Beefeaters patrol the busy Tower of London with walkie-talkies. Piccadilly Circus is chockablock with tourists and watched over not only by Eros but also by Michael Jackson and Madonna who (in wax effigy) wave from the balcony of Rock Circus. Red double-decker buses now also come in green.
Sigh.
Where is the London of yesterday amid all this today?
I find it in a pair of small architectural doodads on a building on Buckingham Street.
Beyond a place`s obvious ”sights” is history we don`t see unless someone points it out. That`s what Anton Powell does in ”Londonwalks” (Holt, $12.95), a book of five step-by-step walking tours of the city in which architectural details, historical tidbits and colorful anecdotes offer glimpses of London`s past and insiders` info on the present.
The walk I take is titled ”The London Dickens Knew: Adelphi and Covent Garden.”
Which brings me to Buckingham Street.
Though the actual building is gone, this is one of the streets on which Charles Dickens lived, albeit briefly. So did writer Samuel Pepys, duly noted on a plaque on building No. 12 and with anecdotes in the book.
The doodads that capture my imagination are hollow iron cones set on each side of the door of No. 18.
These are ”link extinguishers” from the 1700s, used to put out the flames of torches carried by link boys (actually men) who ran in front of carriages at night to guide them past potholes and other obstacles. Link boys also protected passengers from crime.
A link extinguisher outside a building signifies that this was at one time a grand residence, inhabited by someone who might have visitors wealthy enough to arrive in carriages guided by link boys.
Suddenly the street looks different. With a little concentration I almost can see the past.
”Londonwalks” is full of such details, the kind that bring history to eye level. Powell is an informative, chatty guide in absentia, and touring with ”Londonwalks” is like being accompanied and independent.
I follow Lower Robert Street underground to see the last remaining arch of the Adelphi, a neighborhood created in the mid-1700s. The arches were built to lessen the gradient of the land, which sloped into the Thames.
The arch is covered with graffiti but retains its air of mystery. Child thieves-like the Artful Dodger and his cronies in ”Oliver Twist”-operated here in the 1840s. They are easy to imagine in the dank tunnel.
In Exchange Court, a quiet, narrow alley off the busy Strand, Powell mentions the first of many original gaslights in Covent Garden. Though it is daylight, a tiny flame flickers. He takes a moment to recite a maudlin Victorian poem about a poor flower girl tearfully selling her wares under
”gaslight`s glitter.”
”Victorian writers loved children-especially when they were dying,” he notes.
This leads, literally and emotionally, to one of the tour`s most evocative sights, a rear view of ”tall, bleak 19th Century slums.” These were the slums of Dickensian poverty-the poverty from which Dickens rose, about which he wrote and against which he railed. With eyes squinted to shut out modern distractions, imagination can fill in the rest.
It is outside the stage door of the Adelphi Theater on Maiden Lane that William Terriss, a leading actor of the late 1800s, was stabbed by a deranged minor actor who believed that with Terriss dispatched, there would be a vacancy in the spotlight waiting to be filled. (By the murderer, of course.)
Terriss` ghost reportedly haunts the site, though today he is displaced by workmen patching potholes.
Rule`s Restaurant is still operating. This was a hangout of Dickens in the later years of his life and, in the 1870s, a favorite spot of King Edward VII when he wanted to entertain Lillie Langtry.
St. Paul`s Covent Garden, a tranquil, little-known and charming churchyard, is said to have been site of the burial of highwayman Claude Duval. From the `20s until the early `80s, the Communist Party had its headquarters on King Street in the building now housing a Midland Bank. No. 12 New Row, now a cutesy shop called Naturally British, was a fruit and vegetable warehouse in the days of the Covent Garden market.
Goodwin`s Court is a treat. While the entry off a trendy street is tiny and ”unremarkable,” Powell says, the court is a small, perfectly restored 18th Century street. This day it is quiet but for two yuppies coming home with the morning`s marketing. There seems something enchanted about the little courtyard, all but hidden from the people who bustle by on the street outside. Above the window of the building that spans the entry to Goodwin`s Court is a fire mark. From the 1700s until 1833, these small painted metal plaques marked buildings protected by fire insurance. Not only did they indicate a prosperous owner, Powell says, but also fire marks, and the accompanying insurance, were good protection from enemies in a time when burning someone`s house was a fairly common way of showing contempt.
Oh, the wonderful, colorful trivia I am learning from Powell. I poke my head in the Lamb and Flag, a darkly authentic pub with a sign that entreats its patrons not to wear muddy work boots and overalls; peer in the window of Penhaligon`s, a well-known, long-established perfumery; wander the Central Market, where Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins had their fateful, fictional meeting and where fruits, vegetables and flowers have given way to crafts and incense.
The walk takes about 2 hours and 52 pages. By the end I am gorged with historical bonbons.
There still are four walks not taken in ”Londonwalks”: ”Legal and Illegal London: The Inns of Court,” ”The Old Palace Quarter: St. James`s,” ”London`s Latin Quarter: Chelsea” and ”The Backstairs of Government:
Westminster and Whitehall.”
Someday I will let Powell show me more of London`s yesterday.
Among other books in the ”Walks” series: ”Pariswalks,”
”Venicewalks,” ”Barcelonawalks” and ”Florencewalks.”
