CHAPTER III

THE FIRE

I. ASPECT OF THE CITY BEFORE THE FIRE

THERE was very little difference between the London of Elizabeth and the London of Charles II. I briefly quote a contemporary. The following humorous description was written by Sir William Davenant two or three years before the Fire:

"Sure your ancestors contrived your narrow streets in the days of wheel-barrows, before those greater engines, carts, were invented. Is your climate so hot, that as you walk, you need umbrellas of tiles to intercept the sun? Or, are your Or, are your shambles so empty, that you are afraid to take in fresh air, lest it should sharpen your stomachs? Oh, the goodly landslip of Old Fish Street, which, had it not had the ill luck to be crooked, was narrow enough to have been your founder's perspective! And where the garrets, (perhaps not for want of architecture, but through abundance of amity) are so made, that opposite neighbours may shake hands without stirring from home. Is unanimity of inhabitants in wise cities better exprest than by their coherence and uniformity of building: where streets begin, continue and end, in a like stature and shape? But yours (as if they were raised in a general insurrection, where every man hath a several design) differ in all things that can make distinction. Here stands one that aims to be a Palace, and, next it, another that professes to be a hovel; here a giant, there a dwarf: here slender, there broad: and all most admirably different in faces as well as in their height and bulk. I was about to defie any Londoner, who dares pretend there is so much ingenious correspondence in this City, as that he can shew me one house like another: yet your houses seem to be reverend and formal, being compared to the fantastical looks of the modern: which have more ovals, niches, and angles, than are in your custards, and are inclosed with pasteboard walls, like those of malicious Turks, who, because themselves are not immortal, and cannot dwell for ever where they build, therefore wish not to be at charge to provide such lastingness as may entertain their children out of the rain :

so slight and prettily gaudy, that if they could more, they would pass for pageants. It is your custom, where men vary often the mode of their habits, to term the nation fantastical but where streets continually change fashion, you should make haste to chain up the city, for it is certainly mad.

"You would think me a malicious traveller if I should still gaze on your misshapen streets, and take no more notice of the beauty of your river: therefore, I will pass the importunate noise of your watermen (who snatch at fares as if they were to catch prisoners, plying the gentry so uncivilly, as if they had never rowed any other passengers but bearwards) and now step but bearwards) and now step into one of your peascod boats, whose tilts are not so sumptuous as the roofes of gundaloes, nor when you are within are you at the ease of a chaise-à-bras. The commodity and trade of your river belong to yourselves but give a stranger leave to share in the pleasure of it, which will hardly be in the prospect of freedom of air, unless prospect, consisting of variety, be made up with here a palace, there a wood-yard: here a garden, there a brew-house: here dwells a lord, there a dyer, and between both, duomo commune. If freedom of air be inferred in the liberty of the subject, where every private man hath authority, for his own profit, to smoak up a magistrate, then the air of your Thames is open enough, because it is equally free. I will forbear to visit your courtly neighbours at Wapping, not that it will make me giddy to shoot your Bridge, but that I am loth to disturb the civil silence of Billingsgate, which is so great, as if the mariners were always landing to storm the harbour: therefore, for brevity's sake, I will put to shoar again, though I should be constrained, even without my galoshoes, to land at Puddle Dock.

"I am now returned to visit your houses, where the roofs are so low, that I presume your ancestors were very mannerly and stood bare to their wives: for I cannot discern how they could wear their high-crowned hats: yet, I will enter, and therein oblige you much, when you know my aversion to a certain weed that governs amongst your coarser acquaintance as much as lavender, amongst your coarser linen; to which, in my apprehension, your sea-coal smoke seems a very Portugal perfume. I should here hasten to a period, for fear of suffocation, if I thought you so ungracious as to use it in public assemblies: and yet, I see it grows so much in fashion, that methinks your children begin to play with broken pipes instead of corals, to make way for their teeth. You will find my visit short; I cannot stay to eat with you, because your bread is too heavy, and you disdain the light substance of herbs. Your drink is too thick, and yet you are seldom over-curious in washing your glasses. Nor will I lodge with you, because your beds seem no bigger than coffins and your curtains so short, as they will hardly serve to inclose your carriers in summer, and may be held, if taffata, to have lined your grand-sires' skirts.

