Lovely, but lucre-loving
Philip Ziegler
LONDON: THE BIOGRAPHY by Peter Ackroyd Chatto, £25, pp. 779 London has been a brooding presence in many of Peter Ackroyd's books: in his novels, The Great Fire of London, Hawksrnoor, The House of Doctor Dee; in his biographies of Dickens, Blake and Thomas More. Sometimes it has hulked so large that it has threatened to displace the human beings with whom the books were ostensibly concerned. Now it has itself become the hero, a living organism which requires not so much a history as a biogra- phy. The background has finally come cen- tre stage. The result is a book that is idiosyncratic, sometimes whimsical, occa- sionally perverse, and invariably exciting and immensely enjoyable.
Ackroyd starts deceptively with introduc- tory chapters that are more or less chrono- logical and, though filled with interesting detail, not very different to the work of ear- lier authors. But then he begins to zigzag hectically among the themes that catch his attention: magicians and astrologers, the theatricality of London, the explosion of the great vat at the Horseshoe Brewery, depression and schizophrenia among East Enders, the contrasts between Hogarth and Canaletto. He rejoices in the picturesque characters who have haunted the streets of London throughout history: Colly Molly Puffe, 'a short hunchbacked man who sold pastries'; Tilly Doll, 'a vendor of ginger- bread in the Haymarket who wore ornate and brightly coloured dress, complete with feathered cap'. When Doll temporarily dis- appeared from the city accounts of his alleged murder were printed and sold in the streets by thousands; in the end he fell through the ice and was drowned in the Thames. Roger Crab of Bethnal Green subsisted on 'dock-leaves, mallows or grasse', while more recently Stanley Green, wearing cap and blazer, paraded for 25 years along Oxford Street with a banner proclaiming, 'Less Passion from Less Pro- tein'. Ackroyd can catch the atmosphere of a district in a few words:
Of London areas there is no end. The vibran- cy of Walthamstow, the mournful decay of Pimlico and Mornington Crescent, the confu- sion of Stoke Newington, the intense and energetic air of Brixton, the watery gloom of Wapping, the bracing gentility of Muswell Hill, the eccentricity of Camden Town, the fearfulness of Stepney, the lassitude of Limehouse, can all be mentioned in the vast oration of London.
One may not agree in their entirety with all his judgments but they always contain an essential truth that deserves consideration.
Ackroyd takes an idea, worries it, pokes and pulls it, stands it on its head, then releases it to totter on its way. In Clerken- well, for instance, he tells us that at the end of the 18th century 120,000 watches were produced each year by 7,000 artisans almost half the population of the parish. The fact is fascinating in itself, but he goes on to suggest that the 'passages, closets and attics' of the district 'may be compared with the wheels and dials of the clocks themselves, so that Clerkenwell itself becomes a vast mechanism emblematic of time and the divisions of time'. Clerkenwell was traditionally a hotbed of radicalism. Did the presence of so many skilled arti- sans actively foment such tendencies? 'Or was it that the creation of the division and subdivision of time was an obvious neigh- bourhood idol, to be smashed by those patriotic radicals who wished to return to an earlier polity and a more innocent state of society?' Ackroyd coruscates with ideas and fancies; not all his fireworks soar equally high and a few prove damp squibs, but the total effect is spectacular and vastly stimulating.
Ackroyd's London is a harsh and strident city. Violence is one of its most marked characteristics. The London crowd tends to demonstrate supreme callousness leavened only by a tincture of mawkish sentiment; from the voyeurs who yelled a derisive `butterfingers' when the executioner dropped the severed head of the last of the Cato Street conspirators, to the members of White's who bet on whether the man who had collapsed on the club steps was dead or merely in a fit and protested when `Not only is there nothing in this magazine. It's the same nothing that was in the last edition.' attempts were made to succour him on the grounds that 'it would affect the fairness of the bet'. 'The maddest people that the maddest times were every plagued with' was a contemporary description of Lon- doners during the Lord George Gordon riots; pari passu, the Broadwater riots of 1985 provide an ugly echo of the tragedy.
Noise ranks with violence. Much of the city exists in a perpetual maelstrom of pneumatic drills, burglar alarms, blaring radios and all-pervasive traffic. 'It is part of its unnaturalness, too, like the roaring of some monstrous creature. But it is also a token of its energy and of its power.' And with noise comes dirt. In the Middle Ages pigs, kites and ravens provided the best hope of keeping refuse under control; in the 18th century the road outside Aldgate `resembled a stagnant lake of deep mud', even in the 1970s an Iris Murdoch charac- ter felt 'the thick filth and mulch of Lon- don under my feet, under my bottom, behind my back'. But dirt is more than an unsavoury inconvenience; it is a symbol, even an essential element of London's prosperity. When a bailiff in the mid-1720s was ducked in a cess-pit and another was `force-marched before the crowd with a turd in his mouth', the author comments, `The connection between money and ordure is here flagrantly revealed.'
For money has always been at the heart of London's being; the city was a centre of trade from the Stone Age, by the early 18th century it was the centre of world com- merce. Not for nothing did Wenceslaus Hollar, in his great panorama of London, set Mercury, the god of commerce, in pride of place. Profit has been the driving force throughout the millennia and, since the accumulation of vast riches has almost always • had as its concomitant the poverty of those who labour at lower levels to help amass them, the sensational wealth of the most successful has been matched by the misery of the underprivileged. Engels con- demned the callous insouciance of the upper classes: 'The more that Londoners are packed into a tiny space, the more repulsive and disgraceful becomes the bru- tal indifference with which they ignore their neighbours and selfishly concentrate upon their private affairs.' The worst excesses against which Engels railed have now been corrected, but a capacity for ignoring their neighbours is still all too evi- dent among Londoners today.
Violent, noisy, dirty, avaricious, Ack- royd's picture of London and its inhabi- tants is hardly a seductive one. And yet his love of London is never in question, of its energy and vitality, its daring, its unpre- dictability, its fitful generosity, its obstina- cy, its conservatism, its extraordinary adaptability. The best known of all remarks about London is Samuel Johnson's apho- rism: 'When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.' The same could be said with equal justice of any reader who finds no pleasure or instruction in Ackroyd's book.
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