• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1366 0

square miles of land that marked London's main environs. One in six inhabitants of Great Britain had lived in the capital at some point, when only one in forty French citizens lived in Paris. Thanks to immigration, London doubled in population from nearly 700,000 in 1700 to 1.3 million in 1820. In the 1770s, hundreds of souls like Emma arrived in London daily from the provinces, searching for work. The population swelled when the aristocracy arrived in carriages from the country to houses in Mayfair for the social season and the sessions of Parliament in spring. Trooping in their wake came all those who lived off the rich: servants, robbers, sellers, and prostitutes. Foreign tourists and investors crammed the city, along with spies and diplomats monitoring the activities of Lord North, the prime minister, and King George III. Dubbed the "farmer king" for his love of blunt speech, plump George was already struggling with the mental strain that would later become a devastating mental illness.

London was the biggest, most profitable, and dirtiest city in the world. Visitors complained that the buildings were coated in grime, and they declared the sky totally obscured by smog. Many of the roads were blocked with rubbish and awash with mud four inches deep. Even in the most beautiful part of the Strand, near St. Clement's church, the thick mud from the street splashed those who forgot to shut their coach windows. Pedestrians tried to protect themselves from dirt by putting down large stones and hopping between them, blocking the route for carriages and animals. Since there were thousands of wooden houses with open fires but no public fire brigade (private firefighters could be secured for a huge subscription), the sky was red with flames most nights, and the ensuing messes of debris, molten lead, and ash flowed into the mud in the roads. Apprentices, unsurprisingly, spent most of their time cleaning silt off their master's houses.

London was the envy of Europe for its superior and glamorous shops. As one German tourist commented, "Everything one can think of is neatly, attractively displayed, in such abundance of choice, as almost to make one greedy"2 All those who visited Cheapside were dazzled by the huge glass windows bursting with brilliant and varied luxury goods from far-flung countries. On one point visitors and inhabitants agreed: London was the most expensive city in the world. There were rich rewards offered to those able to tap its boundless sources of luxury and glamour.

CHAPTER 6

The School of Corruption

Emma's new home was a sparklingly new townhouse near Black-friars Bridge over the Thames in southeast London. Although it bordered the Fleet prison and was not far from the seedy, notorious docks, the genteel square of Chatham Place epitomized bourgeois living. Merchants' wives in fine day dress embarked on the trip to town, stepping into their waiting sedan chairs, chairs supported on poles carried by two footmen. Milkmaids and butchers' boys hurried past them, eager to hawk their wares to the housekeepers.

Built in the 1760s, the elegantly spaced red-brick houses let for high sums of between £60 and £100 a year and sold for thousands.∗ The businessmen and merchants who occupied them were inordinately proud of the street sign and house numbers, modern innovations were very rare in the 1770s. Chatham Place houses had the latest trappings: new roofs sealed with lead to guard against leaks, and state-of-the-art security with thick cast-iron railings around the front and heavy doors that bolted with chains. Convinced that crime was on the increase (a terrifying ten houses were burgled every month), Londoners expected their houses to be heavily protected. They were also a little nervous: it was only very recently, after Blackfriars Bridge was built, that the area had been gentrified, and shiny new townhouses arranged in squares had sprung up over patches that had been the dens of thieves.

Houses like the Budds' still remain in central London, particularly in the City and Bloomsbury areas. Above the vaults,