Bloomsbury Square, though now rapidly becoming simply a square of offices and business premises generally, was, in the time of Charles I, the most fashionable and most admired Square in London. Pope, later, alludes to it in the following couplet:
"In Palace yard, at nine, you"ll find me there-- At ten, for certain, sir, in Bloomsbury Square--"
Here, in less ancient days, lived the great judge, Lord Mansfield, whose house was burned during the Gordon Riots, in 1780; the mob threw his pictures, valuable books, and ma.n.u.scripts, out of the windows and made a bonfire of them, while he and his wife escaped for their lives by the back of the building. Sir Hans Sloane, the founder of the British Museum, lived at one time in this square; also, Sir Richard Steele, who, giving here a grand entertainment during financial distresses, was waited on by bailiffs disguised as lacqueys; and, finally, Isaac d"Israeli, the father of Lord Beaconsfield: who wrote his _Curiosities of Literature_ at No. 6. "His only amus.e.m.e.nt," says his son, who, as an infant, used to toddle round the square with his nursemaid, "was to ramble about the booksellers" shops," still so frequent in this vicinity. About 1760, the square was still so countrified that the d.u.c.h.ess of Bedford used to send out cards to her guests, inviting them to Bedford House to "take tea and walk in the fields"; while their coachmen "were regaled with the perfume of the flower-beds of the gardens in Great Russell Street." Within the enclosure is now a bronze statue of Charles James Fox, by Westmacott.
These old London squares, with their tall plane trees, their luxuriant and well-ordered garden enclosures, convey a delightful sense, even now, of leisure and repose. No one in Bloomsbury, Tavistock, or Russell Squares would imagine that behind those green ma.s.ses of foliage,--beyond the blue mist into which they melt so picturesquely,--lies that great "cauldron" or "fermenting vat," as Carlyle would say, of busy London. Yet it is there, but a stone"s throw, indeed, away. In the squares the birds twitter and chirp; vistas of entwined branches, leafy glades, hide the glaring continuity of the streets and houses; you might think yourself in some suburban haunt of peace. Even the rumble of the wheels in neighbouring Southampton Row and Holborn seems, in Russell Square in summer, like a soothing tune "to rock a child asleep." You feel in the world, yet not of it; close to the "mighty pulse of the machine," yet in your garden enclosed, and at rest.... And in the back gardens of the houses themselves (for some of the old mansions yet have gardens, entered occasionally from side streets by mysterious Jekyll and Hyde doorways) it is the same. I know a "backyard" that still boasts its mulberry tree, bursting its fat green buds gaily in the spring; and another that can flaunt, when "soft April wakes," its hedge of fragrant lilac. The "daughters of the varying year" deign to notice us even in Bloomsbury, though they may not, perhaps, condescend to stay with us quite so long. (But then we do not ourselves, as a rule, pay such long visits in London as in the country.) Still, the crocus "breaks like fire" at our feet in the spring; the graceful bells of the foxglove usher us pleasantly into the autumn; and in London, imprisoned in brick, who shall say how we love our "prison flower?"
The literary a.s.sociations of Bloomsbury are yet another feature of its charm. Though Russell Square and its surroundings generally are being gradually rebuilt and improved, yet in some places you can still see the actual old houses standing that, in the century"s early years, were the homes of celebrated men. Thus, No. 65 in Russell Square was the abode of Sir Thomas Lawrence, the painter, and here he received the distinguished sitters, the eminent men and fair ladies who have made his name famous. Here, for instance, at this common-place house door, while the Russian general Platoff was having his portrait painted inside, were posted his attendant Cossacks, "mounted" says an eye-witness, "on their small white horses, with their long spears grounded," standing as sentinels at the door of the great painter.