"I have now left your houses, and am passing that of your streets, but not in a coach, for they are uneasily hung, and so narrow, that I took them for sedans upon

wheels: nor is it safe for a stranger to use them till the quarrel be decided whether six of your nobles, sitting together, shall stop and give way to as many barrels of beer. Your city is the only metropolis in Europe where there is wonderful dignity belonging to carts. I would now make a safe retreat, but that methinks I am stopt. by one of our heroic games, called foot-ball: which I conceive (under your favour) not very conveniently civil in the streets, especially in such irregular and narrow roads as Crooked Lane. Yet it argues your courage much like your military pastime of throwing at cocks: but your metal would be much magnified (since you have long allowed those two valiant exercises in the streets) to draw your archers from Finsbury, and during high market let them shoot at butts in Cheapside. I have now no more to say but what refers to a few private notes, which I shall give you in a whisper when we meet in Moorfields, from whence (because the place was meant for public pleasure, and to shew the munificence of your City) I shall desire you to banish the laundresses and bleachers, whose acres of old linen make a shew like the fields of Carthagena when the five months' shifts of the whole fleet are washt and spread."

To this satirical note let us add a glance at the suburbs with the help of Hollar's map of 1665. In this map Lambeth is evidently a small village lying south of the church and Palace, with at least one street running along the road on the east leading across to St. George's Fields. On the north there are no houses; the Palace Gardens stretch out behind the Embankment, covered with trees; then comes the Lambeth Marsh, a broad field bare of trees; there is a broad mile where the river bends, and here, buried among the trees, houses begin, and continue along Bankside; on the east of Lambeth Marsh is St. George's Fields, with houses on the north side, and St. George's Church. According to Hollar, South London at this time must have been a charming and rural place divided into gardens and set with trees. Unfortunately his picture becomes unintelligible when we find St. Mary Overies on the other side of the river.

CHAPTER IV

II. THE FIRE OF LONDON

IF, as some hold, the cause of the long-continued Plague, which lasted, with intervals of rest, from the middle of the sixteenth century to 1665, was nothing but the accumulated filth of London, so that the ground on which it stood was saturated many feet in depth with poisonous filtrations, the Fire of 1666 must be regarded in the light of a surgical operation absolutely essential if life was to be preserved, and as an operation highly successful in its results. For it burned, more or less, every house and every building over an area of 436 acres out of those which made up London within the walls.

It began in the dead of night-Sunday morning, 3 A.M., September 2, 1666— at the shop of one Farryner, a baker, in Pudding Lane, one of those narrow lanes which run to north and south of Thames Street. All the houses in that lane were of wood, pitched throughout, and as the stories jutted out, the houses almost met at the top. The house itself was full of brush and faggot wood, so that the Fire quickly grew to a head, and then began to spread out in all directions at once, but especially to the west and north. Close to the house was an inn called the "Star," the courtyard of which was full of hay and straw. In a very short time Pudding Lane itself was completely destroyed; it would seem as if the people were distracted and attempted little or nothing except their own escape. When day broke the fire had caught Thames Street, which was full of warehouses containing everything combustible, as butter, cheese, brandy, wine, oil, sugar, hemp, flax, tar, pitch, rosin, brimstone, cordage, hops, wood, and coal. The only means of combating a fire fed by such materials was to blow up the houses, and this the people vehemently opposed at first. As for the supply of water, there was none at all adequate to the situation, and the water machines of London Bridge were quickly destroyed with the houses on the Bridge. In order to escape and to carry away their property, every available vehicle, cart, waggon, carriage, or boat, was in requisition. Forty pounds was offered and given by many householders for the safe removal of their property, while in some cases-those of the wealthy-£400 was paid simply to get the plate and jewels and