London at the End of the Century:A Book of Gossip
a Beckett, Arthur William
1900
A DRIVE IN A DESERTED CITY.
Suppose, then, that you by some means or other are up early. Now comes the question how to spend the day. If it is fine, why not patronise the top of an omnibus, and from any point of the compass patronise the City? The streets of London east of the Griffin at Temple Bar on a Sunday or Bank Holiday are a sight to see. You can quite understand why the merchants, bankers, and stockbrokers who have offices within sound of Bow Bells insist upon a special week-day house-to-house visitation on the occasion of a census. When business is over the City of London is practically a city of the dead. You pass through the wide thoroughfares and do not meet a living soul. The place might be plague-stricken, it has such a deserted appearance. But (as the French say), you see all the beauties of the spot. Now that road and pavement are not overcrowded with hurrying clerks and crawling vehicles, you have the chance of inspecting the magnificent new buildings that during the last few years have sprung | |
252 | up on every side with all their glorious luxuriance of detail. If your taste lie in the direction, you can enter the City churches. You will find any number of interesting inscriptions pointing at a score of eventful lives lived in the later centuries. Here and there you will come across an ancient tomb, but not many, for the Great Fire made a general clearance of the memorials of our ancestors. And if you want to refresh your memory about City benefactions, go to the Guildhall Library and Museum. If you desire to be awed, enter St. Bartholomew's and St. Paul's. If you have the least intelligence, you will then find that you have had a delightful morning-always supposing it has been fine. |