Lawrence died here in 1830, and the house is not in essentials altered since his day. At No. 5 in the square lived, from 1856 to 1862, Frederick Denison Maurice, the "Christian Socialist," and here he held his famous "prophetic breakfasts." At No. 56 Mary Russell Mitford stayed in 1836. The house near by--No. 66--is a curious survival of the days when Bloomsbury was a centre of fashion. Its enormous size, its palatial reception rooms, its tall corridors, now deserted and solitary except for a few colossal statues in niches, all suggest the glare of light, the sound of music, the rustle of fine dresses that filled it in old days. Hawthorne and d.i.c.kens suggested that old houses felt and suffered; the same idea intrudes itself upon us here. The rusted iron arches that used in the old days to support lamps,--now darkened,--still hang here and there in Bloomsbury streets; and, in some cases the actual iron torch-extinguishers that were used when sedan chairs were in fashion, remain to tell their story of ancient grandeur. Nothing is in its way more plaintive than an old and desolate house of this kind; its glory departed, its decorations falling to decay, its "garden" a wilderness of walls, roofs, and broken bottles, its rooms, even, perchance, in course of being broken up into solicitors" or other offices. Bloomsbury Square, indeed--the square nearest to Holborn--has, in this way, entirely merged into offices, the residents being practically ousted. But Russell Square, despite the new Russell Hotel that rises palatially along its north-eastern block, and despite the large Pitman"s School of Shorthand at its south-eastern corner, is still almost entirely residential. None of its modern innovations can altogether abolish or destroy the spirit and feeling of Thackeray that it breathes. Here lived old Osborne, the purse-proud banker; there is going on old Sedley"s sale; I can see the packing-cases, the "loafers" and the vans at this moment; and here, by these very prosaic green square railings, is Amelia, sad and black garbed, looking with tear-filled eyes for her boy George. Now that she comes into the light, I see that she is only a nurse from one of the Great Ormond Street or Queen Square hospitals, or, perhaps, a "Salvation Army" la.s.sie; but for the moment she _was_ Amelia, poke-bonnet and all, to the life. Even the historic square railings are just the same as when Thackeray drew them, and Amelia beside them, in ch. 50 of _Vanity Fair_. The numerous pupils of Pitman"s Shorthand Inst.i.tute now flock, unprotected, down Southampton Row, where little Amelia and her kind, in the early years of the century, walked, followed by "Black Sambo," with an enormous cane.
Little Amelia, whose simple strolls in the square were guarded by the beadle; and before whose door, when asleep, "the watchman sang the hours." The big houses--their fireplaces and ceilings often decorated by Adam, their "powder-closets," curious relics of Queen Anne"s time, still existing, in many cases, behind the drawing-rooms--yet flaunt their enormous kitchens, laundries, and bas.e.m.e.nts, fitted with endless bedrooms and offices for butlers and retainers, such as old Mr.
Sedley"s "Black Sambo" and his tribe. They are out of date in this region now, but the Bedford estate will not remodel them entirely so long as their outer walls are solid; and that these mansions existed long before the modern jerry-building days, their firm walls give abundant proof.
But change is at work everywhere in this region. Flats ascending to a terrific height are erected in every direction; of these "Bedford Court," with its foreign-looking inner glazed courtyard is the most outwardly picturesque. It does not seem long since the "gates and bars" went; and soon, no doubt, a new Electric Railway will continue its tunnels and stations along Southampton Row from Holborn to King"s Cross.
The princ.i.p.al reason, of course, for the modern unfashionableness of Bloomsbury is to be found in its inhabitants; it is, practically, a city of cheap boarding-houses. It will be interesting to see how the big new Russell Hotel in Russell-Square will affect these. Though boarding-houses are vetoed in the big squares, they abound everywhere else. They are chiefly frequented by Americans and Germans, who, through the late summer and autumn, throng the streets, generally discoverable by their red "Baedekers," no less than by their speech.
