CHAPTER XIII.

THE STRAND, ADELPHI, AND COVENT-GARDEN MARKET.

E have now quitted the City and entered
the Strand; before us stands the Church
of St. Clement Danes, on the right of
which an archway opens into Clement's
Inn; beyond that is the old Angel Inn,
from which Bishop Hooper was taken
before he suffered martyrdom at Glou-
cester three centuries ago. Justice Shal-
low
says: "I was once of Clement's Inn,
where I think they will talk of mad Shal-
low yet;" and no sooner is his back

turned than Falstaff says: "I do remember him at Clement's Inn,
like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring ;"***"
"he was
for all the world like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved
upon it with a knife."

66

Of the early church that occupied the site of the present one but little is really known. Stowe tells us that it was so called, because Harold, a Danish king, and other Danes, were buried there." There is a doubt whether Harold, who ascended the throne after Canute, was in any way related to the latter; his pretended mother, Algigiva, was never married to Canute, and it is recorded that she never had a child, but that Harold, who passed for her son, had no higher origin than a poor cobbler for his father. Harold was buried at Westminster; but when Hardicanute (the legitimate son of Canute) came to England, he ordered the body of Harold to be disinterred, decapitated, and thrown into the Thames. The body was taken out of the river by some Danish fishermen, and again interred in a cemetery in London, where only the Danes buried their dead. We have not entered into the reign of Harold at all; these few facts are all that history records of the origin of St. Clement Danes. The present church was built by Pierce under the guidance of Wren. The old church was pulled down in 1660. Dr. Johnson had a sitting in the

present church. The interior is heavily decorated with festoons and drops, and contains two tolerable statues of Moses and Aaron. Facing this church stands the office of the far-famed Illustrated London News, in the columns of which paper the greater portion of these sketches originally appeared.

You still hear a few of the old London cries in the by-streets that branch out of this busy neighbourhood, though many, which the "oldest inhabitants" can just remember, are heard no more.

The cry of " green boughs" to deck the summer parlours, and "green rushes" to strew upon the floors, has long since ceased. The fire-place is no more adorned with bunches of the blossoming hawthorn, branches of sweetbrier, and huge pots filled with the fragrant and trailing honeysuckle: art, with its paper ornaments, has driven away these beautiful products of nature, and the less healthy carpet has carried off the meadow-like smell of the rushes. "Cherry ripe" we occasionally hear, sung out as clear and silvery as when Herrick composed his inimitable little song, though Ben Jonson, by the way, wrote one long before Herrick, on the same subject. "Watercresses," though no longer borne by a nymph, who paused every now and then to throw aside the long hair which fell over her nut-brown and weather-stained cheeks, is a cry we still hear; but the figure that conjured up Sabrina and the "glassy cool translucent wave" has long since departed. Lemons and oranges are cried by the wandering race, whose dark-haired mothers, in ancient days, poured forth their songs in the land of Israel. The primroses and violets of spring are still sold in these streets, but the cry of " Come buy my pretty bowpots" is now rarely heard. The apple-stall, with its roasted chestnuts, the oyster-stall (a simple trestle), and the pieman who is ever ready to try his luck at pitch-and-toss, still haunt the corners of a few of our obscure streets, as they did in bygone days. The grinder and the tinker, and those who yet follow many a primitive old calling, and who set up their workshops in every open street where they can find a job, have been driven, with their quaint cries, into the suburbs, and the men themselves are but shadows of the jolly tinkers and merry pedlars who figure in our ancient ballad lore. The rattle, and roll, and thunder of our modern vehicles have drowned their old-fashioned cries in the great thoroughfares of Fleet-street and the Strand.

But though many of these old cries are heard no more, there is still many a poetical association thrown around this busy neighbourhood.

Who has not heard of the May-pole that stood in the Strand, how it was removed by command of the stern protector Cromwell, and how, at the restoration of Charles, a new one was erected, amid

the beating of drums and loud-sounding music, and the cheers of assembled thousands, who were weary of the puritanic gloom which had so long hung over merry England? What a buzzing there would be in that neighbourhood on the occasion, while May-garlands hung across the streets, as we have often seen them in our day, in a few out-of-the-way old fashioned towns, where the manners and customs of the people have undergone but little change during the last two centuries.

