HAUNTED LONDON
Dr. Johnson’s Opinions of London.—“It is not in the showy evolution ofbuildings, but in the multiplicity of human habitations, that thewonderful immensity of London consists.... The happiness of London is notto be conceived but by those who have been in it. I will venture to saythere is more learning and science within the circumference of where wenow sit than in all the rest of the kingdom.... A man stores his mind [inLondon] better than anywhere else.... No place cures a man’s vanity orarrogance so well as London, for no man is either great or good, per se,but as compared with others, not so good or great, and he is sure to findin the metropolis many his equals and some his superiors.... No man ofletters leaves London without regret.... By seeing London I have seen asmuch of life as the world can show.... When a man is tired of London he istired of life, for there is in London all life can afford, and [London] isthe fountain of intelligence and pleasure.”—Boswell’s Life of Johnson.
Boswell’s Opinion of London.—“I have often amused myself with thinkinghow different a place London is to different people. They whose narrowminds are contracted to the consideration of some one particular pursuit,view it only through that medium, a politician thinks of it merely as theseat of government, etc.; but the intellectual man is struck with it ascomprehending the whole of human life in all its variety, thecontemplation of which is inexhaustible.”—Boswell’s Life of Johnson(Croker, 1848), p. 144.
HAUNTED LONDON
BY
WALTER THORNBURY
EDITED BY EDWARD WALFORD, M.A.
TEMPLE BAR, 1761.
ILLUSTRATED BY F. W. FAIRHOLT, F.S.A.
London
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1880
PREFACE.
This book deals less with the London of the ghost-stories, the scratchingimpostor in Cock Lane, or the apparition of Parson Ford at the Hummums,than with the London consecrated by manifold traditions—a city everystreet and alley of which teems with interesting associations, everypaving-stone of which marks, as it were, the abiding-place of some ancientlegend or biographical story; in short, this London of the present hauntedby the memories of the past.
The slow changes of time, the swifter destructions of improvement, and theinevitable necessities of modern civilisation, are rapidly remodellingLondon.
It took centuries to turn the bright, swift little rivulet of the Fleetinto a fœtid sewer, years to transform the palace at Bridewell into aprison; but events now move faster: the alliance of money with enterprise,and the absence of any organised resistance to needful though sometimesreckless improvements, all combine to hurry forward modern changes.
If an alderman of the last century could arise from his sleep, he wouldshudder to see the scars and wounds from which London is now suffering.Viaducts stalk over our chief roads; great square tubes of iron lie heavyas nightmares on the breast of Ludgate Hill. In Finsbury and Blackfriarst