It is, in fact, in July or August, more common, just here, to hear German spoken than English. London, it has been ascertained, attracts now a greater number of tourists than any other place in the world, and these tourists mostly lodge in Bloomsbury. The theatrical world, also, lives largely about here--it is so convenient for the theatres; but it prefers, for its part, private lodgings, or flats. Yet, even with all this yearly influx from other nations, Bloomsbury is wonderfully little known to the world of shops or of fashion. Oxford Circus is only distant ten minutes from the Russell Hotel, yet "where is Russell Square?" is no uncommon question, even in a shop as big as Peter Robinson"s. "Where is Russell Square?" is, indeed, an almost cla.s.sical question; for it was made in so august a place as the House of Commons, by so omniscient a being as Mr. Croker. It is crushing--but so it is. You might as well, in the world"s eyes, live at Fulham or Kennington Park. "Why do you live so far away?" is a question constantly asked of the Bloomsbury resident by people from distant Battersea or Campden Hill, whom it would be useless to try to undeceive. "The very absence of any knowledge of this locality," said a noted wit, "is accounted a mark of high breeding." Among those who have spoken despitefully of Bloomsbury is Mr. Gladstone. Sir Algernon West records a conversation about Panizzi, and his "sad, ill days before his death," "which Mr. Gladstone attributed greatly to the fact of his living in Bloomsbury Square." But, with all respect to Mr.
Gladstone, it may be submitted that Panizzi would have died anywhere, while, on the other hand, he could not have lived anywhere except in his beloved Museum-land. Bloomsbury, too, is Whig territory, and it was too bad of Mr. Gladstone to identify it with the Inferno.
Its social glory may have pa.s.sed away from Bloomsbury, but pathetic little scenes from a lower strata of life daily enact themselves here before our eyes. For the poor we have, indeed, always with us. Here, for instance, to a certain humble street corner, has come for many years an old blind man who sells collar-studs. He arrives punctually every morning, led along carefully by his wife. Once arrived, his mode of procedure is always the same.
He first goes to an iron railing attached to an uninviting blind wall, and proceeds, with a key, to extract thence a rickety wooden seat, padlocked on to the railing. This he takes to his accustomed spot, an old h.o.a.rding of ancient date, where he is allowed by sufferance of the authorities; when the h.o.a.rding is removed, the old man will lose his means of living unless he find another haunt. His wife helps him across the road, and leaves him to sit patiently all day, east wind, wet, or shine, selling studs. At five o"clock she again appears to fetch him home to tea. Once I witnessed a little domestic drama between the two. It arose thus. The old man had been talking one day to another woman,--a decrepit old waif she was,--and, when the wife returned, the poor old husband had to expiate his flirtation sorely.
His wife "let him have it" all the way over the return crossing, undeterred by pa.s.sing "buses, or cabmens" jeers, from "speaking her mind"; and she was still hard at it, to judge from her thin shoulders and her gesticulations, as they pa.s.sed out of sight together into the foggy night.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Pavement Artist._]
"Pavement artists," too, select the near neighbourhood of the squares as their favoured haunt. These "open-air pastellists," as they have been called, are a curious, unshaven, dilapidated race, with an indescribable "come-down-in-the world" look about them; and their lot seems hardly an enviable one. Their "plant," it is true, is not large; a few coloured chalks and a soft duster form all their necessary stock-in-trade. Gifted often with a fair amount of technical ability, they lead the pa.s.serby to wonder, whether, given happier circ.u.mstances and a less vivid acquaintance with the bar of the public house, they might not now be exhibiting their efforts on the sacred walls of the Royal Academy. Not that the Royal Academy pictures themselves would, for that matter, if they could be painted on the pavement, draw so many coppers as the lurid representations of railway accidents, or the scenes of domestic bliss, or the "Mother"s Grave" (the public love sentiment and pathos), or even the innocent mackerel or salmon, "as like as like," that form the _repertoire_ of the pavement artist. His wares, to catch pennies, have to be highly coloured, if nothing else.
