Though nothing comparable to the Hausmannizing of Paris by systematized and uniform reconstruction was accomplished in London in the mid-Victorian period, great changes and improvements were introduced. Bridges were built, the river was partially purified and the Thames Embankment carried out. The state of the "ancient river, shining as he goes, mail-clad in morning to the ancient sea" of Henley's phrase, was a hideous scandal in the 'fifties. Father Thames may on occasion have appealed to the eye, but he continually affronted the nose. In 1858 the growth of London was estimated to reach 5,816,900 by 1901. Yes, says Punch, but what if the Thames is not purified? In June of that year the nuisance, aggravated by a dry summer, was painfully brought home to legislators in session at Westminster. Constant protests were raised in both Houses, and when Lord John Manners asserted that the Central Board of Works stopped the way, Punch would have liked to see Thwaites – the chairman – and his "gabbling colleagues" committed to prison until they had purged their contempt for our river.

A month later the drought and the bad drainage produced a regular panic, and on July 15 Disraeli introduced a Bill authorizing the cleansing of the Thames and giving the Board of Works power to raise a special rate (which Punch called the Stinking Fund) and a free hand in construction. The stench of the river continued to inspire a succession of poems, paragraphs and articles throughout the rest of the year, including an address to the Thames (after Tennyson), and beginning,

Bake, bake, bake,
O Thames, on thy way to the sea!
And I would that thy stink could poison
A Bishop, Peer or M.P.

The subsequent discontinuance of these tirades is a tolerably safe indication that the nuisance was being seriously grappled with. Eight years later, in the autumn of 1866, Father Thames, though still a disreputable figure, is allowed by Punch to use the tu quoque argument against a Parliamentary critic at a time when electoral corruption was calling loudly for reform.

Hon. Member (on Terrace of Parliament Palace): "O, you horrid, dirty old river!"

Father Thames: "Don't you talk, Mister Whatsyername! Which of us has the cleaner hands, I wonder?"

The new suspension bridge in St. James's Park is attacked in 1857 for its ugliness. "We can't make a monument, and now it seems we can't make a bridge." The new erection is described as a grotesque failure, but at least the ornamental water had been purified. Punch was more hopeful of the new Blackfriars Bridge, built by Cubitt, when he attended the ceremony of laying the foundation-stone in July, 1865, and when it was opened in November, 1869 – just a hundred years after the opening of Mylne's bridge – he celebrated the event in an imaginary dialogue between the Queen, Mr. Cubitt and Dr. Johnson. The introduction of Johnson was thoroughly appropriate, for the doctor had attacked Mylne's bridge, or the "Pitt Bridge," as it was originally called, as contravening sound principles of engineering, and events proved that he was right. Over the new Westminster Bridge, begun in May, 1854, and opened at 4 a.m. on the morning of May 24, 1862 – the day and hour on which Queen Victoria was born —Punch abandoned his pessimism, pronounced Page's design beautiful, and scouted the suggestion of a fussy M.P. who wished to have palisades erected to prevent would-be suicides from jumping over. It was this bridge to which another M.P., Sir W. Fraser, was anxious that the name Sebastopol should be attached.

London Statues

Statues are a subject of mixed comment, mostly unflattering. But a good point was scored in 1858 at the expense of Tom Duncombe, the eccentric Radical M.P. and man of fashion, who was incensed at the erection of a statue to Jenner in Trafalgar Square, and sneered in the House at the "Berkeley cow-pox-doctor": —

Mr. Punch cannot conceive what the veteran dandy Tom was thinking about. Could he be aware that the discovery of vaccination, which has saved myriads on myriads of lives, and which Parliament rewarded, in 1802 and 1807, with grants of £10,000 and £20,000, has the still higher merit of preserving a face from ravages very inimical to lady-killing?

The Guards' Memorial, unveiled in February, 1861, is only faintly praised: —

It is no worse and perhaps it is a trifle better than the many statuesque caricatures that, in the name of Art, are supposed to adorn our much-abused London. The truth is, that the English sculptors have already displayed such a cruel affection for the Metropolis, that it has been quite a spoiled child with them.

