Perhaps there’s a British idealism of social order that will always reside in London. Or so the saying goes, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Charles Dickens explores this line of reasoning in his construction of London within A Tale of Two Cities. London’s social genetics are apparent in the way that the monarchy still exists in the 21st century; however, I don’t believe it to be so obviously evident in the urban design. Streets have a paradoxical quality to them when an absolutist king stares down the road to the site of his own beheading. I am of course describing the statue of King Charles I who faces southward towards his demise at the Banqueting House on Whitehall. A little ways down and the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth—Oliver Cromwell—is stationed outside of Westminster Palace. Safe to say, there is a blurring in British values as you pass statues of both an absolute monarch and absolute democrat within a ten-minute stroll.
So what does this say about London? Well… it’s complicated. London’s historical journey to democratization is inseparable from the city’s streets. There has been a maintenance of the traditional landscape amidst the growth of democratic principles. That’s the ingenuity of the city though, embracing heritage and novelty alike. Buildings bear meaning in ways that go beyond human intentionality. I found this especially relevant while bookpacking Dickensian London. Dickens positions Tellson’s Bank near Temple Bar, the western access point to the old, walled-off City of London. This 1780s mapping of Fleet Street must be independently visualized today as Temple Bar has been moved adjacent to St. Paul’s Cathedral and Tellson’s Bank is a space available for yuppie business gentrification. Poor Mr. Lorry is turning over in his grave as we speak. In its day, Tellson’s was a stale-aired establishment of the old British dogma. This is the dogma that upholds class above all else.
“It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in the moral attribute that the partners in the House were proud of its smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its incommodiousness.”
Drawing by Phiz
Drawing by Phiz
In studying the foreclosed bank from which Dickens drew inspiration for Tellson’s, there’s little indication of what the above passage describes. The stone facade has been redone in an attractive romanesque manner that complements the neighborhood. This is a spot in which it’s hard to find the dogged ode to British traditionalism when it’s not right in front of you.
The skyline in the financial district provides a meditative alternative to Whitehall and Fleet Street. There you will see the Corinthian columns of the Mansion House wherein the Lord Mayor of London sleeps each night and skyscrapers of steel and glass towering behind. There you will look to the horizon on Lime Street and see the 16th century St. Andrew Undershaft church birthing the Gherkin out of its clock tower. There you will stand on the cobbled street corner admiring the Victorian Leadenhall Market on your left and the exoskeletal Lloyd’s building on your right. London combines the modern age of architectural design with the past. I illustrate this point to say that bookpacking A Tale of Two Cities means seeing streets through a timeline of change. I am seeing London’s Darwinian evolution. The inheritable traits of the city have adapted over time with external pressures of social disruption.
“In this respect the House was much on par with the Country; which did very often disinherit its sons for suggesting improvements in laws and customs that had long been highly objectionable, but were only the more respectable.””
There was no capital-lettered English Revolution. I understand this conceptually thanks to the teachings of my ex-BBC professor and I understand this in the way London’s urban design is both static and dynamic just as the process of democratization was. The people of Britain reformed in a manner of small steps. Through the American and French Revolutions, Britain remained devout to the monarchical ideal. It’s bewildering to imagine how those that approved the beheading of King Charles I in 1649 would feel about King Charles III sauntering around Buckingham Palace. Yet, the king of then is no longer the king of now. The path to personal liberty was a sequence of adaptations. Britain’s genetics were not altered all at once.