His trials are many; dust and rain efface his pictures, drunken navvies fall foul of him, cramp attacks his legs, and east wind benumbs his fingers, till, poor wretch, no wonder that he repairs, with his hardly won money, to the nearest public-house,--the poor man"s refuge. He is, on the other hand, not obliged to rise early or to work after dark, and it is said that occasionally his takings average as much as 4/6 per day, although an amateur who recently tried his hand at the business only gained 3-1/2_d_, a violent headache, and nearly a sunstroke. There is, it is true, a new and degenerate kind of Pavement Artist, who, instead of painstakingly bedaubing the same "pitch" day after day, brings out with him a series of highly-coloured oil-pictures on cardboard; the public, however, have already discovered him to be a hollow fraud. There is also said to be in existence one young lady pavement artist, in sailor hat and neat get-up (though where her present "pitch" may be I know not), who labels herself proudly "the only one in England."
That Londoners are great lovers of the picturesque may be seen from the admiring crowd that surround the pavement artist; they prefer Nature, however, brought "home" to them in crude and garish colours.
Yet, as likely as not, when the shabby pastellist has put away chalks and duster for the day, and betaken himself to his nightly refuge in Soho or Hatton Garden, the sky behind him will robe itself in intense hues of orange, purple, and crimson that baffle imitation, and before which even pavement-art fades into insignificance. For the sunset-skies of London are a marvel. All through the varying year they are beautiful, but in September and October they are at their best.
The sun either sinks, a bold red disc, behind the black houses and still blacker plane trees, or it clothes its retreat with bright purple and madder clouds, against which, with their golden background, the tree branches show dark like prison-bars. Was it perhaps, on these sunset-skies that Christina Rossetti gazed when she wrote her most inspired poems? And was it from the small window of her gloomy little house in Torrington Square, "the small upper back bedroom whose only outlook," her biographer says, "was to the tall dingy walls of adjacent houses;" was it from here that,--looking with rapt gaze over to the neighbouring stables and mews,--she saw, in fancy, the angel choirs of which she wrote?
"... Mult.i.tudes--mult.i.tudes--stood up in bliss, Made equal to the angels, glorious, fair; With harps, palms, wedding-garments, kiss of peace, And crowned and haloed hair."
Indeed it is not unlikely that she did see them, for the true poet"s mind sees what it brings, to the exclusion of all meaner things. There is a pretty story told, in this connection, of William Blake, the poor, half-crazed poet-painter of Fountain Court. "What," he said, "it will be questioned" (of me) "when the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea? Oh! no, no! I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host, crying "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord G.o.d Almighty!" I question not my corporeal eye any more than I would question a window concerning a sight. I look through it, and not with it." And thus it was with Miss Rossetti. She, the patient, n.o.ble, suffering woman,--suffering, latterly, from a long and painful illness,--lay, day after day silent and uncomplaining, in that dismal little London house where she had spent nineteen years of her life,--her soul ever beating its prison-bars. Near by in the neighbouring Woburn Square, is Christ Church, where Miss Rossetti during her life was a constant attendant, and whose inc.u.mbent, the Rev. J. J. Glendinning Nash, was her close friend. Here her impressive funeral service (where her own poems were sung) took place on January 2nd 1895. The whole of this part of London is bound up with the lives of the talented Rossetti family. Christina, her mother, and aunts, lived at No 30 Torrington Square--and before that at 5 Endsleigh Gardens; W. M. Rossetti, the younger brother and literary critic, lived near by, close to Regent"s Park; and Dante Rossetti, the chief of this family of poets, was, as we know, a thorough Londoner, and never even visited Italy at all. One of the most curious things about London is the way in which, despite its gloom, it inspires and stimulates the poet"s thought, "moulding the secret gold." Else why is it that so many beautiful things are produced there? Even Mr. Austin Dobson"s Muse, he complains, "pouts" when abroad, though "she is not shy on London stones!" The many-hued beauties of the country do not affect us as do the grey London stones and streets, eloquent with a.s.sociation and history.
If the Rossetti family are deeply connected with Bloomsbury streets and squares,--William Morris, the poet of _The Earthly Paradise_, the Socialist, designer, prophet of the House Beautiful, is hardly less so. It was in unromantic Bloomsbury that his ideas of beauty were mainly nourished; Oxford Street, Upton, and Kelmscott came later.
