford Street now runs, and close to the place where the Marble Arch stands to-day he would look for the gallows called Tyburn Tree, where in his time people were hanged. Think how amazed he would be to behold motor vehicles instead of coaches and sedan chairs in the streets.”

“Or to see trains, and telephones, and electric lights, and telegrams and aeroplanes,” put in Betty. “They would all be strange to him. After all, aeroplanes are still a _little_ strange to us!” she added.

“You’ll pass several Post Offices on your way to Chelsea,” Godmother went on, “and to _you_, to drop a letter this afternoon through a slit outside the office, and expect it to reach Newcastle or Exeter to-morrow morning seems quite natural. To Dr. Johnson it would appear marvellous, for in _his_ day, letters had to be carried by men on horseback from one town to another. These are only a few examples of the changes which have taken place since the eighteenth century, which in some ways seems so near us and in other respects so far away.” ...

“Oh, Godmother, do come back soon!” Betty said, when the sad moment for saying good-bye had come. “There are hundreds and hundreds more things I want to see in London!”

“Then you don’t hate it quite so much as you did some weeks ago?” asked the old lady slyly.

“Oh, I love it! But I never should have loved it without you and the magic journeys. And now there won’t be any more magic for ages.”

“That will be your own fault then,” returned Godmother briskly. “With certain books, some of which you know already, as guides, and a certain exercise of imagination which will grow stronger if you practise it, the Present will melt into the Past, and you will be able to call it up at your pleasure. But never forget, Betty, that the Past has made the Present, and when you are grown up, try to make other people reverence the Past of London, and be unwilling, except for very pressing reasons, to destroy what is old and full of memories. London is changing before our eyes, and too much that is beautiful and interesting is being swept away, often through carelessness and indifference. I hope you’ll be one of the small group of people who help to guard the Past, and use their influence to prevent unnecessary destruction in our wonderful city. And remember that you’ve only just begun to know a tiny fraction of its history. There is enough yet left to learn to last you your lifetime.”

“I know,” said Betty. “Godmother,” she added after a moment, “you said you would read me the rhyme about London bells.”

Godmother went to the cabinet, out of which so many charms had been drawn, and took out a book which she put into Betty’s hand.

“You’ll find it in this book, which I’m going to give you in memory of our journeys, magic and otherwise. It’s called _London in Song_, and I hope it will remind you of many things we’ve seen together. The Nursery Rhyme about the bells was written by some unknown lover of London who lived in the eighteenth century, and some of it at least you’ve often sung at parties when you played ‘Oranges and Lemons.’”

* * * * *

So in the Tube on her way home to Chelsea, which she could now picture as it was before it had become just a part of London instead of a country village, Betty read the rhyme of the bells, and amused herself by counting up how many of the churches mentioned in it she knew.

“Gay go up and gay go down
To ring the bells of London Town.

Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clement’s.

Bull’s eyes and targets,
Say the bells of St. Marg’ret’s.

Brickbats and tiles,
Say the bells of St. Giles’.

Halfpence and farthings,
Say the bells of St. Martin’s.

Pancakes and fritters,
Say the bells of St. Peter’s.

Two sticks and an apple,
Say the bells of Whitechapel.

Pokers and tongs,
Say the bells of St. John’s.

Kettles and pans,
Say the bells of St. Ann’s.

Old Father Baldpate,
Say the slow bells of Aldgate.

You owe me ten shillings,
Say the bells of St. Helen’s.

When will you pay me?
Say the bells of Old Bailey.

When I grow rich,
Say the bells of Shoreditch.

Pray when will that be?
Say the bells of Stepney.

I do not know,
Says the great bell of Bow.

Gay go up and gay go down
To ring the bells of London Town.”

Never again could Betty think of London as a dull, dreary place, for though she continued to forget how she actually got back into the Past, she kept a picture in her mind of London through the ages.

There was the Roman city, with its fortress and its market-place filled with the British people the Romans had conquered. Then the city of the Middle Ages, inhabited by a different race—the English race—the little city with its gabled houses encircled by fields and woods. Next came the city of Elizabeth’s day, richer and bigger now, with its ships floating up to London Bridge, its beautiful “Chepe” or market-place crowded with prosperous people.

Again she saw it a heap of ruins in Restoration days, with only a few of its buildings remaining after the Great Fire that swept it clean. Her next glimpse of it showed her London two hundred and fifty years after the Fire—a different London, of broader streets, and plainer and more healthy dwellings, with churches and public buildings, different altogether in architecture from those of the Middle Ages, or of the days of Elizabeth. Finally there was the London of her own day, the huge city of streets and factories and big modern buildings, among which there still lingered not only many rows of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century houses and many churches and other public buildings dating from the time when London rose from its ashes after the Great Fire, but also buildings far, far older than these. There was the Tower; there was Westminster Abbey; there was Westminster Hall. These had looked down for ages upon the city by the Thames, and watched it through its many changes from early times to the day in which Betty herself lived.

But apart from these three ancient monuments, she could scarcely now walk through any part of modern London without seeing something—if only the name of a street, which recalled a memory of the Past. London had, in fact, become for her what Godmother had once called it—the Magic City.

_Printed in Great Britain by_ Butler & Tanner, _Frome and London_

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.