THE FASCINATION
OF LONDON
WESTMINSTER
IN THIS SERIES.
Cloth, price 1s. 6d. net; leather, price 2s. net each.
WESTMINSTER.
By Sir Walter Besant and G. E. Mitton.
THE STRAND DISTRICT.
By Sir Walter Besant and G. E. Mitton.
HAMPSTEAD.
By G. E. Mitton. Edited by Sir Walter Besant.
CHELSEA.
By G. E. Mitton. Edited by Sir Walter Besant.
WHITEHALL IN 1775.
The Fascination ofLondon
WESTMINSTER
BY
SIR WALTER BESANT
AND
G. E. MITTON
With a Chapter on the Abbey
by Mrs. A. Murray Smith
LONDON
ADAM & CHARLES BLACK
1902[Pg v]
PREFATORY NOTE
A survey of London, a record of the greatest of all cities, that shouldpreserve her history, her historical and literary associations, hermighty buildings, past and present, a book that should comprise all thatLondoners love, all that they ought to know of their heritage from thepast—this was the work on which Sir Walter Besant was engaged when hedied.
As he himself said of it: "This work fascinates me more than anythingelse I've ever done. Nothing at all like it has ever been attemptedbefore. I've been walking about London for the last thirty years, and Ifind something fresh in it every day."
He had seen one at least of his dreams realized in the People's Palace,but he was not destined to see this mighty work on London take form. Hedied when it was still incomplete. His scheme included several volumeson the history of London as a whole. These he finished up to the end ofthe eighteenth century, and they form a record of the great citypractically unique, and exception[Pg vi]ally interesting, compiled by one whohad the qualities both of novelist and historian, and who knew how tomake the dry bones live. The volume on the eighteenth century, which SirWalter called a "very big chapter indee