Bloomsbury, whose drawing and painting schools are immortalised in Thackeray"s novels (_vide_ "Gandish"s," in _The Newcomes_,), has always been more or less a focus of art teaching. Bohemian in old days, it is mildly Bohemian still, as any one who frequents the art-schools of the neighbourhood will testify. When Morris first left Oxford, in 1856, he and Burne-Jones took rooms together in Upper Gordon Street, Bloomsbury, as being a convenient locality for the study of art. Here they fell in with other kindred spirits, such as Holman Hunt and Rossetti. "Topsy" (Morris) "and I lived together,"
Burne Jones wrote in 1856, "in the quaintest room in all London, hung with bra.s.ses of old knights and drawings of Albert Durer." In the following year (1857) they removed to 17 Red Lion Square, a house already consecrated to the early pioneers of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood:
"It was a first-floor set of three rooms; the large room in front looked north, and its window had been heightened up to the ceiling to adapt it for use as a studio: behind it was a bedroom, and behind that another small bedroom or powdering closet. Till the spring of 1859 this was their London residence and working place, and it is round Red Lion Square that much of the mythology of Morris"s earlier life cl.u.s.ters. From the incidents which occurred or were invented there, a sort of Book of the Hundred Merry Tales gradually was formed, of which Morris was the central figure."--(_Life of W. Morris, by J. W. Mackail._)
"A great many of these stories are connected with the maid of the house, who became famous under the name of "Red Lion Mary." She was very plain, but a person of great character and unfailing good humour.... One of the tales told of her shows her imperturbable good nature. Rossetti one day, on her entering the room, strode up to her, and in deep resonant tones, with fearful meaning in his voice, declaimed the lines:
""Shall the hide of a fierce lion Be stretched on a couch of wood For a daughter"s foot to lie on, Stained with a father"s blood?"
"Whereupon the girl, quite unawed by the horrible proposition, replied with baffling complacency, "It shall if you like, sir"!"
From the fact of the Red Lion Square rooms being unfurnished came practically the beginnings of Morris"s work as a decorator and manufacturer. He set to work to provide it with "intensely mediaeval furniture," designed by himself, and painted in panels afterwards by Rossetti and Burne-Jones. There were tables, chairs, and a large settle; "chairs," says Rossetti, "such as Barbarossa might have sat in." It is pleasant to think of Morris and Rossetti walking arm-in-arm on summer evenings, wending their way through quaint alleys up to the Red Lion Square lodgings, deep in earnest conversation; young, intensely busy and hopeful--still more intensely full of "the joy of life." They spent their holidays at the not far distant Zoological Gardens, where Morris, who was fond of birds, would observe and imitate the habits of eagles:
"He would imitate an eagle with considerable skill and humour, climbing on to a chair, and, after a sullen pause, coming down with a soft heavy flop; and for some time an owl was one of the tenants of Red Lion Square, in spite of a standing feud between it and Rossetti."
Morris had several Bloomsbury abodes. Later, when he married, and the Red Lion Square household broke up, he and his wife went into lodgings at 41, Great Ormond Street; and again, some five or six years later, they took an old house, 26 Queen Square, (now pulled down to make room for a hospital), a house which, with its yard and outbuildings behind, had room and to spare for his family, and also for workshops to accommodate his increasing trade as a decorative manufacturer. It is sad that London houses where Morris lived should bear no trace of his beautifying hand; for externally, it must be confessed, such of his Bloomsbury dwellings as remain extant are commonplace. Red Lion Square, a curiously antiquated enclosure near Holborn, approached by paved diverging alleys at the eastern corners, and with a pathetic look of having known better days (it is now mostly offices and business flats), contains but few dwelling-houses. No. 17 still stands, but the only thing about it that seems to suggest the Morris tradition is its plain green door; and it differs from its neighbours merely by its middle first-floor window being "heightened up to the ceiling" as already described. Neither is 41, Great Ormond Street--one of the smaller houses in that dignified old street--in any way remarkable, except for its rather dilapidated look. It seems a pity, by the way, that tablets do not more frequently indicate the houses where great people have lived; the dullest of London streets would gain infinitely in interest were this the rule, instead of merely the exception.
