The pleasance that was London
JOHN BETJEMAN
The Survey of London Volume 35: The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden edited by F. H. W. Sheppard (Published for the Gtx by the Athlone Press £6)
London Street Views 1838-1840 John Tallis, edited and introduced by Peter Jackson (Nattali and Maurice 8 gns)
Even those who do not know London will find these books a pleasure to the eye and hands. They are well bound and amply illustrated. The ct.c Survey of London has been going on for years. It is better than clinical lists with a few sweeping judgments, 'fine', 'poor', lair', that one gets in official documents. It deals with the people who used the buildings as well as former places on the sites described. Considering that it is printed in double column, it is surprisingly readable. This is because it is well written and untiedantic.
The volume before us is about Drury Lane Theatre and the Royal Opera House only. 1662/3 is the first date in the book. It was when Charles II granted letters patent to Thomas Killigrew and Sir William Davenant each to build a theatre in London or Westminster. They chose spaces between the two, then comparatively unbuilt upon. The last date in the book is 1964, when William Bundy, stage director to the Royal Opera House, designed the present elaborate stage lighting by the Strand Electric Company, assisted by M. Carr and W. McGee.
Books on the actors, musicians, dramatists and performances, of these two famous theatres have been written before. The editor wisely confines himself to the managements of the theatres and the architects of the buildings. The patents by which Killigrew's company, known as the King's company, was allowed to perform at Drury Lane. and Davenant's, known as the Duke of York's company, at Covent Garden, became valuable properties. By the end of the eigh- teenth century they were divided into shares of one-sixtieth. The Lord Chamberlain's office was always jealous of these Royal patents. Alfred Bunn, the librettist and manager of Drury Lane before the great days of F. B. Chatterton and Augustus Har- ris, recalled in 1837 how 'the harpies of the Lord Chamberlain's office, with noses as sensitive for a fee as a ferret's for a rat, despatched a missive to Drury Lane Theatre to inquire by what authority I had presumed to announce its re-opening'. Bunn produced a tin box and 'displayed before the won- dering eyes of the disappointed official the document itself, bearing the signature "Howard" with the appendage of his Lordship's ponderous seal of power'. Drury Lane still retains its tin box, but that of Co- vent Garden has been lost.
Until the invention of electric light, and particularly in the days of wax candles and wooden beams, theatres more than any buildings were subject to fire. As London grew, the two Royal theatres also needed to increase in size, thus Drury Lane (1663) enlarged itself in 1674, 1775 (Adam), 1791-4 (Holland), 1811-12 (Benjamin Dean Wyatt), 1822 (S. Beazley), 1921-2 (Walker, Jones and Cromie). Covent Garden (1730). rebuilt itself in 1774, 1809 (Sir Robert Smirke), 1856 (E. M. Barry who also designed the Floral Hall, with its recently destroyed glass dome as part of the Opera House). All these bygone
theatres, as well as the present ones, are illustrated here. The most beautiful must have been Drury Lane by Henry Holland, whose interior decoration was in silver and green with trellis work and blue draperies. It is a coloured frontispiece to this book.
Edward Middleton Barry, a son of the architect of the Houses of Parliament, receives too little credit today. He designed the Charing Cross Hotel and that at Cannon Street. Though the outside of the Royal Opera House today may not be so distinguished as that of Drury Lane, which is still Wyatt and Beazley, its auditorium is the most beautiful in London, thanks to the care that has been taken in decorating it since the war. 'I have so often gazed at the beautiful aquamarine ceiling; a piece of Faberge made for a giant. I am always impressed by the grandeur of the red velvet curtains and the symmetry of the mermaid-angels whose lights adorn tier upon tier of seats,' writes Lady Dartmouth in her preface to this volume. Readers will echo her ap- preciation.
It is unfortunate that on the whole Drury Lane audiences are different from those of the Royal Opera House. There is no doubt that the entrance hall, staircases, rotunda, saloon. Royal retiring room at Drury Lane, all by Benjamin Dean Wyatt in 1810-11, are some of the best Georgian public rooms in London. The statues and paintings which adorn them are worth seeing. The crush bar and grand staircase at Covent Garden are less good E. M. Barry, than his auditorium. It may be that he thought the Floral Hall. which he designed with its dome all as part of the Opera House, was to compensate.
Now that the fruiterers are leaving Covent Garden, William Fowler's granite market buildings (1828-30) in the centre, divested of their later canopies, could become the equivalents of Burlington Arcade. 'nig° Jones's piazza could be extended as Clutton attempted to do in Victorian times, round three sides of the market and London would have a protected pleasure centre which was both a continuous part of its history as well as a handsome and practical piece of architecture.
Tallis's London Street Views have to be seen to be believed. John Tallis, 1818-1876, was a Worcestershire man who conceived the idea of an illustrated directory to the main shopping streets of the metropolis. He published these directories in eighty-eight weekly parts (1838-40) and eighteen in 1847. The sides of each street were carefully engraved and there were a map and an engraved view at either end of the seventeen and a half inch by five and a quarter page, which was the illustrated part of the direc- tory. There has never been such a valuable and moving record of London at its best as this practical illustrated directory. I say mov- ing with emphasis, for hardly a shop or row of decent Georgian shop fronts or stucco fronted terraces shown in it survives. True, Swan and Edgar's are still on the corner of the Quadrant and Piccadilly, and a few names like Liberty and Savory and Moore are to be found. The only shop facades that I can find which are as they were in Tallis. and with the name over the shop, are Twining% in the Strand and Fribourg and Treyer in Haymarket. Other readers may find more survivals.
There is no doubt that to walk down the
streets in this book is to see late Georgian London. The great plate glass windows of mid-Victorian times and their higher buildings had not yet come in. Fortunately for tired eyes strained by too much electric light, the slightly larger reproduction of the original Tallis which this is, is an advantage. Tallis did not illustrate the courts and alleys leading off the main thoroughfares; he made his scheme pay by charging for the engrav- ing of names and shops. Everyone will be grateful to the London Topographical Society for causing this elegant ephemeral to become permanent.
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