VIII PALL MALL 183 better for liquor; and the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York clattering over the pavement; and Johnson counting the posts along the streets, after dawdling before Dodsley's window; and Horry Walpole hobbling into his carriage, with a gimcrack just bought out at Christie's; and George Selwyn sauntering into White's."-Thackeray: The Four Georges, p. 72. Pall Mall, the street of palaces and palatial clubs par excellence, is one of London's handsomest highways. It has for three centuries been the Fleet Street of the well-to-do poets, of the leisured literary world; for what, indeed, could poverty ever have in common with Pall Mall? Defoe, in his day, wrote thus of it: "I am lodged in the street called Pall Mall, the ordinary residence of all strangers, because of its vicinity to the Queen's Palace, the Park, the Parliament House, the theatres, and the chocolate and coffee houses, where the best company frequent. If you would know our manner of living, 'tis thus :-We rise by nine, and those that frequent great men's levées find entertainment at them till eleven, or, as at Holland, go to tea tables. About twelve, the beau-monde assembles in several coffee or chocolate houses; the best of which are the Cocoa Tree and White's chocolate houses, St. James's, the Smyrna, Mr. Rochford's, and the British coffee houses; and all these so near one another that in less than one hour you see the company of them all." This sounds, truly, a pleasant enough life ;—and its counterpart of the present day is,--allowing for altered customs,—no doubt equally pleasant. The taverns mentioned have given place to spacious club-houses, all more or less modern; and the day has, in the last two centuries, come to begin earlier and end later. Coffee-houses, in Defoe's time, were the necessary ladders to rising fame talent; thus, the boy Chatterton, starving and unknown in cruel London, sought to allay his mother's anxiety by writing to her: "I am quite familiar at the Chapter coffee-house (St. Paul's), and know all the geniuses there." In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Pall Mall was a pretty suburban promenade, and its "sweet shady side," sung by the poets, was really no misnomer, as a row of 184 THE POETRY OF ST. JAMES'S SQUARE CHAP. elms fringed it, both north and south. And it is still an aristocratic region, despite the "business" air that has of late invaded it. Of the people you meet here,-elderly gentlemen with nothing, perhaps, very remarkable about them, to outward view;—or smart young men, with well-polished boots and hats, and faultless dress-coats,-it is safe to say that a fair number will have distinguished themselves in one way or another; either in the working of their country's government, or in the fighting of their country's battles But, here as elsewhere, England is uncommunicative, and you may pass angels unawares. Just behind Pall Mall is the aristocratic St. James's Squarealready, alas! invaded by the modern builder : "She shall have all that's fine and fair, And ride in a coach to take the air, -runs the old ballad. Though St. James's Square now contains a fair sprinkling of Government and other offices,—yet its clientèle is still somewhat ducal. Nevertheless, this Square, too, recalls something of the seamy side of life. "What," says Lord Rosebery, referring to London's many associations, "can be less imposing, or less interesting in themselves,than the railings of St. James's Square? Yet, you cannot touch those railings-hideous as they are and dull as are the houses that surround them-without thinking that Johnson and Savage, hungry boys, starved by their kind mother, London, who attracted men of letters to her, walked round that square one summer night and swore they would die for their country." Yes, this, in some way, seems "the best of all possible worlds," and London, in such surroundings, the best of all possible cities to live in. Yet, here, too, the East is still present in the West. Round the corner, as I gaze, comes a pitiful group,-a tawdry woman, her voice raucous ་ VIII THE SEAMY SIDE 185 and suggestive of gin, holding by the hand two children, a boy and a girl,-all singing, or making believe to sing, in chorus: "'Ark! ar ark, my sowl! Angelic songs are swellin', From Hearth's green fields-and Hoceant's way-be shore- Alas! the notes are hardly suggestive of angelic visitants. The chubby little boy is crying, the tears making streaky marks down his dirty little face. "I'm so cowld, so cowld, mammy," "Owld yer row!"-admonishes his sister, in the intervals of her husky accompaniment... The sodden voice of the mother is so terrible that I am moved to give her a shilling to go away and remove her poor suffering babies. . . . But, at the angle of Waterloo Place,- another phantom is stationed; a wretchedlyclothed creature, evidently on the look-out for a job. He might himself be an incarnation of Famine. His cheeks are hollow and cadaverous; his eyes are dulled and hopeless; he shivers in the bleak raw December air; in the "best of all possible worlds,-the richest of all possible cities". . . . The mere "cab-horse's charter" is not for such as he! Ungrateful country, that deals so ill with her children, giving them too often "stones for bread!" "If suddenly," says Mr. Ruskin, "in the midst of the enjoyments of the palate and lightnesses of heart of a London dinner-party, the walls of the chamber were parted, and through their gap the nearest human beings who were famishing and in misery were borne into the midst of the company-feasting and fancy-free-if, pale with sickness, horrible in destitution, broken by despair, body by body, they were laid upon the soft carpet, one beside the chair of every guest, would only the crumbs of the dainties be cast to them-would only a passing glance, a passing thought be vouchsafed to them? Yet the actual facts, the real relations of each Dives and Lazarus, are not altered by the intervention of the house wall between the table and the sick-bed-by the few feet of ground (how few!) which are indeed all that separate the merriment from the misery." It is an effective contrast. But, perhaps the most vivid and pathetic sketch of the Submerged of the Great City is "The devout King destined to God that place, both for that it was near unto the famous and wealthy City of London, and also had a pleasant situation amongst fruitful fields lying round about it, with the principal river running hard by, bringing in from all parts of the world great variety of wares and merchandise of all sorts to the city adjoining; but chiefly for the love of the Chief Apostle, whom he reverenced with a special and singular affection."-Contemporary Life of Edward the Confessor in Harleian MS. "The world-famed Abbey by the westering Thames."-Matthew Arnold. "Westminster Abbey," said Dean Stanley, "stands alone amongst the buildings of the world. There are, it may be, some which surpass it in beauty or grandeur; there are others, certainly, which surpass it in depth and sublimity of association; but there is none which has been entwined by so many continuous threads with the history of a whole nation." The old Abbey of Westminster, is, indeed, in itself an |