Queen Square, though its old houses have mostly been rebuilt as large hospitals, and only a few of them remain, still has a charming old world look. Great Ormond Street, with its tall old mansions of time-darkened red brick, their quaint overhanging porch roofs, and their often elaborate iron-work, runs into it at one end; while the other--curious anomaly at this date!--is still a deadlock of enclosed gardens, with no thoroughfare into dull Guilford street beyond. This,--and it is a fact that of itself speaks well for the health of the district,--is a region of hospitals; hence the occasional whiff of ether or scent of iodine from bandaged "out-patients" that greets the traveller by omnibus up Southampton Row. The high ground on which Bloomsbury is built (for it is a gradual ascent all the way from the river to Russell Square) render it, its fogs and soot notwithstanding,--and despite the old tradition that the victims of the plague were mainly buried here,--far more bracing then the more fashionable West End. It has, certainly, its quota of fogs, or "London particulars" as Sam Weller called them; but so have other parts of London. In and about Great Ormond Street and Queen Square are many hospitals; large, airy, and splendidly managed inst.i.tutions, such, for instance, as the well-known Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, (abused as "hideous" by Mr. Hare, princ.i.p.ally because "two interesting houses, Nos. 48 and 49," of real Queen Anne architecture, were destroyed in 1882 to enlarge it); the National Hospital for Epilepsy and Paralysis, under the great Dr. Ferrier; and the tall newly-built Alexandra Hospital for children. In Powis Place, close to Queen Square, Lord Macaulay lived in early manhood with his family. The house is now joined to the h.o.m.oeopathic Hospital.
In Great Ormond Street, also, on the northern side, is the "Working Men"s College," the history of which is so deeply a.s.sociated with Ruskin, Rossetti, Madox Brown, and their friends. Started first by F.
D. Maurice at 31, Red Lion Square, (where Rossetti and Ruskin subsequently volunteered to hold cla.s.ses, Rossetti "teaching mechanics to draw each other," and Ruskin instructing them in the more rudimentary art of copying leaves, flowers, &c., according to the "strictest school of Ruskinianism;")--it was subsequently moved to its present site. In the lives of this gifted community of artists and teachers, the Working Men"s College played no small part, and showed how deeply these young men were actuated, not only by the love of art, but also by the feeling of universal brotherhood advocated later by Morris in the social Utopia he propounded in one of his best known works. The story of the College may be read in many books and biographies. The kind of thing it practised, being rare in those days, attracted strangers and philanthropic aristocrats, who came to look on and to wonder. Irreverent stories, indeed, are told of the cla.s.ses there by mild scoffers,--such as W. B. Scott, for instance,--who describes Mr. Ruskin"s cla.s.s, as follows:
"We drove into Red Lion Square, and here I found ... every one trying to put on small pieces of paper, imitations by pen and ink of pieces of rough stick crusted with dry lichens!... I came away feeling that such pretence of education was in a high degree criminal--it was intellectual murder!"
For Mr. Scott, who was, as he says, "the representative of the Government schools," some allowance must be made; but Dante Rossetti himself, though he held a "life"-cla.s.s, also saw the comic side. "You think," he said to Mr. Scott:
"You think I have turned humanitarian, perhaps, but you should see my cla.s.s for the model! None of your _Freehand Drawing-Books_ used. The British mind is brought to bear on the British _mug_ at once, and with results that would astonish you."
On the actual value of these things, opinions, as we see, may differ; but who can doubt the indirect good that resulted from the effort, both to teachers and to taught?