When a fine memorial was made, we were not able to keep it; and Punch greatly regrets in 1873 that Foley's statue of Outram, temporarily erected in Waterloo Place before its removal to India, was not allowed to remain there, as it was "the finest statue, the only fine statue ever erected in London." Punch, however, had forgotten that ten years earlier he had applied the epithet "fine" to Joseph Durham's statue of the Prince Consort in the Royal Horticultural Society's garden.

But of all London statues the most unfortunate and the most ignominiously treated was that of George I in Leicester Square. The Square throughout the 'sixties was a standing eyesore; an unkempt wilderness, where garbage of every kind was shot. The dilapidated condition of the statue in 1865 harmonized with its dingy surroundings and prompted a parody of Cowper: —

I am Monarch of all I survey,
My right leg is minus a foot,
My left has been taken away,
And another they haven't yet put.

In the "Lay of Leicester Square" Punch, after a survey of the great days of Leicester House, where "Prince Fred 'gainst Bubb Dodington once held the stakes," describes its lamentable condition at the moment he wrote: —

In dirt and neglect Soho's Slums I outvie
Than my seediest foreigner seedier am I.

Things had come to such a pass that "well bred spectres" no longer could haunt Leicester Square: —

I, Leicester Square garden, so called from the days
When my beds were made, shrubs pruned, and grass duly mown,
In my dirt and disorder maintain the old ways —
While my leg-less lead King, from his war-horse o'erthrown,
Proclaims in his downfall that highest of laws,
"Vested rights are still rights, whate'er nuisance they cause."

Later on in the year there is a cartoon aimed at Ayrton, the unpopular Chief Commissioner of Works in which "Ayrton the (B)Ædile" is shown pointing to the battered statue from which the figure of the rider had been removed, and saying "Ha! Now that's a style of Art I flatter myself I really do understand."

From this derelict condition Leicester Square was rescued by the enterprise and munificence of Baron Albert Grant, whose chequered career was largely redeemed by an act which gave us the Square as we know it. Under the heading, "Grant in Aid and a Check that wants Crossing," Punch gratefully records his intervention and the difficulties which delayed the execution of the scheme.

The greatest of all the improvements that belong to this period was the Thames Embankment, which had formed part of Wren's scheme for the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire. Not until nearly two hundred years had elapsed was Parliamentary sanction obtained for carrying out the plan. It was vigorously opposed in the House of Lords by the Duke of Buccleuch, and Punch, on July 5, 1862, published a cartoon with the heading, "Sawney stops the way." John Bull, driving a bus labelled "Embankment," is confronted by a fully armed and kilted Scottish chieftain waving a banner inscribed, "Buccleuch and No Thoroughfare," while Punch as conductor remarks, "Drive on, John; never mind the Scotchman." John Bull drove on, and early in August, 1868, Punch celebrated (though somewhat ironically) the completion of the footway opening of the Embankment from Westminster to Essex Street. As Sir Joseph Bazalgette, who was responsible for the plans and their execution, was engineer to the Metropolitan Board of Works, Punch could not resist the opportunity for ridiculing his old bête noire Sir John Thwaites, the chairman, and his colleagues, the feu de joie loosed off by a sergeant and two bombardiers R.A., and the subsequent junketings at Woolwich. The Victoria Embankment from Blackfriars to Westminster was not opened to the public till 1870, the Albert Embankment on the south side from Westminster Bridge to Vauxhall in the same year; while the Chelsea Embankment from Battersea Bridge to Chelsea Bridge was finished in 1874. Taken together they constitute the greatest addition to the amenities of London made in our time, to say nothing of the reclamation of swamp and slime from the river and their conversion into what is perhaps the finest roadway in London. Cleopatra's Needle was originally presented to England by Mehemet Ali in 1819. Engineering difficulties stood in the way of its removal from Egypt for nearly sixty years. The question is discussed by Punch in 1869, but it was not till 1877 that the munificence of Sir Erasmus Wilson and the skill of John Dixon solved the problem of its transportation to its present site.

Old Lady: "Well, I'm sure no woman with the least sense of decency would think of going down that way to it."