In an old volume printed before the Great] Fire of London, entitled, The Citie's Loyalty displayed, we find the following account of the May-pole that stood in the Strand.

Prince

"This tree was a most choice and remarkable piece (134 feet high): it was made below bridge, and brought in two parts up to Scotlandyard, and from thence it was conveyed, April 14th, to the Strand to be erected. It was brought with a streamer flourishing before it, drums beating all the way, and other sorts of music. It was supposed to be so long, that landsmen could not possibly raise it. James, the Duke of York, Lord High Admiral of England, commanded twelve seamen off aboard to come and officiate the business; whereupon they came, and brought their cables, pullies, and other tacklins, with six great anchors. The May-pole then being joined together, and hooped about with bands of iron, the crown and vane, with the king's arms richly gilded, was placed on the head of it, [and] a large top like a balcony was about the middle of it; this being done, the trumpets did sound, and in four hours space it was advanced upright." [Four hours to draw up a May-pole! a slow age, my masters; they could not have built Hungerford Suspension-Bridge in those days, which is a toy compared to that now stretched across the Menai Straits. But to proceed with our extract.] "After which, being established fast in the ground, six drums did beat, and the trumpets did sound again great shouts and acclamation the people gave, that it did ring throughout all the Strand. * * * * It is placed as near at hand as they could guess in the very same pit where the former stood, but far more glorious, bigger, and higher than ever any one that stood before it. *** Little children did much rejoice, and ancient people did clap their hands, saying, 'Golden days begin to appear.' This was in 1661. Whether a May-pole was erected after the one given to Sir Isaac Newton, it "being old and decayed," we have not discovered. The one given to Newton was afterwards used for raising a telescope at Wansted in Essex.

Cleveland, the bold cavalier colonel under Charles I., has a few spirited lines on the May-pole, but which are scarcely quotable, so

hard does he hit the puritanical Tabithas and Obadiahs; we quote a few lines:

"Whether it be a pole painted, or wrought

Far otherwise than from the wood 'twas brought,
Whose head the idol-maker's hand doth crop,
Where a profane bird, towering on the top,
Looks like the calf in Horeb, at whose root
The unyoked youth doth exercise his foot :

How canst thou chuse, but, seeing it, complain
That Baal's worshipp'd in his groves again?"

The last line might have been uttered by some crop-eared holderforth, who fought as well as preached under Cromwell. The church of St. Mary-le-Strand stands on the spot where the May-pole was formerly erected. It was built by Gibbs (1717), whose portico of St. Martin's in-the-Fields remains unrivalled for its beauty. The old church stood nearer the river, and was pulled down by the Duke of Somerset, 1549, who used the materials for building Somerset-place, but was beheaded before he had completed it. We forget in what old work we found a long account attempting to prove that he lost his head through destroying the church of St. Mary and the Innocents, as the old church was called.

Passing the present Somerset House (which is now used as Government offices, and of which we merely give an engraving) and Waterloo Bridge, both of which are deserving of a separate article, we will turn down to the left and glance at the old church of St. Maryle-Savoy, which is all that now remains of the once famous Savoy Palace, first built above six hundred years ago, but destroyed by Wat Tyler and his rebels; after which it lay in ruins for above a century and a half. The present chapel, as it is called, was built in 1505. Our engravings represent the exterior and a portion of the interior. It contains several old monuments and crosses.

We now reach the Adelphi, a mass of large dwelling-houses and warehouses, built by the brothers Adam about 1770, on such a labyrinth of arches as startle a stranger who enters them for the first time.

Those noble streets which open into the Strand, now known as the Adelphi, are built above the ground formerly occupied by Durham House and its princely gardens, from whence Lady Jane Grey, the "nine days' queen" (as our old chroniclers call her), was led, with loud acclaim, to the Tower, and then-in tears, to the scaffold. The ground itself on which she walked, and meditated, and saw her garden-flowers blow, is at noonday overhung with midnight darkness, excepting where, here and there, a gaslight throws its dim rays, and