The Pa.s.smore Edwards Settlement, in Tavistock Place, goes perhaps, far to realise some of the ideas of Morris"s Utopia. To begin with, it is a thing of beauty. Its newness is not aggressive, and its long red-brick building, adorned by quaint porches and backed by refreshing green plane-trees, is a pleasing object as viewed from the essentially unromantic and grimy street into which it opens. Its architecture is a credit to the two young men who designed it. Though the building, I believe, at first excited some adverse comment in Bloomsbury circles, yet there can be no doubt of its success as a whole. Its style, simple yet decorative, gains on the beholder. While, externally, it forms a little "isle of quiet breathing" in Bloomsbury streets, its proportions and general construction are internally, no less charming.
The big lecture-hall with its white arched roof, its many windows, the beautifully-proportioned drawing-room with its lovely colouring of green and red, the well-stocked library, the gymnasium, the sewing-rooms, the cooking-school, are all arranged and decorated in the Morris style, and according to Morris"s ideas.... Mrs. Humphry Ward, as every one knows, is the inspiring spirit of the Settlement, and Mr. Tatton is her warden and prophet. The present building, for which the funds were princ.i.p.ally provided by Mr. Pa.s.smore Edwards of the _Echo_, is the outcome of Mrs. Ward"s earlier "settlement" in Gordon Square. It was built in 1897 on the site of a curious old house called "The Grove," which stood apart in its own grounds; a house where Herschel lived and where he first weighed the world; where, also, report says, that George IV. kept one of his numerous "ladies."
The Settlement, which is of the Toynbee Hall type, is unsectarian, and therefore looked coldly on by many church people; though, by the admitted good it works, it has overcome many prejudices. Among the most novel, and a.s.suredly the most excellent, of its works is the Cripples" School which is conducted within its walls. It is a pathetic sight to see the vehicle--half omnibus and half ambulance--carrying these poor little pupils to and from the Settlement. Also, it ministers to the highest pleasures of the people; and it is far more difficult to teach enjoyment than to teach learning. Gymnasiums, cooking, and social gatherings for all cla.s.ses alike pave, at any rate, the way to still larger "departures" and Ruskinian possibilities in the way of "preaching to the rich and dining with the poor." The pretty drawing-room of the Settlement looks, with its bay window, on to a charming green garden once backed by d.i.c.kens"s old house,--Tavistock House,--now demolished.
Literary memories attach even to Gower Street; that long, prosaic, interminable thoroughfare.
Here, at No. 110 (then No. 12, Upper Gower Street, and now utilized with neighbouring houses as Shoolbred"s offices), lived, in 1839, Charles Darwin; it was described by his son as "a small, commonplace London house, with a dining room in front, and a small room behind, in which they lived for quietness." Though Darwin sometimes grumbled, as men will, over the necessity of living in "dirty odious London," he also appreciated its peculiar charm, as the following extract will testify:
"We are living a life of extreme quietness. What you describe as so secluded a spot is, I will answer for it, quite dissipated compared with Gower Street. We have given up all parties, for they agree with neither of us; and if one is quiet in London there is nothing like it for quietness.... There is a grandeur about its smoky fogs, and the dull, distant sounds of cabs and coaches; in fact, you may perceive I am becoming a thorough-paced c.o.c.kney, and I glory in the thought that I shall be here for the next six months."
In 1835, too, as Mr. Frith recalls in his amusing _Reminiscences_, he himself was a boy, just introduced to his first drawing academy, immortalized as "Gandish"s" in the _Newcomes_; that of Mr. Henry Sa.s.s, which still stands, a corner house at No. 6 Charlotte Street, the Holborn continuation of Gower Street. At the side entrance, under the cla.s.sic bust of Minerva,--which, yellowed and antique in more senses than one, "to this day looks down on the pa.s.ser-by;"--under this doorway came not only Frith, but Millais, and other well-known Academicians. Edward Lear, of much _Nonsense Book_ fame, and much undeserved neglect as a landscape-painter, "a man of varied and great accomplishments," was also one of Sa.s.s"s pupils.