London Railways

Punch had no regrets when the old Hungerford Market (built in 1680, rebuilt in 1831), an unsuccessful rival to Covent Garden, was swept away in 1862 to make room for the new Charing Cross Terminus. But he was at best a lukewarm supporter of the extension of London railways, underground and suburban. The progress of the excavations and the "horrible mess" in the New Road, elicited a growl at the "Underground" and the delays in the construction of the "Sewer Railway." It was suggested that Dr. Cumming had found out that the opening of the line would bring on the end of the world before the date he had fixed for that catastrophe; that garrotters had found the excavations a convenient hiding-place, and so forth. Blundering, jobbing, squabbling, and litigation are also assigned as reasons for delay. In the following year, 1863, protests against further extensions of the underground trains reach a climax, and Punch denounces the vandals who want to ravage Sloane Square and Regent Street. In particular the viaduct crossing Ludgate Hill roused his indignation, and the anti-utilitarian point of view is maintained in the illustration of the "Highly ornamental tank" with which the railway company proposed to block out the view of St. Paul's, while the issue of Stanford's Railway Map of London is made the occasion of a vehement tirade against the devastation of London: "The railway man shall not be monarch of all he surveys." Punch, we may add, admitted the decrease in railway accidents, but attributed it to the pressure of public opinion and the penalties exacted from companies for negligence in safeguarding passengers from loss of life and limb.

Eheu Fugaces!

The pulling down of historic buildings or the removal of historic landmarks invariably moved Punch to regret or indignation. He cordially approved, it is true, of the relief of the Park Lane block in 1864 by the cutting of Hamilton Place, and the removal of the narrowest and most dangerous bottle-neck in the streets of London. And he acquiesced in the removal of Charterhouse School to the country in the interests of the boys, publishing, without fully endorsing, the arguments of those who prophesied that in its new surroundings the school would come to be known as Magna Charterhouse. But in general he lamented the demolitions and destructions which accompanied the triumphal march of commerce. Even the dismantling of the Colosseum in Regent's Park in 1868 evoked a melodious lament: —

I remember, I remember,
When I was a little boy,
How I came home in December
My fond parents to annoy.
But my pretty maiden Aunty
Was kind and gave to me
A sort of show galanty
A funny thing to see.

I remember, I was taken
By my Aunt's peculiar cabby,
For to hear the rafters shaken
By the Choir in the Abbey.
Nor the service, nor Te Deum
Nor the sights of Christmas time,
Could approach the Colosseum,
Save, perhaps, the Pantomime.

I remember, I remember,
All those Ruins in the grounds,
And the classic broken pillars
(Sold for something like three pounds.)
And the statues! One of Jason
Was a noble work of art;
They were knocked down to a mason,
Who removed them in his cart.

A little less than a year later a similar note is sounded when an announcement appeared advertising the sale of the "Supper Colonnade" at Vauxhall "to be sold cheap, a remnant of the past which has witnessed many a scene of merriment with lords and ladies of high degree." The disposal of relics, even dignified relics, has often been a problem to administrators. Parliament debated in 1860 what was to be done with the Duke of Wellington's funeral car, and it was ultimately stowed away in the crypt of St. Paul's. The old "Star and Garter" at Richmond was burned down in January, 1870, and Punch was moved to a poetic valediction in the name of the old frequenters who associated it with the days of their courtship. The doom of Temple Bar was pronounced in the same year, but Punch admits that those who lamented its doom were in "a small and mouldy minority." But there are no reserves in the protest uttered in 1871 against the pulling down of the City churches registered under the heading of "The Pick-axe Age": —

Go ahead, Gentlemen Governors. Pull down any secular building that seems to be in the way, and, as Sir Epicure Mammon says,

"Now and then a Church."

Temple Bar is doomed. Now Mr. Lowe wants to destroy the Church of St. Clement Danes, where Dr. Johnson used to worship. All right. St. Mary-le-Strand is an obstruction to vans and drays. Let us erase that. More room is wanted in Trafalgar Square, especially as Mr. Bruce hands it over to legislators of the rough kind; down with St. Martin. Then, though St. Margaret's has historical reminiscences, especially of Commonwealth days, and gives scale to the Abbey, there would be room for a large grass-plot for the people, with Ayrton-statues, were St. Margaret's invited to remove. The Abbey itself suggests an extinct superstition, and its architecture insults that of the Houses; do we want the Abbey? Then, what a splendid sweep for the carriages of the "self-made men of the City," civic knights, and the like, if St. Paul's Cathedral no longer blocked the road from Cheapside to Ludgate Hill! Go ahead, Gentlemen Governors. We can't do much in the way of building up fine things, but we are out-and-outers at knocking them down.

