London in 1731 [1]
who died in 1744. It is the London into which Samuel Johnson came in 1738, at the age of twenty-nine--seven years before the manuscript of "Manoel de Gonzales" appeared in print. "How different a place," said Johnson, "London is to different people; but the intellectual man is struck with it as comprehending the whole of human life in all its variety, the contemplation of which is inexhaustible." Its hard features were shown in the poem entitled London--an imitation of the third satire of Juvenal--with which Johnson began his career in the great city, pressed by poverty, but not to be subdued:-
"By numbers here from shame or censure free, All crimes are safe but hated poverty. This, only this, the rigid law pursues, This, only this, provokes the snarling Muse. The sober trader, at a tattered cloak, Wakes from his dream and labours for a joke; With brisker air the silken courtiers gaze, And turn the varied taunt a thousand ways. Of all the griefs that harass the distressed, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest; Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart Than when a blockhead's insult points the dart."
When Don Manoel's account of London was written the fashionable world was only beginning to migrate from Covent Garden--once a garden belonging to the Convent of Westminster, and the first London square inhabited by persons of rank and fashion--to Grosvenor Square, of which Don Manoel describes the new glories. They included a gilt equestrian statue of King George I. in the middle of its garden, to say nothing of kitchen areas to its houses, then unusual enough to need special description: "To the kitchens and offices, which have little paved yards with vaults before them, they descend by twelve or fifteen steps, and these yards are defended by a high palisade of iron." Altogether, we are told, Grosvenor Square "may well be looked upon as the beauty of the town, and those who have not seen it cannot have an adequate idea of the place."
But Covent Garden is named by "Don Manoel Gonzales," with St. James's Park, as a gathering-place of the London world of fashion. The neighbouring streets, it may be added, had many coffee-houses, wine-cellars, fruit and jelly shops; fruit, flowers, and herbs were sold in its central space; and one large woman thoughtfully considering the fashion of the place, sat at her stall in a lace dress of which the lowest estimate was that it must have cost a hundred guineas.
H. M.
LONDON IN 1731. CONTAINING A DESCRIPTION OF THE CITY OF LONDON; BOTH IN REGARD TO ITS EXTENT, BUILDINGS, GOVERNMENT, TRADE, ETC.
London, the capital of the kingdom of England, taken in its largest extent, comprehends the cities of London and Westminster, with their respective suburbs, and the borough of Southwark, with the buildings contiguous thereto on the south side of the river, both on the east and west sides of the bridge.
The length thereof, if we measure in a direct line from Hyde Park gate, on the west side of Grosvenor Square, to the farthest buildings that are contiguous in Limehouse, that is, from west to east, is very near five miles in a direct line; but if we take in the turnings and windings of the streets, it cannot be less than six miles. The breadth in many places from north to south is about two miles and a half, but in others not above a mile and a half; the circumference of the whole being about sixteen miles.
The situation next the river is hilly, and in some places very steep; but the streets are for the most part upon a level, and the principal of them nowhere to be paralleled for their length, breadth, beauty, and regularity of the buildings, any more than the spacious and magnificent squares with which this city abounds.
As to the dimensions of the city within the walls, I find that the late wall on the land side from the Tower in the east, to the mouth of Fleet Ditch in the west, was two miles wanting ten poles; and the line along the Thames, where there has been no walls for many hundred years, if ever, contains from the Tower in the east, to the
"By numbers here from shame or censure free, All crimes are safe but hated poverty. This, only this, the rigid law pursues, This, only this, provokes the snarling Muse. The sober trader, at a tattered cloak, Wakes from his dream and labours for a joke; With brisker air the silken courtiers gaze, And turn the varied taunt a thousand ways. Of all the griefs that harass the distressed, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest; Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart Than when a blockhead's insult points the dart."
When Don Manoel's account of London was written the fashionable world was only beginning to migrate from Covent Garden--once a garden belonging to the Convent of Westminster, and the first London square inhabited by persons of rank and fashion--to Grosvenor Square, of which Don Manoel describes the new glories. They included a gilt equestrian statue of King George I. in the middle of its garden, to say nothing of kitchen areas to its houses, then unusual enough to need special description: "To the kitchens and offices, which have little paved yards with vaults before them, they descend by twelve or fifteen steps, and these yards are defended by a high palisade of iron." Altogether, we are told, Grosvenor Square "may well be looked upon as the beauty of the town, and those who have not seen it cannot have an adequate idea of the place."
But Covent Garden is named by "Don Manoel Gonzales," with St. James's Park, as a gathering-place of the London world of fashion. The neighbouring streets, it may be added, had many coffee-houses, wine-cellars, fruit and jelly shops; fruit, flowers, and herbs were sold in its central space; and one large woman thoughtfully considering the fashion of the place, sat at her stall in a lace dress of which the lowest estimate was that it must have cost a hundred guineas.
H. M.
LONDON IN 1731. CONTAINING A DESCRIPTION OF THE CITY OF LONDON; BOTH IN REGARD TO ITS EXTENT, BUILDINGS, GOVERNMENT, TRADE, ETC.
London, the capital of the kingdom of England, taken in its largest extent, comprehends the cities of London and Westminster, with their respective suburbs, and the borough of Southwark, with the buildings contiguous thereto on the south side of the river, both on the east and west sides of the bridge.
The length thereof, if we measure in a direct line from Hyde Park gate, on the west side of Grosvenor Square, to the farthest buildings that are contiguous in Limehouse, that is, from west to east, is very near five miles in a direct line; but if we take in the turnings and windings of the streets, it cannot be less than six miles. The breadth in many places from north to south is about two miles and a half, but in others not above a mile and a half; the circumference of the whole being about sixteen miles.
The situation next the river is hilly, and in some places very steep; but the streets are for the most part upon a level, and the principal of them nowhere to be paralleled for their length, breadth, beauty, and regularity of the buildings, any more than the spacious and magnificent squares with which this city abounds.
As to the dimensions of the city within the walls, I find that the late wall on the land side from the Tower in the east, to the mouth of Fleet Ditch in the west, was two miles wanting ten poles; and the line along the Thames, where there has been no walls for many hundred years, if ever, contains from the Tower in the east, to the