Millais, when a boy attending Sa.s.s"s school, lived with his parents at 83, Gower Street (the studio was built out behind). Mr. Holman Hunt thus describes the Millais _menage_ at the time:
"It (the studio) was comfortably furnished with artistic objects tastefully arranged.... The son put his hand on his father"s shoulder and the other on his mother"s chair, and said: "They both help me, I can tell you. He"s capital! and does a lot of useful things. Look what a good head he has. I have painted several of the old doctors from him. By making a little alteration and putting a beard on him he does splendidly, and he sits for hands and draperies, too; and as for mamma, she finds me all I want in the way of dresses, and makes them up for me. She reads to me, too, at times, and finds out whatever I want to know at the British Museum library. She"s very clever, I can tell you," and he stooped down and rubbed his curly head against her forehead, and then patted the "old daddy," as he called him, on the back."
It was close to Sa.s.s"s old school, and opposite his benign Minerva, that I once saw, myself, one bitter May-Day of nipping "north-easter,"
the real old "Jack-in-the-Green" described by d.i.c.kens and ill.u.s.trated by Cruikshank; the "May-Day sweeps" of the _Sketches by Boz_; "my lord," "my lady," "clowns," "green," and all. Very wretched and miserable looked these belated ill.u.s.trators of an ancient custom, as they danced and piped through the wind and sleet that usually, by some strange perversity, usher in the first of May. The c.o.c.kney children who storm the doorsteps, clamorously demanding May-Day tribute, and crying their shrilly monotonous song:
"Fust er Ma--ay, Dawn er da--ay, It"s only once a yee--ar"--
are usually suggestive of a cold, cheerless morn.
At the present day, many members of the legal profession still inhabit Bloomsbury, recalling the old days when, from its residents, it was dubbed "Judge-Land." Its proximity to Fleet Street renders it equally beloved by writers; its nearness to the Strand endears it to "the profession" and the music-hall artistes, who frequent the flats near Tottenham Court Road; but the bulk of the residential population is Jewish. Bloomsbury has, however, not only been the chosen abode of judges, journalists, and Jews, but it is also the home of many sects and religious communities, some important, and some, if report be true, mustering but few adherents. There is a by-way off Lamb"s Conduit Street (which is a thoroughfare at the back of Great Ormond Street, containing, like it, some quaint old houses, as well as some interesting curiosity-shops); in this by-way is a tiny building, pathetic in its minuteness, and chiefly discernible from its projecting gas-lamp, labelled "Church of Humanity." Of this church, a wit is said to have unkindly remarked, with reference to the size of its congregation, that it contained "three persons, but no G.o.d."
Unitarians muster largely round the Bloomsbury squares; and the Irvingites, or, as they call themselves, members of "the Catholic and Apostolic Church," have their princ.i.p.al place of worship,--a fine building erected for them in 1853,--in Gordon Square. Its door is--rare indeed in London!--always open, enabling the visitor to enter and admire the long cloister that leads to the church, and the decorated interior with its triforium, wheel-window, and side-chapel.
The prayer-books lying in the pews seem much the same as those used by the English Church, the chief difference being that in them the word "saint" is always rendered as "angel." This beautiful church and its strange creed result from the doctrines propounded by Edward Irving, the Annandale prophet and seer, the preacher of "the gift of tongues,"
who was himself ordained the first "angel" or minister of his sect.
(This Edward Irving was the first lover of Jane Welsh Carlyle,--the man of whom she said, that if she had married him, "there would have been no gift of tongues!")
Whitefield"s Tabernacle, that early home of Dissent,--where, in 1824, Edward Irving delivered his famous missionary oration of three-and-a-half hours,--stands near by in Tottenham Court Road.
Erected first by the preacher George Whitefield in 1756, and called then "Whitefield"s Soul Trap,"--it has been many times rebuilt,--and is now just re-opened as an imposing red-brick and ornate edifice, on its original site. Notwithstanding its deplorable newness, it perpetuates the memory of Whitefield, Toplady, and John Wesley; and it was here, by a curious coincidence, that two ministers preached their own funeral sermons!