Historic Landmarks

And he returns to the charge a few months later in an ironical plea for the destruction of Wren's churches – St. Mildred's, Poultry; St. Dionis, Backchurch; St. James's, Aldgate; St. Martin's, Outwich, and St. Antholin's, Sise Lane. "Sir Christopher's Cathedral, as it is also a mausoleum, will probably be spared until some railway or tramway shall want the site." When the destruction of Northumberland House was projected in 1873 Punch, in a fit of feudal enthusiasm, deplored the vandalism and commercialism of the Philistine Board of Works, and pointed out that there was still time to save the time-honoured house of the Percys. When the demolition was carried out in the following year, and the lion was removed to Syon House, he was consoled by the reflection that it would be at least out of the reach of ignoble and mean-minded vandals. On the other hand, he had rejoiced greatly when in 1866, as the result of a deputation headed by Lord Stanhope and Dean Stanley, Parliament voted a sum of £7,000 for the restoration of Westminster Chapter House. In 1873 St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell, an inn which had been a favourite resort of Johnson, Garrick and "Sylvanus Urban," was taken over by the order of St. John of Jerusalem, and Punch compares the public spirit of these Templars favourably with the zeal of the "good Templars" whom he regarded as fussy fanatics. There was no controversial acrimony, however, in his plea for the preservation of the Tabard Inn, Southwark, and the poem "For the Tabard" was written by one who had not merely read but loved his Chaucer.

Boisterous Relative: "Hullo! Gus, my hearty, why I haven't seen you for ages! How are you? Give us your hand, my – "

Gus (alarmed): "Hoy! Keep off! Keep back, stand o' one side! Don't come near me – How d'e do. Glad 'see you, but keep off at present, will you – I've just adjusted my sights!"

The preservation of the amenities of London and the suburbs found a strong champion in Punch. We note a change of temper in 1864 in his comment on the rowdy behaviour of members of the "lower classes" who frequented St. James's Park, and the suggestion that it should be renamed "St. Giles's." In earlier days Punch had warmly resented the exclusion of working-men in fustian from this same park. But no class prejudice impairs his satisfaction in November, 1864, when Wimbledon Common was preserved for the nation and the "small bore man" by the good offices of Lord Spencer: —

WIMBLEDON PRESERVED

There is for us, and shall be, one retreat,
If but that only one, saved stucco-free,
Wimbledon, evermore for pilgrims' feet
Kept sacred, noble Spencer, thanks to thee!
Thy generous charter gives us scope to flee
Still thither from the hubbub and the heat.

In the following year he appeals to other Commons – Wandsworth, Barnes and Streatham – to follow the lead of Wimbledon, and when in 1866 Victoria Park was threatened with the erection of the Imperial Gas Company's works, Punch wrote: —

Let Companies shape their projects to scrape
Up wealth, and dividends share,
But dim their eyes if ever they tries
To rob a poor man of fresh air.

Alexandra Palace Destroyed

When the Alexandra Palace on Muswell Hill was opened in the summer of 1873, its gardens, statues and catering were praised in a welcome to "Alexandra" after the manner of the Laureate. Two days after this welcome appeared, the new Palace was destroyed by fire, and on July 5, 1873, Punch rather cruelly published a review of a poem composed on the event by Joseph Gwyer, potato-salesman of Penge. A few of the stanzas are worth rescuing from oblivion if only for their artless simplicity: —

On Muswell Hill there lately stood,
The Alexandra Palace great and good,
Both to our own and foreign land,
It claimed from each a prestige grand.

With works of art it did abound,
Which were wont the ignorant to astound,
The sightly dome for miles was seen
Surrounded by the pastures green.

But on the 9th of June the palace caught on fire,
Each moment seemed to send the flames much higher,
Flinging around with consternation spell
Such sad results as no mortal could foretell.

The shouts of alarm at this dread afray
Many were stricken and did prostrate lay,
As if they'd been wounded by some deadly foe,
So painful was the unexpected great blow.

