CHAPTER XI. N 1824, I am settled as a Publisher in a newly-built house in Pall Mall East, the next house to the College of Physicians. I had occupied for a year a much smaller place of business on the opposite side of the way. This was altogether a new neighbourhood. On the west side of what is now called Trafalgar Square, houses had grown up, which were terminated towards Charing Cross by the Union Club. But there was as yet no Nelson's column; no fountains in the centre, to be ridiculed as dumb-waiters. During the first years of my residence in Pall Mall East, Saint James's Park was getting rid of its old squalidness. The road after nightfall had ceased to be a place of danger and licentiousness. "There is gas in the Park." At the time of the Stuarts the Mall had been the lounging place of the highest-the favourite ground of assignation of the Comedies in which Wit and Profligacy long maintained a flourishing co-partnership. Forty years ago the fashionable idlers had given place to happy children and smart nursery-maids. Mechanics out of work, and street vagabonds, always formed a crowd to see the relief of the Guard. Gapers from the country stood wonderingly upon the Parade, watching the working of the Telegraph at the top of the Admiralty. The old machine, which told its story by the opening and closing of shutters, was superseded by a greater wonder, the Semaphore, which threw out an arm, first on one side and then on another, and at varying heights. Very tedious was the transmission of the message, even by this improved instrument; sometimes impossible from the state of the atmosphere. About 1824 I was summoned as a witness upon a trial in which Mr. Croker was also required to give his testimony. I walked with him for an hour or more up and down Westminster Hall. So full of anecdote was his talk, that I could scarcely agree with him when he said, "The French are right in calling the vestibule to their Palace of Justice la salle des pas perdus." My steps with him were neither lost nor wearisome. At last, looking at his watch, he exclaimed, "Go I must. There is a frigate waiting at Portsmouth for orders to sail, and it will be dark before I can set the Telegraph in motion if I stay longer." The Secretary of the Admiralty writes a few words now, regardless of dark or light, and the faithful wire conveys his orders from port to port, and from sea to sea, far quicker than the flight of Ariel. The neighbourhood in which I am seated is not as yet a very busy or a very lively one. It is gradually growing into a region dedicated to the Fine Arts. The Society of Painters in Water Colours have fixed their Gallery opposite me. The Society of British Artists have their Exhibition close at hand in Suffolk Street. My next-door neighbour is Mr. Colnaghi, the printseller. From him, and from his excellent son Dominick, I had some lessons in taste, as they would occasionally show me a few of their choice importations. It is forty years ago since the Londoners began seriously to think that their traffic was becoming too large for their streets. The broad-wheeled waggon generally crept in and out at nightfall, as it had crept since the days of Fielding and Hogarth. The hackney-coach, never in a hurry, went on "melancholy, slow," patient under every stoppage. No meddling policeman yet presumed to regulate the movements of the driver with a dozen capes, who pulled up when he pleased, unheeding his silk-stockinged fare who was too late for dinner, and sat in the damp straw, shouting and cursing. The omnibus appeared not in our streets till 1831, and when it came, the genteel remained faithful to the foul hackney-coach, mounting its exclusive iron steps with true English satisfaction at not being in mixed company. There were schemes of sub-ways, but they met no encouragement. Colonel Trench obtained an audience at the Mansion House, to listen to his proposal of a terrace, eighty feet wide, from London Bridge to Westminster Bridge. Some thought the scheme a good one, but far too grand. Most sneered at such projects of Laputa. The sneerers and doubters kept their ground through a generation; and now we are thinking in reality about such an obvious improvement. In the semi-thoroughfare of Pall Mall East we had few passing sights. But on the 12th of July, 1824 I stand with my family on our balcony, looking out for a grand funeral procession that is to come from |