The streets of London through the centuries / Thomas Burke.

  • Thomas Burke
Date:
1949
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The streets of London through the centuries / Thomas Burke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    49/220 page 27
    facetiously called members of Duke Humphrey’s retinue. The best picture of it is that of Dekker: Your mediterranean isle is then the only gallery wherein the pictures of all your true fashionate and complemental gulls are, and ought to be, hung up; into that gallery carry your neat body, but take heed you pick out such an hour when the main shoal of Islanders are swimming up and down. . . . But one note by the way do I especially woo you to, the neglect of which makes many of our Gallants cheap and ordinary, that by no means you be seen above four turns; but in the fifth make yourself away, either in some of the Sempster’s shops, the new Tobacco-office, or amongst the booksellers, where, if you cannot read, exercise your smoke. . . . Howsoever, if Paul’s jacks be once up with their elbows, and quarrelling to strike eleven, as soon as ever the clock has parted them, and ended the fray with his hammer, let not the Duke’s gallery contain you any longer, but pass away apace in open view. . . . After dinner you may appear again, having translated yourself out of your English cloth cloak into a light Turkey grogram (if you have that happiness of shifting) and then be seen for a turn or two to correct your teeth with some quill or silver instrument, and to cleanse your gums with a wrought handkercher. It skills not whether you dined or no (that’s best known to your stomach) or in whate place you dined, though it were with cheese of your own mother’s making in your chamber or study. Now if you chance to be a Gallant in the Mercers’ books, your Powle’s Walk is your only refuge; the Duke’s Tomb is a sanctuary, and will keep you alive from worms and land-rats that long to be feeding on your carcase; there you may spend your legs in winter a whole afternoon; converse, plot, laugh, and talk anything. . . . He then advises the Gallant, if he would be in the fashion, to observe the suits and costumes worn by the most dashing, and to bring his tailor with him who, behind a pillar, will note the material and colour and design, and turn him out m the latest mode—just as, in these days, spies visit the “collections” of the Paris costumiers and make mass-productions of their models. Also, he is to climb to the top of the steeple, and, before coming down, to follow a custom that persists to this day among visitors to ancient monuments: Before you come down again, I would desire you to draw your knife, and grave your name (or for want of a name the mark which you clap on your sheep) in great characters upon the leads, by number of your brethren (both citizens and country gentlemen) and so you shall be sure to have your name lie in a coffin of lead when yourself shall be wrapt in a winding-sheet; and indeed the top of Paule’s contains more names than Stow’s Chronicle. Every kind of business went on in the main walk. Money-lenders and marriage-brokers met their clients there; horses could be bought, houses could be rented, private chaplains hired, and assignations made with women through their keepers. Each pillar of the aisle was a station for a particular commerce, and those seeking rich wives, or the illiterate
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3