While some were witnessing this awful view,
Others were anxious as to what they should do,
Some it was seen appeared quite romantic,
While the poor stall-girls seemed nearly frantic.

In two short hours it was a blaze
Which took some years to build and raise
Grand Alexandra's noble Dome,
Alas! all vanished the Ninth of June.

The Pantheon, mentioned in the previous volume, though shorn of its early glories, was still a feature of London in the 'sixties, and "Jack Easel," in January, 1862, describes a visit to the Pantheon, "once dedicated to the Tragic Muse, now a temple of all the gods," combining a bazaar, an aviary and a picture gallery, chiefly frequented by ladies – "Belindas in Balmorals." The pictures were a very mixed lot, including King Alfred and the Cakes, Actæon, and the Dead Body of King Harold. But the Pantheon in its last days was chiefly remarkable for an assemblage of wondrous knick-knacks, cheap bijouterie, antique vases, antimacassars, Buhl caskets, bonbonnières, china candlesticks, cheese-cakes, daguerreotypes, decanters, Gothic go-carts, German glass, rag dolls and ratafia.

Tattersall's

Of more robust interest is the elegy in April, 1865, on the "Transit of Tattersall's," when the old mart for selling horses in Grosvenor Place at the side of St. George's Hospital, founded by "Old Tatt," was pulled down and a move made to Knightsbridge Green. "Old Tatt," originally studgroom to the Duke of Kingston, leased the premises at Hyde Park Corner from the Earl of Grosvenor in 1766, set up as a horse auctioneer, and founded his fortunes by the purchase for £2,500 of the famous racer Highflyer from Lord Bolingbroke: —

Good bye, old Corner, where so long
Turf swells have loved to band,
Since first old Tatt his broad-brimmed hat
Showed in the well-known stand.

Where, ninety years of hopes and fears,
And nine to back of that,
The sporting swell with nags to sell
Still found a Tit for Tatt.

If walls have ears, what startling tales,
Those old rooms must have heard:
What sermons they might preach, the stones
That paved that old court-yard!

By those oak-pales the first Oaks' stakes
Were put down long ago:
Germ of that Epsom growth that now
All ring-fence doth outgrow.

There the first Derby favourite
Was measured by the yard:
And there a century's Sellengers¹²
Fortunes have made or marred.

Till the world grew so fond of "books,"
So giv'n to make the same,
That the old ground too small was found,
For the Turf's "little game";

As from his Grosvenor Place old Tatt
Started to win life's race,
Young Tatt, on fortune bent, again
Takes flight from Grosvenor Place.

At Knightsbridge, lo, a fair glass roof
Stands for the dark old sheds:
We've tiles as shiny 'neath our feet,
As those upon our heads:

But still we love the haunts where first
The Turf's keen breath we drew:
And what recalls those ancient halls
We best love in the new —

The old brown fox, that from his box
Still peers with artful face,
A hint that to the sharp as well
As swift, is given the race.

We miss the verdant lawn, where paced
Crowds of green men and still:
The gravelled walk, which losers oft
More gravelled, used to fill:

And sadder loss than all – no more
The old cow crops the lawn:
Meek monitor of draughts to come
From milch-cows yet undrawn!

Good bye, old yard, and may the new
As long its honours wear;
And though they leave the Corner still,
May Tatts be on the Square!

Even so small an event as the giving up in 1865 of his business by Farrance, the confectioner's at Charing Cross, was not allowed to pass without due homage: —

Other Farrances may rise,
Quite as bilious as before,
But the old familiar pies
(Veal and Ham) will glad our eyes
Nevermore, O nevermore!

Towards new or projected buildings Punch was seldom benevolent. When it was announced that a new National Gallery was to be erected on the site spoiled by the old, he was sceptical of the result, but he greeted the tardy appearance of the lions in Trafalgar Square in 1867, and welcomed the opening of the Albert Hall on March 28, 1871, as providing a building unrivalled for space, sound and light – a eulogy hardly fulfilled as far as acoustics are concerned. But it has a splendid echo, it can hold 10,000 people, and as a scene for the activities of massed brass bands there is nothing to touch it, in London at any rate. Over the Holborn Restaurant, which in 1874 replaced an institution contrived to pay a double debt to bathing and dancing, Punch waxed positively fulsome, but his praise was chiefly inspired by the cuisine; in those days good restaurants for the middle classes were few and far between.

