London - Edward Rutherfurd [485]
On the island of Britain, however, the re-emergence of the Roman world was more appropriately measured in pragmatic ways. Before the reign of George III, to be sure, the splendid classical squares of London and the Palladian country houses of the aristocracy had probably surpassed those of Roman Britain. During it, although admittedly such amenities as public baths and central heating still had to be introduced, the Roman feature that had done most to bring order to the barbarian world began at last to reappear: the system of roads.
In Roman times roads had crossed the island like an iron framework. Then, neglected and overgrown, they had mostly been forgotten. Through the long centuries of the dark ages to the modern Stuarts and early Hanoverians, the roads of England were little more than prehistoric tracks and rutted Saxon lanes. In the case of the old Kent road from Dover and Canterbury along which young Eugene Penny had just travelled, the Roman road had remained in use, but its metalled surface lay buried so deep that even it appeared as nothing more than a cart track.
All that had now changed. The turnpike roads of the late eighteenth century were owned by private trusts and joint stock companies and run for profit, but with such success that within a generation they had covered much of the country. Sometimes they followed a straight Roman route, more often a curving Saxon path. Their surfaces were nothing like as sophisticated as those of the ancient world, but smooth and hard enough to permit a carriage to maintain a brisk and constant pace. Journeys that once took a day or two were now accomplished in hours. Entrepreneurs with fleets of express coaches rushed both mail and people out from London coaching inns to the furthest parts of the country. Suddenly the swelling capital was accessible to every town in the kingdom. It was, truly, both the return of Rome and the beginning of the modern age.
Yet the prospect that now greeted young Eugene’s eyes was not at all what he had expected.
The metropolis of London had continued to grow during George III’s reign, but it had done so mainly north of the River Thames. On the south bank, Southwark had grown, but only in a modest fashion. West of Southwark, though lines of houses were growing along the roads that led to Westminster Bridge, the great parish of Lambeth was still mainly orchard, market garden and field, with a scattering of timber yards along the waterfront; while further upriver, the old villages of Battersea and Clapham had only suffered the addition of some handsome villas and gardens belonging to prosperous merchants and gentlemen. Below Southwark, the riverside areas of Bermondsey and Rotherhithe were turning dingy with acres of crumpled brick housing; yet even this soon gave way to open marshland. Further downstream, the village of Greenwich with its huge white palaces was hardly altered at all.
But across the Thames, northwards, westwards, eastwards, the mighty city was spreading like a leviathan. Or so Eugene had heard. For he now encountered a problem which neither Stuart nor Tudor, nor even Roman had ever known. The city was invisible.
“That, sir,” the coachman said, “is a London fog.”
It lay over the city like a dark grey pall. Judging by its hazy edges, it seemed to Eugene that the great cloud of dirt was spreading outwards; and indeed as they came down the old Kent road it came out to meet them. By the time they entered Southwark borough, the sky was dark and the houses were becoming indistinct in an oily, greenish, mist through which their lights could only signal with an orange glow. By the time they reached the High Street, the coach had slowed and Eugene could not even see the heads of the leading horses. When they turned into the courtyard of the George Inn for all he knew he could have been entering the gateway to hell itself.
The boat made a soft, grating sound as it emerged from the fog and came to rest on the mud below the stairs on the river’s northern bank. One of the men climbed out and turned