The Press SATURDAY, MAY 11, 1935. London, Past and Present

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21470, 11 May 1935, Page 14

The Press SATURDAY, MAY 11, 1935. London, Past and Present

New splendour and old pride, the chromatic brilliance of a modern pageant moving past the grey memorials of history—these contrasts and harmonies must have stirred in many Londoners and visitors to London, during the King's Jubilee, the deep, vain wish to travel back through the centuries and see the capital as it has been, in it 3 ceaselessly changing form and life, and in its scarcely mutable as- : pects. At this happily appropriate 1 time the long labour of Mr Norman 1 Brett-James has ended with the ' publication of his wonderful book, . " The Growth of Stuart London," l in which, so skilfully is the mass of I fact arranged and proportioned, it ' loses its formidable appearance of | dead weight, and the city of the [ Revolution and the Restoration . slides forward into view, like i Wordsworth's, in a smokeless air. { There are two accepted ways I of writing history. The newer ) method is to present a detached, dis- ) passionate record made up from 1 manuscripts of the period chosen. I The other school writes from a personal point of view and reveals * inevitably the author's personality. I Though Mr Brett-James's method is the first, he s not entirely ) hidden behind his manuscripts, j It is true that almost every page is bespattered with figures - referring to the original sources and that the bibliography contains 264 books apart from manuscripts, records, an ' bills of ' mortality. Yet this very fact, reveals him as a man of amazing diligence. There are no limits to his conscientiousness. He took 11 years to write a book which is a monument of historical research. It will be most diligently read by other researchers; but the reader whose interest is less severely purposeful, especially the exiled Londoner whose heart is filled with longing by the very names of the streets, will surrender himself to this account of their origin. The extent of London's growth at this time is amazing. It not only sees the beginning of St. James's, Bloomsbury, Clerkenwell: of Jermyn street, Clarges street. Bond street, Firth street, Covent Garden, and Long Acre, but also of Seven Dials, and the docks of Wappirig and Limehouse. Marlborough House, Devonshire House, St. Paul's Cathedral, and St. Anne's, Soho, were built under the Stuarts. In Westminster and Stepney rose thousands of r.ew buildings. The King and Parliament strove consistently to restrict the growth of London, and we know how completely they failed. Again, upon the development of local government the book is abundantly informative and shows that the problems which had to be faced in the days of Cromwell, Pepys, Evelyn, Wren, and Defoe are those which we are tackling to-day. It is a far cry from Stuart London to our young city of Cnristchurch, and yet their difficulties are seen to resemble each other: .It is instructive to see the various wavs in which the suburbs are organised during the interregnum, and we may perhaps see in the lack of consistency here exhibited a foretaste and perhaps a contributory cause of the multiplicity of authorities, which even to-day is manifest in the London area. The great increase in the population of London under the Stuarts was due to the same causes as have so enormously enlarged our towns to-day. Contemporary writers bemoan the influx of country-dwel-lers into their cities. A large addition of foreigners gave rise to great discontent. Religious persecution drove thousands of French, Dutch, and Bohemian refugees to seek shelter in London during this century and the Jews even then knew England to resemble the Promised Land which they sought, more closely than any other European country. It- is not surprising that a Stuart preacher should complain that " the Dutch bring over iron, " timber, leather, and wainscot ready " wrought ... so that if it were " wrought here, Englishmen might " have some work and living in it, " and further, the strangers conlpass "the city round about [and] fore- " stall the markets." These prophetic words echo loudly in our times. ! A week after the Great Fire had ceased to burn Wren and Evelyn had plans ready for the rebuilding of London. Neither plan was accepted, as the Government still wished to restrict building, and the stricken citizens, bereft of their homes, were in too great a hurry to consider intelligent town-planning, j We might well remember Evelyn, ( who wished to make London a j place of perpetual delight by build- j ing a city of gardens and open ; spaces, planted with " such shrubs - "as yield the most fragrant and j "odoriferous flowers" and abolish- t ing the "Hellish and dismall Cloud "of Sea-Coale." Undoubtedly a j healthier, better-built city arose from the ruins; but for the failure t of a comprehensive scheme London £ has had to pay a heavy price in the < squalid slums which have existed ever since and were even then de- ( scribed as places " where there are I " great multitudes of people . . . j "heaped up together and in a sort < "smothered with many families of \ " children." 5 Even more interesting perhaps is the analogy to be found in the problems of traffic. The cause of the , difficulty is the same. In the seven- | teenth century as in the twentieth 8 i »■»rtur of locomotion had be- I i

come popular. The increase of motor traffic in our day can be com- . pared with that of wheeled traffic 300 years ago. Previously people had travelled bv boat, on foot, or on horseback. Complaints were then made of road manners though from rather a different standpoint, for ; carts "in passing along the streets, whether narrow or wide, do not " yield or give way, as due, to the " coaches of the gentry when they ! " meet them." John Taylor might i have said of us as of his own times, r " This is a rattling, rowling, and . " rumbling age." The streets in those days were a continual menace, being " very noxious and foul, and "in many places very jepardous." Oijts are certainly an improvement: but. the recent state of Riccartop avenue finds a precedent in the case of the pavement from King's street to Charing Cross, " which was ruin- " ous but they ciid not see who " should see it amended." We are left with a strangely disturbing question. Do human problems never become solved? It is probably true that none of our modern poets would, like Edmuna Spenser, die " for lack of bread." If their talent is not recognised, there is always the relief depot. Nor would our doctors allow us to die of such terrifying diseases as "Burst, " Woolfe, Affrighted, Planet, or "Purples"; but Mr Brett-James has • left us with a doubt that the world l is every day in every way getting . better and better. Rather are we i turned pessimists and once again • dismally forced to believe that . " Plus ca change, plus e'est la mane j " chose."