The buildings for the International Exhibition of 1862, planned by Captain Francis Fowke, R.E., did not altogether commend themselves to Punch, who was inclined to cavil at the bad arrangements, and to compare the structure unfavourably with the Crystal Palace, but Fowke's plans had been scamped owing to lack of funds, and he was not responsible for the artistic shortcomings of the building. Punch's comments are chiefly remarkable for his prophetic observations on our choice of executive officials: —

We are certainly a wonderful people, and work, as perhaps our foreign friends will think, in a paradoxical sort of way. It was a gardener who planned our Crystal Palace for '51, and eleven years later we are indebted for the design of another Exhibition to a soldier. A barrister superintends the casting of our great bells, and we have an architect who is an authority on fortification. Well, perhaps when our coasts are invaded a bishop may be a Secretary at War, and a physician presiding at the Admiralty.

The somewhat chequered career of "Big Ben" is followed with sympathy and interest throughout this period by Punch, who claimed to have given him his name. Those who lived in London during the years when his voice was hushed, and welcomed the breaking of his war silence on Armistice Day, will read, not without emotion, the lines which appeared on November 29, 1873: —

BIG BEN

"The great clock of the Houses of Parliament is stopped for a day or two, in order that the 'going train' may be cleaned by Messrs. Dent. During the present month its accumulated error has on no occasion exceeded a second." -Pall Mall Gazette.

Big Ben, that beats from Barry's Tower
The march of time and tide,
To Britain's Commons, and the world
Of London far and wide,
Stops – and the town that marked the hush
Of his deep voice with pain,
Is glad to hear 'tis but a halt,
To clean his "going train."

O, brave Big Ben, that keep'st true step
Thus with the tide of time,
Long may'st thou to the Commons set
Example so sublime;
That England, both of House below
And Clock above, may say,
'Tis no vain boast that to the world
She shows the time of day!

May headlong Wits, that on the seats
Under the Clock may show,
Learn by its even beat above
To tune hot brains below.
And never hold up hands unless
The voice of truth to swell;
Nor strike, except at the right hour,
And then strike strokes that tell.

Cabs v. Omnibuses

Complaints against the public vehicles of London and their drivers continue, but are hardly pitched in so strident a tone as in earlier years. Still the brigandage of competitive 'buses is severely denounced in 1858; the extent of the evil may be gauged from the drastic regulations issued in the autumn of 1860, so drastic as to excite compassion for the conductor who faithfully carried them out.

Punch's hostility to the "growler" and its bibulous and rapacious driver as the first of all London nuisances remained implacable. A report was circulated at the close of 1869 that their final disappearance was imminent; it was nearly fifty years too "previous," but the wish being father to the thought, Punch indulged in a premature farewell to this "unseemly vehicle". With the advent of "clean cabs and civil drivers" he anticipated that no one would ever think of entering an omnibus, little thinking that a time would come when, with clean and swift 'buses, only the affluent would think of entering a taxi-cab.

Swell (to corpulent cabman): "Haw, here's sixpence – get yourself – glass – beer."

Cabby: "Thank you, sir, all the same; but I never take it. I'm a follerin' Mr. Bantin's adwice for corpulence, sir. He says, I may take two or three glasses o' good claret, or a glass or two of sherry wine, or red port, or medeiry, any sort o' sperits – "

(Swell, deeply touched, makes the sixpence half-a-crown.)

The placidity which one associates with mid-Victorian life was rudely disturbed in London by the garrotting scare in the 'sixties. Complaints of the inefficiency of the police and attacks on the Commissioner are frequent in those years. Yet street accidents were far fewer, and, on the whole, it cannot be maintained that London has become safer to live in. The mention of the police reminds one that the tall hat was discarded in 1865 for the helmet, a sensible change which was at first met with undeserved ridicule. The possibility of a strike of policemen at the end of 1872 seemed to Punch so incredible that he declined to treat it seriously.

Tomkins (loq.): "Let 'em try it on again, that's all."

12. St. Legers.